Whittaker 03 The Secrets We Keep

by Donna White Glaser

  Good lord. I shivered so hard it felt like palsy. The good kind.

  Shaking his head, he straightened up and took a step back. “This is going to be more difficult than I thought.”

  “You’re telling me,” I whispered as I reached for the door. Turning the key, I blew him a kiss and slipped through the door. Shutting it behind me, I flipped the bolt, and then peeked through the eyehole. He stood there a couple minutes smiling at the eyehole, knowing I was watching, then blew me a kiss back. I listened to his footsteps trot down the stairs, and went to the window to watch him get in his car and drive away.

  Twitter-pated. Definitely twitter-pated. I couldn’t stop smiling as I went into the bedroom to get my robe. I needed a shower—preferably a cold one—but what I genuinely wanted was to phone Beth, and give her a play-by-play.

  My room was about twenty degrees hotter than the front of the apartment. Halfway to the closet I tripped over something and almost brained myself on the dresser. Siggy? He was usually pretty careful about avoiding my feet. I flicked the overhead light on.

  Not Siggy. A rock the size of a grapefruit. Shattered glass glittered everywhere I looked. Somebody had thrown a rock through my window.

  Heart pounding, I scanned the room but couldn’t see any other disturbance. And I wasn’t going to wait around for one, either. For all I knew the rock thrower’s goal was access, not vandalism.

  He could be in here with me.

  I took off at a dead-run for the front door when I remembered poor Siggy. He must have been spooked half to death when the window shattered. I couldn’t leave Siggy. Struggling to keep my voice steady, I called for him. Not gonna happen. A recently adopted stray, he’d always had an uncanny sense of fear, and would take off whenever I got the least bit nervous. I’d have to hunt him down.

  Grabbing a steak knife, I moved warily through the rooms, checking under my bed and in closets. I finally found him hiding under the couch.

  On a positive note, after covering the whole apartment with my frantic kitty search, I at least knew no one was going to jump out of the shadows and clobber me over the head. Or stab me to death and leave me lying like a used tissue on my bed. I shuddered and forced myself to calm down and think.

  One thing was definite: I wasn’t staying here. Like Beth’s breakins, it was too big of a coincidence to believe the rock-thrower wasn’t the killer. Which meant the killer knew exactly where I lived.

  Enough thinking. I quickly packed the basics, and since I didn’t have a pet carrier, used a laptop case for pet-stuffing purposes. Siggy was not amused. Grabbing my purse, I flung myself down the hall and out the door I had just floated through a bare fifteen minutes earlier.

  FORTY

  I didn’t get a shower until long after midnight. After successfully smuggling Siggy into a no-pets-allowed, chain hotel, I realized I hadn’t brought his litter box. I could ignore many things, but letting my kitty go freestyle in a shared room wasn’t one of them. Turning the TV on to block any disgruntled yowls, I shut him up in the bathroom and headed back out.

  Despite bringing him his “necessities,” Siggy wasn’t speaking to me when I returned. He stalked out of the bathroom, hopped on the bed and presented me with his regal backside.

  “Fine,” I said. “Be that way. I’m taking a shower.”

  At least the water soothed. Using a credit-card sized bar of soap, I replaced the fading scent of fresh grass and bug spray with antibacterial faux-floral. After drying off with two towels the color, size, and texture of Kleenex, I crawled into bed trying not to think of the many news stories on hotel room cleaning scandals and bedbug infestations I’d heard.

  My brain sizzled like it had a short circuit, but there was one more thing I had to do before I could crash. I called Eli.

  I woke him, but once I told him about the rock, he snapped alert. After being assured of my safety, he asked if I’d called the police.

  “I just don’t see what good it would do,” I said, “other than having a record of it. Besides, I don’t think they could get any fingerprints off the rock, and I seriously doubt if they’d spend the money trying since it was just vandalism.” I had CSI training, after all; I watched the TV show every chance I got.

  Plus, there was a slight chance the incident wasn’t caused by our freaky, neighborhood killer. Now that I’d calmed down I realized somebody interested in killing me wouldn’t have gained entry in such an obvious way. Despite my earlier panic, a rock thrown through a window seemed rather juvenile. And, unfortunately, looking at it in that context I could all too easily picture a certain immature, bratty sister of mine heaving a boulder through my window.

  Eli and I spent a few seconds breathing into the phone as we pondered different lines of thought.

  Proving it, Eli broke the silence saying, “Maybe I should come over?” I could hear the smile in his gravelly voice.

  I liked his train of thought much better than my own, but… “No, you shouldn’t.”

  He chuckled softly into the phone, making me smile much sooner than I’d thought I could. We said good-night.

  Sighing, I turned the light off, snuggling down into the strange bed. Even though it was a non-smoking room, the smell of stale cigarette smoke spread as the A/C hummed on, rustling the curtains. Siggy padded across the bed, curling up next to me. Soft purring offered absolution, and my body finally relaxed.

  Some joker had sabotaged the alarm clock in the hotel, inverting p.m. for a.m., which made me late for work. I fed Siggy and hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob as I left. I’d have to pay for an extra night, but I couldn’t leave Siggy home with all that shattered glass and an open window.

  After the glorious summer day yesterday, the weather had turned overcast and muggy. I’d forgotten hair gel and had used up the thimble-sized sample of shampoo the hotel provided the night before. My hair frizzed into the type of halo that does not denote an angelic attitude.

  Since the clinic had closed for the holiday, I’d been forced to book clients well into Saturday evening in order to fit everyone in. Unfortunately, with the change in routine, more than a few were no-shows, leaving gaps in the middle of the day where it did me the least good. I used the open hours to review copies of the articles Beth had uncovered. Ate a couple emergency Snickers bars and a handful of stray Tootsie Rolls.

  Early articles reported fourteen-year-old Gary Westcap had been transported to Sacred Heart, and pronounced dead-on-arrival. Speculation in the community arose as to whether his death could have been prevented had the driver stopped and given aid. I learned Gary’s mother, Patty, was a single mom with two younger children. Reporters made much of the fact that Patty had been working the third-shift the night of the accident. She’d been paying a sixteen-year-old babysitter who lived two doors down from the Westcap’s apartment ten bucks a night to put the kids to bed when Patty worked. The teen’s parents didn’t allow her to sleep there, however.

  Admittedly, the arrangement sucked. But it was one that allowed the single mom, during the school year, to be home in time to get the kids on the bus, sleep a couple hours during the day, and supervise their homework when they got home. The media had a heyday, taking turns vilifying her for the lack of supervision and glorifying her as a struggling single parent.

  The last article, a follow up, had one additional piece of information. Patty Westcap had begun attending a weekly grief counseling group.

  Right down the hall from the very office in which I sat.

  I called Beth at my next break.

  “She goes to counseling at your clinic?” she asked.

  “She participated in the Living With Loss group months ago, but it’s only a twelve-week group. It ended last winter. They run them every quarter, but I don’t know if she continued.” Patty Westcap had never been my client and, more pertinently, the information I was relaying to Beth came from a newspaper, but it still felt weird to talk about it.

  “Can’t you check?” Beth asked.

  “Che
ck?”

  “Yeah, can’t you look her up? She’s got to be in the files, right? Her address and notes and stuff. Wouldn’t they say if she was homicidal?”

  “I can’t do that, Beth. I can’t just go look through someone’s file. And even if I had her consent to review it, I couldn’t tell you about it.”

  “If she killed Trinnie, I think it’s safe to assume she’s not going to give her consent. Can’t you just… peek?”

  “I can’t even enter her name in the system to see if she actually attended.”

  Beth remained unconvinced there wasn’t a loophole available for slipping through, but eventually she gave in. After we hung up, I thought back to fall, the time when Patty Westcap would have likely had started the grief group. Living With Loss met on Tuesdays, my late night. Odds were I’d crossed paths with Westcap in the hall or lobby.

  I scrolled through my own schedule for those evenings. The group met at 7:00 p.m., so I checked my appointments before, during, and after that time period, trying to remember anybody I might have passed in the halls. So many months ago.

  In the end, I tentatively narrowed down two possibilities: a brunette and a strawberry blonde, whose gaunt frame shrieked eating disorder and whose lush, butt-length hair inspired waves of envy. I had no way to know if either was Westcap; the papers hadn’t included a photo of her.

  Understandably, the articles hadn’t given out an address for the family, either. The obituary did mention that, in lieu of flowers, donations could be sent to Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. I guess, even then, they were assuming a drunk driver. It also listed the funeral home—Marsh’s.

  The irony of Gary Westcap and Trinnie crossing paths a second time, months apart, didn’t escape my notice.

  My office phone rang, startling me. The front desk took all incoming calls, handling cancellations and rescheduling appointments from the main computer and taking messages for most everything else. A call being transferred back was a rare enough occurrence that a sense of foreboding rose in my chest.

  An accurate assessment, it turned out.

  “Ma? What’s going on?”

  “Are you kidding me? Somebody beat your sister half to death, that’s what’s going on. I get a call in the middle of the night, scared the crap out of me, and of course when I call you, you’re not around. I end up coming all the way in to town, and by the time I get to the hospital, your sister’s not there. Do you have her?”

  “Wait.” My brain struggled to process everything. I went back to the beginning. “Kris was beat up?”

  “I just said that.”

  “By who?”

  “I thought you went to that fancy college. Aren’t you supposed to say “by whom?”

  “Ma, that’s not the—”

  “I don’t know by whom. He didn’t leave a calling card, and your sister won’t pick up her phone.”

  Kris always became “my” sister instead of “her” daughter whenever she caused problems for Ma. “But she was well enough to be discharged?” I asked.

  “Hell no. She took off against doctor’s advice or whatever. She never listens. And she’s not at her place, which is a complete pig sty, by the way.”

  “Well, how bad is she?” My voice rose. Only my mother could bitch about grammar and messy apartments when her daughter was probably lying bruised and bloody in a ditch along the highway.

  “How do I know? They won’t tell me anything—her own mother!—without some fancy form, which of course Krissy never signed. But listen, if you hear from her you tell her to call someone else next time she gets in a pickle. I came all the way in to town for what? Nothing, that’s what.”

  We spent another fifteen minutes annoying each other, then I told her I had a client and hung up. Pulling my cell phone out, I checked to see if I’d missed any calls from my gone-rogue sibling. Nothing. I called her, but it went straight to voice mail.

  Kris, what happened to you? A multi-layered question.

  Feeling restless, but not expecting to connect, I called Eli. I was in luck, but also in a dilemma. Even though I’d called him, I wasn’t prepared to talk about Kris or her latest grand adventure. I’d have to be careful, though. Despite the short amount of time we’d known each other, he’d clue in on my anxiety—unless I could keep him focused on other matters.

  And there were plenty of those.

  Unlike Beth, when I told him about the Living With Loss connection, he understood the ethical dilemma. In reading his own copies of the articles, he’d also uncovered new information.

  “Did you notice which hospital they took Gary to?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “That’s because you don’t have a sister who works at that hospital.”

  “Lainey? But how can that help us?”

  “One of the nurses had gone to high school with Gary’s mom,” he said. “She ended up going to the funeral.”

  “At Marsh’s,” I interrupted.

  “Yep. Ever wonder how a third shift waitress could afford Marsh’s?”

  Hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe insurance?”

  “Patty’s co-workers held one of those fundraisers and set coffee cans out all over town. They paid for the funeral.”

  “That’s certainly nice, but I still don’t see how that helps? Marsh’s isn’t going to give us Westcap’s address.”

  “No, and Lainey wouldn’t tell me, either. But she was able to tell me where those lovely co-workers of Patty work. That’s not part of hospital record.” He told me the name of a local, open-all-night restaurant.

  “Do you think she still works there?” I asked.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  Gary had been hit on a Friday or, more probably, Saturday in the wee hours. Which meant his mom worked at least part of the weekend. Of course, she could have changed her schedule or her job a dozen times since then, so there was no guarantee she’d be there tonight.

  But it was worth a try.

  FORTY ONE

  My last client was scheduled for 7:00. When he didn’t show up, I waited twenty minutes, then documented the absence in his file. We’d talk about it next week.

  I tried calling Kris again. Left another message.

  My deodorant failed almost as soon as I hit the hot, muggy July air. Smeary heat waves rose from the blacktop, the smell of tar oppressive. I thought I’d smother to death waiting for the air conditioning to kick in, so I lowered the windows and took off in search of a breeze. To the west, the sky darkened, and the faint sound of thunder rumbled a warning.

  I remembered the broken window and sighed.

  By the time I’d swung by Menards for supplies and picked up Siggy, the air felt pregnant with rain, trees straining and churning as wind whipped through them. I hurried upstairs, dropped Siggy on the couch, and headed for the bedroom.

  Times like these made me wish for a man.

  Feeling faintly guilty for the thought and humming “I Am Woman” in penance, I crunched my way across a field of broken glass, dragging a bundle of Visqueen.

  Armed with my brand new, pink Tomboy staple gun, I carefully crawled through my bedroom window onto the fire escape. Sun-baked siding blistered the air; I had to mouth-breathe in order to cool oxygen before sucking it into my lungs. A zigzag of lightning pulsed across the ever-darkening clouds. I was running out of time. The wind kicked up, which made wrestling with the plastic sheeting precarious. Twenty minutes spent playing let’s-fling-you-over-the-side-of-the-building with the wind left me soggy-pitted and panting. I wasn’t out of shape, I assured myself. It was just too damn hot. The storm sent its second warning: a light, spattering of rain dotting my back and arms, at first a relief. Within seconds, however, I was shivering, and when I raised my arms overhead to secure the sheeting, my own body odor nearly caused me to pass out. Refusing to dwell on the potentially deadly combination of lightning, my high perch, and the metal stapler in my hand, I dragged the Visqueen up over the window.

  The black sky dropped its
load, plastering my hair against my head and twining strands of it around my neck and face. The sheeting slipped. Drawing on ancestral memories of Viking warriors battling the elements, I screamed into the wind and again grappled the billowing plastic into submission.

  You can’t staple aluminum siding.

  Cussing up my own storm, I hauled everything back through the window, and stood dripping and swaying in the middle of the bedroom. The storm gloated, tossing in a chuckle of thunder while it continued to pound rain onto my formerly-known-as-white carpet.

  Eli called right as I shot the last staple securing the plastic to the inside wall. I was too stinky to flirt, so I let voice mail pick it up and took a much needed shower. Afterward, I sat on the edge of the bed wearing the butt-skimming, melon-pink shorty robe I used in summer, and called Eli back. Despite the temptation, I refrained from describing my scanty attire. Besides, the odorous, old tennis shoes I wore for foot protection spoiled the mood.

  Instead, I gave an edited version of my DIY adventures, heavy on the heroics and minus the Lucy-does-home-repair bungling. It was going great until the part where I described stapling the sheeting to the interior wall.

  I’d forgotten men have issues with making “unnecessary” holes in a wall. Smooth, unsullied drywall apparently brings out their protective instincts.

  “It wasn’t unnecessary,” I insisted for the third time. “I had to get the window covered. And it worked.”

  Sort of. Even though the tarp kept much of the rain outside where it belonged, several rogue rivulets dribbled from underneath the plastic.

  But Eli didn’t need to know that. My mother had taught me not to burden men-folk with too much information.

  Besides, I was dealing with a more pressing issue. Namely, I couldn’t towel up the ever-expanding puddles because the carpet was littered with glass shards. And I couldn’t vacuum, because of the water.

  Trying to divert Eli, I explained the new dilemma.

  “And,” I felt compelled to add, “It would have been a whole lot worse if I hadn’t gotten the sheeting up. Stapling it on the inside may not have been the ideal approach, but—”