Death in a Funhouse Mirror (49 page)

She looked like a lunatic. Her face and shirt were streaked with mud and stained green from rushing through the bushes, from crawling around the culvert. Looking down, she saw that her shoes were green and muddy. Stephen would be upset, she thought, and then, who the hell cares. She opened the door and would have raced down the driveway to the mailbox, but there was a big man standing there, a cold-faced, red-haired stranger, holding her missing bowl.

"Lost something?" he asked.

Numbly, she took the bowl and tucked it under her arm. "Yes. My child. I've lost my child." It hurt to say the words.

"Detective Gallagher. May I come in?" His voice was gravelly and cautious. She knew instantly that there would be no comfort coming from this man. Over his shoulder she watched the Lexus coming up the drive, watched Stephen get out, his face set and terrible. She knew he was holding back the same fears she was feeling, holding them back and determined to master them. Stephen had little patience with weakness, with fear. Except when it was David's. There, through some resource that Rachel had never understood, he always found the patience and gentleness he needed.

She ran toward him, her arms out, seeking some reassurance that things would be all right. He stopped and stared at her. "Rachel, for heaven's sake, have you looked in a mirror? Have you seen yourself?" He sidestepped and headed toward Gallagher and the house.

"I wasn't thinking about me. I was thinking about him," she said, but Stephen wasn't listening. He'd shaken Gallagher's hand and was leading him inside. Rachel turned to follow and ran into an impenetrable truth, standing like a barrier between herself and the door. This was really happening. This wasn't her vivid imagination or an excess of worry. Not a dream or an irrational fear. While she was at the store buying sugar and peanut butter and listening to an old lady's complaints, someone had come along and snatched her child. Taken her son. Her David.

She collapsed on the step like a puppet whose strings are cut, arms folded tightly around her body to keep the pain from blowing her apart. Tears poured down her face, but she couldn't cry out or even sob. The horror of it stunned her into silence. She could only crouch there like some helpless animal while the realization pierced her like a thousand swords. This was really happening. David was gone.

"Rachel. Hurry up! We're waiting," Stephen called.

Heavily, gravid with grief, with fear, with the burden of a thousand maternal imaginings filling her mind, she pushed herself up and headed not inside, but down the driveway, down the road toward David's bike, toward her last tangible link to her son. She approached it carefully, as though an inanimate conglomeration of metal parts could be sensitive, and stood staring, her hand outstretched, reaching to touch it, to put her hand where David's had so recently been. It shimmered before her blurry eyes, proud and red.

"Don't touch that, please, ma'am." Gallagher stepped between her and the bike so abruptly she stumbled backward. She hadn't heard them coming.

Stephen caught her arm roughly and set her on her feet. "What do you think you're doing, Rachel? Come inside. The detective needs to talk to both of us," he said.

Rachel looked up into his tight, fierce face. "He must be so scared," she said.

Stephen's face softened and she saw the fear that matched her own. He put a supporting arm around her. "He must be. But don't worry, Rachel. We'll find him. We've got to find him." Together they went inside to talk to Gallagher.

 

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from

 

Death at the Wheel

 

by

 

Kate Flora

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

S
ome days it
doesn't pay to get up in the morning but usually, by the time we find that out, it's too late. So it was with me on Easter Sunday. I'd been up since the dawn. Since before dawn. My church attendance may be sporadic but I love the Sunrise Service. I'm not sure that makes me Christian. There's something deliciously pagan in celebrating the return of life to the earth; yet the words of redemption, rebirth, and renewal were etched in childhood, and they still move me.

I stood out on the back deck of my condo, drinking coffee, looking out at the sparkling ocean. The wind, after a chilly spring, was finally warm, and the perfect way to spend the rest of Easter Sunday would be to walk on the beach and then curl up with a good book. Instead, like everyone else in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I was going home for dinner, toting the obligatory potted plant. I hadn't realized how widespread the custom was until I came out of my condo carrying a plant and discovered all my neighbors doing the same thing. As I drove toward Route 128, half the houses I passed seemed to be disgorging residents in twos and threes and they were all carrying potted plants. It was like some new form of Invasion of the Body Snatchers—invasion of the plant-toters.

I turned on the radio, searching for something that would lighten my mood. There was no mystery about how the day would go. It was all predictable. My mother, worn out from her efforts to produce the perfect meal, wouldn't be able to control her anxiety about my unmarried, childless state. As the only one of her offspring likely to give her a grandchild, my reproductive prospects were a source of great concern. She would make what she considered exquisitely subtle inquiries about the state of my romantic life. If I allowed that things with Andre were going well, she'd be even more unhappy. My being married to or even seriously involved with a state trooper didn't conform to her upwardly mobile, country club notions of the proper consort. I rubbed my forehead, trying to press away the incipient headache that threatened whenever a family dinner was inevitable.

My mother's unspoken reproach wasn't all I had to look forward to. My brother Michael would be there, too. Michael the artist. Michael the talented. Michael the disgruntled, a man who had never gotten over his childhood habit of taking out his moods on others. And with Michael came his chronic girlfriend, Sonia, the workout queen, self-involved, petulant, and so virulent she made Michael look sweet. Sonia's conversation was salted with remarks that would give Miss Manners heart failure; remarks that challenged my self-control. Had I ever considered breast-reduction surgery and didn't I want the name of a good hairdresser? Did I know that skillful makeup would cover the circles under my eyes? Once, after staring pointedly at my skirt, she had commiserated about how difficult it is to get stains out of silk, one simply had to give up and throw things away, didn't one. It's not sisterly of me, but if they still had Roman games, I'd relish feeding Sonia to the lions. The poor beasts wouldn't get much of a snack, though. Under her layers of drapy garments, Sonia is rail thin.

In our minds, though never mentioned, would be my sister Carrie, dead a year and a half now, the victim of a brutal murder. Alive, Carrie had been the misfit, angry, challenging, and difficult, a constant thorn in my mother's side. I had loved her like a mother myself, my little adopted sister, and my sadness at her death, and my guilt that I had not done more to help her still lingered, especially there in the house where we'd all grown up.

Through it all, my father, the lawyer known for never backing down, would sit tight-lipped and silent, a row of little frown lines between his eyes, and then begin talking about some unrelated topic of interest to him. My dad is a sweetheart. When I was little, I was daddy's girl, and being a lawyer, he used to come home and pose legal riddles for me, delighting in my ability to solve them. We're not so close now, a fact that saddens me, but in my sometimes tense encounters with my mother, he's wisely chosen to take her side. I don't feel betrayed, just disappointed. I understand. I love my family but much of the time I don't like them. Families are given to us to make us appreciate the value of being grown up and on our own.

The radio announcer was going on much too long about how happy I'd be with a new mattress and a bottle of Bud Light. I had one and didn't need the other. I gave up on the radio and switched to the CD player, treating myself to some reggae, glad I hadn't been penny wise and pound foolish and had sprung for some luxury options on my car. I loved my bright red Saab. My husband David's rusty old Saab, a solid and dependable winter car, had gotten me hooked on Saabs, and when I replaced it, I got another. David was dead, a fact that still caused me pain, and partly my choice of Saab was memorial—a tribute to his taste and judgment. I loved my car phone and my sun roof and in the winter, I loved my heated seats. But it was April and Easter and after the awful winter we New Englanders had endured, it was impossible to stay grouchy on a warm, sunny day, even on the way to family dinner.

My father opened the door and I entered a hall filled with the rich smells of good cooking. He looked older and tireder and I noticed, with the jolt these observations always bring, that his hair was almost completely gray. "Theadora," he said, "Happy Easter. Your mother's in the kitchen." He held out his hand for my coat. "How's Andy?"

"Andre," I said. "He's fine. Still in one piece." He didn't like my answer any more than I'd liked the "Andy." No one who knows him calls Detective Andre Lemieux "Andy."

Mom smelled like cinnamon and yeast and her cheeks were flushed pink from bending over the stove. She straightened up and came to meet me, a regal, impressive woman, 5'10", ample, the impossible hair I've inherited cut short and crisp. She was wearing the apron I'd made her in eighth grade. Once it had been a sunny yellow decorated with bright red and green strawberries, chosen to match the kitchen wallpaper. Now, sixteen years later, the wallpaper was blue, the apron had faded to a dull yellowish gray, and the berries were just darker blotches, but she still wore it. After a hug, she backed up and examined me carefully. "You don't look as tired as usual," she said. "Are things quiet at work?"

"Never," I said, handing her the plant. She set it on the counter next to another, still stapled into its paper wrapper. "Open it now," I said. "I want to see if you'll like it."

She waved a hand at her steaming pots. "I'm busy...."

"Open it." I hadn't tramped all over the planet in the pouring rain to have my offering ignored.

With a sigh, she peeled off the heavy lavender paper and the intoxicating scent of gardenias filled the room, beating back the ham and sweet potatoes and baking bread. She pulled it out, beaming at the glossy green leaves and the profusion of rich, creamy white flowers. "Thea! It's beautiful. How on earth did you ever find such a thing?"

"Just a good detective, I guess."

Her eyes narrowed. "You're not involved in another murder, Theadora? Tell me that you're not."

"Murdering the competition, but that's all."

"Don't even joke about it, dear. You know how it upsets me. Now come in the living room. There's someone I want you to meet." She bustled out, shedding the apron as she went.

Knowing her, I was expecting an eligible young man. She never listens when I tell her I'm not interested, that I'm already involved. She believes Mother knows best. But it wasn't a young man. It was a young woman. Sitting on the couch. Well, perching on the couch. Tiny and blonde and fragile looking. Holding a toddler on her lap with her arm around a little girl. Despite the pink Chanel suit and the expensive gold jewelry, the large diamond on her hand and her superbly cut hair, she looked like a recent refugee, washed up on the shores of my mother's living room. And even though her eyes were brown instead of blue, she looked way too much like my sister Carrie. My lost sister Carrie.