Consider the Crows Page 9

  “What crows?”

  “On the windowsill. When I don’t sing, they come and they scream at me. And sometimes they laugh, mean. They say terrible things.”

  “When did you start seeing things, Caitlin? You used to only hear voices. Are you sure you see them?”

  “They’ll hurt me.”

  “No, Caitlin, they can’t hurt you. They’re not real. Only in your mind.”

  Caitlin started shaking her head again. Carena, a hand on each side of Caitlin’s face to stop the shaking, leaned close and looked directly into her eyes. “Caitlin, listen to me. Listen. I won’t let them hurt you. We’ll both sing, all right? But first you have to get back in bed. Come on.”

  She led Caitlin to the bed, fluffed the pillows behind her head and smoothed the blankets over her, then lay beside her and they both sang hymns to appease Caitlin’s dark angels and the terrifying crows.

  For some time, Carena had tried to tell her mother something was wrong with Caitlin. Her mother got angry. There’s nothing wrong with Caitlin, she said. Caitlin just has too much imagination. She’s always been that way. Even when she was little. She always had conversations with imaginary playmates and her dolls. Her mother clung to that belief until the first time Caitlin had hurt herself.

  The dog barked and Carena jumped. Alexa scrambled up and trotted to the living room. A second or two later the doorbell rang. Now what?

  Some of the tension eased when she opened the door and saw Chief Wren. There was nothing scary about this woman with her thick dark hair, blue eyes, fine cheekbones and small straight nose. She had a haughty look, like an ad for expensive perfume. Her soft gray skirt and blazer beneath the trench coat made Carena feel grubby in old tan pants and baggy green sweater. She fastened a hand on the dog’s collar and kneed her back to let the police chief in.

  “I won’t keep you long,” Susan said and thought, she’s relieved it was me at the door. Susan sat on the couch and dropped her shoulder bag at her feet. Maybe I should have sent Parkhurst. “There are one or two things I need to clarify.”

  Egersund releaed the dog and eased into an old wooden rocker.

  “Before I get into that, is there anything you haven’t told me you’d like to tell me now? No? In that case, maybe you could tell me what you were looking for at Lynnelle’s house.”

  “I’ve never been in her house.”

  “Never? Not this afternoon?”

  For a moment, Egersund looked blank, then there was an oh expression on her face. “I did go out there. Not the house, the woods.”

  “Behind Lynnelle’s house?”

  “Yes,” Egersund said as though wondering where this was leading.

  “What time?”

  “Around four-thirty or so.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “About thirty minutes.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “I was looking for the dog,” Egersund said sharply. “She got away and I went after her.”

  “You found her in the woods?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “I put her in the car and drove home.”

  “Dr. Egersund, it would be wise to tell the truth.” She did not add, for a change, but allowed a hint of it in her voice.

  “That is the truth.”

  “What did you find out there?”

  “Find? What do you mean?”

  “It’s a crime to withhold evidence in a police investigation.” She watched Egersund look down at her hands; they were holding onto each other as though for mutual support.

  She looked up, met Susan’s eyes and unclasped her hands. “I didn’t find anything.”

  “Dr. Egersund, we have a witness. You picked up something in the woods. What was it?”

  “What would I pick up? Dead leaves? I chased after the damn dog, tripping all over—” She broke off.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s nothing. Just part of an old key chain.” Egersund got her tweed coat from the closet, stuck her hand in the pocket and drew out the clump of damp blue feathers. “Is that what you mean?”

  Susan held out her hand and the feathers were dropped into her palm. “If it’s nothing, why did you lie about it?”

  “I didn’t lie,” Egersund said tartly, seemed to feel that needed a little embellishing and added, “I simply forgot.” She looked uneasy as though that sounded lame even to herself. She slid further back in the rocker and folded the coat across her lap.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “I didn’t find it,” Egersund snapped. “The dog did.”

  “Who does it belong to?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “It’s not yours?”

  “No.”

  Susan gathered up her shoulder bag and got to her feet. Egersund rose also. At the door, Susan reached into the bag and took out the paperback books. “Are you familiar with these?”

  Egersund took them, shook her head and tried to hand them back.

  “Read the blurbs on the backs.”

  She turned them over. Susan, watching carefully, saw the little start of fear. She felt her heart pick up a beat. “It’s about an adopted child. Have you read it?”

  “No.” The word came out flat and steady.

  “They belonged to Lynnelle. We’re wondering if perhaps Lynnelle, herself, was an adopted child. That would explain a few things that have puzzled us.”

  “Lynnelle was not my child.”

  Susan looked at her, letting the silence stretch. “Are you sure that’s all you want to say?”

  Carena withstood that hard knowing look and when Chief Wren left, poured a glass of red wine, found two more aspirins and gulped them down. I was wrong about this woman. In her own way, she’s just as scary as Parkhurst. Carena rubbed fingertips against her throbbing temples. Chickens coming home to roost. Bad habit, in the face of adversity her mind scurried around for apt quotations. “Ye have sinned against the Lord and be sure your sins shall find you out.”

  Her parents would find out. Her deeply religious father to whom so many things were a sin and her mother—also religious, as befitted a minister’s wife, but more practical with it—would be shattered. “Trouble, thou wretch, that has within thee undivulged crimes.”

  9

  “I DON’T BELIEVE it,” Susan muttered as she pulled away. Kids are told from day one they’re adopted; biological parents, adoptive parents all gather round in one big extended family.

  She shook her head. Not true. Even now adoptions could be shrouded in secrecy. Her own family, for example. She had a cousin who was adopted. To this day, the kid didn’t know, and he was in his twenties. Adoptees seemed driven to find their natural parents; struggled through all sorts of difficulties.

  Susan nudged the heater up a notch. The weather had turned colder again, rain that had fallen earlier had turned to ice on the streets and glistened under her headlights. Every time the temperature dropped, she asked herself why she was still here and not in San Francisco, where she belonged. The radio crackled and she picked up the mike.

  “Keith Kalazar’s been on the phone,” Marilee Beaumont said in her soft southern voice. Marilee was the dispatcher when Hazel went off duty. “He says he needs to talk to you.”

  “I’ll call him. Anything else?”

  “You wanted to know if anybody spotted Sophie? Ben Parkhurst just reported in. Saw her car on Essex. At the Lutheran church?”

  The pickup tires skidded a bit as she made a right turn, cut past the campus and reached the church just as some meeting or other was letting out. The quilting ladies, she thought, since they all seemed to be female and mostly elderly. They made beautiful quilts and sold them to raise money. She intended to buy one before she saw Hampstead in her rearview mirror.

  Lights on the outside of the church building reflected on the icy tarmac in the parking lot. She squinted at the quilting ladies filing out and flowing toward their cars and
spotted Sophie in a long black overcoat as she broke rank and swooped toward her elderly Chevy.

  “Sophie.” Susan slid from the pickup, and her boot heels cracked sharply on the ice as she closed in.

  The old woman peered across the dark lot, shading her eyes with one hand. “Evening.” Her face was etched with fine lines, deeper lines creased her forehead and formed brackets from her sharp nose to her determined mouth. The long black coat was buttoned up to her chin and a black watch cap was pulled down over her ears, leaving spikes of iron gray hair sticking out around the edges.

  “I want to talk with you,” Susan said.

  “Can’t think why,” Sophie said with a seraphic smile.

  “The little cat cannot—”

  “You need a cat.”

  “Sophie—”

  “Everybody needs somebody to love.”

  “Yes, well, cats need company. I’m not home enough—”

  “Poor little mite. Needs love. Been mistreated. You just don’t worry about it. It’ll all be fine. Plenty else to worry about with that girl getting killed. Find out who did it yet?”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Not to say know. Went ’round to see her about the time she moved in. Took her some pumpkin bread. Being neighborly, you might say.”

  Being nosy was closer to the truth, Susan thought, but she wasn’t above taking information wherever she could get it. “What did you find out?”

  “She wasn’t easy when I came. Like she was nervous I might find out what she didn’t want a body to know.”

  Susan suppressed a grin. That’s exactly what Sophie would have had in mind.

  “We chatted a bit like you do. Made me some coffee. More like weak water, not what I’d call coffee. But being nice and all. She was lonely really, and glad of any company. I asked where did she come from and why did she come here. She gave me one of those I-don’t-want-to-say looks that always make me feel like asking more questions.”

  I’ll just bet it did.

  “She loved her dog. Told me she’d never been allowed pets because he was allergic. Stepfather, turned out. She hates him.”

  “Hates?”

  Sophie sniffed, then exhaled in a puff of fog. “I may be old, but I can spot the difference between hate and dislike. She was all stiff and her face got pinched, and white around the nose. I got the idea he maybe mistreated her some way. I felt sorry for her. I hate to see innocent creatures mistreated. She said he didn’t like dogs. He liked birds.”

  “Birds.”

  “Birds,” Sophie said impatiently, as though she were talking to somebody slow-witted. “Watched them through binoculars. She worked, you know. Lynnelle. Gone most during the day. House wasn’t always empty though.”

  “Somebody was there when Lynnelle wasn’t home?”

  “Little Kalazar girl, Julie. She’d go out there, meet her young man and they’d go inside.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Saw them, obviously. Probably lurking in the shrubbery. In her assiduous devotion to needy cats, Sophie quartered the countryside and if she ran across anything interesting, she made it her business to poke her sharp nose into it.

  “Now, just what do you suppose they were up to in there?” Sophie smiled and shook her head. “Wouldn’t her mother have a fit, she was to find out. Audrey keeps close watch on that young’un’s friends and weeds out the undesirables.”

  Sophie tugged the watch cap down to her eyebrows. “Can’t stand around here talking all night,” she said, clomped to her car and wrenched open the door. “The little cat needs shots. Get her to the vet real soon.”

  “Sophie—”

  Sophie fired up the motor with a roar, then eased back and sedately rolled away.

  Susan sifted through Sophie’s information as she headed for home, trying to find the nuggets of fact. A hated stepfather? Only Sophie’s interpretation. Damn it, why haven’t we gotten onto the next of kin? Thirty-three hours since the body was discovered. What kind of drag-ass outfit are we, anyway?

  What about the other little gem Sophie dropped? Nick and Julie using the house for a trysting place. Anything there? Could explain the second sleeping bag. Nick was a scholarship student and Hispanic. Would either or both make him unsuitable in Dr. Kalazar’s eyes? The whiff of barely suppressed violence that Nick exuded was enough to make any parent nervous. Did Lynnelle threaten to tell Dr. Kalazar and one of them killed her? She gave them permission— why turn around and rat to Kalazar?

  Susan pulled into the garage beside the little brown Fiat she hardly ever drove these days and, as she squeezed past, gave its dusty flank a pat and a promise for a spin. Soon.

  The neighborhood kid she’d made friends with sat on the back step with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, foil-covered bowl beside her.

  “Hi, Jen.”

  “Hi,” Jen said, an eleven-year-old uncertain of her welcome, but obviously glad to see Susan.

  Cops don’t have that many admirers that they can afford to pass one up. “Want to come in a minute?”

  Jen tossed her brown ponytail over her shoulder. “I don’t mind.” She was a skinny kid in jeans and red ski jacket with unusual yellow-green eyes and a stubborn chin. A neat kid, smart and funny, with endless enthusiasms for anything new and a mind always looking for answers.

  Dad had a new wife and Mom had a new boyfriend and when they weren’t using Jen as cannon fodder in the battle between them, they were making her feel like excess baggage. Jen had the usual anxieties and confusions and fears that it was all her fault.

  Susan hated it when kids had problems. It scared her and she was always afraid she’d say the wrong thing. “Does your mom know where you are?”

  Jen shrugged. “She won’t mind, she’s on the phone with Casey.” Her mouth screwed up over the name.

  “You could call and let her know.”

  “She’ll talk forever.”

  “Well, you can keep trying.”

  Jen picked up the bowl and moved out of the way. Susan unlocked the door and snapped on the inside light. “Are you hungry?”

  The kitchen looked the same as when she left; at least the kitten hadn’t created any more rubble.

  “I fixed spaghetti for supper. I brought you some since you never have anything to eat.”

  “Hey, Jen, that’s nice.” Susan tried not to be too effusive with praise. Jen got embarrassed. She hadn’t received enough compliments in her young life and Susan tried to remedy that by throwing out lots of good words without overdoing it. Getting the balance right was a worry. “For spaghetti you deserve a reward. How about I let you beat me at Trivial Pursuit?”

  Jen’s face lit up with the sunshine grin she didn’t use nearly enough. She was a wizard at the game and almost always won. “Shall I get it out?”

  “You mind if I make a phone call first?”

  The grin faded. “That’s okay.” In her world, adults made promises and too often didn’t come through.

  “It’ll only take a minute. Before I do that I want to show you something.”

  “What?”

  The dining room looked the same, except for tiny paw prints all over the clutter on the table. The living room—

  “Wow,” Jen breathed, looking around wide-eyed.

  The two spider plants had been knocked from the mantle, the pots had shattered on the hearth and the plants were torn to bits, then scattered, along with the dirt, across the room. The kitten was crouched on the arm of a chair, brown paws tucked neatly under her beige chest, blue eyes slitted with the smug expression of a job well done.

  Despite vigorous resistance, Hazel had managed to press the plants in Susan’s hands. Killer hands. Even the sturdiest of plants shriveled up and died in her care. Hazel was almost as particular about finding homes for plants as Sophie was for cats. One unwanted gift destroys another.

  “Are you mad?” Jen asked in a nervous little voice.

  “I’m not please
d.” Susan fingered a piece of pottery she and Daniel had bought in Mexico when they were on their honeymoon.

  “I’ll help you clean it up.” Jen knelt by the chair and stroked the kitten who scampered up her arm and nibbled her ear. Jen giggled and cradled the kitten against her chest. “She didn’t mean it.”

  If Susan thought Mom would stand for it, the kitten would be Jen’s in a flash.

  “What’s her name?”

  “She doesn’t have a name. Can you come up with one?”

  Jen nodded solemnly. “I’ll think about it.”

  When they finished with dust cloths, brooms, dust pan and vacuum cleaner, the living room looked better than it had in a long time. Susan left Jen playing lurk-and-pounce with the kitten and went to phone Keith Kalazar. He answered immediately with a sharp hello.

  “Chief Wren, Mr. Kalazar. I understand you were trying to reach me.”

  “I don’t know where Audrey is.”

  Susan did not take the receiver from her ear and stare at it, but she felt like it. “I believe she’s attending a conference in Dallas.” Maybe he was even more vague than she’d originally thought.

  “Yes.” He paused to take a breath. “That’s what I thought. The thing is—” He cleared his throat. “I just called the hotel.”

  “Yes?”

  “Audrey never checked in.”

  10

  “SOMETHING’S HAPPENED.” Keith Kalazar rubbed an agitated hand over his well-trimmed beard and shook his head. “I know it.”

  At nine on Tuesday morning, he was seated in the wooden armchair in Susan’s office and anxiety had him jumpy; leaning forward, leaning back, propping an ankle on one knee, tapping fingers against his thigh. Morning sun shone against the window blinds and spread a striped pattern across the floor.

  “I knew it when he called.” Keith jabbed a hand in a jacket pocket, the same fawn-colored jacket with the leather elbow patches.

  “The conference coordinator,” Susan said.

  “Audrey didn’t show up for her speech.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Saturday morning.” He pulled out his pipe and smashed tobacco in the bowl.