Perfect

by Harry Kraus

  “He loves me, Mother.”

  She huffed. “You don’t know what love is.”

  “I don’t need to listen to this!”

  “How dare you do this to our family?” she shouted. “To your father’s ministry?”

  “That’s what’s important?” I touched my abdomen. “This is your grandchild.”

  She refused to acknowledge my comment. “I’ll take you to a clinic,” she said, as if talking about getting groceries. “We’ ll put this behind us, you and me.”

  “But Dad — ”

  “He’ ll not be told anything about this.”

  I heard a tapping on the window. It was Rene, pulling me from my past. I lowered the window two inches and kept staring straight ahead. “Do you mind telling me what that was all about?”

  I shook my head.

  She lowered her head to my window. “I thought you were excited about my baby too.”

  “I am.”

  My sister stomped around the car and got in. She just sat there staring at me.

  I felt stupid and small. “Why didn’t Mom say that when I told her I was pregnant?”

  “That’s what this is about?” Rene paused. “You want me to be treated as badly as you were? Thanks.”

  “Rene, no.” I threw up my hands, my attempt at honesty. “Yes. I mean I don’t know.”

  “Which is it?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I looked at her searching eyes. “Down inside me, I don’t want you to suffer.” I hesitated. “When I look back on it, maybe I’m getting it all wrong. I’m sure she was distressed about it. Maybe she felt trapped, and decided that abortion was the lesser of evils. But when I remember it, I can only see it through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old.”

  “So what was that all about?”

  “What would my life be like now if Mom had said that to me?”

  “Why didn’t you ask her?”

  I was dumbfounded. “I’m not even sure she remembers. Besides, Daddy doesn’t know. She kept it from him.”

  Rene nodded. “She was protecting his reputation.” She added, “Daddy still thinks of you as his princess. He always called you that. You know what he called me?”

  I knew. “Squirt.”

  “I wanted to be Princess.”

  “But don’t you get it? It was all an act. I was a princess all right. He just doesn’t know his princess had an affair with his youth pastor. He just doesn’t know his princess dared to go against his teaching, lie, hide a pregnancy, seek an abortion, and put his wife in a wheelchair!” There, I’d laid it out. I glared at her, daring her to stack her sins against mine.

  “You didn’t do that to her.”

  “We were on the way to an abortion clinic, Rene. It was my fault.”

  “You were struck by a drunk driver. You didn’t plan that.”

  “Maybe God did.”

  “If he did, then he put Mom in a wheelchair, not you.”

  I shook my head. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m mad at Mom, not you. I’m happy for you. I’m jealous for you, because bearing children will be an experience I’ll never have.” I took her hand. “Can you understand that?”

  She gave my hand a squeeze. I understand.

  My phone chirped. I looked on the readout. Chris Black.

  I looked at my watch and answered, “It’s not nine o’clock yet.”

  “I know, I know. I just wanted you to know that I investigated the Anders place myself. The truck’s clean. If there was ever any blue paint on it, it’s long gone now.”

  “What about the protective grille? Did he show it to you?”

  “Didn’t find it. If it was ever in that garage, it’s long gone. He denied having it.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said, raising my voice. “The man is lying to you.” I started the car. “Give me an hour. I’ll drop by my house and load the pictures onto my computer. I haven’t done the calculations from my mock-up yet, but I’m sure the truck couldn’t have sustained that damage just by rolling down the hill.” I shook my head. “What a jerk!”

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting with the Captain.”

  “I can bring by my camera. At least show you the photos.”

  “Do that.”

  The connection closed. “Amazing,” I said. “This Anders guy’s not just a jerk. He’s stupid to fool with me.”

  Rene looked at me. “I think I understand something. You love reconstructing accidents from subtle clues, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re so hung up on the why of your and Mom’s accident.” She smiled, as if she was sure she was on to something.

  “You’re wrong. The clues only tell me what happened, not the motive behind.”

  I pressed the pedal and let the powerful Mercedes engine push me gently back into the leather seat. If this guy hit Jack, I was going to hit him back.

  Thirty minutes later, after promising Rene I’d not be long, I stood in Chris Black’s office. I connected my digital camera to his desktop in preparation for importing and viewing the pictures I’d taken the day before.

  I moved the cursor to the “import” button and frowned. An error message appeared on the screen: “The device contains no photographs.”

  “What?” I looked at the back of my camera. The digital readout showed no stored images. I shook my head. “This can’t be. I didn’t have time to download the pictures last night because of my guests. But there aren’t any photos here.”

  Chris squinted at me. “Who else has access to your camera?”

  “No one. I keep it at my desk or in the trunk of my car.”

  “No one?” He sipped the double mocha latte I’d brought him. “Are you sure you used this camera?”

  “It’s the only one I use.”

  “You had guests?”

  I nodded, thinking about each one. The Renners had retired early. Henry had come in late, and he knew better than to mess with my camera. That only left Rene and Yolanda. Rene wouldn’t think of touching my professional stuff. That only left Yolanda. Could she have been messing with my camera?

  Chris took the camera from my hand. “This is like mine. It only takes pressing this button twice to erase the whole thing.”

  I shook my head. “I did not erase my camera!”

  “Come on, Wendi. Accidents happen.” He chuckled. “You may have dyed your hair, but you’re still blonde.”

  His attempt at humor fell flat. Not wanting to cuss, I bared my teeth like an angry dog.

  He held up his hands.

  I disconnected my camera and vowed to return to Anders’ place to look around. Something strange was going on, and I was going to get to the bottom of it.

  CHAPTER 17

  I drove back home mumbling about the traffic and distracted by my thoughts about Jesse Anders.

  At a traffic light, I heard Rene saying my name. “Wendi!” She shook her head. “Sheesh! What planet are you on?”

  “I was thinking.”

  “So was I,” she said. “I want you to listen to me.”

  I made an exaggerated move to look at her. “I’m listening.”

  “I want you and Henry to adopt my baby.”

  My face must have paled.

  “Wendi?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” I’d mentioned that very thing to her just a few days ago, but hearing her say it, sensing the real possibility. . .

  “No,” she urged, “Think about it. It’s perfect. You guys are rich. You could provide the perfect home.”

  It looks perfect from the outside, I thought.

  “Henry’s got a great job.”

  “He’s got a good job, yes, but — ”

  “You live in the perfect location.” She paused. “I think Dad will be a better grandfather than father.”

  I pulled away from the light, trying to process the reality of having a baby. “You’ve seen how crazy it is at my house.”

&
nbsp; “It’s only crazy this week because I dropped in on you and because of Jack’s family.”

  “Maybe we’re too perfect.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I held up a finger from the top of the steering wheel. “We have the perfect house.”

  “You have the perfect nursery,” Rene added.

  “We go to the right church, the right country club, the right restaurants, sit in the right pew, eat the right food, drive the right cars, wear the right clothes, exercise in the right club.” I forced myself to laugh. “It’s driving me crazy.”

  “You’d be a great mom.”

  “You’re not listening to me.” Starting a family with Henry was not on my agenda this week. Just trying to keep from running away from Henry was on my agenda. I stared at my sister and wrestled with my conscience. I wanted to be honest, to tell her of my outrageous plans to run away with Jack and of the life I’d lived. Instead, I found myself smiling. “You really think I’d be a great mom?”

  “The best.”

  I shook my head. “You’re a moron.”

  “You’re right. I can’t be a mother to this child. I’m single. I smoke. What kind of example is that?”

  “You’re smart.” I gestured with my free hand. “You can stop smoking.”

  “I’m HIV-positive.”

  “Irrelevant. Remember what the doctor said.”

  “The kid needs a dad. Henry would be perfect.”

  Would he? “Henry’s never home.”

  “Ask him, Wendi.”

  She had a point about Henry. His resume looked great. And it wasn’t because Henry didn’t have the perfect plan for a perfect little family someday. “Henry looks good,” I conceded. “But that’s because he’s obsessive about looking good.”

  “So maybe he can be obsessive about being a good dad.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Just think about it.”

  I sighed. This wasn’t how I’d planned my week. I was supposed to be in the Caribbean with Jack. But, sans my midlife crisis, here I was in Charlottesville talking to my sister about adopting her baby into my perfect family. I thought about the children my husband took care of at the hospital. He could be so gentle.

  I wanted to tell her how perfect Henry really was, how he carried three pens in his white coat, each one centimeter apart, how he tied his silk ties so that the longer tail hung two centimeters below the shorter, how he turned on the blinker at the end of the driveway. I opened my mouth to protest again, but halted as Rene interrupted. “Just think about it.”

  Instead of replying, I just smiled and turned up Azalea Drive. My plans to rescue my fake life had been foiled. I found myself swinging back towards believing that God might be working something out for my good. I wasn’t there yet, but I at least wanted to be there.

  I didn’t have time to think about that anyway. “You didn’t happen to look at my camera last night, did you?”

  I watched her from the corner of my eye. Rene didn’t flinch. “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “The images on my camera have been erased. All those photos I took of a wreck up in Ruckersville.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Rene said.

  “Yolanda,” I muttered. “I’ll bet that airhead was messing with this.”

  “Why would she?”

  “I have no idea. But it was in my sight until I went to sleep. Maybe she got back up to mourn the loss of her sweet fiancé.”

  I pulled in my driveway. I must have looked frightening because my sister grabbed my shoulders. “What’re you doin’?”

  I checked my watch. “Time for the bottle-blonde to wake up,” I said, uncaring that I was criticizing the color I’d worn for six years.

  Rene followed behind, perhaps fearing that I was going to overreact, perhaps kill the floozy. I stomped into the house and down the hall to my bedroom.

  I knocked on the door, softly at first, then a bit louder when the sleepyhead didn’t respond. I looked at Rene. “Time to get up, hangover or not.”

  I tried the door. Locked. I knocked again. “Yolanda? Yolanda!”

  I rattled the door. When she didn’t respond, I reached above the door and retrieved a key resting on the molding framing the doorway.

  A moment later, I pushed open the door. She was still in bed. “Get up, sleepyhead,” I sang, throwing wide the curtains. “It’s past time to — ”

  I stopped as the light fell on the pallor of her face. Her lips were parted, the color of lilacs in the spring. The covers were turned down to reveal her nakedness. Her chest was still. “Oh God,” I said.

  Rene shrieked.

  Yolanda was dead.

  CHAPTER 18

  Call 9 – 1 – 1!” I screamed as I assumed a position with my ear next to Yolanda’s lips and my fingers to the right of her windpipe. She wasn’t breathing and had no pulse. I formed a seal with my mouth over hers and blew. Her chest rose, but only with force. She was stone-cold dead.

  Rene shook her head and covered her mouth with her hand. “It’s no use. You don’t know how long she’s been this way.”

  I felt helpless. I backed away, the eeriness of the situation beginning to dawn. There was an open pharmacy bottle on the table. I picked it up and read the label. “She’s taken an overdose.” I handed the bottle to Rene.

  “Why would she do this?”

  “Maybe she was upset over losing Jack.” I stepped toward the door. “I’m calling Chris Black.”

  “Wait,” Rene said, grabbing my arm. “Look at this.” She pointed to the label on the little bottle. “Henry prescribed this. It’s not even for her. It says Lanny Bedford.”

  I took the bottle from her hand. “Oxycontin,” I read. “It’s a powerful narcotic. But why would Yolanda have a prescription that belongs to someone else?”

  “Weird.”

  I phoned Chris Black. A minute later I had him on the line. “Black,” he said.

  “Chris, this is Wendi. Something horrible has happened. I just got home with Rene. I wanted to confront Yolanda because I thought she’d erased the pictures from my camera, but when I went to check on her, she was dead. She’s taken an overdose, I’m sure. She — ” my voice halted with a sob.

  “Wendi, slow down. What happened?”

  I started crying. I felt stupid for not being able to answer Chris, but it seemed the last domino in my holding it together had just tumbled and now everything was going to fall. My almost-affair, Jack’s wreck, my pregnant sister with HIV, a trucker who was trying to hide the truth, my erased camera, and now finding Yolanda’s body nearing room temperature all erupted in a serious threat to my mascara. I bit my lip and closed my eyes. “Just come over. A woman committed suicide in my house.”

  I set the phone back in the charging cradle and looked at Rene. “We’d better not touch anything. The medical examiner will want to see everything like we found it.”

  I walked to the kitchen and called Henry’s office. He was operating. Lucky Henry. He has his refuge. I plopped onto my leather couch in the den and waited while Rene paced and mumbled, “I can’t believe this,” over and over.

  Ten minutes later Chris Black showed up with two young-buck officers, two boys looking like they were just a few years beyond puberty, Officers Bouchard and Mann. Chris made introductions and followed Rene into the master bedroom just as the phone rang.

  I stopped in the kitchen to answer the phone. It was Henry. “Honey, my secretary said you called. She said you sounded upset.”

  “Yolanda committed suicide.”

  “W-what?”

  “You heard me. She’s dead, Henry. Rene and I just found her.”

  “Call the police.”

  “They’re already here.” I hesitated. “Henry, I need you here.”

  I listened to him sigh. He wasn’t big on emotional support. “I’ve just started a big case. I just scrubbed out to call. Ulrich’s in there by himself.”

  It was my turn to sigh. “Henry,
there is a dead woman in our bed!”

  “Maybe I can get Jackson to watch Ulrich. I can’t leave him here unattended.”

  “I understand.” As bad as it seemed, I knew he was trapped. He couldn’t, under any circumstances, leave a patient already under anesthesia.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Henry, there was an empty bottle of Oxycontin on the nightstand. It belonged to a guy named Lanny Bedford.” I hesitated. “Henry, you wrote the prescription.”

  “I did?” I listened to him huff. “How did she get it?”

  “Who is Lanny Bedford?”

  Henry’s voice was quiet. “A patient,” he mumbled.

  “What’s it mean?”

  He sighed again. “I don’t know. I’ve got to run.”

  I walked towards my bedroom again, but Rene met me in the hall and motioned me away. “They’re treating this like some crime,” she whispered.

  I followed her back to the kitchen.

  “The detective has already called the medical examiner. They are calling a forensics team.”

  I shrugged. “It’s probably all routine, something they’d do for any unexpected death.”

  Chris appeared at the edge of the foyer holding a notepad and pen. Immediately, his manner had me on edge. I didn’t like his attitude and certainly didn’t like his tone of voice. “When’s the last time anyone saw her?”

  “Last night. About eleven.”

  “Why was she in your bed?”

  “She was pretty upset last night. Her fiancé just cancelled their engagement. She drank some wine. We were up talking in my bedroom and she passed out. I didn’t have the heart to move her.”

  “Why was she staying here?”

  “Remember Jack Renner?”

  “Of course.”

  “Yolanda Pate was his fiancée.”

  “Why was she staying with you?”

  “Good question,” I moaned. “My father offered our house for Jack’s parents and his girlfriend.”

  He raised his eyebrows and kept writing. “How did she get the narcotics?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I watched as Rene and Chris exchanged glances. “I’ll need to talk to Henry.”

  “He’s in the operating room. I just talked to him.”