Healing Waters

by Nancy Rue

  “Then let’s move on to Yvonne.”

  “She was my daughter’s nanny.”

  “And she came after these others—Holly—”

  “They had no reason to want me dead! They took care of my child, and I paid them well and allowed them free access to all ALM services.”

  I looked nervously at Sullivan, who rubbed his chin. I wondered if that meant he, too, heard the brittle breaks between words.

  “And Hudson Fargason?”

  Sonia didn’t answer. Hudson. Hadn’t Marnie said he was the cook at one time?

  “He was a wonderful chef,” she said finally. “I wish he hadn’t left.”

  Ingram leaned back in his chair. “You seem to have a hard time keeping staff, Ms. Cabot. Why did Hudson Fargason leave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.” Ingram angled himself forward again. “Isn’t it true that you fired him?”

  “All right, I let him go.”

  “Then you just lied to us.”

  “What happens here in my home is my private business. It has nothing to do with this.”

  “Why did you fire him?”

  She said nothing.

  “Why, Ms. Cabot? We can go downtown and do this—”

  “Because I got food poisoning twice. I thought he was being careless, and I had to let him go—but I didn’t even tell him why. I just said I didn’t need his services any longer.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I had no proof. I still don’t.” She tried to jerk her head away and failed against her gnarled skin. “Hudson has a sweet spirit. He would never hurt anyone.”

  “He tried to poison you!”

  “That was a mistake! He had no reason to do it on purpose. I accepted him when no one else would.”

  I wanted to stop this. So, I could tell, did Sullivan. He opened and closed his fists and shifted against the wall.

  Schmacker looked at him. “Just two more names,” she said.

  Ingram pulled his face from the hand he leaned on. “You think you can be honest about these?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Tell us about Roxanne Clemm.”

  “Roxanne didn’t work for me,” Sonia said. “She was my best friend.”

  An eyebrow shot up. “Was?”

  “Until she moved into my place at Abundant Living after I stepped down. I took that as a betrayal. But isn’t that me having an issue with her, and not the reverse?”

  That was my sister. Even backed into a torturous corner and ready to snap, she still tried to get herself in command of the conversation.

  “Did it ever occur to you that she wanted your position all along?” Ingram said. “That she might have wanted you out of the way so she could take over?”

  I never thought I would want to hear Deidre Schmacker’s grandmotherly voice instead of anyone else’s, but I was just short of begging her to take over now. This bordered on cruel, and Sonia couldn’t take much more.

  She bore down on Ingram with her eyes. “That is a slanderous, evil thing to say. Roxanne is an opportunist, not a murderer.”

  “Then that leaves us with only one more name on our list,” he said.

  “And who is that?”

  He looked at Deidre Schmacker and nodded. She came around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, arms folded.

  “You, Ms. Cabot,” she said.

  I plastered myself to the wall so I wouldn’t lunge forward. Sonia did. Agent Ingram went to his feet, hands out as if he were going to wrestle her to the floor. Sullivan Crisp was halfway to them when Sonia fell back into her chair. Her chest rose and fell as she struggled to breathe.

  Ingram gave Sullivan a hard look that sent him back.

  “Are you suggesting that I planned my own death?” Sonia said.

  “Not your death,” Ingram said. “Maybe a near-death experience that went awry. If it had gone as planned, it would have bolstered your ministry. You could write your next book about it. You could claim that God saved you because you’ve been His loyal servant. Isn’t that what you propound, Ms. Cabot?”

  Sonia drew herself up on the thread that held her together.

  “That is Satan talking through you,” she said. “And I will not have Satan in my home. I want you both to leave.”

  I shoved my fist against my mouth. This was the part where they would put my sister in handcuffs and push her head down into their car and take her away. This was the part I couldn’t handle.

  But Agent Ingram stood up and put his list back into his file, and Agent Schmacker picked up her bag.

  “It isn’t Satan, Ms. Cabot,” she said. “It is merely two frustrated investigators who do not understand why you won’t help them find out who did this thing to you.”

  “You know something,” Ingram said. “And we will find out what it is.”

  I let Sullivan show them out, but I couldn’t leave Sonia alone to suffer a humiliation I knew only too well. My soul ached for her.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that, sorella,” I said.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Her voice froze me.

  “If you are going to turn on me and God like everyone else, you are not my sister.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You let them come in here with their evil—”

  “They’re the FBI, Sonia. You don’t tell them where they can and can’t go.”

  “You okay, Sonia?” Sullivan said from the doorway.

  She rose from the chair, eyes menacing and unstable. “Get out,” she said to me. “Get out and leave me with my God.”

  “Sonia,” Sully said.

  “You get out too!”

  “Hey, okay—we’ll give you some space.”

  He nodded to me, and I moved robotically to the door.

  “How about if one of us stays with you?” he said.

  “I want you out. I want you out now—”

  “All right, we’re going.”

  “Close the door behind you.”

  “I’ll do that,” Sully said. “But there’s no need to lock it. We’re going to respect your privacy.”

  She sank back into the chair and knotted her hands until she had them where she wanted them, tied into her lap. “Just go, please.”

  We did, Sully closing the door behind us. The lock didn’t click, but I heard her prison doors slam.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  When Lucia lowered herself into the Adirondack, Sully could see the strain on her face, but he didn’t need the light of the torches to know it was there. He could feel the tension come off of her like radio static.

  “You need a minute?” he said. “Just to take a few deep breaths, maybe?”

  She shook her head. Her dark ponytail barely moved, as if it, too, were weighed down by too much everything.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “You have to be exhausted after that scene. I know I am.”

  “Well, as you now know, I’ve been through something like that before.” She tilted her head to the back of the chair. “Thank you, FBI.”

  “That’s why it’s not fair to you that I’m privy to things about your life that you don’t choose to tell me,” Sully said.

  She shrugged.

  “I’d buzz you for that,” he said, “but I don’t think you’re in the mood.”

  She moved only her eyes toward him. “Why would I get a buzz?”

  “Because a shrug doesn’t take us anywhere. If you’re upset that they spilled the proverbial beans about your husband in front of me, that’s okay. You have a right to be.”

  Lucia lowered her forehead into her hands. “Nothing is sacred with those people. They just tear your life apart until they find what they want, and then they leave you with the mess to clean up.” She looked at him, eyes as close to frightened as he’d seen them, even at times when she should have been terrified. “Do they really think Sonia staged the plane crash herself?”

  “I don
’t think so. I think they just did that to scare her into helping them come up with somebody who had a motive. Answering their questions about other people might seem safer after that.”

  “It didn’t work, did it?”

  Sully looked over his shoulder at the house. “Did you check in on her again?”

  Lucia nodded. “I knocked on her bedroom door, and she said she was praying and to leave her alone. I heard one of her DVDs going in there, so I guess she’s watching herself. Is that healthy?” She put up her hand. “I’m sorry—we’re not supposed to be talking about Sonia.”

  He did buzz her then, and she let her face collapse into a smile she seemed too tired to hold back.

  “Let’s just go where we need to go with this,” Sully said. “Whatever helps you get a handle on it.”

  He watched her assemble a question.

  “I feel bad even asking this,” she said, “but you don’t think Sonia would do something to hurt herself, do you?”

  “Are you talking about the plane crash?”

  “It’s stupid, isn’t it? Those people have me so paranoid.”

  “It’s not stupid. They put it out there, and you have to process it somehow. Personally, no, I don’t think the thought ever entered Sonia’s mind. She looks for ways to show God’s power in her life, but I seriously doubt she’d manufacture something.”

  Lucia let out a long breath. “I didn’t think so either.”

  “Would she hurt herself now?” Sully propped one foot across the other knee. “That we don’t know.”

  “Marnie’s in the Gathering Room. Sonia won’t let her in either, but I asked her to keep an ear open and let us know if she heard anything . . . strange.”

  “Good plan.”

  Sully waited, hoping she’d go farther down the path she was obviously glancing at. When she didn’t, he said, “Do you have a relationship with Marnie?”

  “No, and I don’t want to talk about her if it’s all the same to you.”

  For somebody who let half the world walk on her, Lucia Coffey knew when to put her own boots on.

  “Do you want to see my list?” she said.

  “That’s why I came out here tonight,” he said. “You did it?”

  In answer, she pulled a piece of paper out of the folder she’d brought and handed it to him. It was a list all right, typed, complete with bullets. And he’d expected her to show up telling him to forget it, that he was full of soup.

  He grinned. “So, how was it for you, making this?”

  She looked slightly annoyed.

  “Seriously. I’m as interested in the process as I was in what you wrote down. Was it as easy as falling off a log? Or more like pulling out your own molars?”

  “I procrastinated,” she said. “And then once I started—” She looked straight at him. “It was like pulling out my nose hairs, one by one, with red-hot tweezers.”

  “Holy crow!” Sully said.

  “You asked,” she said.

  “I did. I’m sorry it was that painful.”

  She gave him a squinty look. “I don’t think you’re that sorry.”

  “Therapy does seem a little sadistic sometimes.”

  “I told you, I’ll do whatever I have to for Bethany. The more I’m with her, the more I find out that just rips my heart out.”

  “I am sorry about that,” Sully said. “So tell me about what you wrote here.”

  She pointed in the general direction of the first item.

  • my first dance lesson

  “How old were you?” Sully said.

  “Five. My grandmother took me.”

  “She was important to you, your grandmother.”

  He watched her swallow.

  “The most important person in my life.”

  “What about your parents?” He glanced at the list. “I don’t see them on here.”

  “They were parents. You know. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. My father was an iron worker.”

  That much Sully knew. Sonia had made their father’s loss of career due to alcohol public knowledge, part of her rising up from a bad start in life. He just wanted to hear Lucia’s take on it.

  She didn’t give him one.

  “So you liked the dance lessons,” Sully said.

  “Loved them. I was good—so they told me.” She frowned down at herself. “Hard to believe now, right?”

  “Why would it be? I can see you as a dancer.”

  “I’m ready to move on to number two,” she said.

  Sully looked back at the list, where she’d written:

  • Sonia’s singing voice was discovered

  • Grandma Brocacini died

  • Sonia went on the audition tour

  Holy crow.

  “So—what do I do with this?” she said.

  “I’ll tell you what I see.” Sully pulled his feet up to sit cross-legged, knees sticking out like cricket legs over the arms of the chair. “I think Sonia would win at Family Feud. She would probably say most of these same things about her childhood.”

  Lucia gave a soft grunt. “Sonia’s childhood was my childhood. When they discovered how well she could sing, everything sort of revolved around that.”

  No bitterness bit at her voice. That bothered Sully.

  “How old was Sonia then?”

  “Five.”

  “And you were how old?”

  “Ten.” Lucia looked upward, fingers on her chin. “I was playing a record in my room, practicing pirouettes, and Sonia was watching me. I had a solo in the recital coming up. Grandma Broc was making my costume.” She knotted her mouth. “You said you wanted details.”

  “I love it.”

  “I was thinking about the tutu I got to wear, and Sonia started singing with the record, making up words, which she’d never done before. It wasn’t this sweet little kindergarten chirp. She just belted it out like she was trying out for Broadway. I was, like, ‘Could you hold it down? I’m trying to dance here’—but my mother tore into my room, and I remember she had a potato and a peeler.”

  She stopped and looked at Sully. “You really want to hear all this?”

  “I’ll let you know if I get bored.”

  “It couldn’t have been more than a few days later that they started her in voice lessons.”

  Sully studied the list. “Where in this timeline did your grandmother die?”

  “About two days after the big discovery.”

  “So Grandma Broc didn’t get to see you in the recital.”

  “I wasn’t in the recital.”

  “Why?”

  “The funeral, and nobody could finish the costume.” Lucia churned slightly in the chair. “It didn’t matter, because when she died, so did the lessons, because she always paid for them.”

  “Who paid for Sonia’s voice lessons?”

  “My mother got a part-time job at a needlepoint shop. Crewel work was big back then, and she taught classes, that kind of thing.”

  “But she didn’t make enough to pay for your dancing lessons.”

  “I know where you’re going with this,” Lucia said. “I recognized a long time ago that Sonia got more than I did, but she was the one with the talent.”

  “People said you were a good dancer. Did your parents think you were, by the way?”

  She gave him the wry smile. “When I made the dance team in fifth grade, my mother told me she was proud of me—and surprised.”

  “Oh?”

  “She said I was the only one with meat on my bones—all the other girls were such skinny little things—and yet I could still keep up with them.”

  Sully felt his heart turn over.

  She shrugged. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to make a career out of it. Sonia was.”

  “They knew that then?”

  “My mother did. She got Sonia all these auditions for shows and commercials, and when she finally got a part in a regional production of Annie and the review was all over what a powerhouse voice she had and how the world would
be hearing from her in the big time, that was it. Mother homeschooled her so they could go on the road anytime an opportunity came up.”

  “She was a real stage mom, huh?”

  Lucia rolled her eyes. “She was insufferable.”

  He was glad to see at least that much resentment. Something about all this resignation nagged at him.

  “What about your father?” he said. “Was he on board with all that?”

  Lucia almost smiled then. “My dad was—well, it wasn’t like he had a whole lot of choice. My mother just always did exactly what she wanted to do when it came to Sonia.”

  “And what happened for you while Sonia and your mother were off chasing stardom?”

  “I stayed home with my dad,” she said. “We ate a lot of pizza. In fact, we became experts on which pizza place made the best sauce, the thickest crust. Until I got sick of it and started cooking.”

  “At what age?”

  “Probably twelve. I found some of Grandma Broc’s recipes, and I figured if I could read, I could cook, so . . .”

  “How did you feel about that?” He cringed inwardly. He sounded like a shrink.

  But Lucia looked up with a flash of realization in her eyes. “I think I was relieved.”

  “Really. How so?”

  “With my mother gone, I didn’t have to listen to her and my father scream at each other. They were both Italian, so they were emotional anyway, and they fought about everything. There wasn’t any syrup for my father’s pancakes, there wasn’t enough money for Sonia’s dance lessons . . .”

  “Sonia’s dance lessons?”

  “You don’t get on Broadway just because you can sing. You have to be able to dance, act, walk on water. But at least when Mother was away they didn’t fight.”

  Sully waited for some indignation to spark. When it didn’t, he said, “You and your father got along.”

  “When Mother wasn’t there. When she was, we just didn’t talk to each other that much. He went to work, and then he went to the bar, and then he came home soused and fought with my mother and went to bed.”

  “Did he go to the bar when she was out of town?”

  Lucia shook her head. “No, he came home with the groceries, and I cooked and we watched Different Strokes and Facts of Life while I did my homework. Oh, and the Olympics. I remember we watched the whole Olympics together, especially the ice skating. It was like dance to me.”