Die Before I Wake (15 page)

I’m calling Dwight Pettingill as soon as we get home, and I’m filing a police report. And if they catch the little shit who did this, I’ll push like hell for jail time.”

Still nodding, Randy said, “You can’t let people get away with hurting your family. You’re doing the right thing, Doc. Make the bastards pay.” I rolled my eyes.
Men.
No matter how long I lived, I would never understand them. It looked like we had our own little vigilante group started. I wondered if they had a twelve-step program for that kind of thing.

Hi, my name is Randy, and I’m a revenge junkie.

Damn it, Tom was too smart to overreact like this. It was obviously kids. Kids who didn’t have the brains to realize the possible consequences of their actions.

But there was nothing I could do to change his mind; my husband was on a tear, already prepared to wreak vengeance for the imagined death of a baby we hadn’t yet conceived. It was a little over the top, but at the same time, there was something endearing about it. I tried to imagine my ex getting this fired up over anything, but that was a station I just couldn’t tune in. Oh, for sure, if anything had happened to me during our marriage, he would have grieved. Jeffrey wasn’t a complete ogre. He’d cared about me. But Jeff was too passive to don a suit of armor, mount a white stallion, and ride to my rescue. Not without major prodding. Tom, on the other hand, was determined to be my white knight, whether I wanted one or not.

We drove home in separate vehicles, Tom riding my bumper so close I was tempted to slam on the brakes just to teach him a lesson.
Thou shalt not tail-gate.
It had come as something of a shock, the sudden appearance of my balanced, rational husband’s inner Neanderthal, and I was torn between justified horror and a faintly mortifying thrill at the realiza-tion that even the vaguest of threats against my person had sent Tom on a zealous mission to preserve my delicate well-being. I’d always been an independent woman, and I knew my card-carrying feminist sisters would drum me right out of the club if they knew about the side of me that was secretly delighted to be fussed over by a man.

Tom must have made the phone call from the road, because when we pulled into the driveway, a Newmarket police cruiser was already waiting. A uniformed officer leaned against the fender, in his beefy hands a half-eaten Big Mac. When he saw us, his ruddy cheeks turned even redder. “It’s this low-fat diet Dolores has me on,” he explained. “A man can only eat so much tofu. If I didn’t sneak in a real meal once in a while, I’d starve to death. Damn woman even has me limited to two beers a day.” He grimaced in disgust. “Lite beer.”

Tom clapped him on the shoulder in sympathy.

“She’s just looking out for your health,” he said.

“Dolores loves you.”

“Yeah. That’s what she keeps telling me. I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I’d be happier if she showed her undying affection by frying me up a big, thick steak. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be fried. Grilled would be close enough.” Dwight swiped at his mouth with a paper napkin and hid a discreet belch behind his hand. Crumpling up the remains of his sandwich, he stuffed it into his empty McDonald’s bag. Suddenly all business, he straightened and said, “I hear you had an incident of vandalism.” Tom showed him the ruined belt, explained what had happened and what Randy had told us. “Hell-raising is one thing,” he said. “I wasn’t a perfect kid.

I egged a few houses in my time, toilet-papered a few trees. But I never did anything to endanger anyone.

We were lucky. My wife was stranded, but nobody was hurt. It could’ve been a lot worse. If this belt had given out on I-95 on a busy Saturday during leaf-peeping season, we could be looking at something a lot more serious than vandalism.” Dwight rubbed the back of his neck. “You realize there’s not a lot we can do,” he said, “not unless you have some idea who might’ve done it.” He looked mildly hopeful until Tom shook his head and crushed his hopes. Dwight sighed and pulled a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket. He flipped open the notebook and clicked the pen. “I guess that means we ask the obvious questions. Do either of you have any known enemies?”

Talk about overkill. I opened my mouth to protest the ridiculous turn this conversation had taken, but Tom beat me to it. “My wife just moved here,” he said. “She doesn’t even know anybody yet. How could she have enemies?”

It wasn’t quite what I would have said, but at least it was a protest. Dwight nodded at Tom, turned his attention to me. Every inch the cop, pen poised over his notebook, he waited.

I cleared my throat. “Nobody I can think of,” I said.

“No previous boyfriends or husbands? Somebody who might have an axe to grind?”

“No. I mean, I have an ex-husband, but we parted amicably.” Dwight said nothing, and his steady gaze made me squirm, even though I’d done nothing wrong. “No,” I said with finality. “There’s nobody.” With a sigh, he returned to Tom. “What about you? Any disgruntled lady friends? Pissed-off patients? Husbands who think the baby looks more like the doctor than the daddy?”

“For Christ’s sake, Dwight.”

“Look, I have to ask. You wanted me to investigate. That’s what I’m doing. Investigating.”

“No,” Tom said firmly. “There are no disgruntled lady friends or vengeful husbands hiding in my private woodpile.”

“No pending litigation? No accusations of mal-practice? No new mother who’s ticked off because her episiotomy scar’s crooked?”

“My patients are all satisfied with the care they’ve received from me.”

Dwight adjusted his sunglasses. “That’s what I’ve heard. How about somebody you’ve had words with? I hear there’s no love lost between you and Melanie Ambrose.”

Tom’s eyebrows went sky-high. “Isn’t that what they call leading the witness?”

The corner of Dwight’s mouth quivered, but he held a straight face. “It would be, if we were in court.

Since we’re not, I figure I have a right to ask.”

“Melanie’s made no secret of the fact that she doesn’t like me,” Tom said. “But she wouldn’t do something like this.”

“You’d be surprised what people will do when the pressure’s on.”

“Come on, Dwight, we’ve both known Mel since we were kids. Can you see her sneaking out here in the dark of night with a switchblade, crawling under my wife’s new car, and hacking her way through the serpentine belt?”

This time, Dwight grinned. “That would be a picture worth a thousand words.”

“I still think it’s teenagers,” I broke in. “And I think you guys are taking this way too seriously.”

“Can’t ever take something like this too seriously,” Dwight said. “Not when it impacts your personal safety.” He closed his notebook and shoved it back into his pocket. “But you’re probably right.

Most likely it was teenagers. Mind if I take a look around?”

“Please,” Tom said. “Whatever you have to do.”

“I’ll file a report,” Dwight said, “but you need to know you shouldn’t expect much to come of it. We can check the belt for prints, but if your mechanic’s had his hands all over it, he’s probably destroyed any evidence there might’ve been.”

“I know you’ll do your best.”

“If either of you think of anything important, don’t be afraid to call.”

“Trust me,” Tom said. “I have your number on speed dial.”

I’d kept Sadie home from preschool this morning because she wanted to help me in the attic. I knew just how much help I could expect from a four-year-old, but I wasn’t in any real hurry to finish; besides, I was eager for any bonding opportunity that presented itself. After a Tom-approved breakfast of oatmeal and fresh fruit, we trooped up the back stairs to the attic. It was a shadowy, foreboding place, long and narrow, with low eaves and corners that never saw daylight. There were a pair of windows at one end, but today they weren’t letting in much light because of the steady gray drizzle that fell outside.

Bare lightbulbs, strategically placed every ten feet along the center of the ceiling, provided pools of weak illumination separated by areas of inky darkness, and I’d brought a couple of flashlights with me to make up for the dearth of light.

Like so many attics in houses of a certain age that had been inhabited by the same family for any length of time, this one was packed with the minutiae that accompanied years of living. A couple of old trunks, a wire mesh dress model, an old black Singer treadle sewing machine. Boxes of Christmas decorations, outgrown children’s clothes, a tennis racket and somebody’s long-forgotten roller skates.

The movers had left my belongings near the stairs. When Tom and I packed up my apartment, I’d labeled the boxes clearly so I’d know what was in each one. Most of them held books, so many books I wasn’t sure how to deal with them. The few wobbly bookcases I owned were far too shabby for this elegant house. All my furniture had been either inherited from my dad—cheap discount store stuff he’d been using since before my mother left us—or acquired during my brief marriage to Jeffrey. None of it was notable in any way, except by its sheer lack of notability.

While Sadie held one of the flashlights aloft, I grabbed the first box off the top of the pile, wrestled it into compliance, and dragged it through the dust to a clear spot out of the main traffic route. “What’s in that box?” Sadie said.

“Books.” I dusted off my hands and went back for a second. “We’re going to stack them by the back wall.”

“Why? Don’t you want them?”

“I need new bookcases. I don’t have any place to display them.”

“Uncle Riley could build them for you. He’s a carpenter.”

“An idea worth considering,” I said.

The flashlight beam wobbled. “Can I look at them?”

So much for being my right-hand woman. I reminded myself that time wasn’t a consideration here and that keeping Sadie happy was at least as important as organizing my stuff. “You probably won’t find it very interesting. There aren’t any picture books. But you can look at them. Just treat them with care.”

While I lifted and stacked boxes, Sadie knelt and pulled open the flaps to a box of paperbacks. She rummaged around inside, pulled out a book. Studying the cover with a frown of concentration, she said,

“
J-A-N-E.
That spells Jane. What does
A-U-S-T-E-N

spell?”

The boxes were heavy, and by now, I’d started to sweat. I paused, swiped my sticky hair back from my face with a grimy hand, and said in surprise, “You know how to read?”

“A little. My best friend at preschool is named Jane.”

“But you’re four years old.”

She looked at me, unblinking, as though puzzled by what her age could possibly have to do with her reading ability.

I hurried to explain. “It’s just that most four-year-olds I’ve met didn’t know how to read. I’m impressed.”

Solemnly, she told me, “Daddy says I’m preco-cious.”

“Apparently so.”

While Sadie lovingly paged through
Pride and
Prejudice,
I went back to the heavy boxes of books.

I heaved the last of them on top of the pile and returned to where the rest of my belongings waited.

Sitting on the dusty floor, I dragged over a box labeled Dad. I cut the seal with a steak knife I’d brought up from the kitchen and peeled back the top.

It was Dad’s record albums. A lump formed in my throat as I thumbed through his well-loved collection.

Ella Fitzgerald. T-Bone Walker. Robert Johnson.

Dave Hanrahan might have been a rock musician, but his heart, his poor, shattered heart, belonged to the blues. And his daughter had grown up listening to these old recordings. I knew them all by heart, had even entertained the idea, during a brief bout of adolescent madness, of becoming a blues singer myself.

Common sense, aided by an utterly mediocre singing voice, had prevailed. But I still loved the old music Dad and I had listened to on those long-ago Saturday nights. I’d been too young at the time to understand that he was mourning my mother. By the time I was old enough to understand, I’d become too self-absorbed to care, one of those snotty adolescents for whom life’s biggest tragedy is to be uncool, and the epitome of uncoolness was staying home on a Saturday night with my dad, listening to music that was recorded before I was born.

Sometimes, when I look back, I feel the flush of shame all over my body. I imagine that kind of self-absorption is normal for an adolescent, but still I occasionally feel the sting of guilt when I remember how badly I treated my dad during those years.

Already bored with Jane Austen, Sadie had wandered off to some dark corner, where she was rummaging through God only knew what. “Be careful,” I shouted to her. “We don’t know what’s up here. You don’t want to get hurt.”

“It’s just boxes. I’ll tell you what they say.
B-E-T-H.

That spells Beth. That was my mom’s name.”
Beth.
Midway through reading the liner notes, I carefully set down the Etta James album I held and took a breath to still the sudden racing of my pulse.

I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t meddle, had vowed to forget about the mystery surrounding her death. But this wasn’t meddling. This was simple curiosity. I cleared my throat and said, “There are boxes up here with your mother’s name on them?”

“Yup. And some pictures.”

Pictures? I got up, dusted off my butt, and followed the beam of my flashlight to the corner Sadie had wormed her way into. Sure enough, four or five boxes tucked back under the eaves said BETH on the sides. Whether they held trash or treasure, they apparently were all that was left in this house of Tom’s late wife. Behind them, stacked beneath the dusty sheet Sadie was holding up, were a half-dozen artist’s canvases.

I squeezed in beside my stepdaughter, played the beam of my flashlight on the top canvas, and studied it in the dim glow of light. It was a pastoral scene, cows and pastures in winter, a red barn in the distance, painted at that golden hour when afternoon blends into evening and shadows fall long and deep.

In the bottom right-hand corner, in tiny white lettering, Elizabeth Larkin had signed her work.