A Crack in Everything Read online

  But my attempt at humor passed Roddie by. Using paper I found in my bag, he scrawled permission for me to pick up Delia at Willowood.

  We spent a quiet hour staring out the window at colored lights and polished boulders in the courtyard before a personage in greens and clogs found us. “Your wife’s in recovery,” he told Roddie. “Everything looks good.”

  They walked into the hall, and when Roddie returned, the fear in his eyes had retreated. “She needed six pints of blood. I only wished they could’ve used mine.” He dropped into a chair like a gray-faced old man. “Go home, Susan. It’s pushing midnight. I’m going to bed down here.” He lifted a poker deck off a side table and laid out a hand of solitaire, clearly a game with my name on it, if ever there was one.

  “I’ll stick around awhile and help you win.”

  He played his cards slowly, chewing his lip while he placed the six of clubs, the nine of hearts, and finally, drew three more cards.

  “What time did you make bail?”

  He studied the cards, missing an obvious match. “Around seven. Charges haven’t been dropped.”

  “They will be.” I touched the Jack of Clubs, and the Queen of Diamonds, and he made the play. While he continued through the deck, I told him Glenn’s story. “When he found his father’s body, you were thousands of miles away in Colorado.”

  “You really expect him to come forward when it counts?” He sounded indifferent, fatigue overriding hope.

  “Glenn’s scared, but I’m sure he’ll do the right thing.”

  The game continued its sluggish progress. I dug a Lifesaver out of my bag, steeling myself for the hard question I had to ask. “Roddie? Lauren told me about her affair.”

  “Did she?” Though the game had looked like a winner, he swept up the cards and began a noisy shuffling.

  “Did you know Chaz Renfrow was her lover?”

  He laid out another hand, lining up the cards with fanatical precision, apparently too absorbed to speak. Finally he said, “Not until the police found the voter survey. That’s when Lauren told me who Renfrow was. After that, I did everything I could to keep her name out of the investigation.”

  I believed him, and he knew it. The dam broke, and he told me how Lauren had shut down in the days following Chaz’s death. How Delia had suffered.

  “You’ve got to tell Gordon everything,” I said.

  “If Glenn speaks out, maybe I won’t have to.”

  I picked up a card and helped him to another match. A weak grin lit his face. “Hey, Susan. What’s the only surefire way to be rescued if you’re lost in the desert?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Lay out a hand of solitaire.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

  “Hordes of people will come out of nowhere, ready to kibitz.”

  I laughed, wishing I could use a hand of solitaire to gather every person who had ever mattered in my life. What a kibitz that would be.

  “I’m leaving. Call me at any time, for any reason, especially if you can’t play your ace.” I hugged him. “Everything’s going to be fine.” By everything, I meant Lauren, and the charges against him. And the campaign. Odette and I would hold the fort. It was early days yet, I told myself. Early days.

  ***

  I pulled in close to my house, right up on the walkway. The roof lights snapped on; my key was in my hand. Always hold your key like a weapon, women’s safety literature admonished. I looked down at the stub of brass between my thumb and bandaged finger, rounded point facing out, almost as sharp as a butter knife. If a tub of warm lard went on the attack, I’d be ready.

  At the top of the stairs, I paused, remembering that Lauren’s attacker had waited inside for her. The hardest part was unlocking the inner door to the pantry.

  From the kitchen phone, I checked in with Deirdre who’d arrived back from London yesterday. Michael had left a message.

  “He said to tell you he’s out for bear in New Hampshire.” Deirdre inhaled sharply. “Susan, I hope that doesn’t mean guns.”

  “I think it means sniffing around in a focused way.” If Michael was out for bear where Glenn liked to regroup, he must have taken my advice and talked to Darcy.

  “Did he say why he didn’t call my cell?”

  “No, but I have a feeling he didn’t want to be distracted. Leaving you a message was safer than talking to you.”

  “If I think about that long enough, I’m sure I’ll find a way to take it as a compliment. Did he say when he’d be back?”

  “Just that he’d be cross-hiking the mountains and would call you first chance he got.”

  This was not comforting. First chance could be days away.

  “So how was your trip?” I asked, a little perfunctorily, unable to focus on Deirdre’s vacation with my own world in turmoil.

  “I didn’t see much of London,” she confessed. “I spent the entire time at the exhibition, or reading in my hotel room.” In an odd, sleepy voice, she talked to me about William Blake. “I’d like to fall into his world,” she said. “All the answers are there.”

  “Yeah, but what about the questions?” I chuckled and regretted it instantly.

  “There’s only one.”

  Lots of answers, just one question? Blake sounded way too complicated for me. Give me Chaucer or Justice Brandeis any day. I said good night and went to bed, but even with the lights on and Gil’s knife under my pillow, I slept fitfully.

  So Wednesday started earlier than I’d planned. Going against the morning rush, I made it to Roddie’s house in eight minutes. From my kangaroo pouch, I took out the key, and Gil’s knife, which I slipped into my jeans for the comfort of it.

  As soon as I stepped inside, I could feel the absence of menace. No one was lurking. In the foyer closet, I found a canvas suitcase and took it to Delia’s room, where I quickly stuffed it with shorts, bathing suits, overalls. Curious George sat lopsided on the bed pillows, his sweet monkey face begging me to take him too. I tried to jam him in on top of the socks, twisting and compressing his body, and then I saw what Detective Bowdon and I had missed: a cobweb-fine gash running the length of his back. Lauren’s attacker had slashed her clothes to ribbons. He had also slashed Curious George.

  Delia’s Curious George.

  I zippered her suitcase, my hand trembling on the verge of an insight. Why Delia? Why an innocent child? I couldn’t compute, only knew I had to get her away from Boston.

  As I drove to Willowood, I painted gruesome scenarios: Lauren’s attacker knew where Delia went to camp. Was already there, terrorizing the children.

  I parked at the corner of Hammond and found dozens of children playing on a scant acre of tree-filled grounds behind the Unitarian church. A girl in her early twenties detached herself from a circle of bubble-wand wavers. “Hi,” she said. “Are you here for Delia Baird?”

  Roddie had called about me this morning. She read over his permission note and said, “Mrs. Lester never makes it before nine. Want some coffee while you wait?”

  It wasn’t even eight-thirty. I’d allowed myself way too much time. I followed her toward the church wishing I’d collected Delia at Amanda’s house. If the Lesters lived nearby, I could zip over and head them off. I tried to summon up the address by envisioning it in the camp directory. Why, I wondered, had Lauren detached it from the lamp?

  Last night, Amanda’s mother told me she had called a dozen times and left message after message on Lauren’s machine. Had someone listened to her irritated voice while he waited for Lauren to come home?

  “No coffee!” In a frenzy of fear I shouted after the girl. “I’ll pick up Delia at Amanda’s! Give me the address!”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Pushing The Envelope

  I steered into the driveway and inched toward a s
tone house fifty feet ahead. A Volvo sedan was parked in front with its doors and trunk open, Delia’s backpack on the ground, ready to be loaded. I studied the house, surrounded by rhododendron in full flower. Its slate roof was quaintly pitched, doorframe arched, windows trimmed in sky blue. A storybook picture. Except Delia’s pack lay too far from the trunk, as if she had abandoned it there. And was that a stuffed giraffe sprawled beside the left rear tire?

  I hesitated.

  Someone screamed, a shrill, little girl scream abruptly cut off, and now I was sprinting for the house, clutching my Swiss Army corkscrew. The front door was locked, something pink caught in the frame. Delia’s blanket. If I could force the lock…but when I jammed in my corkscrew, the tip broke off.

  Pushing through masses of rhododendron, I circled the house. Every door, every downstairs window was locked, some with closed shutters. There was a trellised patio heavy with climbing roses attached to the house, its lattices forming a lacy roof over the bricks. A bumblebee roamed through the flowers, but no sound came from the house, pressed against my back like a cliff I didn’t want to climb.

  “Delia! Come out!” The shout ripped through the quiet, and my head jerked up. A window above the patio was open the width of a breeze.

  “Delia, where are you?” Softly now. “I’ve got your blanket.”

  Liar! A long silence was followed by what sounded like footsteps shuffling through the room directly above my head. My heart hammered in my throat. If the invader looked out, he’d see me trembling among the vines. I tried to disappear into the trellis, and thorns drove in like nine-inch nails. I didn’t dare make a sound.

  “Delia, tell me where you are, and I’ll bring you your blanket.”

  No Delia, it’s a trick.

  The footsteps seemed to recede. The voice grew fainter, but didn’t I recognize its whiskey and honey, promises and menace? Pick it up, or I’ll kill you, it had threatened me. Johanna?

  My disconnected thoughts began to gel. Yes, Johanna. Somehow, she’d found out who Delia was. Understood that Delia had rights to NGT. I remembered our telephone conversation. Did you and my husband have an affair? Her phony indifference to Torie. Her greedy demand for my fee.

  Johanna the jealous. Johanna the liar.

  I wasn’t all that frightened of JoJo.

  I was frightened of heights, but adrenaline drove out caution. Battling roses and thorns, I climbed the rickety trellis and crawled to the window. I forced up the sash and landed in a book-lined study a few feet from a desk occupied by elderly cat with fluffy orange fur. Her unblinking eyes fixed on me, she flicked her tail across a keyboard and snuggled her bony haunches against a telephone.

  I rushed over and punched in 911. A hollow sound came out of the receiver, and I let it fall, cursing myself for leaving my cell in my hobo bag, in the car.

  Fluffy stretched out a languid paw, jumped off the desk and followed me across the room. The study opened into a T-shaped hall lined with closed doors, the only light coming from an oriel filled with plants and from a stairwell that led to the ground floor.

  At the top of the stairs I stood stock still, but all I could hear was a faint thrumming that seemed to come at me from everywhere. The sound made my flesh crawl; I tried to picture something harmless, a groaning old kitchen freezer, or no, one of those ductless air-conditioning units, vibrating against an outside wall and chilling the hell out of me.

  I feared I must, one by one, throw open those closed doors and was mentally preparing myself, when the cat wound between my ankles. “Go away, Fluffy,” I whispered, nudging her with my toe, and out of the throbbing silence I heard her cozy purr.

  Something thumped, at the oriel end of the hall. “Delia! Let’s play hide and seek. First I find you, then you find me.”

  Delia, wherever she was, kept still.

  As quickly and quietly as my feet could move me, my eyes adjusting to the dimness, I worked my way toward the voice. The thrumming had stopped, but the knot in my stomach tightened like a noose.

  “Where oh where has Delia gone? Where oh where can she be? I bet she’s in the…closet.” A door was wrenched open and slammed against a wall, then came a silence as the closet was presumably searched. “Not here, you bad girl! Are you under the bed?”

  An impulse to shout Delia’s name died in my throat. Mustn’t alert Johanna. The element of surprise and a damaged corkscrew were my only weapons. I took out the corkscrew, and advanced on the balls of my feet, one of which came down on something that crunched. Not Fluffy, I hoped. In the light from the oriel I saw a green oblong with shiny plastic ears and a triangular red nose. As I pushed the toy aside with my foot, it emitted a weird beep. I snatched it up, ready to crush it in my palm, when I suddenly realized that the ears were antennas and the red nose a HELP button. Was it a kid’s cell phone, or only make-believe? I pressed HELP, but nothing happened, so I replaced on the floor, and prayed it wouldn’t beep again.

  The voice began to rage. “Come out or I’ll drag you out! Do what I tell you! Do it!”

  I threw open the door on a bedroom with bunk beds that Johanna was crouching beside, her head buried in a black ski mask. Glenn’s blue-and-white shirt hung over her jeans. I stared at the shirt, something unreal about the way the sleeve flapped off the shoulder, and then I understood: I was looking at a slashed shirt, stiff with dried blood.

  “It’s all right, Delia!” I shouted to the five year old child I guessed was cowering under the bed. “Stay where you are!”

  Johanna stood up, swung around, and now I could see how much damage Lauren had inflicted last night. A diagonal slash ran from the shirt’s left shoulder across the hollow chest and right thigh. Cloth and skin were crusted with blood. The ski mask stopped just below the chin, exposing the Adam’s apple. The left hand came up in a fist. Taw marble eyes glared at me.

  “Glenn. I should have known it was you.”

  The fist opened like a flower. “I’m not going to hurt her.” His voice was soft, as low as a lullaby. “She’s my sister. I’ve come to bring her home.”

  Tiny ears, a dry little nose, nudged my ankle, and the damn cat began to purr again.

  “Take off the mask, Glenn. It scares Delia.” And me.

  He bared his face, clotted blood on a lip, a purple bruise on his cheekbone, and I sensed his calculation. He could still win this game. He took a step toward me. “I’m awfully sorry, Susan. Once I realized my father hadn’t fucked you, I hoped we could be friends.”

  I held up my corkscrew. I’d poke out his eyes if I had to.

  Fluffy twitched against my foot, and I let my glance flicker. “No, Delia!” I shouted, hoping to divert Glenn for even a second. “It’s me, Susan. Don’t come out!”

  He looked over his shoulder, at nothing, and in that timeless space I picked up the cat.

  When Glenn saw I had tricked him, he rushed me, and I heaved fat old Fluffy in his face. Fluffy clung for dear life, digging in with every brittle claw. Glenn howled, and I threw a Princess Bride and pillows at him and kicked his shins. A bookcase tottered, lamps toppled, and just as he managed to rip Fluffy off his face, I body checked him. He crumpled. His head hit the radiator, and his wounds began to bleed again. With a strength that came from some distant galaxy inside me, I dragged the upper bunk bed off its posts and shoved it on top of him.

  “Okay, Delia, come out!” I yelled. “Let’s go!”

  She crawled out from behind a Victorian doll’s house built on a thick wooden base and we ran into the hall. “My new phone!” she yelled, stopping to retrieve the little green oblong I’d abandoned on the floor.

  “I pressed HELP, but it didn’t work,” I said.

  “Got to hold it down.” She made the 911 connection and handed her cell to me.

  Before the police arrived, Fluffy, Delia and I freed the Lesters from the kitchen where Glenn had
gagged and duct-taped them, Amanda to the iron base of the pedestal table and Georgina to pipes beneath the farmhouse sink. When I’d cased the exterior of the house, Georgina had seen me peering through the window and tried to catch my attention by rocking her head and back against the pipes. That was the thrumming, I’d heard, an old house vibe, if I’d known how to read it.

  ***

  Lauren smiled me in. She was sitting up looking almost fit in a fancy embroidered jacket that hid her hospital gown, though not her bandaged neck and hands. Color suffused her cheeks; the transfusions were holding.

  I pulled up a chair. “You look great,” I said.

  “I’m back from the edge.” Her smile faded. She found a Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes. “Just like you.”

  I never met a tear I couldn’t share. My own eyes began to fill. “Oh, I’m all right. Nowhere near the edge.”

  She pushed the Kleenex box in my direction. “Roddie told me everything. You saved Delia’s life.”

  “Not me. The cat.”

  For a few minutes the room took on a damp, salty silence, interrupted by a little nose blowing and throat clearing.

  “Well, I owe the cat more than I can ever repay.”

  “De nada, says the cat. Just keep on healing. Delia needs you. Roddie needs you. Even the campaign needs you.”

  “I’ll stuff envelopes till the cows come home.”

  A hospital aide barged into the room behind a trolley of snacks. Lauren accepted a cup of tea, and I tried the angel cake.

  “Where is that…Glenn?” Lauren said. “Have they locked him up?”

  “Of course, prison hospital.”

  “What about bail?”

  “A multiple murderer? Not a chance.” I peeled the wrapper off my cake and chomped a little cotton in the over-air-conditioned room.

  “I can’t stop seeing his eyes.” She touched the bandages on the side of her neck. “How could he kill his own father?”

  “I don’t know.” I thought about Lizzie Borden, about the man who set fire to his ten-year-old son. Family life. My own family had done no worse than, from time to time, mislay me, which sometimes happens to a redundant much-younger sister. Now that I live back east relations are affable. My mother and sister send me thoughtful gifts while observing me through the wrong end of a rose-colored telescope. A tiny grateful Susan glows in the distant light. We mean well by each other, even love each other, which is more than Lizzie or Glenn could say.