If Delia took Baxter to work, he would be in a place beyond happy. He would ratchet right up to euphoria.
* * *
Delia didn’t get home until after six. By then, J Bird was dressed in cutoff sweatpants and a tank top, binge-watching the first season of Once Upon a Time with a bag of Doritos stationed between her knees. Her sister looked more frayed than usual. Baxter greeted her with his usual adoration-style welcome, wrapping around Delia’s legs. Who wouldn’t want to be greeted every day like that? The dog should teach couples’ counseling. Step one: Rush to the door when your beloved comes home. Step two: Tell them you love them and that you missed them. Step three: Make body contact.
“Doritos?” said Delia. “We’re getting ready to open a high-end bakery and your food of choice is Doritos?”
Juniper felt no guilt or shame over the Doritos. “Sometimes junk food does exactly what it’s meant to do. It’s culinary recreation, an adjunct to binge-watching Netflix,” she said. “You look terrible, by the way. Are they working you extra hard for your last few weeks? Tell Ira to quit it.”
She held out the bag of fried, Day-Glo orange chips to Delia, who sank into the couch next to her. Delia dipped her hand into the bag. Juniper hit the mute button just as the bad witch revealed her true nature to the heroine, the beautiful blond sheriff.
“It’s my last case, the little girl in emergency foster placement. If we can’t find her family, any family members, soon, then we have to move her into the system. Into a regular long-term foster placement.”
Baxter stretched out between the sisters on the floor.
“And on top of it, I met Tyler at the Portland Hotel for drinks. He wanted me to help him pick out a dining room set,” she said.
Juniper skidded to a stop, a Dorito chip between her thumb and finger, paused in mid-ascent to her lips.
“That’s a girlfriend job assignment. That’s like saying, what’s our color scheme for the kitchen? Do we want granite, soapstone or butcher block?” said Juniper.
“I know. That’s what I told him,” said Delia. Her sister passed the bag of chips, but Delia shook her head. “This is very close to breaking confidentiality, which I have never done, but I want to tell you something strange that just happened. Promise me that you won’t repeat it?”
Juniper was used to the lead wall that Delia erected around any information pertaining to the kids who went through Foster Services. There had never been a crack in the wall before. Why was she changing course now? Juniper held up her right hand and said, “I promise.”
Delia inched back on the couch and crossed her legs. “Do you remember the dining room table at our house, the one with the clawed feet? When we played under it we called it the tiger house.”
Baxter lifted his head and looked from one sister to the other.
“I remember playing under the table and hiding under it,” said Juniper. No breach of confidentiality here, just good memories along with the bad.
“Tyler showed me four choices for his dining room, and one was a close replica of our table growing up,” said Delia.
“What? Now I am officially freaked out. I mean, he’s gorgeous and he’s obviously into you, but that is creepy. Why would he think that would be a good thing? Please don’t tell me he’s creating a replica of our old house or I’m calling the police right now.” She was only half kidding about the police. The skin along her neck quivered.
Delia ran her hands through her hair. “Stay with me and put aside the Tyler part of it for now. The important thing was that I’d forgotten all about the claw-foot table and how we called it the tiger house until he showed me the image. The little girl that I’m working with, my last case, said a similar thing. She said that the woman who was her caretaker, or kidnapper, told her to avoid a certain place because it was a tiger house. How strange is it that both places were related to danger, like when Dad was delusional, and they were both called tiger houses?”
Had Delia been working too hard? Was she under too much pressure with starting the new business? She was connecting dots that were only distantly related, if at all, and missing the big warning sign about Tyler. She sounded like their father, and few things could be more terrifying. Baxter stood up and licked her hand.
“Don’t. Don’t connect points on a map that are unrelated. Lots of people have dining room tables with clawed feet and they probably played under the table as kids. That doesn’t mean that your little kid is connected to them. And frankly, you sound like Dad when he was going off, and you can never, never do that. Do you understand me? If you do, I’ll have nobody,” she said. The last words caught in her throat and came out in a sob. She put her hands over her face.
Baxter whined and pushed his head into Juniper’s lap. The dog was an emotional Geiger counter; when one of the sisters was upset, he went on red alert, chest up, nose flickering. At that moment, nothing else seemed to matter for Baxter. He was like an astronaut, highly trained for one specific duty, to save the mother ship by keeping his pack harmonious and safe. If Juniper or Delia were in pain, Baxter went to work offering the kind of solace that was unrelenting and irresistible.
Delia put her hand on Juniper’s knee. “So does this mean you think I’ve gone too far?”
She smacked Delia with the bag of chips. “Yes, you big geek, you just went too far! You just hit the Dad parameter, the electric fence of screwed-up connections.”
Elbows up in mock self-defense, Delia said, “Okay, okay. I will use you as the reality check. The two tiger houses are officially unrelated. Coincidental.”
As Juniper looked up at the silent screen, the dark queen on the television gazed into a glass ball and viewed the hapless heroine, who was totally alone in her knowledge of the queen’s identity. She clicked off the power.
“I think we’re both working too hard, getting the café ready to open and finishing up our other jobs. Maybe we’re both frayed around the edges,” said Juniper. Which she mostly believed. But she wanted to talk to the person who knew Delia almost as well as she did. Ben.
CHAPTER 33
The next morning, Delia concentrated on the details of clearing out of her office. She would pick up Baxter in the early afternoon, give him an enormous walk, and then head over to Erica’s.
Most of the furniture in Delia’s small office was either castoffs from Ira or pieces that she had picked up at the used furniture stores around the Portland area. She appraised the three chairs with padded seats, an oval coffee table, and a three-foot-tall bookcase placed strategically to give the illusion of a room divider. The only thing that she really wanted to take with her was the round blue and beige area rug from IKEA. She would have it cleaned from all the wintery mud that had dropped off shoes and put it in their spare bedroom on the main floor. She dropped down to her hands and knees to take a closer look at the rug to check on a stain that looked like mashed crayons and scratched at it with her fingernail.
“I was in the area and thought I’d stop by to find out when you were going back to Erica’s, but I see you’re involved.”
Delia looked up. Mike stood in her doorway, white paper bag in hand. She popped up as gracefully as she could, brushing off the knees of her black pants. “Melted crayons,” she said. “I keep crayons in here for kids but I can’t even explain how they ended up melted.”
He walked in and set the paper bag on her desk and extracted one cup of coffee. “Once, just on a hunch, I looked under my daughter’s bed and there were a dozen cheese sandwiches stuck in little hidie places beneath the box springs. It turned out they were offerings to the monsters that used to live under her bed. You never know with kids.” He pulled out the other coffee. “I took a wild guess and thought you might like coffee. Cream and sugar is in the bag.”
He had come bearing gifts of coffee. This was a welcome break, a respite from closing out files. “I do like coffee. Black.” She pulled off the plastic top. “Please tell me that you’re here with good news about Hayley’s family.”
Ira’s road atlas was on the coffee table. Delia had brought it in from her car and intended to return it to Ira. Mike picked it up.
“Can I show you something on the map?” he asked. He opened it to the map of the entire USA. “Here’s Nashville, the destination point of the new heroin link from Mexico. What’s happening is that heroin comes into Nashville and is then dispersed in all directions, but mainly east.” He flipped to the map of Tennessee. Highways struck outward from Nashville in a starburst pattern. All roads led to, or out of, Nashville. Mike ran his pointer finger along one major highway that went from Nashville due east.
“This is Dalton, where Raymond was from, about forty miles from Nashville. If you’re a smart business guy in the heroin trade, you take it directly to New York City, where you will turn an incredible profit, especially if you cut it down. But if you want to charge even higher prices, you bring it to places like Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.” Mike traced a line on the map of the USA along route 81, through a spiderweb of roads to New York, then angling up to Hartford, to Portland.
“Heroin costs more here than in New York City?” she asked. Delia wasn’t new to the topic of heroin, but her reference point was always the kids and parental fitness. Alcohol remained the top wrecking ball for most families.
“That’s right,” he said.
She took a sip of the hot coffee. Mike was a Dunkin’ Donuts man. “Let’s pretend there is a new kingpin in the local heroin trade. What does that mean for Hayley, and what does it mean for her mother?” she asked.
Mike crushed his empty cup and tossed it into the metal trash can by Delia’s desk. Overhand. “I wish I knew. This whole case feels like it’s shrouded with a veil, just dark enough that I can’t see clearly. I woke up at four a.m. with something scratching at my brain about Hayley. Does she seem like a kid who was abused to you?”
Both she and Ira had speculated on the same thing. “No. She’s a kid who is traumatized because of separation from her parents. I’m even going to guess that to the best of her ability, Emma Gilbert took good care of Hayley,” she said.
He closed the road atlas. Whatever scratched at his brain was still at work. Mike frowned and ran one hand along the side of his face. Most cops looked like they all went to the same barber and gave the same instructions. Shave it. But Mike had real hair, deep brown, neatly trimmed along the back of his neck but threatening to break into a wave.
She would need to tell Ira that his road atlas was more helpful, this one time, than all of Google Maps. Delia moved it across her desk. She needed to look at it again after Mike left. Something about Dalton, the way it hugged the highway coming out of Nashville, Emma Gilbert, Raymond, and the mystery man all began to dance around. It was like whatever Mike had was contagious, and the inscrutability of Hayley’s origins grew.
“The third guy at the scene? We’re beginning to think that he was collateral damage. It’s likely that a bigger heroin trader came after Raymond and wanted to put him out of the business. And given that big drug dealers aren’t known for their good behavior, the third guy was killed to get rid of him for any number of reasons, with the prime reason being that the others could get a larger piece of the pie,” he said.
Why did Mike always start a sentence that answered a question in Delia’s head? How did he do that?
He raised one dark eyebrow and winked. “We’ve been thinking a lot about the third victim.” He glanced out her window. “So, Delia, is there a boyfriend in the picture?” asked Mike.
The man could change topics with heart-stopping speed. “No. But I need to qualify that no to a suddenly-I’m-not-sure. An old boyfriend has reappeared.” She was glad for the change in topic, but unprepared for the direction.
Mike typed a few notes into his phone. He looked up. “I’ve never had an old girlfriend show up. I married so young that there won’t ever be an old girlfriend from long ago. How long ago are we talking about in your case?” he said.
Did she really sense a bit of nervousness with the detective, a change in voice, a junior high blush?
Delia stuffed a few files into her bag. These weren’t case files about kids, these were personal files, notes from workshops and conferences. She was gradually emptying her office, closing this part of her life.
“Thirteen years ago. We were just out of high school. We had one year of college under our belts and had seen each other nearly every weekend, and we were sure we were in love. Then he left Portland abruptly, his family moved to California not long after . . .” Delia pressed her lips together. She hadn’t told this to someone new in a long time. “After the fire. My parents were killed in a house fire.”
Mike slid his phone into his front pocket. “I’m sorry. That’s terrible. I’m sorry,” he said. He sat down, hands resting on his thighs, giving her full attention. Either he was an incredible actor, or he really didn’t know about the famous house fire that claimed the lives of her parents.
For the first few years after the fire, people would say to Delia or J Bird, “Oh, you’re the two Lamont girls whose parents were killed in the house fire. I’m so sorry.” It was their identity. But Mike didn’t grow up in Portland, which she knew because she had Googled him. He had grown up in Rhode Island. Apparently he hadn’t Googled Delia, otherwise he would have known about the fire. She was disappointed in a surprising way.
“We’ve always assumed it was arson, likely set by my father, who had schizophrenia. The fire chief told me that arson is one of the hardest things to prove conclusively. But the old boyfriend, Tyler, is the one who saved my life. He pulled me from the house when I ran in to find my parents,” she said.
Sometimes when you retell a story, a true story, after not telling it out loud for a long time to an outsider with fresh ears, the story sounds different. New bits show up.
“He saved you how exactly?”
Or sometimes a new person asks just the right questions to adjust the lens.
“I was overcome by smoke and Tyler pulled me out. He suffered burns on his hands when he saved me,” she said. Delia pulled a few therapy books from her bookcase that she planned to take with her. She touched each one and then replaced them. Let the next person have them.
Mike tilted his head the way dogs did trying to decipher a strange noise. “He pulled you out. He was on the scene of the fire and he burned his hands. Were you burned too, or was it primarily smoke inhalation?”
No one had asked questions like this since the initial investigation after the fire. She rubbed the center divot in her collarbone with her thumb. “I didn’t have any burns but my lungs took a big hit, and I was hospitalized for a few days. I don’t know why his hands were burned. I never really had a chance to ask him. My world was upended. I was only nineteen and hollowed out by grief. I missed my parents so much, I still do. But I couldn’t stop to be reflective; my sister was six years younger and I had to take care of her.”
There was a knock on her door, and both of them were startled. Ira opened the door and said, “I saw the summary from our art therapist. I need to talk with you, Delia.”
As if a magician had snapped his fingers, the smoke and calamity cleared from the room and Delia was back in her office and not in the nightmare of the burning house.
“Sure. Five minutes, in your office,” she said.
Mike stood up, nodded to Ira. Ira glanced from Mike to Delia, noted something that Delia was positive he would mention later, and pulled the door closed as he left.
“So now Tyler is back and you are in a maybe-yes and maybe-no place with him. After thirteen years.” He man
aged to ask questions between statements. Why was Tyler back? Did she still have feelings for him or was it an old fantasy?
“That is what I’m trying to figure out,” she said. “But everything has to take a backseat to Hayley. Old boyfriends resurfacing will have to wait.” She picked up a file. “I’ve got to go. My boss beckons. And I almost forgot to tell you; I’m going out on a visit to Erica’s this afternoon with my dog, Baxter. You said you wanted to be there. I need to go over the art therapist’s report, which just came in this morning, but I’ll be there at three today.”
He frowned. “I wish you had called me before the chief assigned me to a review panel. If I can get out of it, I’ll be there. If not, please tell that dog of yours to bring back some concrete memories from Hayley.”
Mike opened the door for her, which felt odd since this was her office. Wasn’t she the one to welcome people into her den and to wave bye-bye when they left? Men; they claimed territory wherever they went.
“You had your hands full,” he said, answering her unspoken question. How could he tell what she was thinking? Would he notice the extra hum of vibration in her solar plexus?
“Thanks, Mr. Detective,” she said, opting for playful, light. She stopped in the doorway, and the pull of Hayley found her again, stripping away anything light. “Do you think we’ll find Hayley’s parents? All we have is a vast amount of geography between here and Tennessee and the mom might even be somewhere else entirely.” A conspiratorial space grew between them, forming a capsule tinged with desperation for a child who wanted only to go home. He relaxed his shoulders and leaned closer to her.
“Someone knows where the mother is being held. And we need to get to her before this whole thing implodes on us. It’s possible that the husband is being manipulated in some way and that his wife and Hayley were the negotiating point. Your work with Hayley has been important,” he said. He didn’t lie to her, he didn’t say, Don’t worry, we’ll find her. And for that, Delia was grateful.
The Tiger in the House Page 16