A Question of Ghosts

by Cate Culpepper

  Becca knew Patricia was right. Several pictures of her mother survived, and a framed photo of her parents still stood on her dresser at home. Madelyn Healy had the kind of shy blond beauty one associated with reticence and reserve, an understated delicacy that was unthreatening to other women and aroused protectiveness in men. From her own memory, Becca could picture her hands most clearly, her long, tapered fingers the incarnation of gentleness. Then she remembered the harrowing scream from the radio and shuddered. She felt Rachel watching her.

  “Are you all right with this, friend?” Rachel leaned closer and lowered her voice. “We don’t have to discuss anything that upsets you. I can always bring up Michelle Obama.”

  Becca suppressed a bubble of laughter. “How can I be upset? There’s devil’s food cake in the kitchen.”

  Rachel winked at her, but sobered as Jo spoke.

  “Actually, your insights into the dynamics between Becca’s parents might be helpful to us.” Jo reached into the breast pocket of her white shirt. She withdrew the small silver device she’d had at the Rose and laid it on the table. “Does anyone object if I record this?”

  “It’s not really my habit to allow—” Mitchell broke off and looked at Becca.

  “Good,” Jo said shortly. “Becca, I can promise you I’m not going to make any direct references to the death scene.”

  “Good,” Becca repeated. She couldn’t tell yet if she’d have to plunge her fork into Jo’s jugular before she made this charming dinner any worse.

  “Becca and I are working from the theory that the accepted explanation of her parents’ deaths isn’t true.” Jo studied Mitchell and Patricia. “Have either of you ever had any suspicions along those lines?”

  “There’s never been any reason to question what the police told us,” Mitchell answered. “Becca, are you sure you want us to delve into all this personal business?”

  “Well, this family doesn’t have a big history of delving.” Becca was not loving this conversation, but she’d told Jo she would cooperate in learning more about her parents. She looked at Rachel for reassurance and found it in her kind eyes. “You guys have never told me that much about my mom and dad.”

  “Oh, Rebecca. I’m not sure that’s fair.” Patricia sounded pained. “It seems to me we’ve spoken about them quite often over the years. At least when you were younger.”

  “I don’t mean you didn’t mention them. You just never really answered my questions. Some of my questions, when I was younger.” Becca hesitated. That fogginess was tickling the back of her brainpan again, the mild disorientation that was becoming her natural state these days.

  “Before we’re all too much older, Becca.” Jo drummed her blunt nails on the tablecloth. “What questions would you like to ask?”

  Becca threw Jo an exasperated glance while she tried to gather her thoughts, aware the other three were exchanging looks. This gathering had brought out the worst in Jo, the near failure of her meager social skills. At least the other night, with Marty and Khadijah, some actual warmth had developed around that table. The sharp edges of Jo’s brusqueness had softened eventually, in the company of her friends. Becca saw none of that gentling in her now. She felt an unexpected pang of wistfulness, missing the friendlier bond she’d shared with Jo in the cemetery, at the feet of the Lady.

  A friendliness that had begun to change, Becca remembered. She had tried hard to hold back from touching Jo in that moment; she wasn’t given to throwing herself in the arms of people who avoided physical contact. But Becca’s sudden weariness had been so complete, her loneliness so stark, she desperately needed some kind of human connection. Leaning into Jo had felt surprisingly natural, even welcome. And the sensation of touching her had deepened, become richer and undeniably sensual. Becca shook her head and tried to clear her mind.

  “I guess I’ve only heard the good stories about my parents. I remember those.” Becca granted Patricia that much. “But I know they didn’t have a perfect marriage, and neither of you have said much about that.”

  Patricia started to speak, but Mitchell beat her to it, which was not technically interrupting, it was just Mitchell. “I’d say you’ve summed it up plainly enough, Becca, and I’m not sure what more we can add. Pat and I weren’t privy to the intimate details of Scott’s marriage. You’re right. It wasn’t a perfect union. I haven’t known many of those, however, except my own.” He lifted his coffee cup to Patricia. Becca noted Mitchell’s definition of a perfect union involved Patricia’s lifelong willingness to overlook his roving eye, but he was right; their marriage had always been solid.

  “But there was no abuse in their relationship, Becca.” Patricia spoke with the authority of the director of a women’s shelter. “We would have been aware of that, certainly. Scott and Maddie may have argued, but we would have stepped in if we thought there was violence.”

  “You did step in, though, didn’t you?” Becca smiled at Rachel. “You were worried enough that you got them into counseling with the best psychiatrist in Seattle.”

  Jo had been checking the device to see if it was recording, but now she set it down. “Dr. Perry? You saw Becca’s parents in counseling? I wasn’t aware of this.”

  “I told you Rachel was my therapist when I was a kid, Jo, after my parents died.” Becca tried not to sound snappish, but she didn’t try hard. “That’s how I knew her. Mitchell referred my folks to her for marriage counseling.”

  “I couldn’t imagine better hands to entrust them to.” Mitchell inclined his head at Rachel. “Pat and I had heard enough to know there was a lot of tension under that roof. And it’s true we were concerned enough to ask Rachel to meet with them.”

  “But it wasn’t a referral you should have taken, was it?” Jo turned to Rachel. She didn’t sound accusatory, just curious.

  Rachel lifted her head. “Because?”

  “You mentioned that Mitchell is one of your oldest friends, correct? Doesn’t that mean you had at least some personal contact with his younger brother, as well? I’m wondering if it was wise, or ethical, to agree to see a family friend in a clinical setting.”

  Becca bit back a knee-jerk defense of Rachel, trusting her to speak for herself. The planes of Rachel’s elegant face held the same pallor that had worried Becca the day before and she sat stiffly, as if she were in pain, but she answered Jo easily.

  “Under any other circumstances you’d be right, Joanne. I really intended just to do a preliminary assessment and then refer Scott and Maddie on to a colleague who would be a good fit for them. It began as a simple evaluation for marital counseling, but it quickly became focused on Maddie.”

  Rachel paused and took Becca’s hand in her own. “Becca, your mother was my patient. You know her death doesn’t release me from the promise I make to all my patients, that I’ll honor their privacy. You’re my friend now, but there are things I can’t and won’t tell you about Maddie’s journey. Do you still understand that?”

  Becca ignored Jo’s sliding the recorder closer to them. She didn’t answer Rachel right away, letting the room mellow until it was just the two of them again, comfortable and familiar. “You’ve told me that so many times, Rach. I do understand. Or I do whenever I’m not feeling this raw. But I really need your help with all this tonight, okay? Tell us what you can.”

  Rachel sighed and straightened in her chair. “All right. Most of this is fairly common knowledge anyway. Becca’s mother suffered from bipolar disorder, Joanne. She only had one manic episode to my knowledge, before her child was born. But she struggled hard with some devastating depressions when Becca was quite young.”

  Rachel spoke gently, but Becca saw no need to cushion these words. Not only was her head too dim to host much feeling right now, she remembered her mother’s emotional cataclysms as the natural order of things. As far as her small self had known, everyone’s mother stayed in bed for days at a time. Everyone’s father came racing home in the middle of the day to feed their kid.

  “Becca, she foug
ht so hard to get well.” Patricia seemed to think Becca needed comfort, too. “Maddie really tried, dear. I can’t say I knew her terribly well. I wanted to be closer to her, but I felt she and Scottie resisted spending time with Mitch and me. But those depressions scared her enough to agree to see Rachel privately. And I know Maddie did everything she could to help herself. She made all her appointments, she stayed on her meds. I wish half the homeless women I work with had her courage.”

  A small, hard kernel in Becca wondered at Patricia’s unusual wordiness on this topic. She had probably just said more about her mother than Becca had heard throughout puberty. And there was a note of professional detachment in her aunt’s tone, some nuance that made her sympathy sound rehearsed. Lord, Becca thought, I’m getting as scratchy as Jo.

  Rachel rubbed her eyes. “In Maddie’s case, Becca, more than any I’ve ever seen, it came down to chemistry. The chemical imbalance in your mother’s brain was just too complex to be helped by medication for long, at least the ones we had back then, in the mid-seventies. It’s a lifetime curse for many of my patients, even today—to be born with minds that are simply too inscrutable for modern psychiatry to offer any real, lasting healing.”

  Becca started to speak, but closed her mouth, confused. Jo was staring at Rachel with an odd mixture of foreboding and distaste. Her hands were folded neatly on the table, but Becca could see her fingers were so tightly clenched that her knuckles were white.

  “Help me understand this, people.” Jo loosened her hands and traced a pattern on the tablecloth with one finger. “We’re talking about a young mother, by all accounts a loving one, highly motivated to control her behavior. A troubled marriage, but a husband supportive enough to send his wife to a competent psychiatrist. Madelyn Healy was fully compliant with her treatment. How long was she in therapy with you, Dr. Perry? Before the shootings?”

  “Eight months,” Rachel said quietly.

  “Eight months of private sessions. And she had a husband, concerned in-laws, and a good therapist as her support system. I’m trying to understand why none of you saw the crisis coming. If things happened that night the way all of you say they did, if Becca’s mother suddenly flew into a psychotic rage and took two lives. How is it that none of you were alerted to—”

  “I believe Rachel has explained all that, Joanne.” Mitchell was every inch the prosecutor again. “Tragedies happen in families afflicted with mental illness. It’s a fact of life. Pat and I see it every day in our work, and we both deal with the carnage that kind of sickness leaves in its wake. The best treatment in the world can’t save some people.”

  “And on that happy note, I’m afraid I must take my leave.” Rachel smiled at them and pushed back carefully from the table. “Patricia, dinner was wonderful, but I have early sessions in the morning.”

  “Rachel, please. No need to rush off.” Mitchell got to his feet. “Sit for a while longer. You don’t look well tonight. I’m sure Joanne didn’t intend to imply any criticism.”

  “I’m not offended, Mitch, honestly.” Rachel laid her hand on Becca’s shoulder before she could rise, and spoke to her alone. “I promise to help you in this investigation in any way I can, Becca. I’ve just had enough for tonight, and I need to take care of myself.”

  “Of course, honey,” Becca whispered.

  Jo looked uneasy for the first time. “Dr. Perry, I’m not necessarily talking about any professional failing on your part.”

  “We’re talking about the first and saddest professional failure of my career, Joanne. Perhaps of my life.” Rachel bent stiffly, lifted her purse from the floor, and opened it. “Becca, here are the keys to the house. Remember that damn washer is still on the blink. I haven’t had a chance to get it fixed.”

  Becca accepted the keys numbly. “I’m sorry, Rach.”

  “No harm done.” Rachel kissed Becca’s cheek. “Night, friends.”

  “I’m walking you to your car,” Becca decided. Then she decided the night was over for her, too. “Patricia, Mitchell, thank you for having us. Great manicotti. Jo, you can ride back with me now, or you can jump into Lake Washington and swim to Capitol Hill. Your pick.”

  Chapter Six

  The lights across the I-90 floating bridge burned an eerie fairy path across the dark water, and Jo sat back in Becca’s rattling Toyota and tried to enjoy the ride. She drove this bridge often enough in her own Bentley, but always alone; she seldom got to take in the scenery that was Seattle’s inherent blessing. Not that the palpable tension in this car allowed for such innocuous pleasure.

  Jo’s stomach rumbled, and she considered asking Becca to stop at a Dick’s Drive-In en route to Capitol Hill. She didn’t know what Patricia Healy considered decent manicotti, but it was not whatever had inhabited Jo’s plate tonight. Dick’s offered an excellent cheeseburger. She glanced at Becca’s still profile and decided against it.

  “I didn’t like the way he spoke to you.” Jo hadn’t intended to say this aloud, but it was the truth.

  “What?” They were the first words that had passed between them since Becca pulled away fast from the stately house in Kirkland. “What are you talking about?”

  “The way he made you feel. I didn’t like it.” Jo struggled to shut up. Her voice revealed too much emotion, too much of the protectiveness that was still so new to her. “Your uncle talked to you as if you’re simple, as if your opinions don’t matter. It was so different the other night, with your friends. They respect you, Becca. I could hear it in their voices. They treated you the way people who love you should. But your face changed tonight when your uncle spoke to you. You got smaller in your chair. It made me angry.”

  “Jo.” Becca’s hands still clenched the wheel, but at least she wasn’t “Joanne” anymore. “Mitchell and Patricia took me in when I was five years old. They never expected to be parents, never even wanted kids of their own. But they raised me kindly. They did the very best they could, bringing me up. And I didn’t always make it easy on them, I promise you.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” Jo looked at Becca’s features, lit softly in the light of the dashboard, and realized she found them lovely. “Except for your phobia, and perhaps your too-hardy appetite, I’d think you’d be easy enough to raise—”

  “Jo, you have to listen to me.” Becca’s voice was less chilly, but still firm. “I’m telling you that you don’t have my permission to be rude to the people in my life. However you might feel about my uncle and aunt, Rachel, my friends, you’ve got to be courteous to them. If we’re going to spend a lot of time together, you have to understand that. You have to do better.”

  Jo stared miserably out the window, flecked now by slanted dots of rain. “I’ll try, Becca.” It was the best she could promise. She had been trying for courtesy all her life and falling short of the mark.

  “Thank you.” Becca glanced at her, and her eyes warmed before she returned her attention to the road. Jo understood she was on her way to being forgiven. She realized she didn’t need to consult her files on microexpressions to know the truth about Becca anymore. This was puzzling, as they’d met only eight days ago. Jo didn’t trust herself to interpret the motivations of many people in her life, even after years of acquaintance. Becca’s face seemed familiar to her now, open and expressive and honest.

  They chugged up the steep rises of Capitol Hill, but the silence inside the car was more comfortable. Another welcome oddity in Jo’s sparse social life, not having to struggle to fill perfectly good quiet with empty talk. She watched Becca’s fine-boned hands on the wheel, her wrists delicate in spite of the strength in her arms. She imagined Maddie Healy’s hands had been much like her daughter’s.

  Becca pulled up in front of the house on Fifteenth Avenue with a squealing of brakes, and the engine harrumphed several times before dying.

  “Doesn’t the state pay their social workers enough to buy decent transportation?” Jo hoped Becca would hear the teasing in her voice.

  Becca chuckled and t
apped the steering wheel. “Well, the state pays me more than the staff makes at my aunt’s shelter. Basically, I’m too cheap to buy a decent car. Or decent sneakers. I love to get out of the city on weekends, so I save all my dinars for trips.”

  “Where do you trip?”

  “Cannon Beach. Lake Crescent. I seem to run for pretty water whenever I get a chance.” Becca was still tapping the wheel. “I’m stalling. You can tell, right?”

  Jo nodded. “It’s hard for you, going back into this house.”

  Becca gazed out her window, to the dark cemetery across the street. “It’s going to be hard for me to sleep in this house again. We don’t know how long we’ll have to stay here?”

  “There’s no telling, Becca.” Jo was sympathetic but resolute. “If it’s any comfort…I’m not sure why it would be, but if it’s any comfort, you won’t be alone in there. I’ll be with you every minute.” She smiled. “You won’t hurt my feelings if you scream in dismay now and run away again.”

  A brief laugh escaped Becca. “Both of us are pretty private people, Dr. Call. If we’re alone together every minute, for days on end, I can imagine we…”

  Jo wasn’t sure what Becca was imagining until she started to imagine it, too. Becca’s gaze changed, deepened, as she studied Jo more intently. They stared at each other, and the warm confines of the car seemed suddenly close and confining.

  “Pop the trunk,” Jo said. “I’ll get our bags.”

  Becca reached beneath the dash and popped the trunk.

  *

  “We should plan to sleep in this room, and spend most of our time here.” Jo was tinkering with a silver radio on the coffee table in the living room, so she didn’t see Becca’s look of dismay. “It’s best if we consolidate all of our resources in one area.”

  “We’re going to sleep in here?” Becca said faintly. “Not in the bedrooms upstairs? I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Why can’t you? We’ll be perfectly comfortable.”

  There were a vast number of things Becca felt incapable of at the moment, but she decided to focus on dealing with this one, this thing with Jo. She didn’t want to keep ignoring what was happening between them. She continued her slow circle of the living room. “Listen, maybe we should talk. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but it’s my way to be direct about things like this.”