Charley's Web (18 page)

“What do you mean, unpleasant?”

“The usual: I’m stupid and disgusting and deserve to die.”

“That definitely qualifies as unpleasant.”

“You ever get e-mail like that?”

“Occasionally. My favorite ones are the ones that quote Shakespeare. You know the line about, ‘First, we kill all the lawyers’?”

“Really?” Charley realized she was smiling, and wasn’t sure why she should be taking so much comfort in the fact that Alex’s life had been threatened, too. “So you don’t think I have anything to worry about?”

“I’m sure it’s just an empty threat.”

“It also threatened my children,” she said, hearing her voice break.

“Then I think you should phone the police.”

“I’ve done that. I was just waiting for them to call back.”

“I’ll call you another time,” he offered.

“No, that’s okay. What’s up?” Had Jill contacted him, told him she was upset about their little spat, and that she wanted to bring in another writer?

“Jill’s sister, Pam, has agreed to meet with you.”

“Really? When?”

“Unfortunately it has to be this weekend. Her father and brother will be out of town, and she’ll only talk to us when they’re not around.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange.”

“You’ll let me know as soon as possible?”

“Absolutely.” Charley hung up the phone. It rang again immediately. “Officer Ramirez?”

“Not quite,” her sister replied, each word a block of ice.

“Emily?”

“I’ve talked to Anne,” she said. “You’ve got a deal.”

Y
ou look tired,” Alex said as Charley climbed into the front seat of his car. A light rain was falling, so the top on his convertible was up.

Charley waved good-bye to her mother, who was watching from the living room window, and tried not to bristle at Alex’s assessment. She’d actually spent considerable time getting ready for this trip—more than she would have devoted to an actual date—and she thought she looked pretty damn good. She’d selected her wardrobe carefully, eliminating a pale pink blouse for being too girlish, and discarding a bright floral print for being too loud, before ultimately selecting a mauve silk jersey top over a pair of classic black pants. The outfit was sophisticated without being imposing, alluring but not overtly sexual. “Who are you trying to impress?” her mother had asked.

Who
was
she trying to impress? Charley wondered as Alex pulled the car away from the curb. Not Jill’s sister, Pam, that was for sure. And certainly not Alex, who was dressed casually in jeans and a checkered shirt, and who had obviously made no effort at all to impress
her.
“I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep.”

“More threatening e-mails?” Alex turned north toward Okeechobee, heading for I-95.

“No, thank God. Just a puppy with a tiny bladder.”

Alex looked surprised. “I never would have pegged you for a dog lover.”

“Just doing a favor for a friend.” Charley quickly explained the situation with Glen McLaren.

(“It’s Glen’s dog,” Charley had told her mother earlier. “What could I do? I owed him.”

“He wouldn’t settle for a blow job?” had come her mother’s instant response.)

“Glen McLaren,” Alex repeated now, twisting the name around his tongue, as if it were familiar.

“You know him?”

“The name rings a bell.”

“He owns a nightclub in Palm Beach.”

Alex shrugged, as if he’d already lost interest. “I’m sure it’ll come to me. Was that your mother watching us from the window?”

“That was my mother.”

“Very attractive from what I could see.”

“Definitely one of a kind.”

Alex smiled. “Aren’t they all?”

“Sounds like you speak from experience,” Charley observed.

“I’m sure we all have our ‘mother’ stories to tell.”

“Tell me one of yours.”

For an instant, Charley thought she might have pushed the familiarity button too far, that Alex might opt out of the conversation altogether and revert to the safety of his legal tapes, but he only smiled and said, “My mother is one of those people who never uses one word when a thousand will do. She can take a whole day to tell you what she had for breakfast.”

“Sounds fascinating.”

“It isn’t. But what can you do?”

“What
do
you do?”

“I listen. It’s not the end of the world.”

“And your father?”

“He stopped listening when I was two years old. To make my mother’s very long story short, he walked out the door one day and never came back.”

“You’re saying you never saw him again?”

“I saw him off and on until he got married again, started a new family. After that, I didn’t see him much. Haven’t heard from him at all in about five years now. I think he moved to California.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Can’t say that I do. Although I have a couple of half-brothers I’m a little curious about,” he continued, unprompted.

“You could contact them,” Charley suggested.

“I could,” he agreed. “If I’m remembering what Jill said correctly, you have a brother and two sisters.”

Charley’s shoulders stiffened. She was still angry at being given the brush-off by Jill earlier in the week. She’d driven all the way to Pembroke Pines, only to be told that Jill wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to see her. “If she pulls that stunt one more time,” Charley said now, without bothering to elaborate, “I’m pulling the plug.”

Alex didn’t try to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about. “She told me to tell you how sorry she is about the way she acted.”

“She has to understand that no question is off limits.”

“She understands that.”

“This book was her idea,” Charley reminded him. “I’m not here to be jerked around.”

“She swears it’ll never happen again.”

“Well, she’s right about that,” Charley said, determined not to forgive Jill so easily. The week had been a busy one, what with trying to organize her next column and trying not to obsess over her latest threatening e-mail.

“I’ll need that list,” Officer Ramirez had reminded her, and Charley had spent several hours jotting down the names of everyone she’d ever offended, starting with Lynn Moore and Gabe Lopez, and going all the way back to grade school. She’d even included her father and sisters on that list, ignoring the look of surprise that flashed through Jennifer Ramirez’s dark eyes.

“My sisters are actually coming to Palm Beach in a couple of weeks,” Charley heard herself confide.

“That’s nice.” Alex paused, turned his head toward her. “Isn’t it?” “I guess we’ll find out.” They didn’t speak again for several minutes. Alex turned on the radio, and the sound of “easy rock” filled the car, Josh Groban crowing mellifluously, if more than a touch melodramatically, about being “raised up.”

“What kind of music do you like?” Alex asked.

“I guess I should say classical,” Charley responded after a moment’s thought.

“Why should you?”

“I don’t know. So you won’t think I’m shallow, I guess.”

“I don’t think you’re shallow.”

“You don’t? Because I am,” she said, and was grateful when he laughed. “Country,” she admitted after a pause. “I like country.”

“Really? Any artist in particular?”

“I like them all,” she admitted. “Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Tim McGraw.”

“No women?”

“Faith Hill, Alison Krauss. Dolly Parton, of course.”

“Of course. Everybody likes Dolly.”

“What kind of music do
you
like?” Charley asked in return, realizing she was asking because she was interested and not just because she felt obligated.

“Classical,” he deadpanned. “Just kidding. Actually, I’m kind of partial to country myself.” He switched the station to WIRK. The Judds were singing “Mama, He’s Crazy.” “I even play a pretty mean guitar.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Well, actually, I’m a little surprised you play the guitar, but not at all surprised you play it well, if that makes any sense.”

“I think it might.”

“I used to play the piano,” Charley said.

“You don’t anymore?”

“I stopped when I was twelve. My father said my playing gave him migraines.”

“You were that bad?”

“I was that
good,”
Charley corrected. “Took a lot of dedicated practicing to give that man a headache.”

Alex was clearly intrigued, although he stopped short of asking her to elaborate. “What’s your favorite food?” he asked, perhaps seeking safer ground.

“Italian.”

“Thought you might say that. Ever eaten at Centro’s?”

“No. Where’s that?”

“A little strip mall not far from Pembroke Correctional. Maybe we’ll go there after we see Jill on Wednesday.”

Was he asking her out on a date? Charley wondered, sidestepping the question of dinner. “I didn’t realize you’d be joining us,” Charley said, referring to Wednesday’s meeting with Jill.

“I thought it might be a good idea, in light of what happened. Plus, I have an appointment in Fort Lauderdale in the morning. I can meet you at the prison. Unless, of course, you have any objections….”

“No. No objections.”

“Good.”

There was another brief lull in the conversation. The Judds were replaced by the group, Alabama. “All I really got to do is live and die,” they sang lustily.

“Just how much do you know about what happened?” Charley asked Alex.

“What do you mean?”

“You know that Jill was sexually abused by her brother,” Charley stated.

“Yes.”

“And that her father abused her as well.”

“He beat her, yes.”

“Did he abuse her sexually?”

Another pause. “You better ask Jill about that.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I don’t feel comfortable discussing it.”

“What if Jill says it’s okay for you to talk to me about it?”

“Then I’ll talk to you about it.”

Another silence. The final chorus of Alabama drifted off, followed by the news: a six-year-old boy had drowned in a boating accident on the Intracoastal; a local politician was the subject of a police investigation regarding Internet porn; there was renewed fighting in Afghanistan. “How’d that case go that you were working on?” Charley asked.

“Which one was that?”

“You know. The world against mother…”

“Oh, that one,” he said with a sly grin. “I won.”

Dania was just north of Hollywood, a short drive from the Fort Lauderdale airport.

Jill was right about the place, Charley thought, glancing from one side of the deserted main street to the other, noting the boarded-up storefronts. A good many of the buildings were empty and looked as if they’d been that way for some time, their exteriors dull and lifeless, the paint peeling from their sides in large, dry strips, the lettering on the front windows chipped and occasionally illegible, the windows themselves dark and streaked with grime.

“From what I understand,” Alex was saying, “this used to be something of a hub. Now, there are only a few stores still in business.”

“Isn’t ‘collectibles’ spelled with an
i?”
Charley asked, as they passed an empty store advertising
ANTIQUES AND COLLECTABLES.

“Maybe you can spell it either way.”

“Are you a collector?” Charley asked.

“I used to collect baseball cards when I was a kid. You?”

Charley shook her head no. “My mother had this fabulous collection of dolls from all over the world. At least a hundred of them. I used to sneak into her room to play with them.”

“She still have them?”

“My father threw them out after she left. I came home from school one day, and they were all gone. At first, I thought maybe she took them with her….” Charley’s voice drifted off. She waited for him to ask the obvious questions about her family, but either he was reluctant to pry or he wasn’t interested.

“What about antiques?” he asked instead.

“What about them?” Why wasn’t he interested?

“Do you like them?”

“Not especially.” Hadn’t he sort of asked her out on a date? Was he miffed because she hadn’t answered him? “What about you?”

“Never understood the appeal. I prefer being the original owner.”

“Which would explain your choice of automobiles.”

Alex laughed. “Believe it or not, this car was brand spanking new at one time. I paid cash, money I’d been saving up for years. I’d always wanted a convertible. Still can’t quite bring myself to part with it.” He turned right at the end of the street, then left, then left again. Before long, they were away from the main area and heading toward the less-populated part of town. “The Rohmers live down here,” he said, a mile and several turns later. He pointed toward a modest gray, wood-framed bungalow at the end of the block.

Charley reached for the tape recorder inside her purse, clicking it on, and speaking softly into it. “The house is small, maybe twelve hundred square feet, one floor, looks like all the other houses in the area, almost deliberately nondescript. Painted gray with white trim, paint looks reasonably fresh, well-tended front lawn, curtains in front window drawn. Gate around back. Single-car garage.” She dropped the recorder back into her bag, removed a small digital camera. “Is it okay if I take pictures?”

“Do it discreetly,” Alex advised, pulling the car into the driveway.

Ignoring the steady drizzle, Charley was out of the car and snapping pictures before Alex could turn off the engine.

“This way,” he said, taking her elbow and escorting her toward the front door. He rang the doorbell, then waited. After ten seconds, he rang it again.

“She does know we’re coming, doesn’t she?” Charley asked, wishing she’d brought an umbrella, as her mother had suggested.

“She knows.”

Another ten seconds passed. Charley could feel the rain penetrating her silk jersey top. In another ten seconds, her clothes would be soaked right through and her hair would be pasted to her head, like a cloche. Not my best look, she was thinking as Alex rang the bell a third time. “Maybe it isn’t working,” she suggested. But even as she was saying the words, she could hear the chimes echoing throughout the interior of the house.

Alex knocked on the door. Still no response. “Wait here,” he said, going around the side of the house and unlocking the gate to the backyard.

“This is fun,” Charley said to herself, feeling someone watching her. Slowly, she turned in the direction of the house next door.

A woman was standing at her open front door, half-in, half-out of her house. She looked about sixty, although her long gray hair might have made her look older than she was. She was slightly overweight and wearing a red velour tracksuit that spelled
JUICY GIRL
across its zippered front. “What do you want?” she called over.

What’s it your business? Charley was tempted to respond, but she didn’t. It was probably not a good idea to alienate the neighbors. She might want to talk to them eventually, especially if Pam had changed her mind about cooperating. In fact, it might be a good time to talk to them right now, Charley decided, impulsively cutting across the Rohmers’ front lawn to the neighbor’s house, covertly clicking on the tape recorder in her purse. “I came to see Pamela Rohmer. Do you know if she’s home?”

“Haven’t seen her.” The woman’s voice was rough and raspy, probably the result of too many cigarettes over too many years. Her yellow-stained fingers confirmed this impression, as did the stale odor of ash clinging to her tracksuit. “What do you want with Pam?”

“I have an appointment,” Charley hedged, glancing around for Alex, and seeing nothing but rain. “Alex?” she called out. Where had he gone? “Alex?”

“You might as well come inside for a minute,” Juicy Girl said. “You’re getting soaked.”