Consider the Crows Page 16

  “She’s hurt herself.” Caitlin nodded at Alexa who had flopped down and was noisily licking one front paw.

  “We have to go now,” Carena said and nudged Caitlin toward the car.

  Alexa limped alongside.

  16

  ALEXA JUMPED IN, spread herself across the backseat and licked her paw. Carena settled Caitlin, shivering and teeth chattering, in the front, buckled the seat belt around her, and made sure the door was locked, wishing there was some way to prevent it from being opened. She could almost feel Caitlin slipping away inside herself.

  The drive to Topeka was a nightmare. They sang hymns. Whenever Carena tried to stop, Caitlin got agitated and Carena was afraid she would fling herself from the moving car. The road stretched endlessly, hypnotically in front of the headlights; the windows were fogged, the heater droned, and they sang.

  By the time they pulled up in front of Caitlin’s house, Carena was hoarse. She got out of the car, went around to the passenger side and helped Caitlin out. A porch light went on, the front door opened and Phil came out on the porch. For a moment, he stood there, then ran down the steps.

  “Where the hell have you been?” He grabbed Caitlin’s arm and she shrank back against Carena.

  “Let’s get her inside,” Carena said through clenched teeth. Damn him, why did he always attack. The throb in her temples grew worse.

  In the living room, a pleasant room with soft shades of green, pale-green carpet, paler green walls and flowered chairs, they got Caitlin to the couch and wrapped her in a blanket. She was quiet now. Curled like a fetus, face turned away, she was starting to withdraw into the deep stillness that made Carena want to cry.

  Phil Avery looked down at his wife with fatigue and anger. He was in his mid-forties, a stocky man with a few strands of gray in his carefully combed brown hair and a heavy jaw that always looked in need of a shave. He wore dark suit pants and white shirt with the cuffs turned up. He had a square face that looked tired, the skin was soft and pinched around his eyes and mouth, and his eyes were slightly bloodshot.

  “I’ll call her doctor,” he said in a dead voice.

  Carena sat beside her sister and crooned softly, brushed hair from Caitlin’s face. “I’m sorry, darling. I know you can hear me. Just listen. I love you. I’m so sorry this is happening again. Just remember you’ll get better. You’ve done it before. You rest, heal yourself. Don’t give up.”

  When Phil came back, she stood. “How long has she been gone?”

  He rolled down his cuffs and buttoned them. “Since Saturday night?”

  “Why didn’t you let me know?” The headache surrounded her eyes in a tightening web of pain.

  He glanced around for his tie, found it over the back of a chair and slid it under his collar. “Dr. Brock said I should take her in to the hospital. He’ll meet us there.”

  Carena hated to see Caitlin small and still in the sterile room with its white walls and smell of antiseptic. Twice before she had gotten real bad, babbled about her dark angels and terrifying crows, and cut her wrists. Carena kissed her motionless sister and said she would be back very soon. The tears she was trying to hold back dribbled down her face on the drive home. Caitlin will get better, Carena told herself in much the same tone as she had used with her sister. She has before. As long as she was in the hospital and sedated, at least she couldn’t hurt herself.

  It was after midnight when Carena got home. She undressed quickly, dropped her clothes on the end of the bed and climbed in. Pulling the covers up to her chin, she closed her eyes.

  Was it some predetermined genetic code that decreed Caitlin must carry all the family pathology? She was the best of them, the brightest and the kindest and the softest and the most gentle. Was that why? If Martha Ann hadn’t died, would Caitlin still be battling her dark angels? Or would they be safely locked away in some far corner of her mind?

  Martha Ann, curly-headed baby, unexpected and the darling of the family. Martha Ann, who had only two years of life. Caitlin was looking after her, had taken her outside to play and Martha Ann wanted her pink teddy bear. Caitlin went in to get it and, in that brief moment she was gone, Martha Ann grabbed the garden rake near the metal end and darted for the steps going down to the driveway. She fell. The tines pierced her throat.

  Tears filled Carena’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. Much later, she had taken the hose and washed the blood from the driveway.

  * * *

  Students hated eight o’clock classes and tried with creative endeavor to avoid them. This class seemed endless, and the kids who couldn’t fit in calculus at any other period looked semicomatose—those that weren’t studying for their next class or watching the clock or asleep with their eyes open.

  Carena slogged on, not very inspired, not raising a spark of interest. Julie Kalazar, her best student at the beginning of the semester, now close to failing, looked scared. Nick Salvatierra, whom she’d struggled hard with, had reverted to his sullen scowl. When the period finally ended, she went to her office and phoned Phil at work. He was short with her. He didn’t like grim reality intruding into his professional world, the one he could control, the one where he invested most of himself. He had nothing new to tell her about Caitlin. She punched in another number and made an appointment with David McKinnon. Even that much felt like action and the rest of the classes weren’t quite so burdensome.

  At four, she walked into David McKinnon’s office. With a smile, he rose from behind his desk, came around it and extended a hand to shake hers. Dark suit, discreet tie. A very good-looking man; she’d forgotten how good-looking. Her ex-husband was very good-looking. Handsome men expected, as some sort of rightful due, pampering and kowtowing. She perched on one of the two black leather chairs beside a low round table. Maybe coming here was a mistake. He wasn’t the only attorney in town. He regarded her with eyes a remarkable shade of blue. Even though the office was sufficiently warm, recessed lighting making it seem pleasantly light after the gloom outside, she shivered and kept her coat on.

  “Would you like some coffee?” he asked.

  “What I’d really like is an aspirin.”

  “I can probably provide that.” Picking up the phone, he spoke to his secretary and a moment or two later, she brought in a tray with two mugs, cream and sugar and a small bottle of aspirin. Taking the tray from her, he murmured his thanks and she withdrew. He put the tray on the low table in front of Carena and sat in the other chair. She unscrewed the bottle cap, rattled two tablets onto her palm and swallowed them with a gulp of scalding coffee.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “I think I’m going to need an attorney.”

  “Why do you need an attorney?”

  “I think I’m going to be arrested for Lynnelle’s murder.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  She looked past him at the cold gray sky out the window and then down at the mug clutched between both hands. I should have thought more before I came, figured out how much to tell him.

  “There are three people you should never lie to,” he said quietly and sipped coffee.

  She looked at him.

  “Your physician and your attorney.”

  She waited and when he didn’t go on, she asked, “Who’s the third?”

  “Either God or the IRS, I forget.”

  The laugh bubbled out. “God was a big issue in my life. I don’t recall much mention of the IRS.”

  “Why do you think you’ll be arrested?”

  “They think I’ve been lying to them.”

  “Have you?”

  She hesitated.

  “Whatever you tell me is privileged. I can’t be forced to reveal anything to the police.”

  “I know that,” she said and added quickly, “I didn’t kill her.”

  “You have information you haven’t told them?”

  “It’s not— Nothing that will help. Nothing about the murder. If I did, I would— I’d tell them.”

  “
It’d be more helpful, if you’d tell me the stuff that goes between the pauses.”

  She tried a smile that felt sickly even to her. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?”

  “Absolutely.” He gazed at her with sharp intelligence.

  Too sharp. All she wanted was an attorney to represent her if it came to that, not a ferret.

  “You’re trying to protect someone,” he said.

  “Myself,” she snapped.

  “You’re afraid whoever it is might have killed her.”

  “No.” The aspirin hadn’t helped any and pain throbbed in her temple. “I’m afraid the police will think so.” Especially if they talk with Michael and he tells them he saw me out there.

  “Lynnelle thought you were her mother.”

  “I’m not. I wasn’t. How do you know that?”

  “An inference from questions asked by Chief Wren.” He studied her closely. “You know who her mother was. Someone close. Friend? Relative? Sister?”

  Oh hell. Trouble thou wretch, that has within thee undivulged crimes. “She was fifteen and scared to death.” I was just as scared and trying not to let her know. “We never told anybody.”

  “Your parents?”

  She shook her head. Good people, her parents, her kind gentle father would never have pointed a stern finger at the raging blizzard and proclaimed, Out! But they would have been devastated. “I was enrolled at the University of Oklahoma for the fall and I told them I had to be there for the summer. I made a big deal about going to a strange place and I wanted her to come with me.”

  That awful summer. Unbearably hot. The crummy apartment with weeds growing through cracks in the walls. The crummy job cleaning toilets. The nosy landlady with her sly, knowing looks. “The adoption was arranged through a physician.”

  “Why did Lynnelle think you were her mother?”

  “I don’t know. We told so many lies. Caitlin never used her real name.”

  Something flickered in his blue eyes and for an instant, he seemed to look through her.

  “She was Karen Hart. Half the time I think she actually believed it. If Lynnelle in her search came across my name—I had to have a job, identification.” She sighed. “If I were searching for someone, I might think Karen Hart was a phony name for Carena Gebhardt.” With both hands, she raised the mug and sipped coffee, fighting down a sense of failure and betrayal.

  “Why are you trying to keep all this a secret?”

  Because I don’t know where Caitlin was that night. I’m afraid she was there, I’m afraid it was her Michael saw. “She’s never been very strong. Her worst nightmare, the child would one day show up. She never told anyone. Not her husband and—well, he isn’t a very understanding man.”

  “You’re afraid she killed Lynnelle,” David said gently.

  “No. She could never kill anybody. She’s sweet and kind and loving, but she has fears and demons and sometimes she gets lost inside herself.”

  Again, she caught a thoughtful inward look in his eyes. It made her uneasy. She knew nothing about this man, not even how skilled he was as an attorney. “How long have you lived here?”

  If he was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it. “Over two years.”

  “What made you choose Hampstead?”

  He smiled. Charming smile, she thought with all her cynical distrust of attractive men.

  “It was more a matter of leaving where I was. This is somewhere between there and the place I should have gone.”

  “Stuck a pin in a map?”

  “Not quite. I used to have relatives here.”

  “Who?”

  “An uncle. Howard Creighton.”

  She remembered Howard Creighton. There was some scandal about his son—what was the son’s name—and he committed suicide.

  “I worked for Uncle Howard one summer years ago when I was a kid.”

  Years ago? How many years? She’d never met him, she’d remember if she had. Could Caitlin have known him? Caitlin was friends with—Lowell, that was his name—and she could have been around when David was there. Caitlin had refused to say who the father was. She’d dug in her heels with unshakable stubbornness. He can’t help, was all she’d say.

  * * *

  Drizzle streaked down the windshield and the wipers only smeared it. So much for confession, Carena thought. I always suspected unburdening your soul wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Oh, come on. David McKinnon could not be Lynnelle’s father. God wouldn’t display such a bizarre sense of humor. Consciously, she relaxed her shoulders, but it didn’t relieve her uneasiness.

  At home, she turned on the kitchen light, blinked a bit at the brightness and snapped on the radio to interrupt her thoughts. Tea was what she needed. She ran water in the tea kettle and set it on the stove, then shrugged off her coat and draped it over a chairback. A weather forecaster said rain turning to snow later in the day. Alexa, favoring her right foreleg, limped to the door and pressed her nose against it.

  “I suppose you need to go out.” Carena attached the leash and opened the door.

  The cold drizzle was not to Alexa’s liking and she had to be coaxed from the screened porch, then took care of her needs quickly and lurched back inside on three legs. Carena knelt to examine the sore paw. Lexi turned her head away as though she couldn’t bear to look. It was bad, pads split and swollen and pus-filled. Nasty. Why didn’t I look at this before?

  The tea kettle shrieked, startling her and she rose to turn off the burner. In the phone book, she found veterinarians, slid on her coat and loaded Lexi in the Volvo.

  Two people waited ahead of her in Dr. Newcomer’s office, an elderly woman with a black cat in a carrier and a man with a quivering cocker spaniel. Carena sat on a beige vinyl couch that squeaked whenever she moved and Alexa plastered herself against Carena’s legs.

  A gust of cold air blew in when the door opened and Chief Wren, in a grey trenchcoat and carrying a cardboard box, stepped inside. Carena’s pulse jumped and she took in a breath of antiseptic air. I’m going to be arrested in a vet’s office, hauled away in handcuffs. Close your mouth and try not to look like a scared rabbit.

  Susan, hoping this wouldn’t take too long, glanced around. People waiting. Damn. Come back another time. She started to leave, then noticed Carena Egersund looking like an animal run to ground. Ah, maybe this wasn’t such a waste of time. Combine responsibilities of pet ownership with hotshot police chief on heels of suspect.

  Resting the box on the counter, she spoke to the receptionist, then stepped around a trembling cocker spaniel and walked over to Egersund, who watched with worry and apprehension all over her face. If only I knew the right buttons to push, Susan thought. “I understand you consulted with David McKinnon.”

  “Spies, Chief Wren?”

  Susan smiled. Apparently, the woman wasn’t as unstrung as she looked. They were speaking softly, but the other people in the room watched curiously. Egersund seemed to take heart from their presence, as though thinking Susan wouldn’t attack savagely in front of witnesses. The woman was wrong about that, but Susan wasn’t sure enough for a savage attack.

  The vinyl squeaked as Susan sat down. She placed the box on the floor, pulled off her gloves and shoved them in her pocket. “We’ve located Lynnelle’s stepfather. I’ll let him know you have the dog.”

  “Stepfather,” Egersund repeated.

  “You knew she had a stepfather?”

  Egersund loosened the fingers clutched in her lap and absently patted the dog.

  “Her father died,” Susan said in a low voice, “and her mother remarried when Lynnelle was thirteen.”

  “Her mother. Have you talked to her?”

  “Her mother died two years ago.”

  The elderly lady with the cat carrier was summoned into the inner office. Egersund watched her go. “I’m sorry,” she said so softly Susan had to lean closer to hear her.

  She looked like a woman with too much to bear. For a moment, Susan felt compassion, t
hen she pictured Lynnelle dead, blond curls plastered around a gray pinched face, twenty-one years old. Professional detachment slid back into place. “Sorry for what?”

  Egersund seemed to pull herself together even more and some of the tightness left her voice. “For a lot of things. For Lynnelle, her mother, her stepfather.”

  Susan wasn’t sure the stepfather deserved any sympathy.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Egersund whispered.

  Maybe not, but something weighs heavy on your conscience, Susan thought. The lady with the cat left and the man with the cocker dragged it into the office.

  Alexa nosed the box on the floor and Susan moved it further under the couch. “What’s wrong with her?” Susan nodded at the dog.

  “Just a sore foot.”

  Right on cue, Alexa raised her paw. Just then the examining room door opened and the cocker flew out, scrabbling for escape, and the receptionist nodded at Egersund who led away a reluctant dog.

  Twenty minutes later, Susan placed her cardboard box on the examining table.

  “Chief Wren,” Dr. Newcomer said with surprise. He was a large man with a thick chest, heavily muscled arms and huge hands with springy pale gold hair on the backs and square blunt fingers. Dense, dark-gold curls framed a wide face and sleepy-lidded amber eyes slanted away from a Roman nose. He looked like a benevolent lion. “What have you got?”

  “A kitten.”

  “Involved in some kind of crime?”

  “No. Well,” she grinned, “not that I know of, it came from Sophie.” She unfolded the flaps. The kitten, crouched in a corner with her ears flattened, hissed when she reached in. “I brought her in for whatever immunizations she needs.”

  He turned to a cabinet for small vials and syringes. “What’s her name?”

  “She doesn’t have a name. I didn’t plan on keeping her.”

  “Oh, yes?” A deep rumble came from his chest—a laugh, she assumed—and he upended a vial and withdrew liquid into a syringe.

  The cat spat and swore and it took both of them to hold her down. Small she might be, but she intended to fight valiantly to the end.

  “The Samoyed you just saw,” Susan said. “What’s wrong with it?”