The Tiger in the House

by Jacqueline Sheehan

  Delia couldn’t shape the rest of it into words without sounding crazy. She was sure that if her father really slipped through the veil to give her a message, he picked his words carefully. If he said lamb, then he understood that this was the hardest thing for Delia, because despite his illness, he understood his daughter and she understood him. Spring lambs were the most painful dilemma. And secondly, a lamb couldn’t make it without a mother. Otherwise they turned into sacrifices.

  Lastly, there was Tennessee. Two of the victims were from Tennessee. That was where she needed to go. No, she was not going to try to explain this to Mike, Ira, or J Bird. Especially J Bird. Although J Bird’s mental health looked robust enough, the habit of protecting her little sister was well entrenched.

  After a dozen more tosses of the stick, Delia turned around to head back to the parking lot. Baxter was shocked by the horrible turn of events. There was rarely a middle ground with him; life was either breathtaking or soul-crushing.

  “Come on, Baxter, I have to get to work,” she said, as if he understood anything but the tone of voice that signaled an end to the walk.

  Did the dead still suffer from schizophrenia? Was it entirely a physical affliction, improper wiring and a bad mix of chemistry? Could she count on her dead father now, when in life she had been so often bludgeoned by his paranoia and delusions? And how long would it take to drive to Tennessee? No, she didn’t have time to drive. She had scrupulously saved up miles on her credit card. She would fly.

  Mike said that the most recent heroin line ran from Mexico to Nashville. But Raymond Blanchard lived outside Nashville in Dalton. Or he had lived there. Once she was at her office, she’d look up the nearest department of child protective services to Dalton. She might not know the world of heroin traffickers, but she did know the world of protective services better than anyone.

  She would tell J Bird that she had to fly to Denver to pick up an unaccompanied minor to return him to Maine. She would tell Ira that she had to take a personal day, despite how close she was to the end of her days at foster care. She would tell Mike nothing at all for fear that he might sniff out a lie. There was no one who would understand why she’d do something so irrational, so unlike her.

  She rinsed off Baxter at home; the salt water wasn’t good for him or their floors. He adored the rubdown with his special towel, smiling with pleasure as Delia indulged him.

  When she arrived at her office, she went straight to her laptop and to the Kayak Web site; flights to Nashville and one night in a motel somewhere between Dalton and Nashville. She’d be in and out of Tennessee before anyone even noticed.

  CHAPTER 38

  Tennessee

  The dark smell of cigarette smoke clung to the entrance of the Dalton Family Services Center and jettisoned Delia into the past again. Cigarettes meant mental illness roaring through the kitchen, spilling off the counters, when her father locked the door against imagined invaders.

  There had been a national campaign against smoking for decades. But none of the tobacco companies had capitalized on the connection between smoking and mental illness, at least not in a forthright manner. It would have been too insensitive, creating a campaign that honed in on an already maligned population. Delia could have written the advertising script for them: Crazy people crave the smoke from cigarettes, huffing away in slow suicide, trying to subdue the monsters of mental illness. She could hear Ira, shocked at her sudden lack of compassion. And just as quickly, she could feel her mother’s devotion to Theo, the love of her life, her patience with anything that soothed him, including cigarettes.

  In Portland, smokers were the scorned underworld. Here in Tennessee, where children still picked tobacco on family farms in the summer, smoking was a sign of defiance against all things new. It marked a loyalty to a way of life that had both supported them and annihilated them for generations.

  Delia felt the memory melt her flesh as she pulled open the glass doors of the child protection office. She shook off the past, as she did numerous times each day, and attended to her present challenge.

  Previous occupants must have been a real estate office, or even a medical facility. Now a worsening economy, lack of jobs (thanks to the growing ranks of nonsmokers), and increased drug use created havoc for children. When Delia called to set up an appointment, she learned that the agency was struggling to address the kids who were the carnage of the surge in drug use, those left parentless.

  If Emma Gilbert had not left some mark on social services, Delia’s trip would be a bust and little Hayley would be about to enter foster care with a permanent family back in Portland. Hayley might get lucky, but her chances of going through multiple foster homes was high. All of this would be for nothing: the early morning drive to Boston for the quickest flight out of Logan, renting a car in Nashville, and lying to J Bird and Ira. Tyler had called twice, the last time with the message, “I need to talk with you.” She had not answered him.

  She didn’t want her last case to be the worst, the failure she’d never forget, the one that would mark her final days with foster care. Surely in her ten years she had learned enough of the ins and outs to get one kid back with relatives who could take care of her. This was about Hayley. Or was it about Delia saving herself, and not some ego-laden attachment to taking care of kids?

  It wasn’t like she’d have to hunt through case files; every single person who came through this door would be in the computer system.

  In the reception area, a young black woman with exceedingly good posture sat behind a counter with a glass enclosure. The castle guard. Delia said a prayer. Please let her be interested and willing. Please let her have had her favorite breakfast, eggs just right, with toast golden brown. Please don’t let her think that everyone from the north is a big know-it-all. Please let her hand over the hall pass to let me in. Don’t let this be the day when she has decided that all of the services in the world for shattered families are useless.

  The woman slid the glass window open. “Do you have an appointment?” She kept it neutral. Delia knew it was her job to start assessing people the minute they walked in the door. Unofficially, of course. She waited to hear Delia’s voice. Receptionists and administrative assistants ran every organization, in a stealth, massively underpaid sort of way.

  “I don’t exactly have an appointment, but I called yesterday and spoke with Pat Garvey. She said she’d try to fit me in this morning. I know I might have to wait.”

  There, she’d heard Delia’s voice and was figuring where she was from.

  “I’m from foster care in Portland, Maine,” Delia said, offering a token that could move things along.

  What had her father said during one of his stays in a hospital, where they filled him with a cocktail of medications to soothe him? She and her mother visited him in the family room of the psych unit.

  “When we all have so little, we will fight like starved dogs for the scraps. Last night there was a fight between two men over the remote control,” he said.

  Delia didn’t want to arm wrestle this woman for admission to their office of broken families. She heard an electronic buzz, and a door to the left released its lock.

  “Thanks,” said Delia.

  “Second door on the right,” said the receptionist, with a slight toss of her head.

  Delia pushed open the door and followed the clipped directions to the director’s office. She wanted Pat Garvey to be the Tennessee version of Ira: smart, ethical, friendly enough, but down to business. More than anything, she wanted this person to have enough caring left in her for a kid stuck in emergency foster care in Maine.

  The people here had tried hard to make the place softer, if not beautiful. They made an effort to curl the edges of concrete block from right angles to curvilinear with the help of murals depicting the surrounding mountains dotted with friendly animals, Disneyesque versions of cows, horses, owls, and deer with white tails.

  Delia tried hard to shut down her overly sensitive olfactory system, bu
t the layers of fear swirled through the hallways and made their way into her throat with their sticky tendrils. Maybe she should try dotting her upper lip with a drop of lavender, a barricade to the assault of a world of scents.

  Even for people with average nose ability, memory worked in collaboration with smell, pairing traumatic images with the scent of burning toast, rubber dolls, or Dove soap. Would children coming through this hallway forever link the mural images of animals with abuse, neglect, and abandonment? If Delia had a say, which she clearly didn’t since this wasn’t her office, she’d say skip the murals, go soft and neutral, include water, maybe a fish tank, plants, and something for people to nosh on. Food, something with carbs that people could hang on to. Big bowls of Goldfish crackers.

  She knocked on the door. Surely Pat Garvey had been notified about her arrival.

  “Come in.” The doors were cheap, hollow core. It must be terrible in this office when families started trumpeting and the sound vibrated the flimsy wood, when rage and fear battled it out and children were at stake.

  Delia opened the door and took a quick visual tour, left to right, sweeping the room. It was not what she expected. Pat’s desk faced the left wall, but the opposite side of the small room held a semicircle of three comfy chairs. A kid-sized chair, a box of Legos in a blue plastic tub, another box of two-inch-tall superhero action figures, and in the center, an oblong coffee table that had never seen a coaster in its life.

  Pat sat in a small version of a wingback chair with roughed-up blue brocade. She was anchored by a laptop. Manila folders were stuffed between her left side and the edge of the chair. Her feet rested on the coffee table, where another stack of files leaned dangerously to one side. Pat started to get up, and Delia was sure that the entire rig was going to topple over.

  “Please don’t get up. I’ll just sit right over here,” said Delia.

  Pat looked older than Delia, late forties, solid build, a white blouse over a tank top, sensible beige work pants made of something that didn’t have to be ironed.

  “You know that the police up your way have already checked with us about Emma Gilbert and the child. Neither of them came through our system,” she said.

  Good. She was just like Ira. Pat didn’t need a prologue.

  “I know. You mentioned that on the phone. And I don’t doubt the thoroughness of the police, but . . .” Delia’s voice caught on something hard, a memory of suddenly being orphaned, being shot out into the universe, untethered.

  “I’ve been in this business for ten years, and this is my last case. I know that what I’m doing is not normal; caseworkers don’t chase down hunches in other states about their existing kids in foster care. Hayley is just so . . . I mean, I have a feeling that someone is looking for her. She told us that she talked with her mother on Skype. If I can catch a thread that might lead me to her family, if she has a family, then . . .”

  Delia couldn’t shake the emotion that rolled through her.

  Pat waited patiently, putting down her reading glasses and an open file.

  “Then you thought you could end with a success? Saving one kid,” asked Pat.

  Delia knew what she sounded like, that this was more about Delia than the girl back in South Portland currently being guarded by a Maine Coon cat.

  Delia let out a rumpled sigh, gaining traction again. “Yes, I would prefer a happy, fantasy reunion for my final case. But there’s more to it. My gut tells me that this child has somebody, that she’s telling the truth about the Skype thing even though no one has been able to trace it. My boss, sort of you in my parallel Maine universe, is more invested in this case than I’ve seen in a long time. There is something ticking in the background that I can’t quite wrap my brain around, and I’m willing to dig hard until I find it. She’s worth it. They’re all worth it.”

  “Spoken like someone who is either brand new, or leaving the business with your soul intact. Why are you leaving?”

  Delia put her feet up on the coffee table. “My sister and I are starting a bakery café together.”

  Pat laughed with a deep, throaty alto that could have belonged to a nightclub singer. “Oh, please take me with you. I can wash dishes. Did you bring any samples?”

  Delia wished that she had scooped up some of J Bird’s chocolate éclairs on the way out. “That would have been wise, but I’ve been awake since three a.m. and all I could think about was coffee and my GPS.”

  “Oh, well, a girl can dream. Tell me again how you think I can help you,” said Pat.

  Delia glanced at the wall behind Pat. Master’s degree in social work, Penn State.

  Delia’s glance was not lost on Pat. “That piece of parchment both helps and hinders me. As we say here, it’s the bottom fact. With doctors it gives me credibility, with my clients it’s a hurdle that impairs their ability to trust me, and that makes my job harder. What about you, does it help or hinder you?”

  Oh, she was good.

  “You’ve guessed that I’ve never been to rural Tennessee before, and you’re right. What I’m hoping for is a thread that the police might have missed. I’ve got a child in Portland, Maine, who was with three adults who were killed. Emma Gilbert was one. She had no police record. And one, Raymond Blanchard, was from Dalton, with a record of possession,” said Delia. She saw no harm in repeating what Pat already knew. She often did this with kids and parents in foster care.

  Pat leaned back. “And I told the police that Emma Gilbert had never come through our system. And yes, they showed me a photo of her. You know that her family was contacted, all of whom live out of state. Emma attended college in the area, but she graduated more than five years ago. The other man who was identified, Raymond, was never part of our system. Which means both of them had good enough parents or they had good luck. I can tell you that Raymond’s lawyer is well known in these parts. If you have money, you hire him, which is what Raymond did. He paid him enough to wake snakes, and the result was probation for a drug charge. He’s white, too, which in the legal system was a point in his favor.”

  Delia relaxed a little, felt her pelvis uncurl from her crouched and ready posture. She trusted Pat. She liked the speed at which this woman’s brain traveled.

  She slid a photo of Hayley out of a file folder and gave it to Pat. “This is the child. Hayley had never been to school before, but is there a way to get this photo around to local preschools? I know this is a long shot, but she may have gone to day care when she was younger,” said Delia.

  “The local police already shined all over town with the photo. Pediatrician’s offices too. But no one recognized her. Kids are tough, though. Their looks change nearly every day,” said Pat.

  “What about Raymond? You sound like you knew him. Or knew about him. Why would he be involved with heroin? And why would anyone want to kill him?”

  “There are only two answers, and you already know both. He was capitalizing on the unprecedented rise in heroin use and embarking on a career in drug running, or he was a user who didn’t pay his bills. There is a third option, which is that he was addicted and running a business, but I hear that heroin preoccupies the brain almost entirely so he wouldn’t have made much headway in selling if he was addicted,” she said.

  Pat had skipped part of the question, and Delia returned to it. “Did you know him?” There, that should be direct enough.

  Pat slid the stack of folders out of the nook of the chair and onto the table. “I know we’re supposed to have all the files computerized, but it’s taking us time to catch up. I’ve only been the director here for six months, and wheels turn slowly. I knew of Raymond’s family. Everyone in town knows them. His father is the mayor.”

  She was closer now. Even though he was dead, she could come closer to Raymond and make him tell her where Hayley’s mother was.

  “He wasn’t exactly one of the kids in town who still spend August picking bacca,” said Pat.

  Delia blinked hard several times trying to decipher the unfamiliar term.
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  “Tobacco picking. The kids call it picking bacca. We don’t say tobacco here, more like, tobacca. I should write a translation app for our part of the country and make a fortune,” said Pat.

  Delia felt something struggle to rise up out of the sludge of too much information in her brain. Tobacca. Bacca barn. Is that what Hayley had said? Not in back of the barn, but bacca barn. The kid was precise, and Delia had tried to alter her words without really listening. Had she been repeating what Raymond said? Bacca barns? That’s where the naughty place was. That’s where her mother was.

  On the trip to Hartford, she and Ira had commented on the pastoral beauty of the tobacco barns that dotted the Connecticut Valley, where the specialized tobacco that was grown for cigar wrappers was still dried. The long barns seemed a thing of the past, like playing horseshoes, or women in long aprons.

  “Maybe I’m connecting the dots where I shouldn’t,” said Delia. “It’s a family trait. But Hayley said her mother tried to run away, and then that’s when they took her away from her mother, and now her mother is in the bacca barn.”

  Pat lifted the remaining files off her lap and put them on the coffee table. “Well, Jesus Christ. There’s only about a hundred tobacco barns in Tennessee, and now we’re going for the industrial bunkers that aren’t near as pretty. I think this all might be beyond our pay grade. It’s a slim lead, but I’m with you connecting those dots. I’m on a first name basis with the police in Dalton. I’ll call them when we’re through here. Are we through?”

  There had to be more. Her father had crossed the veil to tell her about Tennessee, the Tennessee spring lamb. It wasn’t just a tobacco barn that she came here to find.

  “I’d like to talk with Raymond’s family. Can you give me an introduction to them? I’m only here for one day. My flight leaves tomorrow morning,” said Delia.

  Pat projected a large presence until she stood up. She was shorter than Delia had imagined, probably not more than a few inches over five feet.