Caught in a Bind

by Gayle Roper

Nope, I hadn’t been wrong after all. I ran to the kitchen. “Quiet! Your mother’s sleeping.”

  “Like I care.” He stalked down the front hall and out the door. I followed and watched out a window as he disappeared around the corner on his bike.

  Did he often take off like that without saying where he was going?

  My father always said, “Your mother and I tell you where we’re going. You tell us where you’re going. I don’t care how old you are. Families talk.”

  At least some families talked.

  When the wall phone in the kitchen rang, I raced to grab it before Edie awoke. “Hello?”

  A man’s voice growled in my ear. “If you say anything to the cops, I’ll get you too.”

  “What?” I could barely push the word out of my throat.

  “You heard me. I’ll blow you away too. Just like your old man.”

  When the dial tone buzzed in my ear, I missed the cradle the first time I tried to seat the receiver. The second time I succeeded. I leaned against the wall and shuddered.

  “Who was that?” Edie stood in the doorway, her face filled with the warring emotions of hope and fear.

  “It wasn’t Tom. I’m sure of that.” I shuddered again. “But whoever it was sounded nasty.” I dialed *69 to see what number the call had been placed from.

  “This is your return call service. The last number that called is unavailable.” Disappointed, I hung up.

  “It was a threat?” Edie looked shocked.

  “Big-time. We need to call William.” I dialed his number.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “Tom?”

  “No. A threatening phone call. I tried *69. Nothing. Can you trace it another way?”

  “We probably can’t do much,” William said. “Edie needs to call the phone company and get a special Call Trace account set up. If he calls again, we’ll at least have a better chance.”

  I knew this service traced calls of an obscene or threatening nature, recording the number at the phone company where the police could obtain it. Edie herself would not be given the number.

  “Let’s go into the living room.” I wanted to put off telling her the content of the call. “We can wait for William there.”

  She looked me in the eye. “What did the caller say?”

  “He threatened me, though of course he thought he was talking to you.”

  “And he said?”

  I knew I had to tell her. “‘If you say anything to the cops, I’ll get you too.’”

  Edie lost what little color she had. “Too? He said too?”

  I nodded.

  “Was that all?”

  I shook my head. “I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘You heard me. I’ll blow you away too. Just like your old man.’”

  “Just like—” Edie gave a low groan and started to sway. I caught her just before she collapsed.

  I laid her on the floor and ran to the sink. I grabbed a towel that lay on the counter, wet it and hurried back to her. I placed it on her forehead, grabbed her hand and began to rub.

  Her eyes fluttered. “What hap—?” Then memory hit. “He’s dead. Tom’s dead.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said, but I don’t know that he knew what he was talking about. Maybe he’s just trying to scare you.”

  She pulled the cloth off her forehead with a shaking hand and sat up. “Well, he succeeded.” She used the cloth to wipe her face. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified, not even with Randolph.”

  With Randolph? How did he get into the conversation?

  She looked at me with sad eyes. “Tom’s never going to come home.”

  “Edie! Don’t say that.”

  “Don’t ask me how I know, but I do. Tom Whatley’s never going to come home.”

  EIGHT

  I knew something was up as soon as I walked into the newsroom on Monday. The air pulsed with awed wonder.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Larry, the sports guy. He was standing by his desk staring in mute fascination toward the big picture window.

  I saw nothing unusual. “Window cleaners are coming? The pigeons are having an open house and have invited us out to their sill? The African violets are being resettled?”

  “Look again.”

  I studied the window and the windowsill and still saw nothing. My eyes drifted casually to the right to Mac’s desk. “Oh, my!”

  Larry looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “That’s a mild expletive for the radical nature of the situation.”

  “As a nonswearer, I rarely get rawer than that.”

  “Remind me not to take you into the locker room after the home team has lost.” Larry flopped into his chair, still staring. “Something big is up. The question is what.”

  I continued to study Mac’s desk. It was neat for the first time since he’d become acting editor. “Does it mean he’s been fired? Or does it mean he’s trying to make a good impression? Or does it mean he’s lost what little sanity he had?”

  “He’ll never find anything now. We’ll be subject to fits of temper unlike any the human race has ever seen.”

  “You looking at something?” Mac asked softly from directly behind us.

  I spun around, my face red as I recalled my crack about his sanity. I refused to even recall Larry’s comment. I decided attack was my best defense. “It’s bad enough when Randy sneaks up on me. You don’t have to do it too!”

  He studied me for a minute as I glared at him. “I think I like you better grumpy than smiley.”

  “Ha, ha.” I opened my bottom desk drawer and dropped my leather shoulder bag inside. “How did you accomplish the cleanup between Saturday, when I last saw the indescribable mess, and this morning? And more importantly, why?”

  He grinned. “I had help.”

  That grin could mean only one thing. “You asked Dawn to neaten up your desk? I thought you liked her.”

  “When she heard Mr. Montgomery was coming in today, she volunteered to help me. We spent yesterday afternoon working. Together.”

  I couldn’t decide which concerned me more, Mr. Montgomery’s impending visit or Mac’s continuing infatuation with Dawn and its effect on her.

  “Montgomery’s coming to the newsroom?” Larry sat up straight, all nerves and rattled energy. It was obvious what was his major concern. “When? Maybe I’ve got time to organize my desk too.”

  We all looked at Larry’s working space with its dog-eared books of statistics and well-read sports magazines, Internet printouts, handwritten notes, professional team mugs with dried coffee crusts and a new box of doughnuts that he might or might not choose to share. Then we looked at each other and shook our heads. Not a chance.

  “But it’s okay,” I assured Larry. “Your job’s not hanging by a thread.”

  “As is that of someone else we all know and love,” announced Jolene as she plopped her handbag down on her desk and opened the Waterloo Gardens paper bag she had been holding carefully by the handles. She lifted out a basket of small flowering plants: primroses, tiny mums, tête-à-tête daffodils, grape hyacinths and cyclamen.

  “Oh, Jolene.” I stared at the basket, as bright as the spring it heralded, and promptly forgot all about Mr. Montgomery. “How beautiful. Did you arrange it?” I glanced at her face and knew by the satisfied look she wore that she had indeed clustered the flowers together and draped the graceful, airy Spanish moss around the edges to hide any holes or pots careless enough to show.

  Mac studied the basket. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad?” She glared at Mac. “What do you mean, not bad?”

  “It’s great is what it is,” he said hurriedly.

  “Right answer. Now put it on the corner of your desk and maybe Mr. Montgomery won’t notice the mess.” She stopped cold. “Where’s the mess?”

  Mac reached for the basket. “How did you know Mr. Montgomery was coming today?”

  “I di
dn’t. I just knew that if I were deciding whether to keep you or fire you, I’d come see you in action. Now we’d better get to work, so that when he comes in, it looks like we actually do things around here.”

  The door at the back of the newsroom opened and we all spun, expecting to see Mr. Montgomery come to catch us all at our leisure. We breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was only Edie.

  She looked terrible. Her face was pale, her eyes were puffy and her skirt actually fit, a sure sign that she wasn’t eating. I was willing to bet she hadn’t had anything since the cup of soup I made her eat yesterday afternoon.

  I hurried over to her, Jo right behind me.

  “No word from Tom yet?” I asked.

  She closed her eyes as if in pain.

  “Edie.” Mac held out the basket of flowers. “Take these and go home. You don’t need to be here today.”

  “Please let me stay.” Her face was desperate. “Please.”

  Mac blinked. “Sure you can stay. Whatever’s best for you.”

  I was proud of him for his kindness. Sometimes I actually liked Mac a lot.

  He still held out the flowers, ignoring Jolene’s accusing look. “These can cheer up your desk.”

  She looked at them, then turned her head. “They look too much like something you might get if someone died.”

  I didn’t think they looked like that at all, but I understood that she was terrified Tom was dead. I could hear her saying to me yesterday with desperate conviction, “Tom’s never going to come home.”

  Poor Edie.

  Wisely Mac took the basket and went to his desk, where he set it on the corner. Between the African violets on the sill and the basket on the desk, he looked like he was lost in a flowering jungle. He sat down and stared in bewilderment at his neat desk.

  I thought Larry might turn out to be right about coming temper tantrums.

  Edie went to her seat and began moving papers around. Jolene and I watched her out of the corners of our eyes, but she seemed all right. Gradually we relaxed and went about our own business. We did have a nine o’clock deadline.

  First I called the police station for the latest on the body in Randy’s car. William wasn’t in and wouldn’t be until the afternoon. I spoke with Jeb Lammey, the cop who served as their press liaison and PR specialist.

  “Nothing yet, Merry,” he said. “We’ve sent fingerprints to AFIS—that’s the FBI, you know—but who knows how long it will take to hear. It depends on how busy they are. And that’s assuming the guy’s prints are on file to begin with.”

  I turned my back to Edie and said as softly as I could, “What about Tom Whatley? Any word?”

  “Nothing there either. We’re making inquiries.”

  Ah, those all-encompassing, ever-convenient inquiries.

  “Any idea why the man was in the Whatleys’ garage?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Jeb, you’re not making this very easy for me, you know.”

  He laughed. “If it’s hard for you, imagine what it’s like for us! We have to find the answers. You only have to write about them.”

  We hung up, and I wrote a story that depended heavily on Jeb’s quotes about the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

  The business of comparing the arches, loops, and/or whorls from the fingers of John Doe to the millions found in the FBI computer was amazingly quick, but requests for assistance from AFIS came from all over the world. On a busy weekend, a request might be one of hundreds and would have to take its place in line. When several similar prints were finally found by the computers at AFIS, the possibilities would be examined by a fingerprint expert. The final identification had to be made by human eyes.

  I even ended up writing about Randy’s birthday car, a gift from his father, damaged before it was even driven. How sad. I think I kept my personal feelings about a gift of this magnitude out of the article. I certainly meant to.

  I reread my copy, pushed the right buttons and sent my stuff to Mac in his flowering jungle for approval and editing.

  It was shortly after nine when I found time to call Tina at her parents’ home.

  “I’m just checking to see how you’re doing.”

  “We’re doing all right.” Her voice was hesitant.

  I leaned back in my chair, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

  “He came last night.”

  “Your husband? To your parents’ house?”

  “Yeah. He wanted to make me and the kids come home.”

  “Obviously he didn’t.” Thank you, Lord. “But my father’s in the hospital.”

  “Oh, Tina! What happened?”

  She gave a little sob. “When he grabbed me, my father tried to stop him. Bill pushed him.”

  “What happened? Did your dad fall?”

  “No. He had a heart attack.”

  I closed my eyes, wishing I could make all of Tina’s pain go away. “Will he be all right?”

  “We don’t know.” She took a huge shuddering breath. “Mom’s at the hospital now, but I had to come home because of the kids. Oh, Merry, he’s such a good man!” I assumed she meant her father, not her husband. “It’s all my fault! I should have just stayed at home. I should have. Then Dad’d be all right and Mom wouldn’t be crying and everything would be fine.”

  “Except it wouldn’t be fine, Tina. You know that. You’d still be getting knocked around.”

  “But at least I deserve it!” And she began to sob in earnest.

  I let her cry for a bit until the racking sobs became soft weeping. Then I said, “Now listen to me, Tina. You need to remember that you never deserve treatment like Bill’s given you. Never.”

  “But neither does my father.”

  “You’re right. He doesn’t. It’s just another sign that your husband is out of control. You need to get a restraining order to protect you and the kids from him.”

  “I don’t know. I get so confused! My mom called the police when he showed up. They arrested him.” She started to cry again. “They were putting him in the police car and he’s yelling, ‘I love you, Tina. All I want is for you to come home. I’ll never touch you again in anger. I swear. I love you and the kids!’ It was horrible!”

  “Tina, tell me you’re not going to go back to him!”

  She said nothing, and I read a lot of bad things into that silence. I sighed. Another thing I couldn’t fix.

  “Will you let me interview you for the News?” I asked. “I won’t use your name or anything. I’ll protect you and the kids.”

  “You want to talk to me for the paper? Why me?”

  “I’m doing an article on domestic abuse. That’s why I was talking to Stephanie when you called on Saturday. I’d like to have your perspective on what it’s like to be in your situation.”

  Tina stopped crying as she thought about the interview.

  “Think of how you could help other women caught in situations like yours. Maybe something you say would help one of them be as brave as you and leave.”

  “I’m coming to Freedom House tomorrow,” she said. “I could see you then. Is that too late?”

  “No. That’s just right.”

  “I have a black eye,” she said suddenly, a touch of anger in her voice. “He clipped me last night when I tried to protect my father.”

  I thought of Curt holding me in his lap, comforting me even though I had been the foolish one.

  Dear God, I don’t even know how to articulate my thanks.

  “Mac, I’d like to go to Audubon, New Jersey, and see what I can find out about Tom Whatley.”

  It was early in the day yet, not even ten. Audubon was a small town just across the Delaware River, and there should be plenty of time to get there and back before Sherrie showed up at 4:00 p.m.

  “Why Audubon? I thought Camden was where he came from.”

  “That’s the official line, but Edie told me that Tom once let slip that he had graduated from Audubon High School. He later denied he’d said any s
uch thing. I looked in the Camden County phone book, and there are three Whatleys listed, all with the Audubon exchange. I called the numbers. One was an answering machine, but the other two claimed they didn’t know anything about any Tom Whatley. They were awfully belligerent for not knowing him. Maybe in person they would talk to me.”

  Mac didn’t even need to think about it. He just got a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin. “You’ve got good instincts, Kramer.”

  I hugged the rare compliment to myself.

  He nodded. “Why don’t you try the high school while you’re there? Check the old yearbooks. Talk to the teachers.”

  I could feel the excitement thrumming. “Sure. There have got to be some who remember him.”

  An hour and a half later I climbed the front steps of Audubon High School, a solid-looking tan-brick building, went to the office and signed in. I had to show both my press card and my driver’s license. I felt like I was trying to get through security at the airport. The school secretary directed me to the library.

  “You want Mrs. Russo. She’s been here forever, she never forgets a student and she’d love to help you. Just look for the lady with the curly hair.”

  When I walked into the library, several students were sitting at tables reading and several others were tapping away at computer terminals. I looked around and found Mrs. Russo immediately, a short, thin lady of indeterminate years. Hennaed curls stood out all over her head. Her red dress fought with her hair, but her personality beat both into submission. She was lecturing a linebacker-sized student, her finger wagging under his nose. He stood, patiently enduring, eyes on the floor.

  I approached her, arriving just in time to hear her say, “You’re a good boy, Jay Knowles. A bright boy. Don’t you go doing something stupid like trying to get by on Cliffs Notes again. Read the whole thing, young man. Never settle for the easy way out.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jay mumbled. He turned and walked to the table she pointed to, a sheepish grin on his face as the other kids smirked at him. He reached in his bookbag and pulled out a paperback copy of Moby Dick and began to read.

  “Senior honors class,” Mrs. Russo said to me, her sharp eyes watching the room to see if anyone dared challenge her lecture to Jay or tease him about receiving it. “They come in here each week for some sustained reading. Can’t have them taking the easy way out. No, sir, we can’t. They’re too smart for that.”