Deeper Than the Dead

45

“You received a traffic fine in the mail.”

Anne looked at her father as she dropped her book bag and purse inside the front door. “What?”

“It says something about reckless driving and destruction of property. I taught you how to drive better than that.”

“I learned to drive from Mom,” Anne said, taking the citation from him. Frank Farman had written the ticket because she had turned around on his lawn after he parked behind her and blocked her in. Jerk. “You must be thinking about some other daughter you had with some other woman.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means. It means you don’t get to reinvent my history.”

“You don’t have to worry about it, anyway,” he said, waving at the ticket. “I give to the sheriff’s charity every year. They know me. They’ll look the other way.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works, Dad.”

Fine: $150!

“Of course that’s how it works. What were you doing behind the wheel? Drinking and driving?”

“No, but I’m thinking about taking that up.”

He didn’t react because he never listened to her. The other person’s role in a conversation with Dick Navarre was to kill time while he was deciding what to say next.

In all their years of marriage he had probably heard about 3 percent of what her mother ever had to say. Her opinion had meant nothing to him, nor had Anne’s. She remembered when she was nine years old her mother telling her to go into the living room and talk to her father before dinner. Even then Anne had seen the futility of that exercise.

“Really, honey,” her mother had said. “Daddy wants to hear about your day at school.”

Anne had looked up at her mother, perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up, all for her husband who treated her like a servant, and said, “Mom, he doesn’t even know what grade I’m in.”

She regretted saying it instantly only because her honesty had hurt her mother. Her father probably couldn’t say what grade she taught now because what she did was of no interest to him, even though he had been a teacher himself. The ultimate narcissist, it only mattered to him that she took care of the things he needed taken care of.

“You’re late,” he said. “Again. What’s your excuse tonight?”

“I’ve been recruited by the FBI to work undercover in this murder investigation.”

He looked annoyed. “The FBI doesn’t hire women.”

“Yes, they do. It’s 1985, Dad. We have the right to vote and everything.”

“Ha. Very funny,” he grumbled, walking away. “The right to vote.”

Anne dropped the citation on the dining room table and headed for the kitchen, calling, “Did you take your meds?”

“Of course I did. I’m not senile. I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

“Good. In that case, I’ll be moving out next week.”

She looked into the plastic case that held his pills for the day. He hadn’t taken half of them. If she asked him why not, he would undoubtedly tell her it was because he once read an article in The New England Journal of Medicine while waiting for his dermatologist to remove a mole, and therefore knew more about the subject of pharmaceuticals than any one of the three medical specialists he saw.

“Maybe you can get a girlfriend,” Anne called out, dumping the pills into her hand. “It’ll be just like the old days.”

“I don’t know why you go on like that,” he groused. “I was a very good husband.”

“Really?” she said, coming back into the dining room. “To whom?”

“You always took your mother’s side.”

“Yes. Damn but that I didn’t inherit that amoral gene of yours. My life would be so much easier.”

“Are you finished?” he asked coolly. “I’m going next door to watch Jeopardy! The Ivers are such a lovely family.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “You hate Judith Iver. Tuesday night you called her a stupid cow.”

“Not to her face.”

“Well, that makes all the difference. Here,” she said, handing him a fistful of pills and a glass of water. “I’m not letting you out the door until you take those.”

“I don’t know why you bother,” he complained. “You’d be happier if I was dead.”

“Yes, but I’m such an obvious suspect.”

“I’m sure your new friends at the FBI would take care of you.”

“It would make a better story if I called in all your markers for donating twenty dollars a year to the sheriff’s annual circus day fund.”

Her father sniffed and struck a pose like a Shakespearean actor on stage. Sir Richard of Bullshit. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

“Oh, please,” Anne said, quickly thumbing through the rest of the mail. “I’m completely thankful to my parent. That just doesn’t happen to be you, that’s all.”

“I’m leaving,” he announced, offended. It would give him something to talk about when he sat down with Judith Iver and her nephew. He could lament his daughter’s low treatment of him and elicit half an hour’s worth of sympathy while flogging them at Jeopardy!

Anne hurried to her room to shower and change clothes. The Thomas Center was holding a candlelight vigil for Karly Vickers and in memory of Lisa Warwick, and she felt a need to be there. She refused to recognize the fact that she expected to see Vince there, just as she refused to think too hard about the fact that he had kissed her. She had allowed him to kiss her.

It was only because she had felt weak and vulnerable, and he had felt so strong and safe by comparison. And she wanted to trust him. The deepest, most private part of who she was had existed in emotional isolation for most of her life. But in that one moment of weakness she had wanted to drop those shields just to feel the comfort of another soul next to hers for a little while.

The sound of his low, rough voice was warm in her head as she stood in front of her bathroom mirror.

It’s all right. . . . This shoulder has been cried on before.

She ached all the way through at the memory of how much she had needed to hear someone say that.

Now she pushed the feeling away as something impractical and a waste of time. She had things to do and needing was not high on the list of priorities.

The Thomas Center was a collection of white stucco buildings that had been a private Catholic girls’ school from the early twenties into the sixties. Modeled on the style of the old Spanish missions, the buildings formed a courtyard between them with a fountain at its center and stunning, simple gardens rambling along the stone walkways.

It was a beautiful place by daylight. By candlelight it was magical. Hundreds of tiny flames seemed to dance on the dark night air. The courtyard was nearly full. Franny had scoped out the scene before Anne got there and had chosen a spot with the optimum potential for eavesdropping.

“This is my entertainment for the evening,” he said as she joined him. “I’m giving up Miami Vice to be here.”

“Well, I hope for your sake a car chase ensues at some point,” Anne said.

“I’d settle for a Don Johnson sighting. Or a sighting of your Mr. Leone,” he suggested, raising up on the tiptoes of his Top-Siders to survey the crowd. “What were you doing out there in the woods all that time, Anne Marie? A little horizontal hokeypokey?”

“Oh, yeah. In a shallow grave,” Anne whispered. “Have some respect, please. We’re at a vigil.”

“We should hold a vigil for your vagina if you take a pass on the Italian Stallion.”

A couple of heads swiveled in their direction. Anne grabbed his arm and pinched him hard. “Behave yourself!”

“I liked the way he put his hand on your back,” he said. “Very proprietary. BIG hand, I might add.”

Anne shushed him and told herself the flush of heat that washed through her was embarrassment and had nothing to do with the memory of Vince Leone touching her.

Jane Thomas stepped up onto a small stage that was positioned at one end of the courtyard and thanked everyone for coming. The program was short. A poetry reading in memory of Lisa Warwick. A plea for information from the public regarding both cases. An announcement about the reward the center had posted. Donations from the public would be accepted in memory of Lisa. A local folksinger got up and sang a song that made everyone tear up. The end.

They shuffled toward the exit with the rest of the crowd. Talk of the findings at the salvage yard that afternoon rippled through. Speculation about the sudden series of crimes ran the gamut from evil seeping north from Los Angeles to an obvious decline of a once-great society.

“I need an espresso,” Franny declared as they made it to the sidewalk. “All this melancholy has worn me out.”

As they turned in the direction of the plaza, Anne caught a flash of red from the corner of her eye.

Janet Crane was bearing down on her like a charging tigress. Her eyes were so wide-open the white was visible all the way around the iris. Her lips pulled back in a grimace that showed gritted teeth.

Anne’s heart plunged into her stomach and bounced back up to the back of her throat.

“Miss Navarre,” she spat each word as if it tasted bad. “I would like a word with you.”

Anne swallowed hard. Show no fear. She stepped out of the flow of human traffic and faced the woman, hoping she appeared calmer than she felt. Janet Crane didn’t stop until no more than a foot separated them.

“Mrs. Crane—”

“How dare you!” Her voice was lowered to a harsh whisper to keep from being overheard, but carried all the strength of a shout. “How dare you try to use my son.”

Caught mentally flatfooted, Anne couldn’t think of a response. She was guilty as charged. She didn’t deserve to defend herself.

She glanced at Tommy, who looked both mortified and hurt, and wouldn’t make eye contact with her. His expression was a harder punch in the stomach than any verbal attack his mother could launch.

Janet Crane’s words broke up like bad radio reception in Anne’s head. She wanted to drop down on her knees and beg Tommy’s forgiveness.

“. . . making a little boy think his father might be some kind of-of monster . . . absolutely outrageous . . . My husband is a highly respected member of this community. How dare you insinuate . . .”

Anne felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. Or maybe she wished that she was. She couldn’t seem to move or speak. She was aware of people staring at them, Franny looking like a deer in headlights.

Then a man’s voice came from her left. Low, rough, familiar. “Is there some kind of problem here, ladies?”

It took a minute for the rage to clear from Janet Crane’s eyes. She blinked at Vince like he had dropped out of the sky.

“Oh. Oh! Mr. Leone,” she said, scrambling. Anne could practically see the wheels in the woman’s brain brake to an abrupt halt and struggle to start turning in another direction. “Mr. Leone. What a surprise to see you here!”

“If I’m going to be part of the community, I thought I should start participating,” he said smoothly. “Is everything all right? This looked like a bit of a disagreement,” he said, wagging a finger from one to the other of them.

“No. No!” Janet Crane said, flashing the too bright smile. “Not at all. Everything is fine. Mr. Leone, this is Anne Navarre. Anne teaches at Oak Knoll Elementary.”

“We’ve met, actually,” he said.

“Oh. Well. That’s wonderful!”

He smiled down at Anne, a thousand watts of pure charm.

“I certainly hope it will be. In fact, I was hoping to catch up with you tonight, Miss Navarre,” he said, settling his hand on the small of her back once again. “I need to discuss something with you. If you’ll excuse us, Mrs. Crane?”

Janet smiled the brittle smile that made Anne think the fine veneer of her face was about to shatter to pieces and reveal the reptilian alien beneath the facade.

“Of course,” she said. “My son and I were just on our way home. Have a lovely evening. Good to see you, Anne.”

A chill ran down Anne’s back.

“Oh my God,” Franny said, finally regaining the ability to speak as Janet Crane walked away. “I think you were just saved from having your soul liquefied and sucked out of you.”

“That was your fault,” Anne said, angry and upset as she turned to Vince. “Do you have any idea what just happened? I just lost that little boy’s trust. Do you have any idea what that means to me?”

He had the grace to look contrite. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be. She’s going to get Tommy taken out of my class,” she said, swiping angrily at a tear that dared to fall. “I’m someone he should be able to trust and she’s going to take him away, and who will he have then?”

“Anne—”

“I’m going home,” she announced, and started walking toward the public lot where she had parked. She felt like Janet Crane had reached right into her chest and torn her heart loose. And it was her own fault. She should have gone with her gut.

“Anne,” Vince said, taking hold of her arm. “Wait.”

“No,” she said, jerking away from him, not slowing down. “I’m upset, and I’m going home before I make a complete spectacle of myself in the street.”

“I’ll fix it,” he said.

“You’ll fix it?” she turned and stared at him, incredulous. “How will you fix it? How will you get that little boy to trust me?”

“He’ll trust you again,” he promised. “He wants to trust you. He needs to trust you. He sure as hell can’t trust his mother. He’ll turn back to you. And he won’t be going anywhere. I’ll take care of Janet Crane.”

Anne arched a brow. “Take care of? That sounds like something a gangster would say.”

“Well, I am from Chicago, but I promise I only work on the right side of the street.”

“Don’t try to be amusing,” she snapped. “I’m in no mood to be amused.”

“Sorry.”

“And what makes you think you can stop Janet Crane from doing something if she’s made up her mind?” she demanded, jamming her hands on her hips.

“I don’t think I can. I will,” he said. “Janet Crane has a lot, which means she has a lot to lose. Her status, for instance. Her standing in the community. I have the ability to make those things go away simply by having a conversation with a reporter.”

Anne’s eyebrows went up. He meant it. Seriously.

“I owe you,” he said. “Besides, people can’t mess with people I like. And she can’t screw with me because she’s got no currency with me. She’s got nothing to threaten me with. I’ve got the big stick, and I’ll use it.”

Anne thought about that for a moment. She had never had anyone rush to defend her before, let alone promise annihilation of the enemy. And she had no doubt that he would do exactly what he said. His expression was just this side of fierce. He radiated power. She felt a little like she had poked a stick at a lion.

“Let me see you home,” he said, dialing down his intensity a notch.

“I’m capable of driving myself home,” Anne said.

“I’m well aware you’re capable,” he said, brows lowered over his dark eyes. “I would feel better seeing you home. You’re upset. You’re not going to be paying attention. There’s still a killer on the loose. Now that I’ve fucked up—pardon my French—your relationship with your student, making sure you’re safe seems like the least I can do. Is that all right with you?”

Without examining her reasons too closely, Anne handed him her car keys.