Perdition

by R. Jean Reid

  “Get in the car now! I haven’t time for this.”

  “You never have time for anything,” Lizzie flung back at her. But she got in the car, albeit the back seat, making her point while still complying with Nell.

  I have to find Josh, Nell thought. Once I know he’s okay, then I can deal with Lizzie. How do these things fall apart so quickly? she wondered. Is there any way I can be such a perfect mother to never provoke Lizzie? Little Nell Sunshine, all light and compassion and understanding, never angry or upset. Or worried about my son, who should have been waiting at school but wasn’t. Nell glanced in her rearview mirror, looking for traffic, but also caught a glimpse of her daughter. Lizzie had retreated behind headphones, her eyes closed as if shutting out the world and particularly her mean mother.

  Nell drove slowly down the streets she guessed were Josh’s most likely route to the bike shop. Twice she saw a cyclist ahead of her, but her relief was quickly quashed when she realized that they were either too old or too female.

  Could he have already made it to the shop? she thought as she passed the second non-Josh cyclist. Maybe he was taking a different route. Or he’d stopped at a friend’s house along the way. She tried not to think of the other possibility, though it loomed with every empty block.

  Finally, she was at the bike shop. Still no sign of her son.

  “Wait here,” Nell instructed Lizzie. Lizzie looked like she had no intention of doing anything else; still immersed in her music, she didn’t respond.

  Nell got out, scanning the street for any signs of Josh. Entering the bike shop, she first looked for her son. He wasn’t there. Only then did she notice that Marion was standing at the counter talking to Kate.

  “And I thought a bike might make sense for getting around town,” Marion said, as if she were a customer talking to a sales person.

  “Have you seen Josh?” Nell asked. She considered adding that she knew, they didn’t need to pretend, but now was not the time.

  “Josh?” Kate asked. “No, not this afternoon.”

  “He and Lizzie were supposed to meet me at school, but Lizzie said that Josh rode a friend’s bike over here to have it looked at,” Nell blurted out. “I didn’t see him along the way and he should be here by now …”

  “Maybe he went a different way,” Marion said.

  “Or he might have ended up walking the bike if it has problems,” Kate added.

  Nell found a small relief at finding another reasonable possibility for Josh’s not being there yet.

  “Maybe I should keep looking for him,” she said. She had the feeling she was interrupting a private conversation and forcing Marion and Kate to put on their company act. Marion had moved away from the counter where she’d been when Nell first entered.

  “Do you want us to help?” Kate asked.

  “No, someone needs to be here in case Josh shows up. To tie him up if need be,” Nell answered.

  “I should be heading back to the library. I can look for him along the way,” Marion said. “I’ll think about a bike,” she added to Kate, but Nell suspected it was for her benefit.

  The door of the shop opened. Lizzie held it for Josh as he wheeled in the broken bike.

  Lizzie said, “I told him you’re not happy he took off without permission.”

  “I just rode Joey’s bike straight here from school. He has only three speeds. I told you about it,” he said, countering Lizzie’s suggestion that he was in trouble.

  Nell was more relieved than angry, but she knew the only reason Lizzie was standing holding the door was to see if her anger at Josh’s leaving school was going to be appropriately expressed.

  “You were supposed to meet me at school,” Nell told her son, hoping she was putting enough sternness into her voice to placate Lizzie.

  “I told Lizzie where I was going. I came right here. I’m okay. What’s the big deal?” Josh asked.

  “Not a big deal,” Nell said, but she wondered, how do I explain to them why I’m so worried about Josh doing one of his usual bicycle stunts? How do I scare them just the right amount without adding terror to their lives? “Just please don’t haul off when I expect you to be somewhere” was what she said.

  “But I promised Joey that I’d get his bike taken care of,” Josh protested.

  “Fine, but it wouldn’t have hurt you or Joey’s bike to have waited for me. Then I could have followed you to the store instead of wondering where you were or if you were stuck somewhere with a broken bike.”

  “It’s just a shifting problem. Nothing to stop me from riding it.”

  “Josh.” It was time to use the no-arguments-mother voice. “The point isn’t the bike. The point is don’t needlessly worry me or place your sister in the position of explaining why you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked down at the floor, not meeting Nell’s eyes.

  Now I’ve done it, Nell realized. Lectured him in front of Kate, his idol. Her mother karma was getting major negative points today.

  It didn’t help that no one said anything after the lecture until Marion broke the silence by saying goodbye and heading back to the library. She’d probably hoped for a few minutes with Kate, taking advantage of the afternoon lull to slip out of the library to a bike shop with no customers.

  “So, what’s the problem with the bike?” Kate asked.

  Josh wheeled the bike past Nell, still not looking at her. “It’s the derailleur. It’s not shifting right. I think Joey hasn’t been doing a good job of taking care of it.”

  Kate examined the bike. Lizzie had abandoned her door post, clamping her headphones back on and retreating to the car. Good thing children can’t divorce their parents, Nell thought as Kate and Josh talked in incomprehensible bike jargon. She knew that Kate was defusing Josh’s humiliation and she was both grateful and annoyed. Grateful that someone was undoing the damage she’d done, but feeling like she was being judged and found wanting.

  They finally decided that Josh would leave the bike overnight, and tomorrow they would work on it during the bike maintenance class.

  That settled, Kate had to attend to other customers, and Nell reclaimed her son.

  Josh still didn’t say anything as they went back to the car. Nell wasn’t sure how to apologize without diluting her message. It was important that he not just take off—not with things the way they were—Boyce loose and possibly aiming to get in one last piece of revenge before leaving town, and the voice that had destroyed her night. That person had already killed one young boy.

  The drive home was silent save for the escaped chings and hisses of Lizzie’s headphones.

  Take those off, don’t destroy your hearing. Don’t talk back. Don’t not be where you’re supposed to be. Don’t talk to strangers. Tell an adult if you see anything that doesn’t feel right. Nell ran over the litany in her head. How do I get them to hold in all these don’ts, keep them safe from the things that they don’t know enough to be scared of ?

  Nell made one last attempt at patching things as best she could. She led the way into the house and before they could disperse to their rooms, said, “I know I haven’t been in the best mood today and I’m sorry if I haven’t communicated my concerns well.” She could see their eyes glazing over—Mom was in formal mode, using big words. What would Thom have said? “I’m sorry I’ve been a bear, but I was worried.” But she wasn’t Thom and she couldn’t make up for his absence. “I shouldn’t have been so upset, but I was worried, okay? Don’t worry me and I won’t get so upset. Deal?”

  Josh and Lizzie both nodded. Nell wasn’t sure if they really had a deal or if agreement was just the quickest way out of the kitchen, to the phone for Lizzie and the computer for Josh.

  She let them order pizza for supper, and even dispensed with her usual hints that the veggie pizza might be a healthier choice than th
e pepperoni and sausage one.

  thirteen

  The next morning, Josh and Lizzie were safely dropped off at school before Nell headed to the office.

  She’d been surprised to see a police car cruise by the house several times during the night. She’d doubted Chief Shaun took her fears seriously enough to do that. No, of course he doesn’t take my fears seriously—he’s placating me, she thought. When she arrived at the office, Nell told Dolan what was happening. His office was right next to the front door of the Crier, so consequently he was usually the first person to see anyone coming in. And the first person to have to deal with whatever came in.

  So far, the day was a usual quiet day, with the most unpleasant task Nell faced that of prodding Carrie about her stories. Not that she was writing anything that had to be in this week’s edition, but Nell was roughing out the layout and having a story or not having a story made a difference. At the moment she was regretting her decision to proffer a possible front-page place to Carrie. Having to hold space on the front page for a possible no-show story and its pictures wasn’t the key to easing the tension she felt. If Carrie’s story wasn’t going to make it, then she needed to have something else lined up. Yesterday, Carrie had said that she was “working on it,” but Nell knew that when Carrie was really working on it, everyone in the office usually heard about it. So far, all was quiet on the Carrie front, and that didn’t make Nell sanguine about the appearance of the pound story.

  “Hi, Nell,” Jacko said, poking his head into her office. “How much of a story do you want from me about the murder of the Gautier boy?”

  “How much of a story do you have? Any breaks in the case?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. The sheriff says we need more proof to even be sure that it’s a murder, but the chief is hinting that he’s got some solid leads.”

  “Solid evidence? What did he say?”

  “Just something about the murderer is going to be convicted and on death row by the time Sheriff Hickson notices the boy was killed.”

  “That’s probably just bragging. Perhaps you’ve noticed a slight rivalry between them.”

  “Slight, right. Open warfare, more like. But the chief said the heavy-footed stomping of the sheriff’s men didn’t destroy all the evidence after all.” Then Jacko quickly added, “I asked what he found, but he won’t tell me. Just said, ‘You’ll see.’”

  “Evidence hinted at isn’t anything I’m going to put in the paper. Let’s stick with the small piece—you can drop the possibility of it being homicide but don’t play it up—and hope nothing major breaks the second we go to press.”

  “One small story it is, then.” Jacko went back to his desk.

  As Jacko exited, Alessandra Charles came into Nell’s office.

  “Have you seen this?” she asked, tossing a flyer onto Nell’s desk.

  Alessandra was the advertising manager for the Crier. It had taken Nell a while to admit that Alessandra was actually good at her job, mainly because she considered the woman to be everything that she was not. She’d always wondered how much Alessandra’s blond good looks and ample bosom had influenced Thom’s decision to hire her. She was the kind of women who could wear a navy blue suit in the middle of July and not show a drop of sweat. She didn’t have bad hair days, only perfectly coifed days and days of a windswept look that usually required a high-priced stylist to achieve.

  Nell had argued with Thom about the hiring. “Give the job to someone who really needs it,” she’d said, a reference to Alessandra’s reputed generous divorce settlement from the much older man she’d married when she was twenty-one. He had divorced her when she reached thirty-one, and given his success in building casinos, could easily afford his generosity.

  Alessandra seemed to want the job more as something to do than because she needed the money. That had been Nell’s argument. But Thom had countered by saying the point of the job wasn’t to give someone a paycheck but for that person to procure ads for the paper.

  That, Alessandra did very well. She came across as the poised cheerleader you always wanted to like you in high school. People who bought ads enjoyed the favor of her charm.

  But she and Nell had never been close—the bookworm and the cheerleader—even though Alessandra had a son, Rafe, just about Josh’s age and they occasionally played together.

  Nell glanced at the flyer on her desk.

  “Pelican Bay Lier” was boldly printed across the top.

  Nell glanced up. “They could use a better editor. Where did you find this?”

  “Too many places. At the community bulletin board at the grocery store, on just about every phone pole in the city, stacked anywhere people might pick it up.”

  Nell glanced at the rest of the flyer. “Don’t believe what you read in the paper. Too many lies get told every week. Don’t trust the people that advertise in the Lier. Buy from them and you support lying.”

  She tossed the paper back on her desk. “Wendell Jenkins’s first shot.”

  “You know it’s Wendell?” Alessandra asked. “That’s what I’m hearing, but why?”

  “Because I threatened to press charges against his son for almost assaulting me.”

  “Nothing like being the last to know,” Alessandra said. “Nell, it would be helpful if you shared things like that with me—things that might affect our ad accounts.”

  “I didn’t think he’d do anything. Particularly this … petty,” Nell said with exasperation.

  “Believe it or not, you and I are on the same side. I want to sell ads and make money for the paper. It helps me if I have some warning when something like this is in the air.”

  “Okay, well, the boys in blue and tan decided it would be better for all concerned to not try to put Boyce in jail, but instead let him leave town. So, he might be packing to go or he might be planning an assault on the offices. But the real reason Boyce was let off was that Chief Shaun got his jollies out of beating him up instead of arresting him. Also, someone murdered Rayburn Gautier and yesterday Josh wasn’t waiting for me at school like he was supposed to, so I panicked and fell into the bad-mother-yelling-at-her-kids trap. Now you can worry about Rafe, too. Sheriff Hickson and Chief Shaun are doing their usual arguing about jurisdiction and how to handle the investigation. Maybe we can sell space to alarm companies and gun stores.”

  “Guard dogs, too. There are a couple of kennels out of town that could use the exposure.”

  “You are joking, aren’t you?” Nell felt stupid for asking, but she never could tell with Alessandra. She had such a perfect, perky exterior.

  “Nell, of course I am. Good grief, you make this town sound like a soap opera.”

  “But with real people and real lives and no scriptwriter to make it all come out okay in the end. Or at least be the fault of the evil twin.”

  “What do you want me to do about this?” Alessandra asked, pointing to the flyer on the desk.

  “I guess we ignore it. Why give them the attention?”

  “It’s all over town, I don’t know if you can ignore it.”

  Nell looked at the flyer for a moment, with its misspellings and grammatical errors. “I have an idea. We’ll put it on the front page and edit it.”

  “Edit a flyer?”

  “Make fun of it. The spelling, the grammar. Instead of doing a serious rebuttal, we’ll show their version, then an edited version with all the mistakes removed and the text rewritten to make it better.”

  “It might be dangerous to mock a man like Wendell Jenkins.”

  “Not you, too. That’s all I hear these days—‘Don’t take on Wendell Jenkins.’ Why doesn’t anyone say, ‘Don’t take on Nell McGraw’?”

  Alessandra let out a laugh.

  “It’s not that funny,” Nell said, only half kidding.

  “No, I’m not laughing at you. But that’s a great idea. ‘Don’t take on
Nell McGraw—who knows what’s hidden in the archives of the Crier?’ That should get their attention. And you’re right—we can’t ignore this flyer, but we can’t take it seriously either. Nothing like reducing it to the level of a junior high paper. Okay, Nell, you edit and I’ll sell.”

  “You really think it’s the best way to handle it?”

  “Look, if the boys are going to be pricks, we have to make fun of them. It’s good to see you with your fighting spirit back.”

  “Okay, then. I edit, you sell.” Nell smiled at Alessandra.

  Alessandra returned the smile as she left to do battle with the pricks of the world, stopping on her way out to flirt with both Jacko and Dolan.

  Nell pondered her last comment. “With your fighting spirit back”—had she been so detached that even Alessandra had noticed it? She thought she’d carried her grief and shock well—taking care of her children, taking care of business, keeping her sorrow to herself during working hours.

  Fighting spirit, Nell thought, then picked up the phone. Thom claimed that a moment like this was when he fell in love with her—when, in response to his “You just can’t call someone up on the phone and ask them that,” she’d picked up the phone and asked them that. As she’d told Thom afterward, “Of course, they won’t answer the question, but what they do say can be very interesting.”

  “May I speak to Mr. Jenkins, please?” she asked. Then, not even waiting for the reply, “This is Nell McGraw, the editor of the Crier.”

  As she expected, she was on hold for quite a few minutes.

  Finally, he drawled, “Wendell Jenkins here.”

  “You need a better editor for you flyers, Mr. Jenkins,” Nell said.

  “My flyers? What flyers are you talking about?” His voice had the same lazy insolence his son’s had.

  “The flyers that are all around town, you know the ones,” Nell said, hoping that her voice conveyed an easy assurance that he was responsible for the flyers and they both knew it.

  “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re going on about. I can’t imagine you’d think I’d do anything improper.”