Under the Ice

by Aaron Paul Lazar

  I watched the clock tick slowly toward ten o’clock, sorely tempted to let Greg’s impending call be taken by the voicemail. I really didn’t want to talk to him again.

  Marion climbed into my lap and pointed to my eyes.

  “What dat?” she asked.

  “Eyes,” I said. “Eyes. Can you say it?”

  She pursed her lips and tried. “Eye.”

  After a few minutes of going through body parts, she toddled toward the television.

  Johnny shrieked. “Opa! Mari’s doing it again!”

  Marion had pushed the stop button on the DVD. She looked at Johnny with glee and pushed it again. The player ejected the disc from the machine.

  “Opa! Tell her to stop!” he cried.

  I rose and scooped her up just as she pulled the disc out and had started to pull hard on the disc tray.

  Johnny sighed, lay the movie back in the tray, and shot daggers at me. “Opa!”

  I sat down on the floor next to his blanket, watching Marion, who briskly trotted toward the desk by the window. “It’s hard having little sisters sometimes, isn’t it, pal?”

  He flopped back onto his stomach and frowned. “Yup.”

  I ruffled his hair and reached down to hug him. “You know she doesn’t mean any harm, right? She just likes to see what happens when she pushes all those buttons.”

  “I guess,” he said, softening a little.

  “Hey, buddy. Today we’re building our snow fort, right?”

  He brightened. “Yes.”

  A crash came from the other side of the room.

  “Ought-oh,” Marion cried, backing up from her current disaster. She’d yanked a small drawer out of the desk and dumped the contents. Letters, envelopes, pens, and notebooks flew everywhere. Fortunately, the drawer hadn’t landed on her feet.

  I jumped up and went to her side.

  She looked at me wide eyed. “Ought-oh,” she repeated.

  “Marion? What did you do?” I scolded her gently.

  She backed up a few steps and watched with interest as I replaced the drawer and restored the contents. As soon as I was done, she reached for it again.

  “No, no!” Sighing, I picked her up and carried her to the kitchen.

  Freddie and Siegfried glanced up.

  I held her out to the highest bidder. “Who wants this little troublemaker?

  Siegfried held out his arms for her. “It is my turn,” he said with a grin. He automatically pushed his long, blond ponytail over his shoulder when Marion began to yank on it.

  Freddie closed the schedule with a finger swipe on her iPad. “Where’s Celeste?”

  She ducked beneath the table. “Where’d that little monkey go?”

  Sig nodded toward Mrs. Pierce’s room. “I think she went that way.”

  Marion pushed her finger toward his eye. “What dat?”

  I ran into Mrs. Pierce’s bedroom. No Celeste. Concerned, I checked the adjoining bathroom. Celeste stood over the toilet with a half roll of tissue paper in one hand and the other on the flush handle. Before I could stop her, she’d dropped the entire roll into the bowl and flushed.

  “All gone!” she chirped.

  I groaned and sprinted toward her. Water crept toward the top of the bowl. I reached her just in time to lift her off the floor. The water puddled around my feet. The tissue paper was gone, stuck somewhere in the drainpipes.

  I swung the baby up to my shoulder and shouted for Freddie. “We need some help in here.”

  Freddie grabbed her daughter as I sopped up the water with a towel. After several pathetic attempts with the plunger, I gave up. Unplugging the mess was going to need a higher skill level than not-so-handy-me.

  Siegfried ran for his toilet auger in the carriage house and we struggled with the contraption for the next few minutes. Finally, when he pulled a soggy mass of tissue paper out of the bowl with obvious relief, the phone rang. I looked at the clock.

  It was ten.

  Chapter 26

  Freddie handed the phone to me. She knew who we were expecting, and scowled. “It’s him,” she whispered.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “So. The professor answers again.” He paused and growled the next few words. “Where is she?”

  I took a deep breath. “Shelby’s at school.”

  “I want to see her,” he said.

  I shifted the phone to my other ear. “I’ll have to discuss it with her mother,” I said. “I’m not sure where she stands on this.”

  I wanted to say, Over my dead body, but I held my tongue.

  “It’s the law. You have to let me see her. Ask your lawyer. He’ll tell you.”

  I tried to calm myself down. Slow the pulse. Breathe. “Why don’t you give me your phone number so I can get back to you?”

  I hoped I sounded neutral. Relaxed. Unconcerned. But in reality, I was afraid I’d explode from the tension.

  “No. I’m not in my new place yet. I’ll let you know when I’m ready, and then I’ll call back. Soon.”

  “Okay, then.” I wished he were closer, so I could throttle him. The anger swam in my stomach and rolled hard from side to side. I tried to contain it, to keep my tone even. It was nearly impossible because I kept picturing him bashing my wife and knocking her across the room.

  She’d described it many times to me. Haltingly at first, and then as the flood of emotions let go, it had poured from her in waves of anguish.

  Be cool.

  I couldn’t let him know how upset I was. I might give him some kind of sick pleasure if he knew how badly I wanted revenge.

  I added a few “Ah ha’s” and listened to him as he spouted some passage from a law that supposedly pertained to him.

  “It’s the law,” he said forcefully.

  “Right,” I said. “When do you think you’ll be settled in your new place?”

  “In a day or two. I’m moving into a halfway house in Rochester until I can get my church going.”

  “Church?” I said.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Er, okay. Well, give us a call in a few days. By then, we will have discussed all this with Camille’s lawyer.”

  “Good.”

  He hung up. No “Goodbye.” No “Thank you.” No nothing.

  Siegfried and Freddie had hung on each word and now looked at me with concern.

  “He’s out,” I said. “And he wants to see Shelby.”

  Sig’s eyebrows drew together. “Nein. He will hurt her.”

  Freddie put her hand on his arm to calm him. “It’s okay, Uncle Sig. No one’s going to hurt her. We won’t let him. Right, Dad?”

  “We’ll see to it,” I said firmly. “No one’s gonna hurt our little girl.”

  Chapter 27

  Camille and Shelby were due home in a few hours. Siegfried returned to his apartment in the carriage house and Freddie corralled the children into the great room to color. I slipped upstairs to my bedroom to call Joe.

  I settled into the blue wing chair that had been Elsbeth’s favorite and looked out over the frosty landscape. The sun had risen high in the sky, causing the snowscape to sparkle below.

  The flash of Siegfried’s axe glinted in the noonday light, following by the satisfying thud that resounded when it hit the wood. The man chopped wood like a pro.

  I watched, mesmerized, as dry pieces of wood splintered and tumbled in the air. He split log after log, working like a mighty lumberjack.

  I picked up my cell and scrolled to Maddy’s number.

  She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Maddy, it’s me. Are you two doing okay?”

  “Hi, Gus. We’re managing. Doc got Joe into that program, sweet old geezer that he is. I’m driving him up on Monday. And he started his new medication last night. It’s supposed to take a few days, but I think I already see signs of improvement.”

  I expected the improvement was due more to Maddy’s nurturing than the pills, and said so.

  “No, it’s no
t. I’m not doing anything special here. Just helping him settle into the guestroom. Trying to make him comfortable, that sort of thing.”

  “The guest room?”

  She chuckled. “Well, we have to look proper, you know. Can’t have Shelby know I’m shacking up with my man, can I?”

  “Shacking up, eh?” I snorted a laugh. “Hey, can I talk to him?”

  I purposefully didn’t bring up Greg’s phone call, believing it would upset Maddy to know the guy who used to beat up her daughter now wanted to hang out with her darling granddaughter.

  “Sure. He’s with Adam in the living room. They’re installing some kind of fancy lawman’s computer.” She giggled again. “I’ll go get him.”

  A minute later, he came to the phone. “Hey, Gus.”

  “How are you doing, pal?”

  “Okay, I guess.” He paused.

  I waited.

  “I still haven’t gone outside yet.”

  “That’s okay. You’ll get there, Joe.”

  “I guess. I have to go to that program thing soon.” He lowered his voice. “Maddy’s all excited about it. But I’m dreading it.”

  “I don’t blame you. It’ll be hard. But with Maddy at your side, it’ll be easier, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So, what are you two installing in the living room? Is it for work?”

  “Adam’s hooking up a secure system so I can do research. I’ll have access to all the national databases. Thought it might be a good way to stay on top of the job while I’m... er, recovering.”

  That in itself was a good sign, and I felt a bit encouraged. “Great.” I turned to look outside, wondering if Greg would show up on our doorstep. “Hey, I’ve gotta ask you something.”

  His cop intuition was still in place. “What’s wrong, Gus?”

  “Camille’s ex called. He wants to see Shelby. And he seems… ” I hesitated. “He seems obsessed with her.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Has he been released?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s coming right up. Greg acted like he was getting housing soon. Talked about starting a church.”

  “A church? Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I’ll check it out. I’ll put in a call to the warden. I spent some time with him a few years back. Fishing trip, actually. He’s a friend of my cousin.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Joe.”

  “Not a problem. Hold on a sec.” He spoke a few words in the background. “Hey, Adam wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here he is.”

  The phone crackled.

  “Gus?’

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “Are you alone?” It sounded like he’d moved away from Maddy and Joe and was talking very close to the receiver.

  “I am,” I said. “Why?”

  “Just want to let you have time to digest this before you tell Camille or Shelby.”

  “Digest what?”

  “I’ve done some research on the body from Mendon. You know, the one you guys found under the ice?”

  “Right. What’d you find?”

  “Her name was Lisa May Albertson.” He cleared his throat.

  “And?”

  “Ms. Albertson had recently come home to stay with her parents. There had been some kind of trouble in her commune.”

  “Commune? They still have those?”

  “Well, that’s what the parents called it. They were rather vague with their description. Anyway, she’d been gone for several years and then suddenly came home, very distraught. She’d been kicked out of the commune.”

  “Interesting.”

  I thought back to the last commune I’d last seen in Massachusetts in 1969. It had been a front for a white slave trader group. I’d nearly lost my first wife, Elsbeth, to the horror of an overseas sex slave ring. Shaking the disturbing vision from my brain, I focused on what Adam was saying.

  “Yeah. And there’s more. Apparently she wasn’t attacked by anyone. She killed herself, Gus. Swallowed a whole bottle of Xanax.”

  “That’s horrible, I said.”

  “No kidding,” Adam said quietly. “Her folks said she used to be a bit on the wild side.” He cleared his throat. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

  I sighed. “Okay. Give it to me.”

  “She was wearing braids.”

  I wished he would just blurt it out. This piecemeal sharing of information was killing me. “So?”

  “One of them was cut off.”

  My blood ran cold. “What?”

  “I know. I told you it was weird. Especially in view of what Greg sent Shelby.”

  I thought back to the plait of brunette hair that was in the envelope on top of the refrigerator. An ominous feeling settled over me.

  “I don’t get it. Is Greg somehow connected to this?”

  Adam kept his voice low. “He might be. We’ll check it out. Meanwhile, stay vigilant. If Greg shows up at your house, he will have violated the restraining order, and we can arrest him immediately. Call me, day or night. Okay?”

  “Count on it, Adam. Thanks.”

  We hung up.

  Shelby bounded up the stairs and flew past the bedroom. “Mom’s lost it!” she hollered, stomping into her room. She dumped her stuff on the floor and slammed the door.

  Chapter 28

  I hurried downstairs. “Camille?”

  “I think she’s still outside, Dad.” Freddie was coloring with Johnny and the twins, with her head bent over the drawing pad. She focused on her masterpiece with Johnny watching over her shoulder. The twins had taken all the crayons out of the box. Each girl held a fistful.

  Apparently whatever had happened between Camille and Shelby hadn’t been in front of Freddie. She seemed oblivious.

  Johnny shrieked at her. “Make a GREEN tractor, Mummy. Put Mari and Celeste in the cart. That’s right! Good job, Mummy. I’ll draw the wheels.”

  I continued into the kitchen, grabbing my coat from the chair. Anxious now, I peered out the kitchen window.

  Where is she?

  There, over by the barn. Camille’s Volkswagen bug spewed white exhaust plumes into the cold air.

  I headed outside and almost fell down on the icy porch steps. I made a mental note to salt them, then ran across the snowy yard to her car. I opened the passenger door, stopped, and stared. “Camille? Honey? What’s wrong?”

  She heaved a huge sigh and began to sob when she saw me.

  I slid into the car and reached for her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t touch me!” She shrank from me.

  “I—”

  “Please don’t touch me.”

  I pulled back, stunned.

  “Oh my God.” The tears ran like spring streams down her cheeks.

  “Sweetheart, what happened? Are you okay?” It was a stupid question, but I asked anyway. Of course she wasn’t okay.

  Camille turned to me. Her eyes met mine, filled with dread. It was a deep, aching, gut-wrenching dread.

  My heart flip-flopped and I panicked.

  “I saw him, Gus,” she wept. The words exploded from her lips in a hiss. “I saw him.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Saw who?”

  “Greg,” she said. “He sat on the opposite side of the gym talking into a cell phone, right on top of the bleachers. It was right at ten o’clock when he called you. He stared at me and Shelby, and I freaked out.”

  “What did you do? What did he do?”

  “I ran. Shelby fought me; she wanted to stay and see Rolf. I finally told her that Greg was in the building and she reluctantly followed me to the car.”

  “Did he follow you?” I said.

  She looked over her shoulder nervously. “I don’t think so. I think he was still in the building when I pulled out of the parking lot.” Her hands shook. She reached for a tissue, and held it to her swollen eyes. “I can’t stop crying. I fee
l like such a fool. Thank God I held it in until Shelby left the car. And then it just came pouring out.”

  I didn’t dare to reach for her again, afraid of the memories that must have hit her full force. Greg had hurt her, badly. Again and again. This sudden face-off with her ex-husband had to be traumatic, at best.

  “Camille? How far was he from you? Can you estimate?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t know if the restraining order applies to public events like that. Does it?”

  “I’m not sure,” I whispered. “But it should. It shouldn’t matter where you are or who’s around you. If he’s closer than five hundred feet, he can be arrested for breaking the order.”

  I gently reached for her hand, suspending mine a fraction of an inch above hers. “It this okay? May I hold your hand?”

  She pulled back in surprise, stopped for a moment, and then threw her arms around my neck. “Don’t ever leave me, Gus. Please.”

  I leaned toward her and held her close.

  “I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay, baby. I’m here to stay. I love you. He’ll never hurt you again.”

  The stick shift poked into my ribs, but I didn’t move a muscle. She needed to be the one to make the moves, to ask for more. I rubbed her back and she slowly settled down.

  When all her tears were spent, she sniffled, blew her nose, and looked up at me. “I’m sorry. I can’t face being in the same town as that monster. Never mind in the same building.” She pulled back her hair, smoothing her ponytail and refastening the clip.

  “Your reaction was completely natural. I’m surprised you held it in for the whole ride home.”

  “Well, I didn’t really. I acted strange. I snapped at Shelby when she dawdled and started to argue with me. My voice was all tight and I couldn’t even talk to her. Poor baby. She must be scared.”

  “She’s not the only one. I don’t like that bastard creeping up on us like that. It’s like he’s playing with us. On the phone with me, when he knew you were at the game. It’s so bizarre. Like he was testing me or something.”

  “I wonder how he knew we were there?” she said.