by Gayle Roper
“I know. I was just going to when you came out.”
He glanced around. “I wonder how he died. I don’t see any blood. But he’s lying here too neatly to have just keeled over.”
He did look neat, now that Drew mentioned it. Legs straight. Arms bent. Hands together. All that was missing was a white lily in his grasp for him to be laid out for viewing. The only mark on his person, and granted I couldn’t see much of him, was a bright red welt on the back side of his neck. Either he’d met a giant mosquito, or something I couldn’t imagine had bitten him.
I shuddered and remembered every bad thing I’d heard about the city and random violence. I took a step closer to Drew.
He pulled a cell phone from its clip on his waistband and hit 911. He reported the death—murder?—and very quickly a black-and-white pulled up to the stanchions at the lane’s end. A pair of uniformed cops walked over and studied the body for a minute as if they doubted Drew’s word. One pointed to the mark on the man’s neck. The other bent to examine the area in question, then called for homicide.
Since Dad and Pop’s fall from grace—cops gone bad—I had an uneasy feeling around the police. Once, Pop had been the chief in our small town and Dad had been his lieutenant. We were a family of some standing in our little world. Then came the day the state troopers took Dad and Pop away amid flashes of cameras from print news and not-a-hair-out-of-place reporters from TV.
They were guilty of suppressing evidence, demanding protection money, and selling confiscated drugs and guns, among other things. Their flagrant disregard for the law they had sworn to uphold was inescapable, though Mom and Nan acted as if they had been set up. I was never sure whether their declared faith in their men’s innocence was for Tori and me to help us cope or whether it was a case of if you say it enough, it becomes true. Or maybe they actually believed Dad’s and Pop’s protestations of innocence.
I didn’t, and neither did Tori. The evidence was too overwhelming. I handled the whole tragic mess by turning to Eddie Mancini for comfort. Tori chose to brazen it out, telling everyone who would listen that she believed in our father’s and grandfather’s guilt.
“I’m glad they were caught, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”
Even though it was fourteen years ago, I still expected officers I dealt with today to say with an expression of disgust, “So you’re Jack Keating’s daughter, Mike Keating’s granddaughter. Huh. They sure disgraced the uniform.” And unspoken would be the sentiment, “Don’t expect any help from us.”
When the homicide detectives arrived, there was, of course, no recognition when I gave my name. Jack and Mike were old news. The detectives behaved very professionally as they surveyed the scene and questioned Drew and me.
Tinksie came outside to see what the commotion was all about and was appalled and fascinated by turns. She had James bring me a folding beach chair to sit on, since I wasn’t allowed to go inside because it meant stepping over the dead man. The police were unhappy enough that I’d tripped over him and thus disturbed their crime scene.
Tinksie also brought both Drew and me cups of coffee. Mark and Tim, the men who lived next door to Tinksie, brought us some fresh-baked coffeecake.
“What a terrible way to be welcomed to Philadelphia.” Tim looked as distressed as if it were his doing.
I indicated the delicious coffeecake. “This is a very gracious way to be welcomed to the lane.”
He relaxed and smiled.
Doors continued to open up and down the lane, and the residents all came to see what was happening, many obviously detouring for a look on their way to work. I met three professional couples, a bachelor, a set of elderly sisters, and a glitzy, well-endowed woman of a certain age named Maxi who, Tinksie whispered, used to be “on the stage.” Somehow I didn’t think she meant legitimate theater.
A cab pulled up to the far end of the lane as the neighbors all faded away except for Tinksie, James, and Maxi. And Drew, who hadn’t yet been released by the police either. Tori climbed out of the cab and sashayed down the lane as if she’d just been out for a stroll instead of finally returning from a night on the town.
“What is going on, Libby?” she called before she got close enough to see. “Did you have such a wild party that the cops had to break it up?” She laughed merrily at such an outlandish idea.
Then she saw past the flashing lights and the crime-scene tape to the dead man. She went ashen.
And I knew exactly when the body’d been delivered to our door. Four thirty this morning. It wasn’t Tori’s returning that I’d heard. It was the man being dumped. He’d been left to die—or already dead—on our stoop with a note for Tori lying on his chest while I’d gone calmly to take a shower in the clawfoot tub.
As I stood to go tell the homicide cop, a Patrick Dempsey look-alike named Holloran, about my time deductions, our front door popped open and Chloe stuck her head out. Princess was in her arms, squirming to get free.
“What’s going on, Mom? Why are the cops here?” Then she saw the man lying at her feet and screamed. Few can scream as well as thirteen-year-old girls.
Princess gave a frightened squeak, jumped to the floor, and headed for the kitchen and safety.
I raced for Chloe, but Holloran stepped in my way. “Use the back door.”
I stared at him blankly. How did I get to it from here? The houses were attached.
“Right down that little walkway between your house and Maxi’s.” James who knew everything pointed.
I hadn’t even seen the opening, it was so narrow.
“Meet me at the back door and let me in,” I told Chloe, who was now torn between sobbing and staring in fascination. “Chloe! Did you hear me?”
She gave a vague wave of her hand. I took off down the narrow walkway, my shoulders almost brushing the walls of the two houses, Tori on my heels. There was a gate in the privacy fence that decanted us into our yard next to the patio. Chloe opened the french doors, and Princess raced out, her bark sharp and shrill. She jumped against my shins, and I picked her up, absently patting her. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew something was wrong.
Chloe raced to me, and I grabbed her in a great hug, squashing Princess. The dog squirmed until she broke free, then gave us a good piece of her mind. Chloe clung for just long enough that I knew she was truly upset.
“My heart’s pounding, Mom! I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“You’ll be okay, honey. You’ll be okay.” I stroked her night-tousled hair.
“His eyes were all open and staring! At me! I mean, how scary is that!”
I patted her back and made soothing mother sounds. Tori picked up Princess and calmed her, her face almost as white as the dog’s.
When Chloe pulled away, she swiped at the tears that ran down her cheeks. “Who is he—was he, Mom?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea.”
“How did he get here, at our house?” She took Princess from Tori and cuddled the animal in her arms, a reassuring presence that comforted her without making her seem like a clingy kid.
“I mean, who killed him? Was he shot? Knifed? But there wasn’t any blood. Maybe he OD’d? Are we in trouble? Did Aunt Stella know bad guys or something?” As she talked nonstop, we went inside where Tori and I collapsed at the kitchen table.
“Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know,” I mumbled. I felt both numb and jumpy, something I would have said was impossible a mere day prior. My limbs were leaden, but my nerves were twitching under my skin, and I imagined tiny fight-or-flight guys inside me, poking at me with little pointy sticks.
Before I started trembling, I pushed to my feet and filled the tea kettle with cold water. My hands shook as I put the kettle on the stove. I clasped them together and took several deep breaths. All the activity and company outside had delayed my reaction, but the horror and distress now had me swallowing frantically to keep from gagging.
Chloe turned abruptly to Tori,
slouched in one of the kitchen chairs. “Aunt Tori, we can still go for my laptop, can’t we?”
“Chloe!” I was appalled at her callousness.
“Well, why not? We don’t know the man, and we can’t do anything to solve the crime.”
“That’s my girl,” Tori said with a look of approval on her still-pale face. “Don’t get distracted by nonessentials.”
Like dead men.
When the water boiled, I made tea in a lovely blue Wedgwood teapot I found in Aunt Stella’s china cabinet. I toasted a couple of English muffins and put them on the table on Wedgwood blue plates rimmed in white raised flowers. I poured Tori and me tea in Wedgwood cups, thinking I’d never had breakfast on such fine china in my life. She and I settled into our chairs as if we were good friends. I looked at the muffins and knew I couldn’t eat any.
“One thing you’ve got to say for Nan.” Tori placed her cup back on its saucer. “She taught us how to make a great cuppa.”
I shrugged. “English girl come to the U.S. to be a nanny. How could it be otherwise?”
“I like that old picture you have of her and Great-Pop, Mom,” Chloe said around a mouthful of muffin. Her appetite clearly wasn’t affected by the excitement. “He looks so handsome in his uniform, and she was so pretty.”
I knew the picture she meant. He was a rookie, just out of the police academy, and Nan was all of twenty. They had married a month later, Dad already on the way.
There was a very similar picture of Mom and Dad at about the same age, Dad a big bull of a man in his uniform, Mom impossibly slim in her jeans and shirt. Tori and I had shown up a mere five months later.
What had happened to all that fine promise?
“Nan and Pop are still a pretty good-looking pair.” Tori spread marmalade on a muffin, but she only managed one bite before pushing her plate away. “I hope I look that good when I’m their age.”
“I bet you’ll be even prettier,” Chloe said. I noticed wryly that she didn’t include me in that comment.
Tori shot me a mocking look. “And I didn’t know you kept family pictures, Libby. I thought you’d washed your hands of us sinful Keatings.”
I shrugged uncomfortably. I loved my family, I truly did, but for me they were as toxic as arsenic. It wasn’t because of Dad and Pop being in jail, though that was obviously no picnic. It was the family mind-set, all negativity and criticism, bitterness and resentment. Life had not turned out the way everyone had expected, and they blamed the universe. Certainly it wasn’t their fault.
From the day I became a Christian at seventeen, I was often the target of everyone’s verbal battery. Not that I had escaped before, but it was as if I had betrayed them when I trusted my life to Christ. The nicer I tried to be, the more critical they became, even Tori. Especially Tori.
“You’re too sensitive,” she told me once when she’d made me cry. It was like she had a momentary pang of conscience. “You just need to tell us all off. Stand up to us for a change. Sass us for all you’re worth.”
There were two problems with that advice. One, I had never sassed anyone in my life. I was a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. And two, as a new Christian still feeling my way in matters of faith and practice, I didn’t think I was supposed to give as good as I got. There was all that turn-the-other-cheek stuff.
So I kept pictures because pictures were safe. They never mocked you or made fun of your faith or heaped bitter invective on you. They smiled at you and let you make believe your family loved and appreciated you.
Chloe carried her dirty dishes to the sink without being told. I held my breath as she bumped her plate on the edge of the sink, but nothing seemed to chip or break. She smiled at Tori. “I think you sinful Keatings are cool.”
“That we are, kiddo. That we are,” Tori said with a smirk at me.
Oh, God! I prayed as that all-too-familiar fear washed over me. Please let Chloe see through them. Please don’t let her go down the same path they’ve followed. Please let her follow Christ! Please!
“I’m going to take a shower, Aunt Tori.” Chloe walked out of the room, all unaware of my alarm at her comment. She paused at the base of the stairs. “Then I’ll go get Jenna. We’ll be ready whenever you want us.”
“Ten,” Tori said, amazingly perky after her night out.
I shifted slightly as Chloe raced up the stairs, and the paper in my pocket crackled. I glanced at Tori’s Times puzzle booklet, now sitting on the counter. Everyone who knew Tori for any length of time knew she was crazy about crosswords. She carried puzzles with her the way ardent readers carried paperbacks.
“Did you know that man on the steps?” I watched Tori closely. She was one of the best liars I’d ever met. “Because he somehow knew you.”
Her eyes went wide with innocence, a sure sign she was about to lie.
5
TORI SHOOK HER HEAD, her eyes earnest. “I didn’t know him.”
“You turned awfully pale when you saw him.”
“I’ll bet you did too,” she shot back. “And cops make me turn pale too.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the paper. I unfolded the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet until only one fold remained. I held it out for her to see.
TORI, handwritten in block letters.
A flash of something like fear appeared before she could stop it. Even if the paper hadn’t been on a dead man, that quick inability to school her features would have told me it was somehow significant, because Tori was a master at controlling herself, her technique perfected when Dad and Pop got into so much trouble.
I opened the paper and laid it on the table. A free-form crossword puzzle with circles around certain spaces stared up at us.
ACROSS DOWN
1 competent 1 from the heart
3 truth 2 all
6 rent 4 shirt or time
7 strange 5 affirmative
9 wild waves or men 8 cause to happen
11 red stone 10 hand and shot
12 — one’s throat 13 intimidation
14 avain home 15 written words
16 half a laugh 18 … one’s heels
17 escape 19 cruising
21 Dutch kindnesses 20 precious mineral
23 aware 22 practice theft
Tori glanced at her Times booklet, open on its spiral binding to the current project.
“No comparison, is there?” She sneered at the paper on the table.
I read clue one. “Competent.” I checked the puzzle. Four letters across. “Able.” I wrote it in. “One-down: from the heart.” I frowned. There was a reason I did Sudoku instead of crosswords.
Tori reached for the puzzle. “Don’t bother, Lib. I’ll do it later.”
I firmed my hold on the paper. “We’ll do it now, Tori. Before Chloe comes down and learns something uncool about her favorite aunt.”
“Her only aunt.” Tori tried for the paper again.
“Careful.” My voice was hard. “You’ll tear it.”
Tori narrowed her eyes. “I believe this was addressed to me. It’s my private concern.”
I shook my head. “Not when I find both it and the dead body it’s resting on. We’re doing it together and now.”
“When did you become so stubborn?”
Obviously stubbornness was not a good character trait, at least in me. “About five o’clock this morning.” I held tight to the paper. “It’s amazing what tripping over a dead man does to you.”
“I’m not doing it.” Tori flicked a finger over the puzzle.
“Yes, you are. I kept this puzzle from the police, which is probably very illegal and could get me in a lot of trouble. But you’re my sister and deserve a chance to explain all this to me.”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
“And even if there was, you wouldn’t tell me, right?”
She just looked at me. I clearly did not have a corner on the stubbornness market.
I leaned forward, invading her space. “If you don’t cooperate h
ere, I will call Detective Holloran.” I kept my voice even, but I hoped she heard the iron intent behind it.
Tori leaned back, and her face would have been funny under other circumstances, her mouth and eyes wide in disbelief. “Are you threatening me?”
I thought for about a second. “Yes, I believe I am.”
She glared at me.
“I’m also trying to protect you, so let’s get to work here.”
It took Tori less than five minutes to do the puzzle, with me looking on. I never eased my grip on the paper the whole time she worked.
I stared at the circled letters when she was finished. “‘Areyounext.’ Are you next?” I blinked. “That sounds like a threat.”
“Don’t be foolish.” Tori tried to appear unruffled as she lounged back in her chair.
“Tori, this puzzle with your name on it was found on a dead man. Is someone out to kill you too? Is that what this message means?”
I’d spent a good part of my growing-up years waiting for Dad or Pop to get bumped off by some druggie in a raid or at a simple car stop, and my adult years waiting for some inmate to take their resentment of law enforcement out on either or both of them in prison. I’d never thought I would fear the same thing for my sister.
“Get a grip, Libby.” She stood.
I grabbed her hand. “Talk to me, Tori.”
She pulled her hand free. “My life is none of your business.”
“Yes, it is. If your poor choices endanger my daughter or me in any way, it’s my business big-time.”
The front doorbell rang, and Tori knew reprieve when she heard it. She all but ran to answer it, beating the barking Princess by a hair. With a sigh I collected our empty plates and cups and took them to the sink where I hand-washed them. No way would I put the Wedgwood in the dishwasher. I went back to the table and studied the puzzle. I could hear Tori’s animated voice from the living room over Princess’s happy yips.
“Chloe’s upstairs, Jenna. Why don’t you go get her and tell her whenever she’s ready, we’ll leave.”
I heard the clump of feet rushing toward the third floor accompanied by the click, click of little poodle claws. And I heard a deep voice.