“I was already away at college—freshman year—when they got married, so I won’t hold it against your family that you filched my favorite neighbor.”
“I can’t believe my dad’s gone now. Your parents . . . they’re both gone, right?”
“Yes.”
“We’re a couple of orphans.” Empathy filled Gideon’s voice, but he broke eye contact, and Natalie suspected his discomfort wasn’t due to lack of knowing what to say about their mutual bereavement.
Rather than keep wondering what he knew about her, she decided to be blunt. “What has Felicia told you about my family?”
“Not details.” He lifted a slice of olive on a spoon, then let it slide back into the bowl. “I know you didn’t have an easy time. That your mother was . . . difficult . . . and you were estranged when she died.”
“She was mentally ill,” Natalie said. “Never officially diagnosed because she’d never talk to anyone about it, but she had bipolar disorder. She was in her mid-thirties when it manifested; she was fine when I was young. After she started struggling . . . sometimes she was fine; other times she made our lives miserable. My father did his best but finally couldn’t take it anymore. He left when I was a teenager and died of a brain aneurysm a few years later.”
“Wow, I’m sorry,” Gideon said.
“When I was in high school, I researched my mother’s symptoms, talked to people, tried to persuade her to get help, but she was adamant that she wasn’t ‘sick’ and didn’t need treatment.”
“Is that how you got interested in psychology? Trying to help her?”
“Yes, that’s how it started. But she . . . didn’t like what I was doing. When I chose to study psychology in college, our relationship got worse. She took my choice of majors personally, saying I was targeting her. And when I decided to go on for graduate work, that was the end. I was an arrogant know-it-all trying to convince her and everyone around her that she was crazy.”
“Gaslighting her so you could control her?”
“Yes, that’s what she thought. And at this point, I wasn’t hounding her to get help. I just wouldn’t put up with destructive behavior from her, and I’d call her on it. That was enough to get her to cut me off. For the last three years before she died, she wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Was she the same way with Andrea?”
“Andrea chose a different way to handle her. I tried to get her as an ally in urging Mom to get help or at least in standing up to her, but she preferred to play along. Enable her. She put up with an entire landfill’s worth of garbage, but it did pay off. My mother disinherited me and left everything to Andrea.”
“You’re kidding. Felicia never told me that.”
Natalie was grateful to learn Felicia had kept this fact confidential. “I thought she’d softened toward me near the end of her life, but . . . apparently, I’d hoped for too much.”
“Did she finally talk to you?”
“No. But out of the blue, she sent me a birthday present. Soap carvings.”
“Soap carvings?”
“Soap she’d carved in the shapes of flowers. It sounds like a strange gift, but it . . .” Embarrassment kindled. She was taking this too deep, offering unneeded details—painful details. More than Gideon would want to know.
“It doesn’t sound strange,” Gideon said. “It sounds like a meaningful gift.”
The compassion and interest in his gray-blue eyes coaxed out more of the story. “Soap carving was a hobby of hers,” Natalie said. “When I was a child, I was in awe of what she could create from a bar of soap—I’m still in awe. I loved watching her work.”
“Definitely a meaningful gift, then. Something she knew you’d appreciate.”
“Yes.” A surprise gift, beautiful and personal. At the time, she’d been certain it was a sign that her mother wanted to reconcile. What else could it mean?
Natalie still didn’t know.
“I have a stupid question,” Gideon said. “Do you use soap carvings? Wash your hands with them or use them in the shower? Detailed carving seems like a ton of work for something that’s going to dissolve.”
“That’s not a stupid question, and no, we didn’t use the carvings. They were artwork. The ones she sent me are in a basket in my downstairs bathroom. Take a look at them when you go inside. You’ll be amazed by how intricate they are.”
“I’m intrigued. I’ve never seen a soap carving more elaborate than the fish I used to carve from Ivory Soap with a pocketknife. And I’ll put my hands behind my back while I look so I don’t accidentally use them.”
“Don’t worry. I keep them on a wall shelf away from the sink and tub so nobody gets confused.”
“After she sent the gift, things still weren’t better between you?”
“No. She still wouldn’t answer my calls or open the door if I came to visit. And to be clear, I’m not blaming Andrea. Andrea didn’t turn her against me. At most, she finessed the hostility my mother already harbored.”
“Didn’t want to heal the family rift, huh?”
“No. Andrea was more a fan of small lies or spin doctoring to make me look worse. She’s never minded cheating in competition, and she saw our relationship as competitive. She enjoys being the winner, the favorite, beating her older sister. It wasn’t just about the inheritance, though my mother had quite a bit of money.”
“I don’t suppose Andrea offered to split it with you after your mother died.”
“Goodness, no. She’s generous, but she’s generous one piece at a time. Giving me expensive clothes, as you saw. Offering to send me on pricey vacations or give me a spa membership or even buy me a new car, always making it clear that she knows I could never afford these things on my own.”
“Strutting the fact that she was the loved one and you were the outcast,” Gideon said.
“Yes. As you saw, I’m not always good at resisting her.”
“In a smackdown between pride and practicality, I root for practicality,” Gideon said. “Free clothes? Bring ’em on. If she’s ever wanting to ditch some expensive men’s shirts, tell her to call me.”
Natalie smiled. “Practicality does win sometimes.” Tasteful, high-quality hand-me-downs from Andrea meant she could both dress well at work and put money she would have spent on clothing toward paying off student loans. “But I’m not letting her send me on a cruise to Alaska.”
“She can send me if she’s short on ways to flaunt her wealth.”
“Go for it,” Natalie said. “And for the next decade, you’ll be hearing about how much she spent on you. I apologize for this whole tangent. I sound bitter, talking about my sister this way. It’s not her fault I didn’t succeed in reconciling with my mother, and this is ten times as much as you ever wanted to know about my family. You came over here to talk about Felicia. I want to do anything I can to help her.”
“Yeah, me too.” He drummed his fingertips on the table. “I’m sick of being useless when my family is suffering.”
“Did she tell you we went to the Chapman party last night?”
Gideon gawked at her. “The Chapman party?”
Considering how stunned he looked, this must be the first social event Felicia had attended since Wade’s death. “The party Robert Chapman throws every year for his local employees and for businesses that rent from him. Felicia always used to go with your father. I was glad she wanted to come, but I don’t think it went well for her. She left early without—” Her phone rang. She glanced toward where she’d left it on the table.
“You should answer it.” Gideon picked it up and held it out to her. “Turnabout is fair play.”
“You haven’t taken a call. Just conducted important research.”
“Ha! ‘Important.’”
Unenthusiastically, Natalie took the phone. At the sight of the number, a flick of adrenaline hit; she’d called this number last night. Jonas Egan. Had Lacey returned?
“Excuse me for a moment,” she said. “I apologize for the atrocious ma
nners, but this is work-related. I’d better answer it.”
“No problem. I’ll keep an eye on the oven.”
Natalie answered the phone as she hurried into the house. “This is Natalie Marsh.”
“It’s . . . Jonas Egan. Lacey—” The turbulence in his voice shook Natalie. He didn’t sound angry; he sounded terrified.
“Have you heard from her?” Natalie kept her tone calm.
“No. But she’s in big trouble.”
“Why is that?”
“She, uh . . . this woman Lacey knows, somebody she admires . . . When Lacey didn’t come home last night, I wondered if she’d gone to see her, so today I went over there. I found a . . . There was a . . . hole cut in the glass. The glass by the door . . .” His voice creaked and stopped.
Natalie waited for him to rally.
His breathing got louder. “Like from a burglar, you know?”
“Yes.”
“You have to keep secrets, right? You said it’s the law. You can’t blab things people tell you.”
Natalie sat at her kitchen table. “In a therapist-client relationship, I’m bound to protect confidentiality, but be aware that you are not my client, so that doesn’t—”
“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about Lacey, and she is your client.”
“Whether or not—”
“I thought even if she was gone, Lacey might be there. She had to stay somewhere, and she hadn’t used her credit card or withdrawn any cash.”
“Has she stayed there before?”
“No, but I thought she might . . . run there, feel better staying there. The door was unlocked, from whoever broke in, so I went inside.”
He’d marched into an apparent crime scene? Natalie waited for him to continue, but all she heard was panting and sotto voce cursing.
“Did you find Lacey?” she asked.
“No. But the woman . . . I found her.” His voice thinned. Tore. “She was dead. Murdered.”
Horror seized Natalie; she struggled to shake it loose. “You called the police?”
“No, are you crazy? What if Lacey was there? What if the police think she . . . was involved?”
“Why would they think that?”
“If she was there!” Jonas snapped. “If she’d been there.”
This conclusion bewildered Natalie. Lacey had never stayed with this woman before, and Jonas hadn’t found her there now, but he was so worried she had been there that he didn’t want to report a murder? “Don’t jump to conclusions. You need to call the police immediately.”
“She . . . Lacey . . . Something’s screwed up in her brain. She grew up in hell; her dad beat her, beat her mother; her mother never protected her. She needs help. I need to find her now.”
“I understand how worried you are for Lacey, but you can’t delay reporting a murder.”
“I can’t talk to the cops. Let someone else find the . . . woman, the body. I’ll take Lacey away somewhere and get her help.”
“Be rational,” Natalie said. “You don’t know Lacey was involved in any way, but you know a woman is dead. You need to call the police.”
Jonas cursed. “I need to find Lacey. I’ve got to talk to her before I talk to the cops. You’re a professional. You help me find her.”
“I’m a psychologist, not a detective or a private investigator. If you don’t report this woman’s death and the police learn you were there, how will that look?”
“You can’t tell them I was there! Lacey’s your client. You’ll get fired!”
“You told me about the murder. Please stop making assumptions about Lacey’s behavior and what the police will think.”
“You’re going to call?”
“Is that how you want to handle this?” She’d prefer to avoid the ethical minefield of reporting the murder herself while trying to protect her professional obligation to Lacey, but she didn’t want Jonas to know she was anything but eager to dial 911.
Jonas said nothing. Natalie waited, pressing her thumb against one of the lumps of pizza dough shielded by a kitchen towel.
“I’ll call,” he said.
“Good.” Natalie had guessed he’d take that option. He’d rather control the way the police heard the story than wonder what Natalie would tell them. “Do it now.”
“You’d better not say anything to anyone about Lacey.”
“I won’t.”
“If the papers publish anything about her, I’ll sue them out of existence. I know they’ll be grubbing for slime and gossip, wanting a big story. The woman was one of Chapman Development’s rising stars.”
“What’s her name?”
“Camille Moretti.”
The name struck Natalie like a wave of water so cold it should have hardened into ice. She grabbed the towel covering the pizza dough as though it could prevent shock from knocking her off her chair. “Camille Moretti?”
“Yeah. I’ll call the cops.” Jonas hung up before Natalie could push more questions past her numb lips.
Chapter 12
Cold. Glacially cold. Dark. Insensible. Icebound on a kitchen chair, a towel in one hand, her phone in the other.
Camille.
Camille was dead?
Murdered?
Natalie forced her fingers open and let both the phone and the towel fall to the table. After a few seconds of staring at her phone, she picked it up again. Jonas might call back.
She inhaled until she couldn’t take in more air, then exhaled hard. Lacey had known Camille well enough to flee to her after a fight with Jonas? Had Camille been playing mother hen, protecting Lacey under her wing? Why hadn’t Camille ever mentioned Lacey except in connection with her new purse?
Natalie dragged herself to her feet, her limbs limp and damaged, floppy stems that had frozen and thawed. She shuffled toward the french door that led from the kitchen to the patio. Through the windows, she saw Gideon peering into the oven, the ash stick in his hand.
She opened the door and stepped into the gentle sunshine. Camille would have adored today, warm, cloudless, leaves vibrant with color.
“We’re ready to roll,” Gideon said. “I’m pushing the embers off—” He set the tool back in the basket and hurried toward her. “What’s wrong? Wait, I’m not supposed to ask that. May I ask if you’re okay? You don’t look okay.”
She should wave off his concern and say something pragmatic about how once he’d pushed the large coals to the back of the oven, he could use the brush to clear the floor for the pizzas. She didn’t want to talk about Camille. Gideon had come today because he was worried about his own family. He was grieving his father; he was anxious about his stepmother. He wanted Natalie’s insight, not her pain.
Gideon started to reach toward her, then rerouted his hand toward the canister of semolina. He lifted the spoon and poked it back into the coarse flour. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“I . . . got some . . . bad news.” Her thoughts sloshed in her head. She couldn’t figure out what to say, what she could say. “A friend. I don’t know details yet. Apparently, she’s dead.” The words sounded strange. Apparently Camille was dead?
“I’m so sorry,” Gideon said.
Part of Natalie appreciated the concern in his eyes while part of her obsessed about her own choice of words. Apparently? Did she think Jonas was lying? Or wrong?
Could he be wrong? Maybe Camille had only fainted. She’d fainted once in high school, under stage lights during a choir concert. Maybe she’d fainted today, exhausted from last night’s party and upset when she’d discovered the broken window. Breathless, furious, racing around the house to see what was missing. Maybe she’d lost something important, like jewelry from Dante. Maybe Jonas had found her on the floor and assumed she was dead—even assumed murder. He was clearly prone to jumping to conclusions, and he’d been so panicked about Lacey that he wouldn’t have lingered to check for a pulse or breathing.
Hope blinked in the darkness. “I need to go.” Were the police at C
amille’s yet? They could check to see if . . . If Natalie talked to them, she could confirm—disprove . . . Jonas could have made a mistake . . .
“Where do you need to go?” Gideon asked.
She rubbed her floury palms against her apron. How had she gotten so much flour on her hands? She’d washed them after shaping the dough. “To her house.”
“Let me drive you.” He didn’t ask why.
“You don’t need to do that. You have enough to cope with—”
“Natalie, you just got devastating news. I’ll drive you.” Gideon picked up a napkin. “You have flour on your face. May I?”
Natalie stared blankly at him, not sure if she was supposed to take the napkin or if he was offering to clean her face for her.
He picked up the water pitcher she’d set out earlier, poured a splash on the napkin, and gently wiped the flour off her cheek. Natalie untied her apron and dropped it on a chair.
Gideon shed his apron and grabbed his phone and keys off the patio table. “Would you like me to lock your house or put any of the food away?”
Natalie shook her head and hurried toward the side gate that led to the front of the house. The food could rot, and thieves were welcome to whatever they could find. She had to get to Camille.
Gideon unlocked his car and opened the passenger door for her. Natalie slid inside, and Gideon rushed to climb into the driver’s seat. Hurrying for her, worrying about her. She was burdening him. She should have sent him home.
“Where can I take you?” he asked.
“Haslett Street.” He was new to Ohneka; he wouldn’t know where it was. “It’s past downtown, the . . . No, it’s not past downtown, it’s before—”
“I can find it.” Gideon tapped the screen of his phone. “Got it.” He snapped his phone into a holder on the dashboard. “We’ll be there in eight minutes.”
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