“Oh.” Thea had a sickening feeling that her sister was right. Given the choice of what to believe, people would always go for the juicy, dramatic lie as opposed to the less-than-conclusive truth.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?” This was a gloves-across-the-face gauntlet being thrown down.
“Okay, Bear, I give up,” Thea said, refusing to rise to the bait. “What do you think I should do about it?”
Practically sputtering, Beryl replied, “Well, I’m not the one who thinks she’s so much smarter than the police, so don’t ask me!”
Arguing with her sister would be fruitless. Better to come up with some kind of strategy here. Two heads and all that. “You’re the one who knows this town better than I do,” she said. “Do you think it would help if I went back to the police and told them what Whit said about the possibility of someone else being there?”
Beryl shrugged. “Maybe you should start your own rumor.”
“You mean ‘fight fire with fire’?”
A sly look crossed Beryl’s face. “I could tell Betty and Veronica—oh, look, you’ve got me calling them that now—and it would probably be all over town within a day or two.” She smirked.
Thea wondered if her sister was serious. “It could backfire, you know.”
“Well, I can’t think of anything else to do—unless we just pack up all Mother’s things and take her to my house in Chicago. Nobody’d know her there.”
“Oh, you mean the house that’s the biggest bone of contention in your divorce from Roger? Just how long do you think you’re going to be able to go on living there?”
Beryl sighed. “You have a point.”
“She’s stuck here and I’m stuck here with her. You’d better go back to Chicago and attend to your divorce. Otherwise, Roger will do his darnedest to screw you in the settlement.”
“Oh,” Beryl lashed out, “as if I’ll be able to even think straight when I’ll be so worried about what’s happening here!”
Thea didn’t respond, doing her best to keep a blank face.
“Damn stupid rumors!” Beryl’s manicured fingers were busy playing with the gold bangles around her wrist. She let out a long, ragged breath. “They can be so hard to live down—even when they’re not true.”
CHAPTER 11
Beryl was preparing to take her leave for the second time when Mother woke up. “Where you goin’?” she asked, eyeing her younger daughter with some suspicion.
“Back to Chicago,” Beryl said. “But I’ll see you soon.” She leaned in to deliver a kiss on the cheek, but Mother ducked her head and querulously demanded, “Gimme some cookies.”
Beryl’s eyes had a wounded look in them as she muttered to Thea, “She’s all yours,” and then, gaze averted, slipped away.
Feeling sorry for her baby sister—rebuffed by the Cookie Monster—Thea took herself into the kitchen and grabbed a handful of cookies from the variety of trays sitting on the counter. Hoping that was enough to satisfy Mother’s gluttony, she was about to pour a glass of milk when she heard a quiet, polite knock on the back door. She waited, knowing that a lot of Rockridge folks would knock, but if they found the door unlocked they would consider that an open invitation and just walk in.
Nobody entered so she put down the milk carton and went to the door. Through the glass panes of the upper half she could see a teenage boy, his heavy winter jacket thrown open to reveal a bright, hand-painted T-shirt promoting the town’s annual Art Walk—Annie’s son.
“Joe!” Thea exclaimed, flinging open the door. “You must have grown another two or three inches since I saw you at Christmas. Come on in.”
He gave her a broad grin. “My mom said you’re having a hard time getting rid of all the food you’ve got.” He stepped into the kitchen and looked pointedly at the plate of cookies and the milk carton on the counter. “I’m here to help.”
“Then you’re just in time,” she said, giving his smile back at him in spades. “But first, let me have a hug.” She reached out and, as Joe wrapped his arms around her, she was impressed by the muscular strength she could feel squeezing her back. Annie’s little boy was growing up.
As they pulled apart, Thea studied his face. It was a masculine version of Annie’s, but with his father’s coloring: brown eyes and hair and smooth, almost tawny skin. At fourteen Joe was in the early stages of leaving his boyishness behind. He would be a looker, of that there was no doubt, but he already showed signs of being a sensitive and caring human being. Thea knew that quality was what made Annie the proudest.
“Put your coat on the bench while I take this stuff into the den for my mother,” she said. “Then I’ll come back—”
“Let me take these to your mom,” he broke in, doffing his jacket and picking up the cookies.
Thea couldn’t help smiling to herself as she heard him in the den saying hello to her mother and introducing himself, as if she hadn’t known him all his young life.
“I remember you,” she heard Mother say in response. “You’re Annie’s boy, aren’t you? How’s your mother? I haven’t seen her in such a long time.”
Thea carried the glass of milk into the den. “Yes, Joe, how is your mother?” she asked, giving him a look that said, ‘Don’t let on that your mom was just here this morning.’
“Oh, she’s good,” Joe said with a straight face. “She’s already busy working on the Art Walk for this summer.”
Mother clucked in disapproval. “I don’t like those things,” she said as if she were deeply offended. “I don’t like to look at paintings outside. They should be hanging on a wall, that’s the only way to really appreciate them.”
Puzzled by this strange and evidently newly minted opinion, Thea decided it was better to let the subject drop than to pursue it with Mother. “Uh, I’m going to take Joe back into the kitchen with me,” she said. “He’s a growing boy and I thought I’d give him something to carry him until dinnertime.” She chuckled, signaling that this was a bit of a joke.
Mother, however, took it quite seriously. “He doesn’t look like he needs it to me,” she said, her eyes raking him up and down. “Don’t let him eat up all of my food.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Thea said, resolving to bite her tongue before ever again attempting to make another joke to her mother.
With a self-righteous sniff, Mother picked up the plate of cookies and, stuffing a whole one into her mouth, returned her attention to the cartoon playing silently on the television.
Thea gestured to Joe to follow her back into the kitchen, where she let out a long sigh. “Thank you for being so nice to her.”
Joe’s brown eyes acknowledged her with what appeared to be an adult’s compassion. “I’m glad Mrs. Prentice remembered me,” he said. “My mom told me that sometimes your mother calls her by my grandma’s name.”
“Alice,” Thea said. “Yes, I’ve heard her do that.”
“Yeah, I guess your mom and my Grandma Alice knew each other from the time they were little kids.”
Thea nodded. “That’s the kind of friendship you have in small towns. Just like your mom and I have known each other ever since grade school.” After what happened this morning, she was surprised by the amount of bitterness she felt talking about Annie and their friendship, and hoped he couldn’t hear it in her voice.
Evidently not, as Joe pushed his jacket over and slid into the breakfast nook. He reached for a chocolate chip cookie on the tray and took a glass of milk. “Thanks,” he said and then carefully chewed his first couple of bites.
As she slipped on to the bench across from him, Thea couldn’t help beaming at this child who had been the salvation of Annie’s life. Thea knew Annie was convinced she had been a terrible mother to her daughter Heather but, with Joe, she was pretty sure she had made up for all her shortcomings in the parenting department.
Sitting there, Thea felt a tiny residue of envy that she would never know what it was like to have a child, especially such an exemplary one as J
oe. But her days of pining away for children were behind her. She’d made peace with her childlessness long ago.
They chatted for a couple of minutes about Joe’s school before moving on to the Cubs and the White Sox and their prospects for the coming season.
And then, swallowing a twinge of guilt over pumping him for information, Thea leaped into the breach that Annie had opened this morning with her strange over-reaction to Thea’s plans to investigate George’s death. Whatever it was involved Heather, so here was an opportunity to get some insights from another family member. She wasn’t about to pass it up.
“So,” she said, hoping her tone came off casual, “How’s your sister? Do you see much of her?”
“Nah.” He shrugged. “She’s too busy with that job of hers. She doesn’t wanna hang out with her kid brother.”
“Ah,” Thea said. “How are things with Heather and your mom?”
Joe frowned. “They’re the same,” he said, his tone glum. “I don’t understand why Heather is so mean to my mom.”
“Ah, well, they have a long history of not getting along.” Thea glanced toward the den. “It’s often that way with mothers and daughters.”
He studied her for a moment. “Yeah, but sometimes I think that Heather hates her. I don’t get that—she’s been such a great mom to me.” And then with a remarkable bit of perception for one so young, he added, “Maybe that’s the problem: Heather is jealous.”
“You could be onto something there,” she said.
He sighed. “Yeah, but even when I was little and Heather still lived at home, she would fight with Mom. I mean,” he hesitated for a moment as if he were reluctant to make his revelation out loud, “like Heather would come after Mom—”
“What? You mean physically?” This was the first Thea had ever heard about this.
Joe’s eyebrows rose. “You never knew that? I thought Mom told you everything.”
“Evidently not,” Thea said, an edge to her voice. “Did this happen a lot?”
His nod was earnest. “Yeah. I think Mom was scared of her. Gee, I was scared of Heather sometimes. She would just go off!”
Thea absorbed this and wondered if Heather continued to have that same hair-trigger temper. “Do you think she’s still like that?”
Joe took a bite of cookie and a sip of milk before he answered. “I dunno. All I know is that when she comes around, she’s real sarcastic with Mom. She says things that are just mean.”
“Like what?”
He ran a hand through his brown semi-shaggy hair, producing a tousled look. “Oh, she makes fun of my mom’s paintings. She’ll say they look like Loki painted them.”
“Loki, your dog?”
He nodded.
“Maybe she’s trying to be funny.”
“No, she says it to hurt my mom.”
“Oh, boy—”
“And she calls my mom a hippie artist.”
“Well, in this town she’s probably not the only one who does that.”
Joe pondered this for a moment. “Yeah, but those other people don’t say it to her face.”
Thea chuckled. “If they did, your mom would probably thank them for the compliment.”
A little vertical line appeared between Joe’s eyebrows. Annie had the exact same line, only hers was deeper now. “My dad says stuff like that, too.”
“About your mom?”
“Yeah, when he thinks I’m not listening.”
Thea was taken aback. In the past, most of her conversations with Joe had been about mundane kid stuff, but never about the problems in his parents’ marriage. She knew Annie hadn’t tried to hide things from her son, but she’d hoped that the worst of their difficulties had gone over his head. Clearly, those days were over. Nothing escaped him now. Thea wondered if discussing this situation was the underlying reason for Joe’s visit today.
The brown eyes gazed back at her, full of frustration and pain. She wanted to say something that would make him feel better, but she couldn’t think of a damn thing that wouldn’t sound glib. A sorrowful “Oh, Joe,” was all she could manage.
But the fact that she hadn’t offered him some cliché, make-it-all-better condescending words seemed to please him. “It’s okay,” he said, his voice stronger. “She’s got me—and she’s got you.” He smiled at her in an endearing and slightly conspiratorial way.
After the way Annie had hightailed it this morning, Thea wasn’t so sure that her best friend still wanted her support. She tried to return his smile, but her emotions felt so bittersweet that the best she could do was fake it. “Right,” she managed to choke out. “Right.”
But Joe didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. He fell silent for a moment, then he picked up another cookie. He just stared at it, as if he weren’t quite certain what it was. “I heard my dad talking about Mr. Prentice,” he said, the words coming out measured and halting, as if he wasn’t sure he should give them a voice.
“Oh, well, that’s not so surprising,” she said, “George was an important man in this town.”
“No.” He shook his head forcefully. “This was a few days before Mr. Prentice fell off the cliff.”
“Oh.” Her gut was telling her that what he was about to reveal was the real reason why he had come to see her this afternoon.
Joe’s eyes slid to the side, remembering. “My dad was on the phone; he was saying weird things about Mr. Prentice, and the other person must have agreed with him because then he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re right. We should do it that way. He’ll never know what hit him.’ And then he laughed. It was a really nasty kind of laugh.” The boy’s eyes were wide and full of questions.
Thea tried not to let him see how significant she thought this was because, after all, this child was talking about his father, but she wasn’t sure she was successful. “Oh, well, maybe it was some kind of joke,” she offered weakly. “A practical joke or something.”
Joe’s look was almost scornful. “My mom doesn’t think it was a joke.”
“You talked to her about this?”
He nodded. “She told me to tell you.”
“I see.”
“She told me you don’t think Mr. Prentice’s fall was an accident, is that right?”
Thea was shocked that Annie had told her son this. “I, well, I’m not certain about it, Joe, but I think somebody might have pushed him—”
His eyes widened. “And you don’t think it was your mother.”
“Right.”
His gaze lowered and a pained expression clouded his face. “Then maybe it was that person my dad was talking to—or, or,” the next words came out in a whisper, “maybe it was my dad.”
CHAPTER 12
“Joe,” Thea said after a long pause. “Why did you tell me this?” It was a harsh question, but it had to be asked.
His eyes dimmed as he struggled to answer. “Because.”
Thea waited.
Looking more like a young child than a teenager, Joe’s face screwed into an unhappy frown, and Thea thought she could detect a glisten of tears in his eyes. “I—I’ve been worried about it ever since Mr. Prentice died.”
“Oh, Joe,” Thea said. Longing to rush around the table and gather him in her arms, she figured he would think fourteen was too old to be held like a baby. So she stayed put.
“I really liked Mr. Prentice,” he said, as if that explained everything.
“I did, too.” Thea moved on to another key question. “Do you really think your dad could have hurt George?”
His eyes flashed. “Well, I hope that he didn’t, but…”
When he didn’t continue Thea filled in what she thought he meant. “But you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t tell me what you heard. Right?”
He nodded, chewed at his lip for a moment, and said, “It was hard enough to tell my mom.”
Thea hesitated. “Well, do you feel better now that you’ve told her—and me?”
His gaze drifted down to his hands. “Not really.
”
“Are you worried what I’ll do with this information?”
His gaze was earnest as he lifted his eyes to meet hers. “No, Auntie Thea.” A faint, fleeting smile crossed his face. “I trust you.”
Around 5:30 Thea glanced at her watch, saw how late it was, and realized she had to send Joe on his way home or Annie would start to worry. Thea had given him a bit of relief by telling him that Cousin Bud Prentice seemed to have a much stronger motive for wanting George dead than his dad, but she held back that, from what Joe had told her, Dan Biggs had to be moved up to Number Two on the Hit Parade of Suspects list that she was compiling.
It was dark outside the protective circle of the security light, so she walked with Joe down the driveway, and watched as he got on his bike and set out for his house only a few blocks away. As he turned into the street he raised his arm and waved to her, and she waved back.
Across the street she noticed a lone car parked two houses over. Her curiosity was piqued, and she chuckled at herself at how quickly she was slipping into “small-town nosiness” mode. But the car was parked outside of old Mrs. Metcalfe’s home, and she rarely had visitors, so Thea couldn’t help wondering who might have been calling on the elderly lady. A feeble pool of light from Cam Maxwell’s carriage lamps across the street provided some illumination. Enough to make out a shadowy presence at the wheel. The rear windows were tinted too dark to see if anyone was sitting there.
Then, as she tried to peer closer, the high beams flashed on, blinding her. She turned, feeling ridiculous that she had been caught prying; yet still, she glanced over her shoulder hoping to catch a glimpse of the driver as the car moved past, but it stayed put. She could hear its engine idling, but she couldn’t make out what kind of car it was—only that it was big and dark and, from the purr of the engine, probably expensive.
Maybe she was feeling paranoid after her conversation with Joe or maybe it was something ominous about the way the car was sitting there, as if waiting for her to leave. Maybe she was just plain cold from standing there without a coat. Whatever the case, she felt a distinct chill run down her spine. Was someone watching her stepfather’s house?
What Has Mother Done? Page 8