And now here was another one. How was her faith going to get her through this?
“Ms. Peizer—”
“My name is Tanya.”
At least the tears had stopped trickling down her cheeks.
“I’d like to ask you some questions about Randi,” he said gently, grateful for small mercies. “If you feel up to it.”
“I took those pills Patty gave me, but they just made me sick. Reality is hard to face right now, but it’s better than turning into a zombie.” She touched her scalp. “I hurt my head.”
Too bad he couldn’t arrest this Patty person for loaning out her pharmaceuticals. “Let me look.”
She leaned away from his attempt to part her hair. “I’m okay. It was yesterday. Janice looked at it.”
To cover the unwanted gesture, which had been as automatic as picking up Tim after a tumble from his bike, Nick pulled out his notebook.
“We’re interested in Randi’s movements during the last week of—last week,” he amended. “But especially Wednesday.”
“Why? Nothing is going to change.” Her eyes were bleak. “God gave her to me and he must not have thought I was doing a very good job, because he took her back.”
No way was he going to get into that kind of theological quagmire. “We’re not sure it was an accident,” he said. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
With the sleeve of her shirt, she wiped her face. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“Yes, you do. You can tell me to go away. But the sooner we act, the sooner we can find out the truth.”
“I wish you would go away.”
He closed the notebook and shifted his weight to his feet. He should send Gil to do this. Gil had a better bedside manner.
“I wish it would all go away,” Tanya went on as if he hadn’t moved, “but it won’t, so I have to get on with it. Please tell me why you don’t think it was an accident.”
He sank back onto the couch, and a spring gouged him in the hip. He moved over a little.
“The clerk at the convenience store said there were a bunch of kids on the bridge, and it looked like something was going on. Then Randi turned up on the sandbar the next day. The one event may have nothing to do with the other, but in case they do, I need to have a picture of her movements leading up to Wednesday night. Maybe something will tell me what could have happened.”
Tanya shrugged. “She did what she always does. She went to school. She went to the mall. She hung out with her friends.”
According to Anna Hale, nobody much liked her. Who were these friends? “Do you know their names?”
“Kate’s one of them. And Kelci—with an i.” She glanced at his notebook, as if to check he had the spelling right. “And let’s not forget the man of the hour, Brendan O’Day. I wanted to meet him.”
“Why?”
Another sideways glance, wryly. “Not the parent of a teenage girl, huh?”
“Not a parent. Not married.” Not even close, and happy to keep it that way, thanks.
“I think he was her boyfriend. I wanted to do the mom thing, you know? Meet him, get to know him. But it never seemed to happen. She always had somewhere else to be, and I always had to work.”
Brendan O’Day was the captain of the junior varsity basketball team and was pegged for some Ivy League school in the future, according to his proud father, who hung out with one of Nick’s brothers. Nick had his doubts that he was going out with Randi Peizer, who was new in town, lived in subsidized housing, and wasn’t well-liked. But, he supposed, stranger things had happened.
“Why don’t you walk me through the events of Wednesday?” he suggested. “Start with when the two of you woke up.”
“We had scrambled eggs for breakfast, and I dropped her off at school on my way to work.”
“Where do you work?”
“Depends on the day. On Wednesday I have early shift at the university. I drive the shuttle bus around the campus. Then from two till six I work swing at Susquanny Home Supply. I’m a cashier.”
Which didn’t leave a whole lot of time for meeting her daughter’s friends.
“What did Randi do that day?”
“She gets out of school at three. I called her at four and she was at the mall with Kate and the other girls.”
She might have been at the mall, but Kate had said in their interview the other night that she had dance class until five and had been there with all the other ballerinas. Randi, it appeared, was as good at spinning yarns as her mother was at believing them.
Or maybe this slender, hunched-over woman just needed to believe in something good in her life. The picture of Randi at the mall, having fun with other girls her age, must have been too appealing to resist.
“What about when you got home? Was she there?”
Tanya shook her head. “She called and said she was staying with one of the girls to eat supper and study, and she’d be home around eight.”
“And was she?”
“I don’t know. I grabbed the extra hours—a mistake, because I wound up not getting home until ten. The store closes at nine, and then we cash out.”
“And she wasn’t here.” She was on the bridge, doing—what?
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I called her cell and left a message.”
“She didn’t answer?”
“I thought she was inside somewhere. Sometimes it doesn’t work in certain buildings. So I—” She stopped. “I—” Her breathing shortened, became a series of gasps. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Take your time.”
Her breath hitched. “I meant to call over to Kate’s—to see if she was there—but I was so tired—I just shut my eyes for a second and—and—”
Aw, no. Nick rubbed a cold hand over his face and wished he’d left while he’d had the chance.
“And the next thing I knew, it was morning and a man who said he was the coroner was on the doorstep—and he said—he—” The last word ended on a wail and Nick found himself dropping his notebook beside him on the couch and folding Tanya Peizer into a hug while she cried.
What kind of God lets a girl die while her exhausted mother sleeps? he asked silently as she shook against his chest.
Of course there was no answer to that question.
There were answers to the mystery of what had happened to Randi Peizer before the river carried her away, though. And he was going to find them.
To Group: GBFWomensBible
From: [email protected]
Hey girls,
Thanks to Maggie and Cammie, we’ve helped Tanya get through the first couple of days. We need to stick with her through the funeral and probably afterward. Can you all zip me a note and let me know what evenings you’ll be able to park the kids with your DH in order to go over to her place for a couple of hours? I want to draw up a roster so no one person has to spend too much time away from her own family. Also, let me know if you can make dishes for her freezer or throw a few extra groceries in your cart next time you’re at the market. I know we’re all busy, but our sister needs us.
Thanks, as always!
Laurie
Sunday morning, Laurie walked into church with to-do lists and schedules and menu plans on a neat list in her tote bag, with enough copies for everyone in the Bible study group. Cammie, she saw right away, had picked up Tanya and made sure she got to the service. Laurie knew for a fact that staying in that apartment, alone and grieving, was not going to start her on the road to recovery. Simply being in the place where others could help her would be a balm to her soul and the best thing she could do for herself.
Cammie stuck to Tanya like a burr during the service, where Cale Dayton preached on the healing power of love. At the end, he announced that the memorial service for Randi would be Tuesday afternoon at four.
“Tanya has requested that Randi’s remains be cremated,” he explained, “so we’ll have a memorial service and celebration of her life. W
e’ll hold it right here, after school, so her classmates can attend as well.”
When the service was over, people crowded around to offer condolences and help. Tanya looked a little like a drowning woman, glancing right and left as if she were hoping that the sea would part and she could escape. Laurie made her way to her side and made sure that people who were serious about their offers of help got their names on the roster for either food or time.
This was one of the reasons she loved Glendale Bible Fellowship—brotherly love translated itself into action here. Nobody had to be asked first. No one who had a need ever went without, whether it was as practical as making supper for a bereaved family, or as spiritual as praying for someone who was struggling.
Tanya gripped her arm. “Laurie, please, can we go?” Tears streaked her face, and fine hair that would have been curly if it had been styled a little better was coming out of its knot.
“Of course, sweetie. I’m just going to finish up with these folks. Cammie, can you take Tanya home?”
The two women made their way to the door and escaped into the chilly morning. The weatherman had predicted snow by mid-afternoon, and you could really feel it if you were standing near the door.
Thanks to the list and the schedule, someone would be with Tanya whenever she needed it—whether keeping her company during her hours off, or pulling out a frozen dish and putting it in the oven, or picking up scrapbooking materials for Randi’s memory book.
It turned out that Tanya was a lapsed scrapbooker, and creating the pages of the album on Monday turned out to be a kind of therapy. Fortunately, Mary Lou and Debbie were scrapbookers, too, and by the time people had begun to gather for the service on Tuesday, the album was finished and displayed on a miniature podium, where people could look through it before they entered the sanctuary.
At the front, Randi’s ninth-grade picture had been enlarged and mounted, and stood on an easel between two elevated baskets of roses and lilies. Three members of the high-school band played flute, piano, and clarinet onstage, and the melody of “Amazing Love” floated through the sanctuary.
Anna’s phone rang just as Colin ushered them all up the aisle.
“Turn that off!” Laurie whispered. Anna knew better than that. The whole family automatically turned off their phones on the way to church every Sunday. Today should have been no different.
Anna glanced at the text message and thumbed the little phone off, then dropped it in her denim messenger bag. As they sat in their usual pew five rows back on the left side, Laurie heard sniffles and the stifled sound of weeping as the church filled.
Cale opened the service with a eulogy that was as short as Randi’s life had been. His text was 1 John 4:10: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us . . .” Laurie glanced over at Tanya and hoped that she was able to take it in. God’s love was active. And so was theirs, right there in the church. Tanya might not be able to see it now, but some day she would, and the care all around her would comfort her.
Then, one by one, Randi’s classmates got up and walked to the podium. Kate Parsons moved with the confidence and assurance of the social leader that Laurie wished Anna would be. Even after their uncomfortable conversation of the other night, she still had hopes. People grew and changed—and a fourteen-year-old changed her mind a dozen times a day.
Kate’s father, Neil, was a lawyer, and as far as Laurie knew, his appearance in church today was a first. His wife, Noreen, came once in a while, but she’d declined to join their study group even though they’d invited her more than once.
Tears rolled down Kate’s perfect skin as her soft voice filled the church, mourning the loss of a schoolmate “who dressed like a real original” and who “is remembered every day.” Brendan O’Day spoke next, and a girl called Rose Silverstein, both of whom Laurie had not met personally, but whose parents she knew by reputation. Everyone knew Brendan O’Day’s father—he was as full of bombast as the furniture crates in his warehouses. He ran the Hawthorne House chain from its head office in Pittsburgh, selling reproductions of English country-house interiors to people who thought they deserved them. She couldn’t stand Jack O’Day, but he and Colin sat on the church board, and she was as sweet as southern tea whenever they met.
Tanya didn’t get up. Laurie was glad that Mary Lou and Debbie had worked with her on the scrapbook—it formed the record of Randi’s life that Tanya was too shattered to say out loud.
During the last hymn, Laurie and her team slipped downstairs to the multipurpose room and got the coffeepots going and the trays of cake and cookies and sliced fruit laid out on the tables. It didn’t take long for the room to fill once the memorial was over. Cammie made sure Tanya had a comfortable place to sit and brought her a plate full of food, heavy on the protein.
Cammie was not a nutritionist for nothing.
Laurie laid a paper doily over a round plastic serving tray and began to arrange her famous pecan tarts on it. On the other side of the table, Natalie Martinez moved a tray of coconut squares from the meat table onto the one that held sweets, and said to Maggie Lesser, “I hear the police are making their rounds.”
“I know,” Maggie said. “I just talked to Joyce Silverstein. I can’t tell you how glad I am that my Kevin’s only in fourth grade. You have to hand it to Rose, though.” She glanced at the other end of the long table, where the teenagers were piling their paper plates high with sweets. “Interrogated one night and eulogizing her friend the next. That’s character.”
“Why are they interrogating Rose? She babysits for us. She’s the last person who would be involved in . . . something like this.”
Natalie stole a mini cherry cheesecake. “They’re interrogating everybody. No one is exempt, apparently.” She glanced around her. “Rose. Kate. Even Anna Hale.”
A skinny man in tight jeans and a silk shirt stepped in front of Laurie, and she restrained herself from pushing him out of the way.
While she waited impatiently for him to move so she could join her friends, Natalie went on: “Who’d ever have thought something like this would happen in our town? Especially among kids we all know.”
“How do we really know what they’re thinking?” Maggie asked. “With all this TV violence and sex and shootings in the schools . . . man,” she said on a sigh. “High school isn’t what it was when we were young, that’s for sure. But still, you’d think you’d be able to write some kids off the suspect list. Anna, for instance. Or Kyle Edgar or Kelci Platt.”
The skinny guy finally stopped filling his plate with desserts, and Laurie pushed past him.
“I don’t know,” Natalie went on as Laurie came up behind her, “sometimes the quiet types are the worst. I mean, Anna is a lovely kid, but in a murder investigation you can’t rule anyone out. Still waters run deep, if you know what I mean.”
Laurie could stand it no longer. Natalie’s tone had Anna clothed in jailhouse orange and manacles by sundown. “Come on, Nat,” she said as she joined them. “We have to stand behind our kids, don’t we?”
She couldn’t help a little internal smile of satisfaction at Natalie’s guilty start. That would teach her to talk behind people’s backs.
“Of course we do,” Natalie said. She made a quick recovery, Laurie would give her that. “I’m just saying that Anna, like so many of these other kids, is a deep person. Teenagers don’t put it all out there like younger kids do. They keep secrets.”
“Not about this. Anna was completely up front with Nick and Gil when they came by. I’m sure the others were, too.”
Nick and Gil. She used their first names deliberately. These women could use a reminder that the investigating officer was family. The Hales and Tremores didn’t harbor criminals. They brought them to justice.
“I’m sure she was,” Maggie said. “But I heard that Anna was one of the ones on the bridge that night.”
“You heard wrong,” Laurie replied. “Anna has already explained that she was at home and in bed. Who is saying this
?”
Maggie shrugged. “I can’t remember. There’s so much talk going around.”
“Well, I hope you set them straight. It’s just . . . ridiculous, that’s all.”
Natalie and Maggie looked at one another. What? What did that look mean? Why were they even entertaining for one second the thought that Anna had been involved in any way? They’d all known one another for most of their lives. Maggie had babysat Anna herself, times without number, and Laurie had done the same for her three kids.
These women were her friends. If they couldn’t defend Anna, the least they could do was not pass on gossip about her.
Laurie was drawing a breath to tell them so, when Maggie gripped her arm. “Laurie. Is that—?”
She followed Maggie’s gaze to the skinny man, who was sharing his plate of dessert with an equally skinny girl with mousy brown hair and talking to Kate Parsons and Brendan O’Day.
“Who? The guy in the silk shirt?”
“Yes!” She sounded breathless. “Isn’t that Jimmy Tyler? You know, the lead singer of Wolf?”
Natalie stared. “I haven’t heard anything of them in twenty years. They used to be as big as Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and bands like that in the seventies, didn’t they?”
Laurie was not ready to talk about aging rock singers. “His daughter was a friend of Randi’s, apparently.”
“Really? Rose said something about that, but I didn’t think it was true. Come on, Nat. Let’s go talk to him.”
“Are you kidding?” But Natalie let Maggie drag her over, and Laurie gave up. She’d talk to them later, or maybe bring it up at Bible study. They had to stick together, to believe in each other, or where would they be? Gossiping around town and hurting one another, that’s where.
She turned and practically ran into Janice Edgar. “Oops.” She took the other woman’s forearms to steady her. Fine wool crepe by some high-end designer crumpled under her fingers. “Sorry about that.”
Over Her Head Page 6