Tell No One

by Taylor Sissel, Barbara

  The captain nods. “I figured the tip was bogus, but we’ve got to check.” He sips his coffee and goes on, talking about the improbability of a kid with Gee’s talent and prospects being dumb enough to risk his future breaking in to houses. “Unless he’s in it for the thrill.” Mackie’s glance shifts from Harris to his mom. “That’s kind of how it’s beginning to look, as if it’s more than one kid, and they’re out for excitement.”

  “How do they get in?” Harris’s mother asks.

  “Oh, they’ve got expertise, the right tools. I’ll give them that. The homeowners never suspect a thing until they get inside and find stuff missing. Electronics, jewelry, cash. Just the small stuff they can handle easily.”

  “Scary,” Harris’s mother says.

  “A lot of folks are loading their guns, sitting up nights. We need to get who’s responsible before somebody gets hurt.”

  No one says anything for a moment. It is everything Harris can do to remain in his chair.

  “About Gee,” Mackie begins, and he waits for Harris to meet his eyes. “What’s he got now—like, five offers on the table? I heard Oklahoma’s in the mix. Any clue who he’ll sign with?”

  “His dad played for Penn State, and they’re all over Gee, but his mom and granddad are UT alums. It’s a toss-up right now, but if I had to bet, I’d say UT.”

  “Folks here in Wyatt’ll be glad if he stays in state, close by. He’d get a crowd at his home games for sure, his own cheerleading section.”

  They all three stand, and Harris leads the way from the kitchen, down the hall to the front door. Mackie pauses on the threshold, and turning to Harris, he says, “There’s just one other thing.”

  Harris’s heart stalls. Keep it together, keep it together . . . A voice rasps advice in his brain. But he’s cracking under the stress. He can feel his resolve softening, weakening.

  “The caller this morning—”

  “Was it a man or a woman?” Harris hadn’t realized he would ask, but suddenly he wants to know. A suspicion has grown in his mind that Zeke is the caller, that the old man has gone back on his word, although Harris knows in his core the sun would burn out first.

  “I’d rather not say,” the captain answers. “The person claimed Gee was selling drugs too. Opioids, mainly. The caller said we’d find them in his car.”

  “Did you?” His mom asks the question he doesn’t have breath for.

  “No, but then I didn’t figure I would.” Mackie looks from Harris to his mom. “Y’all ever hear a rumor about Gee dealing drugs?”

  “No, sir,” Harris says. At least this is the truth. He never has heard so much as a whisper about Gee’s drug dealing.

  “I can’t imagine it,” his mom says.

  “Yeah, me either. Makes me wonder—cop mind, you know—” Mackie points to his head. “What motivated the caller? I figure it’s someone who’s jealous of the kid or his family. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be rich, does it? Some folks want to cut you down, make you pay out of spite.”

  Mackie opens the door. He’s got one foot over the threshold when he turns back. “I guess y’all wouldn’t know of anyone who’d have a reason to set him up?”

  Zeke Roman. Even as Harris shakes his head no, the name sits behind his teeth, despite his conviction that the old man wouldn’t break his word. It’s chilly in the open doorway, but in his panic, Harris is sweating.

  His mom answers that she has no idea either.

  Mackie addresses her. “What about drug dealing taking place on campus at the high school—you ever hear a rumor about that?”

  “Heavens no,” she says, offended, appalled—some combination. “Have you?”

  “A time or two.” Mackie looks off toward his cop cruiser, parked in the drive. “If it’s true, it makes me wonder if the robberies are connected. It’s probably nothing. A lot of talk. But if it is kids breaking in to folks’ homes, drugs might be what they’re looking for, or the cash to buy drugs, or items they can pawn for money or trade for drugs—you see where I’m going with this.”

  Harris doesn’t respond. No way can he trust his voice. Inside he’s jelly, weak with disbelief.

  Beside him, his mother shakes her head. She says she can’t imagine it.

  Mackie’s sympathetic. He says he can understand how it’s hard to believe. “Here’s the thing, though—we keep hearing the students talk to y’all. They trust you. So I’m thinking if anybody were to get the lowdown, so to speak, it would be one of you.” Mackie divides his glance between Harris and his mom, and Harris gets the sense the cop is waiting for one of them to confirm knowledge of the situation he’s already in possession of. Mackie will whip out the cuffs next. He’ll read Harris his rights. Harris’s blood sluices through his veins.

  An improbable half smile quirks Mackie’s lips. “Remembering my days as a jock at Wyatt High, there’s a lot of talk goes on in a locker room.”

  “Yeah,” Harris says. “Most of it BS. You know how full of it young guys are.” He laughs, a truncated sound.

  Mackie grins, looks again at Harris’s mom. “You’re obligated to report drug activity on campus, right? Zero tolerance and all that.”

  “Yes, Captain. I know my legal and professional responsibilities and take them very seriously.”

  “All right, then.” Mackie gives them a short nod. “Y’all have a good day.”

  “You too, Captain,” Harris’s mother says.

  Harris offers no such felicitations. He watches with his mom as the cop walks to his squad car. Once he’s inside it, Harris closes the front door, bending his forehead against it. His relief is short lived.

  “What is going on?” His mother’s voice behind him is as sharp as a razor.

  He straightens, and he’s in the process of saying, “It’s nothing,” when she interrupts him, warning him not to say that, not to put her off.

  “I know better,” she says, and when he turns to her, her eyes are hard on his.

  13

  Caroline—Saturday, January 13

  Martha answered Caroline’s knock, looking grim. She held open the door.

  “What happened?” Caroline came inside, anxious eyes on Martha’s face.

  “Lanie fell in the night last night, trying to get herself to the bathroom. I found her when I got here this morning. Heaven only knows how long she was lying on that cold floor. She was shaking all over. She’s just now quit it.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “She won’t let me call him. She says she’s tired. She let me check her over, and I didn’t feel anything broken, but she needs x-rays, a CAT scan, something beyond what a retired nurse like me can do.”

  “She is so stubborn.”

  “I know, but she did agree to move downstairs. I pulled some strings and got a hospital bed moved into the dining room this morning.”

  “Oh, Martha, you’re a wonder.” Caroline gave the woman a hug.

  Martha was embarrassed, but she seemed pleased. “It was what needed to be done,” she said when Caroline released her. “You go on in there now. She’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Well, look what beauty has come through my door this morning.” Fatigue shadowed the delight in Lanie’s eyes.

  Caroline went to her bedside and, taking her hand gently, bent to kiss her aunt’s cheek. “Are you all right? Martha said you fell.”

  “She makes too much of things. What do you think of my new digs?”

  Caroline looked over her shoulder through the windows at the patio and the garden beyond it. “You have a lovely view.”

  “I hope someone will care for the flower beds in the spring,” Lanie said.

  “Oh, Auntie Lanie, please, please say you’ll see your doctor.” Caroline’s voice broke, and she regretted it, but it was unbearable watching her aunt slip away. She could feel it, how little time was left.

  Lanie patted her arm. “I know you’re sad, honey, and I’m sorry for it, truly, but don’t hold on to that sadness. Promise me. Feel it if you
have to, but then let it go, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know how to be here in this world without you, though.” Caroline sounded like a child crying for the moon, and it was a terrible thing putting the burden of her grief on Lanie, as if dying weren’t burden enough. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “It’s all right, honey. I’m so glad I mean so much to you, grateful for the chance I was given to see you grow into the beautiful woman you are; to have shared that has been such a gift. We have a lot of love between us, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” Caroline said. “I’m so thankful for it, for you. I know I have to let you go—” She clenched her teeth against the sob that rose in her throat.

  “You’ll be fine, sweet, fine as frog’s hair.”

  Caroline smiled at the well-loved joke. “You can’t be finer than that, can you?”

  Lanie gave Caroline’s arm a final pat. “Tell me what you’ve been up to. Bring a dining chair over here.”

  “I’ve got some news about Dad.” Caroline retrieved one of the linen-upholstered chairs to Lanie’s bedside. “I don’t want to wear you out, though.”

  “No, don’t worry. I want to hear.”

  “I met with an investigative reporter this morning. He knew Dad back in the late eighties. They were close friends, in fact.” At Lanie’s prompting, Caroline went on, recounting her conversation with Kip Penny, picking her words carefully to soften the presence of any threat, wanting in the worst way to cast her dad in a kinder light. She might have saved herself the trouble.

  By the time she was finished, Lanie’s disgust and disappointment were evident in her expression. “So at the very least Hoff knew the athletes were being bribed to play,” she said.

  “I hate it, too, but at least he was trying to make it right.” Caroline gave her aunt the ray of light she clung to.

  “What he wrote to your mom, that he was scared, it makes sense now.” Lanie raised her hands, brought them down, a futile gesture. “It’s my fault—”

  “No, Aunt Lanie, don’t take it on yourself.” Caroline was dismayed.

  “If only we’d been on better terms, though, Hoff might have come to me. He must have felt so alone. If I could go back—if I could just know he’s all right.” Her fingers worried the coverlet.

  Caroline set her hand over them, holding them still, feeling Lanie’s pain, fighting her own regret. “We’ll find him, I promise,” she said, and her voice was unsteady even as her brain warned she had no business making such promises. “The private investigator you called—when was it?” she asked after a moment.

  “Probably a month or two after the Christmas holiday in 1989. I would have waited longer had it been any other time of year. I was so accustomed to going weeks without a word from him, you know, because he traveled so much. There weren’t such things as cell phones then. He’d have to pull off the road, find a phone booth. But he’d do it. Especially at holiday time. You remember.”

  Caroline did. Holidays and birthdays, hers and Lanie’s, were the occasions when her dad would make the effort to get in touch no matter where he was or how far away. She remembered the clinking sound the coins made when he dropped them into the pay phone. She’d been seventeen in 1989, still angry and hurt, and she hadn’t cared when there’d been no call and no gift from him that year under Lanie’s tree. She hadn’t thought twice about it.

  “I had a bad feeling,” Lanie said. “That’s why I called Julia, and when she didn’t know anything, I went to the police, for all the good it did. I thought surely an investigator would be able to track Hoff, but he never found a thing.”

  “Do you still have his contact information?”

  “I should, in my address book, in my desk upstairs. His name was Thomas Williams, no, Williamson. I believe Williamson was his last name.”

  “Be right back,” Caroline said.

  Lanie’s eyes were closed when Caroline returned. She picked up her purse, and her hand was hovering above Lanie’s brow when her eyes fluttered open. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I do this, just drop off.” Lanie smiled.

  “I found Mr. Williamson’s number. I’ll call him. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “You’ll let me know.”

  “Of course. And you rest. Mind Martha, okay? Otherwise you’ll have to deal with me, and she’s a lot nicer.”

  “Ha! You are some meanie.”

  “What is it?” the somber note in her aunt’s gaze prompted Caroline to ask.

  “Honey, I think we have to accept that your dad’s death is a possibility.”

  Having Lanie put it into words, the outcome they both dreaded, made it sharply real. Caroline closed her eyes, shook her head.

  “I know you don’t want to consider it, but we have to be prepared. Hoff could have died of any number of things by now. A stroke, a heart attack. Cancer, like me. Even natural causes . . .”

  Or unnatural ones. That was Caroline’s thought, but not one she would share with Lanie.

  Caroline was on her way back to her mother’s house when her phone chimed. Pulling to the curb, she tugged it from her purse, and her heart shifted on seeing Rob’s name in the caller ID window. She hadn’t answered his calls since returning from Wichita to Houston. In response, his messages had become increasingly plaintive. Why was she avoiding him? When was she coming home? He needed her. Their business was suffering. That bit was laughable. It wasn’t their business. Not in the way she had understood it to be.

  But she couldn’t put off talking to him any longer. Late yesterday when he’d called, he’d said if he didn’t hear from her within twenty-four hours, he’d come to Houston. She didn’t want that; she wasn’t ready.

  “Finally,” he said when she answered.

  “I’ve been busy,” she said.

  “Things are falling apart here,” he said. “I’m falling apart.”

  “You’re just worried I’m going to turn you in,” she said.

  “Are you?”

  A beat.

  “What do you want me to do, Caro?” he demanded when she didn’t respond. “Go to jail?”

  “I don’t know.” It was the truth.

  “Fucking do it! Turn me in, if that’s what you want, and get it over with. I can’t live this way.”

  “You can’t live this way? You did this, Rob! You told the lies, put us and our employees and their families at risk! You compromised me, my integrity, my word. You and only you! I didn’t know—”

  “You could have, if you’d wanted to.”

  Caroline jerked upright as if he’d slapped her. “What?”

  “You had access to the forms. Anytime you wanted to see the paperwork, you could have. You’re a partner, an equal partner—”

  “Instead I trusted you—my partner.”

  “This isn’t productive—”

  Caroline cut him off. “In addition to helping with the business, I was raising our daughter, Rob. I was baking cookies for her to take to class; I was going to teacher conferences when you were tied up with work; I made sure we ate healthy and had clothes on our backs. I took Nina to her piano lessons and softball practice.”

  The silence that fell was heated, blind.

  Rob broke it. “Remember our first house, the snowman you, Nina, and I built in the yard after we moved in?”

  Caroline didn’t answer, although she did remember. Nina had just turned two. New Wheaton, their company, had been struggling but had finally shown a profit big enough to finance the purchase. They’d been happy, celebratory. They’d thought of having another child, a sister or brother for Nina, but it hadn’t happened.

  “The heat was always going out,” Rob said. “We’d have to all three pile in the bed to stay warm.”

  “You sang lullabies until Nina and I fell asleep.” Rob had a beautiful voice, low and soothing. When he and Caroline had danced together, he used to hold her close and whisper sing the words to love songs in her ear.

  “When I saw you at Drake the fir
st time—we were at the library. Do you remember that day?” he asked, and Caroline thought he was attempting to woo her, distract her. It made her sad. “I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. You still are.”

  She stared through the windshield. Rob had sat down across from her at the library on campus; he’d struck up a conversation, which she’d wanted to ignore. She’d been in running-away mode still, having left home a scant week earlier, and desperately trying to convince herself she’d been right to break her connection to her mom and dad, their issues, her past, all the drama. And Steve . . .

  The appearance of his name in her mind now, coupled with the rest, startled her. Steve: the road not taken. It was the way she’d come to think of him and their failed romance. She had not taken that road because she couldn’t handle the risk of love that had been too lovely and too huge. Love that was gone now, that she hadn’t any right to anyway. And who knew where that road would have led had she had the courage to walk down it? But she didn’t want these ideas—these feelings inside her heart, this doubt that confused and shamed her.

  “Rob?” she said. “I can’t—I’m not coming home. Lanie fell last night, and when I saw her just now—it’s really beginning to hit me—I’m going to lose her. She’s not going to recover. I need to be here, with her, with Mom.”

  “I’m sorry about Lanie,” Rob said, “but I need you, Caro. We’re in this together. You have as much to lose as I do.”

  “It’s not enough to blame me; you have to threaten me too?” Fury knotted her brow. She gripped the steering wheel.

  “I’m not—”

  “How many times do I have to say it? We aren’t in this together, and even if we were, you have to make it right. You have to do the right thing.”

  “Are you saying you won’t turn me in?”

  The hope in his voice on the heels of what had seemed like his warning struck Caroline as bizarre. She bent her head to her knuckled fist. “I can’t handle this right now, Rob.”