The Baker's Wife (27 page)

“I believe you care about your mom too. Even more than I do. So let's just agree to that much, okay?” Audrey opened the door into the dim and empty house. Miralee stalked in, passing through the living room.

Diane went back to the cabinet Miralee had told her to get out of earlier. Audrey started touching Juliet's things as if she were blind. She ran her hand down the arm of the sofa near the front door. She picked up Juliet's tote bag on the bench in the entryway and put the straps on her shoulder. She fingered the stack of papers, flipping through them and then hugging them to her chest. Then the baker's wife went across the room to the framed photographs on the bookcase. She picked up each picture that included Juliet—there were three or four of these—studied it for long seconds, then set it back down. It was creepy behavior, as far as Diane was concerned.

But it gave her time to do some searching of her own. The cabinet held several small stacked boxes. She opened each one. Candle holders, napkin rings, loose snapshots, drink coasters, furniture coasters. No necklace. She should have started in the bedroom.

Miralee had gone into the kitchen and was opening and slamming cupboard doors.

Diane wasn't sure how Audrey wanted her to help find Juliet. She was unskilled and barely educated. It was unreasonable to think that she could help to save a life or solve a crime that had kicked a respected detective off the ledge of sanity. The sensible part of Diane's brain was leaning against a shade tree and chewing on a piece of wheat, preparing to nap under a floppy hat.
No point in trying
, it muttered to her. The irrational part of her mind was pacing in the meadow, staring at the horizon of her life, wanting to help, to reverse, to repair.

Then again, just finding the cursed family heirloom would have been enough.

As she watched Audrey go through mysterious motions in search of a woman she hardly knew, Diane thought of a children's picture book she had once borrowed from the prison library. It had been donated for those who were learning to read, but she took it because she liked the story, which she thought was a Japanese folktale. It told of a great fire that tore through a jungle, driving all the animals out. Weeping and disbelieving, lions, elephants, monkeys, and serpents watched the massive blaze destroy their home. The smallest creature among them, however, a hummingbird, flew to a nearby lake and filled its tiny beak with a drop of water, then returned to the inferno and tossed its drop onto the flames. It evaporated before it touched the ground.

The animals mocked the bird. How pointless. How stupid. What do you think you will accomplish? But the bird flew back and forth, lake to blaze, blaze to lake, lake to blaze.

I'm doing what I can do
, the bird said to them as they stood by and did nothing.

Diane would do what she could do. She headed for Juliet's bedroom.

“Do you believe that a person can ever really know how another person feels?” Audrey asked as she ran her fingertips over Jack and Juliet's wedding photo.

Diane paused in the hall. She wasn't sure Audrey was talking to her, and she was even less sure of the answer, so she said nothing.

“What I mean is, do you think someone can truly walk a mile in another person's shoes, or put herself in someone else's place?” Audrey looked at her this time.

“No.”

“Why not?” Audrey asked. She followed Diane and took the wedding picture with her.

“It's just a figure of speech.”

“Sometimes I wonder.” Audrey paused as she passed the dining room area and pulled a note card off the stack of Juliet's papers. She directed her voice to the kitchen. “Miralee, do you know who ‘L' is?”

“Of course not,” the girl snapped. Then she leaned out past the room divider and said, less snippy, “I mean, I'd need more information.”

Audrey read, “Mrs. M, Thanks for the great opportunity, but I've decided not to do it. I hope you'll understand. Maybe Colin would? –L.”

Miralee shook her head.

“Decided not to what, I wonder?” Audrey said as she turned away and walked down the hall. Diane led the way.

The first door on the right was an office. Audrey stopped outside the door, clutching Juliet's books and picture frame, and leaned forward as if to move into the open room. She jerked back as if the space were a hot oven. Diane stopped to watch, her curiosity in Audrey's strange behavior deepening.

Audrey pursed her mouth and lifted her heel, then tapped the toe of her shoe on the ground once, contemplative-like. She balanced like that, one foot flat, one on toe, for a few seconds, then lunged into the office.

When Diane looked in, Audrey was in the recliner, squeezing Juliet's belongings by the crooks of her elbows, the book bag hanging awkwardly from her shoulder, straps twisted, across the arm of the chair. Her closed eyes were wrinkled at the corners. The knees of her rigid legs touched each other.

“You don't look very relaxed,” Diane ventured.

Audrey didn't answer. Was she crying? Silently, tearlessly? That wasn't real crying.

“What can I do to help?”

Miralee had gone quiet in the kitchen. The curtain hanging in front of the window seemed to breathe. Lift, fall. Only once.

Perhaps ten seconds passed.

Miralee approached at the top of the hall.

“Audrey?” Diane ventured.

As suddenly as Audrey had plunged into the chair, she bolted out of it, electric-quick. “I'm okay.” In a smooth movement she found her feet and let them carry her out of the room. She pushed Diane out of the way. “That is a very, very sad chair.”

She didn't elaborate but went straight into the master bedroom. Diane looked to Miralee for theories, but the girl offered an expression of boredom.

The walk-in closet ran the entire length of the far wall and seemed overstated for such a modest house. Audrey placed the school papers and wedding picture on the bed and kicked off her sneakers. Juliet's pill bottles rolled across the bedspread.

Audrey walked into the closet and put her feet into a pair of women's slippers.

“What are you
doing
?” Diane demanded.

“Walking in Julie's shoes,” Audrey said, scanning the feminine side of the closet for . . . for what?

“This won't help us find Juliet.”

“It might not work, I realize that. But I have to try.”

“You have to try what?”

“Miri!” Audrey called out.

“I'm right here.”

“What's your mom's favorite sweater, or sweatshirt, or whatever? What she wore most often?”

Miralee came toward the closet as Audrey pulled a sun hat off the top shelf and rammed it down onto her head.

“You shouldn't do that,” Diane whispered. “Those are her
mom's
things.”

“Why do you need to know?” Miralee asked, starting to slide hangers across the bar.

“It will take too long to explain. Just show me what your mom liked to wear more than anything else.”

“Not that hat, that's for sure,” she said. “A plum-colored vest. A fleece thing, lightweight. Zipper-front. She wore it all the time at home and layered it with other stuff when she went out. Through the school year anyway. She was probably wearing it when . . .”

Diane only noticed that Miralee hadn't finished her sentence because Audrey stopped looking for the vest and turned her body toward the teenager. Miralee's handling of her mother's clothing was nearly violent as she shoved each piece aside. Audrey took off the sun hat and put it back on the shelf.

“I know, Miri. I'm so sorry. We'll find her.”

“It'll go one way or the other, won't it? Fifty-fifty. There's a part of me that hopes we don't find her. Sometimes the truth is worse than the mystery.”

Audrey said, “I promise you that I—”

“Don't!” The sea of fabric parted and the purple vest appeared, and Miralee stripped the hanger of it and held it out toward Audrey.

Audrey's fingers closed on the jacket, but she waited for Miralee to let go. “Then I won't make promises. I'll just keep telling you the truth. Deal?”

Diane thought Miralee bit back a disrespectful remark.

“Do you know how many tears your mother cried for you?” Audrey said kindly.

“What would you know about that?” Miralee said.

Audrey turned toward the mirror on the closet door and slipped her arms into the openings. “I'm not sure if this is a good sign or a bad one, finding this vest still here.” She said this to Diane as she tugged the collar close around her neck.

A bad one,
Diane thought.
On all counts.

“Why do you call her Juliet?” Audrey asked.

“Because that's her name.”

“Julie is a nickname?”

“I guess. No one ever called her that when we were kids.”

“Dad always called her Julie,” Miralee offered.

Audrey left the closet and crossed to the bed, which she sat on. Miralee threw herself back across the foot and stared at the ceiling while Audrey picked up the framed portrait. It had a brass plaque embedded in the base of the cherrywood frame. “Says Juliet here too. So the formality lasted until her marriage at least.”

Diane shrugged. Something like that couldn't really matter.

“Do you know when it changed?” The question was for Miralee.

“Her name? Never asked, never offered.”

Audrey said to Diane, “How do you know her?”

“We went to school together.”

“How long?”

Diane approached the bed. “Since the fourth grade. Through . . . through high school. I really don't like that you're wearing her clothes. What are you going to do next? Eat her food? Use her toothbrush?”

“I'd like to see that,” Miralee said.

Audrey's eyes brightened. “What does Julie like to eat?”

“I don't know!” Diane said. “Why are you asking? It was a long time ago. People change.”
People drastically, permanently change
.

“Almonds,” Miralee said. “Mom is crazy about almonds.”

“Is that why your family lives here? All the almond groves?”

“Of course not. We're like, generational types. Miners on Mom's side, as she tells it. We were here before Steinbeck was. Practically before the Native Americans.”

Audrey blinked as if that amount of history was overwhelmingly greater than the little connections to Juliet contained in this small bedroom. Insurmountable stuff. She sighed and shook her head, scanning the room, maybe for something smaller and more tangible.

“We don't have a lot of time,” Diane said. “I don't understand what you're looking for. Can you tell us more?”

“I'm not sure, really.” The optimistic Audrey looked pale now, as if aware of how much time she'd wasted on something pointless. She placed a hand on her stomach and closed her eyes.

“You people are the worst investigators I have ever met,” Miralee scoffed.

“Quit talking to us that way! What are you doing to help?” The strength of Diane's own voice frightened her. Even the girl seemed surprised. Why had she said it? She didn't deserve respect from anyone, not even this kid.

Audrey groaned. Her face had gone green. “Excuse me,” she murmured, and she pitched forward toward the bathroom.

Miralee flopped back across her parents' bedspread. “That woman is nuts, if you ask me.”

Well, I didn't ask
.

CHAPTER 26

Audrey stumbled into the bathroom wearing Julie's vest and Julie's slippers and placed her palms against the edge of the tile counter. She felt the irritation that is the partner of exhaustion. And she also felt hopeful. This was as close as she'd come to recreating her connection to Julie since Diane's jarring wake-up call. What was the explanation for the feverish flare-ups, the nausea? Logically—if Audrey defined the term loosely—Julie was ill. Perhaps injured from the motor scooter accident.