‘That’s OK, Mom,’ Graham said. ‘Bess and Alicia signed up to do the cleaning tonight.’
Both girls glared at him, but started clearing the table. Megan headed for the stairs.
Graham said, ‘Why don’t we go in the living room?’
The living room is where family members went when they wanted to have a discussion not overheard by others. Or to just get away from the blaring TV. Unfortunately the TV was turned off, so I had a feeling a discussion of sorts was in order. I followed him to the front of the house, feeling more like the child than the parent.
We sat, me in the love seat, Graham on the sofa. He leaned forward elbows on knees, hands clasped in front, shoulders slightly slumped. He looked so much like a man at that moment that I almost cried. My eighteen-year-old boy was all grown-up and heading off to college in a little more than a month. I cleared my mind of that thought.
‘I called Dad today,’ Graham said.
All I could do was nod.
‘He said he was staying at Grandma Vera’s for a while. That you were supposed to explain why.’
Again, I nodded.
‘But I did get out of him that you asked him to leave, and that he agreed it was the best plan.’
Be the grown-up!
my mind kept telling me, but my body kept replying,
Hide, hide!
I took a deep breath and looked my son square in the eye. ‘Some things came up. We decided it was time for a break. We’ve been together since college, over twenty years. We just need a little time apart.’
‘I assume the girls don’t know?’ Graham said.
‘No, they don’t. But they need to. Would you mind gathering them up?’
It was Graham’s turn to nod, which he did, then got up in search of his sisters. It took a good ten minutes for them to gather in the living room, ten minutes I took to gather my thoughts. When they were all seated, I said, ‘First I want to apologize for whatever I did this afternoon when I was . . . ah . . . indisposed—’
‘You mean drunk?’ Megan said, arms crossed under her ample chest, her tone cold enough to fix our current weather problems.
I looked her in the eye. I was finally getting good at that. ‘Yes, honey, drunk. I was drunk. It happens. Was it a wise decision to get drunk on a Sunday morning? No, not at all. But it happened and I think we need to all get past it. I hope I didn’t do or say anything to embarrass any of you.’
‘You only embarrassed yourself, Mother,’ Megan said, not easing up a bit.
‘Can it, Meg,’ Graham said. ‘Give her a break.’
Megan sighed heavily and looked away from both her brother and me.
‘We have something more we need to talk about,’ I said. ‘Your father has temporarily moved to Grandma Vera’s house.’
All three girls turned open-mouthed stares toward me. ‘It wasn’t something we planned, it just came up—’
‘Is Grandma Vera sick?’ Bess asked.
‘No, honey, it’s nothing like that.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Your father and I decided we needed a break—’
‘He left?’ Megan said jumping up. ‘He just walked out on us?’ Then she frowned. ‘Or did you throw him out?’
‘It was a mutual decision, Megan,’ I said. ‘We’ve been together a very long time, and we just need a little time apart—’
Megan turned and headed upstairs. I looked at my other three children.
‘When is he coming back?’ Bess asked.
‘We don’t know yet,’ I answered. ‘But you can reach him on his cell phone or his office phone, or even Grandma Vera’s phone, whenever you want to talk to him.’
Bess looked at Graham. ‘I’ve noticed you don’t have any questions. That’s because you already knew, didn’t you?’
Graham shrugged. ‘For just a few hours. I called Dad earlier today and he told me he was staying at Grandma’s. He didn’t give me any more information than she just gave us.’ He looked at me. ‘Which sure as hell wasn’t much.’
‘What is it you want to know?’ I asked. I took a minute to look at each child for a brief instant.
‘Is it because of me?’ Alicia asked.
I felt the bile rising again in the back of my throat. No way was I going to lay this at that poor girl’s feet. She had enough wounds, physical and emotional. She didn’t need this one added to it.
‘Absolutely not,’ I said, and smiled.
‘Then why?’ Bess asked.
‘These are private reasons,’ I said. ‘Things between a husband and wife.’
‘Problems in the bedroom?’ Graham asked. ‘Get Dad some Viagra for crying out loud!’
I laughed. Maybe not appropriate, but I did. ‘No, honey, not that. And that’s not a question you put to your parents.’
‘Yeah, Graham,’ Bess said. ‘Like, yuck!’
I heard a commotion on the stairs and we all turned to look. Megan was coming down the stairs with two large suitcases in her hands.
‘Graham,’ she said, as she hit the foyer, ‘would you please drive me to Grandma’s?’
EIGHT
MEGAN
O
f course she wouldn’t let me go. When you’re fifteen you’re no better than a slave! You have no rights. And your owner can do whatever she wants with you. Clean this, pick up that, take the trash out, clean the toilet, brush your hair, brush your teeth, set the table! I swear it goes on forever! I hate her. I really, really, honestly do! My dad is the only person in the world I can relate to and she threw him out! She denies it, says it was a mutual decision, but that’s, excuse the expression, crap! She knows I love my dad and I don’t love her, so she threw him out, just to hurt me!! I swear I think that’s her entire goal in life, to ruin mine!
I sat in my room, my tears shed. I have no more in me. I’d cried them out. I might never cry again. She had ruined my life! If I weren’t as stable as I am – very, very stable – I’d probably attempt suicide right now! A lesser woman would. Really.
At least I have my job with Mrs McClure. She’s going to get her hair done tomorrow, and a mani-pedi, so I’ll get at least two hours. I didn’t get a chance to spend any money at the mall the other night since my dad kidnapped me and made me go to that stupid church thing, so I have, like, money saved! I’ll add the pay tomorrow, add that to the money saved, and I’ll have, like, close to one hundred dollars! I’m going to save a little more then I’m going to run off to New York City, or maybe Los Angeles. I see myself more as a model slash stage actress, but I’ll do movies if I have to. I’m versatile.
Monday came in on great clumping feet, like a Clydesdale running through my head. But with that came the realization that I could do nothing about my husband and his decision of whether or not to come home or stay at his mother’s and screw around with waitresses. That was his choice. Meanwhile, I’d made a commitment not only to Berta Harris, but also to Ken Killian. I made promises to find out who killed Kerry and who wanted to kill Berta. And since I had no one here to continuously tell me not to, it was time I got with it.
Berta had woken up knowing she was in trouble, just not what kind. She’d woken up knowing she liked Diet Coke, the color blue, and Mexican food. She knew she didn’t like Chinese food or sandals, but liked NBC news and
Survivor
. She just didn’t know who she was. And how did any of that get me any closer to who killed Kerry and who
wanted
to kill Berta?
OK, I thought. Why do people murder other people? Luna told me once it was variations on the twin themes of love or money. Although I wasn’t sure if that followed with Kerry’s murder. I was positive Kerry’s death had something to do with Berta. The way Kerry acted when Trisha and I came to her real estate office proved – at least to me – that Kerry knew something bad, that she was already under some kind of duress.
And that something bad, the duress, had to be related to Berta. So why was someone trying to kill her? She was on a lonely road in Codderville when she was run over by a hit-and-run driver. I wondered what road she might have been on. I picked up the phone and called Berta.
‘Good morning,’ I said when she answered the phone. ‘It’s E.J.’
‘I know,’ Berta said, a smile in her voice. ‘I recognized your voice. What’s up?’
‘Do you know what road you were hit on?’
‘You mean with the hit-and-run driver?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘No.’
‘Who found you and where?’
‘Hum,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. Since I left the hospital so quickly and sneakily, I never had the chance to ask anyone about anything.’
‘OK, thanks,’ I said and hung up, immediately dialing Luna’s number at the police department in Codderville. When she answered, I said, ‘Hey, I need your help.’
‘I’m not speaking to you,’ she said and hung up.
I redialed. ‘Don’t hang up! It’s important. Sorry about the booze yesterday. If it’s any consolation, I have no memory of anything after the last truffle.’
‘There were truffles?’ She sighed. ‘What do you want?’
‘Anyway you can find the call or whatever for when Berta was picked up and taken to the hospital back whenever?’
‘I know you think I’m a complete idiot, and this department can’t do its job without your help, but we already did that. We checked with the hospital ER to find out when she was admitted, traced that back to a nine-one-one call and found out who came to the scene.’
‘Great! So tell all!’ I said, smiling.
‘No,’ she said and hung up.
I hit redial again. ‘What?’ she demanded on picking up the phone.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I said in as reasonable a voice as I could muster. ‘You know and I know you’re going to give me the information eventually. Why drag it out? Unless you enjoy having me call you every five minutes. Is that what this is? Do you have a girl crush on me—?’
A heartfelt sigh came from the other end of the line. ‘She was admitted to the ER at eleven p.m. on October 3, 2010.’ I stood up, stretching the kitchen phone cord across the room to open the junk drawer where I kept a tablet and pen. Why not keep it next to the phone? With teenagers in the house? Get real. ‘The nine-one-one call came from the cell phone of an eighty-four-year-old man who was walking his dog and saw a woman in the middle of the road. That road being Burkley Road on the north side of the ball park in Codderville. He didn’t know if she was dead or alive. I did an interview with him Friday and I don’t suspect him of any foul play. The police officers who responded to the scene said she was alive but unconscious when they got there and they got a response from a bus in less than five minutes. She was rushed to Codderville Memorial. The rest you know.’ And again she hung up on me. I didn’t hit redial – not even to say thank you.
I sat in Kerry Killian’s beautifully appointed living room, in one of the silk striped arm chairs. Berta sat on the couch, and Ken, who hadn’t gone back to work yet, sat on the love seat. The boys were out.
‘Does Burkley Road mean anything to you?’ I asked Berta.
She shook her head.
‘The ball park?’
Again she shook her head.
‘Maybe if she saw the place?’ Ken suggested.
‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘Berta, are you up to seeing the spot where you were hit?’
She looked from me to Ken and back again. She sighed heavily and said, ‘Yes. I think it’s something I need to do.’
‘Thata girl!’ Ken said, smiling, and stood up.
We all hopped in Ken’s car, an SUV with lots of leg room in the back seat, where I was delegated, and drove from Black Cat Ridge to Codderville. It was another beautiful day, royal-blue sky, bright sun, brown grass and sagging trees. The temp as we left Black Cat Ridge at ten a.m. was ninety-four degrees. It was early July and if the temp went as high as predicted, today would mark the eighth day in a row of over one hundred degrees – the sixteenth day since official summer began. The lake levels were decreasing, creeks were disappearing, and there was no rain in sight. The short-lived storm of the other night was so strong that it just ran off topsoil, sending little more than muddy slime into the aquifer. Gotta love a Texas summer.
We crossed the bridge over the Colorado River (the Texas Colorado River, that is), the water running sluggishly along. We were seeing parts of the bank that hadn’t seen daylight in one hundred years. Just looking at it depressed me. The sages on TV were declaring this the beginning of a ten-year drought, or a fifteen-year drought, or even a twenty-year drought, depending on which station you watched or listened to.
I directed Ken to the ball park and we found Burkley Road. Although it had been nine months since her hit-and-run, you could still see faint blood stains and less faint skid marks. We sat in the car for a few moments, just looking at the scene, each one of us, I suppose, playing a similar yet different scenario in our heads.
Berta walking down the side of Burkley Road, a car comes out of nowhere and – and this is where I noted the skid marks – swerves to hit her. Those skid marks didn’t show that the car tried to avoid hitting her at all. They showed an attempt to hit her by swerving in her direction. Whoever was behind the hit-and-run was purposely trying to kill Berta. Or whoever she really was.
I got out of the car to take a closer look at the skid marks. Surely Luna had noticed this! Was she insane? Jeez! It was so obvious! Ken got out behind me, with Berta a slow third.
I turned to Ken. ‘You notice anything about those skid marks?’
He looked at the side of the road where the faint stains of blood still proclaimed their presence. Then at the skid marks. And back again. Then he looked at me. ‘Someone was intentionally trying to kill her,’ he said.
‘I’ve been telling y’all that all along!’ Berta exclaimed. Then smiled. ‘Oh, I’m southern! Did you hear the way I said “y’all”? It was very natural!’
‘Better than that,’ Ken said, again smiling at her, a hand on her back, ‘I’d say you said “y’all” like a Texan.’
‘Really?’ Berta said eyes big. ‘Oh, I hope so!’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘Back to the skid marks—’
‘Didn’t you believe me when I said someone was trying to kill me?’
‘Oh, no! Berta, we believed you! E.J., tell her!’ Ken demanded.
I was getting a little tired of this . . .
thing
, for want of a better word, between Ken and Berta. His wife hadn’t been buried yet and here Ken was treating Berta like a cub to his mama lion.