Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “That’s reasonable.” She realized she hadn’t even noticed him paying, but he put an arm around her and steered her out to the sidewalk without going back into the bistro.

  On her front doorstep at home, he kissed her good-night with what felt more like tenderness than passion, although Madison noticed that he was fully aroused.

  He’d decided not to act on it, she thought, surprised and touched and feeling a stew of emotions that made her entire chest ache. Troy thought he’d upset her when he really hadn’t. Telling him about Mom had actually been liberating, Madison decided. As an adult, she could see that she’d probably hurt her mother’s feelings almost as much as Mom had hurt her. Of course Mom had been overwhelmed with a baby and then a toddler as well as her sullen older child. And no, maybe she hadn’t loved Madison enough to dig in her heels and say, You’re my daughter and you will live with me.

  But I had Dad, and he tried. He wasn’t perfect, but he was enough.

  Which, of course, circled Madison back to the beginning: he deserved his daughter’s faith and, yes, her loyalty.

  Only...he had also taught her right and wrong and how crisp the line between them was. He’d emphasized the absolute importance of never letting her ethics become mushy.

  She was steadied, remembering his many lectures and his acute disappointment with her the few times he thought she’d failed to uphold the values he had taught her.

  He couldn’t be a murderer. That’s all there was to it. In fact, she couldn’t imagine him ever doing anything bad enough that he’d pay to hide it. The idea was so ridiculous, when she looked at it head-on, that Madison felt sure she’d misinterpreted everything in those two phone conversations.

  If Dad had been at the gym the night of the murder, of course he’d have gone to the police, she thought in relief. Troy’s father was wrong, that’s all there was to it. Dad would be appalled if he ever learned she had felt she had to protect him.

  Buoyed by her new confidence, she turned off lights and got ready for bed. It was only after she was in bed, tired but weirdly not sleepy, that a niggle of uneasiness made itself felt.

  She’d heard the acute dislike in her father’s voice when he said Mitch was a sly little asshole in that first conversation. He liked knowing things. Then he could make use of what he knew.

  To blackmail.

  Oh, yes, Dad knew.

  Sickness rose in her throat and she blocked out all the things she didn’t want to think about by remembering how it felt sitting on the restaurant patio in the near dark with Troy’s arm around her. The gentleness in a voice that could often be harsh, the controlled strength of his hand holding hers, a good-night kiss so soft it felt...loving.

  Madison was beginning to think she wanted nothing more in the world than for Detective John Troyer to love her.

  Her stomach quivered with the force of her conflicting needs, her father on one side, Troy on the other. It was a long time before she slept.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TROY HADN’T BEEN exactly dodging his mother, but the past couple of weeks he hadn’t gone out of his way to see her, either. He’d continued his usual brief, nightly phone calls, during which she told him, as usual, that she was fine, just fine. While a few old friends made the effort to stay in touch with her, she still wasn’t going out.

  A man could only push the kind of worries he had about her to the back of his mind for so long. He phoned her the next morning and suggested he take her out to dinner that evening. “We haven’t done that in a while.”

  “Oh, you know how much fun it is for me to cook for you,” she said in that vivacious tone he knew to be fake. “It’s hardly worth cooking when it’s only me. When shall I expect you? Six?”

  Suddenly, in his mind three red cherries lined up. Ding! How could he have been so oblivious? He shook his head. Man. He’d been putting off labeling his mother’s condition, but now he was being slapped in the face.

  Agoraphobic.

  She never left the house and yard anymore. He didn’t know how it had happened or why, but it had. Troy tried to remember whether she’d had any tendencies that way before Dad died, and had no idea. Mostly when he’d seen his parents it was at their house. He’d had dinner there a lot of Sundays, when he had the day off. He and Dad met for lunch sometimes, which had seemed natural with the bank only four blocks from the city hall/police station complex. But Mom? He drew a blank. She must have at least gone shopping in those days.

  Hell, I’ve enabled her, Troy realized, disgusted with himself. He thought of how helpful he’d been in the months after Dad died, doing all Mom’s errands for her because he could see how hard grief had hit her.

  Yeah, and I just kept doing them. He did her household repairs, picked up any little things she needed like fertilizer and mulch— “Whenever you happen to be at the garden center,” she’d say.

  He sat back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to make the cartilage creak. Damn it, now what? He had a feeling she was too far gone for him to simply start declining to do her errands. Those friends and neighbors would probably pick up the slack, not realizing she had a real problem.

  Talk to her. Get her to admit that she had a problem.

  He grimaced. Dinner tonight was going to be good fun.

  His cell phone rang and he checked to see who was calling. Madison. Even the sight of her name lifted his mood.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  She’d complained to him once that she didn’t like her voice. She thought it was too sweet and light, that it got in the way of her being taken seriously. Troy loved her voice and especially the hint of a laugh that often ran through it, like the faint burble of a distant stream. It occurred to him that he hadn’t heard that extra lightness in her voice recently, which was a dead giveaway: she was living under a lot of stress.

  He glanced around to be sure he was relatively alone in the bustle of the busy squad room. “How’s your day?”

  When she said, “Fine,” Troy winced. Not his favorite word at the moment. “Actually,” Madison continued, “I found the file for Frank Claybo.”

  He leaned forward and grabbed a pen. “And?”

  “He was one of those grads who left Wakefield and never bothered to stay in touch. We have no information on what he did after graduating. I have his parents’ address and phone number, but...”

  “They’d likely be in their eighties.”

  “Yes.” Something smug in her voice told him she was holding out on him. “Turns out, though, that he has a younger sister who also graduated from Wakefield. And she has stayed in touch.”

  “Now you’re talking.” There’d been no other Claybo on his list, so presumably the little sister had yet to arrive on campus.

  “She didn’t pop up even when I did a quick computer search because she had a different last name. Thank goodness there was a note in his file about sending information to her when she was in high school. She’s a half sister, I guess, who has since married and changed her name yet again.” Madison gave him that name, her current phone number and address. She was in southern California—Newport Hills, which he vaguely thought might be a ritzy area.

  “You just saved me a hell of a lot of work,” he told Madison. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” That sounded sincere enough, but also solemn and...something else.

  Of course she had to have mixed feelings. When Troy found him, Frank Claybo might name her father as one of the blackmail victims. At this point, Troy thought it was certain that Guy Laclaire had forked over bucks to King in return for silence. The big question was why. Some secrets might be worth paying an irritating little worm like King to keep quiet; the kind of thing that would get you in trouble with a girlfriend, or the college administration, or even parents. But a secret worth killing over—that was another story.

  “I’m having dinner with my mother tonight,” he said. “I’ll let you know if I learn anything significant. Otherwise,
can we plan for tomorrow night?”

  Since this was Friday and she wouldn’t be working tomorrow, Madison offered to cook for him. He accepted with a lot more pleasure than he had felt when his mother made the same offer. Troy felt a sudden urge to tell Madison his worries, but capped it; this was the middle of a working day for both of them. And he needed to find out what Mom had to say anyway.

  After hanging up, he muttered an obscenity. He knew what she’d say. He was being silly, she was fine. Just fine.

  * * *

  “TROY!” MOM GREETED him at the door with such delight that he was stabbed by guilt.

  Well, damn. He should have managed to spend more time with her, rather than letting himself get so preoccupied with work and with Madison.

  He hugged her, then stood back. His mother had been a pretty girl and was an attractive woman who made sure she stayed that way.

  “You’re still losing weight,” he said, perturbed. But her makeup was carefully applied and her hair stylishly cut and streaked. Then with a gleam of hope he thought, hey, maybe he was wrong and she did go out. He knew those pale streaks weren’t natural and he doubted if she spent that much time in the sun. Didn’t that mean she was visiting a salon?

  Mom kept beaming. “Thank you.”

  “That wasn’t a compliment.” He immediately felt like a jerk. “I worry about you.”

  Her smile dimmed, but she continued to clutch his hand. “I could afford to lose a little. Honestly, John. All you do is fuss.”

  Fuss. He kissed her cheek, thinking she wasn’t going to like anything he had to say tonight.

  She’d made one of his favorite casseroles and he spotted an apple pie cooling on the counter. With a little luck, she’d send a few slices home with him. Seeing what a small portion of dinner she dished up for herself, he suspected she’d send the entire remainder of the pie with him. She couldn’t be eating a lot of desserts these days.

  “Your hair looks good. Do you still go to that same salon?” He frowned as if trying to remember. “What was it called? Shear something.”

  “Shear Beauty. No, I’ve found a woman I like better. She either works out of her own home or goes to her clients. It’s so handy having her come here.”

  Well, shit.

  “So tell me what’s up with you,” she said brightly.

  “Uh.” Momentarily he went blank. Did he plunge right in with a demand for her to start going to counseling? Or tell her what Dad had put into the time capsule? Eenie meenie. “I’m seeing a woman” was what came out of his mouth. “I’d like you to meet her one of these days.”

  That lit her up. “How wonderful! You haven’t brought a woman home since...” She had to reach way down in the memory banks. “You were barely out of college.”

  He hadn’t thought of Shari in years. They’d lived together for about a year. He’d never kidded himself that he was madly in love with her, but moving in together had seemed like the thing to do at the time. Under the circumstances, he hadn’t felt able to go home for Thanksgiving without inviting her. He remembered hoping she’d have other plans, but no, she hadn’t.

  Shari was the first and last woman he’d cohabited with. As she got more and more demanding, he’d increasingly felt trapped. He’d been careful ever since to avoid getting cornered like that.

  Madison, though...

  He shook off the thought that was closer to a moment of yearning.

  “Madison’s father went to school with Dad,” he said. “Guy Laclaire. They knew each other.”

  Mom’s expression changed. It was subtle enough he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been paying close attention. “Oh, my,” she said. “How did you happen to meet? Her father doesn’t live here in Frenchman Lake, does he?”

  Why did he suspect she knew a great deal about Guy Laclaire?

  “No, Portland. Madison came to Wakefield because her dad had, and she now works for the college. She’s director of alumni relations. We met because she organized the event when the time capsule was opened.”

  “Oh, my,” Mom said again, as if she had to say something. But he thought she was frightened.

  “I like her.”

  “Well...of course I’ll be glad to meet her.” Mom’s hand fluttered over the basket that held rolls, then away again.

  “I read what Dad put into the time capsule.”

  Her eyes, wide and—yes—frightened, first met his then skittered away.

  “You know what he wrote, don’t you?” Troy had tried to keep his tone calm, but her reaction suggested he hadn’t totally succeeded.

  Mom touched her throat. “Yes,” she said finally. “He told me a long time ago what he’d seen. He regretted ever writing it down.”

  Not what he’d wanted to hear. “Why?” Troy asked.

  “He couldn’t believe that Guy could have done anything awful like that. Joe couldn’t understand why Guy didn’t speak with authorities, but he was sure he had good reasons.”

  “And that’s it.” He shouldn’t be staggered, but he was. “Dad saw someone running away from the scene of an ugly murder, with what could have been the weapon in his hand, and he decided Laclaire was too nice to have hurt anyone.”

  “Well...yes,” his mother said timidly.

  Troy swore in a way that had her eyes so wide, the whites showed like a spooked horse. “Son of a bitch,” he said finally. “You and Dad taught me everything I know about integrity, and the two of you were keeping a secret like this all these years.”

  She ducked her head, but too late. He’d seen the tears spilling in huge rivulets down her cheeks, carrying mascara with them. She snatched her cloth napkin from her lap and balled it against her mouth as if to stifle sobs. Troy was too angry to feel the guilt he probably should.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t insist on attending the opening to make sure I never saw what Dad wrote.” He waited until her alarmed gaze lifted. “But then,” he said softly, “you’d have had to leave the house to do that, and you can’t, can you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she gasped. “Why are you being so hateful?”

  With an almost violent movement, he pushed his plate away. “Am I being hateful because I pointed out that you have a problem?”

  “Your father was a good man.” His mother scrubbed wildly at her wet cheeks, further smearing the mascara. “How can you say he wasn’t?”

  “I’m a cop, Mom. How do you think I felt to discover my own father had impeded an investigation into the most brutal crime that’s ever happened in this town?”

  “He was a boy....”

  “Sure he was. Then.” He let the word thud down like a rock. “What was his excuse ten years later? Twenty? He sure as hell didn’t retain enough faith in Guy Laclaire’s goodness to stay friends with him, did he?”

  His mother sat frozen, a small creature afraid to draw notice.

  His belly was knotted up tighter than a fist preparing for a blow. “You know what he was thinking. Tell me.”

  “I don’t know!” Her face crumpled. “Why are you yelling at me?”

  “God.” He pushed back from the table. “I can’t believe you knew, too.”

  She stared past him, her face ravaged. “It wasn’t my place to say anything. The decision was Joe’s to make.”

  He swung away, unable to look at her. When he reached up to massage the muscles on the back of his neck, his fingers dug in with a painful will. “All right,” he said at last. “You’re right. You were respecting his wishes. I can understand that.”

  There was a long enough silence that he almost turned around to be sure she hadn’t crept like a mouse from the room.

  “Why are you making so much of this?” Mom asked, while his back was still to her.

  “Because I’ve reopened the investigation based on what Dad said.” He did turn finally, to see her still sitting in her place but now staring at him in shock.

  “You’ve...what?” she whispered.

  “You heard me.”

  “B
ut...he didn’t want...”

  “That’s not what he said.” Troy clenched his teeth, then had to work to unclench them. “He started by saying he knew he shouldn’t have kept the secret. That at least by writing down what he’d seen and putting it in the time capsule, he could be sure it would all come out someday. He admitted it was his way of absolving himself of guilt.” He looked steadily at his mother. “I’d like to think I’m following my father’s wishes.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “What I know,” Troy said grimly, interrupting her with no compunction, “is that I’m doing what Dad should have done. I intend to find out who beat a twenty-one-year-old kid so viciously he didn’t have a face left. I plan to find out who has gotten away with the crime for thirty-five goddamn years. And if Dad wouldn’t have approved, I’d be even more disappointed in him than I already am.”

  She seemed dazed. “You’ll destroy his reputation.”

  He could have, should have, told her that no one but he and Madison knew what Dad had written. He was too enraged, too stunned, to feel like soothing his mother’s fears. “Got to say, when I put Dad’s reputation on one side of the scale, it seems pretty light compared to the hideous, unsolved murder weighing down the other side.”

  She kept staring.

  Churning with frustration and too many other unresolved emotions, Troy shook his head. “I think I’ll skip dessert, Mom. Thanks for dinner.”

  She was stuttering a protest while he kissed her on one cheek and strode to the front door. He got out of there quick, before he could say anything he would regret more than what had already passed between them.

  Pulling away from the curb, Troy didn’t look back. He didn’t want to see that his mother had followed him to the front door and was watching him go. He didn’t want to see his mother, period. Right this second, he couldn’t imagine when he would want to see her again.

  * * *

  MADISON WAS SURPRISED when her doorbell rang just after eight that evening. Even friends didn’t often drop by at this time of night without having called first.