by Greta Boris
Olivia was irritated by the intrusion, but she stayed where she was.
“I don’t know a lot about child psychology,” he said. “But one thing I do know is, if you show kids a little trust, they’ll usually make an effort to deserve it.”
“Maybe. But Brian has issues most kids don’t.”
She watched her son’s brown head bob through the group of children assembled on the grass and drop into a center spot. She relaxed. A little. Tom might be right, but she planned to keep an eye on her son even if it was from a distance.
The storyteller, a beautiful, round-faced woman dressed in a long buckskin dress, walked into the circle. She turned on her microphone and began speaking. Soon the children were lost in the world of the Juaneño Tribe of long ago.
Tom leaned over and spoke into her ear, “You know we’ve never had a real date.”
“What about that lovely dinner you made me? That was a date wasn’t it?”
“I mean a more traditional date. I pick you up at your house with flowers in hand. You get all dressed up in something sexy. I take you out to an overpriced restaurant. That kind of date.”
“Are you asking me out?”
“Yeah. Would you go out with me Friday night?”
“Let me check Davy’s schedule,” she said, and turned to watch the storyteller. Moving slowly with Tom was beginning to look like an impossibility.
Twenty minutes into the hour-long program, the pressure in Olivia’s bladder she’d been ignoring for the past half hour grew uncomfortable. She’d waited because she hadn’t wanted to leave Brian alone. When he was small, she could take him to the ladies room with her, but he was too old for that now.
Tom was here, so he wouldn’t be alone. And, as Davy said, they had to begin letting out the leash a bit. “Can you watch Brian for a moment?”
“Sure.” Tom’s eyebrows raised in question.
“Ladies room,” she said.
He nodded.
“It only takes a second for him to disappear.” She sounded overprotective, even to herself.
“Olivia,” he said her name slowly. “People pay me to supervise their kids for thirty hours a week, thirty-six weeks a year. I think I can handle the five minutes it’s going to take you to go to the restroom.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but he’d already returned his attention to the action in the central courtyard.
Olivia walked across the grass toward the visitor center. The building was cool and dimly lit after the bright sunshine. She followed signs to the bathroom door. The small, tiled room was clean and empty and smelled of strawberry disinfectant. She walked to one end and closed herself inside a stall. A moment later, she heard the door to the bathroom open and shut, and the click of shoes. Another sound, hair spray maybe. She flushed the toilet.
When she was done, she walked to a sink to wash her hands and glanced into the mirror on the wall to check her hair. Her breath caught. In its reflection she saw B, R, I in large black letters scrawled onto a half-opened stall door.
B, R, I. Her palms slicked. The room was spotless when she’d entered—no graffiti anywhere. She was sure.
She glanced around, looking for the person she’d heard enter, but saw no one. Heart skipping, she moved to the stall and pulled the door shut so she could read all of what was written: Brian is in danger.
The paint was still wet. The message was for her. It had to be.
She spun around scanning the stark white room. The other stall doors were closed, and there were no feet visible beneath. Olivia stepped to the closest. She placed a hand against the cold metal and pushed. The door swung open. No one inside. She moved to the next and repeated the process. Empty. There was nowhere else to hide.
Cold fingers crept up Olivia’s spine. “Hello.” She yelled into the void. “What do you want?” Only an echo returned.
Fury ripped through her. What kind of person would try to scare a mother like this? “Tell me what the hell you want,” she screamed to the blank walls.
A sudden need to see her son gripped her. She burst through the bathroom door, ran along the dark hallway and out into the sunshine. The group of students gathered around the storyteller were standing now. Several played rhythm instruments. Some danced in halted steps. Where was Brian?
She scoured the crowd, heart racing. She didn’t see him anywhere. A hand gripped her arm. It was Tom.
“Where’s Brian? I thought you were going to watch him.” Olivia heard the panic in her voice, but didn’t care. She only cared about finding her son.
Tom pointed into the circle. A boy covered in a coyote skin cavorted around the storyteller enacting a character from one of her tales. It was Brian. She hadn’t recognized him in the costume. “He’s having fun, Olivia. You should try it.”
She didn’t respond. Cool relief washed over her. Tom’s face formed a tentative smile, and he led her to the shade of the portico. “You okay?”
Olivia nodded. She couldn’t talk. She watched the rest of the program without comprehending, her thoughts in a tangle.
Finding the newspaper articles on her car in the parking lot of the Fishbowl had been upsetting, but this... This was worse. Her place of employment was listed on her records at CPS, school, all kinds of places. It was easy information to come by. But someone would have to be watching her, listening to her conversations to know she was going to be at the Mission today.
She reviewed her week. The only person she’d mentioned the event to was Fiona. Could Brian have told someone he’d be here? He was excited when she’d told him about it earlier that week. He might have talked it up at school.
That thought sent a jolt of adrenaline through her. What if the person wasn’t admonishing her to be a more careful mother but threatening her son? Brian is in danger. That’s what the message on the stall door said. Brian is in danger. From whom? From the writer?
Proctor. His name filled her with the claustrophobic fear of a hunted animal. She sidled closer to Tom and threaded an arm through his, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the day. He grinned at her. “Great program, huh?”
She gave him a feeble smile. Standing close to him made her feel safer. She considered telling him about the words on the stall door, but decided against it. If she told him about that, she’d have to tell him about the articles, and CPS, and the Safety Plan. Just the thought made her cheeks sting. They didn’t know each other well, and probably never would if she became a single mother with baggage.
“I think she’s wrapping up.” Tom lifted his chin in the direction of the storyteller. Olivia made a move toward the dispersing children. “What’s your hurry?”
“We’d better get going.” All she could think about was getting her son home where he’d be safe.
“We haven’t had lunch.” Tom looked hurt.
“I know, but...” She couldn’t think of an excuse to leave, not without telling him about the graffiti.
Brian ran toward them, his words singing across the grass. “I got picked to be the coyote. Did you see me?”
“I did. You did a great job,” Olivia said and hugged him harder than she intended.
“I wanted to be the coyote because coyotes are dogs. Did you know that? I read all about them in a book Miss Travers gave me.”
“Who’s Miss Travers?” Olivia released him.
“She works at the library at school. I told her I liked dogs, and she’s been giving me books about them. Not giving. I can’t keep them. I’m just borrowing them.”
“That’s nice of her.”
“She’s nice. She likes dogs and history stuff. I’m starving.”
Tom caught Olivia’s eye. “I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some Rice Krispie treats.”
“Can we eat now?” Brian’s eyes pleaded with her.
“I also made shrimp salad and brought a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.” Tom’s voice sounded hopeful.
“Let’s eat,” Brian danced around Olivia.
She’d wanted th
is weekend to be special, and it still could be if she didn’t ruin it now. Brian’s life was difficult enough without adding her fears to it. She was the parent. It was her job to shield him from danger, from problems he wasn’t equipped to handle. And it wasn’t like someone was going to snatch him away right from under her nose. But even as the thought passed through her mind, her gaze traveled over the faces in the crowd looking for cold, blue eyes.
He would do something like this. He got off on the fear of others. Her jaw clenched in anger. If it was him, the last thing she would do was play along, satisfy his sick needs. She would sit under a tree, eat her picnic, relax, or at least appear to, and Proctor would know he hadn’t succeeded. “Okay.” Olivia let herself be led toward the street where Tom’s car was parked.
“I know what I want to be for Halloween.” Brian bounced by her side. Every year the decision was left until the last minute and every year it was a tremendous rush to put the costume together. She hoped this one wouldn’t be complicated.
“Let me guess. A coyote.”
“No. That would be too hard. I want to be a Juaneño. I asked the lady. She said I could wear jeans and a t-shirt. That’s what a lot of the men wear now. Then I could make, like, a necklace with shells and put on some fake tattoos. She showed me a picture. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Very.”
“I could get a leather shoelace and string stuff on that. I wish I had a deer hoof. They used to put deer hooves on necklaces. I have Dad’s old rabbit’s foot. You think I could use that?”
While Brian prattled on about his costume, Olivia scrutinized everyone they passed on the way to the street. She didn’t see anyone who looked like the man she’d seen in the parking lot two weeks ago. Was it only two weeks? It seemed like an eternity.
“I thought we could park behind the Adobe,” Tom said when Brian finally took a breath. “There are picnic tables there. Then after lunch we could walk over to the pony rides and the petting zoo.”
“Petting zoo.” Scorn peppered Brian’s voice. “Isn’t that for little kids?”
“Not just for little kids. I used to go there when I was your age, and it’s a lot bigger now. They have all kinds of stuff. You can feed llamas and goats and Guinea pigs.”
“Do they have any dogs?”
“I don’t think they have dogs, but they have horses.”
Olivia listened to the happy banter between Tom and Brian. She hoped they’d become friends. Brian would have to accept someone before she would even consider a relationship with that person. But she did like Tom, and she wasn’t going to let graffiti destroy their outing. She’d call her mother that night and see if she’d talked to Winnie and Drew. Meanwhile, she’d do her best to put it out of her mind and keep Brian in her line of vision at all times.
***
Brian got in bed early without an argument. He was tired from the Mission trip and their afternoon tromping around San Juan Capistrano. Olivia tucked him up with a book about dogs and made him promise to turn off the light at nine. Then she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on for a cup of chamomile tea. While she waited for the water to come to a boil, she dialed her mother.
“Hi, Liv.” Olivia could tell by the tension in Sarah’s voice she hadn’t made the calls. “I know why you’re calling, and I haven’t—”
“Mom. This is important.”
There was a long silence. Then Sarah said, “Why? I have to have a reason. I can’t ask about Proctor out of the blue, especially when they know how I feel about him.”
It was Olivia’s turn to be quiet. She poured hot water into a mug, found a tea bag and weighed the pros and cons of telling her mother about the newspaper articles and the message on the stall door.
The comforting scent of chamomile wafted up into her face as she bobbed the bag in the water. Her mother loved Brian as much as she did. If Sarah thought he was in danger, she’d move mountains to keep him safe. “Odd things have been happening since I saw that man who looked like him,” she finally said.
“What kind of odd things?”
“Last week, after the party at the studio, I went out to my car and somebody had left copies of newspaper articles on my windshield. They were about two little boys who died in tragic accidents.”
“Boys from around here?”
“No. One was in Idaho. Boise, I think. The other one was in Phoenix.” Sarah didn’t say anything, so Olivia went on. “Then when we were at the Mission on Sunday, I got another message. Someone wrote ‘Brian is in danger’ on a stall door while I was in the bathroom.”
Olivia heard a sharp intake of breath, then Sarah said, “And you think this has something to do with Proctor?”
“It’s a hell of a coincidence. First I see someone that could be Proctor’s older brother, then I get these bizarre messages.”
“You think he’s threatening you? Threatening Brian?” There was a catch in Sarah’s voice.
“That, or someone’s trying to warn me about him.”
There was another long silence on the other end of the phone, then a heavy sigh. “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to upset you.”
Olivia’s pulse tripped a beat. “Didn’t want me to know what?”
“Proctor is here. He called three weeks ago.”
Olivia sat at the kitchen table, her legs weak. It was one thing to think he was here, another to know it. “What does he want?”
“He has pictures...”
“Pictures?”
“Of me. Of him and me. Things that could hurt my career.”
“He’s blackmailing you?”
“That’s not what he called it, but, yes. That’s what it amounts to. He said he’d sell me the pictures.”
“You’re not going to give him money.” The question exploded into a command. “He’ll never leave you alone if you do. You know that. He’ll keep coming back for more.”
“He said he’d give me the pictures, then he’d go away.”
“Right. And as soon as he runs through the money you gave him, he’ll find more pictures, or remember those were in the cloud. Mom, how bad could they be?”
“Bad. If it was just sex, I could weather the storm. But there are others. We all did drugs back then, Livvie.”
“You’re an author, not a politician, not a pastor. It wouldn’t shock anyone if an author did some recreational drugs in her youth.”
“If I wrote adult fiction it would be one thing, but I don’t. I write for children. Pictures like these would tank book sales, I’m telling you.”
Whether it was true or not, it was obvious her mother believed it. “We have to go to the police,” Olivia said.
“No. If we go to the police, he’ll release the pictures to the media.” Sarah’s voice was emphatic.
“But, Brian.”
“I won’t allow him to hurt Brian. I’ll tell him, if he doesn’t stop threatening you, the deal is off.”
“The deal? You’ve made a deal with him already?”
“I had no choice.”
Olivia stood and began to pace across the linoleum floor of her small kitchen. “You do have a choice, Mom. You can tell the police. He needs to be stopped. What if he killed those boys in the articles? What if he wants to do something to Brian?”
“Let me get the pictures from him. Then we can tell the police about the threats to Brian.”
“There’s no proof he threatened me or Brian. The only thing we can prove is that he’s a blackmailer.”
“There’s got to be another way.” Her mother sounded desperate. “If this comes out, I’m not the only one who’ll be hurt. There are other people in the pictures. Drew is a judge now. Rochelle Anderson, from Michigan, is a high school teacher. Not to mention you. Having a mother with a checkered past won’t help your cause with CPS.”
Olivia leaned her elbows on the kitchen counter and dropped her head into her hands. Her thoughts had become viscous sludge, and her head felt too heavy to hold upright. “Have you given him an
y money yet?”
“No. I’ve been moving things around. Selling stocks.”
“When?”
“I told him I’d call him when I have it.”
“Don’t do anything. Okay? I need to think.”
Sarah agreed in a reluctant voice, and they hung up. Olivia poured her cold tea into the sink and headed to Brian’s bedroom. He lay curled under his blanket of cars, breathing softly. She kissed his forehead and watched him sleep for a long time.
When she left him, she went to her room and lay on her bed on top of the covers, fully dressed. She stared at the ceiling, watching light trails from the occasional passing car cross the white plaster until dawn made them first dim, then invisible.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“READY?” BRIAN HOPPED up and down.
“Ready.” Olivia had agreed to pick up Brian from Davy’s at eight on Thursday night since she was going to be out anyway. When she pulled into guest parking, she saw Brian, Davy, and Crackers waiting under a streetlight. Brian pounced on her car, pulled her out, and dragged her to the greenbelt as soon as she turned off the ignition.
“Hold his eyes shut,” Brian said to his father.
Davy turned Crackers so he faced away from Brian and pressed the dog’s muzzle into his leg. “I got him.”
“Okay.” Brian took off at a run across the grass, crossed a small street, and disappeared behind a dark hedge near the community pool. Watching him go made Olivia’s nerves jangle.
“Let’s wait a minute. I want him to forget about Brian.” Davy gave Crackers one end of a knotted rope, and the dog fell into a game of tug-of-war. Cracker’s black coat gleamed in the solar lights that rimmed the greenbelt. His teeth flashed white, and a happy growl reverberated in his chest. “Do you have that sock?” Davy disengaged Crackers from the rope and told him to sit.
Olivia fished around her bag for the dirty sock she’d been instructed to bring. It hadn’t been hard to find one. Brian’s gym bag was always full of them. She handed it to Davy.
Davy gave the sock to Crackers to sniff. “Find.”
Crackers pivoted on his feet, nose to the ground, and whined with excitement. This, it seemed, was even more fun than tug-of-war. The dog led Davy in a serpentine path that soon straightened. Olivia followed. They crossed the short street, and Crackers leaped forward nearly pulling Davy into a large privet hedge. A joyful bark, and her son’s laugh brought a smile to Olivia’s face.