“Brandi, I have to go now. Would you like to come to my office tomorrow at 11:00 or would you rather check your calendar and call for another appointment?”
“You can tell Gayle that she’s going to be in a lot of trouble if she keeps trying to take Ian away from me.”
“I have to go. You can call back and leave a message about when you want to come in.”
“No, wait. I’ll come tomorrow at 11:00. And remember, I’m Sabrina’s sister. Those Moxie women aren’t family and they have no rights when it comes to Sabrina.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow at 11:00 —736 Pearl.”
My enthusiasm for painting was gone, so I set about putting my stuff away, wondering whether Brandi actually knew something that made her believe Sabrina would be found alive.
§ § §
Brandi showed up promptly at 11:00. She had that fit and expensive Boulder look—skin-tight designer jeans, black high-heeled knee-high boots, and a white cashmere turtleneck topped with a fire-engine-red Montbell down jacket. Her long blonde hair hung loose under a black shearling sheepskin hat. Her makeup was skillfully applied to give the impression her looks were all natural. Sort of an eye-candy girl who looks the way she wants you to see her.
She had two fat leather photo albums in her arms, which she dropped on the table in front of the couch. Then she took off her jacket and hat and sat down. As she looked up at me, her whole face lit up in a warm smile. “I brought these to show you some pictures of Sabrina,” she said. “I want you to know the special person that she is.” Brandi’s blue eyes showed a hint of tears, but her bouncy step and cheerful voice didn’t fit the picture of a grieving person.
I sat next to her on the couch as she paged through pictures of her and Sabrina growing up, starting with cute shots of her as a toddler clinging tightly to her older sister’s hand, then moving on to shots of them sharing happy family times as they grew up. “This was a trip we took to New York City when I was nine and Sabrina was fifteen,” she said pointing to a page of snapshots of them in Central Park. “Sabrina and I had so much fun on that trip! Mom and Dad let us go off on our own on the subway to the Empire State Building, the Met, Rockefeller Center and all over. Sabrina acted like I was her best friend instead of a little sister six years younger than her. I felt so grownup and special.”
Brandi continued paging through pictures of holidays, birthday parties, and outdoor sports, many showing her gazing adoringly at Sabrina who was helping her with some difficult task or activity. But the pictures ended before Brandi became a teenager. “Our mom died when I was twelve and Sabrina was eighteen,” she said. “No more pictures. Everything changed. Dad was overwhelmed and always working, so Sabrina watched out for me. She was everything to me in those years. Do you have a sister?” she asked, gently touching my arm.
“No, just a brother,” I said, noticing that I was feeling a sympathetic connection to her.
“Too bad,” she said. “A sister is very special.”
Listening to her, I was beginning to wish I had a sister. I thought about Elisa who is like a sister to me.
“It sounds like you and Sabrina are very close,” I said, carefully referring to Sabrina in the present tense.
She closed the album we’d been looking at, and turned sideways to face me. “Sabrina and I have a very strong bond,” she said earnestly. “She and Ian are all the family I have since our father died two years ago. I’ve been living with her and Ian for the last eight months and we’ve had some great times together. Since we’re both single, we help each other out and we share our worries and hopes for the future. Of course we have our differences, too, like all sisters do.”
“Can you tell me about some of the differences?”
Her eyes narrowed. “One issue is those Moxie women. They think everything they do in that stupid group is a deep dark secret. Well it isn’t. I know a lot.” She tapped her fingers on the coffee table and continued sharply. “Like Sabrina’s big mysterious birthday celebration. I knew about it. She tried to make it out to be nothing. Said her big fortieth party with family and friends was the real deal. But I knew about the vision journey or whatever and I knew where they were going.” She sat back, eyes closed, rubbing her forehead.
I gave her a minute, then asked gently, “You said last night that you’re hoping Sabrina will be found alive. Do you know something about what happened up there that the police and the searchers don’t know?”
She opened her eyes and her face brightened. “Missing persons do turn up alive, you know. Just because she’s missing doesn’t mean she’s dead. The law considers a missing person alive unless there’s proof the person is dead. Without proof, you have to wait at least five years before the courts declare the person dead, and that’s what’s driving Gayle crazy.”
“Because she needs to prove that Sabrina is dead to get the court to appoint her as Ian’s guardian?”
“Exactly. Which is where you come in. How does your process of talking to spirits work?”
I explained the apparition chamber and told her how it works for the person who is trying to contact a loved one who has died.
“So the person is in there alone. You don’t stay with them?”
“Right.”
“Then how do you know they really contacted the dead person they say they contacted?”
“That’s really not my concern. The point of contacting the spirit is for the grieving person to resolve issues or accept the person’s death. However that works for them is fine with me.”
“But Gayle will lie and say she talked to Sabrina’s spirit when that’s impossible because Sabrina is still alive. Then she’ll try to use that as evidence that Sabrina is dead.”
“I seriously doubt that the court would declare Sabrina dead based on a report from Gayle that she contacted her spirit.”
Brandi’s mouth was smiling but her eyes oozed anger. “Well I don’t want her going around saying she talked to Sabrina’s spirit. We all need to think positively. We need to trust that whatever Sabrina’s doing, wherever she is, she’s where she’s supposed to be and she’ll come back to us when the time is right.”
She jumped up, gathered her albums, hat and jacket, and gave me a look that sent chills down my spine. “I have to go now. You can tell those Moxie bitches they’d better not mess with me. If Sabrina doesn’t come back soon, I’m going to petition the court to be named trustee of her property and to be Ian’s guardian. Ian doesn’t want to live with Gayle. He wants to stay with me. We’re family and that trumps it all for both of us.” She strode briskly to the door, head held high, and left the room with no backward glance.
Chapter 11
Saturday morning I pushed the whole Sabrina problem out of my head. I drove over to visit my 87-year-old grandmother at Glenwood Gardens, the cozy assisted living house she had moved into after her nursing home abruptly shut down two months ago. I cherish my visits with Gramma, even though Alzheimer’s has taken away so much of who she was. Sometimes she can’t quite remember who I am, but we still connect at a deep emotional level that grounds me in a way nothing else does.
I stepped lightly along the walkway to the door of the little house, rejoicing once again that she now lives in this homey place with plants, pets and people who love her. Mary Ellen, the RN who is one of the founders of Glenwood Gardens answered my knock and gave me a quick hug. “Martha’s in her room listening to music,” she said. “She was a little tired after breakfast.”
I found Gramma sitting in her rose-colored easy chair; eyes closed, head tipped back, fingers clasped loosely together in her lap. The gentle strains of Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor filled the room. As I moved slowly toward her, she opened her eyes and smiled. I sat on the arm of her chair, hugged and kissed her, then leaned back against the chair with my arm around her shoulders as we listened to the rest of the concerto together.
When the music stopped, I got up to turn off the CD player, and then sat on her bed across from her chair.
“Hi, Gramma. Are you still tired?”
She looked bewildered. “Is it lunchtime?”
“No. We have some time to visit before lunch.”
Her eyes wandered to one of her paintings of orange poppies on the wall above the bed. “I like this room,” she said. “I like the flowers.”
“That’s one of your paintings, Gramma. I like it too. I think it’s one of your best.”
She turned her gaze back to me. “Cleo,” she said. “How are you?” I saw a quick flash of recognition and awareness in her eyes that brought tears to mine.
Suddenly I wanted to tell her everything. I needed to confide in someone who loved me unconditionally, and would listen without pushing me, even if she couldn’t understand what I was talking about. The words tumbled out like they used to when I was a kid with a big problem. “Oh, Gramma. I’m having a hard time right now. I’m pregnant and I really want this baby, but I don’t know whether I want to marry Pablo. He wants us to get married, but I don’t know if that’s what I want.” I stopped and took a deep breath.
“Babies cry.”
Was that a random comment or was she actually cautioning me about the stress of being a single mom? “I know, Gramma. Babies are a lot of work. But I’ve been getting to know some single moms lately, who seem to have kept up with their professions and their kids pretty well, by supporting each other. Being a single mom would be hard but I could do it. And Pablo would help even if we weren’t married.”
“I’m married to James.” Gramma doesn’t remember that Grampa died five years ago, and I never contradict her about that. If her memories of their life together feel like today to her, why spoil her enjoyment?
“If I thought Pablo and I could be as happy as you and Grampa, I’d marry him tomorrow,” I said sadly. Like an old home movie, a vision of them happy and in love living in the old house before Gramma got sick popped into my head. “But Pablo says he can’t live in Boulder, so if we got married, I couldn’t stay in your house. And we have other issues. Like trust. Years ago he deserted me to go off to Mexico to find himself. What’s to say he won’t do it again?” I didn’t want to end up feeling like the Moxie members do about their ex-husbands.
Gramma looked intently at me. “Happy,” she said. “Be happy.”
“I want to,” I said, my voice breaking. “But I don’t know how you and Grampa did it so well. Sometimes I feel smothered by Pablo. Like this week. He’s been in California for training since Monday. He’s called me every night, full of questions and advice to make sure I’m taking care of myself. He acts like I can’t manage on my own. And I haven’t even told him what I’m working on for Bruce. I can’t tell him, because I know he’d be mad. That says something.”
Gramma patted my arm. She couldn’t know what I was talking about, but she could tell I was upset. Much as I needed her support, it was time to pull myself together, before she got depressed or agitated. “You’re such a sweetheart, Gramma,” I said smiling at her. I moved back over to her chair and gave her another kiss and some hugs. “I think it’s almost lunchtime. Let’s go out to the kitchen and see what they’re fixing.”
§ § §
I had agreed to meet my fourth Moxie member, Diana, late that afternoon. She’s a physical therapist and a massage therapist and she had invited me to come to her office to talk, after which she’d give me a massage. At first I thought I shouldn’t accept, but then I figured why not. The Moxie women aren’t my clients. Bruce is. And he just wants me to get information. And a massage sounded wonderful.
Diana works at Holistic Energy, a wellness and rehabilitation clinic that offers physical therapy, massage, Pilates, therapeutic yoga, and other helpful services. The clinic occupies a large section of a fairly new modern building in east Boulder. I sat in the waiting room for a few minutes along with a fit young guy wearing a knee brace and a young woman with a shoulder immobilizer. I figured Diana and the other therapists must be doing well. Boulder is full of athletes—both elite and aspiring—fertile ground for clinics like this one.
She came out wearing a sleeveless black tee shirt and loose gray drawstring pants, and took me back to a massage room equipped with comfortable chairs as well as a massage table. “I know you want to talk about Sabrina,” she said as we sat down, “but I’m not sure what you want to know.”
I took a minute to relax into the room’s dim lighting and soft music, then pulled myself back to the reason I was there. “Just tell me about Sabrina,” I said. “Anything you think might be important to finding out what happened to her.”
Diana flexed the muscles in her right arm as she drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “Sabrina is a loving, caring person and a good friend, but she’s so codependent—always taking care of people, rescuing people, always putting other people’s needs ahead of her own.” She rolled her eyes. “I hate to say this, but her helpfulness is her fatal flaw.”
I’m not a fan of pop-psych jargon. Why pathologize the tendency to put others’ needs ahead of your own by calling it codependency? As a nurse, taking care of people was Sabrina’s job. I needed more information to see it as a flaw rather than expected behavior from a helping professional. “Besides being a nurse and taking care of her son Ian, who else does she take care of?”
Diana put her palms together in front of her chest, wrists flexed, and raised and lowered her arms several times. “I like to keep my muscles loose,” she said. “Now what were you asking? Oh, right, who Sabrina takes care of. She’ll take care of anyone she thinks needs something whether or not the person wants her help. When she started Moxie, she acted way overly maternal toward us. She’d take care of all of us, if we let her. But we didn’t. Unfortunately there were other people in her life who were more than willing to play the needy role.”
“Could you tell me about one or two of them?”
Diana laughed. “Where to start? Her ex? Worthless boyfriends?” She shook her head. “No. Let’s start with her sister Brandi. Sabrina’s been taking care of her since their mother died when she was eighteen and Brandi was twelve. Their dad was a total workaholic and he left it to Sabrina to keep Brandi out of trouble. Which she couldn’t do. Brandi got pregnant at seventeen, manipulated the guy into marrying her, then lost the baby. She went back to her wild crowd and got a divorce. Sabrina convinced their dad to support Brandi even though he thought she should learn to take care of herself. It went on and on like that. Brandi would get into trouble, their dad would threaten to disown her, and Sabrina would come to her rescue and persuade their dad to keep supporting her.” Diana stopped, got up and got us each a glass of water from a dispenser in the corner.
I thought about Brandi telling me about the strong bond she and Sabrina have, versus Gayle telling me Sabrina didn’t want Ian left permanently with Brandi. What to believe? “How do Sabrina and Brandi get along now?” I asked.
Diana scowled. “Brandi’s thirty-four now and Sabrina’s forty and they’re still doing the same dance. Brandi lurches from one disaster to another and manipulates Sabrina into rescuing her. Sabrina feels sorry for her, feels responsible for her.”
A grin replaced her scowl. “But their dad got the last laugh. Two years ago, when he died, they found out that he had deducted all the money he’d given Brandi from her share of the estate. Sabrina got most of the money. Moxie had to work hard to convince her not to give half to Brandi. She was so resistant, we finally had to do an intervention. She only agreed because of Ian.” She shrugged. “But now Brandi is living with her, sponging off her, taking everything she can get.”
“So your intervention convinced Sabrina not to give Brandi half of her inheritance, but didn’t persuade her to stop taking care of Brandi?”
“True, but a few weeks ago, we got her to give Brandi an ultimatum about finding a job and getting her own place. So the gravy train was finally coming to an end.” Diana put her arms behind her, interlocked her fingers and pulled her arms up to stretch her shoulders. I could almost feel the tension roll off
her.
Bells and whistles were going off in my head. Had Moxie’s intervention led Brandi to get rid of Sabrina in hopes of getting control of her money before she was pushed out on her own? “Do you think Sabrina’s relationship with Brandi has something to do with her disappearance?” I asked.
“Actually, no. Much as I dislike Brandi, I think she’s too disorganized to pull off anything like that. I mostly told you about Brandi so you’d get how codependent Sabrina is. Where I think that’s significant is with some of her worthless former boyfriends. Especially this guy, Erik, she was with last spring. He was such a liar and a con man, totally using her, but she couldn’t see it.”
“How was he using her?
“He had some holistic healing business and a deal where he sold people kits to grow herbs that they were supposed to be able to sell back at huge profits. She invested money and connected him with other people who invested money, but the whole thing turned out to be a scam. They all lost their investments.”
I gasped. My heart raced as I struggled to speak. “You say his name was Erik?” I finally asked in a jittery voice. “What was his last name?”
Diana hesitated. “It started with a “V.’ Maybe Vane? No, Vaughn. That’s it. Erik Vaughn.”
Omigod! Erik Vaughn. A wave of dizziness washed over me. Sabrina was involved with the sociopath I met last summer when I was helping Elisa’s friend Sharon find out who murdered her husband? Erik didn’t do it, but in the process of my investigation I uncovered a lot of his nasty past. And he threatened to some day make me pay for that.
“Are you all right?” Diana’s voice sounded faint, as if I were in a tunnel.
I took a deep breath. “I know him,” I said. “He’s not a nice man. What happened with him and Sabrina?”
“He wanted to marry her. We were finally able to get her to break up with him, but I think she might have slipped and gone back to him if he hadn’t suddenly disappeared. She was shocked. Even though they were no longer together, she couldn’t believe he left her without saying anything. Plus he owed her and other people money that they’d invested n his business. The police called it a scam, but she didn’t believe it. She was convinced something happened to him. She never heard from him again—or so she said—but she knew how we felt about him, so she might have lied about that. I think maybe he came back and she went off with him.”
Lynn Osterkamp - Cleo Sims 03 - Too Many Secrets Page 6