Not Guilty

by Patricia MacDonald

  Lucas shook his head and looked away, as if trying to stifle his grief.

  Keely hated to see his distress. She changed the subject. “You know, Lucas, there was a detective here today, asking about the night Mark died.”

  “Who was he?”

  “His name was Stratton.”

  “Phil Stratton,” Lucas nodded grimly. “From the prosecutor’s office.”

  “He was asking all these questions about Mark and Dylan and even about Richard, my first husband. He said there was some problem with the police report. Do you know anything about it?”

  Lucas frowned. “No, but I have an idea.”

  Suddenly, there was a loud thud, as if a flying object had slammed into the house. Lucas struggled to his feet.

  Keely started, and then laughed, recognizing the sound. “It’s okay. Dylan’s home. He’s tossing the basketball.” Mark had affixed a hoop over the garage door for his stepson.

  Lucas let out a sigh. “Been a long time since I heard that sound,” he said apologetically.

  “Did Prentice like to shoot baskets when he was a boy?” Keely asked.

  Lucas nodded. “But I think Mark actually used the hoop more than Prentice ever did.”

  Keely nodded. “You know, Mark talked about those days at your house when he was putting the hoop up there for Dylan. Those were happy times for him,” Keely said gently.

  The expression on Lucas’s face made Keely’s heart ache for him. Lucas sighed. “I took it down a few years ago—the basketball hoop. Betsy always hated that thing anyway. Used to rattle all the dishes in the china cabinets.” He smiled with forced cheerfulness. “Well, I’d better be getting along.”

  Keely got up and walked him outside. She wanted to see Dylan anyway. “Thank you for bringing those papers. I will come into the office soon.”

  “And we’ll get you over to dinner,” said Lucas, kissing her cheek. “Don’t forget. You can call on us for anything. Mark’s death doesn’t change that. You’re still our family.” He waved to Dylan, who was dribbling the ball down the driveway, his leather coat flapping open in the evening breeze. “So long, Dylan,” he called out.

  Dylan stopped, and tucked the ball under his arm. “G’night, Mr. Weaver,” he called back.

  Keely wrapped her arms around herself and walked over beside her son. “Chilly,” she said. Dylan grunted in assent. They watched Lucas walkstiffly out to his car and climb, with difficulty, into the front seat. He looked old and tired. Keely and Dylan both waved as he pulled the car down the drive. Then Keely turned to Dylan. “How was dinner at Jake’s?” she asked.

  Dylan shrugged and began to bounce the ball away from her. “Okay,” he said.

  “Did you two play that computer game you like so much?”

  “For a while,” he said. He walked over to the free-throw line that Mark had painted on the driveway and took aim. The ball struck the edge of the hoop and bounced back. He ran to retrieve it. He jogged back to the line and took aim again. His face was a blank. All his concentration appeared to be on the ball and the hoop.

  “Dylan,” Keely said. “I want to talk to you about something. About what you said, this afternoon before you left.”

  Dylan tried a shot which hit the backboard and came right back to him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  Keely shivered and wished she’d put on her jacket before she came out. “You said I blamed you about Mark.”

  Dylan focused on the hoop, and tossed the ball again. Again, he missed. “Damn,” he said.

  “It’s getting dark,” she said. “Hard to see the basket.”

  “That’s just an excuse,” he said.

  Keely nodded. For a minute there was silence while he shot again, and the ball hung above the rim before it sank into the basket. “Anyway,” she said, “I wanted to make this clear: I don’t blame you, honey. I never could. These things happen in life. There’s nothing we can do to change them. It’s a waste of time to even think about it. It’s important to get past this stuff. Not to dwell on it.”

  “That’s what you wanted to tell me?” he said coldly.

  “I just want you to know that there’s no way I hold you responsible, honey. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand,” said Dylan, hurling the ball into the darkness, beside the garage. “I’m sick of this game.” Without another word, he stalked past her, heading into the house.

  “Dylan, what is it? Talk to me. I want things to be right between us. What did I do now? I can’t seem to do anything right.”

  Dylan stopped on the path to the front door. Silhouetted by the light from the house, his profile reminded her so much of Richard. Dylan had inherited his father’s lanky frame and his even features. Also, she thought, he had Richard’s tendency to keep his innermost thoughts hidden, where they could nag at him and plague him. Keely could see that Dylan was trying to form the words to say what was on his mind. Instead, he said, “The phone’s ringing.”

  “Let it ring,” she said.

  “It’ll wake up Abby,” he reminded her.

  Keely sighed and then ran toward the house, knowing what he said was true. When she reached it, it was only the Realtor, making an appointment for the next day. She dispatched the call as quickly as possible, then went back to look for Dylan. She’d heard the door slam while she was on the phone so she knew he was in the house. But when she called for him downstairs there was no answer. She climbed the stairs and went down the hallway to his room. His jacket lay over the back of his desk chair. His clothes were on the floor. The door to his bathroom was closed, and she could hear the shower running.Drowning me out,she thought. With a sigh, she bundled up his dirty clothes and headed down the hall to the stairs.

  7

  Are you sure this is all right?” asked Nan Ranstead breathlessly. Keely forced herself to smile. Nan was a Realtor at the agency where Keely had listed the house. Nan had phoned half an hour ago to say that she had clients in her office eager to look at the house. Keely understood that she was expected to leave when clients were viewing the property, but Abby had fallen asleep only moments earlier and Keely didn’t intend to wake her. “Perfectly all right,” she said.

  “We’ll tiptoe around,” Nan promised. She gestured with one French-manicured fingernail to the sleek-looking young couple in the driveway. The pair began to walk toward the doorstep where Nan waited.

  They probably think I’m the cleaning woman,Keely thought, aware of her sweatshirt stained with baby food and her old jeans. Glancing in the hallway mirror, Keely saw that her shoulder-length, silvery-blond hair looked drab instead of shiny, and the planes of her face seemed gray and shadowy without makeup. She didn’t seem to have the heart to fix herself up. It was all she could do just to get out of bed in the morning and make it through the day.

  “Abby’s asleep in the nursery,” she said to Nan. “I’ll wait in there. You can just push the door open when they want to look.”

  “We won’t be long,” Nan promised.

  “Take your time,” said Keely.

  She walked down the hallway to the nursery, opened the door, and went in. Keely leaned over the rail of the crib. Abby was fast asleep. Her little body was shaped like a pear because of the bulky diapers beneath her pale green corduroy overalls. Keely touched her forefinger to herlips and then brushed it against the baby’s warm face. Reluctantly, she pushed herself away from the bars and sat down in a white rocking chair by the window that looked out on the side yard. She could see the front yard of the Connellys’ house through the trees that separated the two houses. Evelyn Connelly was guiding her elderly father down the walk to the car. It was hard to imagine that he had once been a respected physician. He was childlike now, and Evelyn seemed to be completely alone in caring for him. Keely could hear her speaking sharply to her father as she bundled him into the front seat.

  Evelyn had been distressed to see theFOR SALEsign go up on Keely’s lawn and had come over to say so. “You won’t fin
d a more beautiful street, or a nicer house,” she had warned Keely. “It’s perfect for children. I know. I grew up here.”

  Keely had murmured agreement but secretly wondered if that nostalgia for her childhood was what kept Evelyn going. Surely her present life in that house was mostly sad and lonely. A beautiful house was no substitute for close relationships.

  Keely was thinking about taking the kids back to Michigan once the house was sold. Her brothers and their families still lived out there. Her brothers were much older than she, but still, it was a family bond that she could count on. Maybe she could go back to her old school to teach. And Dylan could pick up where he left off with his old friends. They needed to go somewhere where they would feel as if they belonged. No one would miss them here.

  Well, almost no one. Lucas and Betsy would be sorry to see them go. But despite Lucas’s assertion that they were family, without Mark the relationship seemed tenuous. Mark always said that adopting him had been Lucas’s idea and that Betsy had agreed to it out of kindness. From what she had seen of Betsy, Keely thought Mark’s assessment was probably right. The Weavers would be sorry, but not sad, to see them move away.

  The thought of Ingrid, Richard’s mother, on the other hand, made Keely feel positively guilty. Ingrid could have been a Midwesterner. She baked pies, sewed her own clothes, and doted on her grandson. Sometimes Keely thought that Ingrid had been so good about acceptingher marriage to Mark because it meant that Dylan would be living near her. Ingrid was also fond of Abby and never missed a chance to take care of her. Since Mark’s death, Ingrid had been a stalwart friend, doing her best to help out. Ingrid would be devastated if they left, Keely thought.We’ll buy a house with a guest room,she told herself.We’ll invite her for long visits.

  The sound of the doorbell ringing interrupted Keely’s thoughts. Keely frowned, glancing in the direction of the sleeping baby, hoping the chimes wouldn’t wake her. She hurried down the hallway and opened the front door.

  Detective Stratton stood there. A squad of men carrying equipment waited on the walkway behind him. “Hello, Mrs. Weaver,” he said politely.

  “What do you want?” Keely asked.

  The Realtor and the well-dressed young couple who were viewing the house appeared in the doorway to the living room and stared at Keely curiously.

  “This is the Crime Scene Investigation Unit,” Phil Stratton explained. “We need access to your pool area to collect some evidence in regard to your husband’s drowning.”

  “Drowning!” the young woman behind Keely exclaimed with a gasp.

  “I have people here looking at my house,” said Keely angrily.

  “They can continue looking,” Phil said. “They won’t be in our way.”

  Keely could hear low voices murmuring behind her. “No, I couldn’t,” she heard the young woman insist.

  “May we go around back?” Phil asked.

  “Do as you like,” said Keely, slamming the door. She turned to apologize to the Realtor and the prospective buyers, but the young couple averted their eyes from her gaze.

  Nan Ranstead walked up to Keely. “I’m afraid we’re through here. They’ve lost interest. Could you just tell me the next time if you’re expecting the police?”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting them.”

  Nan ushered the couple out, and Keely watched as they hurrieddown the driveway toward Nan’s red Ford Taurus. Shaking her head, Keely walked back to the French doors and let herself out onto the patio. She crossed the patio and saw one man shooting photographs of the pool’s gate and another officer wielding a tape measure and writing down numbers on a pad. Phil Stratton was conferring with a man with a clipboard in a blue windbreaker.

  “Detective Stratton,” said Keely.

  Phil Stratton turned and looked at her.

  “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “We’ve been measuring—” he said.

  “I can see that. But what are you measuring? Why?”

  “Well, one thing we measured was the distance from the house to the pool.” He tapped a gold pen against his upper lip. “Now how old is that baby of yours?”

  “She’s a year old. Detective, I hope you know that you just torpedoed the sale of my house. I had prospective buyers here looking at the property. But once you announced my husband’s drowning, they couldn’t get away fast enough.”

  “Can’t be helped,” he said shortly. “About the baby—how long do you think it would take her to walk from inside the house out to the pool?”

  “I don’t know,” she cried. “How would I know? I don’t time her.”

  “But she’s not fast. I mean, she’s not marching along at a clip.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as odd?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Well, toddlers are always on the move. I don’t have any children myself, but my sisters are always complaining about having to watch their kids every minute. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that your husband would leave her alone, out of his sight, long enough for her to make her way out to the pool? Never notice she wasn’t in the house?”

  For a minute, Keely felt confused. She thought of her last sight of Mark alive—holding Abby in his arms. He knew that Abby had to be closely watched. But maybe someone had called and he got distracted. Thought Abby was safely beside him, but she wasn’t. “I don’t know,” sheadmitted. “Maybe they were already outside and he took his eyes off her for some reason. A phone call. I don’t know.”

  “Yeah. I guess that’s possible,” Stratton said. He squinted out at the tarp-covered pool. Rainwater had collected in the center, forming a brackish puddle with dried leaves floating on it. “But if he was outside with her, wouldn’t he have noticed that the gate to the pool was ajar? Don’t you think so?”

  Keely looked from the pool back to the house. Her heart felt strange in her chest, as if it were skipping a beat every so often. “I guess something distracted him,” she admitted. And in her mind’s eye she imagined him, deep in conversation on the phone, thinking the baby was there beside him. Assuming there was no danger. Maybe he was talking to a client. Trying to make a better deal. Losing track of the baby as he presented his arguments. And then a scream, a splash. Tears sprang to her eyes as she pictured him leaping up, knowing in that moment that disaster was on him. Rushing over to see her, his adored child, flailing helplessly in the deep end and having, in that instant, to make an unthinkable choice—choosing.

  “Why are you making me live through this again?” she pleaded.

  “What could possibly have distracted him that much?” he persisted.

  “I don’t know,” Keely cried. “A client . . . an emergency . . .”

  “We thought of that. There is no indication that he was on the phone at the time of the accident. I questioned Sergeant Henderson about this. He said that they didn’t find the phone outside when they got here. It was inside. On the hook.”

  Keely regarded him balefully. “Maybe he went inside to answer it.”

  “And left a toddler alone out here with the gate to the pool open?” Phil Stratton asked, incredulous.

  “No. I don’t know,” said Keely miserably.

  “No, I’m thinking maybe he was inside the house when it happened. Your records show he’d logged on to the Internet at seven o’clock. He was in the house, and the baby wandered away. And he had no idea that the pool gate was open.”

  Keely felt as if her head was spinning. “He was careless, all right? And he paid with his life for that carelessness. What difference does itmake? You know what happened.” Tears ran down her face, and she wiped them impatiently.

  Detective Stratton ignored her tears. “That’s just it. We don’t know what happened. And frankly, I’m surprised that you’re not more curious.”

  Keely was stung by his rebuke. “Look, I don’t care how it happened. The result is the same. The pool gate was left open. It should have been locked, but it wasn’t. Ma
rk lost track of the baby. He should have been watching her, but he didn’t. My life was going to be happy, and now it isn’t. That’s all I need to know.”

  “I’m afraid we need to know a little more than that. Mrs. Weaver, I want you to bring your son, Dylan, down to the prosecutor’s office this afternoon.”

  “The prosecutor’s office,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Whatever for?”

  “We want to talk to Dylan some more. It’s in the Profit County courthouse. Do you know where that is?”

  The detective’s words stunned her like a blow. “Yes, but . . . talk to Dylan? Why? What is this all about? Why is that necessary?”

  “What time does he get home from school?”

  “Three o’clock. But I don’t see—”

  “Let’s make it three-thirty, then.”

  “Wait a minute, detective. Let me save you . . . everyone . . . the trouble. Do you want to know how the pool gate got open? Well, I’ll tell you. Dylan—my son, Dylan—left it open. He was mad at me about the bike, and he came home to get his skateboard, which he had carelessly left by the pool. All right? He made a mistake and he left the gate open, and the worst thing that could have happened did happen.”

  “So you believe itwasDylan who left the gate open,” he said, pouncing on her admission.

  “Well, it makes sense. Of course, he’s terrified to admit it. He’s probably afraid I won’t love him anymore. But I don’t intend to make him suffer his whole life for a moment of carelessness. We all do things we regret. Things we would take back if we could. His mistake led to tragedy. I know it, he knows it, and now you know it. If you want to saythat subconsciously he might have . . . I don’t know. It’s true that he had mixed feelings about the baby. It’s true he resented my remarriage. But any kid would. That doesn’t mean he did it on purpose. Never intentionally. Never. He is a good boy.”

  Detective Stratton looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re so sure,” he said.

  “Of course I’m sure!” she cried. “I know my own son.”

  Detective Stratton called out to the CSI team that it was time to wrap it up. Then he looked at her impassively. “In that case, you have nothing to worry about. Until three-thirty, then? You might want to have your attorney present. We’ll try not to keep you for too long.”