"It's very kind, but I didn't come here to ask you for money," Bo said, wondering what to do next. The information regarding Jasper Malcolm's abuse of his older daughter had shocked her despite the fact that she worked with such information every day. The dollmaker hadn't seemed like a child molester, but then neither did most child molesters. Trusting in what people seemed to be, she knew, was invariably a mistake.
The heavyset woman jabbed a finger at a jarring pink and green glass vase on the otherwise empty mantel, a stained straw briefcase clasped to her side. She was perspiring from her hike to the kitchen and back, wheezing softly. Bo felt her own lungs demanding air. It was as if Beryl Malcolm were absorbing all available oxygen from the room.
Aye an' it's like a cat she is, whispered the familiar voice of Bo's long-dead grandmother. A cat suckin' the very life's breath from a baby.
Bo was familiar with the Irish folk tale. The one warning mothers of soul-eating cats-in-the-cradle, their whiskers still as they inhale milk-scented baby breath until there is no more breath. Except according to Beryl, Jasper Malcolm was the cat, Bo reasoned. Not this obese, neurotic daughter with watery aqua-blue eyes. It didn't scan.
"Then what do you want?" the woman asked.
"I want to help Janny, Ms. Malcolm. She needs her family, some support, the truth about her past, an identity. Without any of these things she may not make it through adolescence with her sanity even though she has no real psychiatric illness. The system will assign her one anyway, and then warehouse her someplace until she becomes whatever she's told she is."
"There's nothing I can do for her, Miss Bradley. Surely you understand, I have to take care of myself. You deal with incest victims, don't you? You know that we have to protect ourselves at all costs."
"Mmm," Bo answered, standing. "I appreciate your time."
Back in the Pathfinder she gave Molly a dog biscuit and frowned at Beryl Malcolm's hostile army of porch geraniums.
"No, I don't understand that at all," she said softly through clenched teeth. "I'm beginning to understand what happened thirteen years ago, but I don't understand what's happening right now. I don't understand how you can just forget about Janny."
On the porch the geraniums appeared to bristle like potted terriers guarding treasure so old it had decayed into worthlessness. Like a pirate chest full of tattered doilies, Bo thought. Or a safety-deposit box crammed with deeds to long-collapsed mines. Beryl Malcolm had erected a fence of flowers around emptiness.
Chapter 18
On the drive home Bo mentally reconstructed a night thirteen years in the past, when the lives of two little girls had been damaged irrevocably. She didn't have to see the case file to imagine what might have happened. Tamlin Lafferty separated from the husband on whom she would have been absolutely dependent, separated perhaps by a court order designed to protect her and the children from his abuse. Tamlin alone with the responsibility for three small children, the house cluttered with toys, Sesame Street blaring from a TV, spilled grape jelly crawling with ants on the kitchen counter. Tamlin could easily have been at her wit's end when she fell into bed that night, needing her husband's embrace. And resenting the children for whose protection he had been ordered to leave.
Tamlin might have had a few drinks that night, Bo thought, or maybe a tranquilizer prescribed by her doctor for stress. She might have smoked a little marijuana, trying to calm herself and succeeding only in heightening a hunger for sugar and for sex. But whatever chemical ploy she tried would have worn off hours later, when one of the twins awoke in the night screaming, banging crib against wall as she rocked against its barred sides. It would have been Kimmy, Bo acknowledged with a shudder. Jasper Malcolm had said Kimmy was "the boisterous one."
And her demanding screams would have awakened Janny, sleeping nearby. The usually quiet twin, rumpled and confused, would have joined her reedy whine to the din. Tamlin might have awakened sick and headachy, unable to control the trembling in her arms. In the dark, not really awake but completely desperate, Tamlin might have...
Here Bo stopped. A worst-case scenario, it did not bear thinking. The pattern was typical for troubled and immature mothers struggling alone without supportive female relatives to teach child-rearing skills, provide respite, step in and take over when things threatened to get out of hand. Every CPS worker saw that pattern daily while investigating bruises, malnutrition, abandonment. But rarely did the pattern lead to violence and death.
"A two-story fall onto the side of a cement block," the medical report had said of Kimmy's head injury. A long fall, except there had been nowhere to fall two stories from the one-story Mission Beach cottage. A powerful blow, then, Bo thought with distaste. Had Tamlin picked up something, a book or other heavy object with a straight edge, and hit Kimmy with it? The force of the blow suggested, that the object had been swung, like a baseball bat. A taste of bile in the back of her throat alerted Bo to the fact that this train of inquiry must stop, or she'd throw up.
On the seat beside her Molly raised one soft paw and placed it on the bend of Bo's elbow. Though still very young, the little dachshund was already beginning to exhibit the empathic abilities which distinguish dogs from all other creatures.
Bo patted the paw with her left hand and said "It's okay, Molly. Good girl," eliciting a sort of black-lipped smile on the hound face.
Bo determined not to think about Kimmy Malcolm again that night. But what about the other pieces of the puzzle? The critical events were falling into place, but there were still facts that made no sense. Why had Tamlin changed the surname of her daughters to her own maiden name when she was still married to their father? Or was Rick Lafferty their father? Pete Cullen's file had included no reference to any man in Tamlin's life except her husband, and Cullen, Bo was sure, would have thought of that.
Madge's role in the drama also remained inexplicable, Bo thought as she turned off Interstate 8 at its, and the continent's, terminus, and joined the slower traffic on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. The winter beach to her right was nearly empty and limned with weak late-afternoon sun. Home. But aspects of the case seemed to hang over the mounded sand and occasional, solitary beachcomber.
If the events of Janny Malcolm's past were as grimly typical as they appeared to be, then why would Madge Aldenhoven take the uncharacteristic risk of removing the case file from the office so that Bo couldn't see it? And why hadn't supercop Pete Cullen amassed sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against Tamlin Lafferty?
Jasper Malcolm also remained enigmatic. Trained to believe even the most far-fetched allegations by children of sexual abuse until those allegations were proven false, Bo had accepted Beryl Malcolm's story at face value. But Beryl Malcolm, she reminded herself, was not a child. Had there been any investigation of her charges against her father? Why would Beryl claim to be a victim of incest if, in fact she were not? And if she were not, Bo told herself, the whole case again ceased to make any sense at all.
That was the cornerstone, the sickening fact of Jasper Malcolm as a child molester. From that fact all others spun out in the unwholesome design with which every CPS worker was familiar. Adult children so damaged they could never really function as adults without exhaustive therapy. Repeated abuse, although not necessarily of the same kind, of the next generation of children in the family. And that strangely flat narcissism so evident in Beryl's devotion to herself as "victim."
Bo knew better than to judge Beryl Malcolm. Her own childhood had not included abuse of any kind. Still, she thought against all her training on the subject, the woman's whining self-absorption had been a pain in the neck.
"I actually wanted to punch her in the teeth," she admitted to Molly. Saying it out loud was a relief. Too much social-worky niceness made her feel as though she were swimming in cream-of-chicken soup. In the chocolate-brown dachshund eyes was acceptance and a reminder that dinner would soon become an issue.
"We're almost home, and you can have either turkey and liver or beef chunks,"
Bo told her. "Then I have to clean the apartment for tomorrow."
The prospect was not appealing. Bo parked on Naragansett behind an ancient pale blue Mercedes, and stretched. She was tired, and that could be dangerous. Too much stress, not enough sleep, and symptoms of mania could seep through the restraining medications. She might talk too fast at the party tomorrow, behave too seductively with Andy or, worse, with somebody else. She might embarrass him, irritate her friends, frighten Teless. Everybody would leave early, smiling edgily as they thanked her for a wonderful time. They would glance at each other with knowing looks, and leave. It hurt her to remember other times when people had grown uncomfortable at her antics and left in droves.
“To hell with the apartment," she announced to one of the street people eyeing the Pathfinder's hood radiating heat from the engine. "I'm going to bed."
"Good for you," the man said through brown teeth, then leaned comfortably against the warm metal.
Bo hadn't noticed the light in her own kitchen window from the street below, and was surprised to open her apartment door to the sound of rap music and an odor that made her mouth water. Freshly baked biscuits and something with chicken in it simmering on the stove.
"Sha!" Teless Babineaux greeted her, turning off the abominable music and bending to pet Molly. "Nonk Andy give me the key and dropped me off to help get ready for the party. He said you shouldn't get too tired. So I cleaned up and made you some dinner. Chicken an' dumplings. Couldn't find no oovkang for dem peas, though. Peas good with dumplings."
Bo surveyed her gleaming apartment in shock, then focused on a jumbo can of peas exhibiting pride of place on her spotless kitchen counter. Oovkang undoubtedly meant "can opener" in Cajun, she assumed. And the absence of one in her utensil drawer had been an act of providence. Second only to raw fish, Bo hated canned peas. Canned peas, in fact, would be served daily, cold, in her version of hell. Her vision of hell would smell like canned peas. It had something to do with her manicky brain wiring, that propensity to assign exhaustive allegorical meaning to particular odors.
Teless beamed expectantly. Healthily. Youngly, Bo thought with a smile.
"I'm afraid I don't have an 'oovkang,' and besides, my religion forbids me to eat canned peas," she grinned. "But I'm famished and you're a saint! The place has literally never been this clean, Teless. Thank you so much. But how can I repay you for all your work?"
The wide blue eyes were unassuming. "Let me borrow your car to go see Janny," Teless said. "I talked to her on the phone today. She likes the ghost stories I tell, like last night at the hospital. I got a license, me. An' you gotta rest"
Bo considered the request. Janny had actually seemed to enjoy Teless's nonstop storytelling, even though both Bo and social worker Rombo Perry had shuddered at the stories' content. Haunted bayou bridges, dancing lights in antebellum graveyards, ladies-in-white who vanished from formal gardens like paper napkins blown in the wind. But rather than upsetting Janny, the stories had reassured her.
“Teless is a peer, another teenager," Rombo hypothesized. "Maybe hearing southern ghost stories told as factual events by a peer gives Janny a framework for understanding the inexplicable things that are frightening her. In any event, Teless is good for Janny."
"I'll call Rombo and see if it's okay," Bo answered.
"I already checked. He said no problem. And Nonk'll meet me there to follow me back here and drop off your car. Then we'll go on home, sha. You eat, and go to bed. I’m gonna tell Janny 'bout roogaroos tonight!"
"What's a roogaroo?" Bo asked, filling a pottery bowl with chicken and dumplings, then buttering two biscuits. Teless had already cooled a plate of chicken and broth for Molly, whose tail registered delight.
"Nobody knows," the girl answered. "Roogaroo's just strange things that happen, like noise in the night that don't come from nowhere."
"Sounds appropriate," Bo acknowledged while scrounging through the refrigerator for jelly. "Go ahead. There's an extra car key stuck to a magnet on the refrigerator. And Teless?"
"Yeah."
Bo feigned great interest in the label of an ancient strawberry jelly jar as she slid back onto a bar stool at the counter. "You seem to be having a terrific time here despite the fact that your boyfriend, whom you want to marry, is on his way to prison."
From the corner of her eye Bo saw the girl blush and then muster a guilty smile. "Robby Landry and me, we been friends since first grade, but he's not my boyfriend," she explained. "He knew how much I wanted to get outta there, go someplace. We was always gonna try it ourselves, take off together after we graduated high school, just gas up his old truck and head out, see the world."
"But you got older and Robby started getting into trouble, right?"
"Yeah, big trouble," Teless agreed, frowning. "He wouldn't listen to nobody, not even me. So this last time when we knew he wasn't goin' nowhere for a long time, we came up with this plan. Tell everybody we'd get married before he went off to prison, see? He even went into Lafayette, tryin' to get a license, to scare my folks. Made sure everybody knew what he was doin'. You know what he said, Bo?"
"What?" Bo answered through a succulent dumpling.
"He said this was our last chance to do it together, to get out. He said I had to get out for both of us now, and using him was the way."
Bo nodded. "Smart kid."
"Yeah, sha, it worked! My nanaan freaked and paid to send me out here. I always wanted to come out here. Do you think it was wrong, what Robby an' me did?"
Bo swallowed a last bite of biscuit. Teenagers, she mused, were so damn prone to asking difficult questions. And expecting answers.
"It's never okay to deceive someone who cares about you," she answered carefully. "Never. But sometimes it happens anyway. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
Teless scowled at the knuckles of her left hand. "You think I should tell my nanaan."
"What do you think, Teless?"
"I think I should tell her," the girl sighed. "And I think I should pay her back the money she spent for my bus fare. Except how am I gonna do that?"
"One step at a time, Teless. Just make a plan and then follow through. Now get going before you miss out on visiting hours at the hospital, and tell Janny hi for me."
With the teenager's absence the apartment felt calmer, Bo thought. Less likely to blow apart from all that unbridled energy. After a last walk with Molly, she turned the portable radio in the bathroom to the NPR station and lit a bayberry candle on the edge of the filling tab. The program was a Christmas special by a local investigative reporter, Margo Simon. Interviews of San Diego toymakers interspersed with children's classical music. Bo slipped into the steaming water as Simon concluded an informative chat with a man who made kaleidoscopes from crushed beach glass, followed by excerpts from The Nutcracker. Bo directed "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" with a long-handled back scrubber, then felt her ears lay back as Simon introduced the next interviewee.
"Jasper Malcolm has delighted generations of children with his beautifully crafted bisque-head baby dolls," the reporter said, "but rumors are flying that this year's award-winning doll, Johanna, may be the last. A phoned interview, taped only hours ago, seems to deepen the mystery surrounding this reclusive local artist."
Bo listened as Jasper Malcolm's familiar, cultivated voice conceded that the end of his career was indeed in sight. But, he hinted, there might be one more doll. His masterpiece. If only he could complete the prototype in time. Margo Simon, clearly not wishing to press the possibility of terminal illness during a Christmas special meant for children, let it go. But Bo did not.
Was the old dollmaker ill? Or did his words reflect a doom closing in from elsewhere? What had Kimmy's death meant to him? The lucrative sequence of dolls had been modeled on Kimmy and Janny, he said. Thirteen baby dolls creating again and again two infant faces that no longer existed. One a frightened teenager now, and one dead. Would the dolls cease with Kimmy's death? But Jasper Malcolm had said th
ere would be one more, if he could complete it in time. Maybe this last doll would be Janny, Bo thought. A lovely young lady doll in velvet and lace. An infant frozen in time, now allowed to grow up.
The broadcast closed with Debussy's "Serenade for the Doll," written for the composer's daughter, Claude-Emma, in the first decade of the 20th century. Bo stretched in the cooling bath water. Eventually, she pondered, everyone connected to this strange case, including Bo Bradley, would be gone. But some of Jasper Malcolm's dolls, like Debussy's music, would still exist. The thought was eerie. Bo shelved it for later and headed sleepily for her reindeer sheets until her progress was interrupted by the phone ringing.
Probably Andy, she thought calling to confirm the arrangement for meeting Teless and returning the Pathfinder. But the voice on the phone wasn't Andrew LaMarche's.
"Ms. Bradley," Jasper Malcolm stated decorously, "by now you will have spoken with my daughter Beryl."
"I have," Bo answered. Something in his voice made her think of mice, the scritching sound of mice in a dark cabinet where traps are baited and waiting.
"And she told you that I sexually molested her from the time she was five until early adolescence."
"Yes."
"Did you believe her?"
"I did at first, Mr. Malcolm. Then I had questions. Why do you ask?"
"It's terribly important to me that you know the truth, Ms. Bradley. There are several reasons, but please let it suffice that this matters. I did not sexually molest or in any other way abuse Beryl or Tamlin or any other child. Evil cuts a wide swath and a blind one. I am no less its victim than poor, tortured Kimmy or her sister, whom you are championing so valiantly. Please believe me."
Bo drummed her fingers on the counter.
"Why should I?" she asked.
“Why shouldn't you?" he countered. "Good-bye, Ms. Bradley. And thank you for helping Janny."
"I haven't—" Bo began, but he'd hung up.
The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five) Page 17