Redemption Lake

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  “Travis seems to think someone cleaned up the house. He said his mother didn’t do a lot of cleaning. Would you agree with that?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Travis is a neat freak, but I guess I don’t notice stuff like that.”

  Radhauser studied him for another moment, then stood. “Will it be okay with your parents if Travis stays with you for a few days?”

  Matt nodded.

  “Call them,” he said, ripping a paper towel from the roll on the counter. “Use this to hold the receiver. Forensics tried to lift fingerprints. That carbon is hard to get off your hands.”

  Matt looked down at his fingertips. He wondered if he’d completely removed his fingerprints from the shower curtain. They could have already found his cufflinks in Crystal’s bedroom. Could already know he was here earlier and lying about it.

  “I can drive Travis to my house,” Matt said. “It’s not far and you won’t have to wake up my dad or interrupt my mom on her wedding night.” He was talking too much. It made him look like he was nervous. He was nervous. The detective’s big hands and the way he wrote things down made Matt nervous.

  “Travis is a minor and I prefer to release him into the custody of one of your parents.”

  The last person Matt wanted anywhere near this house tonight was his mother, who’d always been able to tell when he’d done something wrong. But he looked up the number for the Hacienda del Sol where she and Nate were spending their wedding night and called her anyway. Unlike Matt, Travis hadn’t blamed Karina for the divorce. She was closer to Travis than Matt’s dad. She’d know what to do, how to comfort him.

  “I’ll need you both to stay clear of this house for the next few days,” Radhauser said. “I’ll let Travis know when it’s okay to come back.”

  Matt couldn’t stop thinking about his cufflinks. He had to find them before Detective Radhauser did. “Could I get a box of tissues for Travis out of the back bedroom?” he asked, hoping for an opportunity to search.

  “No,” Radhauser said. “This is a potential crime scene.” The detective’s stare was level. He took a neatly folded white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Matt. “I don’t need it back.”

  * * *

  Radhauser stepped into Matt’s path. The kid had a flashlight and was obviously searching the ground between the back deck and the carport. “Lose something?”

  Matt flipped off the flashlight. “No. I was just…just looking for anything suspicious.”

  Just what Radhauser needed—a kid who wanted to be a detective. “That’s my job. You wait in the car with Travis.”

  When he heard the car door open and close, Radhauser checked in with Tim O’Donnell. His shaved head was shiny with sweat. “I’m thinking suicide with an outside chance of homicide.”

  Whenever they investigated a late night case, most officers hoped for an accident or suicide. It meant they’d turn it over to the Medical Examiner and be finished except for the paperwork that could wait until morning. But this case didn’t feel right to Radhauser. Women usually opted for pills or carbon monoxide. They rarely did something as violent as slicing their own carotid. “That means you’re not sure.”

  “Isn’t suicide on your mind, too?”

  Radhauser nodded. “Always.”

  Tim’s eyes shone with sympathy. He quickly looked away as if he knew how Radhauser still felt about losing his family. “Her kid said she’d been drinking and missing work. That they didn’t have enough money to pay the rent last month. Sounds like depression to me.”

  “Yeah. But somebody drove her home. And it was a female who made that 911 call at 11:44.”

  “Maybe the victim placed her own 911 call. The place is pretty neat. No sign of a struggle. Wouldn’t she kick and fight like hell if someone tried to slit her throat? Wouldn’t there be water splashed all over that bathroom? A trail of blood?”

  “Maybe,” Radhauser said. “But what if she was so drunk she passed out in the tub? An unconscious woman wouldn’t put up much of a fight. And what if the murderer, frustrated by what he’d done, broke the mirror?”

  “Maybe she didn’t like the way she looked and broke it herself.”

  “Would she have carefully wrapped the shards and put them in the trashcan?”

  “If she didn’t want her kid to get cut, she might have,” Tim said. “It’s the only bathroom in the house. Obviously a perp couldn’t shower before he left the scene. Forensics will do their thing, but her fingernails looked clean to me—no trace evidence I could see. And Luminal showed no bloodstains on the carpet in the hallway or the living room either. Not even the front door knob.”

  This was one of the things Radhauser liked about working with O’Donnell. He questioned everything. Looked at all the angles. “And what if the killer used the bathroom towels to clean up most of the blood on his body and clothing?” Radhauser said. “What if he took off his shoes and wrapped them in the towels, washed his hands at the bathroom sink—used one of the washcloths to open the door and then took everything with blood on it with him?”

  “And what if the victim washed a load of towels and forgot to hang new ones? What if you’re looking for something that doesn’t exist?”

  “Travis said there were four towels on the bars when he left for the dance. He said his mom had bought them to match the new paint in the bathroom. Routinely, he used the two dark green ones. His mother used the light green ones. And each of them had a matching washcloth.”

  “She still could have washed them,” Tim said. “And a woman about to kill herself wouldn’t be worried about having a towel to dry herself off.”

  “That’s probably true, but I checked the washing machine and the dryer. The washer had a set of sheets and a dishtowel. They were still wet. I checked the hallway linen closet, too. As far as I can tell, those towels disappeared.”

  “Maybe she dropped them off at the Laundromat. Or maybe they did have blood on them and the Good Samaritan who called 911 took them home to wash.”

  “Maybe,” Radhauser said. “But the broken mirror, the unknown person who drove her home, the absent caller, the clean shower curtain, and the missing towels are enough to investigate it like a homicide, at least until we talk to the 911 caller or Melon says otherwise.”

  Chapter Nine

  As the headlights from Nate’s pickup truck swept over the yard, Matt read the words crime scene on the yellow tape stretched across the driveway and the borders of the property. His chest tightened. Even the dazzling night sky seemed panicked. He wanted to see his mother, wanted to get Travis away from here. Matt leaped out of Detective Radhauser’s Bronco and opened the passenger door before Nate could turn off the ignition.

  His mother slipped out of the truck and tried, unsuccessfully, to smile. She wore a pair of white slacks, a navy and pink striped shirt, and pink running shoes. Over her right shoulder, she carried a multicolored striped purse, big enough to hide Portugal—obviously an outfit she’d purchased for the honeymoon.

  “Thanks for coming, Mom.” There was no other living adult who loved Travis as much as she did. Matt led her away from the truck. “I’m really sorry about the wedding.”

  She looked terrible, exhausted, and as if she’d been crying for hours. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “The police won’t let you inside. Detective Radhauser is helping Travis pack a few things and then they have to secure the—”

  Her gaze landed on the yellow tape. “Crime scene? Do the police think Crystal was murdered?”

  He looked away. His Mom had eyes so dark the iris made one color with the pupil, giving them an intensity that could make Matt uncomfortable, especially if he tried to hide something. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Are you cold, honey?” she asked. “You keep rubbing your hands.”

  Matt dropped his hands to his sides.

  Under the glow of the porch light, their eyes met and she held his gaze for a moment—so many unsaid things b
etween them. She stared at the T-shirt he was wearing. “What happened to your tuxedo shirt?”

  He told her he’d spilled something on it and put it in the trunk of his car, along with the tuxedo jacket.

  “Don’t look so worried,” she said. “I’ll wash it out.”

  “I can handle it. And I can take it back on Monday, along with Nate’s if you want.”

  “Some stains can be tricky to get out,” she said. “Especially after they dry.”

  “I’ve become quite the laundry expert since you—”

  A pained look spread over her face. “I’m happy to reapply for the job. Anytime you’re ready.”

  He heard the eagerness in her voice and had a hard time meeting her gaze. He waited for her searching to settle, waited for her to see whatever answers she looked for on his face.

  Her gaze dropped to his hands—his fingertips stained black.

  “They fingerprinted us,” he said. “The ink is hard to get off.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you and Travis suspects?”

  He told her what Detective Radhauser said about eliminating prints of the people who spent a lot of time at the house.

  Her face relaxed. She touched his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here. Travis is lucky to have such a good friend.”

  The word pounded away inside Matt’s head like machine-gun fire. Friend. Friend. Friend.

  Travis and Detective Radhauser stepped through the front door. Radhauser carried a suitcase, Travis’s backpack of books, and the dirty baseball uniform he hadn’t gotten around to washing after his last game.

  His mom gathered Travis into a hug. “I’m so sorry, honey.” She held him until his shoulders stopped shaking. “You’ll stay with Nate and me,” she said, still patting his back. “You can have the room we fixed for Matt. For as long as you want it.” There were tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Travis wrenched away. “What about the honeymoon? You guys are leaving tomorrow.”

  “No, we’re not. And don’t give me any fuss about it either. How could I go to Aruba knowing one of my boys needed me?” She hugged him again.

  Though he wanted to, Matt was too scared to cry. He turned away, afraid Travis might read something in his face, then Nate’s arms folded around him. For one moment Matt forgot Nate had ever been the enemy, the man he’d hated for taking away any possibility Matt’s family would be reunited. His stepfather had understood any words, even kind ones, would have filled the space where Matt’s sorrow needed to be. Sometimes the world cracked open and revealed its goodness in a single instant.

  After a few words with Detective Radhauser, Mom and Nate took charge of Travis.

  While Nate carried Travis’s things to the truck, Matt stood outside Crystal’s bedroom window with his hand on Travis’s shoulder. The moon sat full and impossibly bright in the early morning sky. Travis cupped his hands over his eyebrows and stared into the window, as if trying to memorize this place filled with Crystal’s clothes, magazines and jewelry—a bed he’d probably shared as a small boy after a nightmare. A bed she’d shared with his best friend, Matt thought.

  Travis sighed and walked away.

  Matt followed him, grabbed his arm and tried to pull Travis into a guy hug. Though he knew he couldn’t say the words, he wanted Travis to know Matt was sorry, a prick, a real fucking jerk.

  Travis pushed him away and kept walking. “Don’t go all homo on me.”

  “I don’t know what you want,” Matt said, running to catch up. “I don’t know how to help you.”

  Travis stopped and turned, a runaway train of sadness barreling straight toward Matt. “I want her back.”

  Radhauser asked for an address and telephone number where he could get in touch with both Matt and Travis. He jotted Karina and Nate’s names and number in his notebook, along with Matt’s father’s phone number.

  When Radhauser gave her a questioning look she added, “Matt lives with his father.”

  As soon as she said it, Matt realized he couldn’t go back to his father’s house. There was no way he could leave Travis now. Matt tried to imagine what this loss must feel like to Travis. Before he’d left for the dance, his mother was alive. And after he returned, she was dead. Those two parts, the before and the after, how could Travis ever put them back together?

  Matt hung his head.

  * * *

  It was nearly 3am when Matt stepped outside and sat on the porch steps in front of his mother’s swimming pool. He’d showered and changed out of the tuxedo pants and into a pair of Nate’s pajamas and a pair of Reeboks a half size too big. The pajamas smelled like the detergent his mom always used and a hint of Nate’s Stetson cologne. The bottoms were too long and Matt had rolled them up to his ankles.

  He needed to process everything that had happened with Crystal and his role in it. Right now, he wasn’t a suspect. But if the police proved he was there and had sex with Crystal, he’d have to tell the truth. He worried about the cufflinks. He’d searched the area between the house and the carport. There were only two other places they could be—her living room or, God forbid, her bedroom.

  Despite the drinking, Matt had been cognizant enough to hear the sound of water running. A car on the road at 10:38. He was pretty sure he’d heard the front door open and close around 11:20. Saw another vehicle turn right on Oracle Road. If he’d heard all of that, he couldn’t have slept through a murder, could he?

  He thought about that for a moment. He didn’t know what was worse—if she’d died on purpose because of what they’d done, or if someone else had entered the house while he’d been in a drunken stupor and murdered her. Either way, Matt was not blameless. He knew he should make a plan, decide what to do next, but he couldn’t focus.

  When he’d awakened, Crystal’s bedroom door was open. He remembered her pulling it closed when she’d left him. But maybe she came back for something before her bath. If someone else had entered the house and murdered Crystal, that person would have seen Matt’s car and maybe him asleep in her bed. Why hadn’t he been killed, too?

  He had to go back to Catalina and find the cufflinks before it was too late.

  As kids, he and Travis had played robbers, practicing their cat burglar moves so many times they’d kept a narrow putty knife over the back frame around the sliding glass door. All Matt needed to do was slide the knife into the gap between the door and its frame and lift up on the latch.

  Through the kitchen window, he saw Nate and Travis at the table. The house had been recently purchased and this was the first time Matt had been inside since his mother, sister, and Nate had settled in.

  Behind Travis, on the long family room wall, Matt’s mother had arranged a series of framed photographs of her children. Half the space designated for Sedona, the other half recorded events of Matt’s childhood. A dark, curly-haired toddler clad in a sagging diaper, forever standing at the edge of the ocean, the surf slapping, like foamy wings, against his plump brown feet. A dorky snapshot in his band uniform, his saxophone thrust out in front of him. An eight-by-ten enlargement of Matt and Justin—cousins born three days apart. Cousins who looked like brothers, their arms flung around each other’s bare shoulders, that summer they’d learned to water ski on Lake Powell. Matt quickly looked away.

  His mom called out to him. “You need to eat something.” She’d made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. The meal she’d always fixed for him when he stayed home sick from school. Matt didn’t feel hungry, but he stepped back inside and washed his hands at the kitchen sink. Three rinsed-clean rocks were lined up in the windowsill. Matt stared at them for a moment, remembering the way his mother carried one home from every new place she discovered and loved. The way she’d carefully mark the rock’s underside with the location she’d found it. She believed you could feel the spirit of a place, just by warming its rock in the palms of your hands.

  Over the years, she and Matt had gathered them along Oak Creek in Sedona—his mother’s favorite place and the source of
his sister’s name. They’d filled their pockets along the Delaware and Colorado Rivers, on a hike at the edge of the Grand Canyon, and then carefully sorted them later, choosing the perfect one to represent each new place.

  Now, he stared at the three rocks in the window—thought about his mom’s new life with Nate. Heat built behind his eyes—a pathetic, self-indulgent loser, about to cry over some stupid rocks when his best friend’s mother was dead. He looked out the window and tried to make himself think of something else.

  “There’s plenty of soup left,” Nate said.

  The kitchen smelled like buttery grilled bread, basil, and grief. “I’m not hungry. I think I’ll head home and pick up a few things. I’ll be back in an hour,” Matt said, hoping it would give him time to drive out to Catalina and retrieve his cufflinks.

  Travis took a bite of his sandwich and left the rest on his plate. His soup remained in the bowl, untouched. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders and rubbed them vigorously—looking so shaken Matt changed his mind. He couldn’t leave Travis now. There had to be another way.

  Chapter Ten

  Matt checked the time on the clock radio on the nightstand between their twin beds. It was 5am. Travis snored softly. The Valium Matt’s mom gave Travis had worked. This was Matt’s chance to go back to Catalina and search for his cufflinks.

  He slipped out of bed, grabbed Nate’s shoes, pulled the door closed behind him and tiptoed barefoot down the hallway, through the kitchen and out the back door.

  He sat on the porch steps and put on the shoes. He closed the redwood gate as quietly as he could, released the parking brake, shifted into neutral and drifted down the driveway. Close to the end, he started the ignition and headed toward Catalina.

  As he neared Travis’s street, he pulled the car over and parked. The early morning air smelled like sage and Palo Verde blossoms. Matt opened his trunk to get out his flashlight.