by Linda Barnes
“Your father didn’t see you this week?” I said.
“That jerk. No.”
“And you didn’t see Reardon?”
“No.”
“And you don’t know he’s dead.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” she asked anxiously.
“It’s true,” I said. “That’s why.”
“Please,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Dead,” she repeated.
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“He killed himself.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s dumb. He wouldn’t.”
“The police say he did.”
“But—”
I shook my head and her face crumbled. She flung herself down on the pillow. Her shoulders shook, but she didn’t make any noise. I went over and patted her on the back. At first she recoiled from my touch, then she lay still. I would have stayed with her except I heard Roz yell for help.
CHAPTER 30
Roz is not a screamer. I don’t mean she’s quiet. Particularly when using one of her tumbling mats for love-making, she can turn out the most incredible progression of provoking noises. But this was something different, and I was out of the bedroom before I thought about what the trouble might be.
She had tried the second-floor bathroom. I don’t know if her lover, the tall, dumb plumber had told her it was safe in some fit of overconfidence, or her nonlover, in a corresponding fit of jealous rage, had told her the same, but Roz was stuck in the bathroom, staring transfixed at the geyser erupting from the ruptured faucet of the Day-Glo orange sink.
She was soaked, dripping, huddled on the window side of the bathroom. To get to the door she would have had to run under the fountain. Steam was rising.
“Shut-off valve!” I yelled.
“It’s under the fucking sink,” she screamed. “Too hot.”
“Don’t move,” I said.
“I’m going out the window,” she cried.
“Is it hitting you?”
“No, but the steam—”
“This is the second floor,” I shouted. “Stay there.”
“I can jump,” she said.
“There aren’t any fucking tumbling mats. I’ll get the shut-off in the basement.”
“Hurry,” she said.
I was already down the stairs. Every time I took a step I muttered something about the Twin Brothers. Stupid, shitty, dumb-ass, motherfucking Twin Brothers.
I had to find a flashlight, race down two flights of stairs, remember where the damn shut-off valve was, all the while hoping Roz didn’t scald herself to death or crawl out the window and crash to the ground.
When I ran back up, the first words Roz screamed, peering over the landing, were, “Did you catch her?”
Valerie. She was goddamn gone.
CHAPTER 31
The bathroom was a disaster, a swamp of steamy water and warping chocolate tiles, like squares of Hershey left out in the sun. Water dripped from ceiling tiles that would never be the same color again. The battered faucet of the Day-Glo orange sink clogged its porcelain bowl.
Roz, now standing in the hallway hanging her head, had wisely closed the door when she ran out. I was sorry I’d reopened it.
“Shit,” I said, plunging my hand in the sink and yanking out the chunk of faucet. The water drained with a vengeful sucking noise. I went to dry off my hand but the towels were all soaked.
My hand may have been dripping hot water, but the rest of me was freezing. At Roz’s shouted warning, I’d run out of the house without my coat, searching for Valerie. In the dark my neighborhood of close-together houses and hearty oaks could have hidden an army. “Valerie,” I shouted, imagining her silent, scornful laughter as she hid behind a bush or in the shadow of a nearby porch or tool shed.
“Goddammit.” I said, wiping my hand on my jeans.
Abandoning the bathroom, I ran to get my outdoor clothes, my shoulder bag, a strong flashlight. The girl couldn’t have gotten far. With my car …
That’s when I heard the motor start, and the character and direction of the noise made my heart stop. I stared at the front door and realized what I hadn’t noticed before. Valerie had left the door swung wide on its hinges. I’d closed it on my first fruitless return. My keys, left in the lock, were gone. I ran to the front door fast enough to see my car, my dear red Toyota, my first and only car, drive away without me.
“Shit,” I said.
So I was wet, freezing, angry, and feeling pretty dumb to boot. I thought about calling the cops to report my stolen car but couldn’t bear the monumental indifference with which the Cambridge Police would greet the news.
Car theft is a misdemeanor in this state unless the owner can prove that whoever stole the vehicle did so with intent to deprive said owner of use on a permanent basis. A kid taking a joyride isn’t really a car thief under Massachusetts law.
I sent upward a brief but fervent prayer that Valerie, underage though she was, had some rudimentary knowledge of the driving process.
I grabbed my handbag to get the car registration. It felt unusually heavy, and I remembered Valerie’s purse, her wallet-sized shoulder bag, stuffed deep into its nether regions.
I found it and tumbled its contents onto the kitchen table. Two lipsticks rolled to the floor. Subway tokens joined them. There was a package of condoms in among the wadded Kleenex, and a pack of cigarettes. Virginia Slims. Two matchbook folders, both from Zone bars. No address book. There were various keys, but none with an ID tag. I’d been hoping for a hotel key. A rich little bitch like her would have rented a room.
Folded up small was a piece of paper, lined notebook paper torn at the margin, a page filled with round childish writing. I read it. I sat down. I read it again.
The page had been ripped in two. The top half was lost so there was no lead-in to the meat of the paragraph.
… so I dream about running away. To places where they know what I am, where the girls are like me. Or I dream about telling Jerry. Or telling you. Telling everybody. Just walking to the front of the stage someday and saying in my quiet voice that I haven’t ever been a virgin. I don’t remember being a virgin because my father is my lover and he has always been since I can remember. And if I say no he says he will do it to Sherri and that I’m the oldest and I can take it best. And if I say I’ll tell my mother he says it will kill her and if I tell anyone else he will kill them and if anyone finds out no boy will ever want to marry me and I care about that even though I don’t know why because I don’t want to marry anybody like my father ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever …
She’d written that one word over and over, maybe a hundred times. It took up a third of the page and ran over and filled up the back getting heavier and blacker. A cry even a self-centered man like Geoff Reardon couldn’t ignore.
He hadn’t ignored it. He’d sought out Valerie. He’d promised her money. Money from where? And he was going to stop teaching, maybe have the money to produce his play.…
I rubbed my hand across my dry lips and caught myself wondering if I’d shaken Prescott Haslam’s hand, if I’d touched his hand with mine.
Valerie hadn’t known about Reardon’s death until I told her.
I reread the notebook page, found the fragment I remembered:
… if I tell anyone else he will kill them …
Valerie hadn’t returned home the day of Reardon’s death. Reardon had promised to help the girl financially.
And now Valerie had taken my car. Why? Here in Cambridge, she could catch any Red Line train back to the Zone.
“Roz,” I yelled.
Then I ran into the living room, unlocked my bottom desk drawer, and hurriedly unwrapped my gun. The sharp, oily smell hit me like icy water, and I hoped I was wrong about where Valerie was headed. I hollered for Roz again as I finished loading and tucked the .38 in the pocket of my coat.
&n
bsp; I hadn’t heard her come down the stairs. She was barefoot in a white terry robe, with a big maroon towel wound around her head.
“They’re coming over,” she said defensively, before I had a chance to speak. “They’re on their way. It won’t be five minutes.”
“Who?” I said.
“The Brothers. They don’t understand how it could have happened. They’ll fix everything.”
“Sure they will,” I said.
I was pacing by the time the truck finally squealed to a halt in front of the house.
Roz convinced them to let me borrow it. After the fact, I just snatched their keys and took off.
CHAPTER 32
One-fifteen Lilac Palace Road, Lincoln.
I had a hell of a time finding it. No streetlamps, and if there’d been any, they wouldn’t have helped much because few of the corners boasted street signs.
I had to keep pulling off to the side of the road, checking the Arrow Street guide for the Towns of Eastern Mass. that the Twin Brothers kept in their dash compartment.
That it came equipped with a street guide was the only good word about the Twin Brothers’ truck. It didn’t have a dome light, so I had to keep yanking out my flashlight to read the maps. Its less-than-luxurious interior and rotten smell aside, it couldn’t corner worth a damn, and its steering made Gloria’s orneriest cab seem like a Porsche 944. I nursed it up to forty-eighty m.p.h. on Route 2, and thought the shaking would knock out my filings. It was a good thing it couldn’t go any faster because the brakes were minimal, which I discovered after inadvertently running a red. The Brothers could probably claim antique status for both the shocks and the muffler.
As I drove Valerie’s words kept echoing. I’ve never been a virgin. My father is my lover. In their initial impact, I’d accepted them without question. Now I found myself doubting. Was Valerie telling the truth? She’d written the words for her drama teacher. Was her incest claim an attention-seeking ploy, a theatrical lie?
I pictured the man I’d met over Chinese food, the bespectacled stockbroker, Preston Haslam. I heard his cool voice on my answering machine, declaring his daughter safely home. I saw Valerie, eye makeup streaked, crying on my unmade bed. I believed the girl. Why? Because she’d run away after handing in her diary, unable to bear the thought that her teacher would know her shame. Because she’d fallen apart when Jerry Toland kissed her.
And most of all, because it explained Geoff Reardon’s death, made it murder instead of unmotivated suicide. After reading Valerie’s diary, Reardon had sought her out in the Zone. Promised her help. Money. Thousands of dollars, Valerie had claimed, even while she wondered where the teacher would get that kind of cash. Where else? He must have gone to Haslam, promised to tell his dirty secret unless the stockbroker came up with money—enough to help Valerie, enough to let Reardon retire from teaching. Haslam must have been the angel who was planning to invest in Reardon’s screenplay.…
Maybe Reardon had overestimated Haslam’s wealth, asked for an impossible amount. Maybe he’d just underestimated Haslam’s need to keep his secret.
I didn’t find 115 Lilac Palace Road so much as I found my car, my dear Toyota, pulled to the side of a road I thought might be Lilac Palace. It rested at an angle with the front tires on the grass verge and the back tires well into the street. Not well parked, but I couldn’t see any dents. Valerie hadn’t locked the front door, but the key was gone from the ignition.
I’d had to wait for the plumbers’ truck and it had taken me some time to find the place. Valerie had beat me out here by, what? maybe an hour?
I patted the smooth fender of my car, leaned against it. Finding the car brought me flush with cold reality. Until that moment all my energies had been focused on finding Valerie. Finding her physically, finding her mentally. Now I knew who she was, this adult child. I knew why she’d run away from paradise. And I knew where she was. Inside with the man who’d stolen her childhood.
I didn’t know what to do about it.
Two hours earlier Valerie had told me she’d wouldn’t go home, ever, except to get her little sister. Had she come to rescue Sherri? But two hours earlier Valerie hadn’t known Geoff Reardon was dead.
I wondered if I should ring the doorbell of the house across the street, Jerry Toland’s house, ask to use the phone, dial the police. I could hear myself trying to explain the uncomfortable urgency I felt.
I didn’t go to Jerry Toland’s house. I crept closer to Valerie’s, using my flashlight to guide me. Halfway up the walk a dark wrought-iron lamppost tried to trip me.
115 was a big, boxy Colonial with a two-car attached garage on the right, centered on maybe an acre of ground, painted a pale color with dark shutters. A stand of rhododendron bushes blocked the windows to the right of the door. The downstairs was dark, but lights blazed on the left side of the upper floor. I debated ringing the bell, skirted the path, and made my way closer to the lights.
The room underneath the lighted room was large, some kind of family affair, with leather couches, TV and stereo equipment, a patio, and sliding glass doors. A hooded barbecue grill blocked the center of the patio. A broad woodpile rose closer to the house. Even if I climbed the woodpile I couldn’t reach that second-story room. Crouching near the sliding doors, I could hear noises. A man shouted something over a rhythmic thumping. There was another noise under the thumping but I couldn’t make it out—a faint mewling, like a cat.
I tried the sliding doors but they were locked. I ran toward the front door, tripping over bushes. As I lifted my hand to ring the bell, all the lights in the house blackened. The noises disappeared. I froze with my hand raised.
Had Valerie used her key? Had she tried a secret approach?
I placed my hand on the front doorknob and carefully rotated it. It turned. I pushed the door and met with no resistance. Maybe Valerie had left it open to ease her later escape, once she’d found Sherri.
If she’d come back for her little sister.
The noises upstairs hadn’t sounded like the successful result of a secret snatch-and-grab mission.
I patted my coat pocket and felt the reassuring metal, but I didn’t take out my gun. I needed my right hand for the flashlight.
The beam showed me stairs, mounting to the left of the foyer, heavily carpeted. I took them well to the side, testing each one for creaks before committing my weight to it. While I climbed I worked out the geography of the house in my head. I was interested in the room with light, then with no light.
The second-floor foyer was carpeted with the same heavy stuff as the stairs. A skylight let in the stars so I could see four closed wooden doors. Two of them were on the left. Either could be the door to the room I wanted. I listened at the first. Nothing. I pressed up close to the second and heard ragged, labored breathing.
I turned the door handle gently, silently, holding my breath.
My flashlight showed a small room, a little girl’s room with high shelves of dolls shadowing a single bed. A girl—Valerie by the clothing—lay across the bed, on top of the bedspread, tossed like a sack of laundry, knees drawn up, arms outflung. I thought she must be uncomfortable that way.
There was one window in the room, curtained. I crept closer to the bed, thinking I’d wake the girl, take her with me, to the police, to a therapist, somewhere safe.
“Valerie,” I whispered.
Her breathing sounded wrong and I shone the light full on her face.
Blood trickled from one nostril. Her nose was smashed to one side and her face had the lumpy look a beating gives, before the bruises have a chance to color and the swelling to start. My jaw clamped shut and I ran my flashlight over a wider circle. A glass of water sat on her bedside table next to a bottle of pills.
I didn’t pick them up, but I leaned closer to read the label. The prescription was for Mathilde Haslam. Serax, 30 MG. Take one before bedtime.
I touched a dark spot on Valerie’s sweater. Not blood. Water. Her chin was damp, too.
; There was no phone in the room. I’d have to find a phone, dial 911.
The door to the room crashed open. Maybe the noise wasn’t as loud as that, but I had my back to the door and the quiet, broken only by Valerie’s attempts to breathe through her ruined nose, was so complete that the door, cracking against the opposite wall, sounded like thunder.
The overhead light blinked on, much too bright for my dark-adapted eyes. I squinted at the frilly pink room, filled with lace and dolls. The room of a small child. An immaculate child. Nothing out of place, not a china doll, not a stuffed animal. Except for the dark lump that was Valerie, bleeding on the bed.
Preston Haslam wore a bathrobe over slacks. His eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles were narrow, speculative.
“What’s going on?” he said. “What are you doing here?” His voice was too loud, his face too red, his breathing too heavy.
“Your daughter stole my car,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said, striving for a smile, “but surely that can wait until morning.”
“Your daughter can’t,” I said. “She needs a doctor.”
“I don’t think so,” he replied, as if he’d given the matter careful consideration.
“Look at her,” I said. “She’s hurt.”
“Yes,” he said coolly. “She must have fallen on the stairs.”
“She’s out cold,” I said.
“I think we should let her sleep,” he said.
“There’s a bottle of pills on the table. Your wife’s sleeping pills.”
“Yes,” he said, “they are my wife’s.”
“Your daughter needs a doctor.”