Not in the Heart (27 page)

C
HAPTER
42

Abby parked on the corner near where I had left her car earlier that night. Such an obedient girl. A mind of her own and instincts she was willing to follow. Just like her old man, unfortunately.

A couple of streetlights buzzed and flickered above us and the other side of the street was almost totally darkened, so we crossed over and walked toward the salon, navigating the broken sidewalk. A police car was parked in front and there was yellow tape across the broken window.

“Can they get fingerprints from a brick?” I said.

“You should have bought the matching gloves at Goodwill,” Abby said.

“Let's get out of here.”

“No, wait. I can report the purse theft and give them a description of the guy.”

“If Tompkins is there, he'll have you arrested.”

“Let him try. I'll say he was trying to rape me. The police will believe me.”

There was no talking this girl out of something when she set her mind to it, but I tried again.

“Dad, this might be my last chance to get in there. He'll change the locks, tell me I can't work there anymore.”

“Good. I don't want you going back.”

She looked at me with that stare that most females in my life have given at some critical juncture. All my women, from my mother down to Abby, have been right about the big decisions they've made. It has taken me this long to realize that fact.

“Do you want me to hold your purse?” I said, the closest I could come to tacit approval of her plan.

“Doesn't go with your ski mask. Plus, I need it.” She headed toward the salon, then turned and whispered, “Stay out of sight.”

I slid to one knee behind an aging Pontiac whose bumper was held together with a wire hanger and prayer. The right brake light was a piece of red tape. I watched Abby navigate the street, her hair bouncing as she crossed onto the illumined sidewalk. She knocked at the front and waited, waving. The police officer exited, ushering her inside. The front light was on, so I could see them kibbutzing, Abby gesturing, leaning forward and pointing to her forehead, holding out her purse. I couldn't see Tompkins, but I could see his shadow moving and the officer with folded arms.

I was so intent on watching the scene that I didn't hear the footsteps behind me. I should have been alerted by the smell.

“Excuse me, sir,” a man said in a high-pitched rattle and rasp. My eyes had adjusted to the moonlight and general haze of the city, and I turned and saw his salt-and-pepper beard stained with something black or red. He wore layers of clothes, too much for the evening chill. His shoes, if you could even call them that, looked only a little better than the Pontiac's rear end. I was just glad it wasn't the blond guy with the razor.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said again.

I have never, ever had anything good happen to me after someone said those three words. Usually I either wind up walking away and feeling guilty or giving the person some money and feeling equally as guilty for supplying the habit.

“Just back up and get out of here,” I said firmly and quietly.

He put up his hands in a defensive posture. “Don't mean no harm. Don't mean no harm. Just admirin' that nice little lady you have with you. Must be nice havin' a hot young thing like that.” He gave a phlegmy laugh without covering his mouth.

“You need to move on, friend,” I said in my most authoritative voice.

He nodded, then glanced at the salon. I wanted to look back but my fear kept my eyes on him, thinking he might make a move.

“Wonder what's going on,” he said as if he were wearing headphones with Coldplay turned up as loud as it could go. “Don't look good, what's going on over there.
Poe
-leese and all that. Don't look good at all.”

“Would you keep it down?” I said.

“Sure thing, sure thing. Gotta be movin' on anyway. You wouldn't happen to have some spare change, would you, sir? Just some spare change is all I'm looking for.”

I shoved a hand into my pocket and looked back quickly. Abby was still inside. If I had a twenty-dollar bill right then, I would have considered it an investment just to get the guy to shut up and leave. But about all I had was loose change from the soda at Subway.

“This is all I have; now please, be quiet and leave me alone, okay?”

He cradled the change in his grimy hands and sneered. Seriously the guy sneered at my offering like I had asked him to fish for pennies in elephant dung. On a parade route.

“Man, if this is all you got, you better keep it,” he muttered. Then, raising his voice, he said, “And last I checked this was a free country and a man could stand anywhere he wanted.”

“Look, that's my daughter over there. She has some cash in her purse. If you move on down the street, I promise you . . .” The words struck a chord somewhere.

“You promise me what?” he shouted, angry now. Teeth bared. Eyes bulging.

“You just made me think of something.” I looked up at him, then stood. He stepped back, fearful, like a child who has pulled the tail of a rabid dog. His watery eyes betrayed him for who he was, just another scared, addicted man on the street trying to get money from another addicted man.

“Thank you,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. The touch sparked something inside him. How many times had he been touched as an adult? How many people had walked to the other side of the street just to get away from the sight and smell or to avoid his verbal ramblings?

“Thank you,” I repeated, and I meant it.

“Well, if I helped you so much, why don't you just give me a fiver and call it even?”

“Wait down at the corner,” I said. I couldn't believe I was saying it but there it was. “When my daughter comes out, I'll bring you a fiver. Go now and I'll make it a ten.”

“A ten would be good. That would do the trick.”

“Then go.”

“You promise? You promise?”

“Cross my heart,” I said. Yeah, it was cheesy, and I even crossed it like some little kid about to double- or triple-dog dare him to stick his tongue to a cold flagpole. That was the scene. That was my desperation.

He squinted and pointed a grimy finger toward me. “You'd better give it to me. You promised.”

“I'm not giving you anything unless you move now, you hear me?”

He shuffled away, muttering and gesturing. I crouched again, then moved to my right to see inside. Abby was nowhere in sight, but the officer and Tompkins were standing by the front desk in an animated conversation.

“You better bring it to me!” the drunk shouted from halfway down the block.

The officer turned and stared out the window at the man, then went back to his conversation. The drunk staggered toward the corner obediently, shaking and muttering. Cars passed on the street and he waved at them, then back at me, saying something that ended with “You promised!”

I told you nothing good ever comes of “Excuse me, sir.” But I had just proved my postulate wrong. Something good had come of it.

Abby appeared from the back of the salon and Tompkins turned his attention to her. The officer moved closer as if to protect her. She pointed toward the street, the window, then held up her hands. She showed the officer her purse and forehead. I was sure he would ask her to fill out a report of some kind but in a few minutes she came out of the salon and headed toward the car, not even looking at me.

I ran to the car and hopped in as Abby started it. “Do you have a ten-dollar bill?”

She looked at me like I had just said I had decided to become a Benedictine monk.

“I need it for that guy down there. He helped me understand something.”

“I've got something better than that,” she said. She pulled a moldy, wet notebook from her purse and held it up. “I found it.”

My jaw dropped. She pulled away. The drunk guy a block away ran after us, whooping and yelling, waving his arms, leaving one shoe behind. “You promised!”

A half block away I told her to stop. “You have any cash?”

She handed me a twenty and I told her to back up. I held it up, showing it to the man, then put it under the windshield wiper of a parked car.

“That's the trick!” the man yelled, running toward me now. “I knew you'd come through for me.”

I jumped back into the car and Abby drove away.

C
HAPTER
43

I cradled the notebook like some holy artifact lost for centuries. A piece of Diana's cross, as it were. I didn't want to open it but couldn't help leafing through it in the dark as we drove home, the curled pages rattling with age, giving off a musty smell.

“How did you . . . ? Where . . . ?”

Abby kept her eyes on the road but reached over and took the notebook from me and pulled it back into her lap. “I explained about the purse snatching and gave a description of the guy who slashed it. I told him I thought Tompkins and the guy knew each other, but he denied it. Said I had made the whole thing up.”

“What did the officer say?”

“He said I should file a report. I told him I would. I looked straight at Tompkins and said the guy left my wallet and cell phone but took a notebook.”

“How did Tompkins react?”

She shrugged. “Didn't seem to faze him. I couldn't read any fear, but who knows. Anyway, I needed to get alone and think, so I told them I needed to use the restroom. I went back and locked the door and just sat and closed my eyes.”

I do that a lot, too, but I didn't want to say that right then.

“I tried to put myself in Diana's shoes. Scared. Thinking someone might be trying to hurt her. Keeping some kind of secret. Being paranoid about being paranoid. Knowing I'd recorded stuff in a notebook that I wasn't supposed to. And then I thought about my own diary. She didn't want to leave it for someone else to find; she wanted to hide it to come back for later. Someplace nobody would look.”

“She taped it inside the back of the toilet?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. It wasn't something she planned. It must have just happened. She saw the blond guy across the street. She got scared. She hid it.”

“Where?”

“The bathroom floor is built up a bit. The ceiling in that building is low anyway and with the floor raised, you get that closed-in feeling. I looked at the ceiling tiles—they're all water stained and some are broken and falling apart. But the tile just above the toilet was popped up. And I thought, if I was scared, I might come in there and hide what I treasure most. So I stood on the toilet and pushed the tile up and reached in.”

“You should never reach into dark places.”

“Believe me, I didn't want to. At first I just felt cobwebs and water. But when I moved to the other side, I brushed against it.”

“Have you read anything?”

“Enough to know it's hers. A lot of it is ruined by the water damage. I knew I had to get out of there. When I came out, the cop and Tompkins were talking about some drunk across the street.”

“He was hitting me up for money. He helped me.”

She gave me a quick glance, the cousin to the quizzical stare that shows up when you're driving.

“You know how drunks will seek you out and ask you for stuff? Follow you until they get what they want? It struck me, that was exactly the opposite of what happened in the video. The blond guy followed Terrelle. He was the initiator.”

“You think he put Terrelle up to chasing Diana?”

“I'm sure of it. Now maybe that journal will tell us why.”

My cell buzzed. It was Ellen. But when I answered, it wasn't her voice.

“Mr. Wiley, it's nice to finally meet you.”

A thick German accent. Noise in the background—perhaps the ding of an elevator? Someone speaking through an intercom?

“Who is this?”

“I am the man who knows too much about your daughter's teenage crush on . . . what is the name? Tommy?”

“Who is it, Dad?” Abigail said.

I covered the phone, wondering if I should tell Abby he had Ellen's phone. “Our friend who took the bait. You had a crush on Tommy Spence?”

“The blond guy?” she whispered, slowing down and pulling to the side of the road.

I nodded and mouthed, “Go toward the hospital.”

“This is all very interesting,” the man said. “Your daughter gets an A for penmanship. But this is not what you purported to have.”

Some people clam up when they're scared. Others cry. For me, humor and sarcasm take over. “Listen, Dieter—it's okay if I call you Dieter, isn't it? You probably don't want to give me your real name. I can make it Klaus or Wilhelm, if you'd like.”

“I prefer Adolf.”

Menace and a sense of humor. Perfect.

“Good, Adolf. First of all, I don't know how you can say we've purported to have anything unless you have a bug inside the salon. Or maybe you're working with Tompkins. Did he talk to you?”

“Is that what you think?” There was derision in his voice.

I hate derision in the voice of a bad guy. Especially one who has my wife's cell phone and pushed my daughter to the ground.

“I'm new to this, Helmut. I'm just trying to tell a story of a guy who got framed for something he didn't do.”

“You have no idea what you're doing.” He said it with a bit of pity. “You have no idea the danger you're putting yourself and your family in.”

“Sounds like a threat, Jurgen. How did you get my wife's cell phone?”

“I sliced your daughter's purse quite easily. I could have sliced her face. You're a smart man. You know when you're in too deep.”

“Illumine me, Fritz. What am I into?”

“Your son's condition is very fragile. If you don't drop this, he won't make it to the transplant. And your wife will pay the consequences as well.”

I thought about telling him we had the real diary. I thought about threatening him with a buzz cut at the salon. I thought about rolling down my window and throwing up because that's what my stomach told me to do. But I shut up instead.

“This is your final warning,” he continued. “You follow this trail any farther and your life will get even more bleak than it already is. Your debts have just increased.”

This guy knew a lot more than I wanted him to. I steeled myself to that fact as Abby neared the hospital.

“Thanks for caring about us, Sigmund. Really appreciate that. I do have to say you really looked photogenic on the surveillance video with Terrelle. Don't think the police or Terrelle's defense noticed you all those years ago. Your hair was a little shorter, but I couldn't mistake the cocky walk. Do you use help on your color now? Or maybe extensions?”

I could feel his anger seething through the phone, which was a good thing. I wanted him to show emotion.

“You are a fool, Wiley.”

I wanted to be all hard-nosed and say something like “You and Tompkins will pay for what you did to Diana, I guarantee you,” but I had run out of courage, valor, and German first names.

The call dropped and Abby let me out at the emergency room entrance. I looked around the lobby, down hallways and corridors, then rushed to the elevator and up to the eighth floor. Ellen wasn't in the waiting room. I hurried to Aiden's room, my heart beating wildly. My breath was even more labored now than running away from my window-smashing episode.

She wasn't by Aiden's side. His room was darkened, monitors and machines assembled, working overtime to keep him alive. His face was gray ash, lifeless and sallow. I put my hand on his chest, lightly, just enough to feel it moving. Maybe I breathed a prayer. Maybe the touch was my prayer. He didn't stir and I had turned to head out when something caught my eye. On the bed next to Aiden's hand was Ellen's cell phone.