A Fatal Twist

by Tracy Weber

  “I understand,” I replied. “How can I help?”

  “I’m not sure that you can. I’m not sure anyone can. I just wish this whole nightmare would go away.” Her eyes grew wet. “I still can’t believe Richard’s gone.”

  Rachel’s pocket buzzed. She pulled out her cell phone and glanced at the screen. “Excuse me, I have to take this.” She set her cup next to the water dispenser, walked a few feet away, and spoke in a low voice. “I see. Can it wait until—” She stopped, mid-sentence, and listened. Her complexion turned ashen. “Yes. As soon as I can. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  She stared at the phone for at least twenty seconds, as if the screen held an important but completely indecipherable message.

  “That was my lawyer. The police need me to come down to the station. Now.”

  Cotton lined the roof of my mouth. Henderson and Martinez must have found whatever they were looking for.

  Rachel held her breath for a moment. When she released it, she seemed to grow three inches taller. “Kate, there is something you can do for me.”

  “What’s that?” I was tempted to say I’d do anything for her, but I’d already proven that wasn’t true. I wouldn’t lie.

  “Nicole’s not … ” Her voice trailed off. “She’s sixteen, but she’s young for her age. She shouldn’t be by herself right now. Can you watch her while I’m gone? If I can’t come back to get her—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I don’t have the luxury of denial, Kate. My lawyer thinks the police are going to arrest me. I don’t want Nicole to see it. Can she stay with you while I go to the station?”

  “Of course.”

  She swallowed. “If I’m not back by five, call Justine. I spoke to her last night. She agreed to let Nicole stay with her until school lets out for summer. If I’m in jail longer than that, Nicole will have to go to Atlanta and live with my parents.”

  Tiffany rattled the front door, then opened it with her key. I almost didn’t recognize the young woman who walked in behind her. The blemishes on Nicole’s skin were barely visible, and expertly applied eyeliner made her eyes pop dramatically against her pale skin. Her lips were a little too cherry red for my taste, but I had to admit: Tiffany was a makeup magician.

  If Rachel noticed her daughter’s transformation, she didn’t mention it. “Nicole, I need you to stay here with Kate while I go to the police station and answer a few more questions.”

  “Stay with Kate?” Nicole glared at her mother, then at me, then back at her mother again, as if she wasn’t sure which of us to loathe most. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “I know you don’t,” Rachel snapped. “But please, for once in your life, would you not argue with me?”

  I offered the teen a conciliatory smile. “Believe me, Nicole. I’m not a babysitter. Ask Tiffany. Anyone who hangs out with me has to work.”

  “She’s not kidding,” Tiffany replied. “She’s a freaking slave driver.”

  I ignored Tiffany’s quip and focused on Nicole. “If you stay with me, you’ll have to help with the puppies.”

  The girl’s energy softened. “Puppies?”

  “Yes. I’m fostering two labradoodle puppies. They’ve been home alone for the last couple of hours. I need someone to watch them while I take my older dog for a walk. If we have time, maybe you can show me some of those makeup tricks Tiffany taught you. You look great.”

  Nicole’s eyes didn’t meet mine, but I swore that she almost smiled. “Okay.”

  Rachel gave Nicole a one-sided hug, mouthed the words “thank you,” and walked out the door. Nicole stared out the window until long after Rachel’s car disappeared down Greenwood Avenue.

  Ten

  Forty-five minutes later, I left Tiffany in charge of the studio and drove with Nicole to Ballard. The grumbling started as soon as she latched her seat belt.

  “I can’t believe my mom is making you watch me like some sort of toddler. It’s like that stupid party at the hospital all over again.”

  “You didn’t want to go to the open house on Saturday?”

  “Why would I? Did you see anyone else my age there?”

  Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t. I’d seen adults of all ages and plenty of younger kids, but not a single teen. Not even Nicole. I shook my head no.

  “Mom only made me go so she could keep an eye on me.”

  “If that’s true, she didn’t do a very good job of it. When I saw her, she was trying to find you.”

  “The party was lame. I figured I couldn’t get any more grounded than I already was, so I took off.”

  “To where?”

  She shrugged. “Around. I hung out at a coffee shop for a while, then I grabbed a bus home.” She frowned. “That woman is seriously obsessed with keeping me under observation, like I’m some sort of lab rat. If she actually does get arrested, she’ll probably make the cops put me in the cell next to her. That way she can glare at me through the bars.”

  I smiled. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

  Nicole crossed her arms and slumped against the seat. “Prison might not be so bad. Her real plan is worse. She told me today that if she gets arrested, I’ll have to stay with Justine.”

  “Justine seems pretty cool. You don’t like her?”

  “She’s okay, but the old woman who lives with her is gross. She drools all the time and chews with her mouth open. She even wears a diaper.” Nicole wrinkled her nose. “The last time I was there the living room smelled like urine.”

  This wasn’t my battle—at least not one I cared to join—so I didn’t comment. Nicole sulked for a few minutes, but then her demeanor changed. She dropped her bitter facade long enough for me to glimpse her vulnerability.

  “Hey, you don’t think my mom will actually get arrested, do you?”

  I paused for a few seconds, unsure how I should answer. I settled for honesty.

  “I don’t know, Nicole. She might. I wish I had a better answer, but I won’t lie to you. You deserve the truth.”

  Nicole leaned toward me earnestly. “You know my mom didn’t kill Richard, right?”

  I nodded my head yes.

  “Then tell the police you were wrong. Tell them you didn’t see her or that you got the time mixed up.”

  “I can’t lie to the police, Nicole. Even if I did, they’d figure it out. That would make your mom’s case worse.”

  “There has to be something we can do. What if she goes to prison?”

  “What your mom needs most is for you to be strong,” I said.

  Nicole rolled her eyes.

  “And by that I mean cut her some slack. She’s under a lot of stress. I know you two have issues, but can you try to not fight her for now?”

  Nicole didn’t say yes, but she didn’t argue, either. I took that as a good sign.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll send you both positive energy.”

  I planned to do significantly more than telegraph good intentions, but I didn’t share that with Nicole. The last thing she needed was false hope.

  We drove the rest of the way to my bungalow in silence. Nicole grabbed my arm as we pulled into the driveway. “Kate, you shouldn’t leave puppies outside alone. It’s not safe!”

  She was right. The puppies were in danger. From Michael. He’d strangle them the moment he saw today’s carnage. Mutt was currently digging a hole in Michael’s freshly planted vegetable bed. Jeff gnawed on what was left of a tattered tennis shoe—men’s size ten.

  “The little Houdinis escaped again.”

  Nicole leaped out of the car and ran toward them. I sprinted a milli­second behind her. The gold and black monster-pups glanced up from their pillaging and chose a new game. Keep away. As in, keep the heck away from the buzz-killing humans determined to catch you.

  I crushed Michael’s prized Sungold tomat
o plants and knocked over the pea trellis, but I finally cornered Mutt on the front doorstep. Jeff dropped the tennis shoe and scampered toward the street.

  “Nicole, grab the black one before it gets hit!”

  She scooped him up inches from the sidewalk.

  Mutt wiggled happily at the end of my arms, covered in something brown, crumbly, and decidedly smelly. “What’s that all over your neck?” I leaned forward and took a deep whiff.

  Chicken manure.

  From the wrinkled expression on Nicole’s face, Jeff smelled no better.

  Old Kate would have chosen this moment to throw an ill-advised temper tantrum, but New Kate was in charge now. And New Kate looked on the bright side. The puppies may have destroyed Michael’s dream of home-grown salsa this summer, but at least they had stayed on the property. If they’d gone wandering …

  Oh no.

  If the puppies had escaped both the house and my fenced back yard, where was Bella?

  I thrust Mutt into Nicole’s arms. “Wait here. I need to see if my German shepherd got out, too. She’s not always good with strangers.”

  My mind whirled with nightmarish scenarios as I ran to the back yard gate. Dog fights, car accidents, mauled Santas, stern Animal Control officers. Bella was huge, powerful, and easily frightened. She often acted like Cujo on steroids. She’d never harmed anyone, human or animal, but that gave me little comfort. Frightened dogs, when cornered, were the most likely to bite. With Seattle’s tough dangerous dog laws, Bella’s first bite could well be her last.

  I pulled on the padlock. Still locked. That was good, right? My hands shook so hard, I couldn’t insert the key.

  Take a deep breath, Kate. Slow down.

  The lock snapped open on the third try. I charged through the gate, tore across the yard, and peered through the kitchen blinds, desperately hoping to see Bella. She sat at perfect attention, staring at the doggie door.

  My hands—in fact my entire body—still shook. I slumped against the window and took several long, steadying breaths, then looked at the sky and whispered a quick prayer to God, the universe, or anyone else who might be listening.

  “Thank you.”

  Bella greeted me in the kitchen with wet, sloppy kisses and a full-body wiggle. I greeted her with a huge, full-Bella hug and a few sloppy kisses of my own.

  “Gooooood girl.”

  After a moment of relieved bonding, I clipped on her leash, grabbed a handful of dog cookies, and led her outside.

  “It’s safe now, Nicole. Come on into the yard.”

  Nicole closed the gate and set the two writhing puppies on the grass. They scampered away, no doubt searching for something new to destroy.

  I laid my hand on Bella’s shoulders and pointed to Nicole. “Bella, this is Nicole. Nicole is our friend.” At the sound of her favorite F-word, Bella lowered her head, woo-wooed, and gently swished her tail back and forth—the trademarked I-am-a-sweet-and-friendly-dog greeting she used with new friends. “Bella, say hello.”

  As trained, Bella walked up to Nicole, went into a sit, and offered Nicole her paw.

  “How cute!” Nicole grabbed Bella’s paw and gave it an enthusiastic shake.

  “Good girl, Bella,” I said. I gave Bella one of the cookies and handed the rest to Nicole. “Give her these and she’ll be your friend forever.”

  Bella stared at Nicole—or more likely at the dog treats—with an expression of unbridled adoration. A long line of drool dangled from her lower lip all the way to her elbow.

  “Are you comfortable with big dogs?” I asked.

  Nicole’s smile enveloped her entire face. “Absolutely.”

  I left them to bond while I explored the devastation.

  Mutt and Jeff could only have been out an hour or two, but they’d made excellent use of their time. A half-dozen new holes dotted the walkway. The corpses of Michael’s newly planted geraniums lay beside them. The petunias hadn’t fared much better. The ones still attached to their roots had been flattened into petunia pancakes, the obvious victims of some serious puppy rolling.

  Three feet from the gate, I discovered their escape route. An impossibly small break in the fence with a labradoodle-puppy-sized hole dug underneath it. Ingenuity score? Puppies: 237. Human prison guards: 0.

  And I hadn’t looked inside the house yet.

  I took a deep breath and steeled my shoulders. No time like the present.

  Nicole hugged the pups to her chest and followed me inside. “Eww.” She pointed at the living room carpet. “You don’t expect me to clean that up, do you?”

  “No.” I sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s my job.”

  A large pile of puppy droppings and a softball-sized wet spot decorated the floor. Half of a second puppy pile had been smashed into the carpet. The rest had been tracked around the room. I wasn’t sure which of the three dogs had received the day’s poopie pedicure, but I could easily track the creature’s movements—across the carpet, onto the couch, and out to the kitchen.

  Mutt began to sniff and circle, a clear sign that she was about to desecrate the carpet again. I scooped her up and accidentally dug my fingers into her bladder, with the expected outcome. Urine splashed down my shirt and onto my jeans.

  Nicole burst into laughter, a sound so rare that hearing it was almost worth being drenched in dog urine.

  “Gross!”

  “You think that’s funny? Wait till it happens to you.” I handed her the still-dripping dog. “Take her outside while I change clothes.” She held the puppy at arm’s length and marched it to the door. I ran upstairs and quickly changed into sweats and a torn T-shirt, the perfect clothes for dog washing.

  I grabbed a week’s supply of terry towels from the closet, wetted half of them, and cleaned up the mess as best I could. Next up: a kitchen sink bath for the two evildoers. I found Nicole and the puppies in my office.

  Mutt, Jeff, and Nicole were cavorting like long-lost friends. The puppies nibbled; they licked; they yipped their affection. Nicole giggled and rolled on the floor, covered in crawling fur monsters. This was not the angsting teenager I’d loaded into my car at Serenity Yoga. Not even close.

  The Yoga Sutras posit that within each one of us resides a perfect being. An all-knowing soul, if you will. But we rarely show it. Instead, we cover it with filters—layers of conditioning that color how we interact with the world.

  Nicole was no exception. By the age of sixteen, she had experienced traumas that would have broken many adults. The gray fog of addiction, the purple bruise of heartache, the black nothingness of death. That dark-shrouded Nicole was the person I knew. That dark-shrouded Nicole was the person she shared with the world.

  As she interacted with those puppies, her resentful shield lowered. For the first time since I’d met her, sullenness was replaced by something that looked an awful lot like joy.

  Even when Nicole’s eyes met mine, her shield stayed down. “Oh my gosh, Kate. They are so adorable. What are their names?”

  I smiled, puppy-induced irritation forgotten. “Michael calls them Mutt and Jeff, but we’ll eventually come up with something better.” I gestured with my thumb toward the kitchen. “Come on, let’s give these monsters a bath.”

  I filled the sink with warm, sudsy water and scrubbed the chicken doo out of Mutt’s fur. Bella sat ten feet away, ears flattened in helmet-head position, undoubtedly worried that she was up next. For a while, Nicole and I worked in silence. As I rinsed the suds from Mutt’s fur, I asked Nicole about the one thing we had in common: yoga.

  “So, what did you think of the Yoga to Overcome Grief class?”

  She didn’t answer at first. She stalled by taking the pup from my hands and rubbing it dry with Michael’s favorite bath towel. “To be honest, Mom forced me to take it.”

  I teasingly nudged her shoulder. “So your mom sentenced you to spend time with
me, kind of like today?”

  She blushed. “It’s not you. I just … I never thought I could do yoga.” She looked down at Mutt’s fur. “I’m not … you know … ”

  I’d heard the start of that sentence many times before. It usually ended with one of three misconceptions: that only fit, flexible people did yoga; that yoga was Hinduism, and therefore violated the principles of Christianity; or that all yogis looked like the models on the cover of Yoga Journal.

  I gestured at my mismatched sweats and torn T-shirt. “You didn’t think you could rock the yoga fashion world the way Tiffany and I do?”

  Nicole’s lopsided grin hinted at the mischievous teenager she kept hidden inside. “I hate the tight yoga pants people like Tiffany wear, but that’s not it. I don’t like working out.” She shuddered. “I hated gym. So no offense, but watching a bunch of rubber-band Barbies shove their butts in the air didn’t sound all that fun to me.”

  I didn’t consider yoga a workout—it was a practice that integrated the full human system, body, mind, and spirit—but I didn’t correct her.

  She continued. “But then I came to your studio, and you turned out to be okay. You don’t focus on what the poses look like at all. When I practice, I feel like I’m alone. Yoga class is the one time I don’t feel self-conscious.”

  I knew what she meant. When I practiced yoga, the world evaporated. In a good way.

  She lifted her eyes to meet mine. “They should offer yoga classes in high school. It would totally beat weightlifting and track.”

  “I’m glad it helps.”

  I handed her the black puppy. Nicole nuzzled his belly with her nose. “You’re so lucky to have three dogs. I wanted a pet, but Richard hated animals. A friend gave me a kitten after my dad died, and Richard threatened to drown it. Mom made me give it back.”

  I bit back the vile words threatening to spew from my lips. Dad taught me to never speak ill of the dead. But when they threatened a kitten? That had to be some sort of exception. Still, badmouthing Nicole’s dead stepfather wouldn’t help anyone. I stuck with a safer topic.

  “I am lucky. Bella is the love of my life.” I pointed at Mutt, who had toddled to the water dish and appeared to be slurping her weight in water. “The little ones aren’t mine, though. My boyfriend and I are just fostering them until we find the jerk who abandoned them. Whoever they are, I could kill them.”