Charley's Web

by Joy Fielding

  There was another brief lull in the conversation. The Judds were replaced by the group, Alabama. “All I really got to do is live and die,” they sang lustily.

  “Just how much do you know about what happened?” Charley asked Alex.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know that Jill was sexually abused by her brother,” Charley stated.

  “Yes.”

  “And that her father abused her as well.”

  “He beat her, yes.”

  “Did he abuse her sexually?”

  Another pause. “You better ask Jill about that.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable discussing it.”

  “What if Jill says it’s okay for you to talk to me about it?”

  “Then I’ll talk to you about it.”

  Another silence. The final chorus of Alabama drifted off, followed by the news: a six-year-old boy had drowned in a boating accident on the Intracoastal; a local politician was the subject of a police investigation regarding Internet porn; there was renewed fighting in Afghanistan. “How’d that case go that you were working on?” Charley asked.

  “Which one was that?”

  “You know. The world against mother…”

  “Oh, that one,” he said with a sly grin. “I won.”

  Dania was just north of Hollywood, a short drive from the Fort Lauderdale airport.

  Jill was right about the place, Charley thought, glancing from one side of the deserted main street to the other, noting the boarded-up storefronts. A good many of the buildings were empty and looked as if they’d been that way for some time, their exteriors dull and lifeless, the paint peeling from their sides in large, dry strips, the lettering on the front windows chipped and occasionally illegible, the windows themselves dark and streaked with grime.

  “From what I understand,” Alex was saying, “this used to be something of a hub. Now, there are only a few stores still in business.”

  “Isn’t ‘collectibles’ spelled with an i?” Charley asked, as they passed an empty store advertising ANTIQUES AND COLLECTABLES.

  “Maybe you can spell it either way.”

  “Are you a collector?” Charley asked.

  “I used to collect baseball cards when I was a kid. You?”

  Charley shook her head no. “My mother had this fabulous collection of dolls from all over the world. At least a hundred of them. I used to sneak into her room to play with them.”

  “She still have them?”

  “My father threw them out after she left. I came home from school one day, and they were all gone. At first, I thought maybe she took them with her….” Charley’s voice drifted off. She waited for him to ask the obvious questions about her family, but either he was reluctant to pry or he wasn’t interested.

  “What about antiques?” he asked instead.

  “What about them?” Why wasn’t he interested?

  “Do you like them?”

  “Not especially.” Hadn’t he sort of asked her out on a date? Was he miffed because she hadn’t answered him? “What about you?”

  “Never understood the appeal. I prefer being the original owner.”

  “Which would explain your choice of automobiles.”

  Alex laughed. “Believe it or not, this car was brand spanking new at one time. I paid cash, money I’d been saving up for years. I’d always wanted a convertible. Still can’t quite bring myself to part with it.” He turned right at the end of the street, then left, then left again. Before long, they were away from the main area and heading toward the less-populated part of town. “The Rohmers live down here,” he said, a mile and several turns later. He pointed toward a modest gray, wood-framed bungalow at the end of the block.

  Charley reached for the tape recorder inside her purse, clicking it on, and speaking softly into it. “The house is small, maybe twelve hundred square feet, one floor, looks like all the other houses in the area, almost deliberately nondescript. Painted gray with white trim, paint looks reasonably fresh, well-tended front lawn, curtains in front window drawn. Gate around back. Single-car garage.” She dropped the recorder back into her bag, removed a small digital camera. “Is it okay if I take pictures?”

  “Do it discreetly,” Alex advised, pulling the car into the driveway.

  Ignoring the steady drizzle, Charley was out of the car and snapping pictures before Alex could turn off the engine.

  “This way,” he said, taking her elbow and escorting her toward the front door. He rang the doorbell, then waited. After ten seconds, he rang it again.

  “She does know we’re coming, doesn’t she?” Charley asked, wishing she’d brought an umbrella, as her mother had suggested.

  “She knows.”

  Another ten seconds passed. Charley could feel the rain penetrating her silk jersey top. In another ten seconds, her clothes would be soaked right through and her hair would be pasted to her head, like a cloche. Not my best look, she was thinking as Alex rang the bell a third time. “Maybe it isn’t working,” she suggested. But even as she was saying the words, she could hear the chimes echoing throughout the interior of the house.

  Alex knocked on the door. Still no response. “Wait here,” he said, going around the side of the house and unlocking the gate to the backyard.

  “This is fun,” Charley said to herself, feeling someone watching her. Slowly, she turned in the direction of the house next door.

  A woman was standing at her open front door, half-in, half-out of her house. She looked about sixty, although her long gray hair might have made her look older than she was. She was slightly overweight and wearing a red velour tracksuit that spelled JUICY GIRL across its zippered front. “What do you want?” she called over.

  What’s it your business? Charley was tempted to respond, but she didn’t. It was probably not a good idea to alienate the neighbors. She might want to talk to them eventually, especially if Pam had changed her mind about cooperating. In fact, it might be a good time to talk to them right now, Charley decided, impulsively cutting across the Rohmers’ front lawn to the neighbor’s house, covertly clicking on the tape recorder in her purse. “I came to see Pamela Rohmer. Do you know if she’s home?”

  “Haven’t seen her.” The woman’s voice was rough and raspy, probably the result of too many cigarettes over too many years. Her yellow-stained fingers confirmed this impression, as did the stale odor of ash clinging to her tracksuit. “What do you want with Pam?”

  “I have an appointment,” Charley hedged, glancing around for Alex, and seeing nothing but rain. “Alex?” she called out. Where had he gone? “Alex?”

  “You might as well come inside for a minute,” Juicy Girl said. “You’re getting soaked.”

  Charley took another glance around before stepping inside the woman’s small foyer, papered in brown and gold stripes. She wiped her feet on an old sisal mat, and shook some of the water out of her hair with her hand. “Thank you, Mrs….”

  “Fenwick. You’re…?”

  “Charley Webb.”

  “You’re a reporter?”

  Charley tried not to appear either too surprised or flattered. The woman was clearly more sophisticated than she looked, and had better taste than the brown leather bean bag propped against the living room wall on her left would indicate. “Yes. You read the Palm Beach Post?”

  “Why would I read the Palm Beach Post?” Mrs. Fenwick scoffed.

  “I just assumed…. How did you know I’m a reporter?”

  “What else would you be?” Mrs. Fenwick rolled watery blue eyes toward an overhanging light fixture that looked vaguely like a crown of thorns. “I would have thought you people would have had your fill by now. There’s not much meat left on the bones.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Bunch of vultures,” Mrs. Fenwick elaborated. “Isn’t it enough Jill’s sitting on death row? You gotta pester poor Pammy to death as well?”

  “I’m not trying to pest
er anybody, Mrs. Fenwick.”

  “You’re not here to interview Pam about her sister?”

  “I’m here at Pam’s invitation.”

  “Really? Then why isn’t she answering her door?”

  Charley forced her lips into a smile, felt a drop of rain fall from the tip of her nose into her mouth. She glanced back outside, looking for Alex, but he was still nowhere to be seen. “Look. I’m writing a book….”

  “A book? My, my. Aren’t we ambitious?”

  “It was Jill’s idea. I assure you she’s cooperating fully.”

  A strange look passed across Mrs. Fenwick’s face.

  “Maybe I could ask you a few questions,” Charley broached, her reporter’s instincts sensing a shift in the woman’s attitude, and deciding to take advantage of it.

  “Such as?”

  “To start with, how long have you lived next door to the Rohmers?”

  “Twenty-five years.”

  “So you’ve known Jill…”

  “All her life. Pammy, too. Lovely girl, Pammy. Takes wonderful care of her mother.”

  “And Jill?”

  Mrs. Fenwick shook her head, picked some invisible tobacco from her tongue with her fingers. “Polite, respectful, eager to please. Hard to believe she did those awful things,” she added without prompting.

  “Hard,” Charley repeated, hearing a qualifier in Mrs. Fenwick’s voice. “But not impossible?”

  There was a pause. “Not impossible,” Mrs. Fenwick concurred.

  “Charley!” Alex suddenly called out. “Charley, where are you?”

  Charley opened the front door, although she still couldn’t see Alex. “Be right there.” She turned back to Mrs. Fenwick. “Why not impossible?”

  The woman reached into the pocket of her sweatpants, pulled out a loose cigarette and a book of matches. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Why should I tell you?” Mrs. Fenwick put the cigarette in her mouth, lit it, and inhaled deeply before slowly releasing the smoke into the space between them.

  “Because I think you want to.”

  Mrs. Fenwick shook her head. “The last thing I need is more trouble with Ethan.”

  “More trouble?”

  “Pammy’s the sweetest girl in the world. I’d do anything for her. And her mother is, well, you know, she’s been in that wheelchair for years, and getting worse every day. But that husband of hers, and that Ethan. Always angry about something. One time I complained his car was blocking my driveway. Next thing I knew, the front of my lawn was covered with trash. Another time, he threw eggs at my front door.”

  “Charley?” Alex called again.

  “What can you tell me about Jill, Mrs. Fenwick?” Charley asked, ignoring him.

  “It’s probably nothing. Just a feeling I had….”

  “Tell me.”

  “This goes back a long time, maybe eight, nine years,” Mrs. Fenwick began. “We had this bird’s nest in one of our trees out back, and the eggs had just hatched. Don’t ask me what kind of birds they were. Probably just sparrows. Not very interesting really, but I used to love watching them. They were all scrawny, their mouths always open, crying to be fed. I showed the nest to Jill, and she seemed quite intrigued. Anyway, one afternoon, I came home from work….”

  “Charley!”

  “Over here!” Charley called back impatiently as Alex materialized on the Rohmers’ front lawn. “What happened when you came home from work, Mrs. Fenwick?”

  “I really don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

  “What was Jill doing when you came home from work that day?”

  A moment’s hesitation, then: “She was in my backyard, standing at the foot of the tree, the nest on the ground, the poor little birds lying dead at her feet. She was crying, said a cat must have gotten to them. I comforted her. We buried them together. I didn’t think too much about it until later on, when I looked out my bedroom window, and I saw her sitting on the grass, her back against her house, playing with this big, long stick, and staring up at my tree with this weird little smile on her face. That was when I knew it wasn’t a cat that got to those poor little birds.”

  “Charley!” Alex ran up the front walk.

  “Can we talk again?” Charley asked her.

  Mrs. Fenwick shook her head. “No. I’ve said quite enough.

  You should go.” She opened her door, all but pushed Charley into Alex’s arms.

  “What’s going on?” Alex asked.

  “I’ll tell you later. Did you find Pam?”

  Alex pointed through the rain toward the Rohmer house. The curtains in the front window had been pulled back. Pamela Rohmer stood between the panels, watching them approach.

  CHAPTER 19

  The front door of the Rohmer house opened directly into the living room. The room was a small, perfect square, completely dominated by a large plasma TV that took up most of one cream-colored wall. A well-worn, beige chesterfield was pushed against the wall at right angles to it, between two brown leather La-Z-Boy loungers. A real guy’s room, Charley thought, surprised by a vase of fresh-cut flowers on a glass side table beside the archway leading into the tiny dining room, the only indication a woman might also live here. Charley noted that the table was already set for dinner. She checked her watch. It was barely two o’clock.

  Pamela Rohmer was standing by the large front window. She was taller than her sister, with the same dirty blond hair and heart-shaped face, but while her eyes were a similar brooding shade of brown, they lacked Jill’s vitality. They were faded, like a photograph left too long in the sun, and void of curiosity, as if she already knew the answers to all life’s questions, and found them to be both useless and uninteresting. She was wearing jeans and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and her freshly washed hair hung straight to her shoulders. “Charley’s kind of a strange name for a girl,” she said before Alex could formally introduce them.

  “It’s actually Charlotte.” Charley decided to wait until later to request a photograph.

  “Charlotte Webb.” Pamela nodded as she absorbed this information. “Guess your parents thought that was cute.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Pamela smiled. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  Charley shook her head.

  “Sorry about keeping you waiting for so long. I was busy with my mother and couldn’t get to the door.”

  “Is she all right?” Charley asked.

  “She’s asleep. For the moment.” Pamela’s voice was as deep as it was distracted, almost as if she were speaking to you from another room. Charley wished she could jot that observation down before she forgot it. “Have a seat.” Pamela indicated the sofa with a wave of her hand.

  Charley sank down, a vaguely musty smell rising from the cushions to compete with the scent of citrus air-freshener. Pamela perched on the edge of the sofa’s far end, crossing one ankle neatly over the other, and folding her hands primly in her lap. Alex walked to the window, pretending to be looking out at the rain. “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” Charley began.

  Pamela shrugged. “It’s what Jill wants.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “She called last week, asked me to cooperate.”

  “Well, I appreciate it.” Charley looked to Alex for a nod of encouragement, but he was still looking out the front window, seemingly engrossed in the growing downpour. She glanced back at Pamela, who was staring at her without expression. What am I doing here? Charley wondered. I have no idea what to ask this woman, no clue where to start. She tried to dredge up the list of questions she’d been tossing back and forth in her head all week, but her mind was as blank as the look on Pamela’s face. What do I say to this woman to get her to trust me? “Listen, before I forget,” Charley heard herself say, “my brother said to say hello.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Bram Webb?” Charley asked, as if she wasn’t sure. “Apparently you knew each other a few
years back?” Again, the sentence emerged as a question. Charley bit down on her tongue. She’d always hated people who attached question marks to the end of obvious statements. Didn’t they know what they were talking about?

  “Bram’s your brother?”

  “I understand you took some classes together.”

  “Art classes, yes. He’s very talented.”

  “He said the two of you dated for a while.”

  “We went out a couple of times, yeah. Bram and Pam, we used to joke. A perfect match. How’s he doing?”

  “Great. He’s doing great.” I hope, Charley added silently. She hadn’t heard from her brother since she’d called to tell him a family reunion was in the offing.

  “Please tell me I’m hallucinating,” was all he’d said.

  “I always thought he had such an unusual name. Obviously your parents…”

  “Obviously,” Charley repeated, with a roll of her eyes.

  “Bram Webb,” Pam said, shaking her head in wonderment. “Wow. Small world, huh?”

  “Small world,” Charley agreed, reaching into her purse and bringing out her tape recorder, setting it on the cushion between them. A flash of fear interrupted Pam’s blank stare. “If you don’t want me to tape this,” Charley said quickly, “I can just take notes.” She quickly withdrew a small pad from her purse, began rifling around for a pen.

  “No, I guess it’s all right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Pam nodded, smoothed down the sides of her hair, almost as if she thought the tape recorder was a camera.

  Charley realized the recorder was still running from her encounter with Mrs. Fenwick, and wondered if Pam could hear its gentle hum. “I was talking to your neighbor,” she said.

  “Mrs. Fenwick?”

  “She’s a big fan of yours.”

  Pam absorbed this latest piece of information without any noticeable change to her expression. “She’s a nice lady.”

  “She says you take very good care of your mother.”

  Pam shrugged. “I do my best.”

  “Okay. So, are we ready?” Charley asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Do you have anything you want to say before we start?”

  “Like what?”