Window of Guilt (10 page)

“Daddy needs to cut back on cheesy foods.”

“But you’re still making it for me, right Mom?

“Let me get back to you on that.”

“Spin me again,” Rory called out.

Laurie eyed her watch, then turned away from the tire swing. “Time to leave, kiddo,” she called over her shoulder.

Her son kicked the pebbles beneath the stalled tire. “But we only just got here.”

“We’ve been here an hour. It’s already five o’clock.”

Rory followed her out of the playground. “You’re sad about Daddy.”

“Yep.”

“I got a question.”

Laurie sauntered past professionally landscaped flower beds. Horrible to admit, sometimes widowhood didn’t look so bad. The freedom to come and go as you please. Eat whenever. Raise her son in a peaceful environment where daily arguments didn’t ensue.

She stopped to extract a water bottle from her purse when she felt a sharp pinprick on her hip. “You pinched me!” she said in anguished surprise.

Rory’s lip quivered as he threw his arms around her waist. “You’re not listening.”

Then again, there were the nauseating images. Single mother. Sole decision maker. Sole financial provider. Sole soul. Laurie angrily removed her son’s small hands from her clothing. “Monster child.”

Rory began to cry. “I’m sorry, Mom. Will you forgive me?”

She was a sucker for her son’s tears. She knelt down and took him by the shoulders. “And I’m sorry I called you those mean words. No more angry touches, got it?”

He nodded and she took him into her arms. “Tell me.”

Rory pulled away from her embrace and looked at her, his eyes the color of a foggy sea. “I’m in third grade now, Mom. I wanna have sleepovers at other kids houses, not just our house.”

Laurie sighed. “Fine, as long as I meet their parents first. Make sure they can be trusted.”

“You met my camp counselors, but you still made me come home every day. Nicky and me were the only campers who didn’t stay overnight.”

“His mom and I felt you guys were too young to stay overnight for a whole month,” she said, dabbing her eyes at the thought of him sleeping away next summer.

“You treat me like a baby, Mom,” Rory sniffled. “Like you don’t think I can handle it.”

“Maybe next year.”

Rory hesitated. “When you meet someone, how do you know you can trust them?”

“You got me there, kiddo.” A profound question. How did you ever know if someone was authentic, no matter how long you knew them? Like husbands who say they’re working late but are actually carrying on with their mistresses.

“Why do you have to meet my friends’ parents before I stay over at their houses?” her son persisted.

Laurie’s face paled. Did Ryan actually have a mistress?

“Mom?”

Laurie forced a bright smile. She needed to stop obsessing over her husband’s motives and focus on her son. Already her only child was growing away from her. “Because that’s what caring moms do.”

“Jay’s mom lets him sleep over at kids’ houses without meeting their parents. Does that mean she doesn’t care about him?”

“Enough!”

“Okay, okay.” Rory grabbed her hand. “I’m hungry.”

Laurie tousled his hair. “Beat you home!”

Ryan complained she focused too much on Rory. That she needed to go out with her girlfriends more often. Yet after ten years of marriage, Laurie had lost touch with most of the people with whom she’d gone to school. She’d checked out Classmates.com. Everybody was in their own world.

Playing at the park. Engaging in an impromptu discussion about growing up. This was why Laurie elected to work from home. To be there for her son. More selfishly, to be there for herself. To vicariously experience what it felt like to have a parent attend to your every need when you needed it.

As she and her son raced down Fullerton Avenue, Laurie racked her brain for the memory of a similar playful moment with her own mom. None came to mind. Her mother had been one of those ’80s women who worked for intellectual and social stimulation as well as a paycheck. At 6:30 pm each night, she disembarked the 147 bus and walked the half-block to their two-bedroom Lakeview apartment.

Laurie would sit on a kitchen barstool and recount her school yard misadventures while her mom made macaroni and cheese and cut up celery and carrots for the two of them. Laurie’s dad worked six days a week as a sales manager for a Ford automotive dealership. She was asleep by the time he got home from work.

“Hey!”

Her heart banging in her chest from the unexpected thump on her back, Laurie fearfully glanced behind her, then screamed, “You’re wicked!”

“Doesn’t take much to make you wet your pants, does it?” giggled her friend.

Laurie stopped to rub her aching back, then hugged Mitzy. “Next time lighten up on the back slam, okay?”

“You got it. How’s Ryan doing?”

Laurie jogged in place. “He says he feels fine but he looks like shit. Rory, wait up!”

“Don’t rein him in. I’ll jog home with you,” Mitzy offered.

The two friends ran in comfortable silence.

“What you doing all the way down here?” Laurie finally asked, breathing hard.

“Took a private detective class at the Discovery Center.”

“You switching careers again?” Laurie asked incredulously.

“After teaching school for one year? I’m not that mishugina. But I do want to better understand what Jeff does.”

They slowed down in front of Laurie’s bungalow. “You mean you want to better understand how to poke your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“Why not? Detective Jeff and I will eventually mend our relationship,” said Mitzy, leaning against a tree as she stretched her Achilles’ heel.

“Yeah, right.” Laurie fumbled in her blue fanny pack for the house key.

“Hi Aunt Mitzy,” Rory hugged his mom’s friend. Then he turned to his mom. “Hurry. Rocky gotta go out.”

Laurie tossed the silver key to her son. “Since you’re in such a hurry, you open the door.”

In a flash, the little white dog was out the door, sniffing Mitzy, then Laurie as he wagged his whole body to and fro. Then he cocked his leg alongside a willow tree.

“You ever make it to the vet?” said Mitzy.

Laurie shook her head. “I did talk to Dr. Block on the phone, though. Wants to run some tests. She also asked if he experienced some recent trauma.”

“What did you say?”

“‘Like discovering a dead body on your master’s property?”

“You didn’t.”

Laurie giggled. “Barring any physical problems, she suggests a low-dose tranquilizer.”

“Wanna stay for dinner?” Rory asked. “We’re having pizza.” Laurie ruffled her son’s hair. “Actually, we’re having vegetable stir-fry. You’re welcome to stay. Ryan’s resting upstairs so we’ve got to be quiet.”

“Great, but my car’s parked on a side street near the Discovery Center.”

“You park in a No Parking Zone?”

“Do I look like I have a death wish?”

“Then you’re fine. If we get too drunk over dinner, you can sleep over.”

“One drink is my max. I’m not driving up to Lake Forest during morning rush hour.”

“One drink of soda is all you get?” asked Rory, frowning.

Laurie laughed. “Who’s going to help me cut the veggies?”

“I got a math page to do,” said Rory, quickly exiting the kitchen.

“Guess you’re elected,” Laurie said. She grabbed two paring knives and cutting boards from an oak cabinet overhead.

“So what’s the scoop on Ryan?” asked Mitzy as she vigorously chopped away at the celery and carrots.

Laurie slid several hunks of tofu off her cutting board and into the heated oil. “The docs were confident Ryan had a panic attack, but they kept him in the hospital overnight for observation, just to make sure it wasn’t diabetes or a stroke. I brought him home this morning.”

“He’s dropped a lot of weight this year,” observed Mitzy.

Laurie extracted a bottle of Merlot from the refrigerator. “Fifteen pounds since he started working with his personal trainer last spring.”

“Did your little sojourn to the summerhouse rekindle the old flame?”

“If anything, it doused the fire,” Laurie said wryly. She removed browned tofu chunks from the wok and placing them on a paper towel.

“Money arguments again?” asked her friend, sliding the vegetables into the hot oil, then lightly seasoning them.

“Our arguments are like those birthday candles that don’t blow out.”

“My mom says it’s just as easy to marry a rich guy as a poor one,” said Mitzy.

“Poor? Ryan was a claims adjuster.”

“Well he’s not anymore, is he?”

Laurie bristled. “He’s exploring continuing ed courses online.”

“He’s gotta be bored out of his mind not working in over a year,” Mitzy said.

“Ryan’s scared it’s going to happen again,” Laurie said quietly.

“You can suffer a second heart attack sitting in front of the television day after day.”

“Drop it, will you?” She didn’t need this shit, not from her best friend.

Mitzy embraced her. “I apologize.”

Laurie’s body relaxed as she returned her friend’s embrace. She spooned the veggies and tofu onto three dinner plates and placed them on the table. “Any input from Maggie about the dead body?”

“I totally forgot to follow up with her. It’s been so busy at school this week. Tomorrow.”

“Yeah, right.” Her friend’s brain suffered from multi-task overload. “Rory? Dinner.”

“When I worked for the
Tribune,
I investigated this serial killer who preyed on the owners of beauty salons, then dumped their dead bodies in grocery store dumpsters,” said Mitzy.

“I doubt a serial killer would know about Lac La Belle. It’s way off the beaten path.”

“Doesn’t have to be a serial killer, Laurie. It could be anybody with two strong arms and a good motive. We need to talk to your other neighbors up north.”

“Officer Gomez already did that.”

Mitzy sighed. “We need proof you did indeed find a dead body on your front lawn.”

“So now you believe me?” asked Laurie.

“Remember those bracelets we stole from Claire’s Boutique when we were at Whitney Young?”

“You talked me into that fiasco,” Laurie reminded her.

“You went right home and called the police on us.”

“That wasn’t honesty, that was stupidity.”

“Luckily, neither of us was eighteen, so it didn’t go on our records. The point is, you’re more honest than truth serum. Any chance Shakia’s ex-boyfriend is ‘TG?’”

“Anything is possible.”

Rory appeared in the doorway and spotted the tofu. “Ugh!”

14

Carmen Gomez and Susie Gray stood side by side as the burly medical examiner lowered the male corpse from the drawer onto the gurney.

“She sign the release form indicating she’s eighteen?” asked the medical examiner as he wheeled the gurney towards them.

Officer Gomez nodded.

The M.E. slowly lifted the sheet exposing the upper torso.

Susie buried her face in the officer’s shirt. “I can’t look,” she whimpered.

Gomez gently extracted the girl from her body. “If he’s not your brother, you will save your parents undue grief,” she whispered.

Swiping at her tears, Susie slowly turned to view the body.

*

“Thanks for coming along to question Shakia,” said Laurie as she and her friend shuffled up the front steps of an Evanston bungalow.

“Like I had a choice,” grumbled Mitzy.

The heavy wooden door edged open at Laurie’s rap. “Hello?” she called through the opening. A whiff of doggie dander hit Laurie’s nostrils, causing her to scratch at her wrist. When she was in elementary school, her family had a beagle named Terry. She’d been allergic to his saliva. Her parents offered her a choice: return Terry to the Anti Cruelty Society or undergo monthly allergy shots. She chose the latter.

Terry passed away at the ripe old age of thirteen years. In those days, nobody knew from hypoallergenic dogs. By the time she married Ryan, breeds including the Maltese, Shih Tsu, Lhasa Apso, and Bichon fit the bill. She purchased Rocky at Bichon Rescue, where the folks running the organization cared more about the human/dog relationship than a humongous pet shop price tag.

“One sec,” a youthful voice shouted through the opening. “Got to secure the dogs.”

A few minutes later, the door swung open. Laurie and Mitzy were greeted by a lean athletic-looking girl with a creamy chocolate complexion. The girl sported a purple and gold women’s basketball jersey. She flashed Laurie a beatific smile. “Hey, Mrs. Atkins.”

Laurie rubbed her eyes. Unfortunately, Labs were not hypoallergenic. “Hey, Naijah. This is my friend, Ms. Maven.”

The girl shook Mitzy’s hand. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“My, don’t you have nice manners,” Mitzy marveled.