So what, Rachel? You know how they bought it.
Why had she come here? She should have ignored her mother’s invitation.
Rachel walks slowly up the perfectly edged sidewalk, smelling honeysuckle. A breeze plays with her hair. At the first porch step she falters, searching within herself for any hint of weakness. Though she lives only ten miles away, she has not seen Rosa for over a year. Rachel vows to display nothing of herself here, not one emotion. No resentment, no bitterness. No if onlys. Her life is fine. She has a steady job as a receptionist in a large office, even has a few friends. Many men want her. She just doesn’t want them. She does not need Rosa, and certainly doesn’t need anything the woman might try to give her.
As if her mother could make up for all those black years. For all the neglect and abuse, and failing to protect her when she needed it most —
Rachel, don’t.
She steadies herself. Almost turns around. Suddenly she is not feeling strong, not at all, and this she cannot afford. Why does she fear seeing Rosa yet long to see her? Why does she both hate and love the woman? Rachel has a life to live. She will belong someday — to someone. To a husband who needs her, and children. She does not need her mother —
The fancy wide door with etched panes of glass swings open.
“Hi, hon! Welcome to my humble abode!”
Hon?
Rosa poses with one hand on her hip, the other on the edge of the heavy door. Her head angles with supreme satisfaction, her bright red lips wide in a proud smile. Her bleached hair lies dry and spiky on her bare shoulders. She wears a short leather skirt, revealing skinny tanned legs, and a beaded white halter top. Around her neck hangs a tasteless chunky gold chain.
“Well, come in, and hug your mother. I haven’t seen you for so long!” Rosa tosses out the words, so blithe, so cavalier, as if they are long-lost buddies with nothing but happy memories between them.
“Hello, Rosa.” Rachel keeps her voice even as she steps inside. She doesn’t want to give Rosa even a cursory embrace, but Rosa reaches out both arms theatrically and pulls her near. Musky perfume fills Rachel’s nostrils and she holds her breath. She doesn’t bother to hide her own stiffness, but if Rosa notices, she doesn’t let on.
“Okay, come on.” Rosa bounces like an excited child. “Let me show you the house. Eddie’s not here right now, so it’s just us two chicks.” She titters.
Eddie — the big drug man. The latest boyfriend who helps Rosa afford all this.
Reluctantly Rachel follows, keeping her chin high, holding on to her heart. Rosa’s heeled sandals clap-clap against the polished hardwood floor of the entryway, the large kitchen. Everything is immaculate. Someone other than Rosa clearly keeps up the place.
“We have a maid,” Rosa explains as if reading her mind. Her hands make circles in the air, gold bracelets tinkling. “I drop something, she picks it up. She’s the best, Rachel. You really should have one.” She seems to forget that Rachel could ill afford such a luxury.
Rosa chatters her way through the formal dining and living rooms, pointing out designer furniture, the fine stitching of throw pillows, the marble fireplace. Rachel murmurs through it all, “Yes, it’s beautiful” and “Oh, how nice.” Rosa flits through the den with a huge plasma TV, the rec room with a pool table, then scoots up the stairs. As Rachel reaches the plush white carpet of the first step, the irony of it all hits her again. Such loveliness — built on filth. On selling illegal, dangerous drugs that lead to addiction and death. Any day now, Rosa’s fairy-tale world could come tumbling down. She could sleep in these fine surroundings one night, on a thin mattress behind cold iron bars the next. And Rachel marvels anew at Rosa’s never-ending self-centeredness. The more the woman shows off her new belongings, the less she seems aware of Rachel’s wooden responses, until she doesn’t even wait for one at all.
“We have four bedrooms up here, including the master suite, which you won’t believe.” Rosa hums as she sails through the open door of the first bedroom. “Look at this one, Rachel. I decorated it just for you. Remember when you were little how you wanted a bedroom in baby blue with a four-poster bed? Well, here it is!”
Rachel halts at the threshold. She takes in the double bed with lacy coverlet and matching canopy. Lined curtains of the same material at the two large windows. Freshly painted light-blue walls, plush blue carpet. It’s everything a little girl could hope for.
Pain stabs her like a hot-bladed knife. In that moment, amid Rosa’s happy chatter and the pristine bedroom, everything Rachel has lacked in her life, everything she has ever dreamed of, swirls together in a dust storm that batters her very soul. The force is so strong, so stinging, that it leaves Rachel reeling. She reaches out and hangs on to the doorframe for support.
Rosa sweeps past her back out into the hall. “And in this bedroom over here — ”
“Rosa!” The name jumps from Rachel’s mouth. She whirls to face her mother, heartbeat surging.
The woman jerks in surprise, red-nailed hands hanging in the air. “Huh?”
“Are you still doing business with Blake?”
Rosa blinks at the harsh tone. Her animated expression fades.“Why do you ask that?”
“Because I want to know.”
Rosa’s head draws back and her lips tighten. She looks like a spoiled child whose party was just disrupted. “Okay, yes. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Indignation and fury stiffen Rachel’s back. “It is my business. It was always my business. Because I’m your daughter. Because I lived in the same house with you, and whoever came in and out of our front door affected my life. Don’t you get that?”
Rosa’s eyes widen. One hand finds its way to her throat. “Well, I always tried to do what was — ”
“You always did what you wanted, Rosa. Never what I needed!” The sudden tornado blows harder in Rachel’s chest and there is no stopping it now. It is wailing and moaning, sucking up every brick in her carefully constructed wall and spitting it out.
“Wait just a minute.” Rosa’s expression turns hard. She leans toward Rachel, shaking a finger in her face. “Don’t you tell me how to be a mother until you’re one yourself. You have no idea how hard it is — ”
“He raped me, you know.” The ugly truth spurts from her. “Blake.Your business contact. That first night he saw me. He raped me in my own bed. In your house. And where were you, Mother?” The word bludgeons. “High on speed in the den, that’s where. You and your latest boyfriend and the sorry, stinking lot of you!”
Tears fill Rachel’s eyes. She despises her weakness, but she despises the woman in front of her more. She grips the doorframe, waiting for a response from Rosa’s twisted mouth, wanting . . .something. Some word of apology, a sense of horror and shame.
Rosa draws herself up, nostrils flaring. Her eyes narrow. “You little liar. You’re just jealous of what I have. Can’t stand to see me happy. You have to come in here and spoil it for me, don’t you?”
Even coming from her mother, this is unbelievable. Rachel’s throat burns. “You know what? I think you knew what happened. You were just too drugged out of your mind to care. Then if you acknowledged what he did, you wouldn’t have been able to let him come around anymore, would you? You’d have been out your supplier.”
Bright red circles dot Rosa’s cheeks. “Oh, really. If it’s true, why didn’t you do something about it?”
“Who would I go to, Rosa? The cops in our area were on the take, remember? Who’d have believed me over protecting you?And if they did listen about the rape and the drugs, where would I be then? You’d have gone to jail and I’d have been out on the street, and goodness knows if they would’ve caught up to Blake.He’d have come after me in a heartbeat.”
Rosa flings her arm toward the stairs. “Get out! I don’t know why I had you come here. I don’t want to see you here ever again!”
Rachel’s body goes cold. “No, I suppose not.” She pushes out of the doorway. “My presence — and
the glaring truth — might taint your sterling white walls.”
The world blurs as she stalks down the stairs, clinging to the polished rail for support. Rosa hurls caustic words at her back.
“I was a good parent! I did all I could do for you. You’ve been a brat since the day you were born!”
At the bottom of the staircase Rachel turns and looks up at her. Rosa huddles at the top step, knuckles white against the banister, cords standing out on her splotchy neck. At forty-two she looks at once ragged and old, and the petulant, stubborn child.
The storm within Rachel abruptly dies, leaving her with the aching emptiness she brought to this horrible place. “Rosa.” She is amazed at how calm her voice is. Dead calm. “No baby is a brat. Babies are meant to be loved.”
She turns toward the expensive front door, away from the woman fate gave her as a mother. Her steps clatter hollowly across the floor and down the perfect porch steps.
FORTY-ONE
Vince had watched Paige carefully as they talked. He was no lie detector machine. As a human he was far more, and far less, than electrodes and recording graphs. He came with his own emotions, lacking the cold objectivity of science. Sometimes those emotions could be a hindrance, sometimes a help.
At the moment Vince couldn’t decide which was true.
Paige Williams’s childhood represented everything wrong with this evil-tainted world. Neglect, abuse, a life riddled with disappointment and hurt. She was only a few years older than his own son would have been. All that Tim had enjoyed as a child — love and happiness and a stable household — Paige had never known. As Vince Edwards the father heard Paige’s story, felt her miasma of weariness and despair, he couldn’t help but grieve with her. No doubt the emotions he sensed from her were genuine.
Unlike pieces of her story.
As with Francesca Galvin, he’d watched where Paige’s gaze roamed as she spoke. Her body language and expression. He couldn’t decipher every true detail from the false ones. Rather, they fell into general patterns. For example, her story of why she fled Kansas, he didn’t buy. Her road trip to Kanner Lake, he did. She seemed to be telling the truth about being home the previous evening, although lacking an alibi certainly didn’t help her.
The question was, were any lies she may have told significant to this case?
A lie detector machine would objectively decry the lies themselves but lack the ability to understand any foundation of emotional truth. So while the policeman in him detected some falsehood, his human side wondered if the lies mattered. People had lots of different reasons to be less than forthcoming with the police. For Paige it could be shame, guilt, the desire for her past to remain as anonymous as possible as she built her new life.
Now came the moment of significance — Paige’s reaction to the accusation that she had made a death threat toward Edna San. Vince cataloged her every move.
The young woman’s eyes grew wide and her head jerked back just the slightest. Her breathing lulled. Color drained away from her face like whitewash running down a window. “That’s not true!” The denial sounded cinched, shocked. “I never said anything like that.”
He held her gaze, saying nothing, knowing she’d fill the silence.
“Who told you that? Why would anybody say that?”
He shrugged. “Maybe they’re wrong. That’s why I needed to check with you.”
Paige’s color rushed back, ruddy and blotched. Her mouth hardened. “I’ll say they’re wrong. You can ask anybody in that store. Ask Sarah; she was right there.”
“All right, okay.” Vince held up both hands. “I’ll do that.”
Her eyes darted around the table. “I wish I could tell you who else to ask. It’s just that, like I said, I don’t know the name of anybody else in the store. I’d recognize those girls if I saw them, but who knows if they’re still around. I can’t even remember what the other people looked like. Believe me, if I did, I’d send you right to them, because any of them would tell you — ” She cut off her words, some new realization seizing her features. Her gaze sought Vince’s face and hung there. “But that’s just it, right? One of those people told you that. Why would any of them do such a thing? I didn’t say anything even remotely like a threat.” Her words tightened further, brightness in her eyes. For a moment Vince thought she might cry. She leaned toward him, a hand at her throat. “Tell me it wasn’t one of the girls. Please. ”
The pain in her tone cut Vince to the core, where his own grief weighed like hot steel. Vince the police chief faded while Vince the father of a dead son reeled. With one plea this girl had laid herself bare. Amid all her anxiety about the accusation, Paige Williams seized upon the one possibility with the power to shake her world even more — that these sisters, who had buoyed her soul by showing indignation on her behalf, might turn on her, reinforce the harsh reality that she was unloved and unlovable.
Paige’s pain was not far from Vince’s own. He grieved for love taken. She grieved for love never known.
“Paige.” He shook his head, voice low. “It wasn’t one of those girls.”
She drew back, swallowing hard. For a moment she said nothing, relief soothing the lines in her forehead. “Okay. Well, I don’t know who else it would have been either. All I do know is, it isn’t true.” She looked into his eyes. “Ask Sarah. She’ll tell you.”
He nodded. “I believe you, Paige. And I’m sorry I put you through this, but . . . you understand why I had to.”
She regarded her plate as if the thought of food made her sick.“Can we go back now?”
“Yeah. We’re done.” He gestured toward her sandwich. “You want to take that with you?”
“No. Thanks.” Her shoulders remained stiff.
Vince leaned toward the window until he caught sight of Bud at an angle through the alcove doorway, and waved. Bud hustled over with their check and removed their plates.
On the way out, Vince ducked into the bathroom and switched off the tape recorder.
He and Paige did not speak as they exited the restaurant. She opened the passenger door of his vehicle and slid inside, turned her face toward the window. They drove back to Simple Pleasures in silence. Vince did not spot Leslie Brymes tailing them this time. The girl was probably long gone and talking a blue streak with Sarah Wray.
Vince’s gut told him to believe Paige’s denial. Yet Edna San had claimed Paige threatened to kill her. Why?
Paige had not told the truth about the reason she fled Kansas. Why?
Vince parked close to the store and escorted Paige back inside. While she took over manning the counter, Vince asked Sarah Wray to step inside her office, where the woman confirmed in no uncertain terms that Paige Williams had said no such thing, and that the girl was far too sweet to even think such a thought.
By the time Vince returned to his car, he was convinced Paige had not threatened Edna San. Which, as far as he could see, left two possibilities — either Edna had embellished the Simple Pleasures incident as a way to legitimize her roiling anger, or Francesca had done so to divert attention away from herself. Knowing Edna, Vince considered the former a possibility. As for the latter, it would definitely cast further suspicion on Francesca.
Vince started the engine, pondering the second scenario. If Francesca was involved in Edna San’s disappearance, lying about Paige Williams seemed like such a stupid thing to do. The woman manages to pull off a crime leaving few clues — and then spins a tale so easily unraveled? One involving a young woman with no former ties to Edna and without substantial reason to harm her? It didn’t make sense.
Nonetheless, Vince would need to question Francesca again about the alleged threat.
Heading out of town, Vince used his cell phone to check in with the station. Frank told him his men had been busy. The San estate had now been sealed off as a crime scene, with Roger Waitman posted at the gate. A forensics team was at the house, searching for evidence. Vince regretted not being there with them but knew they were capable of ha
ndling the task. He made a mental note to catch up with them as soon as possible. Two cadaver dogs and their handlers were now searching the woods and road near the San estate, starting at the point where Lester’s hound had lost the scent. And Jim had assembled a team of volunteers — mostly folks from the city council and chamber of commerce, plus the town’s volunteer firemen — to comb the outlying woods as well.
“Okay, Frank. Thanks.”
Vince clicked off the line and headed back to Lakeside diner. There, he knew, Bud would have a present waiting for him — Paige Williams’s can of soda, carefully emptied of its contents and placed in a paper bag. He and Bud had worked out their system some time ago. Whereas Lakeside typically poured sodas into glasses, Bud knew when Vince showed up with one person and asked for seating in the alcove, he needed to bring the cans instead.
Vince would see that Paige’s soda can was taken to the lab for lifting of prints. Her fingerprint would then be scanned into AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, to look for a match. Using powerful configurations to create unique mathematical maps of fingerprints, AFIS was capable of checking Paige Williams’s print against millions of others in a matter of seconds.
However, the process wasn’t quite as simple as determining that one perfect match. Rather the system would provide a can didate list of the closest matches. A fingerprint examiner would then review the potentials to determine an exact match. It was a blend of machine and human working together, human making the ultimate call.
Meanwhile techs at Edna San’s house would be looking for fingerprints as well. Any discoveries they made would also go through AFIS. The handles on the french doors leading into Edna San’s kitchen would be a good place for them to start. Their possible discoveries were another reason Vince had wanted Paige’s prints.
Violet Dawn Page 16