Close to Home

by Lisa Jackson

  “You’re saying they were sexually involved?” she asked, cutting to the heart of it. “Theresa and Roger Anderson?”

  “Well, from the way he talked, I’d say if he wasn’t doin’ her, he sure as hell wanted to. Probably the reason she took off, I’m thinkin’. It was freaky, man, the way he talked ’bout her.” He paused then, and as if he realized he’d said too much, he suddenly clammed up.

  “Anything else you remember about him?”

  “Look, we were cell mates for a while. That’s all. We both got out, and that was that.” He leaned closer, over the desk. “I try not to hang out with ex-cons, y’know. It just don’t look good.”

  “To whom?” she asked.

  “Everyone. Cops ’specially. Why do you think I’m here talkin’ to you? It’s not cuz of anything I’ve done.” He was a little hostile, his voice whiny. And he was still lying. Bellisario felt it in her gut. Maybe it was the way he tried to stare her down, or how his arms folded defensively over his chest, stretching his jean jacket over his shoulders. He wasn’t a big man to begin with, but he sure as hell was trying to puff himself up.

  “You’re a mechanic by trade.”

  “Well, yeah, but who’ll hire an ex-con? That’s why I’m washing dishes.”

  “Roger Anderson was spotted down at The Cavern.” The tip wasn’t confirmed, a wino had “thought” he’d spied Anderson when shown a picture of him, but she decided to see what kind of reaction she got. “A patron saw him.”

  “He wasn’t in the kitchen.” Hardy was emphatic.

  “But he was there?”

  “I heard that he hangs out there, but it’s got nothin’ to do with me. Shirley, the bartender, she’s seen him a couple of times.”

  “He didn’t come around to the back?” she asked. “Strike up a conversation?”

  “We ain’t friends. Why are you pushin’ me? I told you I haven’t seen Anderson, and that’s that. Now, you want to charge me with something?”

  “All we’re doing is talking here. At my desk.” She hadn’t taken him into the interrogation room as she figured he might freak out or seal his lips. Here, in her office, it was more of a “we’re just friends” atmosphere, or so she hoped. But Hardy wasn’t buying it.

  “Well, then, we’re done,” he said. “I ain’t done nothin’, and I don’t know why you dragged me down here in the first place.” He stood as if to leave.

  “Okay, fine, but if you hear from Anderson, you let me know.”

  “It’ll be a cold day in hell when that happens.”

  “You had a falling out?”

  “I already told you, there wasn’t nothin’ to fall out. We were never friends to begin with.”

  “You don’t know where he lives.”

  “Haven’t you been listening? I told you every damned thing I know about the dude!” Hardy was really fired up now, but she wasn’t quite finished.

  “He left the house in The Dalles. The woman he rented from said he just up and left, took everything with him.” Bellisario leaned forward a little. “We checked, he was gone, the room clean as a whistle. As if he hadn’t been there.” A ghost, she thought.

  “So?” Hardy was unimpressed.

  “And he hasn’t kept in touch with his parole officer. Made no contact in a couple of months.”

  Hardy didn’t say a word.

  She plowed on, “He’s always done what’s required, you know. Walks the straight and narrow every time he gets out, but this time, all of a sudden, Roger Anderson’s not playing by the rules.”

  “Happens all the time. Why do you think he keeps landing his ass in jail? Look, I already told you I don’t know where he’s livin’ or what he’s doin’ or who he’s doin’ it with. I don’t hang out with the dude. That’s it. I ain’t sayin’ another word.”

  “Fine,” Bellisario said, but she was talking to herself. Hardy had already turned on his heel and was marching down the hallway, leaving her with nothing except the lingering feeling that Hardy Jones, the ex-con who insisted he didn’t hang out with other felons, was hiding something.

  Something important.

  CHAPTER 28

  Her parents’ bedroom was a bust.

  She’d stirred up some old memories she’d rather forget, but Sarah found nothing in the suite or anywhere else on the third floor. She’d even ventured into Theresa’s room, her heart hammering, half expecting the Madonna statue to have moved again, but no. The figurine was just where she’d left it, and she told herself, after examining the room, that the Madonna was not smirking at her as she closed the door.

  “All in your head, Sarah. All in your head.” In the hallway, she hesitated at the doorway to the attic, hearing footsteps on the steps from the second floor.

  “Mom?” Gracie called up as Xena bounded into view and came galloping along the hallway. “You said you’d be right down.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Thought I could lay my hands on that Bible. Mom wouldn’t have gotten rid of it.” She glanced at the attic door, but she hadn’t noticed the Bible when she’d been through the garret earlier. The only place she hadn’t really examined was, of course, the basement.

  “You didn’t see it when you found the journal?” she asked Grace.

  “No.”

  “You looked all around, right?” Sarah said, remembering what Jade had said about Gracie snooping. “Even in the basement?”

  “You told me I wasn’t supposed to go down there.”

  “But you did, didn’t you? That’s where you found the journal. So the question is, while you were down there, did you notice the Bible? It’s big, so I don’t think you’d miss it.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Gracie said. “Sorry.”

  “Too bad. If we find it, we might just be able to make more sense out of the journal, why it’s in French and what it all means.”

  “Why do you want the Bible? Can’t you just translate it?”

  “Yes, but that’s the weird thing. I don’t think you’ve found the diary of Angelique Le Duc.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what I’ve translated, this journal was written by someone else, probably her daughter, Helen. She keeps talking about her mother, and I don’t think Angelique would be doing that.”

  Gracie’s disappointment was palpable. “Then it won’t help.”

  “We don’t know that. But to be sure, we need to find the Bible.”

  “You think it’s in the basement?”

  “Maybe.” Sarah forced a smile and tamped down her twenty-year-old phobias. “Let’s go look.”

  Gathering her courage, Sarah followed her daughter to the door of the basement, but as she swung it open, her cell phone rang and she recognized Clint’s number on the screen. Her stomach tightened, and she hesitated at the top step. “Hello?”

  Gracie was already halfway down the stairs.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice neutral. “How’re you doing?”

  “Okay.” Aside from the fact that I’m stepping into the place I’ve feared all my life, “What about you?” She started down the steps.

  “Doin’ okay, I guess. I’d like to spend more time with her, y’know. Really get to know her.”

  “I’m sure we can work that out. But you should be talking to her, don’t you think?”

  “I texted her, but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet. I figured she would, but I’d give her a little space. Let her get used to the idea. It’s a lot for a kid to take in.”

  She nearly tripped on one of the uneven stairs but grabbed hold of the rail and somehow managed not to drop her cell phone in the process. “A lot for an adult too.”

  “I wanted you to know that I contacted a lawyer today. Tom Yamashita. Local guy. I’ve known him for years. He’ll be calling you; probably want to talk to Jade too.”

  “You did?” Her chest suddenly constricted.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything you don’t like. I just need to know my rights, and Jade needs to understand hers as well. Not to m
ention McAdams.”

  “Okay. I’ll—I’ll talk to your attorney,” she said reluctantly.

  “Your ex adopted Jade, right?”

  “Yes, soon after we were married, but—” she’d wondered how Noel would handle the news. Probably not all that well. “I’ll take care of it. He’s a . . . reasonable man.”

  There was a pause, and she wondered if he were going to ask her about the divorce and the reasons she and Noel had split up. Her stomach tightened.

  “If you say so,” Clint agreed. “Sarah—?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ve got a lot of talking to do.”

  “I know.” One quick conversation was just the tip of the iceberg. “And maybe we should do that talking before we start hiring attorneys.”

  “It’s nothing against you. I swear.”

  She was trying not to be threatened. “Do I need my own attorney?”

  “Your call. But as I explained, I’m not trying to cause any trouble.” A pause, then he asked, “So where do you and I go from here?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, but it was an automatic question. She knew. When he waited for an answer, she finally said in a low voice so Gracie wouldn’t overhear, “You and I . . . were over a long time ago.”

  “Maybe we should work on that.”

  Her heart squeezed. Don’t do this, Clint, Don’t be attractive, “How?” she asked tentatively.

  “That’s what I’m asking,” he admitted. “Look, there’s the legal thing, yes. But there’s more to this, Sarah, a lot more.”

  “One step at a time,” she said automatically, as she glanced down to the cracked floor of the basement and gave herself that same piece of advice.

  “You’re going to Dee Linn and Walter’s party?”

  Clint was invited? She shouldn’t be surprised, she guessed. Aunt Marge had mentioned that Dee Linn was throwing a really big bash, her brothers had said as much when they’d visited, and since it had proved to be her older sister’s MO in the past, why would tonight’s “get-together” be any different. “Yeah, I’ll be there. At least for a little while. Big parties. Not my thing.”

  “I remember.” There was almost a smile in his voice. Almost. “Then, you’re not a thing like your sister.” He said it as if he still knew her, understood how different she was from Dee Linn, the sister who didn’t resemble her in looks or personality.

  “So I’ll see you tonight, I guess.” She hung up and realized her lungs were tight, her pulse elevated, her heart rate unsteady, even though she’d made it over the first hurdle of explaining to Clint and Jade that they were father and daughter. As hard as that had been, it wasn’t over. All of her family would soon learn the truth, and in a town the size of Stewart’s Crossing, an item of gossip was like a stone thrown into water, the ripples of any kind of scandal making ever-wider circles within the community.

  She could handle it, deal with the questions and probably more than one set of raised eyebrows or cutting comments, but what about Jade? Her daughter was already having trouble fitting in at Our Lady of the River. Her new status as the love child of Sarah Stewart and Clint Walsh wouldn’t help things.

  Bolstering herself, Sarah made her way down the final stairs.

  Grace was already snooping through the junk that had collected for several generations. Only one lightbulb in the whole area still worked, its illumination shadowy at best, so they used flashlights, and Sarah saw objects from her youth that she’d forgotten. An old bike—Jacob’s, she thought—was propped against one wall; empty canning jars were stacked in wooden shelves; the old milk-separating station, complete with stainless steel discs and a drum, had been left idle for dozens of years. Now cobwebs covered the equipment, and cracks were visible throughout the concrete floor.

  Yeah, Sarah thought, she’d need to come down here with a foundation specialist; several of the posts holding up the building appeared to be rotting, and who knew how long they would last. Jacob’s teasing words about getting a bulldozer came to mind, but she refused to consider taking down this old house.

  Her skin crawled as she walked through the area where dust and debris and old artifacts had collected. “This is worse than the attic,” she said to Gracie, “and guess who gets to clean it all up?”

  “Me?” Gracie asked.

  “You can help, but I think it’s my job. I wonder if Dee Linn or the twins want any of this.”

  “Isn’t it still Grandma’s?”

  “I don’t know, honey, but we won’t sell or get rid of anything she wants.” They began looking through boxes and moving old vases and books on shelves, pushing aside furniture.

  “This will take forever,” Gracie complained.

  “No . . . it’s not that much. Just disorganized.” It was as if Arlene, as she was starting her battle with dementia, had used the basement as a holding cell for things she couldn’t quite part with. An old radio, a broken dresser, a cracked mirror, and a television that looked like it was from the sixties—a lifetime of treasures turned to trash. Strangely, Sarah had calmed down; being in this underground space with items from her youth wasn’t frightening at all. Plastic toys and a hula hoop, her father’s pipe collection, and finally, tucked on a shelf near the old root cellar, behind some cookbooks with broken spines and stained pages, the Bible.

  “Here we go,” Sarah said. “Let’s take this upstairs.”

  It wasn’t easy, as the Bible was heavy and a little difficult to carry, and they tried not to trip on the uneven stairs, but soon they were in the dining room again. It was late afternoon, and daylight was fading as Sarah flipped open the tome to the page where, for nearly a century, the family births, deaths, marriages, christenings, and divorces had been recorded.

  “Am I in here?” Gracie asked, and Sarah said, “I don’t know. I don’t think my mother kept this up. Oh . . . look, I was wrong.” She flipped the page, found the most recent listings, and ran her finger down the list of names. Dee Linn and the twins’ names had been entered in Arlene’s fluid scroll, but that’s where it ended, with Joseph’s name and time of birth, ten minutes after Jacob’s.

  “That’s odd,” she said aloud when she realized that nothing had been posted after Joseph had come into the world. No more marriages, nor the twins’ christenings, which maybe they didn’t have. Seeing the family tree end with her siblings, with no mention of her, was difficult, and it stung a little. Had her mother had too much to do with six children, one an infant, two troubled teenagers, to list her?

  Oh, wait, now she understood. She had been born around the time that Theresa had gone missing. Of course, Roger and Theresa weren’t listed in the Bible as they weren’t Franklin’s children, but had been taken in by him when he married Arlene. That union was recorded, the date of the wedding clear, the children listed below. Except for one.

  “It looks like Grandma quit making entries. See, I’m not listed, nor you or Jade, and there are no further marriages written down either.” Not hers, of course, because she didn’t exist in the family Bible, but neither Dee Linn’s nor Jacob’s wedding was jotted into the page and Becky, Dee Linn’s daughter, wasn’t listed. It was as if from the moment Theresa disappeared, a light in Arlene had died, her enthusiasm for life, if she’d ever had it, had withered away.

  “Let’s not worry about that just now,” she said to Gracie. “You know, if we want, we can always add the names.”

  “It’s kinda weird, though. Look at all these names.”

  She was right. There were nearly six pages of names and notes, more than a hundred years of Stewart lives and deaths, the branches of the family tree long and sometimes crooked.

  “Are all of these people, the ones that have died, I mean, buried in the graveyard?”

  “You mean the family plot?”

  “Yeah, the one out there.” She pointed to a window and beyond.

  “The family stopped using that plot years ago. You know, Grandpa’s not in it. He’s in the community cemetery with a lot of other people
who lived around here.”

  “Then who is?”

  “Mostly people who died more than eighty years ago. I don’t really know when the plot was given up, but sometime in the early nineteen hundreds.”

  As much to stem her daughter’s interest in the old cemetery as well as to get her back to the point, Sarah flipped the pages of the Bible. “Here we go.” Angelique Le Duc’s information was complete, written in, no doubt, after she married Maxim, the date of her wedding not six months after the death of Myrtle, Maxim’s first wife. Great-great-great-grandpa worked fast. Myrtle had been forty when she’d died, and Angelique was still in her teens when she’d tied the knot with Maxim.

  “Angelique must’ve added her own information because her own mother’s death is listed as the day after her birth,” Sarah said. “That happened a lot back then, women dying in childbirth.”

  “So she never knew her mom?” Gracie said. “That’s sad.”

  “Uh-huh.” There was a lot of sadness in the pages of this old Bible, Sarah thought. “So that means the journal belongs to Helen.”

  “Or it’s Ruth’s,” Gracie ventured. “Or even Monica’s.”

  “No . . . look, at the date Helen was born.” Sarah pointed out the faded record. “April eighteenth, nineteen ten. That would have been about right. She would have been about the right age, fourteen, when Angelique disappeared. And look,” she flipped a few pages of the journal, “you can see where she names all of her siblings. Here’s Ruth and baby Jacques, Monica, and Louis. Papa would have been Maxim, Mama Angelique, even though technically she was Helen’s stepmother. The only person whom she doesn’t mention is herself, Helen.”

  “Because she’s writing in the first person.”

  Sarah smiled. “Someone’s been paying attention in English.”

  “I learned that a long time ago,” Gracie said. “Mrs. Stillman in the third grade was really big on it.”

  “Fine, so Helen is ‘I’ in this journal,” she said, tapping a finger on the diary.