The Baker's Wife (26 page)

Coach didn't answer right away.

Jack said, “Maybe you didn't know Julie as well as you claim.”

Coach's voice lacked strength. “She said some days made her question whether being a good teacher made any impact on the world at all. It wasn't about you, Leslie. We all feel that way from time to time.”

Leslie sniffed and looked slightly relieved. Her pencil was flitting across the paper again.

“Your wife's a great teacher,” Coach murmured.

“Of course she is. If she put as much effort into her spiritual life as she puts into her vocation she'd be—”

“—all but a saint,” Coach provided. “She told me you say that a lot.”

“Thees woman has run out on you,” Estrella dared. “With some man who ees not so backhanded.”

“No, no,” Coach said. “She wasn't seeing anyone on the side. I asked her, and she laughed at that.”

“I have another idea,” Leslie said, lifting her pencil off the paper to get Jack's attention. “Let's say someone stole the bike—”

“We've been over all that,” Jack said.

“But you haven't solved this problem about not being able to find . . . evidence of the rider. What if there was no rider?”

Jack leaned forward over his knees.

“I've been working on this problem for a few days, and it's not ironclad because the math is just way too complex, but something about the whole scenario is really bugging me.” She turned to a fresh piece of paper and made a quick sketch of an intersection, a car entering it, and a scooter crossing it. “We think the bike was crossing on Sunflower, and Mrs. Bofinger T-boned it. Then everyone starts looking for Mrs. Mansfield out here.” Leslie drew little arrows fanning out in the same direction the car was headed.

“Like an arrow shot from a bow,” Ed said.

“Sort of. She would have sort of bounced off your mom's car, but she's not a rubber ball. She couldn't have been thrown far if your mom was only doing thirty.”

“She wasn't going any faster, I swear.”

Jack said, “Look, the child does physics too. Does your math take into account how much time this yahoo had to drag her body away?” He pointed at Geoff.

Leslie's eyes widened. “Is that possible? I heard the police didn't find any blood anywhere other than around the car.”

“How did you hear that?”

Leslie opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again.

Jack said, “It's true, though.”

“That eliminates a few options, then.” She continued to write.

“Now she's an accident-reconstruction specialist. Amazing.”

“Are you interested in what she has to say or not?” Ed asked.

“Well, we lost ours in budget cuts last year.”

Leslie ignored them. “We've been assuming that Mrs. Bofinger and Mrs. Mansfield were both in motion.” Leslie drew a line up Main Street and another coming in from Sunflower until they met in the middle. “But what if the scooter wasn't moving?”

“Why would she stop in the middle of the street?” Ed asked.

“I don't know why, I'm just saying
what if
?”

“You tell us.”

“Here's what happens to the body: there's no mechanism to impart any velocity to it, but being seated on the bike puts her center of gravity pretty high off the ground. Have you ever seen a car hit a bike?”

Leslie didn't wait for answers.

“A ton of things can happen, depending on the velocities, the masses, angles, centers of gravity, and so on, but usually the rider and his ride will be separated. If the body has a high center of gravity but no oppositional velocity, it's going to slide up onto the hood of the car. And if the car doesn't slow down—”

“Mom didn't hit the brakes until after the collision.”

“—the car will pass right under the body, which will tumble over the car and land in almost the same place from which it was launched.”

“Behind the car,” Ed said.

“Yes.”

Jack said, “Well, that didn't happen.”

“Exactly,” Leslie said. “So that's problem number one.”

Ed could think of a million more.

“Hear me out. The other problem is what happened to the bike. If Mrs. Mansfield is driving in from Sunflower—”

“Just tell me where else my wife could have landed,” Jack said.

Leslie held up her pencil.
Wait
. “If she's driving perpendicular to the car and the side of the bike is facing the car when it hits, the energy is distributed across the scooter, making it more likely to bounce off the car, or come apart.”

She looked at everyone as if this should make sense to them. Ed raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

Jack said, “The bike collapsed under the front fender. Completely crushed—who is leaking this stuff to you?”

“I told her that part,” Ed said.

Estrella stepped in. “You think ees a head-on collision,” she said.

Leslie nodded.

Jack snatched the notebook out of Leslie's fingers, looked at it, then handed it back to her. He jiggled the gun at his side, frowning.

“Why would she be riding on the wrong side of the street?”

“She's trying to say that no one was riding it,” Ed said.

Leslie brightened. “Yes. It was just parked there.”

“This makes less and less sense,” Geoff said.

Estrella offered to Jack, “Ees best explanation yet for why you cannot find Julie.”

“Why?” Jack said, his volume rising a notch. “Why would she park it in the middle of the street?”

No one had any theories.

“There ees nothing in physics to explain human nature,” Estrella said.

“But her blood was everywhere!” Jack barked.

“Which takes me back to my original point,” Leslie said. “Let's say someone stole the bike. Anyone could have parked it there. Maybe someone killed her and then—”

“Why go to the trouble?” Ed said loudly to prevent her from saying anything more. His mental alarms were going off. “What's the point of hurting her and then setting up a complicated scene like that?”

A light had gone on in Jack's eyes that looked like the yellow of a predator about to pounce. “I like this girl's thinking.” He glanced at Leslie. “I have lots of reasons now to hope Audrey gets back here before you're in line to die. Save you as a witness for the prosecution. How many people would it take to set this up, if my wife was murdered before the accident?” His gaze traveled between Ed and Geoff. “How many to subdue her, kill her, steal the scooter, drain her blood—”

“You're nuts!” The pitch of Ed's voice became a screech. “Listen to you! Do you seriously think we'd do that? Oh my gosh. If we really did have it out for her, I promise you we wouldn't be dumb enough to run her over with our own car!”

Ed was vaguely aware that he sounded like a lunatic and looked like one too as he lunged at Jack.

“Ed! Ed!” The weight of his father's body held him back.

“He's going to level us with lies.” Ed's breaths came hard.

Geoff's hands were firm on Ed's shoulders, forcing his son to focus. “No one's going to believe anything this man says after today.”

“Evidence talks louder than the person who delivers it,” Jack said.

“I'm more interested in the truth,” Geoff responded.

“You don't think they're same? That's interesting.”

Ed threw his hands in the air and broke away from his dad, invading Jack's personal space. “Aren't you the
least
bit worried about Julie?” he yelled.

“Of course I am. Why on earth do you think I'm here?”

CHAPTER 25

Warmth like two large human hands gently squeezed against the sides of Audrey's head and turned her face toward Julie Mansfield's house. Again, Diane and Miralee followed her. Harlan's house was swallowed by gray fog before they were halfway back.

While walking she called Captain Wilson. She told him about the truck Miralee had purchased from the Halls.

“It might not mean anything,” he said to her.

“Except that Jack didn't know about it. And no one knows where it is.”

“That kind of secret doesn't bode well for him, if she was making plans to run off with someone.”

“I've never heard of someone abandoning a family and leaving so much blood behind,” Audrey mused.

“If she wanted Jack to think she was dead—”

“Well, if I'd had an invasive surgery
and
a lover, I wouldn't have run off with him until I was completely healed. And I wouldn't have left my medications behind.”

“You found prescriptions?”

“Jack didn't tell you?”

“No.”

“You should speak to her doctor.”

“We did. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the procedure or Julie's prognosis. I hope you're not about to tell me that you broke into that man's house.”

“Her daughter let us in,” Audrey said, casting a look at Miralee.

The girl smirked.

“Mrs. Bofinger, you'll be more help to your family if you come down here right now.”

“I don't think that's what Jack had in mind, Captain. But I'll come as soon as I can.” She hung up before he could argue and waited for Diane to catch up to them. “Harlan Hall shares your last name.”

Diane nodded.

“Are you related?”

“My father.”

Audrey nodded, surprised that she wasn't surprised. But she was able to quickly add up in her mind everything she knew about Cora Jean's death, about that faded family portrait that held so much pain, about Diane's imprisonment and need for a place to live, and about her silent and aloof posture at the end of Harlan's walkway. “I'm so sorry about your mother's passing,” she said. “She was a gentle woman.”

Diane's chin twitched. “Thank you.”

Then there was Diane's unexpected connection to Julie, and her even more startling appearance at the bakery on the very day of Julie's disturbing disappearance. “I'll understand if you don't want to keep helping,” Audrey said.

“But I want to.”

“I'm glad for your help, but why?”

Diane took a deep breath. “I think Juliet has something of mine. I need to find it.”

“Great,” Miralee muttered. “Now my dad's a killer and my mom's a thief.”

Audrey laid a hand on Miri's arm as they reached the front stoop. “Back in March,” she said, “I dropped by your house. The week after spring break. Do you remember that?”

“You never came to see me.”

“I didn't come to see you on purpose. We talked through that window.” Audrey pointed. “You wouldn't invite me in.”

“I probably wouldn't have, if we'd actually talked, which we didn't. ” Miralee wriggled out from under Audrey's touch.

“Could you at least pretend to want to help me?”

“Oh, sure. Let's all hide our true selves. We'll cope better with life. It sure worked out well for my parents, didn't it?”

Audrey paused at the front door and held the screen open while trying the knob. It was locked. Miralee inserted her key.

“I never had the chance to raise a daughter,” Audrey said. “But I've got a son I'm really proud of, and his dad and I take a little credit for that. So I'm going to tell you something we told him.”

“I can hardly wait. The preacher's son, waving his Bible with one hand and unzipping his pants with the other. Do you take credit for that too?”

Audrey grabbed hold of the knob to prevent Miralee from eluding the confrontation, and also to funnel her anger into a controlled, harmless action.

“We told Ed that being a good person is about loving other people well. It's not about having all the right answers or doing all the right things. That's where dishonest living comes in, don't you think?”

Miralee's disrespectful glare invited Audrey to be blunt.

“You're the one who lived dishonestly with my son. He's the most honest human there is, right down to his last imperfection. You aimed to bring him down just to prove yourself right.”

Now Miralee looked away.

“I'm afraid for my family, Miralee. And I'm afraid for the other people in that bakery, and for your father and for you. But I'm also here because I care about your mom. Even though I hardly know her, I can choose to care. It's better than the alternative, don't you think?”

Diane was standing close enough to overhear, and she came closer at these words, looking at Miralee.