The Dollmaker's Daughters (Bo Bradley Mysteries, Book Five) (26 page)

On the porch
the geraniums appeared to bristl
e like potted terriers guarding treasure so
old it had decayed into worth
lessness. Like a pirate chest full of tattered doilies, Bo thought. Or a safety-deposit
box crammed with deeds to long-
collapsed mines. Beryl Malcolm had erected a fence of flowers around emptiness.

Chapter
18

On the drive home Bo mentally reconstructed a night thirteen years in the pa
st, when the lives of two littl
e girls had been damaged irrevocably. She didn't have to see the case file to imagine what might have happened. Tamlin Lafferty separated from the husband on whom she would have been absolutely dependent, separated perhaps by a court order designed to protect her and the children from his abuse. Tamlin alone with the responsibility for three small children, the house cluttered with toys, Sesame Street blaring from a TV, spilled grape jelly crawling with ants on the kitchen counter. Tamlin could easily have been at her wit's end when she fell into bed that night, needing her husband's embrace. And resenting the children for whose protection he had been ordered to leave.

Tamlin might have had a few drinks that night, Bo thought, or maybe a tranquilizer prescribed by her doctor for stress. She might have smoked
a littl
e marijuana, trying to calm herself and succeeding only in heightening a hunger for sugar and for sex. But whatever chemical ploy she tried would have worn off hours later, w
hen one of the twins awoke in th
e night screaming, banging crib against wall as she rocked against its barred sides. It would have been Kimmy, Bo acknowledged with a shudder. Jasper Malcolm had said Kimmy was "the boisterous one."

And her demanding screams would have awakened Janny, sleeping nearby. The usually quiet twin, rumpled and confused, would have joined her reedy whine to the din. Tamlin might have awakened sick and headachy, unable to control the trembling in her arms. In the dark, not really awake but completely desp
erate, Tamlin might have
...

Here Bo stopped. A worst-case scenario, it did not bear thinking. The pattern was typical for troubled and immature mothers struggling alone without supportive female relatives to teach child-rearing skills, provide respite, step in and take over when things threatened to get out of hand. Every CPS worker saw that pattern daily while investigating bruises, malnutrition, abandonment. But rarely did the pattern lead to violence and death.

"A two-story fall onto the side of a cement block," the medical report had said of Kimmy's head injury. A long fall, except there had been nowhere to fall two stories from the one-story Mission Beach cottage. A powerful blow, then, Bo thought with distaste. Had Tamlin picked up something, a book or other heavy object with a straight edge, and hit Kimmy with it? The force of the blow suggested, that the object had been swung, like a baseball bat. A taste of bile in the back of her throat alerted Bo to the fact that this train of inquiry must stop, or she'd throw up.

On the seat beside her Molly raised one soft paw and placed it on the bend of Bo's elbow. Though still very young, the little dachshund was alrea
dy beginning to exhibit the em
pathic abilities which distinguish dogs from all other creatures.

Bo patted the paw with her left hand and said "It's okay, Molly. Good girl," eliciting a sort of black-lipped smile on the hound face.

Bo determined not to think about Kimmy Malcolm again that night
.
But what about the other pieces of the puzzle? The critical events were falling into place, but there were still facts that made no sense. Why had Tamlin changed the surname of her daughters to her own maiden name when she was still married to their father? Or was Rick Lafferty their father? Pete Cullen's file had included no reference to any man in Tamlin's life except her husband, and Cullen, Bo was sure, would have thought of that.

Madge's role in the drama also remained inexplicable, Bo thought as she turned off Interstate 8 at its, and the continent's, terminus, and joined the slower traffic on Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. The winter beach to her right was nearly empty and limned with weak late-afternoon sun. Home. But aspects of the case seemed to hang over the mounded sand and occasional, solitary beachcomber.

If the events of Janny Malcolm's past were as grimly typical as they appeared to be, then why would Madge Aldenhoven take the uncharacteristic risk of removing the case file from the office so that Bo couldn't see it? And why hadn't supercop Pete Cullen amassed sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against Tamlin Lafferty?

Jasper Malcolm also remained enigmatic. Trained to believe even the most far-fetched allegations by children of sexual abuse until those allegations were proven false, Bo had accepted Beryl Malcolm's story at face value. But Beryl Malcolm, she reminded herself, was not a child. Had there been any investigation of her charges against her father? Why would Beryl claim to be a victim of incest if, in fact she were not? And if she were not
,
Bo told herself, the whole case again ceased to make any sense at all.

That was the cornerstone, the sickening fact of Jasper
Malcolm as a child molester. From that fact all others spun out in the unwholesome design with which every CPS worker was familiar. Adult children so damaged they could never really function as adults without exhaustive therapy. Repeated abuse, although not necessarily of the same kind, of the next generation of children in the family. And that strangely flat narcissism so evident in Beryl's devotion to herself as "victim."

Bo knew better than to judge Beryl Malcolm. Her own childhood had not included abuse of any kind. Still, she thought against all her training on the subject, the woman's whining self-absorption had been a pain in the neck.

"I actually wanted to punch her in the teeth," she admitted to Molly. Saying it out loud was a relief. Too much socia
l-
worky niceness made her feel as though she were swimming in cream-of-chicken soup. In the chocolate-brown dachshund eyes was acceptance and a reminder that dinner would soon become an issue.

"We're almost home, and you can have either turkey and liver or beef chunks," Bo told her. "Then I have to clean the apartment for tomorrow."

The prospect was not appealing. Bo parked on Naragansett behind an ancient pale blue Mercedes, and stretched. She was tired, and that could be dangerous. Too much stress, not enough sleep, and symptoms of mania could seep through the restraining medications. She might talk too fast at the party tomorrow, behave too seductively with Andy or, worse, with somebody else. She might embarrass him, irritate her friends, frighten Teless. Everybody would leave early, smiling edgily as they thanked her for a wonderful time. They would glance at each other with knowing looks, and leave. It hurt her to remember other times when people had grown uncomfortable at her antics and left in droves.

“
To hell with the apartment," she announced to one of the street people eyeing the Pathfinder's hood radiating heat from the engine. "I'm going to bed."

"Good for you," the man said through brown teeth, then leaned comfortably against the warm metal.

Bo hadn't noticed the light in her own kitchen window from the street below, and was surprised to open her apartment door to the sound of rap music and an odor that made her mouth water. Freshly baked biscuits and something with chicken in it simmering on the stove.

"
Sha
!" Teless Babineaux greeted her, turning off the abominable music and bending to pet Molly. "Nonk Andy give me the key and dropped me off to help get ready for the party. He said you shouldn't get too tired. So I cleaned up and made you some dinner. Chicken an' dumplings. Couldn't find no
oovkang
for dem peas, though. Peas good with dumplings."

Bo surveyed her gleaming apartment in shock, then focused on a jumbo can of peas exhibiting pride of place on her spo
tless kitchen counter.
Oovkang
undoubtedly meant "can opener" in Cajun, she assumed. And the absence of one in her utensil drawer had been an act of providence. Second only to raw fish, Bo hated canned peas. Canned peas, in fact, would be served daily, cold, in her version of hell. Her vision of hell would smell like canned peas. It had something to do with her manicky brain wiring, that propensity to assign exhaustive allegorical meaning to particular odors.

Teless beamed expectantly. Healthily. Youngly, Bo thought with a smile.

"I'm afraid I don't have an 'oovkang,' and besides, my religion forbids me to eat canned peas," she grinned. "But I'm famished and you're a saint! The place has literally never been this clean, Teless. Thank you so much. But how can I repay you for all your work?"

The wide blue eyes were unassuming. "Let me borrow your car to go see Janny," Teless said. "I talked to her on the phone today. She likes the ghost stories I tell, like last night at the hospital. I got a license, me. An' you gotta rest"

Bo considered the request. Janny had actually seemed to enjoy Teless's nonstop storytelling, even though both Bo and social worker Rombo Perry had shuddered at the stories' content. Haunted bayou bridges, dancing lights in antebellum graveyards, ladies-in-white who vanished from formal gardens like paper napkins blown in the wind. But rather than upsetting Janny, the stories had reassured her.

“
Teless is a peer, another teenager," Rombo hypothesized. "Maybe hearing southern ghost stories told as factual events by a peer gives Janny a framework for understanding the inexplicable things that are frightening her. In any event, Teless is good for Janny."

"I'll call Rombo and see if it's okay," Bo answered.

"I already checked. He said no problem. And Nonk'll meet me there to follow me back here and drop off your car. Then we'll go on home,
sha
. You eat, and go to bed. I
’m
gonna tell Janny 'bout
roogaroos
tonight!"

"What's a
roogaroo
?" Bo asked, filling a pottery bowl with chicken and dumplings, then buttering two biscuits. Teless had already cooled a plate of chicken and broth for Molly, whose tail registered delight.

"Nobody knows," the girl answered. "
Roogaroo
's just strange things that happen, like noise in the night that don't come from nowhere."

"Sounds appropriate," Bo acknowledged while scrounging through the refrigerator for jelly. "Go ahead. There's an extra car key stuck to a magnet on the refrigerator. And Teless?"

"Yeah."

Bo feigned great interest in the label of an ancient strawberry jelly jar as she slid back onto a bar stool at the counter. "You seem to be having a terrific time here despite the fact that your boyfriend, whom you want to marry, is on his way to prison."

From the corner of her eye Bo saw the girl blush and then muster a guilty smile. "Robby Landry and me, we been friends since first grade, but he's not my boyfriend," she explained. "He knew how much I wanted to get outta there, go someplace. We was always gonna try it ourselves, take off together after we graduated high school, just gas up his old truck and head out, see the world."

"But you got older and Robby started getting into trouble, right?"

"Yeah, big trouble," Teless agreed, frowning. "He wouldn't listen to nobody, not even me. So this last time when we knew he wasn't goin' nowhere for a long time, we came up with this plan. Tell everybody we'd get married before he went off to prison, see? He even went into Lafayette, tryin' to get a license, to scare my folks. Made sure everybody knew what he was doin'. You know what he said, Bo?"

"What?" Bo answered through a succulent dumpling.

"He said this was our last chance to do it together, to get out. He said I had to get out for both of us now, and using him was the way."

Bo nodded. "Smart kid."

"Yeah,
sha
, it worked! My
nanaan
freaked and paid to send
me out here. I always wanted to come out here. Do you think it was wrong, what Robby an' me did?"