I Scream, You Scream

by Watson, Wendy Lyn

  “So I guess you know why you’re here,” Cal said. Between his lazy-lidded gaze and laconic drawl, strangers might have taken Cal for nothing more than a good ol’ boy. Sure enough, he could turn on the aw-shucks, chicken-fried charm when it suited him. But behind his sleepy blue eyes lurked a whip-smart mind and a shrewd ambition.

  “Actually, no,” I said, clasping my hands together on the table. “I can’t imagine how I could help you.”

  Cal cracked a crooked smile, startling white in his tanned face. “Now, that’s mighty telling right there.” He snapped the ballpoint against the table, then made a quick note on his pad.

  “Let’s talk a minute about the night before Brittanie Brinkman passed away.”

  “Sure.”

  “Seems a little strange you were at a party hosted by your ex-husband.”

  I sighed. “I wasn’t a guest. I served dessert. Just business.”

  Cal thrust out his lower lip and nodded, considering. “Huh. That must’ve rankled.”

  “What?”

  “To be working for your ex-husband. And his girlfriend.”

  I felt a slow burn creeping up my throat. “I wouldn’t call it ‘working for them.’ ”

  Cal’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh.”

  He made another note on his pad. I tried to crane my neck subtly to read what he’d written, but his penmanship was atrocious, nothing more than a scrawl. I sank back in defeat.

  “Yeah,” Cal continued, shaking his head at my sorry situation, “there you are working for your ex and his new girlfriend while your high school flame comes cruising back into town. That must have really chapped your hide.”

  I made a sound of dismissal. “Good heavens, what does Finn Harper have to do with anything?”

  Cal tipped his head, considering. “I seem to recall you two were pretty hot and heavy in high school.” Cal knew better than most how close Finn and I had been. He’d tried to break us up more times than I could count. “I just think it must be unsettling to have him back. Especially under the circumstances.”

  “That was a long time ago, Cal. Finn being back doesn’t really affect my life one way or the other.”

  “Uh-huh.” He made another note, and I couldn’t hold back a huff of frustration.

  “Now . . .” He cleared his throat. “Tell me about the fight you two had that night.”

  “ ‘You two’?”

  “You and Brittanie.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a fight.”

  He flashed another smile. “Seems like we need a dictionary in here. Maybe look up employee and fight.”

  “It wasn’t a fight, Cal; it was a misunderstanding.”

  “Mmm-hmm. And what exactly did you misunderstand?”

  “I didn’t misunderstand anything. Brittanie did. She got it in her head that Wayne and I were flirting.”

  He chuckled. “Any truth to that?”

  “None.”

  “So what gave her the idea?”

  I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. She was drunk.”

  Another note.

  “What about later that night?”

  His tone remained mild, but there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere, like the dip in barometric pressure right before a storm. I held my breath, waiting for the deluge.

  Cal met my gaze and lifted one eyebrow in question. “What did you do after the party?”

  “I dropped Kyle off at his folks’—”

  “That would be Kyle Mason?”

  “Right. I dropped Kyle off, and Alice and I went home.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I took a shower, took some ibuprofen, and went to bed.”

  “You didn’t see Wayne after the party?” All pretense of casualness disappeared. “He didn’t come to your house?”

  I looked away for an instant, centered myself by studying a crack in the cinder-block wall behind Cal. Someone had painted the wall recently, and a thin skin of latex covered the imperfection. But the light and shadow and texture of the wall betrayed the flaw beneath the surface.

  I took a deep breath and met Cal’s gaze again. “No. I didn’t see Wayne after the party. Didn’t see him again until Brittanie’s funeral.”

  Cal studied me closely before jotting another note.

  “Would it surprise you to learn that Wayne told me he went to your house after the party? That you two spent the night together?”

  I considered lying, but I’ve never done it well. I could get away with little fibs, the sort that folks tell to smooth over social situations. But I didn’t think I could withstand Cal’s scrutiny. He was a professional lawman, after all, and once upon a time we’d been close friends.

  “It wouldn’t exactly surprise me, no.”

  “Mmm-hmm. But he’s lying.”

  He didn’t ask it like a question, so I didn’t feel compelled to answer directly. “Wayne does foolish things sometimes. Rash, impulsive.” I paused, to be sure Cal had given me his undivided attention, before I added, “But he’s a good man, Cal. Deep down, he’s a good man.”

  He had to be. I couldn’t bring myself to believe I’d spent nearly half my life with a bad man, so he had to be good.

  “Good men do bad things, Tally.”

  And that was what worried me most.

  That evening, after a day of hemming and hawing and second-guessing my every thought, I stood on the front step of the Harpers’ big Tudor house. The mullioned bay window to the right of the door glowed softly from the light of three fake jack-o’lanterns on the window seat inside, and a skeleton festooned with purple fairy lights danced on the iron-banded front door. Finn’s dad had died nearly a decade earlier, and, from what I had heard, Mrs. Harper was bedridden from her stroke, so the decorating must have been Finn’s work. Still more evidence that the wild child I had dated had been domesticated.

  The doorbell sounded the Texas A&M fight song, a melancholy reminder that Sonny Harper’s ghost had never quite been laid to rest. Finn’s older brother, Sonny, had played football for A&M for two years before a freak case of meningitis took his life just before he started his junior year. Sonny’s death would have been tragic enough on its own, but it also killed the Harpers’ marriage and Finn’s relationship with his dad. Mr. Harper stayed with his family, but his tepid wife and rebellious younger son could never fill the hole left by his beautiful boy, so brave and bright.

  A light winked on in the foyer, and a moment later the door opened wide.

  “Well, if it isn’t the woman of the hour,” Finn said.

  He gestured that I should enter. Stepping foot into the hallway was like taking a step back in time. The marine blue carpeting that covered the foyer and swept up the stairs, the cream-on-cream striped wallpaper, the colonial brass chandelier, were all just exactly as I remembered them. A brass console table rested against one wall, its glass surface nearly covered by a massive cream, blue, and maroon silk floral arrangement.

  Above that table, like a shrine, hung a picture of the Harper family in happier days: Mrs. Harper’s sandy curls framed a plain, patrician face, and her tan shirtwaist dress with the white collar and navy bow complemented her tasteful tortoiseshell glasses frames. Behind her, a big hand on either shoulder, stood Mr. Harper and Sonny, both thick necked, hale, and hearty. Sonny smiled more widely, and his hair was a lighter shade of brown, a little longer at the nape, but he was otherwise the spitting image of his dad. A young, lanky, sullen Finn crouched at his mother’s feet, his elbow resting on her knee. He looked more like his mother than his father, with her long face and pronounced cheekbones, but the stubborn set of his jaw was all Harper.

  I studied the portrait while Finn closed and latched the door behind me. It predated my relationship with Finn by a couple of years, and I felt a pang of tenderness for the boy in the photo, his mouth too wide for his face, his ears hidden beneath unfortunate wings of feathered hair, the spark of challenge in eyes that had only begun to glimpse the hard realities of life.

  “So,” Finn
asked, startling me from my reverie, “did you cover for Wayne or not?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You told the truth,” he said. But his sigh of relief spoke of the doubt he had harbored. “Want some tea?”

  I smiled. “Absolutely.”

  Finn led me back to his mother’s kitchen, still decorated in muted blues and mauves with country geese and cabbage roses ringing the room. I sat at the oak dinette table, fiddling with the ruffled edge of a checkered place mat, while Finn went through the ritual of tea making.

  Finn’s affinity for tea started in high school. I always suspected it was an affectation, a conscious effort to be different from the other “alternative” kids who gulped black coffee and smoked clove cigarettes. Yet he had apparently never outgrown it.

  “Would you like Earl Grey, Irish breakfast, or chamomile?” He looked up from the boxes he grasped in his broad hands. “That’s the only decaf option I have,” he said apologetically.

  “It may keep me up, but I could really go for the Irish breakfast,” I said.

  “Lemon and sugar, right?”

  I smiled. “Yes.”

  He puttered about the kitchen, and I watched. Mrs. Harper had never been much of a cook, preferring to bring in elaborate precooked meals from the deli of a high-end supermarket: plastic tubs of minestrone and breaded breasts of chicken Kiev, ready to pop in the oven for thirty minutes. So I was surprised to see the ease with which Finn negotiated the kitchen, spooning loose tea leaves into a wire mesh ball and rinsing the teapot in hot tap water. I was even more surprised when he peeled the tinfoil from a cake pan and sliced up squares of clearly homemade gingerbread, redolent with spices and the sweet-tart snap of lemon glaze.

  “You cook?”

  He ducked his head and shrugged a shoulder. “If you don’t ski or skate, you have to learn to do something to fill up the long Minneapolis winters. I’m no Julia Child, but I can keep body and soul together.”

  I sank my fork into the tender gingerbread and popped a piece in my mouth. It was fantastic, like a well-blended perfume: a sparkling top note of citrus over the piquant bite of ginger and the darker, more complex notes of molasses and clove. I closed my eyes and moaned a little. “God, this would be so great with a scoop of lemon ice cream,” I muttered. I took another bite and moaned a little louder.

  “Careful, Tally,” Finn teased. “My mom might get the wrong idea about what we’re doing down here.”

  My eyes popped open to find a steaming mug of tea before me and Finn across the table, tucking into his own slice of cake.

  “How is your mom?”

  He shrugged. “As good as can be expected. The stroke was bad. She’s lost the use of her right arm and her right leg, and her speech comes and goes. She sleeps most of the time.” He cleared his throat. “There’s a nurse here during the day, and two nights a week. I’ve been looking at care facilities. For now, though, she’s comfortable.”

  I felt as though I ought to say something, but everything that came to mind sounded trite and empty. So I just let the silence stretch until finally Finn broke it.

  “So you survived your conversation with Johnny Law?”

  “I guess so,” I said, poking at the cake with the tines of my fork. “The big question, of course, was whether Wayne spent that night with me. But Cal seemed mighty interested in how I felt about Brittanie and . . .”

  “And what?”

  I cleared my throat and looked down into the amber depths of my tea. “Well, he pointed out that you being back in town might have stirred things up a bit.” I held up a hand to ward off any comment. “I told him that was silly, that you didn’t have anything to do with my marriage or its demise, but you know how ornery Cal can be. Like a dog with a soup bone.”

  Finn was quiet a moment, chewing softly. “Tally, I’m glad you didn’t lie for Wayne. You have a real chance to start over without him, and I don’t want to see you get dragged into his mess.”

  A short, humorless laugh escaped me. “I’m already waist deep in this mess. Which is why I think I need to knuckle down and grab a shovel.”

  Finn froze, fork midway to his mouth. “I know that look,” he said. “That ‘ain’t nobody better stop me’ look you get right before you go off on some wild hare. What are you thinking?”

  I picked up my mug and blew gently across the surface of the tea, relishing its warmth in my hands. “Nothing much,” I assured him. “I just want to do a little poking around. See what I can find out about Brittanie. Maybe figure out who might have wanted to see her dead.”

  His fork clattered to the plate. “You’re going to investigate a murder? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  I clicked my tongue against my teeth. “I’m not going to do anything of the kind. Just make a few discreet inquiries.”

  “That sure sounds like an investigation to me.”

  “Well, it’s not. I’m just worried that the police are going to focus all their attention on Wayne—and maybe a little on me—and they’ll miss something big.”

  Finn spread his hands wide on the table, as if he were trying to stop the world from spinning just a bit. “Look, Tally, I don’t think Cal’s seriously considering you as a suspect. He knows you better than that. He’s just yanking your chain a little. And as for Wayne, well, that’s Wayne’s problem. Not yours.”

  I took a cautious sip of my tea, and then, when it didn’t scald me, another. “I just can’t figure out why Wayne won’t tell the police where he was that night.”

  “Has it occurred to you that he’s sticking to this ridiculous story because the truth is worse? Because he actually poisoned his girlfriend and listened to her death throes and did nothing to help her?”

  The image he painted was so ugly, I staggered as if he’d struck me physically. Hot tea spilled over my hand. “You don’t know Wayne like I do. He’s an ass, but he’s not evil. I don’t know why he keeps lying about what happened that night, but he didn’t kill Brittanie. And I can’t let him go to jail for something he didn’t do. I just can’t.”

  Finn leaned across the table. “Dammit, Tally,” he said, his voice taut with frustration, “he screwed you over seven ways from Sunday. Why would you protect him?”

  I looked away, fixing my gaze on a ceramic cookie jar shaped like a goose. “He was my husband.”

  “Was. He was your husband. Past tense.”

  “My name is still Jones.”

  “So change it. Go back to being Tally Decker. Hell, Tally Decker knew how to stand up for herself.”

  I flinched at the contempt in his voice but forced myself to meet his gaze again.

  “Yeah, well, Tally Decker is long gone. I could change my name, but I can’t bring her back. I can’t unravel all the choices I’ve made through my life, Finn. And the people in this town will always see me as Wayne’s something: his wife, his ex, his door-mat.”

  “Exactly,” he said more gently. “This town is holding you back. Get out.”

  A wistful smile tugged at my lips, and I felt tears gathering in my eyes. “I’m not like you. I can’t just pick up stakes and start over.”

  “Sure you can. You just go. Go someplace where no one has ever heard of Wayne Jones. Go someplace where you can just be you.”

  I sank my fork into the gingerbread, but then stopped and pushed the plate away. “I don’t think you get it, Finn. There is no ‘me’ without this place. Without Bree and Alice and Kyle and, like it or not, without Wayne.”

  He didn’t answer at first, just got up, cleared the cake plates, tucked them in the dishwasher. He futzed with the cake plate and the sliced lemons, tidying the kitchen. I got the sense that, more than anything, he was buying time to think.

  Finally, he came back to the table with the teapot—as round and shiny and red as a perfect maraschino cherry—in one hand and a white knitted pot holder in the other. He refilled our tea mugs, set the pot on the pot holder on the table between us, and settled back onto the ladder-backed dining chair. />
  “So, what can I do to help?” he said.

  I took a sip of tea and swallowed hard to hide the depth of my gratitude.

  “For now, nothing. Brittanie’s life seemed to have three hubs: Wayne’s Weed and Seed, Zeta Eta Chi, and the Lady Shapers. I think I stand a better chance of worming my way into all three worlds than you do.”

  For an instant, Finn looked as though he wanted to add something, but then he frowned and shrugged, his attention focused on the mug in his hands.

  “Finn?” He looked up at me through his lashes, his expression wary. I plucked up my courage and thanked him the best way I knew how. “I wouldn’t be me without you, either.”

  chapter 10

  I arrived at the Prickly Pear Café fifteen minutes early for my lunch with Honey Jillson because I didn’t dare arrive a second late. A wispy hostess with a dull brown bob ushered me to a table in the solarium. The Prickly Pear occupied a building that had once housed a florist and greenhouse, and during the cooler months, diners could sit in a glass-enclosed solarium, soaking up sunlight beside potted ficuses and sprawling cacti.

  I drummed my fingers against the chintz-covered tabletop and fidgeted with the saltshaker until Honey arrived at noon on the dot. She surveyed the restaurant from the foyer and waved away the hostess when she spotted me. Her rigid posture and regal bearing made me acutely aware of my own untidy slouch, and I squared my shoulders as I waited for her to settle into the seat across from me.

  “Good afternoon, Tallulah.” Honey slid the napkin ring off her silverware roll with trembling fingers, while an acne-riddled busboy filled her water glass.

  We ordered our lunch, ladylike salads and water with lemon, and traded pleasantries until our food arrived. By the time the waitress set my Asian chicken salad in front of me, I had learned that Honey was planning a silent auction to benefit the North Texas Italian Greyhound Rescue, that she had just accepted a position on the board of the Friends of the Dalliance Library, and that she was coordinating an Adopt-a-Family Christmas drive for the League of Methodist Ladies. In short, I got a crash course on just how busy an unemployed woman could be.