by Teresa Trent
“Deal.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I knew I needed eggs if I was going to be baking all night, so I stopped off at the Best Buys Grocery Store. As I pulled in to park, I noticed that Zach had left part of his math homework in the passenger side, and it looked as if it was about to slide under the seat. I turned off the car and reached down to attempt to pull out the paper, which had become wedged in the metal bars that moved the seat back and forth. As it continued to stick, I reached my hand under the seat, a little worried what else might come out with it. I tried to grab for the paper but came up with something lumpy and metal instead. I nudged my hand further back and found the corner of paper and slid it out.
Curious as to what else was down there, I slid my hand under the seat again and tried pulling out the small object. I could feel the familiar metal ridges of keys. I couldn’t remember the last time I had lost my keys. I had always been pretty responsible about hanging my keys on a peg in the kitchen. Barry, on the other hand, had misplaced his keys at least once a week, and I know we had to replace them at least once during our short marriage. The one time I teased him about it, he blew up at me and told me to quit nagging him. I remember how much it had surprised me at how sensitive he became at the slightest criticism. Reaching around the back end of the seat, I pulled out the long-forgotten keys. I held them up to the light shining from the post of the grocery store parking lot.
There were several keys on the ring and a keychain ornament with a Canfield Investments logo on it. Could this be an old set of Barry’s keys? How long had they been down there? There were only a couple of keys on the ring, so they were probably his office keys. They had been wedged under the seat, which explains why my car vacuuming had missed them.
I remembered his old office in the bank building downtown. I had brought in some plants to help with the decorating, but then I only visited a few times after that. Barry would always put off my suggestions to come downtown for lunch. He told me that he preferred to be all business at work, and then he added, almost as an afterthought, that I would be too much of a distraction for him. Now I knew he just didn’t want me finding out about whatever it was he and Canfield were doing. If Canfield had returned to that office when he came back to Pecan Bayou, I wondered if the keys would still work. I also wondered how he was paying the rent without a partner to split the cost. I hadn’t seen any real estate signs with Canfield’s name on them around town.
After Barry had disappeared, Oliver Canfield did come by the house one time to bring a box of Barry’s things. He sat on the edge of our old couch and told me if I needed anything just to call him. It probably would have sounded like a legitimate offer if he hadn’t been out my front door within the next two minutes.
I thought of Barry as I held his keys in my hands once again. Keys that he had forgotten, that had stayed buried in this old car for the past seven years. I fingered the metal ridges. I wondered if they would still work. No, I couldn’t. I had to buy eggs and bake cookies. I stuffed the keys into my purse and headed for the grocery store. As I stood at the checkout a few minutes later, I noticed all of the pregnant celebrities on the cover of the gossip magazines. Now, if a woman was pregnant and in Hollywood, she was delicately phrased as having a “baby bump.” That way she could still be seen on the beach in her bikini sporting her “bump” but still looking incredibly beautiful. I thought about Celia, who had much more than a “bump” to carry around. Even though she was much bigger than the starlets I saw pictured on the magazines, she was also just as beautiful, even if she couldn’t get her wedding ring on anymore. I wondered if she thought to take it off before her hands got bigger or if she had to use butter to get her ring off. When I had been pregnant with Zach, I didn’t know my hands would swell. I barely got my ring off in time. Canfield’s hand came to my mind. Had he been trying to take a ring off just before he was shot? There were so many things I still needed to know.
“Did you find everything you needed?” the checkout girl asked.
“Just about,” I answered. Just about.
*****
I held Barry’s keys in my hands as I turned the steering wheel into the parking lot of the bank building. It wasn’t as if I were going to the crime scene. I had been offered an opportunity to look inside Canfield’s office and see just what he and probably Barry had been up to all those years ago. If my dad had been given this opportunity, he might have done the same thing, I rationalized.
I looked up at the town’s oldest two-story building. It housed our bank, which was situated at the end of a two-story atrium lined with smaller offices. I slipped into the main lobby door. There was the unmistakable odor of cleaning products in the air, and I saw a cleaning cart outfitted with squirt bottles and a large trash bag holder. A woman looked down as she cleaned inside an accounting office. A strain of tinny portable radio music drifted across the open area.
Not wanting to take a chance she would look up, I waited until she turned her back to vacuum in an inner office. I darted across the lobby to the stairway leading to the second floor. My eyes shot to the accountant’s door again, and I could hear a chorus of singers coming over the radio. Whoever was cleaning probably wouldn’t hear me ascend the stairway. I took off up the stairs, got to the top and looked down again on the open lobby. The woman pushed the vacuum out of the back office and started emptying trash cans. I blended into the shadows on the unlit second floor.
I pulled out my keys and tried the lock. Whether I had the right keys for the lock became a moot point as I realized that the door was already unlocked. Maybe it had been opened for the cleaning lady. If so, I would need to make this a speedy search. I was in. Canfield’s office looked as if it had been updated since Barry’s days. My plants were gone and replaced by tasteful potted palms. There was a large oak desk next to a brown stone wall and a leather couch next to a large window. The wood floors shone and were tastefully covered with a brown and gold oriental rug.
Using what little light I had streaming in from the downstairs lobby, I started going through the items on Canfield’s desk. There were no pictures of a wife, and if Canfield had any children, there was no trace of them. Reaching into the middle drawer, I found an appointment book. I leafed through the pages of the small book to see that he had spent the year in various deals around the state with appointments in Dallas and Fort Worth, as well as Pecan Bayou. On the Wednesday before his death, he had an appointment with Benny and one with someone named Bitsy. He also had a scheduled time next to a scrawled JTB, which I had to assume was the Johnson Tuberculosis Hospital. This appointment was with someone named Roy.
I knew who Benny was, but who the heck was Bitsy? I couldn’t remember a soul in town named Roy. I searched further and found a sketch of what looked like a layout for a mall. That must have been his idea for the property. Pecan Bayou did not have a mall as of yet. Most people drove over to Andersonville to do their department-store shopping.
I searched through his right desk drawer. I found memo pads, business cards and a few scattered breath mints. My hand skimmed over something sticking up in the back. I tried to grasp it as all of Canfield’s business cards came sliding toward me. I seemed to be lifting out the bottom of the drawer. I pulled it completely out, letting the cards and mints hit the floor. I had stumbled onto a hidden section in the drawer. There were several credit cards and a couple of identification cards with Oliver Canfield’s picture on them, but not his name. One said Javier Torres and another had the name Oscar Bianchi. It seemed Mr. Canfield, or whoever he was, had more than one identity. I looked at the credit cards and was surprised to see they were all issued to women. Ruby Morris, Martha Johnson, Molly Baumgartner and – I couldn’t believe it – Maureen Boyle. What was he doing with her credit card? Did he steal it from her, or did she give it to him? If I hadn’t just broken into this office, I would be calling my dad right now. Trying to explain how I learned this information was a conversation I didn’t want to be having right now.
; I looked for Canfield’s computer. There was an empty area on his desk where it should have been. The police were probably searching through his hard drive for their investigation.
I turned around and headed toward a row of filing cabinets on the back wall. Upon opening the first drawer, I found files listed by property. It seemed Mr. Canfield closed more real estate deals than I had been aware of. In the next drawer, the files were listed by last name. Once again I saw some of the same names I had seen printed on the credit cards. I reached for the file marked “Maureen Boyle” when suddenly the reflection from the lobby lights went black. Upon turning around, l looked through to the glassed-in front office. The entire building was dark. Had there been a power outage? I walked forward a few steps and felt pain shoot up my leg as my knee collided with the corner of Canfield’s desk. I placed my hands on the desk for leverage and tried to see the path to Canfield’s office doorway. I heard a soft sound in the next room. Could that be the outer door opening? Had the cleaning lady come up here? I crouched down by the desk. If it was her, I couldn’t let her see me. I could hear breathing as whoever it was moved around the room. I tried to hold my breath.
My phone jangled “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You.” I jammed my hand into my pocket, trying to grab at it.
“Dad!” I whispered a scream. Then pain spread across my skull as something hard hit me in the back of the head.
*****
I came to with a sudden jolt as I coughed to clear something in my chest. I coughed again, feeling pain as my lungs labored to breathe. Smoke was everywhere. My eyes fixed on a bright light now illuminating the doorway. Was the office on fire? Staying away from the clouds of smoke I saw billowing above me, I started crawling towards the door. My head throbbed, and I recognized the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. As I came close to the fire, I forced myself to stand up, although my head felt like a giant bell was ringing inside of it. I took a deep breath and immediately went into another cough for my efforts. I shut my eyes and leapt over a darting flame, ready to feel the impact of my body hitting the floor on the other side.
“Betsy!” The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t make out the figure, other than it was a man. As he drew closer to me, I started backing towards the painful heat of the flames. Was this Canfield’s killer? He edged in closer and grabbed me under the arms.
“It’s okay, Betsy. It’s me, Leo,” he said gently. “We have to get out of here now.” We hobbled together to the stairs. We were now overlooking more dancing flames edging toward us on the bottom floor.
“Can you get down the stairs?” he yelled over the thunder of the fire.
“I’ll try,” I said as I tried to see my own feet on the floor. How was it that the place was on fire and spinning too?
I put both hands on the stair railing to find it was hot, so I held on to Fitzpatrick behind me. Together we started down the stairs, one by one. When we reached the bottom, we ran for the door.
The cleaning cart was now abandoned by the accountant’s office. I wondered if the cleaning woman got out. I tried to tell Fitzpatrick about her but couldn’t seem to speak very well. What if she was trapped in there? I could see the red-and-blue flash of the fire trucks and police department.
Running in from the street with Zachary in pajamas, I saw my father.
Zachary ran into my arms. “Mom!” was all he screamed before burying his head into my shoulder. Fitzpatrick stepped back. My dad, heaving the sigh of a father whose daughter couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble, watched the building grow into a larger blaze. “Betsy, what the hell were you doing in there? I thought you were going to bake cookies!”
“I was,” I confessed that I found an old set of Barry’s keys. “I was in Canfield’s office. I had to know.”
“It was a damn fool idea. That’s what it was. You could have been killed, do you know that? Now I’m thinkin’ having that GPS gadget on your phone was the best idea you ever had.”
“Mom,” Zach joined his grandfather in scolding me, “you could have been killed. It was a …”
“Okay, okay,” I answered, holding my hand up to stop the two-generation lecture.
“Thank God Mr. Fitzpatrick pulled you out of the building.”
I looked around behind us. I saw the cleaning lady now sitting on the curb with a paramedic putting a blanket around her.
“Where did he go?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” my father said, turning around in the parking lot in an effort to find him.
“That’s strange,” I said. “Why would he go running off like that?”
“And what the hell was he doing here in the first place?” said my dad.
CHAPTER TWELVE
After the fire, my dad left Zach with me and was going to look up Fitzpatrick’s address from that phone number I had given him. I assured him that I was fine, just a little shaken up. I put Zach to bed and started stirring up cookie dough.
The next day, although bleary-eyed and grumpy, I helped Zach get ready for school. Zach gave me a hug that lasted just a little too long as he climbed out of the car. I think seeing his mom being dragged out of a fire the night before had scared him. He had already lost one parent, and the prospect of losing another was just about as earth-shaking as it gets for a little guy. He had been so tired last night that he fell asleep in the car on the way home. This morning, his mood was quiet as he sat at the table eating his cereal. The silence between us made me aware that I needed to be careful not to scare him like that again.
I, too, had eaten breakfast with only one parent for many years. My mom, while driving home from a PTA meeting one evening, was hit head-on by a drunk driver. Life for me and my dad was never the same after that. I was only eight, but I became overly protective of my remaining parent. Every time he would go to work, I was worried he would get shot. I even asked him to switch jobs to something bullet-free, like a salesman or a barber. He knew I was scared and would comfort me with the low crime statistics of Pecan Bayou. He told me that he was still waiting to use his first bullet.
My mother had been wonderful, and after she was gone there was a big hole in my life. That was where my Aunt Maggie stepped in. She had been thirteen years old when my father was born, so he kind of treated her like his aunt, as well. Aunt Maggie was there to make my Halloween costumes and prom dresses. She was also there to help me through all the clumsy years of growing into a woman.
After Danny was born, my aunt and uncle were advised by the doctors not to have any more children. Now we know the chances of having two children with Down Syndrome are almost nonexistent, but she and Uncle Jeeter heeded the warning. So Aunt Maggie and I found each other. I had a mother I wasn’t supposed to have, and she had the little girl she hadn’t been allowed to have. My father almost never complained about her presence, except for the time she forbade me to ride in the patrol car when he arrested people. Growing up a cop’s daughter introduced me to a world other children only saw on television. I knew I was a little different when I announced to my third-grade teacher that I was putting an APB out when the class hamster went missing.
Now I was presented with another mystery. This time I might be able to find out where Barry was, and on top of that, I might be able to help Maggie. Breaking into Canfield’s office gleaned more information than I had dreamed of. I tried remembering the names on the credit cards. Maybe I could try to contact some of these ladies and find out why they had given their credit cards to him. It was especially intriguing that all the cards belonged to women. Some men might have only women for friends, but Canfield didn’t strike me as the type. I didn’t even find him physically attractive. In his forties, he did have a decent head of black hair, but he had a round face with a barrel chest and always seemed to be mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Not exactly a chick magnet.
If I could ever get Maureen Boyle to quit condemning me and my family, I was sure she could provide some answers. She had to have been out at that hospital because of some connection to Canfi
eld.
I decided to deliver my four dozen cookies personally to Benny at the barbecue. I pulled up, noticing a couple of foolhardy tourists sitting and sweating in the rocking chairs. Perhaps they were enjoying the Texas heat before returning to colder climates. Benny was stacking plates in a dishpan when I entered, juggling my cookies in plastic containers.
“Let me get those for you,” he said as he put a plate in the stack and then came over to grab a couple of containers.
“My son informed me that he bragged about my cookie baking at the meeting and that I was to deliver them today.”
Benny laughed. “Yes, I do recall hearing something about your ability in the kitchen. We are so grateful to have them, Betsy.” He opened up a plastic lid and sampled one. “Say, these are good. If you ever decide to give up writing and want a job in my kitchen, I think we could work something out.” He smiled as he chewed a peppermint chocolate chip cookie.
“I’m glad you stopped by.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry about what that boy said to Zach at the meeting. How is he doing?”
“He’s all right, I guess. You know, he still thinks Barry will come back.”
“Ah, yes. Hope springs eternal when you’re that age. It’s hard to learn that sometimes things just aren’t going to go your way, no matter how angry or how disgusted you may get.” I wondered if we were still talking about Zachary. He continued. “I suppose you heard that I would like to put Zach together with the new boy, Tyler, as a camping buddy.”
“I heard. Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”
“I know, I know, but sometimes the best way to get two kids to get along is to make them work as a team. They’ll have to sort out their differences just trying to get that tent up together.”
I thought it was a terrific experience for the other kid but not so much for mine. Benny crossed his arms over his white barbecue apron and waited.