What You Wish For

by Janet Dawson

  Lily backed into the dining room and slipped behind one of the double doors. Through the inch-wide gap between door and jamb, she saw George Dunlin enter the house, dressed in gray pinstripes, the same shade as his wife’s suit. Gray the pair of them, just like the gray house and the gray foggy day outside. He shut the door and stared at his wife.

  “You’re home early,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Obviously not. You’ll have to change your plan,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “So that’s it, then. Without a word.”

  She pointed at the envelope. “I wrote you a letter. Everything I have to say is there.”

  “Say it, then,” he snapped. “You owe me that much.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” she told him.

  “Like hell. Don’t your marriage vows mean anything to you?”

  “This wasn’t a marriage, George. It was a financial transaction cementing your business arrangement with my family.”

  “That’s not the only reason.”

  “Yes, the other clauses in the contract.” She stepped away from the desk. “You wanted an ornament to display at social functions. I’ve done that. You wanted a child. I provided one. I’ve kept my part of the bargain. No more. It’s over.”

  “You’ve gotten plenty from this arrangement. My money, my position.”

  “It’s not enough,” she said. “It hasn’t been a good bargain for ­either of us. We’ve shortchanged ourselves, and Annabel. I was never cut out to be a mother and you aren’t much of a father. Lily’s more of a mother than me.”

  “You’ve got some man on the hook or you wouldn’t be doing this. Who is he?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she walked past him and started up the stairs.

  “This conversation isn’t over,” he said.

  “It is for me.”

  The wind gusted outside. Then the house itself creaked, as it sometimes did. Mr. Dunlin looked around, his eyes cold and furious. Lily shrank back, fear crawling up her spine, afraid to breathe lest she make a sound. Had he seen her cowering behind the dining room door? Could she get away now? He was right there in the hall, just a few feet away.

  Mr. Dunlin’s right hand closed over the big crystal pineapple, as big as his fist. He started up the stairs. In profile his face looked like a hatchet, ready to strike. Soon he was out of sight.

  Eavesdroppers never hear anything good, Lily thought. Poor Anna­bel. That woman is right. I’m a better mother than she is.

  Lily fled. In the detached double garage she pressed the button that opened the garage door. Her hands shook as she got into the sedan and fumbled with the key, taking three tries to start the engine. She shifted into reverse. The Ford shot out of the garage. Brakes squealed, a horn blared. Lily stomped on the brakes, clenched the wheel, and glanced back as a yellow cab whipped past and turned right onto Octavia Street. The cab’s horn bleated twice. Lily took a deep breath and shifted the Ford into drive. At the stop sign she realized she’d forgotten to close the garage door. She punched the device on the dashboard, but didn’t look back to see if the garage door was closed.

  At the store, Lily walked the aisles, taking her time as she filled her cart with groceries. She was reluctant to go back to that house. But she couldn’t delay her return forever. She had calmed down, but her heart began pounding again as she loaded sacks into the Ford’s trunk. When she arrived at the Dunlin house, police cars with pulsing red lights blocked the street. The garage door was open. A uniformed policeman approached the Ford. “I work at that gray house on the corner. I’m the housekeeper. I went to buy groceries.”

  “Okay, they’ll want to talk to you.”

  Lily eased the Ford into the garage and got out. Then a big black Cadillac parked at the curb. Mr. Dunlin stared at her as he got out of the passenger seat. His assistant, Mr. Brinker, was at the wheel.

  Lily and the policeman carried the groceries into the house and left the sacks on the kitchen counter. The tin of almond cookies she’d baked for Annabel was open. Strange men crowded the house. Someone was taking pictures near the front door.

  Lily gasped.

  Mrs. Dunlin lay at the bottom of the stairs, blood pooled under her head. The half-moon table had been knocked over. Pineapple figurines scattered the floor. When they told her Annabel was there, Lily rushed through the living room to the study and put her arms around Annabel.

  In the living room, Mr. Dunlin, Mrs. Megarris and Mr. Brinker were talking with the police. Then Mr. Dunlin told her to pack Annabel’s suitcase. Lily glanced at him, somber in his gray suit. But something wasn’t right. He’d changed clothes. Earlier he’d worn gray pinstripes. The suit he wore now was charcoal, almost black, with no pattern. His cold eyes raked over Lily. Had he seen her hiding behind the dining room door?

  A tall police inspector wanted to talk with both Lily and Annabel, so Lily led the girl to the kitchen and sat her at the table with a glass of milk and the cookie tin. “Put it from your mind. I don’t want you to remember it.”

  Lily filled the teakettle and put it on the stove. Then she put away the groceries. The tall man, who identified himself as Inspector Niebuhr, walked into the kitchen, accompanied by another man, his partner, Inspector Colluci.

  They sat at the table, Lily across from Inspector Niebuhr, with Annabel in between. The little girl hunched over the table, stacking cookies in front of her. The inspector took out a notebook and pen, and asked Lily questions.

  “I come to work at seven,” Lily said. “I take the California Street cable car from Grant to the end of the line, and walk to the house. This morning I made coffee and took it to Mr. Dunlin in his study. I got Annabel up and dressed, fixed her breakfast, and walked her to school. Mr. Dunlin was gone when I got back. Around ten o’clock I took a breakfast tray up to Mrs. Dunlin. She sleeps late.”

  Lily pursed her mouth, trying not to show her disapproval of Mrs. Dunlin’s lay-abed habits. “I did laundry, sheets. I’m not here weekends and there’s always laundry.”

  Inspector Niebuhr smiled. “Yes, there’s always laundry. Especially with a child in the house. Do you fold things as soon as they come out of the dryer? My wife does.”

  “Yes, right away,” Lily said. “It keeps things from wrinkling. Then I baked almond cookies, for Annabel.”

  “When did you see Mrs. Dunlin again?” Inspector Colluci asked, pacing around the kitchen.

  “When I took the clean sheets upstairs to the linen closet. She was all dressed up. She asked if I was going to buy groceries. I do that every Friday. When she went downstairs, I made the bed and cleaned the bathroom. She always leaves towels everywhere. I put out fresh towels and rugs, and took the others downstairs. Mrs. Dunlin was at her desk. She asked again if I was going to buy groceries. I said yes, as soon as I finished the laundry. She said to let her know when I was leaving for the store.”

  “When was the next time you saw her?” Inspector Colluci asked.

  “I went to tell her I was going to do the marketing. I didn’t notice the time.”

  “You left the garage door open,” Inspector Niebuhr said.

  Lily glanced up. The kitchen door was ajar. So was the study door on the other side of the hall. Mr. Dunlin stood there, scowling. She was frightened. What if he heard? If he hadn’t guessed already, he would know she was here when he got home.

  Inspector Niebuhr got up and shut the kitchen door. “I guess you didn’t mean to leave the garage door open.”

  “I thought I closed it. Sometimes I push that gadget, but the door doesn’t close.”

  “You didn’t finish the laundry either,” Inspector Niebuhr said. “You left towels in the dryer. Why didn’t you fold them?”

  Lily hesitated. “I was running late. I thought I’d fold the towels when I got back. I have so much to do on Fridays.”

  Should she tell him about Mrs. Dunlin calling for a taxi? But that would lead to more uncomfortable quest
ions, about what else she’d seen and heard.

  The kitchen door opened wider and another policeman told them Mr. Dunlin was angry, threatening to make trouble. Rich people always make trouble, Lily thought. These inspectors must be bending some rules.

  The two inspectors conferred. Then Inspector Colluci left the kitchen. Inspector Niebuhr sat down. “Hello, Annabel. My name’s Gary. I’m a policeman. I’d like to ask you some questions. Will you answer them for me?”

  Annabel nodded. Inspector Niebuhr questioned Annabel, probing gently, eliciting information. Why had Mrs. Megarris been here at all? Lily wondered. Why had she gone upstairs? What was she doing up there? And why did she bring those shopping bags? There was something odd about the order of events, and this inspector knew it, too.

  “Was it before or after your aunt went upstairs that she talked with the police?” he asked. “How many times did your aunt talk with your father? Once, or twice? One time before she went outside and one time after? Just once?”

  “I dunno,” Annabel whispered. “Maybe I got it mixed up.”

  Inspector Colluci opened the kitchen door and told Inspector Niebuhr the body had been taken away and Mr. Dunlin’s lawyer was coming soon. Inspector Niebuhr told her to pack Annabel’s things so she could stay with Mrs. Megarris.

  “I won’t go!” Annabel swept her hand across the table and her empty milk glass hit the floor and broke. Inspector Colluci picked up the pieces. “I want to stay with Lily.”

  “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like,” Inspector Niebuhr said. “Will you and Lily show me your room? I’d like that.”

  In the front hall, a man Lily had never seen before swooped at Inspector Niebuhr like a seagull, pecking him with angry words. Inspector Colluci stepped in front of the man as Lily and Inspector Niebuhr led Annabel up the stairs, where Lily opened the storage closet containing the suitcases. Mrs. Dunlin’s suitcase and makeup case were there. That’s what Mrs. Megarris was doing upstairs, she thought. She’d unpacked the dead woman’s cases and put them away.

  Lily shivered. She reached for a small case and shut the closet door. She took Annabel to her room. “What would you like to take with you?” Annabel refused to say anything. Instead she grabbed her teddy bear and hugged it, tears in her eyes. Lily packed the suitcase. Then she reached for the music box her mother had given Annabel on her last birthday. It was a merry-go-round with black-and-white horses under a red-and-yellow canopy that played a tinkling little waltz. Lily led Annabel out to the hallway.

  “What’s that?” Inspector Niebuhr asked from the master bedroom.

  Lily stepped into the room, handing him the merry-go-round. “Annabel’s mother gave her this music box.”

  She glanced at the door leading to the master bath, and frowned. The towels were different from those she’d put out this morning. These were a lighter shade of green. She compressed her lips, willing her face to be blank as she thought about what else Mrs. Megarris had done.

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” Inspector Niebuhr asked. She shook her head. He turned the key and the music box tinkled in three-quarter time, playing the waltz from Carousel.

  27

  Later that afternoon, in her office, Lindsey lined up the accordion folders she’d found in Pandora’s Box. The first held the newspaper clippings about Annabel’s mother and her death. She read through them again, with a perspective altered by Lily Hsu’s account of what she saw the day Mrs. Dunlin died.

  Inside the second folder, Lindsey found a thick stack of papers held together with a metal clip, along with a business card—INSPECTOR GARY NIEBUHR, HOMICIDE. SAN FRANCISCO POLICE DEPARTMENT. Under the phone number on the card, presumably the inspector’s office, another number had been inked in blue. A home telephone, perhaps? On the back of the card was a note. Annabel, call anytime, day or night. Gary Niebuhr.

  Lindsey unclipped the papers and spread them out in front of her. This was a copy of the case file. The first document was the initial police report concerning Mrs. Dunlin’s death. The second was the autopsy report. After this came supplemental reports, notes in Niebuhr’s distinctive spiky handwriting, as well as some typed memos.

  Lindsey opened the third folder. It contained more of the case file, a typewritten account of what Annabel herself had seen, describing how she’d found her mother’s body at the foot of the stairs—and her aunt’s activities before the police arrived. Next was Lily’s account of that day—not the one she’d told the police, but the one Lindsey had just heard.

  Then two sketches, one showing the floor plan of the fifth floor of the Dunlin Building, and the other the building’s basement parking garage. Annabel’s accompanying notes said a door led from her father’s corner office to a back hallway, terminating at the freight elevator and the back stairs. Both descended to the basement loading dock and parking garage.

  But there were other things hidden in the basement, as Annabel and Claire had discovered one afternoon when she and Claire were thirteen. While the attendant fetched Aunt Rebecca’s car, the two cousins darted away, finding rooms at the back of the parking garage, dusty chambers containing the boiler, guts of the heating system, wiring for phones and electricity, and a final resting place for broken chairs, battered desks, and outdated office equipment. Then Annabel opened a door onto a dim passage.

  I dare you, Claire had said. Annabel took the dare. Their giggles echoed off the walls as they ran down the corridor. It led to the basement of the building next door, more rooms full of wires and equipment, another freight elevator, another stairwell. Up the stairs they went, to a small lobby and out to the sidewalk.

  This was the way her father got out of the building without being seen by anyone, Annabel wrote. He’d gone out the back door of his office, down the back stairs to the parking garage, into the passage to the basement of the building next door. Out on California Street he caught the cable car and rode it all the way to the end of the line, just a few blocks from the house. Then he’d come back the same way.

  Annabel hadn’t been satisfied with the story told in the newspaper—or by her father and aunt—or even the police file. She’d conducted her own investigation into her mother’s death, collecting pieces of the puzzle, fitting them together until she had most of the picture.

  Inspector Gary Niebuhr was no longer at either of the phone numbers on the business card. Lindsey called directory assistance and got a number for Human Resources at the San Francisco Police ­Department. A woman answered the phone.

  “I’m trying to locate Inspector Gary Niebuhr.” Lindsey spelled the last name. “He was a homicide detective back in nineteen sixty-one.”

  “Wow, that’s before I was born,” the woman said, making decades sound like centuries.

  “I’m sure he’s retired.” Lindsey hoped he wasn’t dead. “I need to get in touch with him.”

  The woman put up the privacy roadblock. “I can’t give out any personal information.”

  “But you could get a message to him,” Lindsey countered.

  “Well...” The woman hesitated. “He worked Homicide, you say? Hold on a minute.”

  It was longer than a minute and Lindsey wondered if she’d been cut off. Then a man’s voice came on the line.

  “Inspector Cavenaugh, Homicide. I understand you’re looking for Gary Niebuhr. He retired a few years back. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Thanks, but no. I need to talk with him.”

  “What is this about, ma’am?”

  “An old case from nineteen sixty-one. The Inez Dunlin case.”

  Cavenaugh chuckled. “Way before my time. Guess I can’t help you at that.”

  “Could you get a message to Inspector Niebuhr?” Lindsey gave him her name and phone numbers. “Tell him I’m a friend of Annabel Dunlin.” She hung up, hoping for the best.

  Now Lindsey knew what Annabel meant, on that evening long ago, after Annabel’s father died.

  He left the house to me, along with t
he ghosts, Annabel said.

  Is the house haunted? Lindsey asked.

  In a manner of speaking.

  They were all haunted, by the past, by mistakes and happenstance, by twists and turns of luck, stumbling through the present while ghosts whispered in the shadows.

  The doorbell rang. Lindsey went to answer it and found Gretchen on the porch.

  “I’m returning your key.” Gretchen stepped into the foyer. “How was Ashland?”

  “Ashland was fine.” Lindsey put the key into her pocket.

  “Claire says Nina suddenly moved in with Tess. What happened?”

  “I told her who her father is. Now she’s mad at me all over again.”

  “You told her?” Gretchen’s voice sharpened. “Why now? This started with Tess wanting to find out about her biological father. You’re helping her, so you decided you had to tell Nina the truth.”

  “That about covers it,” Lindsey said.

  “Damn it,” Gretchen snapped, “Nina is your business. Tess and Annabel aren’t. They aren’t a research project. Neither is my family. Claire told me you’re asking questions about Nat’s adoption. Why?”

  “Have you ever wondered where Nat came from?” Lindsey asked. “Whether he has family back in El Salvador?”

  “Of course. But we’re his family now. The past is past.”

  No, Lindsey thought, the past is always with us, affecting what we do and who we are, haunting us at the most inconvenient times. During that morning’s strained meeting, Flor had given Lindsey an ultimatum.

  “During the war in El Salvador,” Lindsey said, “thousands of children disappeared. There’s an ongoing effort to locate missing ­children and restore them to their families.”

  Gretchen flushed, the mother lion protecting her cub. “Nat isn’t missing. He was abandoned. He has no family in El Salvador. We are his family. We adopted him, legally, fair and square. End of story. I won’t listen to any more of this.” She slammed the front door on her way out.