The comic-book shop on Madison, where Drew worked, surprised her. Venetian blinds covered the windows, the shelves had been hewn from solid cherry, and the air seemed remarkably free of dust. Every last inch of space had been utilized, but neatly. Classical music tinkled from hidden speakers.
It could not be wise to show up there so soon after Evan’s accusation of collusion, but Theresa lacked sufficient paranoia to think he would have her followed, and felt a face-to-face with Drew would be more productive. He could hang up a phone too easily.
Drew was conversing with a customer at the counter, too engrossed in his topic to notice her approach. “Do you have number 437? That one was really cool because he finally really talks to Marina about her father. And he beats up Doctor Sin too. But he gets away-”
“Drew,” she interrupted, refusing to be distracted by the history of Doctor Sin.
Drew turned, saw her, gulped. “Excuse me a minute,” he said to the customer, who hitched his computer case strap higher onto his shoulder and shuffled off toward a glass display case labeled FIRST EDITIONS. “Hi, Mrs. MacLean.”
The polished wooden counter dug into her waist as she leaned toward him. “Did you tell Evan Kovacic that I told you to apply for guardianship of Cara?”
“Um.” The red had faded, mostly, from the whites of his eyes. Perhaps he had finally ceased the relentless sobbing. “No.”
“Are you sure? Because I just met with him and his attorney and they have that distinct impression.”
He pulled his knit zip-up cardigan more tightly around his thin frame, and his eyebrows crept up in an imitation of innocence. Today he seemed no more dangerous than a stray kitten.
“He’s threatening to sue me and my employer,” she added.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! His attorney called me after I filed the papers and asked who my attorney was and when I said I was representing myself he said then I have a fool for a client and who the hell-though he said more than hell, which I didn’t think was very professional of him-did I think I was, trying to take a man’s daughter away from him?”
“Okay. And where did I come into this?”
“He said Evan had the resources to give Cara a decent life, and a loser like me had nothing.”
This situation had disastrous potential for her and she needed to stay on track, but still, she couldn’t let that go by. “Attorneys aren’t known for their tact, especially when they’re trying to get you to drop a case, Drew. Don’t pay any attention to his insults. But as for me-”
“I might have said something like, well, that you didn’t think it was such a bad idea. If I got custody of Cara.”
Oh, hell.
“You don’t, do you?”
“Drew, I never advised you to-”
“But you don’t, right? Wouldn’t it be better for Cara to have a father who really loved her, and not just her bank account? And let’s look at the facts-Evan didn’t do such a good job of taking care of Jillian.”
“Jillian was a grown woman, Drew.”
“But-”
She fiddled with the items near the cash register to take a break from his gaze, a collectible Batmobile, light sticks in a variety of colors, the “take a penny” bowl, and tiny plastic Legolases. “Look, despite the fact that your emotions seem to-fluctuate-I’m sure you would be a perfectly good father…”
“Thank you,” he said and beamed.
“But whether you would, or whether Evan wouldn’t, none of that is up to me. Your court case over Cara has nothing to do with me. I can’t help you with that-”
“Sure you can. Prove Evan killed Jillian.”
“Drew, I don’t know that he did.” Didn’t she? Then what had she been doing for days, neglecting her job and the rest of her life to retrace a dead woman’s steps? Okay, she knew it. But she couldn’t prove it.
“Sure you do.”
“You’re not listen-”
“You got in trouble at work, I get that. I promise I won’t mention your name to anyone from now on, I’ll say it was entirely my idea to ask for Cara. I’ll pretend I don’t even know you. Just put him in jail, and Cara won’t have to be raised by the man who killed her mother. I know you can do it, because you understand.”
“Understand what?” she asked, fairly certain she did not want to hear the answer.
“What it’s like to lose someone. I looked you up, in the library newspaper archives. I-I read about your fiancé dying. That was so awful.”
As always, she didn’t know what to say.
“But that’s why you understand about Jillian, why I have to know what happened to her and punish Evan for doing it. I have to.” He patted her hand and she tried not to jerk it away. “You’ll figure it out. You’re like Wonder Woman. Just pull out your lasso of truth, all your lights and test tubes and microscopes, and justice will prevail.”
“Wonder Woman,” Theresa said. “Sure.”
Jillian’s mother, Barbara Perry, managed an antiques store in Cuyahoga Falls-not a storefront affair, but a vast box perched on the edge of a forested valley. Parked cars clustered near the door, filling one-third of the lot in the middle of a weekday. Theresa sat in hers and stared. What was she doing here? Frank had contacted Anthony and Barbara Perry, been told that they hadn’t spoken to their daughter in months, and that they could shed no light on her life or activities. “Quote,” Frank had told her. “That’s exactly what her dad said, ‘no light.’”
That was why it had taken Theresa four days to pay Jillian’s mother a visit.
Who was she kidding? She simply hadn’t wanted to converse with a woman who had just lost her daughter. Too easy for parallels to pop up and linger.
And, truthfully, if they hadn’t seen Jillian in a year or two, they would be unlikely to illuminate Jillian’s state of mind or her relationship with her husband. So why was she here, taking over for the investigators like some sort of deranged Nancy Drew?
Because she had a right to ask what they knew about Jillian’s state of mind. That was the job of the medical examiner’s office. Maybe not her job, specifically, but close enough. She opened the car door and stepped onto the asphalt.
And because she wasn’t going to turn her back on Jillian Perry again.
The frigid air filtered out of the valley with the smells of evergreens and frozen earth. Cuyahoga Falls tried to live in harmony with the nature surrounding the town, and for the most part had the funds to do so. Apparently the antiques business had not suffered along with the rest of the economy. The shopgirl who had answered the phone earlier said that Barbara Perry would be in all morning and could pick up the line as soon as she finished with a couple and their butler’s table. Theresa hadn’t waited. Barbara Perry had at least seen her newborn granddaughter, and with luck might know more about her daughter than anyone suspected.
There was only one way to find out.
Still, the walk to the lettered glass door seemed to take many more steps than it should have. The air felt especially bitter, and one lone starling gazed at her as he perched on the luggage rack of a silver Audi. The starling squawked.
“You shouldn’t be here either, my little feathered friend. Aren’t the smart birds still in Florida?”
Its marble eyes did not waver. She reached the door.
What are you hoping this woman will do? Tell you that Jillian said Evan threatened to kill her and also said, by the way this is how I’ll do it? Tell you that Jillian had been contemplating suicide, so she walked into that woods of her own accord and Evan is simply a tactless, shallow, but innocent man? Decide that perhaps she should sue for custody of Cara, since Evan is all by himself and not even a blood relation to the little girl?
Maybe.
Then he’d sue you for sure.
But Cara would be safe.
She pushed the door open and stepped through. Not even the smell of wood polish and old upholstery could unclench her stomach.
She saw Barbara Perry immediately, her hair and eye color too identical to her daughter’s to miss. The woman held a glass bowl out to an older man in a heavy parka, not removing her own hands until his had firmly clasped the beveled edges. She wore a simple pantsuit in light pink and a heavy cardigan sweater that seemed to pull her shoulders down. The blond hair was set in precise curls. The blue eyes never left the bowl.
Blowing a sale would not get their relationship off to a good start. Theresa browsed through lamps and then a few shelves of knickknacks until the man decided to pony up for the bowl. As soon as he left with his carefully wrapped package, she approached the woman.
“Mrs. Perry?”
“Yes,” she said and viewed Theresa without apparent interest.
Theresa introduced herself without specifying her position at the medical examiner’s office. “I realize this is a difficult time for you, but could I please have a few minutes?”
“We couldn’t do this on the phone?” She sounded more surprised than upset. Only plumbers made house calls these days. “I’m working.”
I thought you might be more forthcoming without your husband. “I was in the area anyway,” Theresa lied blatantly. She’d lived in northern Ohio all her life and only visited the suburb east of her perhaps three times.
“I don’t think I can help you. My daughter and I haven’t seen much of each other these past few years.”
“Anything you could tell me would help. We’re trying to complete her case file, but I wanted to be sure that I spoke with all her next of kin first.”
With the carrot of closure dangled before her, Barbara Perry agreed to take a break. She said as much to a skinny teenager with CARLOTTA on her name tag and led Theresa to an area next to the office that showed almost as much sophistication as the showroom. The coffeepot had deep stains and the microwave needed cleaning, but the sofa had been upholstered in crimson jacquard and an orange carnival-glass teacup held the Splenda packets.
Theresa’s heart beat a little desperately as she planted her bottom on the red cushions.
Pretend she’s Rachael’s teacher, she coaxed herself. She’s given Rachael a C instead of an A on a recent test that Rachael insists she aced, and you’re not leaving until you find out why. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Perry. I’m sorry for your loss.”
The woman did not speak until after she’d craned her neck to get her coworkers in her line of sight. The teenager on the floor moved to greet a pair of young women crossing the threshold, and a man of indeterminate age spoke, low and without pause, on the phone in the adjacent office. Apparently reassured, Barbara Perry stated, “I loved Jillian.”
“I’m sure you-”
“No.” She looked at Theresa, pressed her trembling lips together. “I loved Jillian. I think she made some mistakes, and perhaps I did too, but I loved her. You don’t know how many times I’ve wished I could say it’s all right, it doesn’t matter. But it wasn’t right, bringing that baby into the world without a father, using her body instead of her mind to make a living, and how could I say it was? What’s the point of being a parent if you don’t try to influence your child to take the healthiest path?” She turned her palms up. “What am I here for if not that?”
Theresa stammered, “I see your point.”
“I could say to myself, Jillian’s an adult now, she has to make her own decisions, and of course that’s true. But I’d be saying it to absolve myself of responsibility. I see others doing the same thing, with kids younger and younger.”
It took this woman thirty seconds to confess to a parent’s thorniest worry, Theresa thought. She wants to talk. She particularly wants to talk about Jillian. “What was Jillian like as a girl?”
An awfully broad question for a medical examiner’s investigation, but Barbara couldn’t be expected to know typical queries from the atypical. Nor did she seem to care. “Sweet. They were both so easy, she and her brother. That’s why it jolted us so when she dropped out of school to be a model. She had always planned to be a teacher, and all of a sudden, after two years of college…at first I thought she’d gotten lazy, even though she never had been before. She had always worked hard for her grades. She’d had a job at the Dairy Queen since the tenth grade. Jillian was never lazy. She wanted to be a model.”
“It sounds like a fun job,” Theresa put in when the woman’s voice faded.
“For how long, though? She needed to be able to make a living, be independent. I always thought it had to do with breaking off her engagement to Jeremy.”
“Jeremy?”
“They dated through high school and into college. A nice boy. Even Andrew liked him, felt he would take sufficiently good care of his little princess.”
“Is that what your husband called Jillian?”
“Always.” A gentle smile showed, in no uncertain terms, the origin of Jillian’s looks. “Both our kids, the prince and princess. Just a family joke-it’s not that they were spoiled. Our son wasn’t interested in being royalty, only in running and playing ball and getting a car. But Jillian, she would play dress-up in my old clothes and fashion tiaras for herself out of pipe cleaners and costume jewelry. Every day in the summer she’d be in the backyard with a court of stuffed animals and dolls.”
She seemed in danger of getting lost in the memory, so Theresa said, “My daughter did the same thing after I brought home a tape of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.” She didn’t add that Rachael had tired of the pomp and circumstance in a week, after figuring out you couldn’t ride a bike in a ball gown.
“My husband finally built her a castle. It was basically just a plywood crate and she was nearly ten, barely enough room to turn around in, but Andrew put a little turret at the top and painted it as best he could. She’d spend hours in there, winter and summer. I’d go out and check on her, make sure she didn’t faint from heatstroke or freeze to-” She stopped.
Theresa didn’t press the image. “Jillian and her father were close?”
“We both were,” the woman said firmly, nipping that idea in the bud. Problem girls often had daddy issues, and sexually precocious behavior often sprang from molestation at a young age. But so many years with her steady, the “nice boy” Jeremy, did not mesh with that profile.
“What about her brother?”
“The typical bickering when they were kids, but otherwise fine.”
“What about as adults? I understand he lives out of state?”
“New Mexico. I don’t know if they spoke much, but I doubt it. He’s busy with his own family now…and he and his father have too much conflict. They love each other, but they’re too alike.”
So you’ve lost both your children because of your husband. Theresa tried to think of a tactful way to ask for her reaction to that. “Did Jillian say why she broke up with Jeremy?”
“She felt disappointed in him. She didn’t get more specific than that, so I don’t know what she meant, but I assume the relationship went on too long. He began to take her for granted; she began to think she had settled down too soon and was probably right. I wasn’t concerned about Jeremy. If she wanted to broaden her horizons, I thought that was a good idea. Dropping out of college to become a model, that wasn’t.”
“Was she living at home?”
“No, she had her own place by then. That’s why it took us almost a year to figure out that modeling wasn’t paying her bills. She didn’t get jobs-she had a pretty face but her personality…Jillian glowed in person, but the camera couldn’t catch that.”
Theresa nodded. She realized her thighs were aching from pressing her knees together, trying not to fidget or do anything to break Barbara’s train of words. The man in the office had hung up the phone and Theresa hoped he would not come out and interrupt them. “Being beautiful and being photogenic are two different things.”
“I think that’s how she got into the live modeling. I don’t know how she wound up with that-man-downtown. Then one of our friends saw her out with a group of businessmen and told Andrew. He called that man…I don’t know what he said, but it nearly killed Andrew. One day I had a daughter.” She sighed. “The next, I didn’t.”
“Your husband disowned her?”
The woman waved her hand at the idea. “We’re not the Hiltons. There wasn’t much to disown her from except us. He stopped speaking to her, which was a million times worse. Jillian thought the world rose and set on her father.”
“But she wouldn’t quit the agency?”
“No.” Barbara crossed her arms over the pink knit top, as if protecting her midsection against a new onslaught of pain. “I don’t understand. I never understood.”
“Perhaps she wanted to, er, enjoy her youth after being in a steady relationship all those years.”
“My daughter wasn’t a slut, Mrs.-I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“MacLean.”
“My daughter was a romantic. That was the problem all along. She had no realistic sense of how the world worked. She expected a man to come along and build her a castle.”
“Evan.”
This made Barbara look at her, the blue eyes startling in their clarity. “Was my daughter happy?”
She should have been. She’d found a man to replace her father, in charge, controlling, a man who designed castles and took her to live in one with her very own little princess at her side. She should have been very happy. “I don’t know, Mrs. Perry. She might have been.”
“Then why is she dead?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Barbara.” The office man had materialized next to them and Theresa gave a little start. “Here’s the order for that wardrobe. They’ll be in this afternoon.”
She took the folder he held out. Her hand trembled.
He did not appear to notice the wet eyes or quavering voice. Perhaps he had poor eyesight or an utter lack of empathy. “Be sure it’s wrapped properly. We don’t want another disaster like the Bennings’ china cabinet.”
“No, of course.”
When he had returned to his desk, Theresa asked, “Did Jillian have any health problems?”
Barbara seemed a bit relieved to have a specific, answerable question to tackle. “She was born with a hole in her heart, where the wall didn’t close up.”
“A septal defect? Between the two ventricles?”
“Yes. It had healed by the time she started school. It didn’t hold her back from any activities, but Jillian didn’t care for sports anyway. She had chicken pox at ten, and mono her first year in college. Other than that she was hardly ever sick.”
“Any allergies?”
She shuddered. “Shellfish. I let her try my crab at a restaurant once, on her first day of second grade. She turned blue and we had to go to the emergency room. She scared me to death, and completely terrified her father.”
There had been no sign of anaphylactic shock in the dead woman. “Anything else you can think of, something that might have affected her physical condition?”
“I thought Jillian froze to death. Do you think it could have been natural causes?” The stillness in her face eased, and her spine straightened just a millimeter in cautious hope. “Do you think some physical ailment could have affected her mind? Is that why she walked into the woods and froze to death?”
“I’m just gathering information, Mrs. Perry-”
“Maybe she didn’t know what she was doing. Because I don’t believe she would kill herself, I really don’t. Only if she had taken a lot of drugs, but Jillian hardly took aspirin, and you didn’t find any drugs in her system, did you, or you wouldn’t be asking all these questions. Maybe it was a brain tumor?”
“We would have found that during the autopsy.” It pained Theresa to dampen Barbara Perry’s hope that her daughter had not chosen to end her own life. Some bizarre biochemical reaction would be preferable. A brain tumor would be preferable.
Murder, even, would be preferable.
“I don’t know exactly how Jillian died, Mrs. Perry. That’s why I’m trying to find out.”
“I know there’s some explanation. You don’t know how frustrating it is, to know that there must be an answer out there but without any means of finding it.” For the first time her fingers unclenched. “I have to wait for someone like you to find out for me.”
Great. First Drew and now Jillian’s mother, both counting on her to uncover the truth. But only their specified truths. Drew wanted to know that Evan murdered Jillian and Barbara wanted to know that her daughter had found happiness before dying of an unexpected and unpreventable physical disorder.
Theresa wanted to ensure Cara a long and healthy childhood.
Tall orders. Tall, and perhaps mutually exclusive. Even for Wonder Woman.
“Your granddaughter Cara-do you know who her father is?”
The brief reprieve for Barbara Perry’s emotional health had come to an end. Her shoulders sank so, she could be accused of bad posture. “A soldier, apparently. He died in Iraq.”
Theresa had been waiting for an “I don’t know.”
“Really?”
The woman shrugged. “She said so after I asked for the fifteenth time. I expect she planned to tell Cara that someday.”
The salesgirl, Carlotta, approached the sitting area. “Barbara?”
“I’ll be done here in a minute.”
“That couple I have are interested in a canopy bed. Do you want to show them that one from the estate sale-”
“Herd them over to it, slowly. Be sure to show them the lamps. I’ll be there in a minute.”
The girl trotted away. Barbara smoothed her skirt as if preparing to stand, but Theresa pressed on. “You don’t think it was the truth? Because whoever he is, he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about Cara’s money, or you’d think he would have reappeared in a hurry.”
“Andrew said if the soldier story was true, Jillian wouldn’t have kept it a secret. She would have been able to tell us something about him, what he did, where he was from. A name, at least.”
“Jillian invented him to make everyone around her feel better?”
“She never could lie. She was terrible at it.”
“She didn’t say anything else about him?”
“It’s hard-” Barbara took a deep breath. “But I have to conclude that she didn’t tell us anything about him because she didn’t know anything about him. He was a one-night stand. Or a client.”
Or a pimp.
Or what she did know was so bad that Jillian gave up child support in order to stay away from him. Could that have gotten her killed? Some secret from her past that had nothing to do with Evan, or Cara’s money?
In any event…Theresa chose her words carefully. “Evan has had to apply to the courts for guardianship of Cara since he was not married to Jillian at the time of Cara’s birth and makes no claim to be her parent.”
Barbara responded with what seemed to be equal caution. “Yes?”
She was probably going to get sued anyway, so she might as well do what she had been accused of. “You and Mr. Perry are the baby’s next of kin.”
“We can’t take her.”
“Of course that would be a huge decision-”
Barbara didn’t ask why she’d brought it up, or seem to take any offense at the topic. “I know she’s our granddaughter, and no matter what, I’ll love her. But we can’t go back to raising a child. My husband wants to take early retirement next year and the income will be fixed.” Now she did stand, dismissing the idea with a stilted wave. “I know what you’re going to say, that Cara comes with her own funding, but it’s not the money.”
“About Cara’s account…was your husband angry when Jillian’s grandparents left the money to her?”
The implications of this question went right over Barbara’s head. “No, that’s what I mean-it’s not the money, it’s the time. When my husband retires we’ll finally have time for ourselves, maybe travel while we’re still young enough to keep up with a group. I know that sounds horribly selfish.”
“It doesn’t.”
“But I did my job. I just can’t do it over again. Even with all the money and help in the world-” Her eyes grew wet. “I just can’t. I’m too old, and I’m too tired.”
“I understand perfectly. Thank you for your time, and again, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Out in the parking lot, Theresa waited for the engine to warm up. A couple strolled on the sidewalk in front of her, a young man and woman, each carrying a matching Tiffany glass lamp. They must have been happy with the purchase; they stopped to congratulate each other with a kiss.
She hadn’t thought of Paul all morning, and, as if the feelings had accumulated in the meantime, like held mail, longing and abject pain rushed through her now. Her stomach had begun to sink with her visit to Stone’s office and continued through the up-close-and-personal visit with Barbara Perry and her loss. Now it did its best to shrink into her spine, while her lungs froze up in that limbo that comes before a sob.
Oh, Paul.
Was life ever going to seem good again?
Stop. Focus. Concentrate on the work. Did I learn anything from the interview? Only that Jillian had been healthy, and her princess Cara would not be rescued from the castle’s turret by her grandparents.
Not that Theresa found that difficult to understand. Would I want to raise Rachael’s kids? Hell, no.
Though it would be different if Rachael’s child lay beneath a suspended sword, ready to fall from its thread the moment Evan became her official next of kin. But of course she couldn’t tell Barbara Perry that, because she couldn’t prove it.
Yet.