A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (41 page)

I told her so, over and over. She’d survived worse already, and now I had her. I told her I would always have her, keep her safe, and she nodded with her face pressed hard into my bel y, believing me.

Then over her, through the windshield, I saw a tan-colored Saturn coming off the interstate. I blinked, hard, wil ing myself to be wrong, but I wasn’t.

I recognized the car. Even as I patted Mosey’s sweat-damp head and promised her that everything would be okay, I was watching Claire Richardson’s private detective drive al casual past us on the access road. He turned into the Cracker Barrel parking lot and hid himself behind a big rig.

I sat there with my jaw working up and down like some stupid cud-chewing animal’s, purely flummoxed. How could he be pul ing off the interstate fifteen minutes after we did? How could he fol ow me al the way here? The only answer I could come up with seemed too sinister to be true: He must have put something, a kind of tracker, on my car. But that was a thing a private eye might do to folks on television, not to real people in little towns near the beach in Mississippi.

It surely isn’t legal
, I thought, and then realized how ridiculous that sounded. I was sitting not twenty miles away from the house where Liza had committed grand theft baby, blinking in disbelief to think someone might bug my car.

I’d known I’d have to face Claire Richardson, but I thought I’d have a little more maneuvering room. Claire didn’t know who Mosey
was
, only that she wasn’t Liza’s child with Coach. But I’d led Claire’s PI directly to the crumbling pink bungalow. He had seen the place where Mosey came from, so how much time did I have before he went to Claire Richardson and she put al the pieces together? Not a lot, I decided. Not a lot of time at al .

This woman blamed Liza for the death of her baby, for Melissa’s drug use and her disappearing act, even for her perverted husband’s unfaithfulness. She would have us at her nonexistent mercy, with no reason not to destroy us, not to try to get Liza and me into a world of legal trouble, no reason not to try to use her considerable money and influence to get the state to take Mosey.

That very night Mosey sat between Liza and me on the sofa. I had her snugged up into my armpit, her head on my shoulder, as we watched a
Law

& Order
marathon. She was quiet and very, very tired, but she was al right.

I met Liza’s eyes over her head and said, “I’m going to have a quick shower. Take care of her?”

Mosey said, “’Kay, Big,” thinking I was asking her to watch her mother.

Liza knew better. She’d been stuck at home with Mrs. Lynch, sweating it out while I rushed to Alabama to bring Mosey back from a hel that Liza knew intimately. Thirteen years ago Liza had carried Mosey to me from that same pink house. Now her eyes burned bright into mine, and she nodded, a single, faint, up-and-down motion. I untucked Mosey and passed her into Liza’s care. Liza’s good arm came up around her, and Mosey relaxed against her, eyes on the television, untroubled.

I went and got the phone and our local directory from my bedside table, and I took them to the bathroom. I turned the shower on for noise cover. I didn’t want Mosey to know I was on the phone at al , much less what my business was. I looked up Claire’s number and dialed it. She picked up on the second ring, like she’d been waiting for me.

“Hel o?” Her cool voice set my spine ashiver.

I felt my skin break out in a sweat from the forced heat of my sudden loathing. This woman had poisoned Liza, poisoned my child, and now she had us in her power. It was unendurable.

“Hel o, Claire.” I had to work to keep my voice level and quiet.

There was a pause, and then she said, “Ginny Slocumb. Real y? You think I want to have a conversation with you?”

I did think so, actual y, and she proved it by not hanging up.

“I’d want to talk to me if I were you,” I said.

She forced a version of her musical laugh on me, but it sounded sour and flat through the phone. “You are not me. Not even close.”

“I know you hired that PI to fol ow me. I saw him in Montgomery,” I said, laying one of my cards flat slap on the table.

There was a surprised pause, and then she said, “Honestly, you can’t get good help these days.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

Another long pause. Unendurable. “I haven’t quite decided, to be honest. I have a lot on my plate right now.” Sure she did. Winter formal was coming up at Calvary High. She was probably on the streamer committee, trying to decide between blue and silver, and that had to be settled before she could spare a moment to decide whether she should ruin Mosey’s life, just to get at what was left of Liza.

“You know if you tel anyone about Mosey, your husband’s part in al this wil come out, too,” I said.

“I hope so. Chief Warfield has certainly been unable to break him. My husband has decided to defend himself by claiming he bedded so many ladies during our marriage he could have fifty little bastards buried al over the state and not know about a one of them. Claims he didn’t know half the women’s names or where they were from. It’s just a tad embarrassing,” Claire said, and I could hear acid dripping through the honey in her voice.

I was only half surprised. The DNA test would of course have turned Warfield away from us and onto Coach. Now even a self-blinding champion like Claire couldn’t stay in denial about her husband’s extramarital perversions. But it sounded like she was giving Liza the lion’s share of the blame for her husband’s infidelity. Yet another reason to come after us.

“Maybe you don’t want to believe he ever cheated on you with anyone except Liza, but even so, Claire. Liza was a child. He could be arrested.”

Claire said, brittle, “That would be lovely. At least then I could be sure that my prenup would hold.”

I closed my eyes. So she was divorcing him—and blaming Liza for that, too. I said, “I know you hate my daughter, but the person you’l hurt most is a fifteen-year-old girl who never did a thing to you. This road you’re on, it’s leading someplace bitter. Please. Don’t go down it.”

I could hear my own voice shaking, but if begging this poisoning bitch was what it would take, I would beg. If she wanted crawling? I could do that, too. She didn’t answer, but she didn’t hang up. It was as if she were holding the connection to take a sweet little sip of what destroying my family might taste like, decide if it was a drink that she was thirsty for.

“Or what?” she final y said, bored and flat, as if I had made an idle threat instead of pleading. “Why shouldn’t I tel the world what a piece of work your daughter is?”

Before I could answer, my other line beeped. I stole a quick glance at the receiver, and it was Lawrence, thank God, Lawrence cal ing. His friend at the lab must have come through.

On Claire’s end she must have heard the beep as a click, because she asked, “Are you recording this?” with her voice gone sharp.

“No,” I said.

“I think you are,” she said. I said nothing. I heard her breathe in through her nose. “I’m not saying any more. If you wish to finish this conversation, you can meet me in my lawyers’ office. Tomorrow, at ten.”

“It was my other line,” I said. I heard the click of Lawrence going to voice mail.

Her only answer was to rattle off a Pascagoula street address, and then she hung up.

I barely slept that night. I kept getting up to walk the hal , standing in Mosey’s doorway, then Liza’s, listening to my girls, asleep and breathing sweetly in and out in the dark.

At ten sharp I presented myself like a lamb at the law offices of Gishin, Todd, Sharp and Montblank. A secretary in a crisp linen dress led me back through a wide hal way lined with what looked like actual art. I could see the brushstrokes of oil paint on the canvases. The carpet was so thick that my feet sank into the pile with every step.

She left me at the door of the glass-fronted conference room. I stood on the outside for a minute, looking through the clear wal into the iced-over eyes of Claire Richardson, seated facing me on the far side of a cherrywood table. This was high-stakes poker, and Claire already had a pair of lawyers showing. They sat on either side of her in their black, sleek suits. Their ties alone probably cost more than my car payment.

Al I had was the test results Lawrence had left on my voice mail last night and a prop Dixie cup, because the real one was safe at the lab.

It came back to me again then, the outgunned, shoulder-slumping defeat I’d learned while hurling bricks at that huge, impervious Jesus window, his colors shot through with secret steel. Claire was looking at me on the other side of a window now, and her face was as smooth as the face of that glassy Jesus. She was staring me down, her inside, me out, reading defeat in every line of my body and liking it.

Under her gaze, at what felt like the end of everything, I wished for Liza or Lawrence beside me, to take over and be strong for me. Then I thought of Mosey. Saw her in her best dress with its thousand tiny flowers cascading down the print. I thought about someone coming to take her from us, and I felt my shoulders squaring up al on their own. I felt my hands clench, and right then I sure wished I had a brick. Here was a glass wal in front of me I could take out with one blow.

It occurred to me for the first time that I had been wrong about that stained-glass window.

Wrong and foolish. I’d been a child then. I’d crept away in the night with my tail tucked, but as Claire’s gaze lapped at my defeat like it was cream, I realized that I’d given up too easy. If I’d wanted it bad enough, I could have stood there throwing and throwing until the flower garden didn’t have a single edging brick left, until the sun came up, until every passing driver was a witness. I could have driven into the grass and climbed up on my car roof to loft my bricks higher, to smash his honey-brown locks and break his inward-reaching arms. Before the police arrived to stop me, I could have run back and forth to other flower beds and thrown more bricks until my arms ached. If I’d been wil ing to take the consequences, I could have gotten every bit of that glass Jesus down.

I shoved the door open, and I walked in fast and angry. I didn’t sit. No one spoke. Claire’s face looked smooth as paper, and her eyes were alight with a pale blue, ugly triumph. I took a deep breath, and then I dug the Dixie cup out of my purse and slapped it down on the table between us. I’d bought a sleeve of them on the way over. It was the tropical-print pattern with palm trees and monkeys, same as they’d had at the luau. It made a soft, scuffing noise against the wood. The lawyers couldn’t have looked less threatened if I’d set a fluffy kitten down in front of them, but one of Claire’s eyelids twitched.

I said, “You know what’s funny? I came here to beg. But then, right out there, in that hal behind me, I thought to myself, screw it. I’m not going to beg the bitch who poisoned Liza.”

Claire’s eyebrows shot up. “I never—” And the lawyer on the right, the older one, put his hand over hers again, stopping her.

“Fine. It wasn’t poison,” I acknowledged. “That’s good, actual y, because it would be harder to connect you to something everyone has in their garden shed to kil the mice. You slipped her your diet pil s in that drink. Phentermine. You gave amphetamines to a former meth addict, Claire. It may not have been poison, but your intentions were not good.”

Her face stayed careful y neutral, and the younger lawyer said, “It’s a very common drug.” His tone was so flat he almost sounded bored.

“Sure it is,” I said to him, “but I bet anything your skinny-ass client has a prescription for it.” Claire stayed careful y blank, but the younger lawyer’s eyes twitched toward Claire and away in a lightning glance. I had scored with him, so I sent my next words his way. “Did you know that Liza was blackmailing your client into paying Mosey’s tuition at Calvary? I bet a forensic accountant could trace that money. That’s her motive. She hoped to knock Liza off the wagon and get her out of town, and it was just sauce and gravy for her that instead she almost kil ed her. She had the motive, the prescription gave her means, and at the luau she damn wel had the opportunity. How many people in this town can hit that trifecta?”

Claire snorted. “Quite a few of the ladies, I’d imagine. The married ones. Your daughter has a taste for other people’s husbands.”

“And who set her mouth?” I said. “She was a child. Your pedophile husband put his hands—”

Claire sat bolt upright and went even paler, yel ing over me, “Your slut daughter seduced him! She wrecked my marriage and—”

“—on a fourteen-year-old child!” I finished.

“Enough,” the older lawyer said, loud and authoritative. Claire and I both stopped talking, breathing hard. He turned to me. “Oh, I didn’t mean you, Ms. Slocumb. You go ahead. I’l take notes and begin building our nice civil suit for slander against you.”

“Please, bring it,” I snapped back. “It’s not slander if it’s true.”

His lips flattened into a grim, closed smile. “It’s not slander if you can
prove
it’s true. That’s an entirely different thing.” He wafted a lazy hand at my prop cup. “What you have is circumstantial at best.”

I turned back to Claire. “You need to stop this overinterest in my family. It was one thing when you thought the bones under the wil ow might be your child. Of course you had to know. But they weren’t. It is al only and ever my family’s private business.”

Claire started to speak, but I cut her off.

“Understand me clearly here. If you go forward, I wil trumpet everything I know about you from the rooftops. Everything. I wil tel anyone who wil stand stil for half a minute that you are a murderous bitch, that you couldn’t deal with the fact that you married a pervert, even though you believed it enough to shel out blackmail money. I wil tel everyone how you poisoned my child to keep al your filthy secrets. If Liza and I go to jail, I don’t care, and if you sue me for slander and take everything I own, I do not care. Because Mosey wil stay mine. I raised her up into who she is, and nothing you can do now, al these years later, can truly take her. Cal the state, scream kidnapping, see if you can get her carted off. She’l come right back to me, and the slow way the courts grind, by the time you get it done properly, she’l likely be twenty and off at col ege. As for me? If you start? I wil go into al manner of debt, I wil drag my feet and countersue and muddy the waters and haul your name through every patch of dog shit I can find.