by Rachel Brady
He raised his free hand in a don’t-get-me-wrong gesture. “I meant, only if you’re comfortable. Maybe I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine.” I nestled in closer and took his hand. His eyes were such a deep green that they almost looked brown under the dim lights. And they bored into mine so intently it was clear we were having two conversations. More undertones. “I’m glad you brought it up.”
He waited for me to go on, stroking the top of my hand so gently with his thumb that I barely felt his touch—yet only felt his touch—both at the same time.
“I’m terrified of failing her,” I said. “We hardly know each other. I want her love and don’t know how to get it.”
“That’ll come,” he said. “It gets better all the time. You said so yourself.”
“But in her mind, I’m still the one who separated her from her parents. It’s incredible she doesn’t resent me. I couldn’t live with myself if she started to believe anyone else comes before her.”
He nodded. “I think you’re too hard on yourself. But I understand where you’re coming from.”
“For the record,” I said, “If things were more stable, I’d go on that trip. I’d go on lots of trips with you.”
He gave me a delicate and lingering kiss. “Then when they are, we will.”
Chapter Six
“I said I never met him, not that I never heard of him.” In the city jail, Claire had worn her street clothes but, at County, they’d been traded for a standard-issue orange jumpsuit with a loose cut that hid every curve on her slender frame.
“Did you know that Platt and King co-owned the Westside Cosmetic Surgery Center?” Afraid of the microbes I knew were there, I kept the visiting room’s scummy telephone handset a couple centimeters from my ear.
Claire’s eyes, flat and tired, had sunk into a complexion that lacked yesterday’s vibrancy. The pane separating us was so gritty I thought maybe its opaque glass was partly to blame for her weathered appearance.
“Of course I knew,” she said. “I’ve been a patient there for years.”
“Why’d you withhold that yesterday?”
“I didn’t withhold anything.”
“Now two things trouble me.”
With her free hand, she massaged her temple in a gesture that hinted at impatience.
“You suggested you had no connection to Platt. And you didn’t disclose that the woman you say set you up is married to his business partner.”
“I don’t have a connection to Platt.”
“But you knew—”
She raised her free hand to cut me off. “And I assumed the partnership was common knowledge. My attorney has all that background.”
When I didn’t answer, she narrowed her eyes. “Who are you to judge me?”
“I haven’t judged you.”
“You were in the papers. The out-of-towner who helped the FBI bust up that crime ring last March. You killed a guy.”
“Those people had my daughter.”
“You let them take her away from you.”
“I…let them?” I fought to control my anger. She was either misguided or cruel. Racketeers had kidnapped my baby when they killed my husband—I thought I’d lost them both—and then they sold her to an unwitting couple desperate to have a child. Even helping to bust them hadn’t made things right. Annette still thought the Fletchers were her parents, and Jack’s death would forever leave a void. But I couldn’t let my thoughts go there now. I needed to focus on why I’d come.
I stared at her through the glass. “Did you kill Platt?”
She smacked the pane. “No. A thousand times, no.”
I regarded her for a moment. The strange Jekyll-Hyde feeling was back and I couldn’t figure out what it was about this woman that made me alternately think she was innocent, then nuts. “If you knew that about me, why’d you ask yesterday whether I had kids?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know yesterday. My mom looked into you. She visited me last night before my transfer. Told me about the news articles she found.”
“The people responsible for kidnapping my daughter also killed my husband,” I said. “They tore apart dozens of families and took uncounted lives. Your attorney defended them. So I ask myself, if he took their cases…”
She finished. “Would he take anyone’s? Probably. But I’m not guilty.”
I checked my watch. Visits at County were limited to thirty minutes and we had four left.
“Got somewhere to be?” she asked.
“Your gym, actually.”
She raised her eyebrows, amused. “The shark tank.”
“We’re still watching Diana.” I paused. “When’s the last time you were there, by the way?”
“Thursday. Why?”
I shook my head. “Just curious.” Then, in an inexplicable moment of courage, I added, “Mind if I take a look around your house?”
She shrugged. “Look all you want. Hide-a-key’s near my bathroom window. Alarm code’s 0606-star, my youngest’s birthday.”
I didn’t know what I expected to find at her house, but Claire’s cooperation swayed me back slightly toward the Dr. Jekyll end of her personality spectrum. “Thanks.”
“As for the club,” she said, surveying my faded, off-brand tank top. “Help yourself to my closet. Might give you a head start toward fitting in.”
Something told me Claire paid more for a top than I paid for a week’s rent.
“I wouldn’t feel right sweating in your designer clothes.”
“Standing offer,” she said. “Think it over.”
***
While I was at County, Jeannie power shopped at Houston’s Galleria, browsing expensive stores and probably buying more stuff than she could afford. She sounded a little disappointed when I called to say I was finished at the jail, but when I told her my plans to visit Claire’s house, she perked right up.
“Bring me,” she said. “That place will be nice. And what’s this business about borrowing her clothes?”
“Calm down,” I said. “Cocktail dresses and four-hundred dollar shoes weren’t part of her offer.”
“I’ve barely put a dent in the second floor of this fabulous mall,” she said. “What time are we going to Claire’s? We have appointments at noon.”
I remembered Vince and his half-laughing warning. “Pedicures?”
“Negative,” she said. “Highlights for me. Wax for you. And, listen, before you—”
“No.”
“—refuse to go, the waxer is—”
“No.”
“—Diana’s daughter.”
I hung up.
She called me right back. “I met her during a smoke break at the funeral yesterday. Start thinking about what you’ll say.”
I didn’t want to think about hot wax anywhere on my body, much less what I would say to the daughter of a potential murderer as she applied it to me.
“Back to our plan,” I said. “Richard got some police cronies to take over Diana’s surveillance…sort of a second job thing, I guess. That freed him up, but I’m still too edgy to include him at Claire’s. How about we meet at her house and stay until it’s time for your appointment—”
“Our appointmentsss.”
“—Then we’ll head to Tone Zone and see what we can learn. Diana usually goes around lunchtime. We may cross paths.”
It took some prodding before Jeannie would agree to skip the rest of the Galleria, but the prospect of seeing the inside of a decadent River Oaks home was too much. Finally she broke down and asked for directions. We agreed to meet at Claire’s.
I arrived in the neighborhood first. My slow drive through one of the oldest, most affluent communities in Houston was strangely quiet. Except for the occasional dog walker, everyone seemed to be cocooned in stately mansions that ran the gamut from old Tudor to Victorian to contemporary, and service vehicles on every street underscored the upkeep required to maintain appearances. Trucks and trailers for various landscape arc
hitects and vans belonging to general contractors, sprinkler services, and painters reminded me how much additional cost, beyond the inconceivable mortgages, an upper crust lifestyle demanded.
Enormous oaks, easily over a hundred years old, towered overhead forming an arboreal tunnel for passing motorists like me. In their shade, some homeowners had suspended children’s swings in front yards, their ropes often tied off from perches as high as twenty or thirty feet. The maturity and abundance of these trees, many with trunks covered in lush ivy, certainly made an impression, but to a grassroots Midwesterner like me, the shock value was in homes large enough to be hotels. Evidently, Monday was trash day because residents had deposited recycle bins on their curbs, a detail that somehow humanized them for me.
In Hollywood, I’d once paid forty dollars for a tour of the stars’ homes and been disappointed to find so many of them obscured from public view by high and thick shrubbery. By contrast, Houston’s elite proudly shared sweeping views of their estates, opting instead to simply keep their front drapes drawn and, where applicable, their gates closed.
I passed three properties in a row, all some variant of the White House, before finding Claire’s cul de sac which, like everything else in the neighborhood, was super-sized, more like a traffic circle on steroids. Wide, tall, and deep, Claire’s house was clearly spacious, but I was relieved it wasn’t as sprawling and over-the-top as those on nearby White House Row. I eased my car around a laundry service van and pulled into her extended drive, which curved to the right and ended in front of a three-car detached garage with an upstairs apartment I thought might be some kind of guest quarters. The garage was connected to her house by a covered breezeway, beyond which a wooden play-set, so large I thought it might be a commercial model, was nestled in the shade of four sprawling oaks near a lacrosse goal. Further back, an empty dog kennel reminded me of her love of animals.
The hide-a-key was where she’d described and I rehearsed the alarm code in my mind twice before pushing open the back door and keying in the numbers. I stepped into her kitchen, past a heap of muddy sneakers that clearly belonged to boys, and was momentarily awestruck. My entire apartment would have fit in her kitchen and dining hall. I shut the door and got to work.
At yesterday’s meeting, Claire had said she’d left her anonymous note on a counter. But, she’d also mentioned a cleaning lady and I knew the police had been through there too. If there ever was a note, it was gone now. The only item that caught my eye was a stainless steel plaque left discreetly in a corner nook that said, “Pets leave paw prints on our hearts.” Draped over its corner was a worn leather collar with a tag that said, “I rescued a human.”
I crossed to her two-sided stainless refrigerator and studied the photographs and notes stuck there. A series of wallet-sized school pictures showed two boys evolving over what I assumed to be the last three years. Both had darker coloring than Claire, caramel skin and brown eyes, not green, but the bone structure and expressions were all hers.
A pocket calendar, held in place by a magnet from a local private school, was open to July and its date boxes were crossed off through last Friday—when Claire had been served with her search and arrest warrants and taken away. The little squares were too small to write down anything descriptive, but Claire apparently used initials and abbreviations to remind herself about upcoming plans. July had various entries for P, J and KT with times beside them. I flipped back to June and saw more entries for J, a few for P, and a smattering for K. May had two Js, no KTs, and three Ms. May was also thick with Ks.
I gave up on the alphabet soup but suspected it might be useful so I took the calendar and dropped it into my bag. Around the corner, her neutral beige living room displayed artsy, wall-mounted shadow boxes that contained some kind of dried flowers. Drapes made from the same burgundy and gold chenille that covered the throw pillows were open, unlike her neighbors’, letting morning sun fill the first floor. I ran a finger over a soft, fancy sofa pillow and marveled over the effort that Claire—or more likely, her decorator—had put into the room.
A set of French doors, open on the other side of the foyer, led to a home office and I walked inside. Her computer was conspicuously absent from its spot on the desk, but the keyboard and mouse had been left behind. The desk faced the door, and I walked behind it and took a seat, staring across the foyer into the bright, super-coordinated living room, imagining for a moment that the house were mine. My attraction, I realized, was directed toward the home’s tidiness, not its pricey artifacts.
I started pulling open drawers. Bills and receipts, some dating back ten years, were tucked in hanging folders. She seemed a compulsive keeper of owner’s manuals—vacuum cleaner, dish washer, electric toothbrush, DVD player, cellular phone. Three models of cell phones, actually. From her files, I learned Claire’s kitchen cabinets and countertops were replaced in May and that Daniel’s Z4 was due for an oil change, though I doubted she cared. There were investment portfolios and 529 plans, copies of her parents’ living wills and power-of-attorney forms, and tax returns dating back through her last two marriages. I spent twenty minutes browsing paperwork but found nothing to tie Claire to Platt, or to anyone other than her family.
Her bookshelf had a collection of romance paperbacks, the sort of books Jeannie liked to read, as well as a collection of fitness magazines, photo albums, and a dog-eared copy of How to Move On—After He Moves Out, which struck me as odd since Claire had initiated her divorce.
My cell phone rang. It was Jeannie.
“Just turned onto her street,” she said. “Brought you a latte.”
“Right after the laundry service van.” I started up the custom curved staircase. “The back door’s unlocked. I’m going upstairs.”
Over my shoulder, I watched through an ornamental foyer window as Jeannie’s rental car rolled up the drive. She headed toward the back of the house, where I’d parked my old Taurus. I continued up the steps, headed for the master bedroom. Soon, the back door swung open, then shut, and Jeannie hollered out, “Helloooo?”
I leaned over the balcony. “Nice digs, huh?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Come on up.”
“In a minute. I’m starving.”
I wondered what that had to do with coming upstairs. “You’re not going to eat her food.”
“She’s not gonna.”
Suction broke as she yanked open a refrigerator door and I turned away from the banister. Arguing was futile.
Then, Jeannie screamed and there was a crash. She screamed again and I raced down the stairs.
Chapter Seven
In the kitchen, I found Jeannie backed up against Claire’s granite island countertop, two spilled coffees and a broken dish at her feet. She stared, wide-eyed, into an open freezer and pointed.
I rounded the corner, stepping around puddles and glass. Jeannie curled her lips into a disgusted snarl and pulled her eyes off whatever she’d found. “This lady’s a freak.”
Fog whirled in front of us and I gazed, disbelieving, into the freezer. Nestled on a shelf of its own was a set of vacuum-sealed rats. Individually bagged, they’d been positioned in alternate directions so that each set of heads was separated by the long, naked tail of a neighbor.
Too nauseated to speak, I turned away and pulled a long series of paper towels off a dispenser.
She flung the door closed. “Right next to the Lean Cuisines and frozen spinach.”
Together, we cleaned up the mess. Claire’s microwave clock showed that the time was nearing eleven.
“We only have a half hour,” I said.
She nodded. “What are we looking for?”
“I’m not sure. Mainly I want to get a sense of her. But I’d also like to know if she had a history with Platt.”
“Anything so far?”
I shook my head. “Let’s look upstairs.”
Four bedrooms opened off the second floor hall. Jeannie took the master suite and I turned the other direction and steppe
d into a gloomy room that obviously belonged to one of Claire’s boys. Navy blue walls sucked all the light from the space, but his twin bed was neatly made and even his desk was orderly. Again, I noticed that a computer was missing.
The room’s centerpiece was what I estimated to be a two-hundred gallon aquarium tank set up to accommodate a fat brown snake. Coiled and still, it lay pressed into a corner of the glass and didn’t acknowledge me. A copy of Your New Burmese Python rested open, pages down, on the enclosure’s mesh lid and I was relieved to at least have an explanation for the frozen rats.
Larger and brighter, the room next door belonged to the other son. Framed prints of airborne skateboarders, some in black-and-white, others in color, hung on the walls. I went from one to another and didn’t realize until the fourth image that the same boy was in all of them. A shelf with a dozen or so skateboarding trophies was mounted above a custom desk, fashioned to fit one corner of the room. Once again, there was no computer, but all the ancillary accessories were in place.
Jeannie’s voice startled me. “What do you think?”
I turned. She’d posed in the doorway holding a red silk evening gown on a hanger in front of her.
“Unless that dress has a card attached that says ‘Love, Wendell’ I’m not impressed.”
She frowned. “But—”
“The woman that dress belongs to is in jail right now, alone and miserable and missing her kids. Do you think she’d like to know you’re fondling her clothes?”
She skulked away.
Twenty minutes later, she found me again, this time in a guest room. Its only point of interest was an enormous bookcase on which Claire kept more photo albums. I was sitting on the bed, flipping through a book of wedding pictures when Jeannie came in with a small wooden box and plopped down beside me.
“Found this in the back of her closet. Bunch of letters inside.” She leaned into me for a view of the album in my lap. “That her hubby?”
I tapped a man in an olive green suit and lamb chop sideburns. “Her first, I think. These are old.”