Charley's Web (20 page)

Pam moaned audibly.

“Did your father molest you, too? Did he molest Jill?”

“Look,” Pam said, her voice a plea. “I want to help my sister. I really do. But what you’re talking about happened a long time ago. It’s one thing for Jill to make these accusations public, but I still have to live in this house.”

“No, you don’t. You can go to the police. They’ll arrest Ethan and your father.”

“And what about my mother? What would happen to her? I don’t have any money. How can I possibly look after her if they put my father and brother in jail?”

Charley paused, suddenly remembering her phone conversation with Jill. “Do you think your mother knew about the abuse?”

“My mother was as much a victim as Jill and I were.”

“But did she know what was going on?”

“I don’t know. She was sick a lot. Besides, what could she have done?”

“She could have protected you, gotten you away from this house.”

“You think it’s so easy to just walk away?”

Charley thought about her own mother. How easy had it been for her?

Pam suddenly reached over and snapped off the tape recorder. “This interview is over.” She stood up. “I think you should go now.”

“Wait, please.” Charley jumped to her feet. “Just a few more questions.”

Pam cocked her head to one side, waited for Charley to continue.

“Do you think Jill murdered those children?”

“The evidence was pretty overwhelming.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“That’s still my answer.”

“Do you think she acted alone?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“So, you think someone else might have been involved?”

“It doesn’t really matter what I think, does it?”

“That depends. Do you think that someone else was Ethan?” Charley pressed, wishing she could turn the recorder back on.

“The police didn’t seem to think so.”

“But you disagree?”

“Not necessarily. Ethan may be a miserable son of a bitch, but I can’t see him killing a bunch of little kids.”

“Pamela!” a woman’s voice called weakly from the other room. “Pamela, where are you? What’s going on?”

“I have to go,” Pam said, moving toward the bedrooms in the back as Alex reappeared in the archway.

“I’m sorry,” Alex apologized. “She woke up, saw me in the doorway. I didn’t mean to scare her.”

“Pamela!”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Can we talk again?” Charley asked, gathering up her tape recorder from the sofa.

Pam shook her head vehemently from side to side.

“Take my card,” Charley began, stuffing it into Pam’s reluctant hand. “If you think of anything….”

“I won’t,” Pam said. “Tell Jill I’m sorry.” She stopped at the entrance to the dining room. “And please remember to give your brother my regards. Those were good times,” she said. And then she was gone.

D
amn it. What’s wrong with me?” Charley was ranting as she bolted through her front door, letting it slam behind her.

“Charley?” Her mother approached from the direction of the bedrooms, Bandit at her heels. “You’re home early. Is everything all right?”

Charley stomped into the living room and plopped down on the sofa, dropping her purse to the floor, and throwing her head back against a pillow. The dog was immediately on the sofa beside her, jumping up and down against her shoulder and licking her face with excitement. Charley struggled to keep Bandit’s tongue away from her lips. “Yes, hello, hello. Now leave me alone. I’m not in the mood. No, things aren’t all right,” she told her mother in the same breath. “Where are the kids?”

“In their room, changing their clothes. They’ve been cooped up all day because of the rain, so I promised to take them to McDonald’s and a movie. We weren’t expecting you home till much later. What happened, darling? Your interview didn’t go well?”

“That’s an understatement. Jeez, Bandit! You stuck your tongue right in my mouth!” she wailed as the dog continued his frantic welcome.

“He’s just happy to see you. He needs a little hug.”

A hug, Charley thought. The dog needs a hug. What about what I need? Which is what, exactly? she wondered, gathering the squirming ball of white fur into her hands. Immediately Bandit burrowed into the crook of her neck, then went completely still.

“Amazing,” Elizabeth Webb uttered.

Charley felt the muscles in her neck and shoulders instantly relax as Bandit’s warmth quickly penetrated her skin.

“You have a real way with him,” her mother said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You don’t have to. That’s the wonderful thing about dogs. They love you no matter what you do.”

“Unlike people,” Charley remarked.

“People are harder to please.” Her mother sank into the seat beside her. “What’s the matter, darling? You left the house with such enthusiasm.”

“That was before I realized what a lousy reporter I am.”

“Who says you’re a lousy reporter?”

“I do,” Charley admitted. “I’m way out of my depth here, Mom. Looks like I’m as shallow as everyone seems to think.”

“Who thinks you’re shallow?”

“I don’t know how to talk to people,” Charley continued, as if her mother hadn’t spoken. “Worse—I don’t know how to get them to talk to me. I don’t know what questions to ask. I don’t even know whether I should be asking questions at all, or just letting them ramble on. I don’t know what’s important and what isn’t. I don’t know
who’s
important and who isn’t. I don’t know what I’m doing. Period.” She felt her mother’s hand reach over to caress her hair.

“You sound just like you did when you were a little girl. And don’t say, How would you know?” her mother said just as Charley was about to. “I may not have been around for all of your childhood, but I
was
there for the first eight years, and I know that anytime you tackled something new, whether it was a game of Chutes and Ladders or a project your teacher had assigned, you’d get yourself all in a flap, convinced you couldn’t do it.”

“This is a little different.”

“Somehow you always managed to pull it off.”

“Give me one example,” Charley challenged.

Her mother gave the matter several seconds thought. “All right. I remember when you were about four years old, and you just had to have this yo-yo. You were so insistent, even after the salesman told you you were too young to manipulate it properly. You were so positive you could master it that I gave in and bought it for you. And, of course, you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t even get it to go up and down, let alone all that fancy stuff. And you cried and carried on, made yourself so miserable I finally told you to throw the damn thing out. But you didn’t. You stuck with it. You kept at it until one day you were handling it like a pro.”

Charley hunched forward in her seat, eyed her mother skeptically. “Are you making this up?”

“Yes,” her mother admitted with a sigh. “How did you know?”

“Because I hate yo-yos. I still can’t work them properly.”

“All right, so that wasn’t the best example, but it was all I could think of on such short notice. The point I was making is still valid.”

“Just what point would that be?”

“That it’s natural to get upset and anxious when you’re tackling something new, but that you’re a bright, talented young woman who will succeed at anything you set your mind to. And if you don’t know the appropriate questions to ask right now, you’ll figure them out soon enough. So stop worrying, and stop being so hard on yourself. Do you want to know what Sharon claimed was the secret to happiness?”

Charley tried not to flinch at the casual reference to her mother’s deceased lover. “By all means.”

Her mother pulled her shoulders back and pushed her ample chest forward. “Lower your expectations,” she said.

“Lower your expectations? That’s it?”

“That’s enough. Sharon was the happiest person I ever met. Now, why don’t you go change into something more casual and come with us to McDonald’s and the movies?”

Charley’s head was spinning. Was her mother right? Did she demand too much of herself? Of everyone? Was happiness just a matter of not expecting quite so much? “Would you be mad if I said I’d rather not? I’m just pooped.”

“Then I have another idea,” her mother said. “Why don’t you let me take the kids to my place for the night? I’ll bring them back in the morning, and we can all go to TooJay’s for breakfast. How does that sound?”

“Sounds great.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.” Elizabeth jumped to her feet, strode into the hall. “Franny, James. Pack up your overnight bags. You’re spending the night at Grandma’s.”

Charley smiled at the sound of her children’s excited whoops of glee. The dog, perhaps stirred into action by the sudden commotion, began furiously licking the underside of her neck. At least one male thinks I’m desirable, she thought, trying not to think about Alex Prescott. “See you Wednesday,” he’d said as he dropped her off in front of her house. No mention of going anywhere later for a drink to commiserate with her about the aborted interview with Pamela. Not another word about dinner at Centro’s this Wednesday night. In fact, he’d barely spoken to her at all on the drive back from Dania, probably disgusted by her so-called interviewing technique, but too polite to say so. “I imagine you want to write things down while they’re still fresh in your mind,” he’d said, but Charley suspected he was happy to see her stew in her own juices. I knew you weren’t the right person for this job, his silence had rebuked her throughout the long drive home. So Charley had concentrated on recording her impressions of the Rohmer house and the people who lived there, when what she really wanted to do was hurl her notebook at his head.
Two sisters,
she’d scrawled across the top of one page,
raised by the same parents in the same environment, both battered, both sexually abused. One becomes a caregiver, the other one a killer.

Why?

She had no answer.

“Do you remember what I was like as a baby?” Charley asked her mother now. “And don’t make it up.”

“I don’t have to make it up. Of course I remember what you were like as a baby. You were lovely,” Elizabeth said. “A little intense, maybe, but very sweet, very curious. Did everything right on schedule.”

“What about Emily and Anne?”

“Emily was more of a prima donna. A gorgeous child, of course, but she cried every night for four hours, like clockwork, from the age of six weeks till the age of three months. Irritable crying, Dr. Spock called it, said it would last exactly six weeks, and he was right. After that, she settled down, although once Anne was born, she had a harder time than you did adjusting. The middle child syndrome, I guess. And it didn’t help that Anne was the best baby on earth. A real gift. She never cried, never fussed. Always smiling. Toilet-trained herself at thirteen months. Really quite remarkable. Bram, of course, was the exact opposite,” she continued. “He cried all the time. And it didn’t matter if you picked him up or rocked him or took him for a drive in the car. He screamed constantly. And when he finally stopped screaming, he became a head-banger, slamming his head against the side of the crib for hours on end when he didn’t get his own way. One time he actually knocked himself unconscious. I lived in fear he was going to kill himself.” She sighed. “I guess not much has changed, when you think about it.”

“I think things are about to,” Charley told her.

“What makes you say that?”

Charley told her mother about her conversation with Emily.

“Your sisters are coming here?” Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears.

“The date hasn’t been finalized, but it should be sometime in the next couple of weeks.”

“And they’ve agreed to see me?”

“I thought maybe we’d have dinner here,” Charley sidestepped. “Bram will come, too.”

Elizabeth looked as if she were about to faint. She leaned against the far wall for support, crying softly. “I never expected this.”

“What did you say the secret of happiness is?” Charley asked rhetorically, thinking she should probably go over and take her mother in her arms, but unable to get her body to cooperate. Two years might have passed since Elizabeth’s return, but a span of two decades still occupied the space between where Charley sat and her mother stood. It was too great a distance to cross.

“Mommy!” James raced into the room, throwing himself in Charley’s lap.

“Why is Grandma crying?” Franny asked from her grandmother’s side.

“I’m crying because I’m so happy to be your grandma,” Elizabeth said.

“That’s silly,” shouted James. “You don’t cry when you’re happy.”

“Sometimes you do,” Charley said, trying to get her son to sit still long enough to kiss his cheek.

“Grandma’s taking us to McDonald’s and a movie,” Franny said, her voice wary, as if she was afraid Charley might object.

“Are you coming too?” James asked.

“Not today, sweetheart. This time Grandma’s got you all to herself.”

“I packed my Superman pajamas.”

“Then I guess you’ll have a super sleep.” Charley watched her son climb off the sofa and wrap himself around his grandmother’s knees.

“Is it going to rain all weekend?” Franny asked her mother, as if Charley were somehow responsible for the inclement weather.

“I think it’s supposed to clear up for tomorrow.”

“And I think we should get going, if we don’t want to be late,” Elizabeth said.

Charley followed her mother and children to the front door, the dog wrapped around her neck like a shawl. “See. It’s stopped raining already,” she told Franny, who studied the gray sky and looked doubtful. “Good-bye, gorgeous things. Go easy on your grandmother.” Charley knelt down for a final hug, but James was already running down the front walk toward Elizabeth’s mauve Civic.

“Come on,” he shouted, creating wide circles with his arms as he urged them forward.

“You’ll take good care of Bandit?” Franny asked her mother. “You won’t forget to feed him and take him for a walk?”

“I won’t forget,” Charley said.

“Bye, Bandit.” Franny kissed the dog’s wet nose. Bandit responded by shellacking her face with his tongue.

“Call me if it gets to be too much,” Charley advised her mother as Franny joined her brother by the side of the road.

“I can’t thank you enough, darling. I know it was you who convinced the others to see me.”

“No thanks necessary.”

“I love you very much. You know that, don’t you?” her mother asked, as she always did.

“I know. Have fun,” Charley said. She watched her children buckle up in the backseat of the car, and stood there waving until they were out of sight. She lowered the dog to the grass. “Do busy,” she commanded gently.

Immediately, Bandit lifted his leg. “Would that everything were so easy,” Charley said, as she picked up the dog and reentered her house, closing the door behind her.

The first time Tiffany Lang saw Blake Castle, she knew her life had changed forever,
Charley read. She reached for the bottle of wine on the coffee table, filled the wineglass almost to the top, and took a good, long sip. “Fortification,” she said to Bandit, who was curled up on the cushion beside her.
It wasn’t just that he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, although that was undeniably true. It wasn’t the blueness of his eyes or even the way they seemed to look right through her, as if he were staring straight into her soul, as if he could read all her most secret thoughts.
“You can do this. I can do this,” she told the dog.
Nor was it the insolent way he occupied the center of the room, his slim hips tilted slightly forward, his thumbs hooked provocatively into the pockets of his tight jeans, the pout on his full lips issuing a silent invitation, daring her to come closer. Approach at your own risk, he said without speaking.
“See, that part’s not half-bad.” Bandit cocked his head to one side. “I kind of like that last sentence,
Approach at your own risk, he said without speaking.
That’s not so awful.” She took another sip of wine, started reading again with fresh resolve. “This is the number-two best-selling book in America,” she informed the dog. “It’ll probably be number one next week, and not only will I read it, I will enjoy it. And I will call Anne when I’m finished to tell her how
much
I enjoyed it. I will not be condescending and superior, like certain lawyers I could mention.” What was with Alex Prescott anyway? Charley continued silently. One minute he was suggesting dinner at some little Italian bistro; the next minute he was giving her the cold shoulder. “And I assure you, I’m not used to getting the cold shoulder from men,” Charley told the dog, whose emphatic bark served as an exclamation point. “He’s not even that good-looking. He’s just kind of cocky, you know what I mean?” Bandit barked again, as if he did. “And I’ve always been a sucker for arrogance. I even wrote a column about it once. I don’t suppose you read it. Tell me,” she instructed the dog, “if nobody out there is reading my columns, how come I’m so popular?” Bandit jumped off the sofa, began spinning around in circles. “I’m so damn popular, I’m home alone drinking on a Saturday night. How’s that for popular?” In response, Bandit barked three times in rapid succession, then ran for the door, where he spun around and barked again. “No, we already went for a walk.”