The Piper (20 page)

‘It happened this afternoon. Sometime in the last hour, I think. It looks like she drowned in the tub.'

‘That's why you're wet? And Teddy?'

‘Teddy was there when it happened.'

Charlotte reached for Olivia. Tried to give her a hug. ‘Oh my God. Poor poor baby.'

Olivia took a step backward. For some reason it was harder not to cry when Charlotte was being nice. When it felt like they were family again, part of the same tribe. ‘Look. I have to go and deal with things. I have to call nine one one.'

‘You mean you haven't called them yet? She's still—'

‘I got her out of the tub. She was beyond help, I promise. The thing is,
Teddy was there
, in the bathroom, when it happened. I don't want the police to know that. I don't want her questioned and traumatized anymore than she already is.'

‘What is it you're not telling me?' Charlotte said.

‘I'm protecting my daughter. That's all you need to know.'

‘Protecting her from what?' Charlotte said.

‘Honestly? Honestly, Charlotte? I have no idea. I just know that whoever it is, I'm scared.'

E
very single light was on in the house when Olivia pulled up, so that for a moment, she wondered if the paramedics were there ahead of her. But the driveway was empty. The front door shut tight, the back gate snug against intruders. The cottage looked so pretty, the sweep of old stone and the twist of the double chimney. The azaleas, pink and white, were beginning to lose their flowers, and the dogwood trees along the side of the drive were on the verge of shedding their leaves. Olivia was afraid to go in.

The house was different now, she could feel it the minute she walked through the front door. It felt dense inside, as if the very air was heavy, a waking, breathing underwater feeling that made Olivia's heart beat hard and her movements awkward and slow. She stopped in the living room, thinking there was something she needed to do. She felt thirsty and cold, and knew she was feeling the shock.

The backpack. Teddy's sweater. Olivia snatched them up and jammed them into the living room closet, stashing them behind a stack of pictures yet unhung. She looked carefully around the room, then started up the staircase, hesitating on the third step. She did not know why she listened. The house was very quiet now, but oddly aware.

Olivia began to tremble. She didn't have to go up there, not really. Did not have to go into that bathroom, and look at Amelia, lying dead on the floor. She could call for help from downstairs, here in the living room.

Olivia looked over her shoulder at her favorite red leather chair, where Teddy had curled up and gone to sleep, Nancy Drew book in her lap, just the night before. How long ago it seemed. She thought she'd had problems then, but now. Now her life could never be the same.

Best not to think that way. She would deal with things. She loved Teddy as much as any mother ever loved a child, and getting Teddy the help she needed would be the sole focus of her life.

Olivia headed up the stairs. Better to look. Check and make sure that everything was okay. She had the oddest feeling that the body would not be there when she went down the hall. She imagined how she would feel if it had moved.

But it was all just like she had left it. Water pooled on the floor, Amelia, sprawled sideways, the water in the tub lukewarm, a skin of bubble bath residue on the surface. Olivia took care not to look at Amelia's eyes as she pushed through the bathroom door. Amelia's bathrobe swung gently from a hook on the back. Her makeup was lined up on the counter, so much of it that Olivia almost smiled. And with the smile came a rush of tears.

‘I'm so sorry, Amelia,' Olivia whispered. She crouched down close to Amelia, and touched the cold white cheek, wondering how such a thing could have happened. It did not feel real. Olivia was flooded with an enveloping disbelief, because Amelia should not be dead and would not be dead if Olivia had come home sooner, or if Amelia had stayed in LA. Olivia wanted a reprieve, a second chance, to find a way to do the day entirely over. She could save them all, Amelia and Teddy, if she could start this day again.

Olivia took the phone out of her pocket, and grabbed for the tissue that spilled out as well, shredding it while she made the call. The routine 911 recording would catch the tremor in her voice. All she had to do now was wait. Should she go downstairs or stay up here? She felt guilt at the thought of leaving Amelia behind, but she did not want to be here anymore. Downstairs would be better, she'd have to let them in.

Olivia was at the top of the stairs when she turned back for one last look. There had been something odd she had noticed, but her mind was so full of noise right now, it was hard to think.

Amelia's right hand was curled in a fist. Olivia bent over her, and peeled back the slim waxy fingers.

‘Sorry,' she whispered. ‘Sorry.'

Amelia had a button in her hand, and Olivia held it up to the light. Not a button. A little plastic eye, from one of Teddy's stuffed animals.

Olivia heard sirens and flinched. They were coming now, she should have searched the bathroom more carefully before she'd made the call. She looked under the wad of towels on the floor, into the hamper, stupid, yes, but she had to be sure.

She found it just as the flash of revolving lights hummed against the bathroom window. Eeyore, soaking wet and missing an eye, wedged in a space against the back wall, right at the bottom of the tub. Olivia ran to her bedroom, and tucked him into her dresser drawer, beneath a stack of tee shirts she never wore.

More sirens, the crunch of tires in the driveway, voices. She ran downstairs to open the front door.

O
livia knew she should cry. The paramedics had brushed by quickly, boxy cases of equipment in their hands, but the uniformed officer named Farrell who asked her questions kept watching her out of the corner of his eye, and she knew that he was expecting tears, that he dreaded it, but that it would also reassure him that nothing odd was going on.

They had asked her if Amelia was depressed. Despondent over things going on in her life. If she suffered from seizures, was on any kind of medication. Adult women did not drown in the tub as a matter of course.

Farrell hadn't liked it, that Olivia had pulled Amelia out of that tub. She'd overheard him say something to his partner about things feeling
hinky
, and his partner had shrugged and told him not to be an idiot. It was perfectly normal to pull someone out from under the water like that.

That had seemed to reassure him and Olivia knew that all she needed to do was burst into tears to ease that last bit of suspicion, but somehow she felt tight inside and it simply was not possible to let go.

Until someone on the porch said
who called homicide?
, and McTavish walked into the room.

‘Livie,' he said. ‘I was down the street with Jamison when I heard the sirens. I just called in and they told me there was an accident – not Teddy, though, Amelia.'

As soon as Olivia saw him, the tears were unloosed.

McTavish crouched beside her and wrapped her in his arms. Olivia knew then that she had come home to feel safe. And though McTavish felt safe right now, the feeling wasn't going to last. She would never be safe until Teddy was okay.

He still had the blue shirt on. Olivia thought about the two of them, together in her office, at the same time Amelia was drowning, of Teddy by the side of the tub. She shuddered and closed her eyes.

One of the officers tapped McTavish on the shoulder. ‘Would you like to see the scene, sir, before we take the body away?'

‘I'm here as a friend, Mike, but yeah, if you don't mind.' McTavish spoke over the top of her head. Olivia could feel the whisper of his voice in her hair.

‘Did you know the deceased, sir?'

‘I did, yeah. Just sit tight, okay, Livie? I'll be right back.' He squeezed her shoulders and whispered. ‘Where's Teddy?'

‘With Charlotte. That's where she goes after school, every afternoon.' Olivia had rehearsed those words and they sounded stilted.

‘Right,' McTavish said, nodding his head as if he had no memory of their conversation the afternoon before, when Olivia had brought him a beer as he cleaned out the grill, and vented about how weird her sister-in-law had been. How Charlotte had backed down from her promise to watch Teddy after school. He followed the officer up the steps, their footsteps heavy and loud on bare wood.

They were gone a long time. One of the paramedics came downstairs and knelt beside her, told her his name was Art. Asking if she was okay, and would she mind if he checked her over. He was looking at her hands, the skin on her wrists and arms. Olivia held her hands up to cover her face. Go ahead and look, she thought. You won't see any marks on me.

‘I'm just upset, Art, and all I really need is a tissue to blow my nose.'

He made a note on his chart and gave her a sad little smile, but he seemed satisfied, like he'd done what he had to do. ‘I've got bandages, ma'am, but no tissues.'

Olivia found a tissue caught between the cushions of the couch. She had stopped crying by the time McTavish came back downstairs. He nodded to one of the paramedics, who looked at his partner over his shoulder. There was the groan of hydraulics as someone wrestled a stretcher through the door.

‘They don't want you watching, Livie, when they bring Amelia through. Let me take you upstairs to your bedroom. You can change into dry clothes and pack a few things. You won't want to sleep here tonight.'

‘I'm the one who found her, McTavish, why shouldn't I be here when they take her through?'

‘It's protocol, sweetheart, so don't fight me on it.' There was a message in the tone of his voice, and the way that he met her eyes.

She shrugged, and let him lead her up the stairs, past the uniforms clustered outside the bathroom, and into her bedroom where he shut the door.

‘Stay here until I come and get you. Make sure you change your clothes.'

‘I'm not worried about being wet, McTavish, and they're almost dry anyway.'

He folded his arms, waiting till she met his eyes. ‘That's right. They are almost dry. But we're in luck because nobody else has noticed that but me, which is why you need to just go on and throw on some jeans or something like you want to be comfortable. Because if you'd really called right after you found the body, you ought to be soaking wet.'

‘Oh.'

‘Right. I'll be back,' he said. Then he was out the door, leaving her alone in the room.

M
cTavish was losing the argument and he didn't like it. ‘You ought to go to Charlotte's house and be with Teddy. And if you don't want to go there, then come home with me.'

‘This is my home, McTavish, there's no reason I can't be here.'

‘I don't want to leave you here in this house.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know. It's got a weird feeling here right now. It's like that sometimes, right after a death. Look, please talk to me about this, Livie. I've got your back, but
tell me
what's going on.'

‘I've told you everything.'

‘Then why were your clothes so dry?'

‘They just didn't get that wet, McTavish, don't cop me to death.'

He folded his arms. ‘Okay, sweetheart, I'll respect your privacy on this, but let's go on record here as me knowing that's bullshit. If you decide you want to talk let me know. You sure you don't want to come to my place? I can cook us something. Open a bottle of wine. You look like you could use some TLC.'

Olivia did not allow herself to imagine it, safely tucked up with McTavish, drowning in a bottle of wine. ‘I need some time alone, McTavish. I just lost my best friend.'

‘If you change your mind.'

‘I'll call.'

‘Even in the middle of the night?'

‘Even in the middle of the night.'

Olivia waited till she saw the headlights of his car disappear down the drive. She had no intention of staying the night, and did not want to be alone in the house, but at least she did not have to go back upstairs. She got Teddy's backpack out of the closet, and the yellow sweater and put them next to the small overnight bag where she'd thrown in a few things for herself and Teddy for tonight.

She watched out the living room window. McTavish, all the paramedics and patrol cars, they were gone. She thought she would feel relieved when they left, but she didn't. She just felt alone.

And then she realized she would have to go back upstairs one more time. She would get Eeyore out from under the stack of tee shirts, and then she could go. She would drop him off at a dumpster behind some shopping center – somewhere away from the house. Charlotte had called and said she'd cooked dinner and had a bed made up. She just needed to hang on a little longer, to make sure that Teddy would be safe.

Olivia headed up the stairs steadily, wondering if anyone had pulled the plug in the bathtub so the water could drain, unable to make herself go in and take a look. Eeyore was tucked in the drawer right where she had left him, soaking the tee shirts, and she put him in the garbage bag from the trash basket in her bedroom, and tied the top in a knot. She had just turned off the bedroom light when she heard the phone.

Not her phone, quiet in the pocket of her jeans. The ring tones were familiar and insistent – Amelia's phone, the ringing coming from Chris's bedroom where Amelia had spent the night. Olivia stood in the hall, trying to make up her mind about answering, when the ringing stopped. Better that way. She was just past the bathroom door when the ringing started up again. Olivia hesitated, then turned back.

Amelia's Blackberry was on the dresser top, next to a half filled mug of coffee. Olivia picked it up, absorbing the details of the room. Amelia had made up the bed. Been drinking a cup of coffee. A half eaten bacon sandwich was on a plate next to the coffee. And downstairs, the kitchen was pristine. So Amelia had been having lunch. Why had she taken a bubble bath in the middle of the day?