Look Closely (12 page)

“I know, but I’m hoping your dad wil add some more to the mix. Maybe he’l be able to explain everything. Even if that happens, I’m stil going to Portland to see Caroline’s husband. I want to help him if I can. And I want to meet my sister again.”

Just then a woman appeared in the doorway of the Mannings’house and waved at the car. She had short hair the same rust color as Ty’s and wore jeans with a sleeveless mint-green sweater.

“That’s my mom,” Ty said with a laugh. “And she’l come out to the car and get us if we don’t move.”

I glanced at Ty, at the affection on his face while he looked at his mother, and I felt a pang of envy. I would never get my mother back, but maybe I would be recovering members of my family soon. “Let’s go then,” I said.

The Mannings’ house felt like a quaint, seaside cottage, even though it was miles from the lake. Wood furniture painted white was mixed with quilts, embroidered pil ows and decorative flowerpots. Ty had told me that his mom was instrumental in decorating Long Beach Inn, and I could tel that she must have done the room where I was staying.

“Hailey, how are you? It’s so nice to meet you,” Mrs. Manning said. She squeezed my forearm. “Now, please cal me Bert. My real name is Roberta, but I hate it. Let’s get you a glass of wine.”

Bert looked as though she might be in her forties, rather than approaching sixty as Ty had told me. She was the kind of mother I’d always wished for, one I could have fun with, who I could have a drink with and confide in. It was obvious that Bert and Ty were close judging by the glances and private jokes that passed between them.

“Your father’s late,” Bert said, removing a tray of lasagna from the oven.

“Surprise, surprise,” Ty said.

“So we’re going to let this cool and start on the salads without him.”

The three of us sat down at a whitewashed kitchen table with leaves hand-painted in the corners. I passed on the wine that Bert offered. The thought of it made my stomach shriek. Over a large salad and a loaf of garlic bread, Ty and his mother talked about Ty’s older brother, who was a computer programmer in Chicago, and his younger sister, who was getting a master’s degree in child psychology at Northwestern.

“She said she’s definitely going for the Ph.D. after this,” Bert said. “Can you believe it?”

“Of course,” Ty said, eating his salad, “and she’l probably run for president after that.”

Ty and Bert both laughed, and I felt a wave of longing again for a family like this, the kind that knew each other so wel .

“So, Hailey,” Bert said, offering me the basket of bread again. “Ty said you’re from Manhattan, is that right?”

I took a slice. “I’ve lived in NewYork for years now, but my family used to live here—a long time ago.”

“Oh!” Bert said. Apparently Ty hadn’t told her that much, and it confirmed my feelings that I could trust him. I had asked Ty not to let his parents know why I wanted to meet them. I hoped to bring the conversation around natural y and see what came up. Experience taught me that I often got more information from witnesses when they didn’t know what I was going to ask them.

“WouldIhaveknownyourparents?”Bertasked.

“I’m not sure. Wil and Leah Sutter?”

Bert made a thoughtful face. “Sure, I remember them. Your dad was the lawyer for this town for a number of years.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’d forgotten that, because he doesn’t do municipal work anymore.”

“I remember everyone was so proud that we had a big Chicago lawyer representing us. And I remember your mom, too, honey.” Bert’s tone was lower now. “I didn’t know her wel , but what I knew of her I liked, and I was so sorry to hear that she’d died.”

“Thankyou,”Isaid,althoughitfeltoddtoaccept condolences over a woman who’d passed away so

long ago, a woman I had a hard time remembering.

“Did your father ever remarry?”

“Oh, no.” It was the same answer I always gave. Often I would go on, explaining that my father had been too in love with my mom to ever replace her, but this time I fel silent because of the separation. I had no idea whose decision that had been. Was it a mutual one because they had fal en out of love? Or had one of them done something to the other, something they couldn’t forgive?

Therewasasecondofsilenceandthenthesound of a car pul ing into the garage. A minute later, the garage door leading into the kitchen opened.

“Hi, honey,” Bert cal ed without even looking at the door. “How were the fish?”

Lou Manning stepped into the room, carrying a large duffel bag over his shoulder. Like Ty, he wasn’t a large man, but there was a presence about him. His brown-gray hair was thinning, and he had intense dark eyes. When he smiled at his wife, though, the solemn face broke.

“Hi, dol ,” he said in a quiet voice. He nodded at his son, and said, “Ty.” Then his eyes turned to me. He gave another nod of his head.

“Dad, this is Hailey Sutter,” Ty said.

I crossed the room to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you, Chief.”

His face had returned to its serious cast, and he didn’t meet my hand. “Cal me Lou. I’m filthy from fishing. I’l just grab a shower.” He moved around me and into the next room, and soon we could hear him climbing the stairs.

I let my hand fal to my side and took my seat again.

“His bark is worse than his bite,” Ty said.

“That’s for sure,” Bert said. She picked up her glass. “You definitely won’t have any wine, Hailey?”

“Oh, no,” I said, and I could almost feel Ty’s smirk. “I had a little too much to drink last night.”

“Wel then, you’l need more bread,” Bert said. She put a few more pieces on my plate. “Soak it al up.”

Chief Manning returned ten minutes later with comb marks in his wet hair, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans. He walked to his wife and kissed her on the top of her head.

“Did you bring us any fish?” Bert asked him.

He nodded. “It’s in the freezer in the garage.”

“Good. Then we’l have a fish fry this week. Hailey, maybe you could come back for dinner again?” Bert got up from the table and began cutting the lasagna.

“I wish I could,” I said, “but I’m leaving tomorrow. I may be coming back to Chicago for business, but I’m not sure when.”

I looked at Ty’s face as I said this and saw him glance down at his plate. I couldn’t read his expression, but I hoped it was a little sadness over me leaving. Under different circumstances, I could get very interested in a guy like Ty, someone undeniably attractive, someone who wanted to understand where I came from, who wanted to support me. But these weren’t different circumstances. I stil lived in Manhattan, and I stil had to leave tomorrow. I would go to Portland to meet Matt, and then get back to New York the next day. I’d have tons of work piled up by then.

I felt someone’s eyes on me, and I turned my head to see that Chief Manning had taken the seat to my left and was watching me closely.

“Chief Manning—Lou, I mean,” I said. It was hard to imagine being on a first-name basis with this imposing man. “My family used to live here in town, and Ty mentioned you might have worked on a case that involved my mother.”

He didn’t say anything, but he gave a single nod of his head. I wasn’t sure if this was an acknowledgment that I was right, or encouragement to keep talking.

“My mother passed away,” I continued, nervous now, “when I was seven. Ty said you might have looked into the matter.”

“Leah Sutter.” He said this matter-of-factly, not as a question.

“Yes, that’s right. Do you remember this at al ?”

Another nod.

“Dad, how about helping her out a little bit?” Ty said.

Lou glanced at his son, then back to me. “It was a long time ago, but I remember. What do you need to know?”

The kitchen went silent, and I had the sense that even Bert, standing over the lasagna at the stove, was waiting for my answer.

“It’s just that I was so little,” I said. I tried to make my words light and chatty, as if I had this conversation often. “And I don’t know much about how she died. I’m curious.”

“Wel , let’s see.” Lou put his hand to the col ar of his flannel shirt and slowly pul ed at it. “Your mother died from blunt trauma to the head. She fel down the stairs, if I’m not mistaken.”

I felt a strange disappointment. “That’s it? She fel down the stairs?”

He nodded.

“Then why were you looking into the case?”

“Standard procedure.”

“But Dad,” Ty cut in. “I remember you saying that she’d been kil ed, and you were going to find out who did that to her. That sounds like you thought there was more going on.”

Chief Manning sent his son a look I couldn’t interpret. “Quite often, when family members say something like ‘She fel down the stairs,’ it means a possible abuse situation. So we have to look into it. We have to interview the family members, anyone else who was around, and we make a determination whether to pursue the case. When your mother died, we did consider whether she’d been physical y abused. Maybe that’s when I made that comment to Ty.”

Bert made a tutting sound as she put the pan of lasagna in the center of the table and took her seat. “If I knew you were saying such things to the kids, I never would have let them come to the office.”

ChiefManningglancedathiswifeandletagrin cross his mouth, then looked back at me. His gaze was disconcerting, his brown eyes unblinking, focused solely on my face. I had the brief thought that he should have been a lawyer instead of a policeman. I’d hate to go up against him in court.

It was hard to ask my next question, but I forced myself. “Who did you suspect of abusing her? I mean, when you had suspicions.”

There was another quiet moment, during which Ty began helping Bert dole pieces of lasagna onto the plates.

“We suspected your father,” Chief Manning said. “That’s standard, to look to the spouse first.”

“But they were separated. Doesn’t that remove the spouse from suspicion?”

“Actual y, that usual y makes us more suspicious. There’s often a lot of unresolved animosity in separations.”

That seemed obvious now that he’d said it, but I couldn’t imagine my father being abusive to my mom or anyone else for that matter. Yet what did I real y know? “You ruled him out eventual y?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Did you suspect anyone else?” I asked.

“You had an older brother, right?”

“That’s right,” I said. I cut my lasagna with my fork. “Dan.”

“Wel , we thought about him, of course. He was old enough and big enough, but he had an alibi. Seems he was gone al night with his friends, taking advantage of your dad being out of the house, I suppose. And he came home to find you al .”

“What do you mean, ‘you al ’?”

Chief Manning glanced at me. “You were with your mama. You and your sister. Your brother came home early in the morning and found you three in your parents’ room.”

The lasagna caught in my throat, and I grabbed for my water. The light that hung over the table seemed too harsh, reminding me of a light in a police interrogation room.

And then I remembered something.
The sound of pounding.
Far away, like the sound in a dream. It became louder, then louder stil , until I’d had to leavethedreamandwakeup.AndwhenIdid,Iwas in my mother’s bed. She was asleep. Her head was turned to one side. Her sandy-blond hair fel like a panel over her face. The pounding again. It was comingfromthedoor.Iuntangledmylegsfromthe sheets.InoticedthatIhadsleptinmyjeansandmy shirt with the big yel ow flower on it.

I was almost to the door when I heard my name. “Hailey!”

I stopped. I looked at the bed. My mother was stil asleep.

“Hailey!” I heard again. It was coming from the door. I walked toward it, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “Hailey, it’s me!” I heard.

“Danny?” I said.

“Hailey, open the door.”

I stepped toward the door and reached for the handle. It wouldn’t turn. “I can’t open it. It’s locked.”

“Unlock it then.” His voice sounded mad.

I scrambled with the handle, trying to figure out how the lock worked. It stil wouldn’t open. Why wouldn’t it open? We were trapped. “I can’t,” I said, scared now. Maybe I should wake Mom.

“Is Caroline in there?” I heard Dan ask.

I started to say no, just me and Mom, but I glanced around the room to make sure. And there was Caroline. Hunched in a corner, knees up to her chest. The same way she sat on the porch swing. It seemed she might be asleep, too. Then I saw her eyes were open, staring at me.

“You al right?” Ty said, leaning toward me now, jarring me away from the memory.

Bert jumped up from the table and refil ed my water glass. Chief Manning, on the other hand, hadn’t moved, his eyes stil on me.

I blinked a few times, focusing on the line of freckles over Ty’s cheekbones, unable to bring back that moment in my mom’s bedroom.

“Fine,fine,”Isaid.Itookasipofthewater,then another,gratefulforthecoolslicknessonmythroat. “I didn’t remember that,” I said. I glanced at Chief Manning. “That morning, I mean, not until now.”

I tried to get my mind away from the image of Caroline, eyes wide, her back pushed into that corner. I tried to force myself into the detached clinical-questioning mode I went into during depositions, but I found it difficult to come up with something to say.

Again there was a hush at the table, and I considered changing the subject for good. Instead, I tookadeepbreathandasked,“Andhadmymother passed away? I mean, was she dead by the time Danfoundus?”Itriedtomakethissoundlikenormal conversation, but I already knew the answer.

“Correct,” Chief Manning said. His fork clanked on his plate as he cut a piece of lasagna. “She’d passed by then. Maybe she would have lived if she’d gotten immediate medical attention after she fel down the stairs.”

“Lou,” Bert said in a chastising tone.

He put his fork down and looked at his wife, thenreturnedhisattentiontohisplate.“That’sjust speculation, though. She had a big head injury, and internal bleeding in the head can be nasty to treat.Sometimesthere’snothingtheycandoforit.”

“She died in her sleep then?” I found this concept oddly comforting.