What Strange Creatures (28 page)

As I let Boober sniff around the cyclone fence, my mother followed us, clutching her yellow leather handbag to her chest for warmth. Once again she was wearing a breezy little cotton dress beneath her fleece jacket.

“I wish you hadn’t brought Boober,” she said. “I’d hoped we could all take your brother out for a bite somewhere.”

“I want to cheer Jeff up,” I explained. “He loves Boober. You three can go if Jeff is feeling up to it, and I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

“When’s the last time you were at work, Theresa?”

“Whitlock gave me some unpaid time off this week,” I said. “But I’ll be going back in on Monday.”

“Good,” Mom said. “It’s important to maintain some sense of normalcy.”

“Important for who?” I asked.

“I don’t
know.
That’s what they say, isn’t it? Have you been working on your thesis?”

I was surprised she brought it up, but I obliged with an answer. “Not since Jeff was arrested, no.”

Boober barked. My mother sighed and fiddled with the hair around her ears. “What’s taking so long? I hope to God there’s not some holdup.”

“Legally, I don’t think anything else can get in the way.”

Boober began sniffing Mom’s beige pumps. We both watched him till my brother and father came around the corner of the building. Jeff was sporting a gleaming white Festival Cruises T-shirt my dad had apparently just given him, along with a patchy starter beard and a painfully strained smile.

“There you are!” Mom cried, rushing to Jeff and embracing him.

When she let go, I picked up Boober so I could thrust him into Jeff’s arms.

“Lick his face,” I muttered into Boober’s ear. “Be a good wiener. Keep it light.”

As I approached Jeff, Boober let out an unaccustomed snarl. Maybe he didn’t recognize Jeff with so much facial hair. Or maybe he could smell the nasty jail aura on him. I gave Boober a quick bite on the very edge of his ear.

“Theresa,
what
are you
doing
?” my mother cried.

“She’s bringing Boober back to himself,” Jeff mumbled.

As he said it, I heard a
bzzzz . . . click.

All four of us looked toward the noise. I realized Boober had already been looking in that direction.

Another
bzzzz . . . click
.

A young woman was stepping toward us, holding a digital camera. She had beautiful big eyes, long brown hair, an elegant neck, and large, eager front teeth.

“Jeff?” she said. “Jeff, I’m with the
Courier.
Can you talk for a minute?”

“Did you just take our picture?” Dad asked.

“Yes, sir. Would you like to make a statement?”

“No thank you, dear,” Dad said, unlocking his car door.

“I think she’s talking to me,” Jeff said. “No, I wouldn’t. Theresa, let’s go. I’ll ride in your car.”

“But where are we going?” my mother asked. “We wanted to take you somewhere nice. Shall we all meet up at that new Indian place?”

“Can you open your door, Theresa?” Jeff asked, and then he took Boober from my arms.

I did what he asked.

“We’ll talk about it at Theresa’s,” Jeff said, getting into the car with Boober. I was relieved to see that Boober had calmed down. Clearly it wasn’t Jeff that had set him off. It was the girl with the camera—who was now staring at me.

“Are you Jeff’s sister?” she asked.

I got into the car without answering.

“Get me out of here,” my brother said.

Boober clawed at Jeff’s sweater, then licked his hairy chin. I started the car.

We convinced my mother that takeout was a better idea. She was happy with a mild-spiced chicken tikka masala and garlic naan. Jeff got only a dal, claiming he needed to “detox” off strange meats. My father ordered a goat dish and bragged about eating alligator on one of his cruises. Sensing my brother’s exhaustion, my parents were gone within an hour.

Once they’d taken off, I filled Jeff in on everything I’d discovered over the past few days.

“But how did you get Nathan to show you all that stuff?” Jeff wanted to know, as I’d glossed over that part.

“Oh, I kinda cozied up to him.” I tried to look busy petting Sylvestress.

Jeff nodded in reply but didn’t comment.

“So what’s your current theory, then?” he asked.

“Well, I was thinking that someone might have wanted to silence Kim about whatever was in those old tapes—the ones from Colleen Shipley. But then I saw this thing with Dustin. Now I’m not so sure. Either way I think maybe Kim really
did
have something on Donald Wallace. Or got herself into trouble trying to find something. I want to check in with her roommate and see if she knows anything about the VHS tapes. I’m gonna start there. Then I was thinking I’d go looking for Dustin. Starting with the Shaw’s in Marist Park.”

Jeff shrugged. “Marist Park’s an hour’s drive. You want company?”

Before I could answer, I felt my cell phone buzz. It was a text from Zach:
DO U CARE THAT WALLACE IS
@
SALLY’S RIGHT NOW
?!
STUDENT JUST TOLD ME. IMPROMPTU CAMPAIGN STOP, I GUESS.

“Sounds good,” I said to Jeff. “I’ll probably go tomorrow. Listen, I’ve got to run a little errand right now. Can you come back for dinner tonight?”

Jeff looked disappointed but not surprised. I told him I wouldn’t be more than an hour.

Sally’s is College Street’s answer to the Donut Dip. They sell coffee and overpriced desserts, but students go mostly for the free Wi-Fi, occupying tables for hours on end. I hadn’t been there in years, though, as the place started to make me feel old after I hit thirty.

As I drove there, I decided it wasn’t important, for now, that I didn’t have Colleen Shipley’s footage. What I wanted to find out was what Donald Wallace’s reaction would be if he
thought
someone had it.

Sally’s was packed, but I wasn’t sure if Donald Wallace was the draw. A sign in the window said
HALF-PRICE CHEESECAKE BITES
! It was crowded enough, in any case, that one didn’t need to buy anything to justify one’s presence. A fair number of people were just standing around listening to Donald Wallace hold court about his support of an increase in federal college aid.

I moved closer to him as he spoke.

His voice surprised me. It was low and confident but also had an eager, breathless quality that didn’t match his fairly stodgy physical presence. His lipless mouth twisted and jerked dramatically as he spoke, but his eyes remained still and expressionless.

“My opponent has said he’d support the Branson plan, which would cut that aid significantly,” he was saying.

He said it in a singsongy, scolding sort of way. I wondered if the kids here felt a bit condescended to. There was a touch of suburban-high-school principal to Wallace. I could more easily see him pulling apart two wrestling punks in a cafeteria than addressing the U.S. Senate, but maybe I lacked imagination.

“Now, I find that quite troubling.” Wallace shook his head and sucked in his nonexistent lips. “You don’t kick the door closed once you walk through it yourself. That’s not how the American dream works.”

I heard a low snort from someone behind me—and saw a girl with black lipstick rolling her eyes over her coffee cup. Still, the line earned him a hoot from the back of the shop, followed by a smattering of applause.

As Wallace continued to speak, I watched him more than I listened. His sleeves were rolled up tight around his elbows. I suppose this was meant to look casual, but he looked really uncomfortable, as if it were cutting off the circulation in his arms. Also, someone really ought to have told him to unbutton his collar and loosen his tie.

“I’m happy to take questions,” Wallace said in conclusion. “I plan to stay here a bit longer and have a piece of Sally’s delicious pumpkin bread. Who knows—maybe I’ll have two!”

A couple of kids—probably from the College Dems and clearly feeling obligated—laughed out loud at this painful attempt to appear relatable. Apparently Wallace thought all the Thompson kids had a folksy familiarity with the Sally’s pumpkin bread. Anyone who knew anything knew that Sally’s was known for their custard pie. But maybe it was weird for a politician to mention custard. Maybe it sounded too European or something.

After the girl behind the counter handed Wallace his slice of pumpkin bread, he began to move through the crowd, alternately chatting with students and taking enthusiastic hearty-man bites of his bread. As he moved in my direction, I dug in my bag till I found a receipt and a pen. I scribbled my phone number on the receipt, finishing just before he reached my corner of the room.

I folded the receipt and mashed it into my palm. As Wallace began to pass me, I extended my hand to him.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” I said, shaking his hand.

“What’s your name?” His smile began to shrink as he felt the paper in his hand. “Did you have a question for me?”

“I’m a friend of Kim Graber’s.” I could hear the tremor in my voice, but I kept going. “She gave me a copy of those tapes before she died. Call me if you want to talk about it.”

The black-lipped girl gaped at me, but thankfully no one else seemed to have heard.

“Excuse me?” Wallace wrinkled his nose, squinting at me. “Kim . . . Graber?”

“Yes. From the Andrew Abbott case, remember? She gave me a copy of those tapes before she died,” I repeated.

I could see this time that the information actually sank in. I thought I saw Wallace’s eyes pop a little before he arranged his face into a solemn expression.

“She died?” he said.

“Yes.” I held his gaze, looking for some hint of real emotion. “She was strangled.”

Wallace stared back at me, his mouth still frozen into a thin, unconvincing frown. Black Lips watched us both, taking a blasé sip of coffee.

“Mr. Wallace?” A woman in a tailored navy suit tapped him on the shoulder. “This young man here has an interesting question about your stance on military spending.”

“The tapes that Colleen Shipley gave her,” I said softly, in case Wallace was still unmoved.

I thought I saw another eye twitch at Colleen Shipley’s name.

“Mr. Wallace?” his aide said.

“I’m sorry for your loss, young lady,” Wallace muttered.

I watched him turn away, keeping my eyes on the hand that had received my phone number. He slipped it into his pocket as his aide steered him off.

Donald Wallace shook hands with a bespectacled student sporting a leather messenger bag. He listened to the kid, but before he opened his mouth to answer him, he glanced back at me. Five minutes later he thanked the whole crowd for their support—and then he was gone.

On my way home, I considered whether this man I’d seen in the flesh could’ve killed Kim for something she was going to expose. He was on the elderly side—although he had a strong build. Or maybe he’d
had
her killed? I hadn’t thought of that before, but wasn’t that how these powerful men operated? On the other hand, I didn’t get a distinct feeling of power from Wallace. A
wish
for power, yes. And that had just as much potential for malice, I supposed. Maybe more.

I wondered if he would call me—thinking I had whatever damning footage Kim had possibly died for. Or if he would show up at my door. It would be scary if he did. But I could think of scarier things.

J
eff and I started out for Marist Park in the late morning, after giving my mother the satisfaction of watching Jeff scarf down a substantial diner breakfast. I decided to make a pit stop at Kim’s old apartment, as I didn’t want to avoid the most obvious possible place to look for those old VHS tapes: where Kim used to live. Of course, we agreed that Jeff should stay in the car and parked out of view of the apartment. I debated taking Wayne with me but ultimately left him with Jeff.

Brittany didn’t seem surprised to find me at her door. She had a towel on her head and a bottle of Windex in her hand.

“Oh, hey,” she said softly. “I’ve actually been thinking of you.”

“And I of you,” I answered. “You must’ve been shocked, too.”

“It’s really scary. So sad. Her poor family.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Did you hear they arrested that Jeff guy?”

“I did, yeah.”

“Do you want to come in?” Brittany asked.

I stepped inside and followed her to the couch. The room looked even cleaner than it had the other day. The hairy beanbag chair was gone.

“I just wish I knew that things had gotten so bad.” Brittany shook her head.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how much he
drank
?”

I managed a shrug.

“See that there?” Brittany pointed to a dent in the wall behind the television. “Jeff did that. He came here one night stumbling drunk and threw this big glass candle at the wall.”

“A large jar candle?”

At Jeff’s request I’d used my half-price employee discount on a Candle Supreme—our biggest jar candle, outrageously priced at thirty-six dollars, retail. Baked Apple, Jeff had advised me, was Kim’s favorite.

“Yeah. Did Kim tell you about that?”

“What scent was it?”

“I don’t know.” Brittany looked puzzled. “It was red.”

“What did he say when he did it?”

“Well, first he said, ‘I got that candle you wanted.’”

“Okay.”

Brittany lowered her voice. “And then he’s like, ‘Maybe you can cover up the skank smell in here.’”

“Oh.”

“He was pissed about her calling Kyle and stuff, I guess. But Jesus. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“What happened after he threw the candle?” I asked.

“He and Kim fought for a little while. Then he threw up and passed out on our couch. I mean, it would be one thing if he was our age. But Jeff’s like
middle-aged.
And acting like
that
? I should’ve known then that there was something seriously wrong with him. I should’ve said something. But it wasn’t my business, you know? I just chalked it up to Kim’s bad taste.”

I glanced away from Brittany and took a breath. “Did that kind of thing happen often with him?”

“No. But I know he and Kim drank a lot together.”