Too Close to Home (16 page)

“Got some kind of head cold, Officer?” Ed asked, though he knew darn well I didn’t.

“No, sir, I don’t. I’m checking for the sweet smell of Mary Jane,” I said, though I knew darn well
he
didn’t.

One of Ed’s mobile eyebrows crawled up his shiny black forehead, until it was stopped by his cap.

“Say what?”

“Y’know. M.J. Magic smoke. Mary and Johnny. Mexican locoweed. The kind of stuff beach bums and old hippies are known to smoke.”

Ed grinned and his eyebrow relocated close to his eye.

“Oh, you mean pot. Well, why didn’t you say so, Officer? What do you think makes my doughnuts so special?”

I slipped my sunglasses back into my breast pocket, picked up a doughnut and made a show of examining it carefully before I took a bite.

“I was certain that it was all that deep frying and sugar…”

“Definitely the deep frying,” Ed retorted. “Give ’em time. They’ll probably make that illegal, too.”

Then Ed and I both laughed. His laughter deep and hearty. Mine closer than it had been in long time to a young woman’s giggle. And though I didn’t know what Ed’s morning had been like, when we finally wound down to gasping and tears, I felt a heck of a lot better.

Ed took off his silly hat to wipe his eyes and then perched it on top of the cash register.

I filled my mug with coffee, then I leaned comfortably against the counter. As I sipped my coffee and nibbled on my doughnut, I looked at Ed’s shirt a little more closely. That’s when I realized that the flamingos were doing a bit more than marching. The busy pattern made their behavior subtle, but the birds were definitely engaging in X-rated activity. The shirt didn’t violate any local decency ordinances, but it sure did push the limits of good taste.

Though I didn’t have nearly the talent that Ed did, I let one of my eyebrows slide out of place, then waved my fingers in the direction of his shirt.

“The missus know you’re wearing that outside your bedroom?”

He hooked his thumb in the direction of the sign on the window.

“She’s out of town.”

“So she doesn’t know,” I said flatly, making a real effort to keep laughter from creeping into my voice.

I was surprised that someone willing to wear that shirt didn’t have thicker skin. But Ed rushed to explain.

“No, no. You don’t understand. She’s visiting up in Chicago this week, and I don’t want to lose the Wednesday lunch crowd. So this here shirt is part of an in-store promotion. Just like in the big city.”

“Seeing as how I’m local law enforcement, I’m compelled to ask. What, exactly, is that shirt promoting?”

“Jamaican jerked pork, of course,” Ed said, managing to sound outraged.

Then, not surprisingly, he changed the subject.

“Gonna be mighty hot again. Not the day I’d choose to go scrambling down into a ravine. But worth it, I suppose, if you find something that helps you put a name to those old bones.”

Then he answered the question he must have seen on my face.

“Chad came by last night, late, for gas and some chips. He mentioned you two were heading to Camp Cadiz today. Looking for clues. He told me you all figured the remains for around ten years old. Give or take a couple of years. And asked if I had any ideas about who that poor woman might be. I figure he wanted some place worthwhile to start in case it turns out that isn’t his momma.”

“What’d you tell him?” I asked, knowing that Chad would give me the information, but wanting an opportunity to hear it from Ed firsthand.

Ed shrugged.

“Not much. Except for his momma, no one else from these parts went missing around that time. And, after all these years, I sure couldn’t recall any suspicious strangers passing through….”

But then Ed hesitated. He frowned and gave his head a quick little shake. As if he were chasing off some unwelcome thought. And then he changed the subject.

“You want some cold drinks or snacks to take along with you today?” he said. “Just like that doughnut and your coffee, they’re on the house.”

Without doubt, he was trying to distract me by baiting me into our usual argument. Why? I wondered immediately as suspicion chased away the lightheartedness that the flamingos had inspired.

The muscles across my shoulders and neck tensed and my eyes narrowed. In a flash, I saw Ed as nothing more than a reluctant informant. Not as a friend.

“This is a murder investigation,” I said. “And if you’re withholding information…”

I heard the echo of my own voice and noticed a flicker of shock—of alarm—cross Ed’s face. That was when I realized how angry and frustrated I was, and admitted to myself that I’d carried those emotions into Statler’s with me. They had little to do with Ed, who had always willingly told me anything I wanted to know. They had everything to do with Katie.

No matter who I was upset with, I scolded myself, I’d never before abused my authority or resorted to intimidation
and hostile threats to solve a problem. That kind of behavior didn’t suit my personality. And it sure didn’t bolster my reputation as a fair-minded cop and respected hometown girl. Bottom line, it wasn’t very effective policing.

In fact, it was piss-poor policing.

Something that Ed proved almost immediately.

Within a moment of his first reaction, he’d pressed his lips together into a tight, straight line. Now he was looking at me across the counter and shaking his head. But the look in his eyes made it clear that this was less a refusal to talk and more an expression of irritation. And disappointment. As if I had no reason to speak to him that way.

And I didn’t.

I made the effort, moderated my tone.

“Come on, Ed. We’ve been friends for a long time. We’ve always leveled with each other. So if you know anything, I’d really appreciate…”

I allowed my voice to trail off, let my expression convey my apology.

“It was nothing as important as what you and Chad have been asking about,” he said. Then he added, with some heat, “And it doesn’t have anything to do with it, either.”

“Okay,” I said, making it a concession.

He looked away, out through the big plate-glass window, toward the row of gas pumps between the station and the street.

“Chad asking about folks going missing reminded me of someone I saw around these parts a while back. And a promise I made myself. But the person I saw wasn’t missing at all. Or a stranger. She was just passing through.”

Obviously, he still wasn’t ready to tell me who he was talking about.

“When was that?” I asked.

Absolutely nothing was going on outside, but Ed continued to focus in that direction as he answered my question.

“A couple, three years after Chad’s momma died. It was my wife’s birthday. I don’t remember which birthday exactly, but I do remember I played her birthdate in the lottery and won five hundred dollars. It’s the most I’ve ever won.”

That was certainly within the time frame Chad and I were investigating, I thought. But I made a point of looking vaguely dissatisfied with what he’d just told me. Which I was.

“Give me a name, Ed,” I said gently. “If it’s nothing, it can’t hurt to tell me. And if it’s something, I really need to know.”

Ed shifted his eyes, this time looking down at the bright fabric he wore. He spent a minute fingering the hem of his shirt, just below the last coconut-shell button. A place where two flamingos were obviously doing the wild thing. But his eyes seemed to be on the floor rather than on the birds’ activity.

Finally, he raised his eyes to mine.

“I don’t want you thinking I’m some busybody gossip who takes joy in spreading poison. That habit is bad enough in a woman, but intolerable in a man. Anyway, that’s what I told my missus last night. Which got us to arguing over the very thing we’re talking about now. She’s prob’ly gonna be a lot happier with me when I tell her that I went along with her advice. Even though I said last night I wouldn’t.”

My expression reflected patience that I didn’t feel.

Okay, I thought. You’ve obviously made the decision. Now just spit out the information. Of course, I didn’t say that. I just ate the last bit of my doughnut, washed it down with a little more coffee, and waited.

He spent a little time rearranging the doughnuts that were still on the tray, probably rearranging his thoughts at the same
time. When our eyes met again, I saw nothing but concern in his expression.

“I wasn’t trying to keep information from you, Brooke. It’s just that talking about what I saw so many years ago would be nothing more than airing dirty laundry. People’s mouths flapping loose in this town have caused enough hurt as it is. Especially for you and Katie. But my missus told me you had a right to know, especially now that you’re all grown-up. She said you might be thinking she was dead.”

“My mother.”

I said the words flatly. Knowing he could be talking about no one else.

He nodded, sighed.

“Nine, maybe ten years ago, she drove into town. And I figure she drove right back out. ’Cause I would of heard if she’d stopped to see her girls.”

Why, I thought suddenly with all the bottled-up anguish from childhood, hadn’t she come to see me? And Katie? Didn’t she love us?

The cop in me answered the victim. The only reason our mother would have come into town was to get money. Because that’s all that addicts care about.

I continued facing Ed, deliberately not giving myself the privacy I’d always needed when I cried. I was a professional, I told myself. I needed to do my job. And I wasn’t going to let the very mention of my mother reduce me to tears.

Certainly, though, I didn’t look happy.

Neither did Ed.

His usually smooth forehead was wrinkled; his mobile eyebrows slanted downward, away from the middle of his forehead, and his mouth was pulled down into a frown. But he didn’t offer me useless words of sympathy. He just waited,
quietly, giving me a little time to think. Which I managed to do with something resembling detachment.

Lydia Tyler had left town at sixteen. And I doubted Ed had had more than a passing acquaintance with her. Decades had passed before he’d seen her again.

I asked the obvious question.

“Are you sure it was her?”

He nodded.

“She’d changed, for sure. Real skinny, for one thing. Wearing lots of makeup, a skimpy halter top, and a short black skirt. She looked like a—”

He caught himself. Whatever my mother looked like, Ed wasn’t about to tell her little girl about it. Even if she was grown-up now. And a cop.

But I had long ago figured out that any fond memories I had of my mother weren’t memories at all. They were from photos in old family scrapbooks and Aunt Lucy talking about her sister. Unlike Gran, who never spoke of Lydia, Aunt Lucy told us about all about their childhood together and how pretty and smart our mother was. Mostly, she reminded us that, even though our mother couldn’t take care of us, she still loved us. And always would. Those lies, Katie had believed far longer than I.

The only real memory I had of my mother was of her walking away. Beautiful and leggy in her high-heeled sandals and thigh-length dress. With her hips swinging and ash-blond hair brushing her bare shoulders. I remembered that the sweet smell of her perfume had lingered in her wake, and that she’d had a couple of twenty-dollar bills clutched tightly in her hand.

That day, she hadn’t locked us in the closet as she usually did. Hadn’t patted us each on the cheek or given us a candy bar or told us to be good. And quiet. She’d simply turned her back. And left us with the man who’d given her the money.

It didn’t take a cop to realize that—even back then—Lydia Tyler had supported her drug habit in whatever way she could.

“—well, not at all like a teenager,” Ed was saying. “So she probably figured I wouldn’t recognize her. But no matter how much she’d changed, she couldn’t hide the fact that she was a Tyler woman. She wasn’t beautiful anymore, but she still had that look. Like all the rest of you have. Kind of self-contained. Real private. No offense, Brooke, but a body could know you for years and not really know you.”

I didn’t say anything. What could I say? Tell him that he was right, that for generations Tyler women had made secrecy their life’s work? And for good reason? My silence most likely reinforced his view of my character.

“So anyway,” he continued, “as changed as she was from the child I remembered, I looked at her real close. And I knew. Lydia Tyler. When she and Lucy were kids, folks’d always comment on how different the girls looked from each other. Kind of like you and Katie.”

“Was there anyone with her, Ed?”

He shook his head.

“No. Looked like she was traveling alone.”

I’m not sure if it was personal need or professional curiosity that prompted my next question. Maybe I hoped to hear something, anything, positive about my mother. Maybe I was just confirming what any cop would have already suspected.

“Did she pay you for the gas?”

If it was possible, his eyebrows sagged even farther. But he kept his eyes straightforwardly on my face, and I had no doubt that he was telling me the truth.

“Yeah. But then she lifted a carton of cigarettes and a six-pack of beer on her way out the door. I didn’t call the cops, because of who she was. And, back then, response time
was…” He shrugged. “Well, you know. Besides, I didn’t want to make trouble for your family.”

A few minutes later, I carried that thought, my coffee mug, and some ugly feelings out to the SUV with me.

I
was damned tired of family secrets.

That was what I told myself as I drove to Camp Cadiz.

I was tired of pretending that Katie’s life and mine went back no farther than the day we first walked up the steps of the Cherokee Rose. Tired of the persistent guilt that came with covering up Missy’s death. Tired, already, of worrying about whatever secret Katie was so angrily protecting. I was even tired of the very worthwhile secrecy of the Underground.

Some secrets could never be told.

But I couldn’t think of one good reason to continue tolerating secrets about my mother. Why, I asked myself, had I spent most of my life supporting the deception? Never asking questions, but pretending to believe the fairy tales my family spun about her and keeping every awful thing I’d learned about her to myself?

My response was quick and easy from long practice. I’d
done it for Katie’s sake, of course. And to avoid hurting Gran and Aunt Lucy, who’d been so kind to us.

The truth, however, was harder to face.

I’d kept those secrets for my own sake.

I was twenty-four, I reminded myself. A member of the Underground. And a cop. For years, I’d made life-and-death decisions for myself and others. On the job and off, I regularly confronted and controlled dangerous situations. I’d never thought of myself as brave, but certainly I was determined.

Then why should it be so difficult for me to face my childhood fears?

I made a decision as I turned off 146 onto a winding road that would take me deep into the center of the Shawnee National Forest. Followed up on it before I could change my mind. At not quite six-thirty in the morning, I used my cell phone to call the Cherokee Rose. Knowing that Katie and Gran would be busy with breakfast preparations. And that Aunt Lucy would be at the front desk in the empty lobby, using the quiet of early morning to work on the hotel’s accounts. That she would answer the phone.

When Aunt Lucy heard my voice—my simple “Hello”—she began talking immediately, chattering nervously. As she rushed to tell me that everything was all right, she said more about an Underground operation than she usually did over the phone. A clear indication, at least, that no one was within earshot.

“We’ve already found a place for Jackie down in Tucson,” she said. “She told me she likes animals and—just by chance—there was a job available in a vet’s office. Our folks are already working on her new IDs. So it’s just a matter of arranging transportation. With luck, that’ll only take a few days. In the meantime, Jackie will be spending most of her time in her room, resting and recuperating.”

That, I supposed, was meant to be reassuring. To make me feel better about Katie’s new involvement with the Underground. But my lingering anger over that made it easier for me to ask the questions that I should have asked years earlier.

“I need some information about my mother,” I said without preamble, and I felt no guilt over the hard edge in my voice.

“Okay,” Aunt Lucy said slowly.

“Was she an addict before she left Maryville? Is that what landed her in prison?”

“So you knew,” Aunt Lucy said, sighing softly. “I’d always wondered. You always seemed to hear—and know—so much. And your eyes… I remember the first time I saw them. So dark and beautiful, but so very sad. And you tried to act so tough. Only five years old, but determined to take care of your sister.” She paused for a breath, then added, “In that regard, not much has changed, has it?”

I wanted to ask my questions, to get the answers I needed, and then to stop thinking about my mother. So I ignored that emotionally charged question.

When I didn’t answer, Aunt Lucy’s voice became more businesslike.

“Lydia had drug problems before she ran away. That was one of the reasons she left. Gran wanted her in rehab. She’d been in and out of prison.”

Aunt Lucy hesitated.

“For what?”

“Why, Brooke? Does it really matter?”

I was tired of secrets, I reminded myself. So I didn’t back down. But I did pull my SUV onto the grassy shoulder at the side of the road because I’d begun speeding dangerously along a hilly, winding road.

“She’s
my
mother,” I said firmly. “And I’m asking. So, yes, it matters.”

Easy enough to hear the resignation in my aunt’s voice.

“She went to jail for exactly what you’d expect. Possession. Prostitution. Petty theft.”

“But you still gave her money,” I said flatly.

That surprised her.

“You didn’t tell Katie about any of this?” she asked urgently. “She’d be devastated—”

“I never told anyone,” I cut in, offended by the suggestion.

“Of course not,” Aunt Lucy said.

She said it as if my keeping a secret was something she could always take for granted. And I realized that it was.

“I don’t think Gran ever suspected, either,” she continued. “If she had, she would have tried to stop me from sending money. Gran always said that Lydia was a user, and maybe she was right. But I loved my sister, so I helped her whenever I could.”

“Was money all she was after when she visited town? Back when I was fourteen or fifteen?”

That inspired enough silence that I anticipated Aunt Lucy would try to lie to me. As she had when we were children.

She didn’t.

“You were fifteen,” she said with certainty. “You, Katie and Gran had been gone only a matter of minutes—shopping, I think—when she knocked at the side door. She told me she’d been on her way to Nashville with a friend, but they’d fought and he’d taken off with all her money. So she needed my help to get clean. To start a new life. I figured that was a lie, like so many others. But I gave her the money anyway. And then she drove away.”

No, I thought, as I stared out through my windshield and watched a passing car kick up a layer of dust. There had to
be more to it than that. She couldn’t have asked for money and just left. Not without seeing us. Not without at least
asking
about us.

I blurted out a question—an accusation—I had never intended.

“Why did you send her away? Were you afraid that she’d want me and Katie to go with her?”

Even to my own ears, my voice sounded like that of a hurt, angry child. But I wanted my aunt to admit that she’d ordered my mother to leave. That she’d forbidden her to see us and maybe even threatened to call the police. Because it was easier to be angry with Aunt Lucy than to know with certainty that my mother didn’t love me.

“I’m sorry, honey,” Aunt Lucy said. “I asked her to stay. I even showed her your pictures. Yours and Katie’s. I told her that you both still loved her. And would forgive her. That I’d help her stand up to our mother. But all she wanted was money. I gave her every extra dollar I had. And then I told her that this was the last time, that I had to save for college for you and Katie. She must have believed me, Brooke, because I never heard from her again.”

By the time I said goodbye to my aunt, I was running late. But I lingered a while longer, parked at the side of the road, shedding the tears that I needed to shed and telling myself that it was foolish to be upset by the past actions of a virtual stranger. Especially someone whose maternal instincts—assuming that she’d ever had them—had long ago been replaced by the compulsions of an addict. It didn’t really matter, I assured myself, that my mother had passed through town nine years earlier and hadn’t sought me out. I’d accomplished what I’d intended by talking to Aunt Lucy and cleared
away the secrecy surrounding my mother’s actions. The best thing to do now was to forget all about Lydia Tyler.

When I turned into the rutted parking lot at Camp Cadiz, I wasn’t surprised to find that Chad was already there. He’d pulled his personal vehicle—a red, three-quarter-ton Chevy pickup—into the very spot where I’d once parked a boxy blue van. Back when I was sixteen and was just learning to believe in human monsters.

As I slid from my SUV, Chad climbed down from his truck.

Like the hot pink I wore, he’d also chosen a T-shirt that would be easy to see among the rocks and foliage of the forest. It was a brilliant orange, emblazoned in dark blue with the University of Illinois logo and the words Fighting Illini. But it wasn’t the way the shirt’s color clashed with his copper hair that drew my attention and made my breath catch in my throat. It was how the fabric stretched across Chad’s broad shoulders and muscular chest. The way it tucked into the waist of his soft, worn jeans, drawing my eyes downward…

Abruptly, I focused my attention on lowering the tailgate and leaning into the back of my SUV. Oh God, I thought, how long would it take before the very sight of him didn’t make me ache?

I didn’t look his way again until the scrunch of his footsteps on the gravel ended next to me. Before glancing back over my shoulder and flashing him a smile, I took a deep breath and then another. And I hoped he’d attribute the flush that I could feel still warming my face to the outside temperature, which was already creeping in the direction of ninety. With the humidity already at more than seventy percent, the forecast predicted that by midafternoon Maryville residents would feel as if the thermometer were well over three digits.

A thunderstorm, I thought, would be a welcome relief.

Chad immediately pitched in to help me unload our gear
and add it to the lightweight backpack, canteen and metal detector he’d brought with him. Climbing harnesses for both of us. Nylon rope. Binoculars. A canteen for me. And my backpack, filled with ready-for-anything supplies that included toilet paper and wet wipes, an all-in-one tool, a first-aid kit and the inevitable crime-scene tape and evidence bags. Chad, I knew from experience, would have packed an assortment of supplies very similar to mine and some kind of snack for us both.

“Sorry I was late. Been waiting long?” I asked as we slung on our backpacks.

He shook his head.

“Fifteen minutes at the most. Figured that you’d gotten hung up admiring Ed’s tropical paradise. His wife should know better than to leave him home alone.”

Though he was chuckling, now that my attention was focused on the details of his face, it was easy enough to see that his thoughts while he’d been waiting hadn’t been happy ones. The line of old scar tissue along his jaw was stark white against the irritated redness of his cheek.

As if to confirm my observation, he raised his hand to his face again. But this time, his anxious fingers drifted toward the new, much smaller wound on his cheek. The one framed by adhesive residue and bridged by several no-longer-white butterfly closures.

I grabbed his wrist and stopped the movement. Gave his hand a quick shake before releasing it.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “It itches.”

“Yeah. I bet it does. But leave it alone. I did a darn good job patching that cheek, and I’d be pissed if it got infected.”

“Wouldn’t want that.”

I couldn’t tell from his voice whether he meant pissing me
off or infecting the cheek, but he’d taken that moment to rub his fingers over his eyes, so I couldn’t read his expression, either.

He looks tired, I thought as our eyes met again. As if the past several nights hadn’t brought him much sleep, either. Though I still wasn’t optimistic, I hoped that we’d find evidence in the ravine proving that the remains belonged to his mother. Chad would sleep better knowing that.

So would I.

We followed the River-to-River Trail from Camp Cadiz, with the two of us walking single file and steadily, but not quickly. Conserving our energy for the more difficult terrain at the bottom of the ravine.

For a time, Chad took the lead, and I couldn’t help but notice how confidently he moved through the forest. Long practice, I thought, remembering all the time we’d spent outdoors together hiking and camping. As childhood friends. As adult lovers. And though I knew that the reason for going into the forest was serious, for this little bit of time I indulged myself. I pushed away anxious thoughts about the past and future, focusing only on the pleasant and familiar present. On the sight of a man who was undeniably sexy in tight jeans. And on life as it might have been.

Halfway across the footbridge, Chad paused. He leaned on the railing, looking up the ravine toward our crime scene.

I joined him and spent a moment peering downward.

Fallen trees, many of them mature, were wedged across the narrow ravine. Some of them had roots that—like a child’s loose tooth—clung tenaciously to the embankment or to one of the more substantial ledges. Those trees were still green and leafy. But most were dead or dying, their leaves a withered, tattered brown.

At some point either rockfall or rotting would send them
tumbling to the bottom of the ravine, more than forty feet below the bridge where Chad and I stood. There, hundreds of years’ worth of rotting trees and the water from a meandering stream supported the abundant vegetation that softened the edges of all but most recent rockfall.

“See the stream down there?” Chad asked. “That’s the dividing line between federal land on the Camp Cadiz side of the ravine and county land on the opposite side. Nearer the crime scene, Maryville jurisdiction intersects with the county’s. No landmark there, just an arbitrary line on the map.”

I nodded, acknowledging the information as I kept looking downward. Today, there was more sandy, rock-strewn stream bed than there was stream. But heavy rains could change the meandering ribbon of water into a torrent that could sweep away whole trees. And as we left the bridge, I thought—not for the first time—that Chad and I were embarking on a fool’s mission.

It was just past 8:00 a.m. when we left the marked trail and began hiking parallel to the ravine.

I took a turn walking in front and watching for hazards.

The strip of land nearest the ravine was relatively clear of plants, enabling us to avoid much of the tangled undergrowth and jutting rock formations that had made searching for Tina so difficult. But the same erosion that swept away so much of the forest’s lush growth had created crumbling edges, deep fissures and sinkholes, often camouflaged by thin layers of soil, vegetation and forest debris.