The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery)

by Jessie Bishop Powell

  “Sorry.” Deputy Greene looked in. “She kind of bulled through.”

  Drew rolled his eyes. I clearly heard the words “damned rookie” in his mutter.

  “Let me tell you something,” Shannon said to Chandra. “Every word these people have been telling you is a lie.”

  Shannon Dearborn was my own height, barely five feet tall, and the rare acquaintance who didn’t tower over me. This made it unfortunately simple for her to glare past Drew and right into my eyes.

  “I’m trying to help her,” Drew insisted. “Right now, she’s got at least six credible witnesses who saw her attempting to kidnap their son.” He jerked a thumb toward Lance and me for illustration.

  “We’ll see. I know how cops work. You lie to get a person to speak . . .”

  “She hasn’t said a word,” said Chandra. “And you, ma’am . . .”

  “I saw her.” I hadn’t meant to say anything. Shannon was already furious enough, and Chandra was more than capable of handling her. But here I stood at the police station with my husband while my foster daughter’s life was in danger and my son, the child who had nearly been kidnapped, cooled his heels with my parents, an FBI agent, a made-over ring-bearer suit, some toy trucks, and a pair of fake gardening shears. How could this woman think her daughter had done nothing? Still, keeping in mind what Chandra had said to Natasha about productivity, I tried for a reasonable tone. “I think . . . I hope her intentions were better than they seemed, but she had one arm, her boyfriend had the other, and they were dragging him toward the boyfriend’s car.” In spite of my efforts, I ended on a snarl.

  “Layla doesn’t have a boyfriend, and that’s hardly how she puts it.” But the look Shannon threw at Drew suggested I had confirmed his story, and now the eyes she narrowed in my direction were wary, but less hostile. “She said she was sitting at home when he showed up with handcuffs.”

  “She was in my mother’s front yard. I absolutely saw her . . .”

  “How would you know who you saw? How can you be sure it wasn’t some other biracial child. Don’t they all look alike to you?”

  Now I didn’t snarl. I shouted. “My son is biracial. Both my children are biracial, and they are both Layla’s biological siblings.” Probably. Probably they were her siblings. I tried to think about that, not my own rising anger. I forcibly lowered my voice. “No, ‘they’ do not look alike to me any more than you look like me because we’re both five feet tall and white with brown hair. I’m hardly going to forget the kid who was distributing sex tapes of Natasha this year.”

  “Excuse me? What did you accuse my daughter of doing?”

  “We spoke on the phone about this before I met with your sister to get them back.”

  “I never spoke to you before in my life. I . . . wait. You met with my sister?” She whipped her head around to Drew. “When was Ivy here? I specifically barred her from visitation.”

  “You don’t have a say,” said Chandra.

  I tried to break in. “It was before Layla went back to school in the fall.”

  Shannon plowed on without listening, planting herself directly in front of Drew so he had to bend down to maintain eye contact. “I have a longstanding restraining order against her. She is not permitted to be near me or Layla, either one . . . wait . . . what?” She turned back to me.

  “I said it was back before school started.”

  Shannon licked her lips. “How long before school started?” She didn’t give me time to answer. “I was at a conference the week before school started. Layla was with my brother in Cheboygan. She was fishing on the lake.” Her fury drained for an instant, only to be replaced with frantic energy. “No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.” She grabbed her phone out of her pocket as she spoke. When her brother answered the call, she demanded, “Did Ivy con you into letting her see Layla this summer?”

  The hostile glowers Shannon was directing at Natasha slowly dwindled to sorrowful glances. When she hung up, Shannon was an entirely different person. She slumped into a folding chair. “All right,” she said. “I’m ready to listen.”

  “It seems like you may need to talk,” Drew suggested.

  “I’m not talking to anybody.”

  “Shannon, I cannot break the law to help Layla. As her guardian will tell you, I’ve already stretched it as far as it goes. But I was a stupid teenager in my day. If a sergeant in Columbus hadn’t lost some evidence and taken a serious rap, there’s the possibility I’d have been in jail when I was fifteen. If I was lucky. And from there, I’d . . . let’s say I’d probably be serving time instead of serving the law.”

  “Your colorful history is fascinating, but I think the rest of us . . .” Chandra began, but Drew cut her off, still speaking to Shannon, utterly ignoring Layla’s guardian.

  “This cop lived in my neighborhood. He knew my family. Knew my situation. I don’t know if he did what he did on purpose. Maybe he was an idiot who couldn’t maintain a chain of evidence. But it was the first time I’d seen my dad might be wrong about the boys in blue being out to get us. And this cop, he was a black man, like me.

  “That man saved my life. And I’m not going to forget it. I’ll do what I can to help your daughter, but you’ve got to help me help her. Chandra has been appointed by the court to make sure Layla’s best interests are met here. We aren’t the enemy.”

  “I don’t know if I have anything to say,” Shannon said. “I don’t think I know anything anymore. But I’m beginning to think Layla was not on the lake this summer. What if my con artist, crazy-ass sister cried crocodile tears to my stupid, fluff-brained brother and got ahold of Layla, then came back here instead? Let’s entertain the possibility Layla is lying to me about how she spent her summer vacation and what she did yesterday. If those things are the case, what are we talking about here?”

  We all rushed in to update Shannon about her daughter’s behavior, but Natasha drowned us out. “I’m going to tell you everything I possibly can,” she said, “but you’re going to answer one question for me when I’m done.” She turned swiftly to Chandra and added, “I swear the question’s got nothing to do with Layla,” before returning her attention to Shannon.

  Shannon studied Tasha for a long time, and then nodded assent. Chandra did, too, but Natasha wasn’t watching her.

  Natasha didn’t only summarize the summer. She took the conversation back to the time even before she and Layla had been at Nelly Penobscott’s together, when Shannon was in Gary’s pornography company, before it consisted entirely of illegal activities. She built her relationship with her sister one word at a time for Shannon, until the woman sitting in front of us was staring with wide eyes and a loose jaw.

  “Lies!” Shannon finally said. “It’s all been one lie after another.” I thought she was referring to Natasha, and I got ready to defend my foster daughter, but then Shannon said, “I wonder if she even catches the bus half the time! She’s had truancy issues this year, and I always believed her when she swore she missed the bus and had no way to get to school. But if Ivy convinced you she was me on the phone . . . and Layla . . . She lies so much. And she sounds like an adult. She’s exactly like Ivy. Exactly like her. I was a wild kid, but I’ve grown up, do you understand? This is bad.”

  “I said I had a question.” Natasha had long since assumed the dispassionate tone she had used back at Mama and Daddy’s when she was telling us about the records room we didn’t know existed.

  “You did. You did say that.” Shannon sounded half hysterical now, and I wasn’t sure what kind of answer she would give.

  Natasha said, “I never thought I’d met Ivy before August. When I saw her at your place, she looked a little familiar, but I couldn’t place her. I figured I’d seen her around or something. It’s a pretty small town, you know. I never knew she was in with Gary and his people. She must not have acted?”

  Shannon shook her head. “Ivy was above that,” she said.

  “But now I’m scared,” Natasha went on. “I think I have seen h
er before. When I saw Layla a minute ago, she turned her head away at an angle, and I was looking, for a second, at the EMT who first responded when Mom . . . when she died. And I want to know if Ivy ever poses as a nurse or doctor or anything like that. Does she ever go around pretending she’s a medical professional?”

  “She doesn’t have to pretend,” said Shannon. “She was a paramedic for a few years, and last I heard she had her RN.”

  “That’s worse.” Now Natasha was the one heading for hysteria, and I found myself fumbling through my purse for the inhaler I had only recently put away. She wheezed out those words, and I knew if I didn’t hurry, we’d be needing a paramedic for her.

  Tasha took the inhaler, but she waved me off when I said she should move from the chair to the floor. She took several shaky breaths and asked Shannon, “Do you know if Ivy uses purple syringes almost exclusively?”

  What kind of a question was that? My desire to know wrestled with my pride in Natasha for mastering her panic long enough to continue the conversation. Tasha had demons. Bad ones. But she also had victories, and this one was enormous. Still, the question made no sense.

  Shannon cocked her head to one side. “Yeah,” she said. “When she can get away with it. If she’s the one placing the order. See, she came to Christmas right after she got her paramedic license, flashing those things around the house. Needles. Around a kid. Around my kid. I knew she wasn’t using those things at work. Those were for personal use, if you follow me. She wanted me to shoot up, when I’d only gotten clean a year before. As much dope as I did, Layla was always clean. That was when I cut Ivy off. And she did so many things after that I was forced to get the restraining order. She . . .”

  We didn’t get to find out what other things Ivy had done to Shannon, because Natasha crumpled sideways off her chair.

  “Tasha!” I thought she’d passed out.

  But she looked up at me and reached out like Sara or William might. “Noel?” she wailed.

  “I’m right here, honey.” I sat beside her. “Lance, get her therapist on the phone.”

  “Noel?” she repeated, as if she hadn’t heard me.

  “I’m right here.” I gently took her arms, trying to simultaneously respect her need for space and affirm my presence.

  She seized me and folded herself around me, heaving and shaking. “I think she killed my mother!” And that was the last coherent thing we heard for some time. This wasn’t a panic attack. It wasn’t accompanied by the gasping for air and complaints of chest pains that came along with those. This was grief. This was a hysteria born from years of holding in pain. Natasha clung to me sobbing, and eventually let me worm around to hold onto her instead, until she was reduced to hiccupping whimpers on the floor.

  When I could pay attention to anything else again, Shannon was describing her sister to Drew and Trudy, and I felt a rush of gratitude for law enforcement officers who were willing to take the word of a fifteen-year-old girl who’d once had a sketchy relationship with the truth.

  Lance had joined us on the floor. “I’m glad you got me out of the pizza place,” he said. “Look at the family fun I might have missed otherwise. Dr. Hanson says you can take some more of your anti-anxiety medication, Tasha. We’re missing your appointment right now, but he’ll wait for us.”

  “I’m fine.” She was still anything but.

  As if she’d been waiting for that moment precisely, Trudy shifted her attention from Shannon and Drew and down to Natasha. “Honey, can you talk?”

  Lance stiffened. I wasn’t impressed with the demands being placed upon Natasha either, and I started to voice my concerns. But, as she had been doing all afternoon, Natasha overrode me. “Listen, I don’t know anything. And I don’t know how you’d prove any of it. And . . .”

  “You tell us what you believe, and we’ll work on finding proof.” Trudy had her tablet out.

  I rose and helped Tasha to her feet. An artist was working with Shannon to draw Ivy. The woman emerging only looked slightly like the one I had met when we retrieved the DVD. This woman bore far more resemblance to the one who surrendered her capuchin in June. Her name hadn’t been Ivy, but a false ID was easy to get. Darnell was right about the real reason for her to crash our party.

  “No.” Natasha wouldn’t let Trudy start recording. “It’s not only Mom. I don’t think Granddad and Gran are safe. I think she maybe works at the nursing home. I think she’s maybe Gran’s favorite nurse. Granddad doesn’t have until next Wednesday. Trudy, there’s got to be somebody you can trust to get them out of there. Both of them.”

  Tasha was starting to squeak again. “Take your pill,” I advised.

  She complied. “I’ll try to slow down,” she promised. “But, please, Trudy. There’s a nurse there who always seems to be around when I visit Gran. Gran says it’s her favorite. I’ve never gotten a decent look at the woman’s face because she sees me and goes, even if she’s in the middle of a procedure, and sends someone else down to finish whatever she was doing. What if Gran isn’t depressed? What if she can’t walk? What if Layla’s aunt is sitting around down there playing with both of them and going to . . . to . . .”

  “Give me five minutes,” Trudy said. “A word, Noel?”

  I stepped into the hall with her, but left the door open so I could still see Natasha. Trudy didn’t waste time getting to the point. “I can get Stan and Gert moved. It’s you I’m worried about. You need to get home, get your kids, get your parents, and go. You need to hide until we sort this out.”

  “So you’re putting us in a protection program.”

  “For a few days. We’ll take care of Natasha. I think once she shows us this room, we’ll have enough information to make another round of arrests. You should be home by Christmas.”

  I barely heard the second half of her sentence and fastened instead on the first words she’d said. “I am not leaving Natasha.”

  “We’ll reunite her with her grandparents . . .”

  A hand on my shoulder told me Lance was behind me. “Noel’s right,” he said. “Not a chance in hell. The next place we’re going is to therapy with Natasha, then back to our children. We’ll all go wherever it is you suggest together. Stan and Gert Oeschle can come to us. We are not leaving Natasha right now.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Dear Nora:

  Night after night, the guy in the apartment next door wakes me snoring! I’m sure the whole floor hears it, but we’re all too nice to say anything. What can I do?

  Sleepless in Ironweed

  Dear Sleepless:

  Either get a little rude or move.

  Nora

  “Noel, Lance, use a little common sense . . .”

  “We are using common sense,” I snapped. “We’re getting Natasha’s grandparents to safety, and then we’re getting Natasha to her therapist. Then we’ll all go someplace fun together. Stan likes to give us things? Tell him to make it somewhere tropical.”

  “And I want to know where the hell this records room came from that it seems like even Art didn’t know about,” Lance said. “He never told us. I’m calling Rick. Maybe he can show us instead of Natasha.”

  Trudy gave up.

  I explained our plans to Natasha. “I better call Granddad,” she said. “If he doesn’t know who’s coming, he’s likely to be uncooperative right now. And I’m going to show them the room. I want that behind me.”

  On the way to Natasha’s therapist, I asked what Lance had learned from Rick. “Some,” he said. “The first contractor the university hired to build the center was one Merle Evans.”

  “I had no idea Merle used to be a builder.”

  “We had no idea he worked at the Marine, either. He kept to himself all the time. Anyway, he’s related to a certain Winfred Prescott. In addition to going bankrupt and backing out of a couple of different university building programs, he chose a floodplain for the center’s original site, and the whole place had to be moved after it was half completed. The original site was abandon
ed. Rick thought any actual structures had been demolished or filled in, but I guess one got missed.”

  “You think this old records room was part of the original site?”

  “I think maybe Merle saved it for himself and joined up with Gary when Gary moved his operations out here.”

  “It would explain why Dr. Prescott thought his head was next on the chopping block,” I mused. “If he thought the people who killed Hugh Marsland were looking for the old site and he might know where it was because his relative built it, then he would have been pretty scared. But why would he have known they wanted to know that?”

  “What if they’d already asked him? What if he’d already been threatened? What if Hugh’s head wasn’t supposed to intimidate you, but him.”

  “Or both of us.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He probably blames the university for the problems with Merle’s company. But Rick says our Merle has a rather well-known drinking problem. His company went bankrupt because he couldn’t keep customers.”

  We had reached the therapist’s office. I hoped Natasha didn’t take long. I wanted my babies back. I wanted them safe. I would feel better when I could touch them.

  Apparently, they felt the same. I had told Mama where we were heading, and she arrived unannounced. “Here,” she said. “I’m exhausted, and I have no idea which one of these things is the ‘afternoon’ meds.” The pills were all laid out in a seven-day minder, clearly marked, so I didn’t know what she meant.

  I quickly found out. The kids were arguing with her about which ones they were supposed to take. We had recently changed a blue pill out for a green one, and both of them were convinced they should still be taking the old medicine. They didn’t want to take the new one. “It makes me tired,” Sara complained.

  “That should wear off in a week or two,” I coaxed.

  “Look, if you take the meds, I’ll get you ice cream,” Mama promised, reviving now that she knew what was going on.

  I groaned. We tried not to buy the twins’ cooperation. But it was a better solution than fighting with them in the middle of the therapist’s waiting room. And it meant Mama was trusting us about the need for the meds, a victory of its own.