Faithful Unto Death (11 page)

Fifteen

M
y heart didn’t stop, nothing that dramatic, but it did give an extra skip before I could get a hold of myself. My body flooded with adrenaline and I had that high-alert feeling. I took the locket from Detective Wanderley and looked at it, slid my thumbnail in the groove, and popped it open. On the left-hand side was a picture of my dad, taken in his uniform. The picture used to be on the right-hand side. On Jo’s thirteenth birthday, Mom made a “now you are a woman” speech and then opened the locket. She had moved Dad’s picture to the left-hand side.

“That way, Jo,” Mom said, “when you put in your own sweetie’s picture, his picture will lie against your heart.”

The sweetheart face looking back at me from the right-hand side of the locket was Jo’s. And next to hers, Alex Garcia’s.

I snapped the locket shut as if I could shut out what I had just seen and closed my fingers around it. I leaned back and rested my elbows on the arms of the chair. It was important to look relaxed and unconcerned even if my mind was whirring like a hamster wheel.

“So you recognize the necklace?” Wanderley said. The jerk.

“How did
you
recognize it?” I asked.

“You mean besides the fact that it’s got her initials on it? And that she’s in it?” He gave a nod toward the picture I have on the wall. “She’s wearing it in the portrait.”

“You saw her picture once and you recognized that locket? You must have been damn good at Concentration when you were a kid.”

He grinned. “I was.”

“Alex had it?” I asked.

“He was wearing it around his neck. Under his shirt, but the chain showed and I asked to see it. It looks better on her.”

“He just showed it to you? Handed it over just like that?” Not very gallant.

“He didn’t know I wasn’t going to give it right back. He was not happy with me when I told him I wanted to keep it awhile. But yeah, he showed it to me. He’s proud of it. He’s proud of Jo.”

Again, I felt my heart do something weird. I’m proud of Jo. I am. I mean, she’s not at her best. Her grades have only recently begun to be acceptable, and only barely acceptable, and she quit all her school sports, and Heaven knows she’s hard to live with. She’s not where Merrie was at the same age, and there’s no getting around the fact that that’s going to cost her come college application time, but she’ll catch up. If she applies herself.

Wanderley said, “I promised him I’d make sure Jo got it.”

Then he held out his hand as if he thought I was going to give him the locket. Cretin.

“I’ll take care of the locket,” I said. I dropped it in the breast pocket of my shirt.

“I told Alex I’d see to it Jo got it back.”

He was insisting, still holding out his hand like some Sunday school teacher asking for a pilfered crayon.

I looked at him, not saying anything, and after a moment he withdrew his hand and put it in his jacket pocket like nothing had happened.

“I guess I can tell Alex you’ll give it to Jo.”

“You can.”

And I will, too. When she’s thirty.

“I would like to talk to Jo about Monday night; Alex didn’t say she was there, but—”

“That’s not going to happen, I can tell you right now.”

“Listen, Bear, I’m not saying your daughter was involved—”

I stood up. “You better not be; I’d have a phalanx of lawyers crawling all over you in the time it took you to draw a good breath, and if you make so much as a—”

That sentence remained unfinished because that’s when Annie Laurie walked in with a big brown bag under one arm. She stopped when she saw Detective Wanderley.

“I’m so sorry, Bear, I tried to call but I kept getting voice mail so I came on up with dinner. I’ll wait out in the reception.”

“No, we’re done, Annie, go ahead and set up dinner, I’ll see Detective Wanderley to his car.”

That was as clear a dismissal as anyone could ask for. Wanderley stood up and made a big point of walking over to Annie and taking her hand, saying he was sorry he wasn’t going to have a chance to visit.

Annie said, “I’ve made plenty if you’d like to stay and have dinner with Bear and me. You know you’re welcome.”

I bit my tongue.

Wanderley turned and looked at me and smiled big. He was still holding Annie’s hand. I was starting to perspire and I was saying “Let the words of my mouth” over and over in my head so fast that they weren’t words anymore, more like a mantra.

Wanderley gave Annie’s hand a final squeeze. “I’ll have to take you up on that thoughtful offer another time, Mrs. Wells. Got to get back to the office.”

He strolled out of my office and I followed him down the stairs. People were drifting into the building. On Tuesdays, along with the sundry adult meetings in the building, the youth group brings in fast food and they eat together and then have a devotional; that’s how Annie and I had gotten into the habit of having dinner together in my office. Wanderley scanned the foyer, noticing everyone: the clusters, the couples, the loners.

Wanderley saw Jo and her friend Ashley Spenser before I did. Ashley was holding a Taco Bell bag. Jo was holding an apple. They were talking. Must have been some pretty important girl stuff; Jo had her mouth about an inch from Ashley’s ear and my daughter was incandescent with excitement. Ashley’s eyes were as big as duck eggs while she listened, and she squeezed her Taco Bell bag in a way I knew couldn’t be good for her burritos.

Maybe Jo was saying, “Hey, Ashley! I got to watch my boyfriend brain his daddy the other night!” I gave myself a shake. A mental shake. At least I hope it was only a mental shake, what with eagle-eyed Detective Wanderley right next to me, taking everything in.

Wanderley slowed when we passed and said, “Hello, Jo.” She looked up, not recognizing him, her glance at me a question.

I took him by the elbow to keep him going and called over my shoulder, “Aren’t you ladies supposed to be with Brick now? Go on up to your classroom.” Jo rolled her eyes but headed up to her class.

“I’ve never been hustled out of church before, Bear. Do you use that move a lot?” Wanderley said. Then he put the brakes on, near the door where five or six teens were grouped. He shook me loose and walked up to Emma Tilton. I thought he must know her.

Emma is an unhappy sixteen-year-old. She’s heavy, and not very pretty. She’s gone the Goth route, the way a lot of heavy girls seem to, and the look didn’t work any better on her than it does on most of them. She doesn’t have a lot of friends, even here. We have failed her that way, all of us at the church.

Wanderley took Emma’s hand in his. The group of teens turned as one to watch the scene.

He said, his voice clear and carrying, “You have eyes like dark purple pansies. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

Then he took her hand and put his mouth close to her ear and whispered something. Wanderley drew back, kissed the knuckles of her hand, and winked at her. He strode out of the church. Emma stared. All the teens stared. I stared, too.

I hurried out after Wanderley and caught him as he was pulling the keys out of his pocket.

I stopped at his car and put my hands on the hood, leaning my weight against the car. It shifted away from me; I was pressing that hard. Right then I felt like I could push his car right over. I could have. I’d abandoned “Let the words” and had resorted to “Please, God, please, God, please, God.” I took a moment until I could feel some of His peace calming me.

“Wanderley, are you deliberately trying to get me to lose my temper?”

That surprised him, my being so direct. He pulled himself up straight, looking professional. “Wells, I’m only trying to find out the—”

“What was that in there? With Emma?”

“You’re mad because I complimented that girl?”

“I want to know what you were up to—she’s all of sixteen, and it’s hard for me to believe—”

“Bear. Did you think I was coming on to that girl? What I was doing, Bear, is what someone should have done a long time ago. I
saw
that girl. And I made it possible for all your perfect
High School Musical–
type kids to see—what did you say her name was, Emma?—with new eyes. She was invisible in your church, Bear. No one saw her but me.”

I took the time to think before I opened my mouth. I do that sometimes.

“What did you say to her? In her ear? All close and secret?”

Wanderley looked tickled. “Bear, you think I seduce children? I’ll tell you what I said.” His face got serious. “I said, ‘No matter what, don’t tell anyone what I’m whispering in your ear. It’s our secret, and if you tell, you’ll break the magic.’”

Now the detective looked mad. “And if you don’t think I worked magic, Bear, wait until you walk back into that building where all you good-looking Christians let a lonely girl stand alone, by herself, with no one to talk to. I don’t know if you preach about that sort of thing, preacher, but the God I read about? Don’t I remember something like, ‘Whatever you don’t do for the least of my brothers, you didn’t do it for me’?”

He didn’t have it exact, but it was close enough. Too close for comfort certainly.

“All right,” I said. “You’re right. I’ll see what I can do about it.” That meant I was in a pickle because I sure haven’t figured out how to get kids to accept someone they don’t want to accept. Another problem to fit on a plate that was overloaded.

“Emma could be Jo, Bear. She could be Molly. I couldn’t stand to see Molly in a corner all by herself.”

I didn’t say anything for a minute. I couldn’t. I had a vision of one of my precious girls isolated the way poor Emma was. I made a resolution to find some way to help Emma.

I said, “Listen, Wanderley, I want to help you. I do. I’m not some bleeding heart who thinks cops are bad and murderers are misunderstood. Graham Garcia was a child of God and his blood cries out from the ground. I want you to catch his killer. And I want to be a help to you if I can be.”

Wanderley started to say something but I held up my hand.

“Let me finish. Every time we’re together, I feel like you’re setting traps for me. But I don’t think I’m a suspect, am I?”

Wanderley looked up at me from under those black eyebrows. He was standing head down with his hands on his hips, pinky fingers hooked in his back pockets.

“Not yet, you’re not.”

My jaw dropped and he grinned that wicked grin. He gave my arm a punch and got in his car, unrolled the window. As he pulled out, he stuck his head through the window and said, “We’ll be talking, preacher. I’ll try to work on my ‘people skills.’”

Cara Phelps, Autumn Flagg, and Becky Bell were all huddled around Emma when I walked back into the church. Her face was glowing. Those pansy eyes were glowing, too. I could see Brandon Ridley and Zachary Zhou watching Emma, too, something appraising in their look. Wanderley was right. He had worked magic. And Emma Tilton did have eyes like pansies. Wanderley made us all see her. She wasn’t invisible anymore.

Dr. Fallon stopped me to say a word before I could get back to my office. He leads the New Members class, and to save my life, I couldn’t tell you what it was he asked me—I had other things on my mind.

By the time I got back to my office, I had only half an hour to eat before the beginning of the self-help groups, divorce recovery, AA, the church choir practices, that sort of thing. It was a good thing I wasn’t leading a group this quarter; I’m not sure I could have talked sense.

Annie had already eaten. She had my dinner set out on the coffee table, on the blue-and-white-checked tablecloth she’d made in junior high. A big roast beef sandwich on French bread, with a Styrofoam cup of spicy broth to dunk it in, plus carrot and celery sticks. There were homemade chocolate chip cookies there, too, lumpy with pecans from my Aunt Sue’s farm. I gave Annie a kiss before I started eating. I was starving.

She waited patiently for me to finish my meal and was picking up the mess when she finally asked, “What was that all about?”

I checked my wristwatch. “We need to be in the divorce recovery group in five minutes, sweetie. Can I tell you about it later?”

She smiled. “Just don’t forget to fill me in—or you might be in that group for more than moral support.”

I pulled her close for a kiss and a squeeze, but when her hands slid up my chest, she felt the lump in my pocket. She pulled Jo’s locket out and I didn’t get that kiss.

“Why do you have this, Bear?”

“Three minutes, Annie Laurie, let me—”

She sat down and put the paper bag with the thermos and tablecloth at her feet. “I don’t believe I’m going to group tonight, Bear. You aren’t leading, are you?” She knew I wasn’t. “You aren’t going to go to hell for missing a group this once; sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

“I hate to miss Jim’s group. He’ll be looking for me—”

“It’s better you disappoint Jim than you disappoint me. I want to know why Wanderley was here again and I want to know why you have Jo’s locket and . . .” Annie Laurie opened the locket with a pink fingernail and stared at Alex’s young face. “Oh, my Lord. Do we have a problem, Bear?”

I sat down. I told her I thought maybe we did.

Sixteen

I
’m not going to go into the discussion we had with Jo that night. I’m calling it a discussion; that may be something of a misnomer since an objective observer might be excused for mistaking the exchange for an all-out screaming match. Not that I screamed any. I yelled some, but only after the kind of provocation that would have had the Apostle Paul throwing hissy fits. (I need to think of someone else. The Apostle Paul is known for his hissy fits.)

Let me sum it up. Jo wasn’t talking. Okay, that’s not quite accurate, either, because she said plenty, mainly to let me know that a suspicious mind was an indication of a guilty conscience, and yeah, she was talking about me there, and that she hadn’t broken any rules as we had never specifically forbidden her to use her second-story bedroom window for ingress and egress (and she used those words, too; “ingress” and “egress,” I mean).

She wouldn’t tell us where she had gone; she wouldn’t tell us what she had done; and she wouldn’t tell us who she had been with, that last being on the principle that her personal relationships were just that, personal.

I think I started doing some of the yelling right about then, Jo not backing down an inch, grit-toothed and clench-fisted and looking for all the world like a black cat spitting at a dog.

She told us that, furthermore (and she used that word, “furthermore”), “Furthermore, Nana gave that necklace to me and you don’t have any right to take it away.”

I said I hadn’t taken it away from her, I had taken it from a Sugar Land cop, and he had taken it from Alex Garcia in an interview room of the Fort Bend Juvenile Detention Center and would she perhaps care to explain those circumstances to her Nana, because I just happened to know her number by heart and I would be only too happy to dial it for her. And I took her cell phone from her desk. And no, I did not confiscate it. I took it for safekeeping because our rule has always been if you misuse it, you’re going to lose it, and the girls understood that from the beginning when I bought them the dang things.

Jo said she hadn’t given the locket to Alex, she had loaned it to him because he was so sad, and in any case, she and her Nana had a perfect understanding and she would talk to Nana on her own time, but thank you so very much anyway, and I said had she taken up
Masterpiece Theater
or Jane Austen or something because she sounded like someone in a costume drama. And that’s when Annie Laurie, who’d been trying to get a word in edgewise, said, “Why, Bear, she talks just like you.” And then I yelled at Annie.

So you can see why I’m not going to go into that night’s discussion.

I’d already had a good run but Baby Bear hadn’t and he’d missed out on his afternoon romp, too, another thing that was Jo’s fault. I stowed Jo’s phone in my underwear drawer and left the two women of the house to commiserate with each other for having the terrible fate of being related to me.

My afternoon run on the levee had taken me from the church to the house, north to south. Tonight Baby Bear and I ran south from my house. If you follow the levee this way, you’ll eventually end up past Oil Field Drive, which is cow country in some areas and sportscaster megahomes in others. Well, there’s one sportscaster out there anyway. Merrie went to his kid’s birthday party.

I wouldn’t be running that far this evening. I wanted to run off steam, not run away. Had it not been for the full moon, the sidewalk would have been the smarter choice for a jog. The levee is unlit except for the lights shining out of the homes that back up to it.

Elkins Road crosses the levee this way. I would pass right by the golf course, right by the ninth green, where Graham Garcia had died less than forty-eight hours ago. Garcia wasn’t much older than me. Correction: He hadn’t been much older than me. He was dead now. I’ve seen a lot of death; ministers do. I haven’t seen much unexpected death. Some car accidents. Some heart attacks. Never murder.

I was thinking along those lines, my feet pounding the levee, my head somewhere else, Baby Bear keeping up easily, when the dog gave a low growl and took off like a bullet. Okay, not exactly a bullet, but like a large, hairy dog on a mission.

He left me in the dust and I was hoping it was a nutria he was after and not some poor, lone jogger who was about to get a toothy, slobbery, Hound-of-the-Baskervilles surprise. I heard a cry and a grunt and I knew it wasn’t a nutria, and I put on more speed than I thought I had left in me. I came past a bank of trees and saw, to my utter horror, that Baby Bear had some guy on the ground and appeared to be worrying his neck. Baby Bear was making disgusting chewing noises. I had visions of battalions of lawyers descending upon me. I’m not proud of that self-centered thought, but it was my first.

The fellow was struggling to get up, saying, “Baby, get off me. Jo! Call him off! He’s getting spit all over me!”

I reached one hand down, grabbed Baby Bear’s collar, and hauled him off. With the other hand I grabbed the guy’s upper arm and hauled him to his feet. Baby Bear hadn’t been tearing the guy’s throat out; he’d been showing him the sort of affection he usually reserves for family members.

Alex Garcia was standing in front of me, his long blond hair glistening with dog drool, using the tail of his shirt to wipe dog slobber off his face and neck. He looked stunned to see Jo’s dad instead of Jo. I was feeling stunned, too. My mind was putting puzzle pieces together.

I said, “Let’s walk a ways, Alex, seeing as you’ve come all the way out here to meet someone who I’m pretty sure is not going to show. In fact, you better hope she doesn’t show.”

He said, “Oh, no. Well, I wasn’t here to . . . I was only . . .”

I had hold of the back of Alex’s shirt and I turned him and sort of propelled him back the way he had come.

I said, “No, you weren’t only anything, you were out here to meet Jo. Not for the first time, either. She didn’t give you away, you know, in spite of the beatings.”

He stopped. “You didn’t—”

That made me mad. “Son, can’t you take a joke? You have California blood, maybe? I do some hollering sometimes, hardly ever, but I have not laid a hand on a woman in my whole life. Not the way you’re thinking.”

I gave him a little shove to start him moving in the right direction again. That direction being away from my house. The idea of me hitting one of my girls. Alex thinking I might really have hit Jo, though—it made me pause. Honey had said Graham didn’t hit her, but she wouldn’t be the first woman to shield her husband.

“Your father,” I said, “he wasn’t rough with your—”

He pulled away from me.

“I’ve never even heard him raise his voice to her. So I guess he did better than you, since you ‘holler.’ From what I hear.”

I’m not saying I didn’t have that coming. Still, that kid didn’t have a clue what kind of restraint it took for me not to do more than yell, what with him sneaking up the levee to entice my fourteen-year-old daughter out to meet him. The thought made me tighten up my grip on his collar. What I really wanted to do was give him a shake and explain to him in no uncertain terms exactly what I was going to do to him if he met Jo behind my back again. I guess I did give him the tiniest shake, a friendly shake, which turned him toward me, and in the blue moonlight I could see his face, his startled eyes looking up at me.

He’d been crying. His face had that thin-skinned look and his eyelids were swollen. He wasn’t but a few years older than Jo. There was still a lot more boy in his face than there was man, in spite of the light dusting of beard on his cheeks. So if he’d been crying, well, Alex had a right to those tears. His daddy was dead. Murdered. He’d been treated like a criminal. And he’d had the misfortune to meet up with Jo’s dad instead of with Jo. I let go of his collar and put my arm around his shoulder. I got us walking again, Baby Bear snuffling at our feet, pleased as peaches that he’d found a friend to join us. Baby Bear loves company.

I said, “You’re right, Alex. It’s a bad thing for a man to yell at his wife, and I have yelled at Annie Laurie. Been real sorry afterward, of course.”

Partly my conscience and partly because Annie Laurie saw to it that I was real sorry.

Alex breathed in the night air, trying to get a hold of himself. Sounded like he was choking. Baby Bear leaned his weight against Alex’s legs as he walked, trying to show support, about to knock him down. I had a strong arm around him, letting him know he could count on me. Between me and Baby Bear, Alex must have felt the teensiest bit squeezed.

“Mr. Wells?” His voice was tight, like he was having trouble breathing.

“Yes, son?” I could tell the boy needed to talk, needed to open up to someone.

“Could you take your arm off me? You’re kind of sweaty and—”

“Oh!”

I let him go. I’d slipped on the same workout clothes I’d used to run home from the office earlier, and I must have been ripe.

The kid took a step or two away and bent at the waist, hands on his knees, in the position of a badly winded runner. He was gasping, clearly relieved to be inhaling the warm, humid night instead of warm, humid me and Baby Bear. I should have been offended but I thought it was funny. A serious musking was a good punishment for a boy who had come sneaking around my house, after my daughter.

“Listen,” he said, straightening up, “I’m, ah, I was, ah . . .” He started walking backward.

But we’d come to one of those improvised benches the road crews had constructed here and there on top of the levee so they’d have someplace to eat their lunches. A piece of planking nailed between two convenient tree trunks, that’s all it was. It was a good place for us to sit and talk on a mild March night like this. If it had been a month or two later, the mosquitoes would have made the night a misery.

“Alex, come sit down here a minute and let’s you and me talk.”

He was still backing up, his hands in his back pockets, elbows akimbo. “No, I, ah—my mom, she’s . . .” Baby Bear kept giving Alex affectionate nudges, sticking his cold wet nose up under the kid’s loose shirt and sniffing interestedly.

“You go on and call your mom.” I sat down on the bench, feeling it bend a little. “You’ve got your cell phone, haven’t you? I mean, that’s how you were going to let Jo know you were out here waiting for her. I don’t guess your generation does anything as low-tech as throw pebbles at the girl’s window, do you?”

Alex hesitated, his big white sneakers half-buried in the tractor ruts. Baby Bear stood on one of his sneakers and worried at the other. Baby Bear’s favorite game is “Steal the Sneaker.” He was having trouble getting Alex’s off and he was producing a ton of drool. All Newfies drool. It’s part of their charm.

I said, “Son, you don’t need to be afraid of me. It’s not like I’m going to eat you. Baby Bear might eat you, but I won’t.”

It was a cheap shot, but with a boy young as Alex, it could have worked. Alex surprised me. He gave me a half-smile, and shook his head like he’d expected better of me.

“Mr. Wells, not wanting to talk to you isn’t the same thing as being afraid to talk to you. And Jo’s dog loves me. Right, Baby?” Alex grabbed Baby Bear’s nape and gave it a rough shake. Baby Bear grinned up at the kid, happy to concur. Alex had been spending a lot of time with my dog. I hadn’t known that.

Then he surprised me again. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number. Not, it turned out, his mother’s.

I said, “If you’re calling Jo, she won’t answer. I took her phone away.”

Alex said, “Jo?”

Which meant Annie Laurie had given Jo her phone back, thank you very much for the unified parental front.

He didn’t drop his voice, didn’t turn his back. “Listen, I’m out on the levee with your dad—no, don’t come—Jo, I’m asking you not to come—I know that, but obviously he doesn’t. We’re going to talk for ten or fifteen minutes, then I’ll call you from the truck. Not more than half an hour, I promise. Okay. I love you. No matter what.”

So. All right, then. I felt like he’d made his position pretty plain there, and as far as he was concerned, I could like it or lump it.

Alex snapped the phone shut and slid it in his back pocket. He gave Baby Bear a push and walked over, his sneakers shushing through the weeds and kicking up puffs of gnats. He stopped in front of me and stood feet apart, arms akimbo. That was to make him look more imposing. I saw it on the National Geographic Channel. They were showing frill-neck lizards, but it’s the same thing.

Baby Bear sat down in front of Alex and then scooted back until his bottom was on top of Alex’s feet. Baby Bear likes lots of physical contact.

“You wanted to talk?”

I scooted aside on the bench, my nylon running shorts picking up some splinters from the unsanded two-by-four. “Sit down, Alex.” I patted the bench but he shook his head.

“No, I’ll stand—I’m not sure it can hold us both.”

Another Clydesdale moment for me, but I smiled anyway.

“They didn’t keep you long, up at the station.”

“They didn’t have any cause.”

“That what your lawyer said?”

“She did, but she didn’t need to. I could have told them myself. I’m not stupid.”

Not stupid, ignorant. There’s a difference.