He said this over his shoulder as he was escorting me out of the building. I let out a breath of air I hadn’t known I was holding. I could answer the man honestly.
“No sir, I don’t.” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a lie. I did not want to tell Detective James Wanderley that Alex Garcia had seen his father in a passionate embrace with a young girl who surely, surely couldn’t have been Jo.
“Listen,” I said, “I’d be grateful if you’d keep me up to date …”
Wanderley held the door open, leaning out to see me off. His extraordinary eyebrows went way up.
“Uh, noooooo, we don’t do that, update private citizens. You check the paper. Or our website. Anything we want you to know, it’ll be there.”
Nice distinction, that. “Anything we want.” Nothing about what you want to know.
I was headed out when Wanderley grabbed my shirtsleeve. I turned. Wanderley hesitated a moment, the wicked grin gone.
“Were you?” he said.
“Was I what?”
Again the smallest hesitation.
“Your father’s favorite. Oldest son and all.”
My turn to hesitate, to nearly answer that my father hadn’t played favorites, he loved us all, and both my brothers had their own successes. That’s all true. My dad had been an evenhanded, fair man.
But face it. This is Texas. I’d been a high school football star. I’d played first string for The University of Texas, and I had enjoyed all the attendant social glory that Texas awards her football players. All the achievements that had been denied my bookish, intellectual father who had taught high school calculus and trigonometry at Foster for years, and still taught at the nearest Houston Community College campus.
I said, “Yeah. I’m his favorite.”
His eyes stayed steady a second longer, and the easy smile was back. He punched my arm.
“Ah, yes, the indomitable Bear. I knew it.” And he swung back into the air-conditioning.
Twenty-three
From: Walker Wells
To: Merrie Wells
Subject: Did you call Jo?
Did you?
Twenty-four
After I left the police station, I made a showing at the Garcia visitation at six thirty, spent some time with the family, and signed my name in the guest book, but didn’t stay long. That’s usual at a Protestant visitation; at a Catholic visitation, after a period of meeting and greeting, there are often formal eulogies, and impromptu ones—that can go on late into the evening. I needed to get back home and repair some bridges.
Thursday night is one of my free nights, and normally we would spend it as a family. Tonight Jo and I were on our own. Annie Laurie had a meeting with a new publisher she was trying to sell some of her programs to, and she was meeting with them on the University of Houston campus. She promised me she would park in the garage and get someone to walk her to her car afterward. It’s a great school, a beautiful campus, but stuff happens.
Annie Laurie is the only person with any sense who will willingly cook for my picky daughter—I sure didn’t plan to try.
Dinner together, the two of us. It would be a good time to talk. Get Jo to open up to me. Please God.
I pulled up outside of Jo’s ballet class and watched through the plate glass windows for her to come out. I have never, ever once in my life picked Jo up from dance class and found her ready and waiting for me outside. This time she was showered and changed; lots of times I’ve arrived to find her still working on the barre. Jo was in line to speak to her instructor, Madame Laney (in spite of the “Madame” business, Laney talks like a Georgia Peach), who was giving instructions to an assistant. When she gave her attention to Jo, she listened, then threw her arms about Jo and spun her around. There was a big hug session before Jo grabbed her tote bag (she still used a silly pink bag with an appliquéd ballerina teddy bear—my mom made it when Jo was five or six) and flew out the door.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“What?” Jo said, still flushed and happy. She did not look like a girl who had been mixed up with a married man more than three times her age. She did not look like a girl who had been mixed up in a murder. My heart eased.
“The big kissy fest in there?”
I got the look.
“We didn’t kiss, Dad. Don’t be a homophobe.”
“What? No, I—”
“Or a lesbophobe.”
“A what?”
“Whatever.”
So the evening was starting off well, and that was good.
We settled for Pho Saigon, our favorite Sugar Land noodle restaurant.
One of Jo’s friends had introduced her to Vietnamese noodle soup, pho, and Jo had introduced it to the rest of us. Pho Saigon became a regular; everybody had a favorite dish there and it didn’t cost much—the same as fast food, and nowhere near the health hazard; pho is light and low calorie, certainly when compared to burgers and fries.
When Jo became a vegetarian, she had fewer dishes to choose from at Pho Saigon, but she still had choices. So we don’t argue over the food there, which is a relief. We come here once a week or so. There’s not a lot of atmosphere; it’s in a strip center dominated by Asian diners, nail salons, boutiques, and dentists. It’s anchored with a Wellfarm, an Asian grocery store, and the only one in Sugar Land that sells pig uteri in the meat department. Really. I’ve seen them there.
We were waiting for our orders, both of us preparing piles of the extras we like to add to our soup—bean sprouts, cilantro leaves, basil, lime juice, and minced jalapeños. Jo stood up to pull a paper from her jeans pocket. Her jeans were so tight, there was no way she could get anything out of her pockets sitting down. She sat back down and pushed the folded paper over to me.
Before I could look at the paper, our soup came. I always get a large number eleven—that’s spicy beef broth with slivers of eye round roast and lots of thin rice noodles and shaved onion slices. Jo had her veggie soup, a small. It looks tasteless, but Jo made me try it once and it’s good. Very spicy. She adds Sriracha and fresh-squeezed lime juice. We were busy for a minute adding our extras, me lifting up my noodles and putting the bean sprouts underneath so they would soften some, Jo keeping them on top so they stayed crisp. Then I reached for the paper and took a look.
Jo’s progress report. I don’t think Jo had willingly showed me her progress reports since she started middle school, so I was surprised before I even looked at the grades. I glanced up at her—she had her porcelain soup spoon up to her mouth and was softly blowing the soup to cool it. Her eyes were watching me.
I was even more surprised when I saw her grades. This was an improvement over her last progress report. An improvement over her last several progress reports.
“Well, all right, then, Jo. Not too shabby. You see what you can do when you apply yourself? Those study techniques we went over must have really helped.”
Her eyes fell and she let the cooled spoonful of soup drop back into her bowl. Soup splashed onto her T-shirt.
I said, “What?”
Nothing from across the table. She stirred her soup and reached into the bowl with her fingers to pull out a bean sprout. She nibbled the bean sprout with tiny, deliberate bites.
We ate in silence for a while before I tried again.
“You know, if you can keep up this math grade, and if you go to summer school, you could be on grade level in math next year.” I was trying to be encouraging. Annie says I should be more encouraging with Jo.
Evidently encouragement was not what was needed because Jo set her spoon down on the table with a loud “clack” and pushed back from the table. Phuong, one of the waitresses, stopped at the table.
“Everything okay here? You want something? What’s matter, Jo, your soup no good?”
Jo gave Phuong a smile that didn’t include me. “It’s always good. You know I love it here.”
Phuong smiled back and patted Jo’s arm.
“You not getting m
ad at Daddy. You two always fight, fight, fight.” She laughed, gave Jo another pat, and moved off.
Maybe we were getting too regular at Pho Saigon.
My bowl was nearly empty; Jo’s barely touched. Jo still sat back from the table, her arms crossed. In spite of her reassurance to Phuong, Jo didn’t look like she was going to finish her soup.
I picked up my bowl and drank off the last of my soup—perfectly acceptable manners in a pho restaurant. I put my bowl down, wiped my hands with a towelette, and tried to take Jo’s hand; she pushed her chair back another three inches.
“You want some hot tea?” I asked.
“Dad, I’m on class level in math. I’m on class level in all my courses. You don’t have to send me to summer school. I wanted to talk to you about this summer.”
“Well, sweetie,” I said, “I just meant … what math class was Merrie taking in ninth grade?”
Jo stood up and snatched her purse with one hand and her progress report with the other.
She said, practically in a hiss, “Dad, why would I give a shit what math class Merrie was taking in ninth grade? Merrie wants to be an accountant.”
Jo said “accountant” the way you might say “extortioner.”
“I would rather roast in Dante’s hell than be an accountant. I am going to be a dancer. I am going to dance for the New York City Ballet for ten years while I study choreography, and when my body gives out at thirty or so, I’m going to be a choreographer, and if I need algebra once, even once, in all those years, then I will take off my pointe shoes and eat them, laces and all. So I am already waaaay overeducated in the math department. And”—this she delivered with the tone of one who knows they are turning the knife—“I have never, ever, not once, ever used one of your lame-ass ‘study techniques.’ You want to know why my grades are up? It’s Alex. Alex helps me. And he’s a much better teacher than you are.”
She flounced out of the restaurant, totally spoiling the grand exit when she got yanked off her feet after the shoulder strap of her purse caught on the door handle.
Both my brothers have sons. So does my sister-in-law, Stacy. Not a daughter among them. They are forever telling me how lucky I am to have two girls. Girls are so easy. That’s what they all say.
Jo didn’t walk home. It’s a five-mile walk and Jo saves her energy for the ballet studio. She tries to tell me that jogging and hiking develop her muscles in the “wrong way.” Please. She’s also very careful of those tiny feet she’s so proud of. So she didn’t walk home, she went and leaned against the car, but she didn’t talk to me, either.
Jo went straight to her room when we got home, and I went straight to mine. Baby Bear was undecided. My room or Jo’s? He prefers Jo’s company, but he didn’t want to miss the chance of a run with me, so I won out.
I wanted a run. Annie wasn’t back yet. I felt irritated and anxious. A week ago, I wouldn’t have wasted brain space over leaving Jo in the house by herself while I went for a run; now I was uncomfortable with the idea.
There is no way I could keep a teenage girl a prisoner until she’s too old to worry about. I still worry about Merrie, and she’s in college. So I changed into my running clothes and remembered to put my dry cleaning into the dry cleaning bag and not just on the dry cleaning bag. It makes Annie Laurie crazy when I drop them on top.
The stairway is lined with portraits of Merrie and Jo. We started having them done when Merrie was eight months or so, and we’ve had them done every year since then. It costs a fortune—Annie’s parents picked up the tab for the first five years, then, when we were more settled, Annie and I paid for them. Annie’s mom said I would never regret the investment, and I don’t. Most times I pass by without a pause; tonight I took the stairs slowly, Baby Bear at my heels.
In the youngest baby pictures, the girls are wearing ruffled white panties over their diapers and nothing else. My mother-in-law’s idea, and it was a good one. Merrie looks directly at the camera. Her plump hands clutch at her round, peachy belly, and her face is creased with merriment. In Jo’s eighth-month portrait, the photographer has caught her in profile; a soap bubble floats in the corner of the frame, and Jo’s hands are stretched out, her eyes wide and wondering.
There was no answer when I tapped at the door. It was locked when I tried the handle.
“Jo?” I called.
No answer.
“I’m going to take Baby Bear for a run. Will you be okay while I’m gone?”
No answer.
I sighed.
“Um, Jo, you can answer politely, or I’m going to go get a screwdriver and hammer, open the door, take it off the hinges, and then you can answer politely.”
Jo sighed. “I’ll be fine, Dad.”
“Will you please stay in the house while I’m gone?”
“I’ll stay in the house while you’re gone.”
“And not let anyone in while I’m gone?”
“And not let anyone in while you’re gone.”
“So help you, God?”
“Dad!”
“I’m joking, Jo. Kind of.”
She sighed again.
There are three or four routes I take to jog. I regularly run past the corner of Alcorn Oaks and Elkins, close to the golf cart tunnel where Graham Garcia died, and I’d been drawn back along this route since the murder.
Baby Bear and I left the high point of the levee and were jogging on the sidewalk that curved around the ninth hole. At tenish it was dark, but the suburbs are never truly dark—part of what you’re paying for when you buy a house out here is the plethora of streetlights.
Baby Bear and I had rounded the corner so that I could look down at the golf course tunnel that ran under the street. It was there that Graham had lain dying.
And that’s where I saw her, standing with her back to me, hands on her hips, looking down at the ground. Her shoulders were heaving, as if she were trying to catch her breath, or as if she were crying.
I stopped running and put a hand on Baby Bear’s head to keep him still. For two or three seconds, I thought it was somehow Jo. But Jo was back in her room.
There was the long dark hair, small body, something in the turn of her head. But this girl’s hair was a straight sheet of blackness, not the tumbled wisps and waves Jo’s hair was. And even if she was as short as Jo, her body was more muscular—a runner’s, not a ballet dancer’s. She was wearing those brief split-leg running shorts and an exercise bra, and I was thinking her daddy was crazy to let his little girl jog this late at night by herself, and the skimpy outfit was a bad idea, too.
But when I first saw her, I thought it was Jo. I really, really did. My head knew my daughter was back in her room, that short of transporting, she could not have gotten to this spot before me. But for a fraction of a second, I saw the girl and thought, Jo.
And I’ve known Jo for all her life. And I was seeing this girl standing on a rise, bathed in the streetlight, not in the dark hollow of the cart tunnel. And I was not a lovesick adolescent seeing my dad with someone other than my mother.
A starburst of relief went off in my chest. That’s when I knew that, for all my self-assurances, I’d been very much afraid Alex truly had seen my Jo with his father. But it wasn’t Jo he’d seen. It really wasn’t.
The name “Jessica Min” floated up and I started to move forward, and that’s when the girl turned and looked over her shoulder and I saw her face.
A fresh startle. A new relief.
Thank you, God.
Because the tear-soaked face I was looking upon was not a girl’s, not a teenager’s, not, I thought, even a young woman’s. This was a mature woman. A trim, slim, adult Asian woman. I couldn’t be sure at this distance, but I would guess she was over forty.
If this woman was who Alex had seen late Sunday night—and I had been fooled myself for a second—then Graham Garcia was not a pedophile, and his son was not going to have to carry that dark secret in his heart for the rest of his life.
I’m not saying
that cheating on your wife is ever okay, but whoa, it is surely better to cheat on her with a woman than a child. If this was the woman with Graham that night. If.
She looked up at me so I dropped my hands to my knees in the “winded but recovering” pose. By the time I’d straightened, she was crossing the golf course, not making any attempt to stay on the path, a golf course no-no. I started jogging slowly forward, keeping my eyes on her back. I marked the spot where she went through a cast-iron gate that opened onto the golf course. I heard the soft “clash” as the gate swung closed behind her. I counted the houses. The sixth house from the corner. She hadn’t taken the sidewalk around to a parked car. She had gone through a backyard gate without any hesitation.
She had gone home.
Twenty-five
From: Merrie Wells
To: Walker Wells
Subject: Re: Jo
Dad, I did. Yes. You need to talk to Jo. No, you need to let Jo talk to you. And try to chill.
Twenty-six
Friday morning I woke so buoyant I needed a tether to keep my feet on the ground. Annie Laurie was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and so, wonder of wonders, was Jo. Sitting, that is. No coffee for Jo. She sat with her feet on the rung of the chair, her fingers laced through the mane on Baby Bear’s scruff. Annie and Jo and Baby Bear, expectant looks on all faces, smooth and furry, were angled away from the table so they could watch my entrance and I knew something was up. Yeah, nearly psychic.
“You having breakfast, Jo?” There wasn’t anything consumable in front of her. Jo never ate breakfast.
Jo had her hair tied back and wore her every-day-but-Sunday uniform of too-tight jeans, too-tight tee, and heavy black Doc Martens.
Annie Laurie gave Jo’s arm a push.
Jo said, “Remember last night I said I needed to talk to you?”
“No,” I said. “Mainly I remember that you didn’t want to talk to me last night. There was lots of not talking last night.” I walked over to the coffeemaker and sniffed to see how fresh it was.
Jo looked at her mom.
Annie said, “Get some coffee, Bear. There’s something Jo wants to tell you.”
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