What a Mother Knows (24 page)

“Where is she, Frank?” Michelle held the napkin up.

He waved it away to see a chubby girl in a bikini do a sloppy cannonball. “I'm liable if someone gets hurt.” The goons in the pool were splashing each other now, nearly soaking an elderly couple retiring to their room. “
Amigos
!
” Frank called. “
Por
favor
!
”

Michelle shouted. “Hey, asshole! Knock it off or you're out of here!”

The guy gave her the finger.

Frank pulled Michelle back into the kitchen. “Very effective, thanks. Especially since every room in town is booked and there aren't any more flights out.” He poured himself a glass of water from a frosty pitcher. “Now they'll write bad Internet reviews.”

“Not as bad as the ones I'll write,” Michelle said.

He rolled the cool glass against his forehead. “Nikki's not here.”

“Don't give me that bullshit.”

“I swear—she called last week out of the blue. She needed a place to chill, so I put her up in the annex and paid her to take a few pictures. No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Tell me about it,” Michelle said, thinking about Noah's motorcycle.

“Look, she made me promise. By the time I got your new number and dialed—I thought better of it. I'm not taking sides.”

“I don't want there to be sides!” Michelle waved the napkin in his face. “She's my daughter. You should have told me!”

“I figured you knew. When she said someone was looking for her, I thought it was an old boyfriend, not you.”

“Her old boyfriend is—nevermind. You didn't hear anything on the news? You weren't curious?”

“We don't have television or Wi-Fi for a reason. Folks come here to get away.”

Michelle was skeptical. “My mother didn't mention it, either?”

“She likes her privacy. We respect that—the lifestyle here is about privacy. That's why she's so popular. That, and her fabulous mambo.” He struck a dance pose.

Michelle didn't have time to hold a grudge. She needed his help. “Okay, I believe you. Maybe I'm the only one who tracked Nikki here. Hope so. But the last thing I want to do is worry Tyler. When is the last time you saw her?”

“This morning,” Frank admitted. “Sterling held on to her check until she turned in all the proofs. She needed money to leave.” He handed Michelle a glass of water.

Michelle took a sip. “Are there really no more planes out?”

“Not tonight,” Frank said.

“Good. I'll look for her at the bus depot. What does she look like now?” Michelle was too upset to drink any more. She threw her glass in the sink, and it shattered. “I don't even know what my daughter looks like!” She burst into tears.

Frank grabbed her shoulders with both hands. “She looks beautiful. She looks like you.” He wiped her tears, then unpinned a business card from the bulletin board.

“Take Tyler to Louie's Backyard. Their pie is actually better than mine. Whatever happened between you and Nikki, let it be.”

“Let it be what?” Michelle asked, pulling away.

Tyler appeared at the door with the room key. “Room's ready. You okay, Mom?”

“Just tired,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Frank to warn him to keep mum. “A shower will wake me up.” She followed Tyler up the grand stairway to the Deveraux Suite.

Inside the large room, piano music drifted in from the open balcony. Tyler set his duffel bag on the quilt and looked up through the hanging fringe of the antique canopy. “I need a shower, too. You want first dibs or do you want Dad's letter?” He pulled a Polo shirt out of his duffel, then handed her a manila envelope.

“You,” Michelle said, waving him off. She struggled with the clasp, then gave up. Why work so hard for real estate papers or some bullshit apology? Michelle needed to focus, to figure out where her daughter could be. She was too close to let her slip away. She pulled the cord for the fan hanging from the pressed tin ceiling, but the blades merely sliced through the air.

She unpacked a few things, then stepped out to the small balcony and looked down at the pool. The guests had gone to dinner now; the water was crystal blue. Beyond the piano, the squeals of tourists rose on the warm breeze from Duval Street. Smoke stacks from a cruise ship towered over the rooftops blocking her view of the harbor. The horn blasted, long and loud. Michelle stiffened. She felt her daughter's presence, as sure as the lump in her throat. Without a car, that ship was the only sure way off the island tonight. Nikki was on that ship.

“Tyler!” she shouted. “Let's go!”

She grabbed the key and careened around the bed, yanking the door open to the hall. “Hurry,” she called, stumbling down the staircase.

Tyler's hair was still wet as he bounded down behind her. “Did I take too long?”

“No, honey, I—forgot about the green flash.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him out. “Come on!”

They hurried through the happy hour crowd on the porch, down the steps and out to the sidewalk where they joined the tourists streaming to Duval Street.

Tyler pointed to the daiquiri machines lining an open-air bar like dryers at a Laundromat. “Look, Mom, just like Baskin-Robbins: thirty-one flavors.” Michelle nodded as if she cared, then stepped into the street to avoid a cluster of college students. A trolley clanged for room, so they leapt back on the curb. Michelle wove between women browsing racks of batik sarongs and children jostling to see the blue toucans squawking from the shoulder of a jester on stilts. She waited in front of an art gallery for Tyler to catch up.

They crossed to Mallory Square and raced through rows of coconut purses to the waterfront. She pulled Tyler past the tourists applauding a fire-eating savage, but paused at a hanging display of disco ball earrings.

The crowd was claustrophobic, so Michelle looked up to get her bearings. The sun was huge, a flat yellow circle hanging like a painting in the sky. It appeared to drop lower as she watched. She pulled her gaze away and locked eyes with a gypsy fortune-teller with kerchiefs wrapping her leathery face. She beckoned Michelle to her shawl-covered table, but Michelle shook her head.

She called to Tyler, who had stopped to watch a magician. He saw her and blessed her with the barest of smiles. Michelle's heart leapt to her throat so fast, she felt like she was choking. Once you created life, love was beyond your control. A grin could lift you to the heavens; a frown could smash you flat. She waved for him to hurry.

Tyler caught up and pointed at the taco bar on the boardwalk.

“I'll meet you on the dock,” she cried, racing ahead until her heel caught between bricks. She staggered forward, then caught herself. She looked back for her broken heel amid the flurry of tourists.

“You're looking for Nikki, aren't you?” Tyler asked, when he reached her.

She pointed at his taco. “Do you need to stop to eat that?”

“No. But if I were Nikki, I bet you'd chew my food and regurgitate it into my mouth.” He took a big bite of his taco.

Michelle shook her head and shoved her broken shoes into her purse. She looked up to see how much time was left. The sun was rolling across the horizon like a bruised orange. The sky was so golden that it looked as if juice had leaked out. Except to the left of them. There, the ship's hull blocked the view like a great black wall. The ship gave another honk. Steam rose against the blushing sky.

“Wait!” Michelle murmured. She ran down the boardwalk through pockets of tourists staring straight up at the wailing ship. Michelle ran across the open cement toward the water, in the dark shadow of the ship. The dock vibrated beneath them. She reached the edge and stopped. The mooring hook was empty.

“Nikki!”

With a great groan, the ship motored sideways ten yards, then fifty, then five hundred. Black water roiled between the hull and the enormous tires nailed to the dock. Rows of cabin windows glowed like full moons above. The dock stopped quaking, but Michelle didn't. The ship was out of reach, and so was her daughter.

Tyler caught up and pointed at the glowing horizon. Michelle blinked and followed his gaze. The fiery globe sunk in jerks, the curved edges dropping line by line until it was gone. A green tint flashed across the horizon line, then vanished.

“Did you see that? The green flash?” he asked. “We made it!”

“No, we didn't.” She watched the cruise ship shrinking in the distance, then looked up. The sky was periwinkle blue, then deep violet, easing into indigo. But Michelle didn't care about pretty views.

Tyler tossed his trash toward the garbage can and missed. “I want to go home.”

Michelle closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath. She wanted to disappear and start over. But when she opened her eyes, Tyler was the one who had disappeared. For a moment, it seemed that the earth stopped spinning, and everyone was still. From the corner of her eye, Michelle saw a silver statue move. When she looked over, his eyes locked on hers. Then he covered his mouth with a silver hand…and froze.

She threw Tyler's trash into the garbage can and limped back, scanning the crowd. In the next row, a fire-eater sipped a bottle of water and a clown pulled off his nose. The fortune-teller looked up, then away. Michelle was the freak now, the unfit mother.

By the time Michelle got back to the Curry Mansion, Tyler was in their room stuffing clothes back into his duffel. “I'm sorry,” she said, reaching to touch him.

He brushed her off. “Sorry is just a word.”

“If you want, we can tour the Hemingway House in the morning.”

“I'm going to the airport in the morning.”

“Fine, I'll take you, but let's at least have dinner. Give me a minute to wash up.”

“No more minutes,” he said, dragging his duffel to the door. “Dad's right. You're sick.”

“I hope you mean sick in a good way.”

“Sick as in crazy.” He shut the door.

Michelle stood there a moment. She didn't think anything could be worse than losing a child. Now she knew better: it was losing them both.

A jazz trumpet wailed from Duval Street. Michelle picked up the Dodgers plate that Tyler left on the bed and fanned herself, but it was no use. She stepped out on the balcony again. The air was too steamy, the music too loud, the tourists too goddamned happy. She whipped the plate over the pool, like a Frisbee. It cut through the sticky air until it dropped into the water with barely a splash, then sashayed to the bottom, a dark polka dot in the glow of the underwater light.

Michelle went inside and sat down on the bed. She tore open the envelope with her teeth and dumped the papers beside her. She gasped. She'd seen a lot of legal documents over the past six weeks, but this one was new: Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

She felt the lure of the liquor downstairs, but her foot throbbed too much to walk. She pictured her mother curled up here, eating bonbons beneath the canopy, a monogrammed bed jacket draped around her shoulders. Madame Deveraux, Frank had called her. Michelle wondered if his father had told him that it was a miracle that he ever met Elyse, a miracle that she had survived. Michelle reached for the gilded phone on the bedside table and lifted the handle to her ear. Then she dialed her mother.

That was the funny thing about mothers. How you still wanted them, even when they'd shown time and again that they couldn't help you. It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Michelle laid back and watched the fan whirring above her. Surely her mother had lain here. Had she noticed how the blades slashed through the air like a guillotine?

Michelle hung up. If her mother said that she was crazy, it just might be true. And she wasn't ready to face that possibility. Not while Nikki was still missing.

The doorbell rang repeatedly in Michelle's dream. She pulled the pillow over her head to block out the noise. The crickets had kept her awake with their mating calls since her return from Key West, and she needed rest to clear up this divorce thing with Drew. It had to be some kind of legal maneuver. Or was he lying about the woman who answered the phone? Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe that was him pounding on the door.

Michelle blinked until she could see beyond her wrinkled nightgown. The floor was littered with papers and plane tickets, lists of places Nikki might go. There were stale pizza crusts and a box of Lucky Charms with the marshmallows gone. There were also photographs of Nikki that she had been keeping under the mattress.

Michelle reached for her phone in the charger, to see if Drew had called, but her elbow knocked over the nesting doll on the nightstand. The shooting pain reminded her that her hand was useless. She rubbed it and ignored the clatter of the wooden dolls spilling to the floor. She squinted at the blank phone screen, then looked under the nightstand. Sure enough, the power cord dangled above the dolls.

The doorbell rang again.

“Coming!” She jammed the plug into the wall and cranked the volume on the phone before staggering through the mess to the bathroom. She recoiled at the unkempt woman in the mirror and scooped up her robe from the floor where she must have dropped it in a melancholy daze.

By the time Michelle reached the foyer, the tang of lemon sliced through her stupor. Cathy wasn't the last person she wanted to see, but she was high on the list. Michelle opened the front door and saw Kenny. Damn. He was on top of that list.

“Welcome home,” he said, already headed to the dining room table.

Cathy set her plate of lemon bars next to the dried out plant. “I thought orchids last forever.”

“Nothing lasts forever,” Michelle said. “Did Drew send you?”

“No,” Kenny said, shuffling documents. “Ms. Rodriguez from Pacific Auto Insurance has been trying to reach you.”

“You look thin,” Cathy said.

“Thanks,” Michelle said.

“I didn't mean it as a compliment. Eat something.” Cathy nudged the plate forward. “Kenny insisted,” she said.

Michelle started to object, but Kenny interrupted. “She's just trying to help.”

“Me?” Michelle asked.

“No, me,” Kenny said, kissing his wife's hand. They exchanged looks, then he turned back to Michelle. “Something has come up. Rodriguez is having complications with her pregnancy. She's on bed rest.”

“How scary,” Michelle said.

Kenny nodded. “For both of you. She won't be available to defend the insurance company for the civil trial in June. Her second chair is preparing a motion to continue the trial—to move it back.”

“Good. That is good, right? More time for me to remember?”

“Not exactly,” Kenny said. He looked at his wife, who gave him an encouraging squeeze. “I got a call from my buddy in the DA's office this morning. There's a rumor they'll file criminal negligence charges against you. And possibly vehicular manslaughter.”

Cathy covered the plate. “That's almost the same as murder in the second degree.”

Kenny winced at the harsh comparison.

Cathy looked at him. “Isn't that what you said? That there are varying degrees of manslaughter charges? Including gross negligence based on being ‘reckless, with disregard for human life'?”

Kenny shrugged. “Close enough.”

“What happened?”

“Dillenger's team has dug up forensic evidence that looks damaging.” He set a document in front of her.

Michelle didn't even bother trying to decipher the legalese. “And?”

“They scavenged the wreck. Tests show that the locking pin was never secured. That means Noah Butler was not wearing his seat belt.”

“Maybe he couldn't get it to work and gave up.”

“That's plausible. But they also collected tire remnants that are nearly intact. Not the kind of rubber loss that results from a skid. Now they can include punitive damages, alleging ‘conscious disregard' for passenger safety. They'll have experts to testify that you didn't brake at all.”

“But why go to all that trouble?”

“More money—that you would pay, not the insurance company. Plus, it would set things up nicely for the DA to bring a criminal charge. According to my buddy, the DA needs the eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old vote in the next election, and he's not above avenging a rock star's death to get it.”

Michelle rubbed her eyes. “Am I going to jail, Kenny?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said. “The civil claim against you now is essentially about financial liability. You could get fines and maybe a year in county. But a criminal charge is a felony, that's the big leagues. Then we're talking about state prison.”

Cathy saw Michelle trembling and put her hand on her husband's arm. “That's enough, honey.”

“She needs to know.” Kenny turned back to Michelle. “We don't want to give the DA time to build up the case. With Rodriguez out, I could take over as the main trial lawyer. It's unusual to have one lawyer represent both the insurance company and the defendant, but in special circumstances like this, it's in the best interest of the client. The judge will allow it.”

“How will this keep me out of jail?”

“If we win a defense verdict—meaning you are found to be ‘not liable' in the civil trial, then the DA will be less inclined to file a criminal charge. He'd need all twelve jurors to disagree with the civil ruling and find you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It would look like he was a celebrity ambulance chaser, trying to keep his name in the news.”

“So the whole thing would blow over?”

“It could. If we win.”

“Then go for it. I just want this to be over.”

“So does the Butler estate, trust me,” Kenny said. “My guess is that Noah's father initially had Greenburg file the civil charges because he wanted someone to blame. And between you, me, and the wall, the Killer Mom mystique is good publicity for album sales. It pumps up his son's legend. But the man is well aware that your policy limits and personal assets won't offer a big payday. Especially if the jury doesn't find a preponderance of evidence against you.”

“It was raining,” Cathy offered. “Maybe your stiletto slipped.” She raised an eyebrow at Michelle then went to the kitchen. “Anyone else for tea?”

Michelle ignored the dig and turned back to Kenny. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome. I'll reconfirm our trial date in Santa Monica.” He closed his briefcase, but didn't get up. “So long as there's no new evidence to delay the proceedings, we'll be fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, mind your own business. Sit tight and try to remember what happened. The more detailed your knowledge, the less there is to be left to the jury's imagination. And depending on how the seat belt argument goes, the issue of character may arise. No matter what the facts are, the jury decides the verdict. And juries can be swayed by unconscious bias. Anything that implies you had reason to dislike Noah Butler could influence them to think your personal feelings affected your reactions in the heat of the moment.”

Michelle thought of the photographs of her daughter scattered by her bed, but said nothing. When Cathy leaned around the doorway from the kitchen to give her a hard look, she recalled what Noah's mother had said about his “trouble.” She also recalled her pact with Cathy. She looked back at Kenny and played dumb. “You mean like Nikki dancing in his video?”

“Good Lord, everyone's already seen that,” Cathy called from the kitchen.

“I'd argue it's circumstantial. Either way, Nikki's testimony might help you. Have you heard from her?” Kenny watched her shake her head no. “If you had, would you tell me?”

Michelle leaned her head in her hand.

The teakettle whistled, but Cathy's voice was sharper. “Kenny, give me a hand? Now!”

Michelle heard him go to the kitchen. Fervent whispers of their daughter Emily's name followed, then Kenny's protest. But the strident tones softened, and Michelle recognized the sounds of a marriage that worked. She was embarrassed by the intimacy. And more than a little jealous.

Michelle's cell phone rang from the bedroom. She sat up and called to the kitchen. “You know Drew wants a divorce, right?”

Kenny emerged carrying a cup of tea. “I was sorry to hear that. The timing isn't ideal, but it shouldn't hurt the case.”

Michelle had nothing to say that wouldn't sound pathetic. She'd dared to hope that Kenny would explain some legal advantage. She was suddenly conscious of how naked she was beneath her robe. She heard her phone ring again and wondered if it was him. Except now she wasn't so eager to answer. “Does Drew know about the new evidence?”

“Yes,” he said, setting the tea down. “We've spoken about having you examine the wreck. A visit might jog your memory.”

“No, thanks,” Michelle said, warming her hand around the teacup. “I went to Topanga Canyon, and that didn't do much good.”

Kenny nodded. “I know it sounds frightening, but now that there's new evidence, we need something to contradict it. Any little detail will help your credibility. Thanks to county budget cuts, the wreckage is still in a junkyard downtown.” He pulled a paper with the address from his pocket.

Michelle took it reluctantly. “Isn't there something else I can do?”

“Plenty. Get me a list of character witnesses—people without so much as a parking ticket who would testify on your behalf. Get me records of your volunteer work, donations to charity, that sort of thing.”

“PTA meetings count,” Cathy said, returning from the kitchen.

Michelle rose and walked them out. As the door closed, she heard the phone click over to voice mail. She trudged back to the bedroom and read Wes's name on the caller ID. Michelle relaxed. He would be a character witness for her, she was sure of it.

Her stomach growled, but there was no food in the house. She wandered back to the dining room and dipped a lemon bar in her tea. It wasn't so bad, she decided. There would be a lot worse food in jail.