Helpless

Chapter 20

Rebecca Bartholomew had been Tom’s favorite neighbor on Oak Street. Rebecca was the first to greet Tom after he moved back into his former home. Tom wasn’t surprised that days later she again stopped by unannounced.

“Want some pie?” she asked, flashing him some berry-rich homemade delight.

“If you don’t mind a mess, I’d love the company,” Tom said.

The pie, he knew, was an excuse for her to check up on them. It was just Rebecca being Rebecca.

The bulk of Tom’s belongings remained packed inside boxes and milk crates. The boxes and crates were strewn about the living room and upper hallway of the split-level home.

“Is this all you own?” Rebecca asked, evidently surprised by Tom’s lack of possessions.

“One day and a rented van was all it took to move me here,” Tom said with a degree of pride. “That’s why I’m a big fan of my milk crate storage system. Just flip ’em over and, voilà, you’re moving.”

Jill had been quite helpful with the move. They talked some on the trip up and back, but not very much. She’d been quiet in the days since her mother’s death.

At Marvin’s suggestion, Tom and Jill began seeing a social worker to help facilitate the transition to her new custodial parent. Tom found it reassuring to know that Jill’s quiet demeanor was normal for this stage of the grieving process, according to Maggie, the social worker.

Rebecca followed Tom into the kitchen. She stepped over an open toolbox, then navigated a field of corroded parts that Tom had removed from the newly disassembled kitchen sink. Rebecca made it safely to the refrigerator without tripping and seemed well aware of the accomplishment.

“We’ve been getting a lot of takeout,” Tom said to Rebecca, who looked inscrutably at the sink and about the kitchen mess.

“I was going to make us a cup of tea,” she said, as if to imply that was no longer an option.

“We have bottled water in the fridge,” Tom said.

Rebecca nodded, got the water out of the refrigerator, and retrieved an electric kettle from one of the kitchen cabinets. She didn’t have to ask Tom where to get it. In another life, Tom, Kelly, and Rebecca had been friends, so it was no surprise that she knew where to find the kettle and Kelly’s substantial collection of teas.

Rebecca had an apple-shaped figure, an unruly nest of dark, wavy hair, and a pretty face, which Tom could not recall ever looking so concerned.

“Does it feel strange to move back into your old home?” Rebecca asked as she filled the kettle with bottled water.

“Everything about this feels strange,” Tom said. “Ten years ago I got divorced and moved out. Jill was just six. Now she’s fifteen, and I’m sleeping in the basement of the house Kelly and I bought together.”

“The basement?”

“Jill’s not ready to touch her mother’s things, and I can’t blame her for that. But I keep on finding things I bought as gifts, or shopped for with Kelly, in just about every room of the house.”

From the living room, Tom heard the familiar whistle of the wall-mounted cuckoo clock announcing the top of the hour with seven quick tweets. Tom had first laid eyes on that wooden cuckoo clock from the Black Forest region of Germany when he opened the crate of knickknacks Kelly had asked him to bring home for her from Wiesbaden.

“Make sure you unpack everything as soon as you get to your folks’ house,” Kelly had said before his troop transport plane departed. “I don’t want any of my mementos getting squished.”

But Kelly had had another reason she wanted Tom to unpack that crate. Tom had been staying at his parents’ house in Shilo for a little R & R. They weren’t at home when he pried open the box, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they were. They’d never seen pure heroin.

“Listen, Tom,” Kelly had said when he had called in a fury. “Before you get too angry with me, I need to tell you something.”

“What?” Tom had said, his voice bordering on rage.

“I’m pregnant,” she had said. “And you’re the father. Now, if you don’t want your child born in prison, you’re going to have to do something to help me out.”

Rebecca poured milk into her tea and offered to do the same for Tom, but he declined. She cut two good-sized pieces of pie, which she served on paper plates.

“Where’s Jill?” asked Rebecca, her pie knife ready to cut a third piece.

“In her room, studying,” Tom said. “She thinks I’m a prison warden because I haven’t let her out of my sight for more than a couple hours.”

“Well, it was pretty scary, what happened to Kelly. And then the whole incident in the woods. Did the police ever catch the guy?”

“No,” Tom said, his voice revealing his disappointment. Even more dismaying, neither he, Roland, nor Marvin could find Lange anywhere, despite all three having made considerable efforts. It appeared that the former private had vanished from earth like the morning fog.

“That must be very unsettling,” Rebecca said.

“We’re taking precautions,” Tom said. “The house is now fully alarmed. And thanks to my ‘friend of Roland Boyd’ discount, we’ve got ourselves an outdoor-lighting perimeter detection system, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Sensors in the woods that trigger outdoor floodlights if any of them get tripped.”

“Wow, sounds impressive.”

Tom laughed a little. “So far we’ve scared away a bunch of deer.”

“Well, between your close watch over Jill and the alarm systems, what else can you do?”

“I could have forced her to leave Shilo and move to Westbrook,” Tom said.

“And have a sullen, furious daughter to look after? No, I think you were right to move here.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Rebecca took a sip of her tea and looked at Tom in a sorrowful way. “Tom, are you really up for this?” she asked.

“For what?” answered Tom, though he knew what she was asking.

“Raising a daughter,” said Rebecca. “Not to mention one who doesn’t seem very open to the reunion, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Well, we both know that Kelly never had many nice things to say about me.”

Rebecca puckered her face. “Forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, but we both know that Kelly was full of s-h-i-t. And I told Jill on any number of occasions to give you a chance.”

Tom returned an appreciative smile. “I figured one day my free plumbing and tree removal services would pay dividends.”

“Well, I’m just saying, if you need anything, anything at all, don’t you hesitate to ask. Now then, back to Jill and raising a daughter. I’ll help out as much as I can. Cooking, carpool, what have you. But this is a lot to take on, Tom. What about your dad? Can he help out in any way?”

“Dad hasn’t been right since my mom died. He’s living in Florida these days and his health isn’t very good, and I don’t think he could make the trip back to New Hampshire anytime soon.”

“Not even for Jill?”

“Kelly kept Jill out of his life, same as she did mine. No, I wouldn’t put that on him.”

Tom heard loud knocking on the door. Four quick, hard bangs. He gave Rebecca a curious look.

“Are you expecting anybody?” Rebecca asked.

Tom shook his head. He left the kitchen, trotted down the carpeted front stairs.

Through the sidelight windows Tom saw Brendan Murphy and Rich Fox lit up by the yellowish glow of the two outside front lights. Murphy was dressed in a tweed sports jacket and tie. Fox wore his police uniform.

Jill! Tom thought. Had she snuck out of the house without his knowing? Was she in danger?

Tom opened the door in a hurry, and Murphy more or less pushed himself inside, flashing a piece of paper clutched in his hand.

“I’ve got a signed warrant to search these premises,” Murphy said, slipping on rubber gloves as he marched up the front stairs. “Officer Fox will be assisting me as a witness, ensuring that I’ve conducted the search to the specifications of the warrant. Oh, and we’ll be removing all your home computers, too.”

Tom felt an icy chill. He didn’t think the police had been all that thorough investigating the house after Kelly’s death. It was just a robbery gone bad, or so they believed. But a search warrant was an entirely different matter. Tom wasn’t worried about Murphy finding evidence that would incriminate him in Kelly’s homicide.

But he did worry Murphy might dig up something else.

Something Kelly might have hidden.

Something Tom wouldn’t want anybody to find.