FAMILY FALLACIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series #3) (9 page)

~~~~~~~~

T
hat evening, Rose went
to her second meeting of the local false memory group. It was an informal
gathering with very little structure. The twenty or so people mostly sat around
and vented. Some of them seemed genuinely confused by their grown children’s
accusations and wanted to figure out how to heal the breach in their families.
But some of the others were quite spiteful and vindictive. Rose had no trouble
imagining them as child abusers.

The worst of them was
the self-proclaimed leader, Bobby Harris. He was in his early forties, tall and
muscular, the owner of a bar in downtown Baltimore. His twenty-year-old
daughter had sicced Protective Services on him once she was out of the house.

Rose had looked up the
case. The two younger children had denied that their father beat or molested
them, supporting the family line that the older sister was a nutcase. Without
any concrete evidence, the social worker could only warn Harris that they had
started a file on him and would be watching for any signs of abuse.

Harris dominated his
quiet wife, as well as several of the more timid members of the group. If
anyone started to waffle and dared to express the desire to make amends with
their estranged offspring, Harris would go on a rant about ungrateful children
and how they all had to exhibit tough love to get their kids back in line.

So far Harris had been
quite nice to Rose. The thinly veiled sexual innuendoes told her why. He was
hoping to get into her pants. Although the thought made her want to gag, she
was not above using his interest to pump him for information.

After they had gone
around the room, everyone sharing whatever had happened since their last
meeting, people started talking in groups of three or four.

Harris got two cups of
coffee from the refreshment table and came over to where Rose was sitting. “Want
some?” he said with a sly grin, waiting a beat before holding out one of the
cups.

“Thanks,” Rose said,
taking the cup and pretending to sip from it. She wasn’t about to eat or drink
anything this man had touched.

“Is this helping?”
Harris asked.

“Some. It’s comforting
to know we’re not alone.”

“You should encourage
your parents to come, Elaine.”

“I will. I just wanted
to check it out first,” Rose replied. “So is this all you do, just talk and
support each other?”

“Well, this is mainly
what we do at the meetings.” Harris hesitated. “But sometimes we get more
proactive.”

“Like lawsuits against
the therapists?” Rose said. Three of the couples had talked about having filed
suits. But none of them had the last name of Wells.

“Yeah, that, but
there’s other things too.” Harris hesitated again. “Can’t really get into it
here.” He tilted his head slightly toward the others milling around the room
and chatting. “Some folks are more open to
proactive
activities than
others.”

Rose suspected what was
coming.

Harris did not
disappoint. “Wanna go somewhere for a nightcap? I can fill you in.”

Rose forced herself to
smile up at him, although the smile only had about ten percent of her normal
wattage. “I can’t tonight.” She glanced at her watch. “Promised my mom I’d stop
by this evening, but I could come to your place downtown tomorrow night, say
about nine? Can’t stay too late though. I’ve gotta work the next day.”

Harris grinned and
winked at her. “It’s a date,” he said and walked away.

When she got home, Rose
called her partner to report in. She repeated the conversation with Harris and
told Skip about her plan to have Mac go into the bar and hang out nearby, in
case she needed assistance.

Skip congratulated her
on her rapid progress.

“Doesn’t feel all that
rapid,” she replied. “Wish I could haul the bastard in and have a long chat
with him in an interrogation room.”

Skip chuckled on the
other end of the phone line. “Yeah, there are still days, after all these
years, when I long for the power of the badge. But PIs have to learn to be
patient.”

Rose waited a beat,
then said, her tone slightly teasing, “I think I’m learning from a pro on that
score.”

Skip just chuckled
again.

Perhaps it was all the
anger and hate radiating from so many of the people in that room tonight that
made Rose do something totally out of character. “Don’t give up on her, Skip,”
she said.

A beat of silence, then
Skip said, “I have no intention of giving up, but thanks for the encouragement.
Buenas noches, Elena Rosa
.”

I
n her session with
Tammy on Tuesday morning, Kate waited patiently through the woman’s litany of
complaints against her husband, watching for an opportunity to ask if Tammy had
given any further thought to the in-patient treatment program.

When the opportunity
finally came, the woman’s response was chilly. “Actually I’ve decided that’s a
really bad idea. I think Mark may be having an affair. So leaving him on his
own for a whole month is unthinkable.”

Tammy then spent the
next twenty minutes describing the vague indications that her husband might be
cheating on her. There was no concrete evidence, but it did seem to Kate that
Mark was withdrawing even further from his wife.

Kate finally found an
opening to once again insert the suggestion that Tammy and Mark should start
seeing a couples’ counselor.

“Can’t we see you for
that?” Tammy asked.

“It would be a conflict
of interest. I can have the occasional session with the two of you, to advise
him on how to support you in your healing process. But it wouldn’t be a good
idea for me to work with you individually and then also with the two of you as
a couple.”

“Well, maybe we should
just see you as a couple for awhile, then.”

“Tammy, you really need
to still be doing your individual therapy. Yes, your marriage is in trouble,
but that is not the only reason for the intensity of your feelings.” Kate was
getting really tired of saying that.
Dear Lord, give me strength
, she
prayed.

Out loud, she said,
“I’d like you to reconsider the in-patient program as well. I understand why
you’re hesitant about being away from home, but if you don’t get some of these
feelings from the past out of your system, then I am seriously worried about
the future of your marriage.”

This time, Kate
couldn’t even extract a promise to think about it from the client.

Audrey’s session that
afternoon was much more satisfying. Before she was even settled in her chair,
she said, “I think Rob’s strategy is working. My mother called Saturday. Ted
answered the phone, and told her I wasn’t willing to talk to her. I was so
proud of him, Kate. Mother confronted him about our lawsuit and he said, ‘Well,
what did you expect, Frances, that we would just stand by and let you and John
run roughshod over Audrey’s therapist when she’s just doing her job?’”Audrey
mimicked a deep voice.

“Then mother said
something about just wanting her daughter and granddaughter back and Ted
pointed out that suing people was not exactly the best way to promote family
togetherness. And
then
she hinted that they might drop their suit if we
dropped ours.”

“What did Ted say?”
Kate asked.

“He told her they would
have to talk to our attorney about that, and then he said, ‘Have a good
evening, Frances,’ and hung up.”

“He handled that
beautifully,” Kate said.

“I thought so...”

Were Kate’s ears
deceiving her or had no-nonsense Audrey just giggled?

“I jumped him as soon
as Alicia was in bed.”

Kate stared at her
client for half a beat, then laughed out loud. “So a good time was had by all.”

“Oh, yes!” Audrey
flashed her a big grin.

Kate grinned back at
her.

For most clients, a
legal battle with their parents would be psychologically difficult if not
devastating, but for Audrey, it seemed to be having the opposite effect. The
battle lines had been drawn in the here and now and this action-oriented young
woman could fight a known enemy in a tangible way, rather than trying to do
battle with a faceless abuser in dreams and flashbacks about the past.

~~~~~~~~

T
uesday night at five
of nine, Rose was standing on the sidewalk in front of a topless bar on
Baltimore’s notorious Block.
Why am I not surprised,
she thought as she
looked up at the neon sign flashing, “Girls, Girls, Girls.”

“Can’t say I care for
this set-up,” Mac growled quietly from beside her.

Rose’s gut was agreeing
with his. “Kate’s home by now. Go on in. I’ll call Skip for some back-up.”

When she entered the
building a few minutes later, Mac was sitting midway down the bar, nursing a
beer and looking straight ahead at the liquor bottles on the back counter. Rose
eased onto a stool close to the door. Harris was behind the bar with another
bartender, a curvaceous, scantily clad blonde. Harris spotted Rose and moved
quickly in her direction.

Rose figured a certain
amount of dismay at the surroundings would be expected. She pursed her lips in
a little moue and looked around the dim room, that smelled of stale beer and
male sweat.

“I know,” Harris said,
a fake look of distaste on his own face as he tilted his head in the direction
of a well-endowed brunette, wearing nothing but a thong stuffed with dollar
bills, who was dancing on the small stage at the other end of the room. “But
it’s what the customers want. Pays the bills.” He gave a small what-can-you-do
shrug.

“What would you like,
Elaine?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the outbreak of laughter
around the pool table across the room.

“You got Coors Light?”

“Sure,” Harris said and
reached for a clean glass from the row behind him.

“Bottle’s fine,” Rose
said. He deftly flipped the cap off a long necked bottle, sweating with
condensation, and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” She took a
small sip. “So I can’t stay too long, Bobby. Gotta work tomorrow. But I wanted
to know more about these proactive things you were talkin’ about. Maybe it’s
something that can help my folks. My mom was bawlin’ her eyes out when I got
there last night.”

“Well, the key is,”
Harris began, leaning his elbows on the bar so he could talk more quietly to
her. “You wanna try to get to the therapist. Scare him or her off, or scare
your sister into stopping therapy. You know who her therapist is?”

Rose shook her head.
“It’s a man, but I don’t know his name... How does scaring the therapist help?”

“’Cause that’s usually
who’s behind the whole thing. Young person’s havin’ problems, like we all do
sometimes. Goes to a shrink. And the next thing ya know, the kid’s accusin’ his
or her folks of doin’ awful things to ’em. Gotta be the shrink convincin’ ’em
that it’s all their family’s fault. If ya can get the kid away from the shrink,
ya can usually get ’em to see reason again.”

“Okay,” Rose nodded.
“That makes sense.” Actually it sounded pretty crazy to her. What did this guy
think people were, total sheep? But Kate had coached her on how this crowd
tended to think.

“So how do you get to
the therapist? Assumin’ I can get his name from my sister.”

“There’s all kinds a
ways. Ya want another beer?”

“No, I’m good for now.”
Rose took another sip.

Harris opened his mouth
but was interrupted by a loud shout from the other end of the bar. A man
sitting on the other side of Mac was hollering, “Hey, Bobby, what’s it take ta
get ’nuther drink ’round here?”

“Hold your shorts on,
Charlie. Can’t ya see I’m talkin’ to a lady here? Susi, get the man his drink,
will ya!”

Mac used the exchange
as an excuse to glance in Rose’s direction. He raised an eyebrow, as if to say,
Where’s the lady?
Rose met his eye, the signal that Skip was on his way.
If she had looked down he would have known they were on their own. Mac turned
back to stare straight ahead again.

Harris leaned a little
closer to Rose, a lecherous glint in his eye. “Now where were we?”

Stifling the urge to
pull back, Rose gave him a small smile. “You were tellin’ me how we could scare
off my sister’s therapist.”

“Oh, yeah. Well,
besides lawsuits, there’s picketin’ the therapist’s office. That’s usually real
effective.”

“I thought I heard
somebody at the meeting saying something about sending notes. Seems like that’d
be an easy thing to do,” Rose said.

“Well, yeah, that’s
been done. But ya can’t sign yer name or say nothin’ real specific on account
of it bein’ against the law. Ya know, to ‘harass’ people...” Harris made quote
marks in the air.  “...through the mail.” He grinned. “That can be fun though,
justa jerk their chain, but it ain’t as effective as some of the other things.”

Rose noted that, here
at his bar, Harris spoke fluent Balmorese. She let a bit more Baltimore creep
into her own voice. “So do you all, ye know, the group... Do ya ever help
people even if they’re not members?”

Harris suddenly looked
a bit wary. “Why do ya ask?”

“Bobby, I tried to talk
my folks into comin’ to the next meeting,” Rose said, pumping some desperation
in her voice. “But my ma just bawled harder, and Pop kept mumblin’ ’bout not
airin’ dirty laundry in public.

“So I was just
wonderin’ if you all’d be willin’ to send some notes, or maybe organize some
picketin’, even if they won’t join up.”

“Well, now, you get the
bastard’s name from yer sister, and then we’ll see what we can–” Harris was
once again interrupted by loud voices, this time angry, coming from the pool
table. He looked around and made eye contact with a very big, very ugly guy
standing near the door. Harris tilted his head toward the noisy patrons, two of
whom looked like they were about to square off with pool cues.

He turned back toward
Rose. “Come on, we can’t talk out here. Too noisy.” He was around the end of
the bar and next to her stool, wrapping his hand around her upper arm, before
she could react. “Let’s go back to my office.”

When Rose made no move
to get off the stool, his hand tightened on her arm. They both glanced toward
the door as it opened. Rose hid her relief.

Skip, his hair
intentionally mussed and his normally neat clothes intentionally rumpled,
strode over to the bar and plunked himself down on the stool between Rose and
the back area of the bar, bumping against Harris in the process.

“Watch where yer goin’,
buster,” Harris growled.

Skip turned toward
them. “Oh, sorry, buddy.” He gave Rose a slow easy grin. “Who’s the pretty
lady?” His eyes were on her but Rose knew he was watching Harris carefully in
his peripheral vision.

“The pretty lady’s with
me,
buddy!
”

Rose used Harris’s
focus on Skip to pull her arm loose from his grip. “I need to get goin’,
Bobby.”

Harris put his hand on
the bar, blocking her way with his arm, but he was still watching the newcomer.
A bleached blonde, wearing a red dress that just barely covered the vital parts
of her voluptuous body, had sidled up next to the big man and was suggesting
that he buy her a drink. The guy was ignoring her.

The bouncer, having
discouraged the rambunctious pool players from fighting, stepped over behind
his boss. The noise level in the room dropped several decibels as many of the
patrons sensed a brewing confrontation. The blonde scuttled away.

Rose suddenly leaned
down as if to scratch her ankle. She deftly palmed the small pistol from her
ankle holster hidden under the cuff of her khaki slacks. She wanted it in her
hand, just in case things turned totally ugly.

When she stood up, she
was on the other side of Harris’s arm. “I’ll call ya when I’ve got that guy’s
name. Thanks for the beer, Bobby,” she said, as she backed toward the door. She
gave Harris a big smile, managing to pump about eighty percent of her normal
wattage into it.

It was enough. Harris
and the bouncer stared at her, mouths slightly open, just long enough for Mac
to slip past them and head toward the door, acting as if he were ignoring all
of them. He and Rose got to the door at the same time. Mac held the door for
the lady.

When Harris turned back
toward the bar, ready to take his anger out on the big guy who’d screwed up his
good thing, the big guy wasn’t there. He looked around. The guy was sauntering
toward the men’s room in the back hall. Harris looked at the bouncer and jerked
his head in that direction. When he looked toward the back area again, the guy
was gone. Harris and the bouncer rushed in the direction of the men’s room, but
Skip had already bolted down the hall and out the emergency exit in the back of
the building.

He found Mac and Rose
leaning against the front of his Explorer around the corner. “Towson Diner.
Coffee’s on me.” Skip had no desire to hang around this section of town to get
Rose’s report.

Mac and Rose stood up
and jogged down the block toward Mac’s truck. A scrawny teenager was crouched
down beside it, bent on removing one of the Hummer’s fancy chrome wheels. Mac
picked the kid up by the collar of his jacket and the seat of his baggy jeans
and tossed him across the sidewalk. A lug wrench clattered on the cement.

The kid’s buddy, who
had been trying to pop the driver’s-side door lock, took off down the street.