Ada Unraveled (18 page)

He also wanted me to feed her vegetable
soup. Mother’s face was all bruised. Her arm was all swollen. The
smell of the soup mixed with the smell of alcohol is probably why I
hate vegetable soup. I remember trying to feed her and how most of
it ran back out of her mouth all over the bed. When I tried to get
her up so I could change the sheets she wouldn’t move. The soup
mostly trickles back out of her mouth.

Later on, I think it was the same day, I
remember I waited at the door for the delivery boy from the liquor
store. She would hide behind the door staring at me with sick eyes.
I can still see his sorry eyes in my mind.

One night daddy came home and yelled at me
for not cleaning the house. He was yelling that I should do a
better job of taking care of her. Then I remember you yelling at
him to take mother to the hospital. You say what I’m afraid to say,
that he should take care of her and that she might die.

But I’m even more afraid for you. I think he
will beat you next. I miss you more and more every day.

Your loving sister Ada. “

I thought a minute about what Gerry had
said--that Andrea had produced the diary. I pulled out my cell
phone. I’d already entered the bee ladies’ names in my contacts
list. It took four rings before she answered, long enough for me to
get anxious over how I should approach the subject with her. She’d
been emotional at the bee. Even a bit prickly. I didn’t want to set
her off.

“Hello Rachel.”

So she’d entered my number in her contacts,
too.

“Is this a good time for us to talk, Andrea?
I have some questions….”

“About what?”

Abrupt. Snappish. Maybe just her nature.

“I’m reading Ada’s diary. You know, the
little book included with the quilt?” I waited for her to confirm
this.

“Yeah.”

I said, “I wonder if you could share with me
where you found it.”

Silence.

I said, “I think it would help me with my
research if you told me.”

“How?”

“I won’t know that until you tell me.”

More silence. Finally Andrea said, “I found
it.”

“Okay.” I waited a beat. She didn’t
elaborate. I said, “Where?”

A big sigh. Finally Andrea said, “At Eddie’s
house.” My eyes flashed toward Ada’s. Also Eddie’s.

“When?”

“In September. After he walked to his
grandma’s. After….”

“After what?”

“Look, I feel…you know, like a rat. Like I’m
ratting him out. It’s his life, you know?”

An idea crept into my mind. “No. I don’t.
Why don’t you just start from the beginning, for instance when did
Ada die?”

“She didn’t die! She was murdered.”

“Go on.”

“Okay, Ada was killed the end of June. At
least, I think that’s when.”

Did Andrea know who killed her?

“Why do you think this is the case?”

“Because…because I visited Eddie then. Back
in June.” She swore and disappeared into the nether again. I waited
for her to return.

She saw Eddie in June? Then why didn’t
anyone else know he was alive…and then it hit me. She hadn’t told
anyone else. And now she was feeling intensely guilty.

Andrea said in a small voice, “Ada called me
in late June and asked me to come visit her. She said she had a
quilt she wanted some help with. I was over at Victoria’s at the
time, so it was no big deal. I just drove over.”

“So you visited with Ada before? Been to her
home?”

She stopped again. I waited. Finally she
said, “Look, none of that is important. I can’t go there. The deal
is I went over and she took me down….to Eddie’s room. And I met
him. And…I was sickened…I just can’t describe it. I just, I just
ran away. I just couldn’t deal with it.”

Sickened? Why would Andrea have been
sickened? But before I could ask, The redhead barreled on with her
story.

“And then I get the call, that Ada had been
found dead. That Eddie was at his grandma’s.” Another pause. “In
September, after the fires. And I knew…it was my fault. I should
have….”

I needed to share a little of what we’d
found this afternoon. Needed to console her. Soothe her
concerns.

I said, “Luke had been beating her for
years, Andrea. We just came from the hospital, where we saw her
records. Her life was a misery. You aren’t to blame.”

More long moments of silence and finally she
said, “Thanks, Rachel. I wish I could be clearer. Truth is I don’t
know when Ada died. I’m just assuming because that was the last
time I saw her alive. Luke was crazy to keep Eddie locked away, and
I think that Ada just wanted her boy…
free
.”

Free? What exactly did she mean by that?
Before I could ask for more details, she blurted out, “I should
have at least called Mary or Anne,” her voice thick with emotions.
“I gotta’ go, Rache. I really don’t have any more information.”

And she hung up without hearing the
questions I wanted to follow up with. So now I sat pondering them,
one by one.

I didn’t know how to take all this news.
Andrea was a puzzle to me but I frankly had difficulty believing
she could have just left Ada to her fates. I didn’t think of Andrea
as callous. Quite the contrary.

A horn beeped and I looked up in my rear
view mirror to see Hannah shrugging her shoulders in her car, as if
to say “What’s up?”

I made the quick decision not to share my
conversation with Andrea until I knew more.

A gloomy mist had begun sticking to the
windows making slow motion tear streaks on the glass. It was
getting dark. We needed to hurry. I shook my sadness away and
reached for my newest Mocs—a rich rust color. The ground was muddy
and Mocs could be washed in the sink. Then I manually lengthened
the exposure time on my camera so that I could take low-light
pictures without a flash. I was stalling and I knew it. Pulling on
my shoulder bag as I went, I stepped out of my car, now almost
completely composed.

Hannah was up on the sidewalk. Gerry still
sitting in her car, fussing with something I couldn’t see.

I asked, “Where have you been?”

“We stopped to visit Victoria for a few
minutes. The visit turned into half an hour. Why are you parked way
over here? We couldn’t find you.”

“Oh, I should have told you I wanted us to
park away from the house so Eddie wouldn’t see us coming. Did you
stop there?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t notice him in any
windows.”

“Me neither.” Gerry joined us holding a huge
leopard skin print umbrella. It wasn’t actually raining, more like
misting, but the umbrella was a fashion statement not a tool. I
made a mental note to talk to her about clandestine clothing for
undercover work.

“Well, hopefully he wasn’t staring out at
the street,” I said. “Let’s go see if we can get him to answer the
door.”

I had my digital camera hanging around my
neck, and my new crime scene kit on my back—in case we actually got
in the house.

My new crime scene kit—a navy blue backpack
with lots of little compartments—always contains fingerprint
powder, fingerprint lift tape, a magnifying glass, six inch ruler,
three sizes of tweezers, a small alternate light source, scalpel,
goggles, flashlight, and my Weight Watchers scales. And all sorts
of other items get put in or taken out of my “kit” as needs
dictate. I’ve even carried wire cutters and a claw hammer around in
my backpacks.

I had a lot of backpacks. All in different
colors. Gerry wasn’t the only fashion conscious one in our
group.

We huddled together like Siamese triplets
under Gerry’s giant jungle umbrella. I was pretty sure anyone still
in the house knew we were coming.

On our approach I noted that Ada’s house had
once been painted white, maybe twenty years ago. The peeling trim
around the windows and doors was either a faded black or dark
green. Some windows had rusty looking screens, most had none. The
windows were grimy. The yard was a muddy field of beaten down
weeds. Joyless and exhausted looking, the house seemed to have died
from the violence it had contained for decades.

Of course I snapped pictures.

“Why didn’t the neighbors do anything about
Ada’s suffering?” I wondered aloud.

“California,” Hannah answered.

Gerry said, “Everywhere. People don’t want
to get involved. They close their windows and turn up the
television, especially if calls to the police result in negative
feedback. Wait. Is that someone in the upstairs window?”

“How can you possibly tell? The windows are
grimy.” Hannah said.

Gerry said, “I’m sure of it. The curtain
moved, over there on the left.”

A gun went off and we jumped as one startled
organism.

“Okay, that wasn’t a gun, just the back door
slamming,” I said. I was talking to myself but Hannah’s shoulders
relaxed.

“Who’s that? Look, driving away. Is that a
white truck?” Gerry said and turned to me, eyes wide.

“Someone is escaping,” I said, willfully
controlling the sudden tremor in my voice. Our thoughts had gone to
the truck that chased me home from the bee.

There were lots of white trucks. No reason
to jump out of my skin every time one passed me by.

“From what little I’ve heard about Eddie it
would have to be Luke. Eddie’s a recluse. Probably doesn’t drive,”
Hannah said.

“Okay, so—now that the coast is clear, let’s
go talk to Eddie.” Gerry was actually eager. Then I began worrying
that the recluse might make a run for it too.

I almost sprinted up the ancient cement
walkway to the small front porch. There was no bell or knocker, so
I rapped my knuckles hard on the wooden door and called Eddie’s
name. There was no response.

“I’m going around the back,” Gerry said as
she headed off. Good thinking. Hannah joined me in my efforts to
raise Eddie. But it was no use. We were met with silence.

I said, “Let’s do a careful walk around and
see if we can spot him through the windows.”

“Isn’t that trespassing?” Hannah said.

“No, the yard is open. Now, if we decide to
break and enter that just might become trespassing.”

I could feel my bad-girl-spy-self rising in
my breast. Hannah’s worried brow knitted closer together.

The dampness in the air was soaking my hair.
In seconds my feet were soaked as well and freezing from the wet
weeds.

We decided to go around to the north—the
side with no watching neighbors. The main floor windows were high.
Too high to see much more than the ceiling. But on the way we
peeked into a filthy basement window where I thought I could see a
light somewhere deep in the recesses. Could have just been light
from another filthy window on the other side.

For some reason my mind flashed back to
Andrea’s words…that Ada had taken her
down
to Eddie’s room,
and that it sickened her.

Down to the basement? Could Eddie be living
in the cellar?

We rounded the back corner.

A dazzling blond stood perkily under her
leopard skin umbrella waiting for us. Part of the reason she was
dazzling was that a strong light was shining down from the kitchen
stoop. And her hair was dry. Our escapee hadn’t bothered to turn
off the back porch lights as he departed. Wasteful, but now helpful
as it was growing darker by the minute.

“I was prepared to tackle Eddie if he came
out onto the back porch. Or, maybe just sweet talk him into staying
awhile, until you two arrived. But there hasn’t been any sign of
him and I’ve been knocking and calling. I take it he didn’t show on
your side of this creepy house, either.”

“Right. Looks like I’ll have to B & E,”
I said.

“Uh, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with
that,” Hannah said, stopping in her tracks.

She was way too uptight. I would have to
train her in the fine arts of snooping. Starting now.

I climbed three steps to the top of the
cement porch and looked out at the littered back yard…sans grass,
sans gardens, with two miserable looking trees huddled around a
falling down wooden shack. Ancient yard tools that looked as if
they were discarded mid-use reminded me of the Stowall’s front
yard. The sorry mess ran back about a hundred feet.

“Look at that.”

“What,” they said in unison. Gerry joined me
on the porch.

“The cemetery. Aren’t those gravestones back
there in the dark?”

“Can’t tell. Do you think that’s where Luke
buried Ada?” Gerry said.

I was loving her umbrella and the nice dry
air beneath. I looked down at Hannah alone in the mist-rain and
wondered why she didn’t come up. Her brown hair was gathering
crystals that sparkled in the porch light, but would soon condense
into drops. She seemed perched on some indecision.

I said, “We don’t know for a fact that Ada
was murdered by Luke. Not yet.”

“What a waste,” Hannah said. “My urban
farmer-self is laying out vegetable beds, a small orchard and a
chicken run. There’s got to be close to an acre of land around
Ada’s home. And those empty fields….”

Okay, she wasn’t pondering running away. She
was pondering backyard lifestyle. And making me feel guilty. Our
yard was mostly flowers, grass and weeds, with a smattering of
fruit trees.

I shivered from the cold and suddenly wanted
to get on with this chore so I could go home and warm up by a nice
fire. Or in a hot shower. Screwing up my courage with a deep
breath--it’s easy to talk big about breaking the law but another
thing entirely to actually do it, usually makes me worry for days
afterward that the police will arrive any minute to drag me off to
jail--I said rather loudly, “Was that a scream for help I just
heard?”

I thought I saw Gerry smile a bit. “Might
have been. A little voice. Maybe a child’s? I think I heard it
too.”

“Uh, I’m feeling really anxious here,
girls,” Hannah said from her low spot.