Lovely, Dark, and Deep (11 page)

“Different in what way?” I asked.

“She was sweet, and kind to her brother, and happy. Before she'd seemed dissatisfied, looking to make trouble just for something to do. Then she seemed somehow content, and she told us she'd had a spiritual awakening. After that she read everything she could about God, about theology, about spirituality.”

“Didn't that seem unusual, such a transformation in just one weekend? In a teenager?” I thought of Adelaide and felt skeptical.

“Well.” Rebecca Yardley went back to her muffins. She seemed hesitant about saying more. I wondered what I could say to squeeze out more information.

“Those look delicious,” I said, as she tipped the pan and the muffins tumbled into a bowl. She brought the bowl to the table.

“Would you like butter for those?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” I lied. She brought plates and cups, offered me coffee, which I accepted, and bustled around preparing our snack. I looked out the window at the mean weather, glad I was inside with warmth and brightness and the delicious aromas of baked goods and coffee. She had music playing, too, on a cd player on the counter. It was instrumental holiday music, played on something both soothing and familiar. I decided it was a dulcimer. “Your home is very welcoming,” I told her.

She poured coffee into my cup, and smiled. “Thank you. We've always tried to make a good home, my husband and I.” She brushed against me as she set the pot back on the table. She smelled like lilacs.

I steered back to our conversation. “So Rachel had a spiritual awakening. Didn't she herself find this unusual?”

Her mother sought my eyes, looked into them for a while. “You told me that you are looking into Rachel's death. Why is that?” she asked.

I hesitated. This was Rachel's mother, and she was looking for the truth so that she in turn could tell a truth to me. “I'd prefer that you not mention this to anyone else, at least not yet.” She nodded at me, solemnly. “One of the sisters at the convent has come to wonder if, uh, Joanna wasn't killed intentionally. She's a friend of mine, and she asked me to investigate.” I waited to see the shock register in her face. It didn't. She merely nodded again, sipped her coffee.

“I don't think there's anything to that, dear. Rachel hadn't an enemy in the world.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

Mrs. Yardley smiled. “She was a Dominican Sister, a teacher, a good and kind person. People don't get murdered just out of the blue. Rachel's death was a tragic accident; we know it in our hearts.” Yet wasn't that a hint of something in her eyes, something like fear?

I backtracked. “Regarding this spiritual awakening—”

Rebecca nodded. “Rachel told us, her father and me, that on this spiritual weekend, she had a vision.”

“Like a vision for the future, or—”

“A vision of God.”

I had been delicately breaking up my muffin, which still steamed a blissful fragrance toward my nostrils, and I stopped, left it sitting on my plate. “She . . . saw God?” I asked. More and more I was feeling out of my bounds in this investigation. Earthly mysteries were easy to solve. Celestial mysteries I felt I should leave to someone else.

Her mother smiled at me. “Her father and I were just as disbelieving. We asked her to explain it to us, to describe it, to define it. We wanted something concrete, not only to determine its truth, but —” she paused, her wide blue eyes looking out the window “—perhaps looking for some proof, some validation of our own faith, if that makes sense.”

“Yes.”

“Of course Rachel couldn't describe it. She said it was less a vision of something we would picture as human, but more a revelation. A revelation that left her without doubt. We saw that she was transformed. She was a new girl, a pure girl in the truest sense of the word. She told us that what she saw transcended description, but that she would never be the same, and that it must mean that she was meant to serve God.”

Rebecca Yardley toyed with her own muffin. “Of course her father and I had no problem with that. Her little brother, he was only nine at the time, well, we didn't think he'd really understand. Although I think Rachel spoke to him, in her own way.”

“So she became a nun, after she finished with her schooling?”

Rebecca looked proud. “Yes. She went to Loyola University, majored in music. She was quite impressive in her work. She was so positive, I really think she could have succeeded in any occupation she chose.”

“Were you glad she became a nun?” I asked.

Rebecca sighed, sipped her coffee. “Yes and no.” The dulcimer music ended, and the room was suddenly very quiet. We could hear the wind howling against the pane. “Your big worries with a young daughter, I suppose, are that she'll get pregnant, or marry the wrong boy, or be too promiscuous. So Rachel's chosen profession should have made us overjoyed in that respect. Ultimately, though, you realize that it's forever, and that you'll never have that little granddaughter who looks just like your daughter, someone to—live on.” She stood up quickly, but not before I saw the tears in her eyes.

I gave her a moment. I looked around the little kitchen, and spied a white cat just outside the doorway. He noticed me, and apparently felt emboldened enough to stalk across the room to a little bowl I hadn't noticed, and to sit next to it, scowling. The bowl was empty.

I laughed at his expression, and Mrs.Yardley smiled at me. “That's Snow,” she said. “Appropriate name for today, isn't it?” She faced the cat. I think she was glad for the distraction. “You want your food, girl?”

I had assumed the cat was male. Now I wondered why. She even had long lashes. I watched Rebecca Yardley feed her. The cat did all she could to be annoying, stropping against Rebecca's legs and nearly tripping her while she poured the food. I might have considered gently shoving the animal out of the way if it had done that to me, but Rebecca laughed and stroked the kitty's fuzzy ears. “She's such a sweetie,” she said.

Now we heard the front door opening, and I felt a burst of cold air make its way into the kitchen. The door slammed, and soon a man appeared, looking like Jimmy Stewart in his later days. I almost laughed. Was this family for real? He brushed snow off of himself and kissed his wife, then turned his eyes on me. I stood to shake his hand when Rebecca introduced us.

“This is my husband Abel, Madeline. Abel, this is the girl who called about Rachel. We've been chatting about all of Rachel's accomplishments.”

I exchanged a glanced with Abel. If we'd been better acquainted, and the topic of our conversation less serious, I would have asked him to run out in the snow and yell, “Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls!” Rebecca took his coat and left the room.

He smiled at me, sat down at the table, took a muffin, and enjoyed a large bite. “So you're talking about my Rachel,” he said. “I think I know your father,” he added, surprising me. “He's Karl Mann, right?”

“Right. You know him from—?”

“He did some accounting work for my company. I was impressed with his honesty. His integrity. We talked about families. This was a year or two ago. He mentioned you, that you wrote for the paper, and since then I've read your stuff.”

“What do you know?” I smiled. I always do, when I think of my dad.

“I feel I have a sense of you. And when Becky called and told me you were coming, I thought maybe this was an opportunity for me.”

“In what way?”

"When Rachel died . . . there was so much going on. There was the shock, and the funeral arrangements, and the condolence calls. We needed to be there for Jeremy, we needed to regroup, recover . . . " He looked past me, presumably at the weather.

Rebecca Yardley bustled back in, and Abel asked her if she knew where his warm sweater was. “The one with the reindeer,” he added.

“Well, isn't it in your drawer, dear?” she asked, surprised.

“I didn't see it in there. I thought maybe you were mending that little hole.”

She murmured something about going to look, and left the room again. I saw that he'd wanted her to leave, that he had something to tell me.

He sighed, and leaned back in his chair. The cat jumped into his lap, and he petted her absently. “There are things that only dawned on me afterward, after the case was closed, after I could think about her death in a more detached manner. Maybe a whole year had gone by before I started to think. And by then it was too late, really. They were just questions, nothing more. But now that you are looking at things, I feel it's a chance for me to say something that I failed to say then. In a way I feel I failed my daughter, and you might be my chance to make amends.”

I leaned forward. “I certainly promise to look into any questions you may have.”

He nodded. “It's hard to know where to start. Rebecca probably told you all the good things. But there was bad, too. Before Rachel went on her retreat, the one that changed her—you heard about that?” I nodded. “She was really struggling with who she was. She was hanging with bad kids, and I suspect doing drugs, and—”

“Did you check the hamper?” called Rebecca's voice.

“No!” he yelled.

“And what else?” I asked.

“Something I could never prove. And because of that I never told the police. I think there was a man. An older man. I think Rebecca might have been, well, sexually involved with him.” It was painful for him, the memory and the admission. I kept my face expressionless.

“But even if that were true, you were probably right to assume it had no bearing. She was eighteen then, and she died years later, a reformed woman.”

“Yes. But something had happened, not long before she died. She wouldn't speak of it to me, but I saw in her eyes that she was working through something. Sometimes I'd catch her almost tearful, but she'd force a smile for me. Oh, I don't know. In some ways she was a private, mysterious girl. She was deep, my Rachel.” Unlike his wife, he was not sentimental in his memories. He looked as though he was struggling with an old problem, but he wasn't near tears.

“Why did you think there was a man, and not a boy?”

He smiled. "I thought it was a boy at first. She did all the predictable stuff, got all gussied up before the parties, put on extra special clothes, experimented with her hair.

That didn't seem strange. But sometimes I'd catch her mailing letters, off by herself, even though we had a whole outgoing pile she could have put them in. And once, I picked up the downstairs phone and heard a man's voice. I apologized into the phone, thinking I'd interrupted a call between my wife and someone from the church. She made a lot of church phone calls, still does. Instead I heard a click, then another click. And then my wife walked into the room." He stared at the purring cat, but his eyes were seeing something more distant. “I asked Rachel about it, and she laughed. Said she'd called her math teacher at home to ask about an assignment, and he'd been unhappy with her.”

“Did you call the math teacher to verify?”

“I didn't have to. I knew she was lying.” He shrugged, reminding me of his son.

“Did you confront her?”

He sighed. "I thought I'd wait her out. We had a good relationship, despite this little incident. She was a sweet girl, a loving girl, even in her 'bad' days.

“Then, a few weeks later, she went on the retreat. It seemed like it was no longer a problem. I let myself forget about it.” He looked regretful.

I tapped my pen on my knee. I hadn't written anything, but I was certainly planning to do so when I got to my car. “What was the math teacher's name?” I asked.

“Oh, let me see.” He stroked the cat's ears. The cat sat with eyes closed, savoring the moment with obvious pleasure. There was something crusty in the corner of one of its eyes. I wanted to reach over and flick it out. “Watson, that was it. Tom Watson.”

There are moments in life when you are reminded that everything is related. It seemed almost predictable, suddenly, that because Sally and I had discussed Tommy's career at St. Roselle, he would suddenly come to the forefront in the investigation. I nodded. “I'll be talking to Tommy Watson soon. It's good to know this going in.”

Abel Yardley let out a sigh—of relief, perhaps, or sadness.

I heard his wife coming down the stairs. “When was the last time you saw her?”

He sat up straighter. “A couple of days before she died, she was here, looking through some of her things that she'd left here. She asked her mom for something, I'm trying to remember—”

“Jeremy's yearbook,” her mother said, coming back into the room. “She'd misplaced hers, and she wanted to look something up.” Rebecca was holding a festive blue sweater with red flecks and a prominent brown knitted reindeer pattern. “It was in the den,” she said. “You probably took it off while you played on the computer.”

She smiled at her husband. The cat looked at her blandly through squinted eyes.

I finished the last of my muffin. “I'll get going now, before I get snowed in,” I joked. “I want to thank you for talking to me. I want you to know that everything you told me will be kept in confidence. As I told Jeremy, this isn't anything more than research right now.”

At the mention of Jeremy's name Abel Yardley broke off eye contact with me. It was just a tiny thing, but I wondered if something was there. “One last thing—would I be able to borrow the yearbook that Rachel had asked for? I'd give it back, of course—”

Rebecca looked thoughtful. “Does Jeremy have those, Abel, or do we? I think we do. I think it's in the hallway bookcase. You know, Madeline, I have a few of the things she wrote me in her last days, it might give you a sense of what I mean, what a good person, how no one could possibly want to harm her—”

Her husband was still looking at the floor.

“I'd like to see them. I'll return them in the same condition, I promise.”

Rebecca walked out of the room again, returning moments later with her hands full.

“Did you talk to Rachel the day she died?” I asked.

Rebecca nodded. “Yes. We had a nice conversation. She was a little sad, but it was because of something I told her, nothing to do with what you're thinking–”

I looked at her curiously. “It might be.”