That was the last time Zoe had seen her Aunt Grace alive. If only she had said something to her parents then. Maybe she could have saved her aunt. Zoe squeezed her eyes shut, trying to keep from crying. This was all her fault.
“I should have seen it coming,” Zoe whispered, slumping down in her chair. “Last night—I just knew something was upsetting Aunt Grace. I should have said something to you. But I didn’t. And now…” She burst into tears.
“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said, sitting down beside her and stroking her hair. “No, no, there was nothing anyone could have done. You cannot blame yourself. Sometimes these things just happen.”
Zoe blinked back her tears. She felt pulled apart in a hundred different directions. How could life suddenly become so confusing?
Chapter Four
After forcing down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Zoe excused herself while Mom and Dad busied themselves calling relatives with the sad news. As she headed toward her bedroom, she noticed the medical examiner in Grace’s room collecting the pills from the floor and putting them in a plastic bag. Detective Tasca had joined the police officer and was dusting the doorframe for fingerprints.
“There’s only one oddity I’ve noticed so far,” Zoe heard the police officer saying from inside the room. “It’s the Cross pen we found under her bed.”
Zoe stepped back. She pressed her body against her bedroom door partly hiding herself from view and listened to what they were saying.
“What about it?” asked Detective Tasca.
“It’s out of place. This room is as neat as a pin, not even one tiny dust ball under the bed. And there’s another thing—the other pens I’ve found in the room have covers on or the point retracted, which suggests to me—in addition to the location of the pen—that she might have been using this pen at the time of her death.”
“Maybe she was writing a letter or lecture notes,” the medical examiner suggested.
“That occurred to me too, but I looked through her things for any handwritten notes—anything—books, letters—using a fine point black pen like this one, but so far nothing. The notes in her desk drawer are written with a blue ball point pen—probably a Bic Atlantis like the ones she keeps in her top desk drawer.”
“Is it possible that someone else was with her in the room at the time of her death and took whatever she was writing?” Detective Tasca asked.
“You mean, like an intruder?”
“Or maybe an accomplice.” The detective ducked under the yellow tape and stepped out into the hallway. Taking a large piece of tape from a silver case, she placed it over the dusted area.
“I don’t think we can go that far. I mean—it could have been a family—”
“I just know she was involved,” Detective Tasca interrupted, a note of bitterness in her voice. “I tell you—she’s guilty as hell.”
Zoe winced. Had the detective already figured out Zoe had been in the room snooping around? The door to her bedroom creaked slightly as she reached her hand back to open it.
Detective Tasca spun around. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
Zoe cringed. “I…I just came to get my stuff from my bedroom—for tonight.”
Detective Tasca let out a long breath. “Okay,” she said dismissing Zoe with a wave of her hand. Then her voice softened. “Go ahead and get your things.”
Zoe backed into her room and pulled the door shut behind her. She felt horrible. Picking up her backpack, she emptied out her schoolbooks and stuffed in a change of clothes and a clean pair of pajamas along with her hairbrush, toiletries, and a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She set the bulging backpack at the end of her bed next to the pink stuffed elephant and checked the clock on her dresser. She had almost an hour before they left for Uncle Patrick’s.
She could hear talking coming from Aunt Grace’s room. However, she could not make out any of the words even if she put her ear to the door.
After a few moments, Zoe walked back to her bed and pulled the journal out from under her pillow. She stared at it. There was no way she would be able to put it back now. She wondered how long it would take the police to figure out that she had been snooping around in Aunt Grace’s room. Probably not long. After all, the detective already had her pegged as a bad seed.
Zoe closed her eyes, searching her brain for a way out of this mess. She figured she may as well stay in her room until her parents called her, rather than risk going out in the hall and giving Detective Tasca a chance to question her again. Zoe knew they could not come into her room without a proper search warrant because it was on the other side of the yellow tape. She knew that from watching Law and Order.
She lay back on her bed and opened the journal. Maybe she could learn something from it about her aunt’s killer.
The first page included a list of New Year’s resolutions: lose ten pounds, work out at the gym, meet new friends, and write a novel. The following half dozen or so entries were short: a shopping trip to Marshalls for workout clothes, lunch with one of her professor friends, another boring department meeting, getting ready for a new class. The next entry was longer and was about something that had happened in one of her ethics classes. It read:
February 13th
Sometimes I feel so discouraged. I am just not sure I’m making any difference in how my students think about morality—if, in fact, they think about it at all. The discussion in class on Friday started out with Mike Nunes saying that right and wrong is all relative—that some people find meat-eating, smoking marijuana, and abortion morally evil, while others think these practices are perfectly morally acceptable, and so on. However, from there he went on to conclude (incorrectly of course) that these issues will never be resolved simply because people have different moral values.
His comments were met with the usual mumble jumble about this being a free country and that we have a right to believe and do whatever we want without other people trying to force their values down our throats. The other students, with only a few notable exceptions, nodded their agreement like a bunch of bobble heads. Honestly, I do not know what’s up with students these days. They seem to think anything is justified as long as it feels good. Even Zoe understands about the importance of right and wrong.
Zoe’s lower lip trembled at the mention of her name. She wiped a tear from her eye and set down the journal then reached over and picked up Horton. She and Aunt Grace had had many long discussions about the dangers of moral relativism—one of her aunt’s favorite topics. According to Grace, not only could relativists abandon their own children without it ever bothering their conscience—like Dr. Seuss’s Lazy Mayzie, who had tricked Horton the elephant into taking care of her egg—they believed all sorts of horrible things like murdering and torturing people, and even cannibalism, were perfectly fine as long as you believed they were. Zoe shuddered and hugged the stuffed elephant. She wondered if this Mike Nunes guy might be dangerous. She knew that moral relativism was really bad, and if it was bad, Mike was probably bad too.
Zoe’s eyes filled with tears. She already missed her aunt so much. She buried her face in Horton’s soft pink fur and collapsed onto her pillow, sobbing.
As she lay there, images of autopsy scenes from CSI crowded into her mind—rigid corpses laid out on cold stainless-steel autopsy tables in some dreary basement morgue, their stiffened bodies neatly slit open for inspection as though they were hunks of meat; skulls being sawn open and a pale-faced forensic pathologist picking through a brain, slicing it up and putting pieces of it on microscope slides. And the lifeless eyes of her aunt staring up at the harsh white glare of the overhead lamp asking, “How could this have happened to me?”
Zoe shivered and rubbed her eyes trying to get rid of the gruesome image. “I won’t let you down, Aunt Grace,” she whispered, placing her right hand over her heart. “I promise.” Sitting up cross-legged on her bed, she picked up the journal and began to read the rest of the entry.
Things really started heat
ing up when Mike made the absurd claim that slavery actually was morally acceptable since the slaveholders believed what they were doing was right.
Mike’s comment provoked a snort from the back of the room and all eyes turned to face Jamal, an affirmative action student from the Chad Brown housing project. Jamal’s certainly smarter than the average student, however, he’s also something of a wise guy. He said to Mike, “You can’t really believe all that shit. Man, if you think slavery is okay, maybe you white guys should try it out for a while. Hey, I’m in the market for a nice white boy to do my bidding.”
Mike immediately took offense, protesting that Jamal had distorted his words and that he was not saying slavery is morally acceptable now—only that it used to be. To which Jamal threw up his hands in a mock posture of subservience and said in an exaggerated Southern drawl, “Whatever you say, Massa. Hey, you da man.”
By now I was starting to worry that I was losing control of the class. I picked up the textbook and pointed to a picture at the top of one of the pages and said in my sternest voice, “Look, if you believe that morality is nothing but your own personal feelings, then this man ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ is your hero because he always did exactly what he felt like doing.”
Fortunately, Nicole—whom I can usually count on to be the voice of reason—spoke up saying: “But what about conscience?” She brought up the example in the textbook of Raskolonikov from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, who had killed a selfish and rich old woman so he could give her money to the poor, pointing out that Raskolonikov thought (felt) what he had done was the right thing, but in the end his conscience got to him.
This started an argument with some students taking the position that Raskolonikov did the right thing killing the old woman, because she was a horrible person and the world was better off without her. Nicole disagreed, saying it’s wrong to kill someone just because we think the world would be better without that person.
Then Mike shook his head like he felt sorry for Nicole and said (paraphrasing Nietzsche), “Conscience is just the internalization of cultural values—an obstacle placed in the great man’s path of self-actualization by losers like that old woman.”
At this point Jamal jumped up from his desk and exclaimed, “Free at last! Free at last! No conscience, no guilt to get in the way.” Then he pointed his finger at the class like it was a gun and said, “Hey, you know what would make me feel really, really good right now?” Honestly, that kid is going to get himself into trouble someday if he doesn’t tone down his language.
Zoe stared at the last few lines. Was this Jamal guy really serious about his threat? She knew from a school assembly they’d had following those school shootings in Connecticut that threats like these needed to be taken seriously. Zoe set down the journal and thought about what she had just read.
Maybe Jamal killed Grace. After all, he did come from that housing project which was in a really bad part of Providence. There were always stories on the news about murders and drive-by shootings there.
On the other hand, that Mike character seemed like a real psycho the way he thought that slavery and all sorts of horrible things were perfectly okay. Who knew what a moral relativist like him was capable of doing? Zoe shuddered at the thought.
Just then, she remembered that she had not been able to find Grace’s book manuscript that morning. Was it possible that whoever killed Grace stole the novel she had been working on and was going to pass it off as their own? Zoe knew from watching television that things like that happened all the time.
She considered this possibility. But what about the passport that had been stolen in Spain and somehow ended up in Grace’s journal back here in Rhode Island? It didn’t seem likely that a kid like Jamal from the housing project, or even that psycho Mike, could afford to travel to Spain.
Unless—Zoe skimmed through the entry. There it was—“wise guy.” The clue was right there in the journal. Grace had referred to Jamal as a “wise guy.” Didn’t that mean a gangster—like a member of the Mafia or a hit man?
She had heard her parents talking about how the Mafia was right here in Rhode Island and that even the infamous Mayor “Buddy” Cianci was almost certainly involved, according to Mom. And if the Mafia could get to a mayor, why not to Jamal as well—especially since he probably needed the money, being so poor and all. Maybe the Mafia had paid Jamal to go to Spain to take out Grace’s husband. After all, her husband was a policeman and everyone knew the Mafia hated cops. Maybe Jamal or Mike—or whoever had murdered Grace—had planted the passport in the journal when he killed her this morning, trying to make it look like Grace had something to do with her husband’s murder.
She flipped through the pages and pulled out the article about Luke’s murder and reread it.
Maybe Mike or Jamal were that “unknown accomplice.” The more she thought about one of them being involved somehow in Luke’s murder, the more sense it made. She had to alert the police. Except, how was she going to get the journal back into Grace’s room without the police suspecting she had taken it? Detective Tasca and her partner must have combed just about every inch of the room by now.
She bit her lower lip. Now she had really done it. Why hadn’t she stayed out of Aunt Grace’s room like she had been told?
A wave of grief flooded over Zoe. She wiped a tear from her eye and picked up Horton. She stared at him as though he had the answer. But the elephant only stared blankly back at her.
Then the doorknob to her room rattled.
Chapter Five
“Zoe?” a voice called. It was Mom.
Zoe shoved the journal under her pillow just as the door opened.
Mom stepped into the room. “It’s time to go,” she said. “Are you packed yet?”
Zoe sighed and looked down at Horton.
“Are you okay, Zoe?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Zoe snapped. She took a deep breath. She had not meant to snap at Mom. It had just come out that way. “Sorry…I didn’t‒it’s just…” She broke off as she noticed the passport peeking out from under her pillow. The dark blue cover stuck out like a sore thumb against the pale pink sheets.
Mom walked over to the bed and started to sit down.
Zoe gasped and plopped the elephant down on the passport beside the pillow where Mom was about to sit.
Mom stepped back and studied her. “Zoe, are you sure you’re okay?”
Zoe felt her face redden. Had Mom seen the passport? Zoe blinked back tears. She was about to confess when Mom bent down and took her hand.
But instead of moving Horton so she could sit down, Mom said, “I understand, sweetie. It’s the toy elephant Aunt Grace gave to you. Of course you want to keep it close to you.”
Tears spilled down Zoe’s cheeks. “It’s just that… I…I don’t know what to do.”
“Hey, I have an idea,” Mom said gently. “Why don’t you come down and we can put together a nice bag of treats—maybe some of those cookies we made yesterday—to take to Uncle Patrick’s.”
“Okay,” Zoe said.
“But first we need to drop Yoda off at Delmyra Kennel,” Mom said.
****
Patrick Delaney lived a few miles away in a large log cabin—the kind made from a kit that came on a big, flatbed truck. The cabin was next to the Queen’s River, which was actually more of a wide stream that flowed through the woods of Exeter.
Uncle Patrick was Dad’s younger brother. Zoe’s grandparents had been killed in an avalanche while on a skiing vacation. Zoe had never known her grandparents. Dad had only been sixteen years old at the time and Uncle Patrick, eleven. With no other living relatives, the responsibility of raising the two orphans had fallen to Grace, their twenty-three-year-old half-sister from their mother’s first marriage.
By the time Zoe and her parents arrived at Uncle Patrick’s cabin, he had already started dinner—spaghetti, Italian bread, and a salad from one of those bags you buy in the supermarket.
“I can’t believe sh
e’s gone,” Uncle Patrick said, pulling a pair of wooden salad tongs from a drawer. He leaned against the counter and placed his free hand over his eyes. “She was like a mother to us. She was so good to us.”
“Here, let me help you,” Mom said gently, taking the tongs from Uncle Patrick.
Over dinner, Zoe’s parents told Uncle Patrick all about what had happened. From there talk moved on to how much they would miss Grace and what a wonderful person she was. In fact, Dad had often said that Grace was “kind and generous almost to a fault”—to use his exact words.
Following dinner Uncle Patrick made a pot of coffee to have with dessert. They all moved to the living room in front of the fireplace. The family cats, Tibia and Humerus, lay curled up in front of the fire. A chiropractor, Uncle Patrick always named his cats after the bones in the body. Zoe sat down on the sofa and stared at the plate of cookies, unable to bring herself to eat any of them.
After a while, she told her parents she was tired and excused herself.
Uncle Patrick had made up the bed for her in Kayla Marie’s room. Her three-year-old twin cousins Kayla Marie and Nickie were away in Guatemala with their mother visiting her family. They had been gone a long time—ever since the Labor Day picnic at their house last month. Zoe remembered Aunt Alejandra crying hysterically about how Grace had tried to drown Kayla Marie, which was, of course, ridiculous and Uncle Patrick had said so in no uncertain terms. He told Aunt Alejandra that if she had been watching the twins like she should have been this never would have happened and that Grace had probably even saved Kayla Marie’s life.
Zoe sighed. Poor Aunt Grace—she had really felt bad about the whole thing and said that she was just trying to pull Kayla Marie from the river. Aunt Alejandra had replied angrily that that was not true—she had seen it with her very own eyes. She’d stormed from the house and left in the van with the twins. That was the end of the picnic. It was the last the time Zoe had seen her cousins.
Fall From Grace Page 3