What kind of a child had she raised? She and Colin had taught the kids that you put others before yourself, that you show people the love of God in your life. Had they failed where Anna was concerned?
No, she couldn’t believe that. She knew her daughter. Anna would never have let Randi get herself into such danger if she could help it. The softhearted, loving girl she and Colin had raised wouldn’t lie and deceive and put her family in jeopardy like this.
And yet . . . Laurie looked down at that footprint, frozen into the earth. Waiting for someone to notice its silent contradiction of everything she wanted to believe.
Nick informed the dispatcher over the radio that he would be out of service for the next hour and pulled into the parking lot of the Split Rail. He came here because the service was fast—his only requirement in a restaurant.
He always sat at the same booth by the window, with his back to the wall that backed onto the men’s room, near the cashier. As a result, he always had the same waitress, a girl named Vanessa who never seemed to wear her hair the same way twice. Tonight she’d put it into cornrows and wrapped all the little braids into a ponytail with a scarf.
“Hey, Vanessa. I’ll have the usual.”
He didn’t bother to look at the menu. She didn’t bother to write down his order. But instead of pouring his coffee and sashaying back to the kitchen the way she usually did, she hesitated at his elbow.
“Can I help you?”
She was frowning, as though she didn’t want to say something, yet felt compelled to. He’d interviewed many a witness with the same look.
“Yeah.” She glanced in the direction of the cashier, who doubled as hostess and manager. “I get my break in twenty minutes. Can I talk to you then?”
“Sure. I’ll eat slowly.”
She made sure he did. His Reuben took about ten minutes longer to arrive than usual, but when she brought it, Vanessa also carried two slices of blueberry pie.
“You going to eat both of those?” He never ordered dessert. There wasn’t time. But it sure looked good.
“No. One’s for you.” She pushed it across to him. “It’s on me.”
“So.” When she hadn’t said anything after three bites of pie, he spoke up. “What’s going on?”
“Mrs. Hale says you’re investigating how that girl died. The one she found in the river.”
“That’s right.”
“If I tell you something, will you get me and my family in trouble?” Her gaze was an uneasy cross between distrust and pleading. “Mrs. Hale said I should come to you, but it don’t mean nothing to me. I can go either way.”
“Have you or a member of your family done something they want to hide?” he asked gently.
She shook her head, and the scarf slid off her ponytail and onto the seat beside her. She didn’t notice. “But I saw something, and Mrs. Hale said you should know. I want your word you won’t get anybody in trouble.”
“If someone did do something wrong, it’s my job to see they pay for it,” he said, “but if no one did anything, it should be okay. What did you see?”
In a low voice that hurried like a current rushing with winter rain, she told him what she’d seen at twenty past ten last Wednesday night. Halfway through, he pushed his unfinished sandwich to one side, pulled his notebook out of his pocket, and began to take notes in his peculiar shorthand.
“You distinctly saw someone push her over the rail?”
She nodded. “It was dark, but from the parking lot of the Stop-N-Go you can see the bridge.”
“But you couldn’t see who it was.”
“No. Just that she was tall.”
“She? You think it was a girl?”
Vanessa frowned and poked at the crust of her pie. “I had the impression it was a girl. The way she pushed. It wasn’t how guys do it, like they’re poking at you to bug you or make you respond. This was a ‘Get away from me’ push. Or maybe ‘You’re not good enough to get near me.’ Like that. And over she went.”
Which fit the evidence exactly.
“Did you see her hit anything on the way down?”
“No. The streetlights don’t shine under there. Well, unless you mean the water. There was this big splash, and then Anna Hale went running past my car like a bat out of you-know-where.”
“Anna?” Never mind, just go with it. “Running from where to where?”
“She was on the grass, you know, where it slopes down to the water. She came out of the trees and ran under the bridge, and after that I didn’t see what happened.”
The Reuben turned over in his stomach. “Anna Hale. You’re sure.”
She gave him one of those “I’m not stupid, Stupid” looks. “I’ve known Anna Hale since she was a bitty baby. I babysat her. I know what that girl looks like. I know how she looks when she runs the hundred-yard dash, the way her arms go, like this.” She demonstrated. “It was her running under the bridge.”
“Do you think she meant to help the girl who fell?”
Vanessa shrugged. “Don’t know. I pulled out and got my sister and we beat it home before I had to go pick up Mama.”
He put his notebook down and picked up the second half of his sandwich. “I appreciate you coming to talk to me, Vanessa. You’ve been a huge help.”
“Are you going to get Kelci in trouble for being there?”
“No,” he said around a bite that had lost its flavor. “But I wouldn’t mind talking to her again. If she was close enough to see who did the pushing, I’d be real interested in knowing who it was.”
“You already talked to her.”
“Yes, but she omitted a couple of important facts.” As had everyone on his mental list.
“Mama probably won’t be too happy about you coming back. She about blew a gasket the last time. Kelci got grounded just for giving the police more work.”
“Kelci has nothing to worry about as long as she tells me the truth. I’ll come by after school tomorrow, okay?”
“Mama will be at work. She ain’t gonna like you being there without her there too.”
“Then how about I meet the two of you here tomorrow in the parking lot? Your mama won’t mind so much if you’re here. I only have a couple of questions, but I don’t want Kelci catching any heat from her classmates about it.”
She was starting to look a little cornered.
“Vanessa, this is important. If Kelci knows who pushed that girl, then she needs to come forward and tell me. We have to do something about it.”
“You think that girl meant to kill the other girl?”
“The victim’s name was Randi. Randi Peizer. And I can’t answer that right now. But I hope Kelci and her friends can help.”
But before he talked to Kelci, he was going to have a little talk with Anna Hale. Kyle Edgar and one or two of the others had been very firm that she hadn’t been there that night. Vanessa had been equally firm that she had. Someone was lying, and he could no longer afford to make stupid assumptions about whose word weighed more. Kyle, the mayor’s son? Vanessa, the waitress? He didn’t care anymore.
The only thing he cared about was Randi, and finding out the truth. Because her mother’s eyes haunted him. If he could do anything to dispel the darkness he saw there, he would.
For the sake of justice.
The sweetness of the blueberry pie was only a memory by the time he pulled up outside Colin and Laurie’s house in the older part of Glendale. Someday he’d have a house like this, with pointed gables and stonework as solid as the love inside. He wasn’t an envious kind of guy, but you’d have to be a saint not to want something like this for yourself. Of course, on a deputy sheriff’s salary, either it would take twenty years to get there, or he’d have to get in the habit of buying lottery tickets.
Tim answered the door, and his face broke into a huge grin. “Nick!” He craned to look around him, then pushed past. “Did you bring the cop car? Can I work the siren?”
Nick grabbed the kid’s sweatshirt just in t
ime. “Not tonight, buddy. Rumor has it there’s a noise bylaw around here, and if you turned it on I’d have to arrest you.”
“Aw, come on, Nick. Just once. I’ll just make it go whoop and turn it off.”
“Nope. Sorry. Your folks home?”
“Yeah. Mom!” he hollered in the direction of the living room as Nick stepped inside. “Nick’s here.”
For just a split second, he saw the same terror in Laurie’s eyes that he’d seen in the eyes of the mayor’s wife the other night. The expression of a woman about to get bad news, and determined to do everything she could to stave it off.
“Nick, what a surprise,” she said, and gave him a hug, the same as she always did. She was the closest thing he had to a sister, and he always associated the scent of vanilla and clean laundry with her. Her shoulders were stiff, though, and her hug a little looser, less committed, than usual.
“Hey, Lor.” He braced himself to say what had to be said. “Is Anna around?”
The rosy color faded out of her cheeks. “Anna? You already talked to her. She didn’t know anything. Besides, she’s doing her homework.”
“I know. But something has come up, and I just need to ask her about it.”
They stood in the warm entry hall. He waited for her to invite him into the living room, the way she had the other night, but she didn’t. Instead, she swallowed and took a deep breath.
“I talked to Vanessa Platt this afternoon,” she said.
Uh-huh. The neurons in his brain lined up and fired. “Did you tell her to talk to me?”
“Yes. Was that a mistake?”
“No. You did the right thing. Look, Lor, don’t panic about this. And don’t look like that, you’re killing me.” He took her hand, which was icy cold.
“Look like what?” Colin came out of the living room, where the TV laughed at its own joke, and now the three of them stood in an uneasy triangle the way strangers did at a cocktail party. Not like family at all.
Colin took one look at his wife’s face and turned toward Nick. “What’s going on?”
Just jump on in. “I talked to Vanessa Platt tonight at the Split Rail. She says she saw Anna near the bridge when Randi Peizer went into the water. And that Anna ran under the bridge right afterward.”
“Anna was asleep in—” Colin began.
“I just need to confirm that. Because even though you believe she was at home and asleep, at least two people place her at the bridge at the time of Randi’s death. With this new information, she could be one of the last people to see Randi alive. I need to find out what she did or saw under that bridge.”
“What do you mean, did?” Laurie’s tone was sharp with fear. “What are you saying?”
“Nothing more than that. Did she see Randi alive, did she try to pull her out, did she—”
“She wasn’t even there,” Laurie hissed. “Come on. We’ll go ask her.”
She turned on the ball of her foot and marched up the stairs. “Anna?” With Colin on his heels, Nick followed her up in time to see her push Anna’s bedroom door open. She leaned in, flipped on the light, and paused. “She must be in the bathroom.” It was at the end of the hall, and even Nick could see that the door stood open on an empty room. “Tim, is she in there with you?” she called against his bedroom door.
“No girls allowed!” came the muffled reply.
“Mothers are always allowed.” Laurie did a quick visual check over her son’s protests, then closed the door and went back into Anna’s room. “Anna!”
Silence.
Nick realized Colin was no longer behind him. In a moment he reappeared at the bottom of the stairs. “She’s not down here.”
“Did you check in the laundry room?”
“Why would she be in there?”
“If the perfect outfit isn’t perfectly clean, she has a meltdown. She knows how to work the washing machine. She’s probably ironing something.” Laurie clattered down the stairs. “Anna?”
But she wasn’t in the laundry room. Or in the garage, the attic, or the backyard.
Nick, Laurie, and Colin met up back in the entryway. Now his cousin wasn’t just pale. Her face was blanched to the color of old linen sheets.
“Houston, we have a problem,” somebody on the television said, and the laugh track cackled mindlessly, over and over.
Chapter Nine
Laurie sat in the dark in the reading chair in Anna’s bedroom. She’d wrapped a blanket around herself, not because the room was cold, but because her body wouldn’t quit shaking. Little tremors started in her gut and tiptoed out to her fingers and toes. Big tremors shook her shoulders like a sob . . . but no tears would come.
Not yet.
The cell phone in her right hand had become slick with perspiration. Colin and Nick had both taken their cars and divided up Glendale in an organized search, but Tim couldn’t be left on his own in the house, so she’d stayed behind. She felt like an assassin, waiting in the dark for her target to show up.
The noise in her head filled the silence as scenarios of what might be happening even as she sat there flickered on the screen of her imagination. Anna walking the darkened streets of Glendale. Anna being followed by a dark shape, with no one around to help.
No, even in her imagination, she had to be honest.
What she really saw was Anna running under that bridge. Randi, falling, falling . . . Anna in court, testifying about how she tried to save her and couldn’t. Or didn’t try. What had happened under there? Had she been the last person to see Randi alive, or not? Was Nick going to have to arrest his own cousin? Did they put fourteen-year-olds in jail?
She would not cry. She would not let those horrible doubts she’d had earlier, as she’d stood and gazed at that frozen footprint, attack her. She would not sit here and dissolve into a gibbering wreck.
When Anna climbed back in that window, she’d find her mother cool, calm, and immovable—because no reason in the world would justify behavior like this. No explanation would be good enough. And no punishment harsh enough. Maybe Laurie could threaten her with being sent away to some kind of boot camp. They had those, didn’t they? Maybe then she’d—
In the silence, the thrum of the trellis against the wall was more a vibration under her feet than an actual sound. No wonder the whole family had been clueless. Anna moved as quietly as a stalking cat.
How was it possible she had raised a girl with skills like that?
A shadow moved in front of the glass, and then the window slid up and her daughter’s slender form slipped through and dropped soundlessly to the hardwood.
Laurie pressed a button on the cell phone. The twitter of the little unit dialing out stopped Anna dead in the middle of the floor.
When Colin answered, his voice tight with anxiety, Laurie said quietly, “She’s home. Let Nick know, okay?”
“Thank you, Father,” he breathed. “See you in a few minutes.”
Laurie disconnected, then reached over and switched on the lamp on the nightstand.
Anna’s eyes widened and her breath came in pants as she recovered from her fright. Well, Laurie could tell her a thing or two about being frightened. She’d learned whole chapters from that textbook tonight.
Without a word, Anna took off her ski jacket and her shoes, and unwound her scarf from around her neck. So she was going to play it cool, was she? Laurie allowed her a few more seconds to speak, but she stayed as stubbornly silent as she had been all along.
The time for silence was over. “I’m waiting,” Laurie said at last.
“For what?”
“Don’t play stupid with me. I am in no mood. Sit down and spill it.”
She sat. “I just went for a walk.”
“Most people go out the front door. Maybe they even say, ‘Hey, Mom, I’m going for a walk.’ Maybe they care enough about their parents’ feelings to let them know when they’re going out. Do you know your dad and Nick have been driving around for an hour looking for you?”
�
�Sorry.”
“Not good enough. Tell me why you feel you need to deceive us and sneak out of the house.”
“I was scared.”
Laurie stared at her. “Of what?”
Anna twisted the fringed end of the scarf between her fingers. “Of Nick.”
It took Laurie a second to confirm that she really had heard what she thought she’d heard. “You’re scared of your cousin? Can I ask why?”
“Not Nick my cousin. Nick the cop.”
“Anna, he’s been a cop your whole life. And now you’re suddenly scared of him? He loves you to pieces. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
“Yes, I do.”
Okay, she was going to do this the hard way, one word at a time. “Why?”
“He keeps coming over. One of these times he’s going to arrest me. So when I heard him come in, I went for a walk until I thought he’d be gone.”
Laurie tried to tamp down the whirlwind of fear and guilt and speculation tearing her up inside. “Well, when he comes back with your dad you’ll see he’s not going to arrest you, not now and not anytime soon. You haven’t broken any laws other than lying to a police officer. It’s rules you’ve broken, and you can bet your dad and I will have something to say about that.”
“He’s coming back?” That bottomless look returned to her eyes, that look that said she was about to abandon all hope. “Tonight?”
“Who, Nick? Yes, of course. He wants to make sure you’re okay.”
“That’s not what he came over for in the first place, though, is it? He wanted to talk to me, didn’t he?”
“He had a couple more questions, but—”
“No.” She looked around wildly, and Laurie got out of the chair and went to sit on the windowsill, just in case she got any ideas.
“Anna, what is going on? You have to tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.” Her daughter toed off her shoes and, fully clothed, burrowed under her quilt. “He’ll make me go to jail.”
Over Her Head Page 10