What the River Knows (25 page)

“Yeah, me, too.” Scott shivered, hoping he and Rica wouldn’t get to the point where they were hateful to each other. Then he remembered the words they’d shot at each other in the restaurant. Maybe they were already there.

Al paused to put his hand on Scott’s shoulder. “Scott, I’ve learned over the years that people change. Hopefully, they grow. And if they are wise enough, and love each other enough, they stay connected to each other and grow together.” He stepped forward to shut off the press. “And they can help each other grow in the process.”

“Do they ever change their minds?” Scott’s voice came out as small as when he was a preschooler asking his mom if monsters were real.

Al looked into Scott’s face for several minutes. “Sometimes, Scott. But often it takes years or a crisis.” He looked down. “Usually they don’t.”

Scott swallowed hard. He had come to Homedale to lose himself in the case, to forget about Rica, and suddenly, she was all he could think about. Al walked past him and started up the press again. Scott just stood there, a man with a jagged hole in his chest. Above the rhythmic whoosh and clack and grind of the press, he heard Al step close to him again. “Scott, you’ll survive.”

He looked up at Al, knowing that his implacable cop’s mask had melted. He just stared.

“Scott, since Sarah died—well, not right away, but after I came out of some of the numbness—I started interviewing people for a book about those who survived loss. All kinds of loss, from the death of a spouse, to abuse victims, to amputees, to those who survived when others died.” Al looked at Scott so hard that Scott had to focus on those intense blue eyes. “Even divorce, Scott.” Scott held onto Al’s gaze, his lifeline for the moment. “I found that survivors overcome. They learn that they can’t change the circumstance that brought about the loss, but they can change themselves and how they view the loss.”

The press lost its rhythm, and Al jumped toward it. He stopped it and cleared a paper jam. When it was clear and he had it running again, he stepped back toward Scott. “You’ll get through this, Scott. You may not want to for a while, but you will.” The press ran out of paper, and Al shut it off. “If you are honest with yourself and work at it, you’ll come out of this a better person.”

“That would be a blessing,” Scott mumbled. “I’ve been a fucking mess.”

“I doubt that. You wouldn’t have been promoted to detective, wouldn’t have pursued this case so far, if you were a total screw-up.” Al patted Scott’s shoulder. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Chapter 54

The fresh-faced, smiling woman who answered the door on the first knock didn’t track with the angry girl in dark Goth makeup and clothes that Scott had seen in the school photos. He didn’t remember her personally at all. “Come on in,” she invited, opening the door to a room that ran the width of the house. She nodded toward a burly man on the couch with a tow-headed little girl on either side of him, and a baby dressed in blue on his lap. “The rain drove Brad out of the field, so he’s volunteered to read to the kids while we talk.”

Scott nodded toward the man that he thought he remembered from football. “Brad, that’s nice of you.” Brad would have been a sophomore the year Scott was a senior.

“It’s okay, Scott.” Brad ruffled the hair of the little girl on his right. She appeared to be about four, the other girl maybe three. “I’m so busy in the summer that I don’t get to do this very much.”

Brandi picked up a glass of iced tea from the table that dominated the east end of the room. She carried it to her husband and handed it to him, pausing to kiss him briefly. Scott shoved down the envy of their easy relationship. She returned to the kitchen end of the room where Scott stood. “Iced tea?”

“I believe I’ll take you up on that, Mrs. Obermann.” Though dust had already begun to swirl in the roadways, the fields soaked the rain up like sponges, and it had driven the humidity up to the intolerable range.

“Call me Brandi, please, Scott. Everyone does.” She ran ice from the refrigerator dispenser and then poured sun tea over it. “Let’s go to the sun room to talk.”

The name “sun room” filled him with dread; in this heat, the last thing he wanted was to sit in a room being cooked like a bug under a magnifying glass. However, he followed her through the kitchen to a shaded former porch now enclosed with tempered glass. An air conditioner vent poured a liberal flow of cool air into the room.

Brandi seated herself in a white-painted rocker, leaving the choice of another rocker or a straight chair for Scott. He grabbed the straight chair. Brandi took a slow sip of her tea before setting it on the small table beside her. “I know the girls were gone all afternoon and the baby was napping, but—” She leaned back and rocked. “It sure is quiet and peaceful out here knowing that their dad is taking care of them, and I can relax for a minute.” Then she focused on Scott. “But I don’t suppose it’s very relaxing to be investigating the murder of someone you know—knew.”

Scott shrugged. “If you investigate long enough, you get to know them all.” He swallowed a drink of tea. “But it does make me really, really want to find her killer.”

“How can I help?”

“What turned you around from where you were headed in high school?”

She smiled, a dimple showing in her cheek. “Brad.”

“What was it about Brad that turned you around?”

“He wouldn’t go out with me the way I was, or just for sex.” She stared out the window-walls into a grove of cottonwoods. “He said he could tell there was a very nice girl hiding under all that makeup and rage. I wanted him so bad, I cleaned up my looks. He started talking to me, but still said he just wanted to be friends. That’s when I started cleaning up my act.” She looked back at Scott. “The better I acted, the more I found I wanted to BE that way. I finally realized it had to be genuine for Brad to accept me, and whether he ever did or not, I wanted it for myself. I brought my grades up and earned the right to move back in with my mom. I kept writing to Brad, enrolled at the same college, and we got to be friends.” She grinned. “And then more than friends.”

“And did Margaret help at all in this process.”

Brandi swirled the ice in her half-finished tea and watched it until it stopped. Scott waited. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.” She looked up, but avoided his eyes. “I mean, she was a great person in school, and I’m sure she was a wonderful adult and mom and all that, but—”

Scott forced himself to remain slouched on the chair, his hand relaxed on his notepad, but inside he quivered like a dog on point. It was always what they didn’t think they should tell you that was exactly what you needed to know.

“Margaret had a bit of dark, wild side that most people never saw.” She ran her fingers around the rim of her glass. “I guess most of us do, really.” She flicked a glance at Scott. “I really hate bringing this up. It seems so cruel after the way she died.” She sat as if waging a silent war within herself over whether to reveal the secret. Scott waited, knowing that if he gave her enough time, she would. Otherwise, the thought would not have come up.

Brandi glanced toward the main room of the house, as if to check for anyone who could overhear. “Margaret came to my room one night in the spring.” She watched the ceiling fan as if it would help her remember dates. “Let’s see, that was my junior year, so would have been her senior.” She glanced into the other room again and leaned forward toward Scott. “She wanted me to set her up with a guy to lose her virginity, said she’d waited long enough. She had tried everything she knew to get Kyle to do it with her, but I could have told her that boy would never have been able to go through with it.”

“Why’s that?”

She stared at him for a moment. “Do you remember Kyle? That boy was so gay he could have burst into flames at any moment.” She started rocking again. “But maybe he hadn’t come to terms with that yet.”

“Any idea where he is now?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t stay in touch with anyone but Brad after I left Homedale.”

“Well, did you get her set up?”

Brandi pressed her lips together into a thin line. “I knew many of the boys in a way that I could figure out which ones would make it good for her.” She took a deep, ragged breath. “I came up with three I thought she might like, and she chose one. For a while, she went a little crazy, sneaking out every night, often with a different boy every night.” She shivered slightly, even though outside the sun baked the grass. “That used to be me, then I was lecturing her, and staying in.” She cupped her glass in her hands. “I’m glad that’s not me anymore.” She looked around the room, her gaze taking in the yard, and then nodded toward the family in the main room. “This is so much better than that.”

Scott held his tongue for a while, but her story had evidently ended. “Were you close to any of the other girls?”

She shrugged. “Mostly just competitors to see who could get which boy, or get in the most trouble, at first.” She leaned forward. “But then I saw the error of that way, and I tried to stay away from them when they were where they could get in trouble. At first they made fun of me, but then, toward the end of the school year, when I learned I could go home to Mom, I saw envy in their eyes.” She shook her head. “They never said anything, never let up on me, but you could see they all wanted that, too, just didn’t know how to change.”

Scott glanced down at his notes. He hadn’t taken many, but the story was burned in his memory. Gay Kyle, wild Margaret, all those hurting girls. He looked up at Brandi again, saw her studying an iris bed beside the porch. “Need to mow those things down soon,” she murmured. Then she focused on him. “Did anything I say help?”

“Who knows?” He folded up his notebook. “Maybe she still had a little wild side and got mixed up with someone a little too wild. Maybe it was nothing like that.” He stood. “You certainly put more dimension to Margaret, and maybe it will lead somewhere.” Brandi stood, too, and took his glass. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Obermann, for your tea.”

She stepped past him into the main room. On the couch, her husband sat with his head against the back of the couch, eyes closed, both girls slumped against him asleep, the baby snuggled close against his chest. Brandi smiled and walked Scott to the door. “I’ll start supper without waking them,” she whispered as she let him out.

He stood on the stoop for a moment, as the heat and humidity claimed every spot of his body that had been cool and comfortable. Would he ever have the opportunity to be that man on the couch, with a woman as devoted as Brandi Obermann? Could he earn that privilege by finding Delia/Margaret’s killer?

He turned toward the patrol car he had parked in the shade of a sixty-foot tall cottonwood that had to be over a half-century old. Earning privilege or not, he
would
find the killer. He owed it to Delia.

He opened the car door. Even though he had rolled the windows down an inch or so and parked it in the shade, the interior was a sauna when he slid behind the wheel. He put the windows all the way down, seeking a breeze until the air coming from the vents turned cool. Only then did he belt in, put the car in gear, and head toward home. He glanced at the clock. Four-thirty. No way he would get back before the chief left for the day. That would put off his ass-chewing until at least tomorrow morning.

When he got to the station, he turned in the car and went straight to his truck. The rain had avoided the city, and the thermometer in his mirror read one hundred nine. It was too hot for a run yet, but not too hot for the cold beers in the fridge.

Chapter 55

Charlotte put off her walk as long as she dared. Devlyn would be home by 11:15 or so, and she needed time to shower and make herself presentable before then. Still, it was so un-Godly hot out. The “If you want to know what hell feels like, visit Kansas in August” jokes were wearing thin, but they felt true. Finally, at 9:30, with the thermometer still registering a hundred degrees, she parked her car in one of the long shadows by her usual entrance to the walking path. Stretching as she made her way to the hot black asphalt, she kept a wary lookout for Handsy. The last thing she needed was for him to recognize her and strike up a conversation.

As she walked, she nodded and exchanged greetings with the regulars she often encountered. Then, a half-mile from her turnaround, she saw him. Again, he was running too hard for this heat, pushing himself, running like a man possessed. Sweat soaked his shirt and dripped from his face as he pounded closer to her. She scanned for a distraction and spotted a family of mallards on the water. She left the path to get closer to them, so her back would be to Handsy. She heard his labored breathing as he blew past and turned to watch his back. What the hell was he running from?

****

Scott knew he should slow his pace. He’d had a couple of beers when he got home from the station, then fallen asleep watching the early news. Then, when he woke up, he forced himself to eat a TV dinner that had looked good in the store, but tasted like cardboard with sauce. He ended up throwing half of it out and had another beer instead. He kept an eye on the outside temp and finally decided at nine that it wasn’t going to get cool enough to run. So he changed his clothes and headed for the running path along the river anyway.

He tried to go slow and take it easy in the heat, but somehow, it seemed the faster he ran, the quieter his mind got. He could no longer hear the voices that told him that Rica would still be with him if he was just neater. That she would not have left if he’d taken her out more often. That it was because they had to watch their pennies on his salary that Ambrose looked so much better than he did. That it was all the baggage from work he carried in his head that made her leave. That he didn’t love her well enough or often enough. When he reached a certain speed, all he could hear was his lungs laboring to pull in enough air to keep his arms and legs and heart pumping. All he could feel was the blood surging through his veins and the sweat pouring out of him, like it could wash out all his faults.

By the time he reached the parking area where he usually circled around to head back home, the endorphins had kicked in and he no longer heeded the voices in his head. It was then that his policeman’s instincts took over, and he began to catalog the people he encountered. The mother with the jogging stroller ahead of him. The auburn-haired woman at the river’s edge watching the ducks. The man with the Weimaraner trotting south. He circled through the parking lot and noted the cars there. Three SUV’s, a pickup with a topper, a Toyota Camry, and a Chevy Cavalier.