The Baker's Wife (18 page)

“Well, Jack's a lawman. Her mom's not like that, is she?”

“Not so much when she's teaching. That's all I know.”

“Miralee didn't talk about her?”

“Nope.”

The air took the edge off of Audrey's strange symptoms. She took another deep breath.

“Do you regret your—”

“Mom. C'mon. It's embarrassing.”

“I didn't mean that, Ed. I wondered if you were sorry for trying to be nice to her. It was a decent thing to do. You had good intentions.”

He shook his head in a way that seemed to say
I can't believe
you're asking me this
. They traveled the last few miles of the kinked road without sharing their thoughts.

Audrey passed the ranger station on the north side of the road and the campground on the south, where the looping nature trail started. The other trailheads met at a parking lot a little farther down.

“Okay, different thought,” Audrey said. “If I went missing, would you want your dad to tell you about it?”

“That's a totally unrelated situation.”

“I think Miralee should know what happened to her mom. Maybe she has information that would help.”

“Let Jack make that decision.”

“Jack's already made it, and I can't say I understand. It even makes him look suspicious. I think we should call her.”

“Don't.”

“Why not?”

Ed shook his head.

“Look, Ed. When things go wrong for somebody, we can't just sit by and watch them get hurt. We have to do what we can to fix the situation. Like you tried to show Miralee that not all Christians are as bad as she thinks.”

“That's the worst example you could have come up with. Also, I don't think you want to do this to help Julie.”

“That's not fair.”

She pulled into the main parking area opposite two cars, a red two-door and an old gray pickup with a long radio antenna arcing over the cab. Maybe Ed was right. Maybe her true motive had more to do with proving Jack wrong. Maybe her anxiety over having injured the woman was being overtaken by resentment. She stopped the car and turned to her son. The movement strained her aching neck.

“Okay. Maybe my intentions aren't as pure as I'd like them to be. But if something terrible—something that could have been avoided—happens to Julie Mansfield, I would regret it for the rest of my life. That's the truth. I have to do what I can.”

“You can't do everything, Mom. And not everything that's broken can be fixed.”

“Does that mean we shouldn't try?”

“Yeah, I think it does. Sometimes we have to let things go. Jesus said it: ‘In this world you will have trouble.' That stinks. And I don't think we can avoid smelling it.”

Audrey stared out the windshield at the beautiful valley that had been cut by glaciers—the cold hand of God—eons ago.

“So what does letting go look like to you? If we're not supposed to try to fix it, what do you think we're supposed to do?”

Ed stared at her.

Audrey smiled back. “Oh, the mysteries of the world. Maybe a walk will sharpen our minds. And when we get home, we'll call Miralee.”

He put his hand on the door handle. “We?”

Audrey smiled and opened her own door, turning to get out. She placed her feet on the ground and pushed herself out of the car, and the earth seemed to slip out from under her as it had when she'd slipped in Julie's blood. The pain of a hot blade sliced through her hips, severing her body's nerves in two.

She doubled over and fell down.

CHAPTER 16

Monday afternoon Diane walked the few short blocks to the county library. It was a decent day, free of fog, though rain had been forecast for the afternoon, which meant the fog would soon follow.

Over the weekend, while thinking through how to go about finding Juliet Steen, Diane felt her ignorance acutely. She wasn't sure which government office kept track of who lived where— when it came to law-abiding citizens anyway—or if that kind of Big Brother thing was even constitutional. Now she thought she should have taken advantage of all the educational opportunities the penitentiary had to offer, and not merely the bare minimum.

So she decided to start with the library and a simple question: did Juliet go on to graduate from the same high school they'd attended together? If Diane could figure out where Juliet had received her diploma, she'd know what to do next.

Because Juliet's twenty-fifth high school reunion was right around the corner, and the committee would have its ways of finding her, wouldn't it?

Diane envisioned herself sweet-talking some nice, middle-aged, former class cabinet officer into giving her Juliet's latest address.

Well, she'd have to practice that.

Worst-case scenario: the librarian would at least be able to tell her where a smart person would have gone to start this search.

Diane passed by a hair salon. She wondered if Juliet still had her silky hair and her rosy marionette cheekbones and her ready laugh. She had envied Juliet's ability to make such a musical sound, and tried to mimic it in moments when she was alone. The effort was ridiculous, the result a fake giggle that was more mockery than merriment. But she had always believed that people who could laugh so freely were predestined to live long and happy lives. She couldn't envision them any other way.

For a sickening second as she mounted the steps to the library, Diane doubted that Juliet would have kept the diamond. What if she had taken the pendant and then sold it as Donna once planned to do? Diane gripped the rail and worried.

Or . . . Juliet might have returned the jewel to the Halls. But Diane's family would have contacted her if Juliet had given it back.

Wouldn't they?

This rabbit trail was short, though, and after a few deep breaths Diane was able to move on. When she entered the library and asked the reference librarian for help locating the Mazy High yearbook from what would have been her senior year, she expected to rediscover her best friend as the young woman preserved in her own memory.

“It doesn't appear we have that particular yearbook at this branch,” the librarian said, studying her screen. “You can get these digitally, but not that far back.”

“Oh,” Diane said. What would she do now?

“I see a copy over at the Exeter branch. Would you like me to have them hold it for you?”

“I don't have a car.”

“They could send it here.”

“Uh . . .”

“Why don't you tell me what you need from the yearbook. Maybe there's another way we could get to the information.”

“I'm trying to get in touch with a classmate. We haven't seen each other for a while.”

“Ah!” The woman got up and came around her desk, indicating that Diane should follow her. “Are you on Facebook?”

“Um, no.” She had heard of the book but never seen a copy.

“That might be the most popular place to track down people you know—or total strangers!” The woman laughed. “But I know several websites that can find school friends, if yours is registered with any of them. You can use our computer stations. All you need is an e-mail address so the sites can respond to your requests for information.”

“I don't have an e-mail address either.”

The librarian paused and turned around. “Okay. Well. If you like I can show you how to sign up for a free e-mail account.”

“It sounds . . . more complicated than I can handle right now. I'm not that up to speed with computers.”

“Have you tried Googling her? You don't need e-mail for that.”

Diane's face felt hot. She could have received training at the prison that would have kept her in touch with accelerating technology, but she had avoided anything that might give her a sense of freedom.

The librarian placed a hand on Diane's elbow and gently guided her past stacks of books. “It's okay. A lot of people hate computers. I use them every day for my job, so it's not so intimidating as it was at first.”

“I know how to use some computer programs. I just don't have a lot of experience on the Internet.”

“I see. So, you've brought me a challenge, and it's been a long time since I've had one. This is excellent. If I hadn't started a career as a librarian, I might have become a private investigator! Let's do some sleuthing.” She steered Diane back toward her scattered desk. “In the old days, before the world was downloaded to a gazillion computer servers, we used to use this high-tech device.” The woman pointed to her telephone. “Let's call upon some humans. What's your friend's name?”

“Juliet Steen.”

“And she graduated from Mazy High when?”

Diane reiterated the year. “But I don't know if she graduated from there. That's what I'm trying to find out.”

The librarian swiveled back to the computer to look up the school's phone number. She typed and clicked swiftly. “Well, privacy laws being what they are these days, I doubt we'll be able to get any personal contact information, but we should be able to find out easily enough if she graduated from one of the high schools in this town.” She picked up the handset and dialed a number. “And if we're really sweet, we might be able to get someone to tell you if she has a different married name, or maybe if she still lives in the area. Either one of those will help if we have to resort to the big bad computers. But if we can land both, then you might be able to find all you need in the phone book!”

Nothing in Diane's life had been so simple, but that didn't really matter. Finding Juliet—finding the necklace—was her only task at the moment. What were a few more months of delay after twenty-five years?

Her new ally went through the paces of being put on hold twice before she was transferred to the appropriate office.

“Hi, Brenda! How are you today?”

Diane wondered if the chipper greeting was truly familiar or only designed to feel that way.

“This is Selma at the county library, and I'm trying to find someone who might have graduated from your school awhile back. I'm sure you're so busy, but is that something you can help me with?”

Diane shifted her weight and noticed a display of novels that appeared to share the theme of serial killers.

“What a dear! Thank you. Here's the information . . .”

A flat-screen TV monitor behind the librarian's head flashed announcements about a public book group meeting, the children's story hour, and an upcoming lecture on the disputed success rates of reestablishing felons in a community.

“Yes, that's right. Juliet Steen.”

The library's peaceful sounds of turning pages and clicking keyboards seemed to belie its more disturbing interests. Diane squirmed.

“Well, is it possible? You would know better than I would.” The librarian grabbed a piece of scratch paper from a short pile beside her mouse. “Yes, I can wait.” She glanced at Diane and covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “I hate to say this, but I'll be a little disappointed if my chance to do some real investigative work ends before it's even begun.”

“What do you mean?”

The librarian held up a finger and returned to the call. She started making notes. “Mm-hmm . . . Well, what a happy coincidence . . . Oh dear. I spoke too soon, didn't I? Why, yes, I'd heard of it . . . Yes, yes. Thank you so much for your help.”

Diane leaned over the little counter separating them and tried to see Selma's notes.

“Your Juliet Steen goes by Julie Mansfield now, and she not only graduated from Mazy High but is a teacher there.”

Diane tried to think of why the name generated anxiety rather than excitement in her own mind.

“Unfortunately Julie went missing—just recently, in fact. I'm surprised you haven't seen the news?”

“No TV,” Diane murmured while the woman's fingers flashed across her keyboard once more. Within seconds a digital copy of a newspaper page appeared on the screen, and the librarian turned it toward Diane.

Juliet Steen, thin and aged beyond her years, stood with the detective who had questioned Diane about the cell phone she had found. The man's stern face, and even more, the badge hanging from his shirt pocket in a leather wallet, had compelled her against her own will to lie to him about having ever seen the phone.

Then he'd shown her this very picture, the couple's arms encircling each other, and asked if she'd ever seen the woman in it. At the time Diane's attention was on the threat of the law, and she'd hardly glanced at her old friend, who was a virtual stranger. Her hair had been cropped short, her pretty cheeks seemed to have sunken, and her expression did not mask the sadness in her eyes—sadness that Diane never would have thought Juliet capable of understanding.

Though Diane's lie about the phone was brazen, her failure to recognize Juliet when Detective Mansfield showed her the photo was completely innocent. Of course, he would think she'd lied.