Fear No Truth

by LynDee Walker

  “She was early.” The words rasped out on a whisper, pulling my eyes from the road to my passenger. Fresh tears spilled down Erica’s cheeks. “Always early, and so strong. I felt her move for the first time when I was just thirteen weeks pregnant. By sixteen weeks, Brent could feel her kick. The doctor said it was impossible, until she landed a swift one to his arm while he measured my belly.”

  I nodded, the kind of awkward half smile that comes with not knowing if or how to reply uncomfortable on my lips. The Benz behind me beeped, and I was so glad to have something that needed my attention I almost waved a thank-you. Turning left on Westlake, I let Erica’s words build a picture of the young woman behind Tenley’s beautiful face.

  “She was born in late August, due October first. They took her to the NICU and put her in an incubator, told us the first week would be crucial to how well she’d fare, and the degree of mental retardation she’d suffer from lack of oxygen during the delivery.” Erica snorted. “She was in my arms less than twelve hours later, breathing fine on her own. She talked at six months. Walked at nine. By ten, she was running, and she never stopped. My miracle. My supernova. Always fastest. Always first. For her whole life.”

  Her voice dissolved into a harsh sob as we turned onto her street, stately homes set far back in the low Texas trees flashing past the windows. The sadness in the truck was heavy. Permeable.

  Familiar.

  “Her whole life,” Erica repeated. “Her whole life . . . is o—” she didn’t get the last part out, turning her face to the window. I knew she didn’t see what was on the other side as I turned into the driveway at number 19. We rolled past brick columns, under an arch dripping with blooming wisteria, and around a massive concrete fountain that hadn’t been notified of the drought.

  I stopped in front of imposing ten-foot oak double doors. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Andre. Are you sure you don’t want me to call anyone? Family? A neighbor? A friend?”

  Erica stayed still, eyes on the house, questions falling around her unnoticed.

  I let the pause stretch a day’s ride into awkward territory before I cut the engine and hopped out of the truck. I rounded the front bumper and pulled her door open. I started to speak. Thought better of it. Offered a hand.

  Erica’s thin shoulders shuddered. Her mouth opened for a scream, no sound escaping.

  I rested pale fingers on her spray-tanned golden-brown arm, nearly landing on my ass when she plunged headlong for the polished-stone drive. Thanks to somewhere around a million hours of suspension core training, I managed to keep us both upright as Erica crushed my shoulders in a desperate, sob-riddled embrace.

  A stranger’s face buried in my neck, my thoughts whirled with a thousand things I needed to do before I slept and ten thousand questions clamoring to be asked first, the steely resolve I’d missed for months settling heavy in my chest. No matter what Graham or the lieutenant had to say, I was in this. I belonged here.

  I would find this woman an answer or die trying.

  But right then, I patted Erica Andre’s back and let her cry.

  6

  She couldn’t go in the house.

  She had to go in the house.

  She never wanted to go in the house again.

  I remembered that sinking dread like it had been nineteen days and not nineteen years—the knowledge that Charity’s absence would sting warring with a need to be in her spaces, to keep her with me a bit longer. Indecision radiated from Erica Andre’s face like a neon billboard as she lifted her head from my shoulder and turned her eyes to the flawless white stucco facade of her home.

  I reached for a box of tissues and blotted tears and snot off my neck and collar, watching her for a cue. Her eyes fell shut, and she tensed from hairline to heels. Three deep breaths later, she met my gaze.

  “I’m—” She cleared her throat when the word came out on a croak. “I’m sorry.”

  I pressed the tissue box into her hands. “Don’t apologize, ma’am.”

  Erica mopped at her face. “I don’t know how to do this. How am I supposed to feel? How am I supposed to be?”

  I leaned back against the truck, my shoulders going up before I got any words out. “However you feel is how you’re supposed to feel. However you get through the next days and weeks is the best you can.”

  Erica laid the tissue box on the seat. “I’m still hoping this is a nightmare and I’m going to wake up any minute and hear T—” She swallowed hard. “Hear my daughter in the bathroom, singing while she puts on her eyeliner. But if I were dreaming this, I couldn’t have dreamt a more compassionate person to be here for it. So thank you.”

  “I’m truly sorry I have to be here, Mrs. Andre.”

  Erica squared her shoulders, nodding to the front doors. “I have to do this, don’t I?” Her voice cracked.

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry?” She blinked, turning her head.

  “You don’t have to do anything, ma’am. If there’s one thing I know that I know, it’s that when life throws you something this horrifying, most of the rules you live every day by no longer apply. You don’t have to go in there. I am happy to drive you anywhere else you’d like.”

  Erica tipped her head to one side. Shook it. “I appreciate that,” she said. “But if I don’t do this now, I may never do it again.”

  I put out a hand. “Ready when you are.”

  The lock squealed a protest as Erica turned the key, the alarm yakking and beeping when she opened the door. Her sandals seemed rooted to the marble as she stared at me with wide eyes and barked a short laugh.

  “I can’t remember the passcode.”

  The beeping picked up speed.

  “Let it go off.” I patted her arm. “That, I can handle.”

  “This is so stupid.” The words came through her manicured fingertips, muffled. “Oh-eight-two-nine. It’s always been Tenley’s birthday. I’m losing my goddamned mind.”

  I shook my head, crossing to the touch screen near the hallway and poking at it. The house fell quiet after the first peal of the siren.

  “Thank you.” Another tear escaped Erica’s lashes.

  “No problem.” I wrapped my arms around myself, eyes roaming the immaculate copper and white-marble foyer: smooth eggshell walls rose to a domed two-story ceiling accented with copper-cast molding, and a large leaded-glass window above the heavy front doors tossed a thousand tiny rainbows over the room in the afternoon light. Directly across from the doors, a pair of art niches occupied by cream-and-peach Ming vases flanked the entrance to the family room. A massive claw-footed mahogany table with burnished copper overlay dominated the floor space, a Waterford vase full of spring wildflowers in the center lending the room a pleasant scent. Down a short hall to the right, French doors guarded a library that would do a bookworm Disney princess proud.

  My mother would love this room. But the reflexive Your home is lovely, Mrs. Andre, that was as much a part of me as my deductive and observational skills didn’t make it past my lips. On a normal day, a woman like Erica would be insulted by my lack of comment on such a stunning showplace.

  Today was not a normal day. I turned back just in time to see her yank one foot from the Venetian tile and stride toward the archway opposite the front door. I followed, stopping when she pulled up short in the doorway before she broke into a run.

  The sharp heels on her sandals left divots in the wide-plank walnut floor as she half flew across the room. She gathered a gray cashmere throw into her arms, burying her face in it and breathing deep, before she sank into the short end of the sprawling chocolate leather sectional.

  I took a seat next to her and caught a waft of vanilla and lavender from the blanket. Tenley’s perfume, I’d bet.

  “Can I bring you anything?” I asked.

  Her shoulders hitched, face still hidden by the throw, her words muffled. “Yesterday,” she said. “Bring me yesterday so I can lock her in, sit on her, keep her safe here with me.”

  “I
wish I could.” I patted her shoulder, letting her sit for another minute before I dropped a question on her. “Mrs. Andre, it’s pretty important that I get in touch with your husband.”

  She raised her face and nodded, looking past my shoulder at a twenty-by-twenty-four canvas hanging over the fireplace. A younger, even thinner Erica and a tall, fit man in a white linen shirt that had to be the husband, laughing in front of a sinking violet-pink sun flanked by low aquamarine waves on a beach.

  “Chelsey Davies.” Her words dropped heavy. “If you find her, you’ll find Brent. I’d say let me call, but I tried him this morning when I saw the news about the storms in Louisiana and Mississippi. Wanted to make sure he was okay. He didn’t pick up.”

  Fantastic. What could I say to that? I studied her face, my heart twisting at the anguish even the Botox couldn’t hide.

  “When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. Andre?”

  “Last night. It was late. We had yet another fight. I went for a drive, he went to bed. The house was quiet when I got home.”

  “Was Tenley home for this fight? Did she know about Miss Davies?”

  Erica shook her head. “Tenley adores her dad. Utter mutual admiration society. I wouldn’t take that from her. They even have a standing lunch date every week. They’ve been doing it since she was twelve.”

  “When?”

  “Every—” Erica stopped, her hand moving back to her mouth. “Monday.”

  Hmmm. I pulled a pad and pen from my hip pocket and scribbled that down. “Is Tenley’s car still at school?”

  “It’s in the garage. But she rides with friends sometimes. I didn’t think anything was wrong when I saw it . . .” More tears swallowed the “this morning.”

  “Mrs. Andre, I know this is difficult, and I appreciate you hanging with me for just a few more questions: Who were Tenley’s closest friends? Is there anyone you can think of she might have confided in? Anyone who might know what could have happened this morning?”

  Erica shrugged. “Tenley and Nicky Richardson have been practically joined at the hip for almost as long as I can remember, but even he hasn’t been around much in a while. They’ve all been so busy, finishing up school, getting ready to leave home . . . She did say she was going to his house to hang out on Sunday, though. Nicky knew her better than anyone else but me.”

  That was the boyfriend from the locket photo. Good enough. I nodded and stood. “Thank you, ma’am. This gives me a few places to start. Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

  Erica started to shake her head. Paused. “Boo bear,” she whispered.

  “Stuffed animal?”

  Erica nodded. “If you go to the top of the stairs and take a left, in the room at the end of the hall, there will be a pink teddy bear on the bed. If you could get me that, I’d like to have it. I can’t go . . .”

  A free pass to poke around Tenley’s room? I was already halfway up the stairs when Erica’s sentence dissolved into another sob.

  7

  A bedroom fit for a princess, right down to the mahogany canopied bed dripping floaty pink and lavender muslin. Tenley Andre had slept under that canopy. Read on that thick, plush gray velvet window seat. Done her homework at the carefully distressed chic white desk.

  My eyes skipped from the wall unit full of trophies to the Stanford pennant that stuck out so much it had surely been a fight to get the mom to agree to hang it.

  Tenley had lived in this room.

  Could anything here tell me why or how she’d died?

  I put a toe onto the pale-gold wood floor, my boot issuing the faintest click against the tenpenny nailhead glinting out of the board end.

  Crossing to the window, I surveyed the grounds, straining for a glimpse of the street through the trees. All was quiet, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. I was kind of surprised Graham wasn’t already there, really. “Probably tied up with the press,” I muttered, thankful for any small favor today.

  Desk first. The surface was tidy—a stack of bright folders and papers in a dusky purple tray, a pink cup sporting a Taj Mahal silhouette full of pens and highlighters, a fancy graphing calculator, and a sleek silver MacBook.

  A toile-covered memo board hung nearby, dotted with ticket stubs, ribbons, and photos of Tenley with her mom, with the track coach, and with the man from the portrait over the fireplace downstairs. I slid my phone from my pocket and snapped a photo of the board. Why no pictures with friends?

  I bent to check the drawers: mail in the top one, three large envelopes from Wells Fargo under several smaller ones from Stanford; a stationery box filled the middle drawer; the bottom held tissue paper and rolls of ribbon.

  I flipped the laptop open with the nail of my index finger, my silent prayer answered as the screen brightened, a neat row of program shortcuts running across the bottom.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember that not everyone guarded information the way I did.

  Photos of Tenley and the boyfriend peppered the screen’s background. Skiing, boating, dressed up in formal wear, standing on a bluff next to bikes . . . there had to be forty snapshots of them doing everything under the sun, dazzling smiles lighting every single one.

  Next up: I needed to find this kid.

  I clicked the Safari logo and scanned her favorite sites, then the recently visited. Instagram, school, YouTube . . . and realtor.com?

  I opened the history, scrolling faster as the days went back.

  Every day for the past several weeks, Tenley had looked at apartments in Palo Alto. She was headed there for school in the fall, the track coach said. Dorms must be passé these days.

  YouTube recents had a KT Tape how-to for a sore calf, a cat fails compilation, and a Futurama episode.

  No “How to jump off a dam.” No “Suicide methods of the rich and famous.”

  Who looks at apartments when they’re not planning to be alive for the move?

  Social media might know. Tenley was the poster girl for the selfie generation, every moment, every smile, caught on camera and shared with the world. I clicked to her Instagram: 389 notifications. How often did she check it, for crying out loud?

  I clicked the little red badge and scrolled through the first hundred—all less than twelve hours old. Back on the main feed, I trailed my fingers over the trackpad and watched images flash by. A party. A big party for a random Monday night. And Tenley was tagged in what? Almost four hundred of these?

  Good Lord. Selfie generation, indeed. Slowing my scroll, I looked for Tenley and Nicholas. Found them both, but not in the same frames. Were they fighting? I didn’t want to think a girl as smart as Tenley would jump off the dam over a boy, but evidence doesn’t always tell the story I want it to.

  Damn, what I wouldn’t give for time to go through these carefully. I stopped on an image of a group of kids laughing, raising red Solo cups at the camera. Tenley was the only one who didn’t have a cup. Or a smile.

  I zoomed in, picking apart Tenley’s flat, uncomfortable expression. Her eyes weren’t on the camera, but cut to her right, glaring at a tall, muscle-bound boy with dark hair. He wasn’t Nick Richardson, but he sure appeared to have his hand on her ass, and she sure didn’t look happy about it.

  I snapped a photo of the screen with my phone and kept scrolling. Wait. There they were, Tenley and Nicholas, her easy smile back in place, his arm slung over her shoulders, cheek resting on her hair, as they overlooked the city from what appeared to be a very large deck. I went back, comparing the time stamps on the photos. The sullen one was posted almost an hour before the more relaxed one. I snapped a shot of it, too, glancing at the others as they blurred by and wishing I had time to review them all.

  But I didn’t. Did I?

  Tapping a finger on one side of my phone, I looked around. There, on the nightstand. I grabbed the iPhone cable and plugged my phone into Tenley’s laptop, clicked “No” when it asked if I wanted to sync them, and touched the phone screen to open my password thief. One by one, I navigat
ed to Tenley’s social media bookmarks: Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat. One by one, checkmarks flashed on my screen.

  It was the first time I’d tried the app, poached off a corner of the dark web I didn’t feel all that bad for perusing if the up-to-no-good inventions lurking there could help me unravel a murder. Hopefully this particular cyber criminal was actually worth the fifty bucks he’d charged me.

  Unplugging the phone, I tapped a pencil on the desk blotter, imprints on the surface catching my eye. I bent closer, running one finger over an off-color blotch with ragged edges. Another. And another. She’d been writing. And crying.

  Who was Tenley Andre when the cameras were off, the winners’ circle was dark and silent, and the whole world wasn’t watching?

  I pulled a notebook from my back pocket, laid a thin sheet over the impression, and ran the side of the pencil back and forth lightly. Learned from Nancy Drew and still useful decades later.

  Well, sort of useful—I lifted the paper, but the white lines standing against the gray were so convoluted, I couldn’t make out anything.

  Like many things had been written over the tearstained blotter.

  The letters Graham found with the gifts?

  I held the page up to the light. Nothing.

  Damn.

  I closed the notebook and the laptop, returned the charging cord to the nightstand, and let my eyes roam the room again. Directly across from the desk, in the middle of the built-in bookcase, sat the trophy shelf, a gilt-framed photo front and center: neck heavy with gold medals, Tenley hoisted the state track-and-field trophy high, her grin threatening to split her gorgeous face clean in two.

  I crossed to the shelf, shaking my head at two-dimensional Tenley, Graham’s suicide theory rattling around my head. “I don’t buy it. You weren’t sad, you weren’t slow, you weren’t hiding from the world. What happened, Tenley?”

  Wishing I’d thought to bring gloves, I turned for the bed. Made with military precision, the thing didn’t look like it had ever so much as been sat on.