Body Movers (6 page)

destined for. She walked out of her bedroom and looked

across the hall at Wesley’s closed bedroom door and

farther, at the end of the hall, to the closed door of her

parents’ room, left largely untouched except for the times

she’d gone in to dust or to adjust the heating and air-

conditioning vents. Daylight shining over the gray carpet in

the hal way revealed large shoe prints, evidence of where

the police had entered their home and confiscated

Wesley’s computer and phone equipment. A sense of

violation permeated her skin—the cramped living space

she’d tried to make a home for Wesley, compromised.

Using the toe of her shoe, she wiped out the footprints,

wondering if they belonged to Detective Jack Terry. The

mere thought of the man made a frown settle on her face

and the knowledge that he’d been in her home made her

feel naked, as if he knew intimate things about her. Had he

peeked into her bedroom, sneered at the girlish white

furniture, the pink Lil y Pulitzer linens and the fuzzy yel ow

chenil e robe she always left draped across the foot of the

bed? A flush climbed her neck when she remembered the

way he’d looked at her when she’d told him that her

father was Randolph Wren. He’d decided that she and

Wesley were from bad stock. Your father’s name is like a

bad smel .

The friendly warning he’d given her about the D.A.

notwithstanding, she had a feeling that Detective Terry

was going to stir up more trouble before he exited their

lives.

As she walked through the living room and into the

kitchen, her thoughts turned to Liz Fischer. She didn’t like

the fact that Wesley had called the woman. She didn’t

trust Liz. After her parents had skipped town, Liz had tried

to convince her that she was too young and il equipped to

raise Wesley, that his needs would be better served with a

foster family until her parents returned.

This from the woman who’d had an affair with her father.

Carlotta had hated the woman for trying to fracture her

family further, and it was Liz Fischer’s insufferable words

that had given her strength in the early years when she’d

thought she would col apse under the stress of raising

Wesley.

She knew what the woman was thinking now—that

Carlotta had done a crummy job of parenting and that

Wesley would have been better off with strangers.

And considering that he was head over heels in debt and

now facing jail time, Carlotta couldn’t exactly disagree.

Maybe Wesley would have been better off with two

authority figures who weren’t bogged down with their

own emotional baggage, who weren’t struggling to make

ends meet, who weren’t, deep down, yearning for a life of

their own.

Carlotta walked into the kitchen, massaging her temples

and craving a Starbucks latte. But since they were facing

unknown expenses, she poured water into the automatic

coffeepot and waited for the homemade brew to trickle

out. She walked around and straightened things that might

have been moved by the police, or perhaps she was just

being paranoid. What was it that Detective Terry had said?

Don’t worry—we didn’t trash your place. That only

happens on TV.

Pushing the unpleasant thought—and the unpleasant

man—from her mind, she glanced around the red-themed

kitchen and contemplated repainting. All the rooms

decorated under her mother’s heavy hand were looking a

little dated. In fact, she’d love to sel the town house

outright and find another place for them to live,

someplace with only two bedrooms and a larger living

area, rather than having to walk by their parents’ empty

bedroom every day. But Wesley wouldn’t hear of moving.

He was afraid they would miss a postcard or a phone

call…or the reappearance of their prodigal parents.

Heaving a sigh, Carlotta fil ed an insulated mug with coffee

and cream to drink during the drive to work. Then she

grabbed her purse and walked through the living room to

the front door.

In the corner of the living room, the small aluminum fringe

Christmas tree that had occupied the same spot for the

ten years that her parents had been gone stirred anger in

her stomach. Her mother had put up the tacky little tree

the day after Thanksgiving and put a few presents under it,

then had skipped town with their father two weeks later.

Carlotta often wondered if her mother had felt guilty

about abandoning her children just before Christmas, if

Valerie had considered the tears that Wesley had shed

Christmas morning when she and their father had failed to

return, dashing his hopes for a Christmas surprise.

Carlotta loathed the raggedy little tree that had lost most

of its luster, but Wesley had insisted that they leave the

tree up and the presents underneath so they could

celebrate when their parents came home. She had been

eager to comfort her little brother in those first few weeks

and months after her parents had left, but eventually she

had begun to resent the tree’s lopsided shape and the

pathetic little pile of presents underneath. She’d long

forgotten what she’d wrapped to give to her mother and

father, and no longer cared what they had given to her.

Several times over the years she had broached the subject

of taking down the tree or, when money had been tight, of

opening the gifts in the event that they contained cash,

only to be met with Wesley’s curt refusal. He was

obsessed with the tree, as if somehow by taking it down,

they would be giving up on their parents ever coming

home. That ship had sailed for her years ago, but she

couldn’t bring herself to hurt Wesley yet again by taking it

down. Turmoil rol ed in her empty stomach. She was never

sure how to handle her sensitive, quirky brother, so she

usually erred on the soft side.

Too soft, apparently.

She opened the door, stepped out onto the stoop and

bent to retrieve the newspaper. Around her, the

neighborhood was peaceful, if a little shabby. Downsizing

from their lavish home in a tony neighborhood to a town

house in a “transitional” area had been a blow to her

mother, who had chirped that it was only temporary and

then taken another drinkie-poo.

“Carlotta!”

Carlotta winced, then turned to face her busybody

neighbor. “Good morning, Mrs. Winningham. How are you

today?”

The woman stood on the stoop next door with her head

jutted forward, her eyes narrowed. “Why were the police

at your place yesterday?”

Carlotta gave a hoarse little laugh. “Oh, that? It was a

mistake. They were at the wrong address.”

Mrs. Winningham frowned. “I saw them carry a bunch of

computers out of there.”

“Everything is fine, Mrs. Winningham. I have to run—I’m

late.” Carlotta jogged down the steps and toward the

garage while holding down the button on the remote

control for the garage door. The noise of the door going up

drowned out the woman’s words, and Carlotta waved

cheerful y as she swung into her dark blue Monte Carlo.

She muttered a curse under her breath at the woman’s

snooping, then started her car.

The Monte Carlo was another sore spot—she loathed the

car. Her beloved ten-year-old white Miata convertible sat

like a sick and neglected pet next to her new car. Just

before last Christmas, her Miata had died and she couldn’t

afford to have it fixed. So she’d taken advantage of a

dealer’s offer to test-drive a vehicle for twenty-four hours

before buying it. Except the night she had taken the

vehicle out for a test-drive was the night that she and her

friends had crashed the party where a man had been

murdered. She’d been taken to the police station for

questioning and the car impounded. When she’d been

released and had finally tracked down the car, the twenty-

four-hour return period had expired and she owned the

car by default.

The money that her friend Jolie had given her had kept

Carlotta from having to sel her beloved, crippled Miata

convertible to satisfy Wesley’s debt. She stil held out hope

to have it back in working condition someday so she could

get rid of the Monte Carlo—although what the Monte

Carlo was worth amounted to less than what she owed on

it.

Her life was a catastrophe.

Next to her Miata sat another thorn in her side: Wesley’s

newly acquired motorcycle, a fluorescent-green crotch

rocket. He’d already received so many speeding tickets, his

driver’s license had been suspended, which only made him

more prone to stay at home in his room and mess around

with his computers.

Puffing out her cheeks in an exhale, she backed out of the

driveway, avoiding eye contact with Mrs. Winningham,

and steered the car toward the Lenox Mall. She knew

every curve of the road of her commute. The first traffic

light would stay red long enough for her to take a long

drink of coffee and scan the first three pages of the

newspaper. The second light would stay red long enough

to allow her to read any article that had caught her eye.

The article that caught her eye this morning reported a

rash of crimes in the area surrounding the mall where she

worked—purse snatchings, muggings at gunpoint, even an

attempted assault. There were also some disturbing

reports of a ring of identity thieves operating in the

Buckhead area. And then she saw it:

Man Arrested and Charged With Breaking Into Atlanta

Courthouse Records—Wesley Wren, 19, of Atlanta was

arrested yesterday and charged with hacking into the

records of the Atlanta City Courthouse database, a federal

offense. A police spokesperson wouldn’t comment on how

much data might have been compromised during the

break-in, but maintained that records confidentiality and

identity theft is a top priority for the department and that

hackers wil be prosecuted “vigorously.”

Vigorously. Carlotta scowled. Since Detective Jack Terry

had used that exact wording during their conversation, it

wasn’t a stretch to identify him as the officer who had

leaked the story to the newspaper. And he had pretended

to be sympathetic to her situation. The brute.

The sound of blaring car horns jarred her back to the

traffic. The light was green and Atlanta drivers brooked no

hesitation. She gunned forward, begrudgingly admitting

that the Monte Carlo’s engine did have some pickup, and

fumed all the way to work. How many of her co-workers

would see the article? And Angela Ashford would be able

to tell her girlfriends that she was there when Carlotta had

received the call from her jailbird brother—but then, like

father, like son, of course.

With her exit looming, Carlotta wondered idly what would

happen if she just kept driving up Interstate 75 and didn’t

stop until she was…somewhere else, far away from

Atlanta. What would everyone think—that she’d been

abducted, or perhaps had suffered some kind of mental

breakdown? No, everyone would assume that she had run

from her problems, as her parents had. Some might even

think she’d gone to join them.

That thought, combined with the knowledge that she

couldn’t abandon Wesley, not when he was in so much

trouble, made her put on her signal and take the exit, as

she’d done thousands of times over the past ten years.

A few minutes later she slid into a parking place, jumped

out and trotted toward the elevator. She was only a few

minutes late, but the general manager, Lindy Russel , was

still perturbed with Carlotta over the clothes-borrowing

business and was keeping a close eye on her. When

Carlotta opened the door to the meeting room, Lindy, who

was standing, paused midsentence to frown. “Nice of you

to join us, Carlotta.”

Carlotta flushed and slipped into a seat in the back row,

next to Michael Lane.

“You’re late,” he whispered.

“Did you take care of Double-A yesterday?” she whispered

back.

“Yes. She was drunk on her pretty ass and not happy with

you.”

She winced. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry—I rang up the sale under your employee ID.”

She grinned. “You’re a gem.”

“I know.”

She looked toward the front of the meeting room. “What

did I miss?”

“Nothing. It’s security update time.”

Sure enough, the mall security director, a tall, wiry man

with a crew cut, sat in a chair next to Lindy.

“With the upswing in crime in the area around the mall,”

Lindy was saying, “I asked our security director, Akin

Frasier, to sit in on our meeting, and a representative from

the Atlanta PD to join us and share some tips to help all of

us be more safety conscious.”

Since safety updates were fairly routine—and routinely

boring—Carlotta settled in to enjoy the rest of her coffee.

“Please welcome Detective Jack Terry.”

Carlotta choked back her surprise, and then joined in the