Death of an Irish Diva (13 page)

“Emily's mother?” Beatrice said, startled.

“We all have one, Ma,” Vera said. “She said they were off the grid.”

“Well, well,” Beatrice said. She'd known plenty of folks who were “off the grid” when Ed first started practicing medicine. Most of them were deep in the hills and distrusted the government. Women birthed their babies, usually with the help of a midwife, and folks buried their dead after a preacher said a word or two. And the government never had cause to know these folks. But . . . today? It would be harder to manage. Suddenly her understanding of Emily had shifted.

“So Emily was adopted into this secular Jewish family who lived in a hippie commune, and when she found out she was adopted, she turned her back on them.”

Vera nodded, then drank the rest of her water, walked over to the sink, and rinsed her glass.

“How did Lizzie do tonight?” Vera asked.

“She's done okay. Her temp has come way down. How was the crop?”

“Well, Rachel came in and talked about how memory keeping has no meaning in the universal grand scheme, or some such nonsense. Sounds like your kinda gal,” Vera said.

Beatrice said nothing. She shrugged her shoulders. She sat at her turquoise kitchen table, relishing the silence, regarding her daughter as she looked out the window.

“What's that?” Vera stood at attention. “Is there someone at the door?”

Beatrice shot up out of her chair, pulling her robe closer around her. Who could it be at this hour?

When she opened the back door, she was shocked to see Leola, the woman who now lived in Vera's house. She was bloody and limping.

“Oh!” Beatrice said. “Come in!”

Vera, who was quick on Beatrice's heels, helped to get Leola to the couch.

“I'm so sorry,” Leola managed to say. “Hate to wake you up . . .”

“We weren't sleeping,” Beatrice said. “What happened to you?”

“I—I don't know,” she said, then winced. “I mean, I was out for a stroll, and I don't know.... Maybe . . . I think someone pushed me.”

“You
think?
” Beatrice said.

She nodded her head. “I know it sounds crazy, but by the time I got up and looked around . . . there wasn't anybody there. Yet . . .”

“Yet?” Vera said.

“I swear I felt someone push me,” Leola said.

“Can I get you some water?” Beatrice said.

“Oh no, please,” she said. “Can you just call my husband? I think I need to go to the hospital. It's my ankle.” She pulled up her jogging suit pant leg and pulled back her sock.

“Oh my,” Vera said, springing into action. “I'll get some ice. Mama, you can call her husband.”

Just then, Jon came padding downstairs.

Beatrice waved him off as she reached for the phone.

“Please try to keep her calm,” Leola's husband told Beatrice.

“What? Why?”

“She has a tendency to get a bit, um, hysterical,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, looking over at Leola, who seemed more like she was in pain than hysterical. Jon was approaching her, and Vera was placing an ice pack on her ankle.

“But who would have pushed you?” Jon said.

“I don't know,” Leola said, wincing again. “It was dark. And whoever it was ran off very quickly. I was cutting through the alley.”

A feeling came over Beatrice just then. A feeling she hadn't had in a long time. She felt her dead husband's presence. She could smell him. Was that him touching her hand? She looked behind her to see nothing. Yet she knew he was there. She knew to pay attention. This was a warning from him. But what was he warning her about?

Leola turned her face up at an angle, reminding Beatrice of Kelsey. She really favored her. Were they related?

“Leola, do you have any family around here?”

“No really,” she said. “Just my kids and husband.”

“Oh,” Beatrice said.

“Well, there is my niece, but we hardly see her. Busy law student at U. Va.”

“Her name Kelsey?”

“Why, yes. How—”

“I believe we met her at the hospital,” Beatrice revealed.

“Wha—”

“It seems your niece is living with my ex-husband,” Vera said, crossing her arms.

“Your Bill is the man she's been dating?” Leola's voice rose two decibels. Her hands went to her mouth in shock.

“Yes, I'm afraid so,” Beatrice said.

“Well, that's just weird,” Leola finally said, wincing, moving the ice pack around on her ankle a bit before settling it on one spot.

“It's a small world,” Vera said.

She grimaced. “Yeah, there's that. Kelsey talks about him like he's Adonis, so handsome, so intelligent.” She rolled her eyes. “You know how I feel about Bill.”

Beatrice cackled. She couldn't help it. Leola didn't mince words.

“In fact, I told you I'd be happy to rep you if they ever charge you, Vera.”

“With what?” Beatrice said, hackles up.

“Oh, Mama, don't worry.”

“Now, wait. They haven't charged you with murder yet, and you're the only person that they can place at the scene of the crime?” Leola said.

“They know my daughter didn't kill Emily McGlashen, whether or not her purse just happened to be there, and let me tell you—”

“Your taxi awaits,” interrupted Leola's husband, entering the room with a flourish. “Or should I say ambulance,” he said as he regarded her black and blue ankle, so swollen that it hardly looked like an ankle anymore.

Annie liked to spend Sundays with her boys, but today both of them had a birthday party to go to at the local YMCA, a pool party, and Mike never missed the opportunity for a swim.

“I'm hoping for chocolate cake,” Ben said over breakfast that morning.

“Whatever kind of cake it is, you need to remember to be polite and thank the Meadows family for it,” Annie said.

Ben shrugged. “Yeah, I know that, Mom.”

“Me too,” Sam said. “I wonder if there will be gift bags.”

Annie sighed. All the recent birthday parties her boys had gone to had sent them home with gift bags with cheap little toys and candy in them. Her boys loved them. She and Mike hated them.

Mike mussed Sam's hair. “You know the party is about Frankie, not you.”

Sam looked at him with his dark eyebrows lifted, as if to say, “So?”

“I like the Meadows,” Mike said and then took a long drink of his juice. “I'm glad you boys found some good friends.”

The family was new in Cumberland Creek, and Annie liked them, too. The boys had other friends, of course, but Annie was never too certain about whom to trust with her boys. There was that incident at school last year, when Ben got into a fistfight over the Weekly Religious Education program. One of the children told him he'd go to hell because he didn't believe in Jesus. And there were other, less violent incidents. Like the time Sam couldn't go to a Christmas gathering because it was the first night of Hanukkah. Or the time Ben went to a friend's house and was served pork. Her boys were getting the message: they were different. She didn't want them to feel badly about themselves because of it. Even though they were not fully practicing, they still held fast to some Jewish traditions.

After the boys left, Annie spread her book notes out on the floor, grouping them into interviews, research, articles, and hunches. Mike always laughed at the hunch file. Funny, because at least one of those hunches always panned out for Annie. She would allow herself time to “play” with the evidence, what she felt about it, mull it over, and write about it.

One of these days maybe she'd write a book about her hunches. Of course, her editors would call it reporters' intuition. Cookie would call it psychic.

Some of the stuff that Emily's mother had spouted reminded her of Cookie. She decided she'd check Emily's mother and keyed in the name Rachel Greenberg. Of course, there was nothing online about her. She'd said they were off the grid. Annie smirked. What was the point?

Her computer screen froze. The thing was so old that she was certain she'd have to get a new one soon. Where would they get the money for that?

While she restarted her computer, she reached for another file and started leafing through it.
Oh. The Emily file.
She glanced over the list of her financial information. Mostly it was just like everybody else's, with a savings account, credit cards, cell phone, rent, and so on. Just this one weird item, where she sent three thousand dollars a month to a bank account in Switzerland. Annie had e-mailed them and had yet to hear back. Who knew if they'd ever get back to her? She wondered if Bryant should just get the FBI involved. They might be able to get quicker answers than some freelance reporter. But she knew how he hated the FBI. And he had every right to after what they pulled on him during the NMO case.

Annie still wasn't certain that Cookie herself wasn't some kind of FBI operative. She and Bryant had discussed that possibility. Suddenly, she wondered if he knew that Emily's parents were still in town and it looked they were planning to stay. She reached for her cell. Then dropped it.
No,
she told herself.
He'll find out, and it won't be from me. Not today, when I have the house to myself, the whole day stretched out before me. A day where I really need to focus. Not Adam.
She pushed him from her mind.

Her cell phone buzzed. It was Vera.

“Hi, Vera,” Annie said.

“Are you working?”

“I'm trying to focus. It's not easy today.”

“Listen,” Vera said, “Emily's mom gave me this great idea last night.”

“Really?”

“Well, we were talking about retracing Emily's last day, you know the day of her murder, retracing her footsteps.”

“Adam and I have already done that.”

“Adam? Well.”

“Um, I mean, Detective Bryant. You know who I'm talking about,” Annie said.

“I didn't know you two were on such a first-name basis.”

“Could we not get into this now?” Annie said after a few minutes of awkward silence. “What did you call for?”

“I think it might be a good idea to retrace my footsteps the night of Emily's murder.”

“Why?”

“Look, Annie, I'm not a killer. You know it. I know it. But the whole town is talking about me. I had an incident at the Pie Palace. I have a business to run. A business with children involved. I'm worried about my reputation.”

“How will this solve anything?”

“There's a part of me . . . ,” Vera said and sighed. “There's a part of me that really wonders why my purse turned up in her studio. It bothers me. I just think if we could go back and sort of go through it, it might trigger a memory of someone or something. I don't know.”

Vera had been giving this a lot of thought, which meant that Beatrice was right when she told Annie the situation troubled Vera deeply. But given Vera's fragile state of mind, Annie didn't know whether this was a good idea or not. What if she remembered something unpleasant? What would happen then?

“Have you talked to Bea about it?”

“Yes, she suggested I get my doctor involved and we try hypnosis, which, as luck would have it, we have already been working on. But I think that's a bit much, don't you?” she said and laughed.

“I think you should talk to your doctor and see what she thinks,” Annie said.

“What? Why? I don't need to get the whole town involved.”

“No. But you've been sleepwalking . . . under a lot of stress.... I think it's best.”

Vera didn't argue before they hung up the phone. She sighed and went on to another subject. After finishing the conversation, Annie wrote two chapters of the book on the NMO, started supper, and took a bath, which was interrupted by her loud boys coming home late in the afternoon.

“I don't understand it. Nothing was stolen,” Vera told Detective Bryant over the phone.

“I know. I know,” he said. “But my team has had a really thorough look at Lizzie's room, and we think someone else was there that night. You must have interrupted them.”

She thought about her confusion that night, set off by the panic of Lizzie's high fever. By then, of course, nothing had mattered but getting her daughter to the hospital.

“But why would they want to rob me? It's common knowledge that I'm broke and I've moved into a tiny apartment. What could they want from me?”

“I'm not sure,” he said after a minute. “Could be anything. Thieves will take stuff and sell it. It doesn't have to be money they are after from you. And they might not know you at all. So they don't know you're broke,” he added and paused. “We've gotten a few fingerprints from the window and some hair.”

“Hair?”

“Yeah, there was some hair on the carpet. Long strands of it. It looks like there was at least one woman in the room,” he told her.

“A woman? In Lizzie's room?” Vera felt her whole body react in a psychic fit. A strange woman in her daughter's room, perhaps looking at Elizabeth? Scaring Elizabeth? Oh, damn. If only she could remember something about that night. How she got in Elizabeth's room. What woke her? Was she responding to a noise? Or was she just sleepwalking?

“Now, if our perp has a record, the fingerprints will pop up on our system fairly quickly. The DNA test on hair? Well, that could take a while and may not lead anywhere at all, I'm sorry to say. But it's worth a shot. This might lead us straight to the robber. I've seen it before.”

Vera sat at her mother's kitchen table. Beatrice and Jon had gone out for a walk and had taken Lizzie with them. She was glad to be alone with the news, if only for a few minutes. She needed to sit with all of this and make some kind of peace with it.

The timer on the oven went off. First things first. Strawberry muffins, made with fresh strawberries from her mom's berry patch, or what was left of it while the excavation was going on. She pulled the muffins out of the oven and nearly swooned at the smell. Her taste buds stood at attention.

She placed the muffin tin on the counter, allowing the muffins time to cool off, and looked out her mother's kitchen window, as she had countless times over the years. Such comfort in the view of a neighbor's well-tended home, spring flowers blooming everywhere, some in pretty pink flower boxes. Mountains in the distance, a backdrop for every scene in Cumberland Creek. Such comfort could be found at her mother's home, in her kitchen, looking out the window, with the scent of strawberry muffins filling her. Maybe she could stay here awhile longer.

Who was she kidding? Maybe she should stay here forever. It would solve a lot of her problems. The money. Help with Lizzie. Safety.

But it didn't sit right with her to be in her forties and living with her mom and Jon. She should be on her own.
Should be.
Life wasn't supposed to be this way. It was against everything she had grown up believing. You worked hard, provided for your kids, and marriages lasted.

Surprisingly, a tear stung at the corner of her eye. What could she have done differently? Could she have seen any of it coming?

Oh, well. No point in going there.
She shrugged and then began scooping the muffins out of the tin, placing them on a plate. None of it really mattered when she intently considered it. She'd done her best with the information she had. Now her decisions had to include what was best for Lizzie. Was it best for Lizzie to grow up here with Jon and Beatrice, in the same house she had grown up in?

The thought held a kind of comfort to her one minute, and the next it frustrated her. She wanted to be on her own with her daughter. She could do it. This was just a blip. She'd have to do something about the fire escape, the lead, and maybe keep Lizzie in her room with her until that happened. There was a way to settle her nerves about this. She just knew it.

Her cell phone buzzed. She answered without looking at the screen.

“Vera?” It was a male voice she didn't recognize.

“Yes, this is Vera.”

“It's Eric Green. Dr. Green?”

“Oh, yes!” Vera had forgotten he said he'd call her. She'd not given it another thought.

“How's Elizabeth?”

“She's getting better. She's out on a walk with Mama and Jon. Her energy is almost back to normal.”

“That's great news,” he said. “Um, listen, we've talked a few times, and I think it would be fun for you and me to get together, say, for dinner one night?”

Vera's senses were suddenly overloading. Her heart raced, her palms sweat, and she felt the fluttering of nerves in her stomach.

“Vera?”

“Yes, yes, I'm sorry. Did you just ask me out on a date?” she blurted.

He laughed. “Yes, I think I did. Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course! And I'd be happy to have dinner with you. . . .”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing really,” she said, feeling herself blush. “It's just that I haven't been on a date in twenty years or so.”

Did she just tell him that? Why was she so willing to spill her guts to this man? It was true that she hadn't been on a date in years. What she and Tony had been doing wasn't dating at all. They had basically been just sleeping together, trying to recapture their youth. And she'd not heard from him in months. Just as well.

He laughed again. “Well, you're in good company. It's been a while for me, too. Shall we say Friday?”

“Friday is good for me,” she said.

When they hung up, Vera suddenly felt lighter. Even though she had forgotten he said he'd call, she was pleased he had remembered. That said something about the man. It probably would come to nothing, she told herself, but dinner with a nice man who happened to know her family very well was going to at least be a pleasant way to pass the time. One could always use a good friend.