Last Writes (2 page)

“You’ve stayed in touch with our brothers?” Kelly asked. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re a lot closer in age to the boys than to me.”

“I talk with Sean a couple times a year maybe. He lets me know if he hears anything from Mom. She calls him once in a while.”

Claudia sensed Kelly stiffen. Erin didn’t know that she had just wandered into dangerous territory. She was unaware of the tacit agreement that Kelly’s mother was a topic to be avoided if at all possible.

“Those would be the times when she wants to hit him up for money,” Kelly muttered.

Erin made a sound of distress. “Fine, Kelly, I get it that you hate Mom, but she’s not—”

“Let’s not go there, Erin. You and Sean weren’t around when I was raising Mickey and Pat. Mom was out hurling herself at as many bars as would take the grocery money. It’s only thanks to sheer luck and the goodwill of people like Claudia’s parents and some of the other neighbors pitching in that the rest of us didn’t starve or get split up and put into foster care long before you were ever born.”

Erin’s eyes widened. “But she’s—I didn’t know it was going on that long.”

“I’ll just
bet
you didn’t.”

The sudden burst of hostility charged the air and Claudia found her neck and shoulders aching from the tension. As she reached up to massage the taut muscles, another flash of memory washed over her: the day the Brennan family moved into the rattiest house on the block.

The hand-lettered cardboard For Rent sign had finally disappeared from the front yard of the old Drew house across the street and a few doors down from Claudia’s parents’ home. The sign had stood there since the previous Christmas when the widowed Mr. Drew had suffered a massive stroke. His children, who apparently had their own busy lives and couldn’t be persuaded to take him in, had moved him into a nursing home, where he died six weeks later. A Realtor hammered the For Rent sign into the grass the day after the funeral.

On that Saturday, the weekend before Claudia was due to enter kindergarten, the weeds in the yard of the Drew house were taller than the flowers they choked. The concrete driveway was cracked and stained with the oil of the 1952 Dodge Coronet that had previously rested there, probably since before she was born, and had now been towed away.

Squeezing herself behind an ancient elm in her parents’ garden, six-year-old Claudia watched two sweaty men in sleeveless T-shirts unload a moving van stacked with furniture shabby enough to match the house. A car pulled into the driveway. She could still remember being impressed by the woman who climbed out of the driver’s seat. Ruby red halter top, shorts that showed off long, tanned legs. Georgia Brennan, Claudia later learned. The mother.

Three children spilled out of the car. Two small boys and a little girl around Claudia’s own age. They had been out of the car only moments before the girl was running around the yard in a futile attempt to corral the boys.

“Kelly Ann Brennan!” the mother screeched, oblivious of curtains twitching in disapproval in windows across the street. “Can’t you do anything right, you lazy girl? You’re about as useless as your father was. Didn’t I tell you to watch your brothers?” The mother’s voice reached a pitch that could set dogs howling. “You get those boys inside right now and wash them up. And don’t let me see or hear a peep from any of you till dinner. You hear me, Kelly Ann? Do you
hear
me? What did I just say?”

That night, Claudia’s own mother held forth over dinner about what she termed “that unladylike caterwauling.” It was the first of her many commentaries on the Brennan family matriarch.

On Monday, when she and Kelly met on their way to the first day of school, Claudia had invited her new friend over to play with her Barbie dolls. Kelly looked like she desperately wanted to say yes, but instead she told Claudia that she had to go straight home and take care of her brothers because her mother would be passed out on the couch. At the time, Claudia hadn’t understood what that meant, but over the years there were many occasions where she saw for herself.

Before Kelly turned sixteen, two more fatherless Brennan kids—Erin and Sean—were crammed into the two-bedroom house. But by then, Kelly spent most of her free time at Claudia’s home anyway. She made her escape from the sardine can with great relief when Claudia’s parents invited her to live with them full-time until the girls completed high school.

When Georgia Brennan informed her eldest daughter that she was moving her four younger children to Banning, where housing was far cheaper, Kelly had said nothing. Banning was only about a ninety-minute drive from their current home in Santa Monica, but it might as well have been a thousand miles away.

 

Returning her attention to the present, Claudia realized that the uncomfortable silence between the sisters was unbroken. She cleared her throat and prepared to mediate. “Why don’t we get back to the little girl who’s missing? That’s where we need to focus our attention.”

Kelly’s cheeks puffed as she blew out a long breath. “You’re so right, Claud. The only thing we should concentrate on is making sure my niece is safe.”

“You’re gonna help me, aren’t you, Kelly?” Erin looked young and vulnerable as she made her appeal. “Sean said you’re a really smart attorney and you’d know what to do.”

“He said that because I kept him out of jail when he got arrested for dealing pot. But that’s another story. I think we have to take this note to the police. This line about ‘the suffering’ is scaring the crap out of me.”

“We can ask Joel about it,” Claudia suggested. “He can tell us who to talk to.”

Kelly made a gun finger and pointed it at her. “Obvious choice. But first, I think we need some more information about what kind of person Rodney is.”

“There’s a lot of information in this handwriting sample,” Claudia said. “And as I said earlier, some of it is troublesome.”

Kelly said, “If you were to write up a report on it, we might be able to get a judge to—”

“Wait,” Erin interrupted. “Who’s Joel?”

“He’s my guy—my—”
Boyfriend
felt slightly ridiculous at forty. Significant Other was worse. “He’s a detective with LAPD.”

Erin looked doubtful. “I’m not so sure we should—I mean, I don’t want Rod to get in any trouble. I don’t think he would actually
hurt
Kylie.”

“Well, pardon me,” Kelly said, throwing up her hands. “But what about what he wrote in this note? Holy Christ, Erin, if you don’t think Kylie is in trouble, what the hell are you here for?”

“I didn’t know what else to do.” Erin rubbed her hands over her face, which was pretty, even without the benefit of any makeup. “He didn’t take Tickle with them. That’s what really got me worried.”

“Tickle?
Who, or
what
is Tickle?”

Erin leaned down, unzipped her bag again and reached inside. When she withdrew her hand, she was holding a fuzzy brown stuffed bunny that had seen a lot of wear. “Kylie never, ever goes anywhere without Tickle. That means she had to be asleep when Rod took her. She’s probably come totally unglued by now.”

The three women looked at each other with sober faces, fully comprehending the importance of the stuffed toy to a small child.

“What the hell was Rod thinking, Erin?” Kelly asked. “Don’t you have any idea at all why he would take Kylie like this? What do you think he plans to do with her?”

Erin shook her head. “I don’t know, Kelly, I just don’t know.”

“Why don’t you tell us what led up to it,” Claudia encouraged her. “Something like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. What’s been going on lately between you?”

Erin began to speak, slowly at first, drawing the words out as if she were reluctant to part with them. “We’ve been arguing on and off for a couple of days. He never said anything about leaving, though. I never guessed he would take the baby! Can’t you do something, Kelly?”

“Is he Kylie’s father?” Kelly asked.

“Of course he is,” Erin said indignantly.

“And you’re legally married?”

“Yes! We’ve been married almost six years.”

“You got married at eighteen?” Kelly looked as if she was going to explode, but she forced herself to stay on track. “Has he ever abused her or you? Hit you or . . . ?”

“No, of course he’s never done anything like that. We’re God-fearing people. He’s a little older than me, but Rod’s been a good husband. We did missionary work together for three years before I got pregnant.”

“Even missionaries can get into trouble,” Kelly pointed out. “How much older than you is he?”

Erin answered reluctantly. “He’s thirty-eight.”

Kelly did a quick calculation in her head. “Fourteen years is more than just
a bit
older, honey child. Okay, like Claudia said, we’ll start by talking to Joel about taking the note to the police; see if he thinks they would view it as a threat since there’s a child involved.”

“I’ll call him right now,” Claudia said, taking out her cell phone.

Kelly rose and stretched her arms high above her head. “Erin, let’s go to the kitchen while she’s making the call. I could use a cold one.”

Claudia watched them go, hoping her friend was talking about iced tea or a soda. Kelly had been working hard at staying sober and for the past several months had been successful. She hoped the stress of Erin’s situation wouldn’t push her into changing that.

 

After a disappointing chat with Jovanic, Claudia joined the sisters in the kitchen.

“He said that as Kylie’s father, Rodney has a legal right to take her. I asked him about the possibility of issuing an Amber Alert, but he said under the circumstances, they can’t. The wording of the note is ambiguous. It’s not a direct threat, so there’s no evidence that he intends to harm her.”

“Damn.” The ice cubes clinked against the glass as Kelly handed Claudia a diet cola. She turned to the refrigerator and got out a bag of French rolls, mayonnaise and mustard, sliced meats and cheese, arranged them on the kitchen counter. Claudia had a feeling that it wasn’t because Kelly was in the mood for lunch; she just needed something to do, to help her contain the agitation that her busy hands telegraphed.

She returned to the refrigerator, dug in the crisper drawer and found a tomato and lettuce. Went back for a jar of pickles. Went back again, but found nothing more. “Let’s talk about the handwriting,” she said, busying herself with her sandwich making. “You saw danger signs, didn’t you, Claud?”

Claudia chose her words with care. “There are indications of some . . . problems. But I’d like to enlarge the note on the computer so I can look at it in more detail.” There was no point in offering a hasty opinion that could lead to mistakes. She added, “If you would scan it and e-mail it to me, Kel, I’ll have a proper look at it when I get home. Six-hundred DPI would be high enough resolution to show the fine points when I blow it up.”

She asked Erin to let her see the note again. The block printing Rodney Powers had penned on the scrap of lined paper told her that the writer had high control needs. He could be opinionated and more than a little self-important. It wouldn’t be easy to get to know him—or to break through his defenses if he didn’t want to believe something, regardless of how hard one tried to convince him.

Flipping the paper over, she ran her fingers across the back, feeling ridges where the pen had dug hard into the paper on the other side. She glanced over at Erin, who was watching her closely. “Do you know what kind of surface he wrote on?” she asked. “Do you think he might have put a magazine under the paper, or something like that?”

“We don’t read outsider magazines,” Erin said. “We just took our Bibles. I’m pretty sure he wrote it on the kitchen table. That’s where I found it.”

Without comparing the note to additional samples of Rodney Powers’s handwriting, there was no way to know for certain whether the degree of emotional depth indicated by the considerable pen pressure was his habit, but of one thing Claudia was certain: when he wrote the note Rodney had been laboring under powerful emotions.

“He’s stubborn,” she mused aloud. “Needs to feel he’s in control. I believe he would have planned this ahead. This is not the type of person who would act on the spur of the moment without first knowing what he was going to do and how he was going to accomplish it. He’s not someone who easily caves under pressure.” She glanced over at Erin, who was twisting her tissue to shreds. “Who do you know that he might have gone to for help? It would be hard for a man to handle a small child on his own.”

Erin shook her head. “Not Rod. He’s crazy about Kylie. He spends more time with her than I do. He knows how to handle her. Anyway, he was raised TBL. He doesn’t know any outsiders.”

“TBL? What’s that?”

“Our church, The Temple of Brighter Light. We don’t associate with anyone who’s not a member. Well, unless it’s for a good reason, like this, of course. That’s why I’m sure Rod doesn’t know anyone outside well enough that he could ask for help.”

Kelly left her sandwich-making for a moment to wipe her hands on a kitchen towel. She tossed the towel onto the washing machine on the porch, then turned to her sister. “Erin, if you’re both so heavily involved in the church, how about your pastor? Wouldn’t Rodney listen to him?”

Erin looked as though she might begin to weep again. “Brother Harold would be so disappointed in him. I don’t want to tell him about Rod leaving. That’s why I have to find him and Kylie myself. With your help, I mean.”

“If you don’t associate with outsiders, can you think of anyone
inside
the church he might have turned to?” Claudia said. “Someone he has a close relationship with?”

“
All
the TBL members are close. It’s the most supportive, wonderful bunch of people you could ever meet. I’ve been a member since I was fifteen.”

Kelly said, “I was in the middle of a divorce back then. I was pretty messed up, but one of the boys told me that you’d run away from home.”