Orchids and Stone

by Lisa Preston

  Picturing her sister meant a range of images. Suzanne’s funky clothes, hair, and makeup filled Daphne’s mind as the memories mobbed for attention. Feathers in her hair. Grating bits of orange peel into her tea, eating weird foods. Reading Eastern philosophy and Native American lore and Celtic myths. Her laughter made everyone in the room turn with an expectant smile. Her clothes stopped them dead.

  She wore broomstick skirts and miniskirts and kimonos and jeans under tutus. Sometimes with men’s jackets, trench coats. She’d been the first person in young Daphne’s world to wear a camisole without a bra and call it good enough. Suzanne braided strips of tapestry into her hair. She shaved it, grew it, let it form dreadlocks.

  Suzanne wrote poetry—sometimes naughty poetry about sex. She wrote plays and acted out the creations for her baby sister. She got As and Fs and laughed about grades.

  Her leaving for college started three and a half tough years of Daphne aching for college breaks, aching for summer.

  “I miss you,” she’d say, meeting Suzanne at the curb when whatever boy she was with brought her home from the university for spring, summer, or Christmas break.

  “I miss you, too, of course. I love you, Daffer.”

  Daphne would bask in the words. Even now, the memory of Suzanne’s I love you, Daffer stopped time.

  The safety of childhood shattered when her sister vanished. Not until Daphne had a youngster in her care did she relearn the sweetness of childhood.

  When she met Vic four years ago, he had an adorable seven-year-old son and an easy eight-year-old daughter. The kids were charming at first, but Cassandra’s behavior became uglier and increasingly catty with Daphne in Vic’s life, and the woman’s venom had infected two good children who had now grown into tough preteens.

  Four years back, Vic had a healthy, happy, sweet-natured dog in Grazie.

  He’d told Daphne his greatest secret, but for a long time, she didn’t tell hers, how the secret shame of potential culpability changed her life’s course.

  CHAPTER 5

  An odd sense of thwarting an attack smothered Daphne. She kicked hard and saw a helpless old woman in the backseat of a car, Suzanne’s coffin at the altar, and a noose—all with herself no longer an observer but the assailant and the assailed. The world morphed, and voices—no, one familiar, safe voice—melted into her consciousness.

  “Daph? Good morning.” Vic’s placid half rasp and hand on her shoulder made Daphne gasp herself awake like a diver breaking the water’s surface. He laughed and shook his head. “Aw, you fell asleep on the floor with her.”

  Grazie thumped her tail from the folds of the comforter. Daphne pulled her hand from the box under the bed. “Morning.”

  She met his kiss halfway and bolted to her feet, checked the clock as she grabbed her phone, shook out her hair and secured a ponytail with three firm wraps of an elastic band. Under Vic’s appraising half smile, she wiggled into her standard work clothes of a sports bra, T-shirt, and Carhartt jeans, feeling one long pocket along her thigh to ensure she had a carpenter’s pencil. The canvas pants, originally brown and stiff as cardboard, had worn soft and light as Grazie’s pale yellow fur.

  “Hey, Grazie? Grazie!” The voice was Thea’s, a quick, cusp-of-sarcasm tone, downstairs. The stairs carried sound like an intercom. Daphne had learned this not long after moving in with Vic, helping him in part-time parenthood.

  Mom says people outgrow each other and she outgrew Dad. Mom says Dad’s the reason we can’t have decent cell phones and we have to go see G-Pop on Saturdays. Mom says Daphne’s like a dyke.

  Vic pressed his lips together. “Thea’s here. Said you asked her to come over.”

  And I was hoping we’d have a morning together before I have to go to sleep, Daphne finished for him in her head. And I wish Thea wasn’t here at all.

  Grazie wagged her way out the bedroom door but stopped dead at the landing.

  “I’ll help her down,” Vic said. “You can go see Thea.”

  They met in the dorm during Daphne’s freshman year at Western Washington University. Thea’s long red ringlets and skinny build made her stand out as much as her milky skin did. At the time, most girls wanted to be tan but not Thea. No indoor solar beds or bronzing oils for her. She was a year ahead and pushed Daphne, who had yet to declare a major, to consider journalism.

  “All about investigative reporting, uncovering social injustice, getting the corporations, writing Pulitzer-worthy stuff,” Thea promised. “We could be partners at it, get jobs together after graduation.”

  Daphne’s parents had just wanted her to get any college degree and any good job. Suzanne would have wanted her to study everything, change majors eight times, join a lot of clubs and try every style. Daphne had ruined all those expectations, everyone’s.

  Standing in a house now with the two people she loved best, she knew neither of them understood her choices.

  “Hey, you.” Thea raised her coffee mug in an unspoken toast.

  Pulling a fat handful of bread from the bag and eggs from the fridge, Daphne fed four whole-wheat slices into the toaster and three eggs into the microwave poacher. She plugged her phone into the quick-charger. Thea, who lived on coffee until the afternoon, looked aghast at the meal’s size and offered one of the coffee mugs.

  “Thanks for bringing this.” Daphne let the bitter strength of double-shot Americano seep through her body.

  “He told me about the lady in the park. You guys called the cops?”

  Daphne exhaled, relieved beyond measure. They had overreacted making a police report, which meant she hadn’t failed by not calling 911 earlier. She wasn’t wrong for not throwing herself in front of the car, clawing out the other woman’s eyes, wrestling the steering wheel away from the man.

  “Sure,” Vic said, patting his leg as he entered the kitchen, to call the old dog in with him. Daphne held her breath for more, but he added nothing.

  Thea emitted a dismissive chuckle. “Well, if you’re going to call at all, wasn’t that a bit late?”

  “Better late than never,” Vic said.

  “Not if some wackos already murdered the old lady,” Thea sang, then snorted. “So you want me to see if I can find her for you?”

  “Umm.” Daphne let her gaze flit about the room. “I want to find, yeah, the lady’s address would be a place to start. So, to check on a lady named Minerva Watts who lives on the other side of the park, what would you do?”

  Vic picked up the fat Seattle telephone book, flipping to the Ws in the white pages. Daphne closed the book. “Not listed,” she said. “What next?”

  Thea wiggled her eyebrows. “I’d check records. Get all the house numbers for the street from a mapping program then run the addresses individually in the tax rolls until I got a hit on the name. Or I’d run the name through the Sewer Queen.”

  “The what?”

  “My contact at city waterworks. And I’ve got telco—”

  “Telco?” Daphne repeated the word without comprehension.

  “Telephone company,” Thea said. “I’ve got telco connections. And there are other databases I can access at work. But initial searching I can do online from any computer. My phone’s charging in my car. You only know her name?”

  Daphne stuffed more toast in her mouth. “Minerva Watts, probably on Eastpark Avenue, her husband was John. That’s all. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “So I guess you’ve begun by asking me.” Thea moved for the laptop sitting in Vic’s open briefcase at the end of the counter.

  “Umm,” Daphne hesitated as Thea fired up the computer.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said. But he stood there.

  Thea’s nails clattered on the keyboard as she typed one-handed, sipping coffee. She shook her head. “I might not get a match, given the demographic involved.”

  “What? Demographic? Why?” Daphne felt like a child who understood nothing.

  “Because she’s a thousand years old.”

  “Thea, stop
it.” Daphne slugged her coffee.

  Vic stroked his chin in a way that acknowledged everything. “It was an older lady.”

  “Like this is an older computer?” Thea scraped her nails over the keyboard and an error message flagged on the screen as the computer beeped a protest.

  “Hey,” Vic said.

  Thea clonked her ceramic cup on the counter and started using both hands to type.

  “Just …” Daphne rubbed her scalp and took a deep breath. “If you could find an address, Thee, it’d be great.”

  Vic blinked at both women. Daphne waited, feeling somehow selfish for having slept while he worked last night.

  Thea gave a quick shrug. “Little old ladies often do not have bills or property titles in their own names.”

  “Oh. But her husband’s dead,” Daphne said, catching her lower lip in her teeth. “I think quite a while back. She said something about that. Do you have to get property in your own name after awhile?”

  Thea shrugged. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  Daphne had been to Thea’s desk at the newspaper’s office, an expansive room of half cubicles and telephones with all sorts of computer and video screens lining the walls. She pictured Thea toiling through rolls of tractor-fed printouts, cross-checking special directories and dusty references. “How long will the basic searching you can do on the net take?”

  “If I’m lazy? About an hour.”

  “An hour? Seriously?”

  Thea sipped coffee then clanked her cup down hard enough to warn of breaking ceramic if she added more pressure. Daphne winced, pushed away a horrible memory, and imagined instead she could hear Vic’s unspoken thought, the same admonishment he gave Jed and Josie. Be careful. It can break.

  It’s stupid, Josie had said, just the previous afternoon on their abbreviated Wednesday visit. Mom has granite countertops. Granite doesn’t break. Ceramic does, Vic had told his daughter, soft-voiced. Stupid, the girl insisted.

  Stupid is what Josie called the countertop when Vic labored to clean the old grout, too. Here, Daphne would have liked to agree with the girl but for the mean-spirited preteen angst Josie carried.

  Vic shifted from one foot to the other and asked Daphne, “Would it be a huge inconvenience for you to take my car today so I can use your truck to pick up Jed’s bike this afternoon?”

  “Oh, no. I mean, sure, we can switch cars. It’s a big commercial project I’m on today and I’m only working a half day anyway. I won’t need much for tools.”

  “Thanks,” he said, kissing her again. “I’m going to bed. I have to be at Jed’s game this afternoon and it’s all the way up in Snohomish. You won’t forget Josie’s volleyball game?”

  “’Course not,” Daphne said, kissing him as he drifted out the door.

  Thea had layers of windows open on Vic’s computer screen. “You’re not sure about the street or anything, are you?”

  “She said she lived on the other side of the park and I sort of assumed she meant Eastpark Avenue.”

  “You assumed that because you live on this side of the park and you live on Westpark. People do that, view the world from their own prism.” Thea cleared her throat. “Well, if she lived on the block where you saw the car, there’d be maybe forty addresses to check in the block. Add ten blocks both ways to be safe. That’ll take—”

  “Forever,” Daphne said.

  “Maybe a few hours’ work.”

  “A few hours?” Daphne felt a flood of relief. If Thea got the old woman’s address today, she could go knock on the door this afternoon and see that everything was fine.

  Thea nodded and grinned. “We used to have interns who lived for this kind of assignment. I loved bossing them around. Find me all the Joe Smiths who have a six-two-four phone prefix and own a food establishment in the downtown district. Get me a list of everyone who owns a racehorse that ran Emerald Downs last month and who drives a Jag XK. Run down everyone with a cosmetology license who lives in Ravenna.”

  “Why would you make someone do that? Because you’re mean?”

  “That, and because it’s often the fastest way to locate someone I want to interview. News is a snappy event. When it’s fun, anyway.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, news is more fun when it’s fast-breaking. And yes, on all those examples. Like, a source mentioned this golden little tidbit he heard when riding with the friend of an acquaintance. He wouldn’t name the person, but he slipped something about going to the track in the guy’s Jaguar to see the guy’s horse run. Hand that to a real research whiz with good Google-fu and you can pin someone down.”

  “Good Google-fu.” Daphne murmured. “I don’t have that.”

  “At work, we’re way beyond Google,” Thea said with a sniff. “But hey, I’m slumming here.”

  Daphne indicated the computer and spread her hands in invitation. “Slum away. You know specific websites to check offhand?”

  “King County dot gov, for one.” Thea’s voice was less rapid-fire as she focused.

  Daphne willed herself to not react when Thea again clonked her coffee cup on the ceramic countertop. To defeat the niggling memory, she asked, “You know those web addresses off the top of your head?”

  “Well, yeah. Looking at address lists now and …” Thea muttered, clicking away, “Culling info from property tax records.”

  Thea punched more keys and Daphne heard the printer warming up at the built-in desk alcove where Vic liked to think his kids did their homework.

  “It’s amazing how much private information is out there, I guess,” Daphne said. How much should anyone ask about someone else’s business? “Why didn’t the police do a computer search for the lady’s address last night? They can access anything you can.”

  Thea snorted. “I think you overestimate how much they’ll work on every single question from every single complainant.”

  “I’m a complainant?”

  “Well, you were in this case.” Thea nodded at the empty doorway where Vic had gone. “Or he was, since he’s the one who called the police.”

  “Complainant. It sounds so whiny.”

  “So does complaining about it. Daphne, it’s just the standard police term for a caller. The person who calls 911 or the nonemergency number and tells the dispatch center that there’s been a traffic accident or a lost child or a burglary or—”

  “Or a little old lady saying she’s being robbed and kidnapped.”

  Thea lurched away to swipe a page from the printer. “You know, the whole thing actually makes no sense. Why would you kidnap someone in order to rob them? If I were going to rob someone, I would not kidnap said someone. And if I were going to kidnap someone, I think I’d be writing a ransom note to the person’s family, not robbing them. You know?”

  Daphne made shushing motions and groaned. “I don’t know. I’d just like to know she’s okay. I mean, what if … ?”

  Thea rolled her eyes and made a dismissive puff of breath.

  “No, no, listen.” Daphne said. “Don’t brush off the idea. Suppose there was some criminal enterprise that involved stealing from little old ladies, making them sign over all their property and—”

  Thea cut both hands across the air. “Stop. If it was a great story, I’d be all over it. But it’s not. I’d love it if it were, though. I could show up this new guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to journalism. Thinks he’s the combined Woodward and Bernstein of our age. Doesn’t seem to notice that one major paper in the city went online and our jobs are drying up. He’s tall and gorgeous and flirty and always trying to buy everyone lunch and help with their articles and stuff. I don’t like him.”

  “Because?”

  “He called me a dumb bitch.”

  “That’s terrible. And ridiculous. You’re not dumb.” Daphne patted Thea’s arm. “You’re the smartest person I know. I, I mean …”

  Thea’s sharp look muffled Daphne’s stuttering attempt to recover. Nothing made a person gulp like Thea’s curt Leave It
glare. Then Thea crossed her arms and lowered her voice. “Okay, so tell me the real reason you called.”

  Daphne wondered if her face flushed as she nodded rather than fight Thea’s insight. “I saw something. And I don’t want to leave things unfinished. I don’t want things to end the way they are.”

  Thea beamed and reached for Daphne in a wide-armed hug. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard in a while.”

  Daphne’s return hug was uncertain. “Uh, yeah, well. I just, I need your help to find a guy, a detective who retired from the Seattle Police Department.”

  Thea’s smile vanished. “What? Who?”

  “The guy who was assigned to my sister’s case. I want to talk to him.”

  Thea stared, openmouthed. “That’s what this is about?”

  “What did you think this was about?”

  “Honey, I thought you were going back to school.”

  “What? School! Why would I do that?”

  “To finish.”

  “God, no. I’m done with that. Forever ago.”

  Taking plenty of time pouring the last of the coffee from the paper cups into her ceramic mug, Thea asked, “Why did you quit school?”

  Daphne sandwiched eggs in toast and ate in huge mouthfuls.

  Thea sighed. “To get a retired guy’s contact info, I’d have to go shmooze Henry—”

  “He’s one of your contacts at the police department?”

  “Yeah, but even then, he’s not going to want to tell me.”

  “But I want … I need to talk to him, Thee.”

  “Then you go blow Henry Fragher.” Thea gave a wicked grin that melted to a kind expression when Daphne got near tears. “Listen to me. Your sister dying her senior year did not mean you shouldn’t have graduated when your turn came. You only need a semester to get your degree. You could do it in a snap.”

  To keep herself from bawling, Daphne set about making her mid-morning sandwich, a peanut butter and jelly to go. “I don’t want a degree. I want to go back in time. I don’t want my sister’s case to be suspended. And I want to fix yesterday. I want to know that lady is all right.”

  “Daphne.”