A Charmed Death

by Madelyn Alt

  Liss ran off to the office to find the digital cam she kept in the drawer for the sole purpose of taking shots of merchandise for the Enchantments page.

  “Do you know how to work it?” I asked her when she returned with the camera.

  “It can’t be too hard, I shouldn’t think.” Liss turned the camera over in her hands until she had found the necessary slot for the plug-in disk. “There we are. It appears to fit.”

  We exchanged an excited glance. “Can we upload them to the laptop?” I asked her. “It might be kind of hard to see detail on the camera’s viewing screen.”

  “One laptop, coming right up.”

  The first few pictures we skimmed through. A picture of a car, Amanda seated playfully on its hood, a knowing look in her eye. A group shot at a lake, her with the boy I now recognized as Jordan, surrounded by a few other couples. Several pictures of her and Candace and Lily, the Troublesome Trio, arms around each other’s necks as they mugged for the camera. Jordan, playing basketball. Jordan, dressed for Halloween as the Grim Reaper. One of the Trio, also from Halloween, who all seemed to be channeling your modern-day streetwalkers (or perhaps they were imitating the latest Hollywood starlets, heh).

  There was nothing strange about any of them, especially, unless you counted the odd pic of another basketballer, identity unknown, who was looking into the camera with an incredibly soft look in his eyes.

  Until . . .

  A boat. Sid’s?

  The pictures weren’t very good, as pictures go. Off-center, a tad blurry, and shot through a leafy veil, they seemed to have been taken with no real sense of focus, and at first glance, no purpose. I leaned forward, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. A pontoon boat with the somewhat uninspired name of Shady Lady, tied up to a typical wooden deck on a quiet, nondescript lake. The boat was white with blue and green trim, and on the large size for the overgrown puddles we boasted around here. Hanging from the railing were what appeared to be a pair of men’s swimming briefs (very), and next to them an itsy-bitsy bikini top in a bright Kelly green with white polka dots.

  Interesting.

  The pictures continued, a whole series of them, the minute differences the only indication that they must have been shot in sequence on the same day. If my first thought was to wonder where the owners of the suits were hiding, the final photo answered the question in vivid Technicolor detail. In this snap the cabin of the boat had caught a stray beam of sunlight. Even slightly out of focus, it was impossible to mistake the sight of a pair of human bodies intertwined in the throes of some kind of sexual gymnastics. Most impressive of all was the height of the girl’s legs. That had to hurt. It also answered the question of the missing bikini bottoms. They were dangling over the man’s right shoulder, swinging from the girl’s ankle.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

  Liss straightened, her face inscrutable. “If you’re thinking it’s a photographic record of someone’s love affair, then I would have to say yes.”

  “Someone’s. But whose?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  I didn’t have to. Assuming the only person who had touched the clock from the time it left the store until the time I’d retrieved it from the Roberson household was Amanda herself, there really wasn’t much guesswork involved. “Can we zoom in?” I asked her.

  Zooming in served only to pixilate the photo beyond recognition. Damn. “Who is it?” I muttered under my breath. “Who is she with?”

  The camera disk wasn’t offering any immediate answers, but that didn’t stop my whirring brain from posing more questions.

  Why did Amanda secret this disk within this antique clock? To keep the photos safe and sound in a place no one would guess to look? But in a clock she was giving to her mother, she had to know that they might run the risk of discovery. Or was that the point? Did she hide them in the event that something might happen to her?

  “It isn’t your usual high school photographic record,” Liss mused aloud. “I wonder who took them.”

  “And why,” I added. “Was it someone she was afraid of?”

  “The man in the pictures?”

  “Maybe. Or someone close to him?”

  “It could have been someone else,” she posed. “Someone related to the man in the photos. Because it is a man full grown, yes? Do you agree with that?”

  “Rather than a high school hottie, you mean? Absolutely. Body shape and thickness is all wrong for a young man in his teens. Which means it could have been—”

  “A jealous wife, perhaps—”

  “Or girlfriend. Although we can’t rule out a jealous boyfriend,” I reminded her. “Still . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well . . . we’re assuming the girl in the pics is Amanda. And while I suspect that’s exactly right, to be fair, we really should find out for sure.”

  “Mrs. Roberson?”

  “Mrs. Roberson.”

  “And if it is?”

  “Then I think we need to hand this over to the police.”

  After placing a BE RIGHT BACK sign on the door, I once again found myself driving out West River Road, this time with Liss riding shotgun. “I hope she’ll see us,” I said as I rounded the last curve. The Roberson house loomed atop the bluff, like it was waiting for us.

  “Don’t worry, she will.”

  We found Mrs. Roberson in a much more positive frame of mind than I had seen her in yesterday. She opened the door to us, bland curiosity the only light in her pale eyes—but at least it was more than the dead look it had replaced. “Maggie. What a surprise,” she said, her gaze flickering to Liss. “I didn’t expect to see you here today.”

  “I’m sorry to intrude, Mrs. Roberson—”

  “Wendy, please.”

  “Wendy, then. I’m really sorry to pop in on you like this, but we found . . . something . . . and I wanted to ask you a question or two about . . . well, about Amanda.”

  Her pale face went even paler. Her grip on the door tightened, knuckles going white, as though she couldn’t decide whether she wanted more to hear what I had to say or to send me packing. “You found something?”

  “Yes.”

  After a tense moment or two, she released the door and backed away. “Come in, won’t you?”

  We followed her into the white-on-white great room. She sat down on the edge of a chair, then stood back up again. “I should offer you something,” she said vaguely. “Tea? Coffee?”

  “Nothing, thank you. Wendy, this is my boss, Felicity Dow.”

  “How do you do?” Mrs. Roberson murmured.

  “Very well, thank you. I hope you will allow me to tell you how very sorry I am for your terrible loss.”

  Mrs. Roberson inclined her head, receiving the lament with a wordless acceptance.

  “About the clock that Amanda had bought for you,” I began, softening my voice as I went.

  “The clock? Yes?”

  “Your husband had mentioned that he thought Amanda had been in the process of wrapping the gift for you when she left the house.”

  Mrs. Roberson frowned, confusion etching her brow. “Yes. The box was partially wrapped, and it even had a gift tag for me. All that remained was to tape down the flaps of paper on either end. I guess . . . I thought maybe she was interrupted. Maybe she was called away or maybe she was late and had to leave before she was done, I don’t know.”

  “Wendy, I had wrapped the clock at the store, before she left,” I said softly. “She had to have unwrapped the clock, and then started to rewrap it. The gift wrap is the same.”

  “But why?” Mrs. Roberson worked to process the information. “Why would she do that? That doesn’t make sense. Does it?”

  “It does if you take into account what she had hidden inside the clock’s case.”

  Taking her cue from me, Liss opened her purse and withdrew the tiny storage disk.

  Mrs. Roberson stared blankly at the device. “What is it?”

 
; “It fits into a digital camera. Think of it as a kind of storage device.”

  “A storage device. For photographs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there pictures on it?”

  The time had come . . . “Yes, there are.”

  Mrs. Roberson swallowed, visibly. “I . . . I don’t know . . .”

  Liss reached out and put her hand over Mrs. Roberson’s. “If you’d rather not see them . . .” she said, her voice as soft and gentle as a warm blanket.

  Mrs. Roberson was trembling. “I have to know,” was her simple answer. “You can understand that, can’t you? If these pictures contain information, anything at all, about Amanda’s death, I have to know.”

  “We’ve brought a laptop with us,” I told her. “Since they’re already loaded onto the store laptop, we thought it would be easiest to show you this way.”

  She had us set up on the low-slung coffee table, with the laptop screen angled away from the tall windows. As Liss powered up the computer, I could see the cracks in the veneer of Mrs. Roberson’s well-cared-for face deepening, tiny fissures that were expanding with the twin pressures of sorrow and guilt battling within her. She looked ancient, weary, and utterly, desperately alone.

  She relaxed a little when she saw the first pictures. “Jordan’s car. He’s very proud of it. Oh, but doesn’t my girl look pretty. Some of her friends. Candace and Lily there. Don’t they all look lovely. Halloween—that seems like only yesterday. Oh, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t.”

  “Do you recognize this boy?” I asked her, showing her the photo of the second basketball player.

  “That’s Charlie, a boy she worked with. Always trying to get her to go out with him. Seemed a nice enough boy, but Amanda wasn’t interested, really.”

  “Charlie Howell?”

  “Yes, I think that’s right.”

  It was time for the big reveal. My heart began to pound.

  “A boat?”

  “Do you recognize it?” Liss asked quietly.

  “No. No, I’m sure I don’t. Why, do you think it’s important?”

  I couldn’t answer. I had to let the last picture speak for itself.

  Mrs. Roberson went quiet. I don’t think she was even breathing. She leaned closer to the laptop. “Is . . . is that . . . ?”

  She couldn’t seem to finish. Tears had formed in her eyes, and all I could think was that no mother should have to have that image of her own daughter burned onto the fabric of her brain. Rivers of despair coursed through her, as palpable in the air as any physical force or substance. That old saying about wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve? Well, the sleeve is more a person’s energy field, but the concept is pretty much the same. Mrs. Roberson’s heart might as well have been a ten-foot beacon that spelled out “CALLING ALL EMPATHS” with flashing red lights.

  “Wendy, I think we need to know for certain whether the girl in the photo is Amanda,” Liss murmured as gently as possible.

  Mrs. Roberson gave us a short, wooden nod. “Yes, it’s her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “The shape of the . . . the legs. The suit . . . yes, it’s her.”

  “Amanda owned a swimsuit like that?”

  Mrs. Roberson nodded.

  Liss looked at me. “Then that begs the question: Who took the photos?”

  “I suppose . . .” Mrs. Roberson bit the inside of her lip. “Well, it’s possible that Amanda took them herself.”

  “Herself?” I frowned and sat up straighter. “But these were taken of her from a little ways away. How could she—”

  “Amanda took a photography course at Grace College the summer before her junior year. She’s been notorious with her camera ever since. She was always setting it up in different places, trying to catch people unawares. You know, just silly kid stuff.”

  “Setting up the camera is one thing—but someone still has to take the picture.”

  Mrs. Roberson nodded, tearful once more. “She begged her dad for a wireless remote control for her camera, and of course Sid bought it for her. Daddy’s little girl, you know. It seemed innocent enough at the time.”

  We were losing her again. To bring her back, I reached over and gently placed my hand on hers. “Wendy . . . Is Amanda’s camera equipment here in the house?”

  She blinked away the fog of memory and regret, and took a steadying breath. “Yes. The police, they checked the camera for any relevant photos, but it was wiped clean. It’s upstairs in her room.”

  “Could we see it?”

  She stood. “I’ll just get them, then.”

  When I was sure she was out of earshot, I turned to Liss. “Wireless.”

  “Point and click,” Liss said, nodding.

  “Do you think it’s possible? Did Amanda take the pictures herself?”

  Liss looked pensive. “Assuming the remote works in the way that we think it might, I would say not only is it possible, but it’s almost certainly the most sensible assumption. It would certainly explain a few things, at least.”

  “Like why the pictures were slightly out of focus, why they weren’t better planned, or even pointed directly at the subject in question—the boat. Because even moored, the boat is on water and will shift around with the wind. So,” I summed up, “if you have a fixed object—a camera—pointed at a shifting object—the boat—what do you get?”

  “Blurry, off-center photographs.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I wonder how far away a camera can be and still have the remote work.”

  We went quiet again when we heard Mrs. Roberson’s footsteps descending the curving stairs. Before her she carried her daughter’s camera equipment with the reverence one might afford a church offering plate. She set it down on the coffee table next to the laptop.

  “Here it is,” she said. “And this is the remote.”

  She placed a small black object next to the camera. Liss and I exchanged a glance. The size of a matchbox, only thinner, it was easy to see how simple it might have been for Amanda to conceal the device in her hand.

  I picked up the remote. It seemed fairly straightforward—a pressure-sensitive button for taking a picture, another for controlling the power on the camera. According to the label on the back, it worked within a range of up to fifty feet. And, most importantly, no telltale wires to disguise or conceal.

  Mrs. Roberson took the tiny storage disk in hand, staring down at it as it lay in her palm. Without a word she turned the camera over. “Where would this thing go?”

  I pointed out the slot and watched as she did the honors. The disk slid into place. That solved that question.

  “Mrs. Roberson—Wendy—think back. Have you ever seen that boat before?”

  She frowned at the photo displayed in all its lurid glory on the laptop screen. “I don’t think so. Sid might, of course—oh, but he mustn’t know about these pictures.”

  Liss and I exchanged a glance. The photos had been shocking enough. Was she strong enough to handle the reality of the blog? Liss shrugged, leaving the decision up to me.

  I took a deep breath and reached for my purse. “Wendy, there’s something more we need to tell you. Do you remember giving me a CD the other afternoon, when my mom and I stopped in to see you?”

  “Yes,” she mumbled, scarcely able to meet my eyes, “I remember. Vaguely, but I remember.”

  From her answer, I couldn’t tell whether she regretted her actions or not. “Most of those files were password-protected—I have a friend helping with that—but there was one file that came up without entering a password. A file with some computer art.”

  Her relief was instantaneous. “Oh. Is that all? Yes, Amanda was always fiddling about on her laptop when she was home. She was quite adept at things like that.”

  I took a deep breath. “Actually, that isn’t all. You see, I had seen the graphic design before. I just didn’t associate it with Amanda until the CD. I don’t know quite how to tell you this.”

  In the end, I didn’t. I cou
ldn’t. I just removed the printout of the blog from my purse and handed it to her. Mrs. Roberson hesitated a moment before taking it, her hands shaking hard enough to rattle the papers. She read slowly, painfully, through a few pages, then squeezed her eyes closed and set the printout down on the coffee table.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told her. “I couldn’t think of a better way to tell you.”

  She opened her eyes again and looked at me. “Not your fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was probably mine. I suspected, you see. I suspected that Amanda had been . . . free . . . with more than just her boyfriend. I would overhear her sometimes, on the phone with her friends, when she thought I was downstairs. But I chose to pretend I heard nothing. It was easier that way.” She fell silent, lost in thought. “The clock . . . She was going to give it to me and hide these there, under my very nose. In my own bedroom,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “How did she get so smart?”

  “Smart?” I echoed.

  “She was always hiding things from me, you know.” Wendy grimaced. “Whenever I worried about her, I would go into her room. Sift through her things. To, you know, see what we were dealing with. Or even just to reassure myself. Sometimes I’d find something, and then I could talk to her about it and she couldn’t sweet-talk her way out of things. I hadn’t found anything in a while. I thought maybe that meant she had less to hide, that she was growing out of it, but I guess I was only kidding myself. She’d just gotten smarter about her hiding places. God! How could I have been so blind?”

  I, too, was quiet a moment, trying to decide how best to explain. “Wendy, the photos and the blog might be important. We’re going to have to turn them over to the police.”

  “But Sid—”

  “We won’t be the ones to tell Sid, I can promise you that. But I can’t promise that the police won’t want to talk to you both about the photos and the blog. I don’t think you’re going to be able to keep this from him indefinitely. I’m so sorry.”

  “I just . . . I just want to know how all of this could have happened to my little girl. I don’t understand why it happened at all. What did I do wrong?”