Over Her Head

by Shelley Bates

  How could he say this without inflicting even more agony? “Because Forrest Christopher is the coroner’s investigator, and he told me. When I went up on that bridge he was already there, going over it, taking evidence, taking pictures. He found blood and hairs on one of the horizontal support beams that stick out under the roadbed, ten or twelve feet down. They matched Randi’s.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “The protruding end of the beam matches the fracture in Randi’s skull. It means that when she fell, she hit her head on it and it knocked her out. So she would have been unconscious when she went into the water.”

  And wouldn’t have known she was drowning.

  The words hung, heavy and cold and unsaid, in the air between them.

  “But what I want to know is, what made her fall?”

  “That makes two of us.” His tone was grim and very low. “Forrest said that if she’d been trying to stand on the railing, to jump off voluntarily, there would have been muddy footprints on it, or marks in the frost that morning.”

  She shot him a glance. “Randi would never do that.”

  How could he put this gently? “Well, it looks like she didn’t. Forrest found scuff marks on the deck of the bridge right above the support beam, as if there was a struggle. We’re treating it as suspicious. I’m going to find out what happened—I promise you.”

  There didn’t seem to be very much to say after that. The wind kicked up again, and when he saw her shiver, he hustled her back to the still-warm police car. Neither of them said a word as he drove her to the mortuary’s parking lot, where her little hatchback sat.

  He caught her eye and nodded toward the building. “When will they be . . . finished?”

  She gathered her purse and put her hand on the door. “In a day or two. They said they’d call me. I want to take her home with me until I decide whether to scatter her ashes or not.”

  “Ah. Well.” He wasn’t sure what to say. “Thanks for tolerating me this afternoon. I’m sorry to be the bearer of ugly news.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Her gaze fixed on her car, as if she couldn’t wait to get out of the police vehicle and away from him. He could hardly blame her. “I’d rather hear it from a human being than get it in a report in the mail. I probably wouldn’t understand it, and that would frustrate me even more.”

  “I’m glad.” That hadn’t come out right. “Well, not that we had to have this conversation, but that I—um—”

  Her nod was brisk, and she climbed out of the car. “I know what you meant. Thanks for the ride.”

  Before he could say one more stupid thing, she bumped the door shut with her hip and climbed into her own vehicle. There was nothing else he could do for her except follow her home at a discreet distance, to make sure she got there safely.

  As he waited behind her at the traffic light, he could see her silhouette shake through the rear window, her hands gripping the wheel as though it were a life preserver. It was a miracle she made it back to the apartment. He waited out on the street until the door of unit 202 closed before he let the communications center know he was back in service.

  It didn’t happen very often, but there were days when he really hated his job.

  Chapter Seven

  To: KelciP

  From: JohnnysGrrl

  Hows little bro, K-girl? He OK? No broken bones? No accidents?

  I think we should get Anna some counseling.”

  Laurie had taken advantage of a break between getting off work and picking up the kids, and dropped in at Susquanny Home Supply to see Colin. Anna was at art class and Tim at band practice, where he whaled the stuffing out of a snare drum and had more fun goofing off with his skater buddies than he actually learned about rhythm. But that was okay. When you were ten, there was nothing wrong with having fun.

  Anna, however, was a problem of a darker stripe. She was not having fun. She stayed in her room much more now, and the phone rang less often. Even though she insisted she was fine, Laurie’s instincts told her differently.

  Colin looked up from what appeared to be a contract of some kind. “What? Counseling?”

  Laurie made sure the door was closed and dropped a kiss on his temple. Then she sat in the guest chair on the other side of his desk.

  “Something’s definitely wrong. She talks to me, but it’s not the same. Whenever we get anywhere near the subject of Randi Peizer, she slides around it and fades away. She only comes back when I change the subject.”

  “Then I suggest you don’t talk about Randi Peizer.”

  That was Colin. So intent on giving a solution that he missed the point completely.

  “We have to. It’s clear that the whole subject upsets her. Talking about it will help her work through it.”

  He pushed the contract into the middle of his blotter and sat back in the chair. “You can’t force a teenager to talk. Besides, she’s always spent all kinds of time in her room drawing and not talking, and it’s never bugged you before.”

  “That was before I found this.”

  Laurie pulled a sheet of paper out of her tote bag and handed it to him. He tilted the chair back and studied it. “It’s a flying girl. So?”

  The drawing was one of Anna’s manga people, with their big eyes and perky noses and attenuated bodies. Laurie couldn’t see the fascination in all these fantasy creatures, but she couldn’t argue with the fact that Anna had a gift for drawing them. Thus, the art classes.

  “Colin, she’s not flying. She’s falling.”

  His gaze dropped back to the picture. “Is this supposed to be Randi?” The girl, sketched hastily with a fine-point felt pen, wore blacked-in hip-hugger pants, a concho belt, and a corset top that cinched up the front with blacked-in ribbons. Her hair flew away from her temples in the updraft, and to Laurie, her eyes were hollow with sadness. But if she said that out loud, Colin would just tell her she was dramatizing things.

  “I think so.”

  “Lor, it’s psychological. If Anna has this girl on her mind, then it’s natural she would express her feelings through her pictures.”

  “If she’s drawing pictures of falling girls, she’s upset enough that she should talk to someone who can help her. She needs to learn to work through it, and I’m afraid that’s beyond both of us.”

  He handed back the picture and she folded it into her tote. “I understand that. What I don’t understand is why it’s affecting her like this. A girl she barely knows died one night a mile from her house. Most people would just remember Randi with love or friendship and then move on.”

  “Anna isn’t moving on. That’s the whole point.”

  “She can talk to us when she’s ready. And she will—you know that. She always has.”

  “She’s never been fourteen before. Things are different now.”

  If Laurie had had someone to talk to when she’d lost Sharon, maybe she wouldn’t have carried that burden for so long. Maybe she would have understood it better and learned to celebrate the years she’d had with her friend instead of mourning the empty years ahead. But there had been no one. Her mother wasn’t the kind to plumb her own emotional depths, much less those of her daughter. Mom’s cure for distress was community work, so Laurie had learned to throw herself into theater and social events and fund-raisers—activities where there was always too much to do, crowds of people—and plenty to keep her mind off herself and her problems.

  “How are they different?” Colin asked. He flipped a pen between his fingers, turning it over and over.

  “She’s growing up. She wants a little more freedom to make her own decisions, but I’m not sure she has the emotional tools to do that successfully yet.”

  “One minute crying over something, the next minute as scatterbrained as can be,” he agreed. “But we could give her a little more responsibility.”

  “She says I force her into doing things she doesn’t want to do,” Laurie blurted. “I didn’t know she didn’t want to sing in the choir. A ye
ar later she gets around to telling me.”

  “Did you ask her how she felt about it before she joined?”

  “Of course. She sounded positive, so I drove her to tryouts and went over her audition pieces with her. And now I find out she never wanted to do it.”

  “Maybe she was trying to please you.”

  “I’d rather she was honest. Like now. I just sense that there’s something going on in that head of hers that she won’t share. That’s why I think counseling is a good idea.”

  “I’d rather keep it in the family, Laurie.”

  “We’re not psychologists. We don’t have the skills.”

  “We’re her parents. We love her,” Colin pointed out. “Isn’t that enough?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I do. I’m not going to have my daughter spilling her guts to some stranger.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a stranger. What about my cousin Gregg? He could talk to her.”

  “Is that what this is about? You want to give that guy some business? He still lives with your aunt, for Pete’s sake.”

  What was wrong with that? Did he want this kept in the family or not? “It’s not about giving him business. He has a nice practice all on his own, and you know perfectly well he’s looking after Auntie Dawn because she’s got MS.” She took a breath. “Gregg is part of the family. He’s qualified. Call him.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Or I will.” She stood, and he looked up at her.

  “We’ll decide together, Laurie. After I’ve done some research and we’ve made sure your cousin is the best solution for Anna. Don’t go flying off half-cocked and do this without me.”

  There were days when Colin’s pragmatic approach to life was a blessing. And then there were days when it was a roadblock.

  If he didn’t move soon, she’d make the call herself and ask for forgiveness later.

  She kissed him good-bye and headed to the school to pick up Tim. At the elementary school, several other mothers were parked in the lot, some driving BMWs or Volvo wagons and some in minivans like hers. So much for her old dream of owning a 1966 Mustang ragtop. At this rate, she wouldn’t get one until the kids were grown up and gone and she was too old to remember how to drive a stick shift. However, the minivan was comfortable and practical—and she wouldn’t last two minutes on the open road in a convertible in November.

  Vanessa Platt leaned on the hood of her mother’s Camry and didn’t move as Laurie pulled in beside her. Vanessa was the worship team’s lead soloist, and as far as Laurie was concerned, was such a great performer she should be studying music and going off to New York to become famous. Instead, she’d graduated from high school two years ago and still hung around Glendale, bringing people to tears with her singing voice on Sundays and serving them chicken-fried steak at the Split Rail Diner the rest of the time.

  She must’ve come to the school today on kid duty. Her eleven-year-old brother, KeShawn, was also a talented musician, though you’d never know it the way he sat at the back of the orchestra and made rude noises with his trumpet.

  Laurie rolled her window down. “Hey, Vanessa.”

  The girl smiled and pulled her puffy pink jacket a little tighter around her. “Hey, Mrs. Hale. You doin’ okay?”

  She nodded. “How come you’re standing out there freezing?”

  “I couldn’t sit still. Went for a walk around the track.” Her gaze jittered away and Laurie’s antennae went up. She’d known the Platts since Vanessa was in lacy petticoats and white Mary Janes, singing her very first solo at the age of six. If the girl couldn’t look her in the eye, something was amiss.

  She patted the seat next to her. “Come on. It’s nice and warm in here. If you catch a cold they’ll make me sing, and nobody wants that.”

  Vanessa laughed and went around the front of the car. When she settled into the passenger seat, the cold breathed off her jacket. “Whew.” She rubbed her hands. “Colder than I thought.”

  “Thanksgiving will be here in no time, and then Christmas, and there might be enough snow to go tobogganing. Tim can’t wait. I, on the other hand, could wait a long time.”

  “I know what you mean.” Silence fell, and Laurie turned up the heater. “Mrs. Hale?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  “Of course. Anything.” Laurie prepared herself to give some sensible career advice, or maybe a word in season about the undergraduate music program at the university.

  “You found that girl’s body, right?”

  Laurie’s train of thought derailed. Her gaze swung from the muddy playing field to the girl sitting next to her. “Randi? Yes.”

  Vanessa’s eyebrows knit together in a worried frown. “I don’t want to tell my mom this, but I thought maybe you’d know what to do.”

  “Do about what, sweetie?”

  “Mama was workin’ that night, and she asked me to pick her up when she got off shift at eleven.” Dorinda Platt was a nurse at the county hospital. “So I was, like, drivin’ around, you know? Waiting for it to be time.”

  “Sure.”

  “So I’m heading for the Stop-N-Go to get a fake latte out of their machine, and I have to drive over the bridge.”

  “And?”

  “And I see all these kids. Which is no big deal, you know, because I used to hang out there myself back in the day. But then I see Kelci, and that’s a different thing, ’cause you know Mama is gonna have a fit if she finds out Kelci was out that late on a school night. So I do a U-turn in the Stop-N-Go parking lot to go get her. I’m thinkin’ I just have time to take her home before I have to pick Mama up.”

  “So this is ten thirty or so?”

  “Twenty after. I looked at the clock.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I’m turning around in the parking lot and I see something goin’ on—like a catfight broke out. You know how that parking lot butts into the park grass there, and if you’re standing on the lawn you can look up and see what’s on the bridge?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the next thing I see is your Anna runnin’ up the park path like her tail’s on fire, headin’ for the bridge.”

  Laurie opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Those girls on the bridge are yellin’ and she’s yellin’ and I can hear it right through the car windows, and the next thing you know, somebody pushes someone else real hard and over she goes.”

  “Who? Who pushes?”

  “I don’t know, but this girl does a cartwheel off the bridge and I’m thinkin’, man, that’s gonna be one cold landing, and Anna runs under the bridge and I don’t see what happens after that, because Kelci sees me and I get her in the car and we go home. We just made it, too, ’cause I picked Mama up at eleven sharp and she never knew a thing.”

  “What—”

  But Vanessa wasn’t finished. “So then Friday I’m at the restaurant and somebody leaves their paper and there’s this thing about you finding that girl in the river. And I thought, it can’t be the same girl, ’cause I never saw it clear, you know. It was just a shape with arms and legs going over. I thought she’d just swim to shore and no harm done except maybe she’d catch a cold.” She glanced sideways at Laurie. “You think it was the same girl?”

  Anna wasn’t out that night. Anna wasn’t involved. Vanessa had seen someone else.

  She had to say something sensible. “I’m pretty sure it was.”

  “You think Kelci will get in trouble if I go to the police?”

  And have them find out that maybe Anna had been there after all? And that she’d run down under the bridge after Randi had fallen? Making her maybe the last person to see Randi alive? The last person to see someone alive was always a prime suspect, wasn’t she? Nobody ever assumed that person was simply trying to help.

  No, no, no. Anna had been in her room. Everyone knew that. So it didn’t matter if Vanessa went to the police or not. She h
ad evidence, and it could be important. The pushing part was important. Someone else had done that. Not Anna.

  “Mrs. Hale?”

  Laurie blinked and behind Vanessa’s slouched form, she saw that the kids were pouring out of the elementary school and scattering to the various cars. Tim and KeShawn were horsing around and bumping each other off the sidewalk, completely careless of the black instrument cases dangling from their fingers.

  “Will Kelci get in trouble?”

  Laurie prodded her brain into coherent thought. “Not unless she was the one doing the pushing.”

  “No, it wasn’t her. I’m sure of that.”

  “Did you see who it was?” she asked again.

  Vanessa shook her head. The boys were twenty feet away now. “It was pretty chaotic. Somebody tall, I think.”

  “I think you should talk to Nick. He’s a good guy.”

  “Yeah, I know. He comes into the restaurant all the time. Reuben sandwich, extra fries.”

  “But, Vanessa, Anna wasn’t—”

  Tim jerked open the door, fell into the backseat, and slammed it in KeShawn’s face, giggling like an escapee from the local asylum. “Mom! KeShawn’s spitting on me!”

  Vanessa opened the door and looked over her shoulder at Laurie. “What?”

  The words froze in Laurie’s throat. Anna hadn’t been there. It didn’t matter what Vanessa said to Nick, facts were facts. “Nothing. I think you should talk to him soon.”

  “I will. Maybe even tonight.”

  Vanessa closed the door, and Laurie glanced back to make sure Tim was buckled in. Then she backed out of the parking space and took off down the county road as if the entire police force were after her.

  “What are you trying to do, Ma, try out for the Indy 500?”

  Laurie glanced at the speedometer. “Good grief.” She lifted her foot from the pedal and the minivan slowed by about thirty miles an hour.

  “Good thing Nick isn’t around,” her son informed her. “He’d have got you for that.”

  With an effort, she relaxed her grip on the wheel and tried to slow her heart rate, too. “Thanks, sweetie. I needed the reminder.”