Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (16 page)

If that happened, if Ann moved away, would David ever
get to
see his kids again? Would they forget him?
That would kill David
.
He loved Danielle and Davey with all his heart and he was a good father, no matter what
she
said
.
He would never do anything to hurt them
.
In fact, she rationalized, he probably only stayed with Ann because of the children
.
He lived with someone who constantly belittled him, who gave him no support, someone who wasn’t a good wife to him at all
.
And he did it because he was so good
.
Unlike his father, David would never break up the family, even if it meant living in misery himself
.

She thought of all the times she’d gone by that horrible bar, Whitey’s Tavern, on the way to
the drug store or the grocery
or on one of her late night walks when she couldn’t get to sleep
, and seen David’s car in the parking lot
.
Poor David
!
That woman
has made him so miserable that he goes there to escape, she thought. He shouldn’t have to live
like that
.
He deserves more, so much more!

She
remembered
her son’s visit the day before. He’d looked so forlorn
.
There were lines etched at the corners of his eyes, lines
that
she’d never seen before.
At one point
, she could’ve sworn that she saw
a tear slide down his cheek
. Her heart ached for him. She
pictured
him as a little boy, always so active, running through the house and playing in the backyard. It wasn’t easy for him, she thought, growing up without a father and losing his twin brother at such a young age. But, in spite of all the grief, he’d managed to be a happy, carefree child, unlike the man she saw yesterday. And his unhappiness was all Ann’
s fault!

The angrier
she
got, the harder she polished
.
By the time she reached the end of the
hall, the woodwork gleamed
.
She stepped back to inspect what she’d done and, satisfied that she’d finished her work for the day, s
he gathered up her cleaning supplies and placed them on the utility cart
that
she used to wheel them from room to room
.
Without realizing it, she clenched her teeth as she pushed the cart down the hall toward the janitor’s closet.

After she’d put the supplies away, she locked the closet, retrieved her coat and purse from a hook in the vestibule and locked the heavy oak door behind her
.
A cold wind was blowing as she stepped outside
.
She fastened the top two buttons of her long
,
quilted
coat and tied her scarf on her head
.
Then she reached into her coat pockets and pulled out her leather gloves
.
She’d had frostbite as a child and, without the gloves, the tips of her fingers would be numb by the time she got home
.
The temperature had dropped drastically in the hours that she’d been in the church.

As she walked the
few
blocks to her house,
her
thoughts drifted back to her conversation with Ann that morning
.
She’d tried so hard to talk sense into the girl but, evidently, she hadn’t succeeded
.
Ann’s words echoed in her head
.
“Your son has a problem with alcohol and you’re too blind to see it
.”

Next, she’ll be insisting that David go to Alcoholics Anonymous,
she
thought
.
She could feel her blood pressure rising at the thought of it
.
She hated AA; in her opinion, it was a cult
.
An AA meeting was where her husband had met “the whore,” as she privately referred to the woman, an evil person who had thought nothing of destroying her marriage and taking David’s father away from him
.
Memories of that time consumed her with rage
.
The angrier she got, the faster she walked
.
Her eyes watered from the cold air as she hurried up the walk to her small,
cottage
style
house and unlocked the front door.

She
went
into the living room, flipped the wall switch and the two end table lamps came on
.
She
took off her gloves and
stuffed
them in the pockets of her coat. Then she
hung her coat and scarf in the closet and went
down the hallway and
into the spare bedroom, the room she still thought of as the “boys’ room
.”
She sat down at the foot of one of the twin beds and sighed
.
Her shoulders slumped as she gazed at the framed photos of her two sons
that
hung on the wall
.

She reached down to take off her shoes and a pain shot down her arm
.
“Damn!” she exclaimed
.
She cringed as she rolled her knee
high support hose down to her ankles and pulled them off one at a time
.
Arthritis? Bursitis? What did it matter? It was all just part of getting older. Some days, like today, the pain was horrendous and, other days, she didn’t have so much as a twinge.

Surely, the
sudden
drop in temperature ha
s
something to do with it
, she reasoned
.
Her body needed time to adjust
and in October, in Cincinnati, the weather fluctuated constantly
.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, it could go from warm
and sunny
to
damp,
bone
chilling cold
.
Well, i
t’s a good thing David can’t see me now, she thought, remembering what he’d said when he’d visited her the day before
.
“Easy,
Mother
.
You don’t know your own strength
.”
With all the problems he has, the last thing I want him to do is worry about me.

Bone-tired
, her whole body aching, she
got into bed, fell
back against
the
pillows and closed her eyes
.
Within seconds, she was asleep and dreaming
.
In her dream, her six-year-old twin sons, David and Daniel, were playing in the backyard
.
It was a warm, sunny spring day
.
The grass was a vivid green and the blue sky
was
cloudless
.
Daffodils
, tulips
and
hyacinths
were in bloom in her rock garden, creating a lovely rainbow of color
.
The boys were laughing, taking turns going down the slide that their father had built for them
.
She
smiled as she slept.

Suddenly, the dream changed
.
It was a chilly, overcast day and the boys were swinging on their swing set
.
David was dragging his feet in the dirt, barely moving, but Daniel kept going higher and higher and higher
.
She
saw herself at the kitchen window, washing the dishes and watching them
.
She became apprehensive as she saw how high Daniel was going
.
She bolted from the house and, as she rounded the corner, Daniel
saw her and yelled, “Watch me, Mommy! I can fly!” He
jumped from the swing. Frantically, she ran to him but it was too late
.
The little boy had hit his head on a large rock in
her garden and died instantly
.

She
awoke with tears streaming down her face
.
The dream had felt so real
.
How horrible to relive
the worst day of your life
in your dreams, she thought
.
As if it weren’t living hell when it happened
.
As if it wasn’t with her every day of her life since
.
She remembered how, the day after Daniel’s funeral, she’d gone into the backyard and furiously yanked the flowering plants, roots and all, from her garden
.
She’d filled a wheelbarrow with the stones and had them hauled away
.
The garden had taken her son from her and she’d needed to destroy it.

She wiped her cheek with the sleeve of her sweater and slowly sat up. She looked around the
room and saw the bookshelves and pennants
that
lined the walls, remnants of David’s last years at home
.
But in her mind she remembered
all
the toys and stuffed animals that were once there, the things that David and Daniel had both treasured
.

After a few minutes,
she
slowly, painfully sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed
.
She sat there for a minute, resting, and then winced in pain as she stood up
.
She
limped
over to the small dresser in a corner of the room and opened the top drawer
.
Reaching into the drawer, she pulled out
her rosary beads,
two white tapered candles, two
brass
candleholders
, a pack of matches and her Bible
.
She placed the candles on
top of the dresser.

She
lit the candles, one for each of her sons,
went
over
and sat down on the edge of
one of
the bed
s
to read
.
She had read the Bible every day for as long as she could remember
.
She held the Holy Book with both hands, opening it carefully because the stitching was coming apart and the pages were falling out
.
After she’d read for several minutes,
she set the Bible aside and picked up her rosary beads.

She made the sign of the cross and whispered the words to the Apostle’s Creed, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth … .” Then, holding the first bead, she recited the Lord’s Prayer and, for the next several minutes, she said
either a Hail Mary or the
appropriate prayer as she worked her way through the
string of
beads
.

When she was finished with her prayers,
s
he stood up,
went
back over to the dresser
,
extinguished each of the candles and carefully placed her rosary beads and the other items back in the drawer. She
folded her hands and prayed
:
“Dear God, please bless and protect Daniel and David
.
Keep
Daniel safe beside You and give me the power to do whatever it takes to make David happy again
.
Thank you, Lord
.
Amen.”

Chapter 1
7

ANN WAS STRAIGHTENING UP
the living room when she heard the sound of a car’s engine revving
toward the
rear
of the house
.
She
went
over to the front window and looked out just as Tina, Olivia’s psychic, backed out of the driveway in her little red sports car
.
No wonder I didn’t know she was here, Ann thought. I didn’t see her car. I wonder why she parked
in the back
.

She watched the car
drive
down the street until it was out of sight
.
I
think
that woman is taking advantage of Olivia, she thought
.
I see her car here at least once a week
.
I know she’s not doing this out of the goodness of her heart
.
I’ll bet she’s charging Olivia a small fortune
.
I was skeptical about her before, but meeting her today confirmed my suspicions
.
I think she’s a fake, that she’s only after Olivia’s money
.