Not Guilty (12 page)

“I don’t want to do that,” he snarled. “I’m not a baby.”

“But honey, you just said—”

“You think you can make it all just go away by showing some old video?”

Keely looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Make what go away? I
thought you wanted to talk. Dylan, we’ve had a terrible day. That business with the police and everything that’s happened. All I’m trying to do is . . . I just want you to know that I do understand.”

“You don’t understand anything,” he said.

“Well, explain it to me,” she pleaded.

“You don’t listen. It’s like talking to the wall.”

“Thank you, son,” she said bitterly.

“I’m going upstairs.”

Keely sank down on one of the lower steps, clutching her baby in her arms. Dylan’s heavy footfalls, as he ascended, shook the tread beneath her.

K
eely walked out to her mailbox, looking wistfully at the golden autumn day.
You should take the baby and go somewhere,
she told herself.
It would take your mind off things.
Every time the phone rang, she jumped, expecting it to be the detectives from the prosecutor’s office, homing in to take another nip out of them, like circling sharks. As she walked back up the driveway to the house, she almost dreaded going inside because the silence that surrounded her was unnerving.

Last night she had dreamed that she was sitting at a table, a cafeteria-style table, visiting Dylan at his new school. He was wearing a uniform and he kept telling her that he hated it and he wanted to come home. In the dream, she couldn’t think why she had sent him away to school. She had never even given such an idea a waking thought. The other boys were silently shuffling past them, and she was wondering to herself why their parents weren’t visiting them, too. But the feeling of dissociation in the dream was too strong to ignore. She kept wanting to take Dylan out of the school and bring him home, but she knew that she couldn’t. And the minute she woke up, still troubled, still lying flat on her back in bed, she understood. It wasn’t a school. It was a prison.

She shook her head, as if to physically shake the memory of the awful dream.
You should take Abby in the stroller and go out,
she scolded herself.
Before long, every day will be cold and gloomy.
But the prospect of going out was daunting. She always felt so lonely when she pushed the baby’s stroller through this silent, pristine neighborhood with its houses set so far off the street that you saw no signs of life as you walked along. And the truth was that she felt so weary these days, as if the simplest tasks were too difficult to accomplish.

She wasn’t the only one. Keely thought of Dylan, who was having so much trouble getting out of bed in the morning these days. He had always been an early riser, but lately it was like trying to wake someone out of a coma. She told herself it was just teenage hormones—kids were known to require more sleep when the teen years arrived. But she feared that it might be depression in his case, too. Whenever she mentioned that he might want to talk to someone, a counselor or someone else, he looked at her as if she had suggested that he might enjoy being beheaded. But one of these days, she was going to have to insist.

Keely sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh and shuffled through the catalogs and envelopes that had come in the mail. She stopped at an elegant brochure advertising a special promotion for valued customers at Collier’s Jewelry Store. It was a family-owned store downtown where Mark bought most of her gifts. Immediately, she remembered the invoice for the smoky quartz bracelet. She had meant to check with the store’s owner to see if he was still holding the bracelet, but it had slipped her mind with all that had happened since. “It’s worth a trip to find out. Come on, baby,” she said to Abby, who was still in her high chair, banging her spoon on the tray. “We’re going downtown.”

Abby kicked her legs joyfully, her eyes alight at this prospect.

“Oh, my baby,” Keely said, scooping her out of the chair and embracing her, warm, sticky oatmeal face and all. “You save me. You really do. While we’re out, we’ll go see the ducks.”

Determined now, Keely retrieved the bill from the pile on Mark’s desk in the den and then gathered together sweaters, a bottle, diapers, a bag of stale bread for the ducks, and whatever else she could jam into the diaper bag. She wrestled Abby’s stroller out of its berth in the garage, folded it, and stuck it in the back of the SUV. Then, giving her own hair a perfunctory combing and her mouth a swipe of lipstick, she picked up the baby and carried her out to the Bronco, buckling her into the car seat while Abby pointed at squirrels and squealed.

As she was climbing into the driver’s seat, Keely heard the phone ringing inside the house. She hesitated for a moment. Her first thought, always, was of Dylan. Second, the police.
Or it could be the Realtor,
she thought reasonably, wanting to make another appointment.
Or Lucas,
with more papers.
If it was Dylan, and it was important, he knew her cell phone number, and he would know to call it. Her cell phone was nestled in the diaper bag.
Otherwise, I don’t care,
she thought.
I don’t want to know. Abby and I are going out. They can call back.
She slammed the car door and revved the engine.

T
HE LITTLE TOWN
OF
St. Vincent’s Harbor, historic and charming, looked especially picturesque in the beautiful autumn light. Keely pushed the stroller up Main Street and stopped in front of Collier’s. The window was filled with gleaming watches and glistening jewelry displayed on black velvet. Keely pushed the door open, and the bell tinkled discreetly. Reginald Collier, natty in a bow tie, was waiting on an elderly woman who was giving him an oral history of a necklace she wanted repaired. Keely waited patiently as the jeweler assured and reassured the customer, then deposited the necklace in a plastic bag which he slipped into a drawer beneath the display cases. Finally, he turned to Keely. “May I help you?” he asked.

Keely took a deep breath. “I hope so. My name is Keely Weaver,” she said. “My husband, Mark, used to shop here at your store.”

The jeweler looked pained. “Mr. Weaver was a valued customer,” he said. “It was an awful tragedy. Please accept my sympathies.”

“Yes,” said Keely. “Well, thank you. But I’m here to inquire about this.” She pushed the bill over the top of the display case.”

Reginald Collier nodded slowly. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Of course.

Well, I apologize, Mrs. Weaver. I should have warned the bookkeeping service not to pester you with this right now. This is tacky. Terrible. There’s absolutely no hurry on this.”

“My husband bought me quite a few gifts here,” said Keely.

“How well I know. And he had excellent taste. Your husband had a long-standing relationship with Collier’s. This is just a bookkeeping snafu. I decided to hire an automated service that sends out the bills and keeps track of accounts because my wife and I just couldn’t keep up with it anymore. But this is what happens. You lose the personal touch,” he said, ripping up the bill and tossing it into a wastepaper basket behind the counter. “Believe me, I will speak to them about this. You
take all the time you need, Mrs. Weaver. I know you have many more pressing things on your mind these days. And I’m so sorry if you were upset by this.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you,” said Keely, mollified, “but, actually, the problem is that I don’t have the bracelet. I was wondering if perhaps Mark left the bracelet here for engraving or something. I’ve never seen it.”

Reginald Collier frowned. “No. Mr. Weaver took it with him. It was a lovely bracelet, as I recall. Smoky quartz. The stones were rectangular-shaped in an emerald cut and set in gold.”

“It sounds lovely,” said Keely, “but I don’t have it. To be honest with you, I haven’t turned the house over searching for it. I thought I would check with you first . . .”

“Well, I don’t recall any engraving, but let me look . . .” The jeweler took out a large black leatherbound book beneath the counter and searched through the pages, which were handwritten in an elegant script. “There it is,” he said. “He took it with him about two weeks ago. I remember now. He told me it was going to be an anniversary gift for you.”

Keely blinked back tears. “That’s what I figured,” she said softly. “He died before our anniversary.”

“Oh, that’s tragic,” Mr. Collier said sadly. “He probably hid it somewhere so that he could surprise you. Do you know where he hid such things? Wives always seem to know. Mine does. I can never fool her about anything.”

Keely frowned. “No. I don’t. Not really.”

“Maybe at his office,” the jeweler suggested. “Or in a safe-deposit box?”

“He didn’t have one. But maybe the office. That’s a good idea. I’ll have to try that,” said Keely.

“I’m sure it will turn up,” he said. “Of course, if you don’t like the bracelet he chose, you can exchange it for another. Or if you want to return it, if you don’t want to pay for it . . . we would certainly understand . . .”

“No,” she said firmly. “It was going to be his last gift to me. I know that once I find it, I’ll treasure it.” She smiled at the jeweler. “Thank you. You’ve been very nice about this.”

The man nodded amiably and waved good-bye to Abby as Keely turned the stroller around and left the store, deep in thought. She would have to start looking in earnest for the bracelet. It wasn’t as if she’d scoured the house looking for it. It hadn’t seemed that important with all her other problems.
I’ll have to do some searching,
she thought.

Keely looked up and saw that they were almost even with Lucas’s law offices—Mark’s former workplace.
I should probably go in and search his office right now.
She hesitated, realizing that she couldn’t face it today.
Let me look at home first,
she thought. She waited for a break in the desultory traffic, then pushed Abby across the street. On the opposite corner was a blue metal dispenser box, almost the size of a mailbox, but with a glass front that displayed the latest issue of the
St. Vincent’s Harbor Gazette. I suppose I should get one,
Keely thought, as she approached it, and then, as she deciphered the headline, she felt her heart do a flip-flop and the blood rush to her face.

LOCAL TEEN LINK IN TWO FATAL ACCIDENTS,
the headline screamed in bold print, and below it,
D.A.’S OFFICE PRESSES FOR A WIDENED INVESTIGATION.
Accompanying the story, which was written by Tom Mercer, were two photos. One was of Mark—the picture that appeared in the law firm’s brochure. The other was of teenaged Richard and Mark in the convertible. The last time Keely had seen that photo was in Ingrid’s living room.

Keely fumbled for two quarters and put them into the slot, extracting a newspaper when the dispenser opened. She sagged against the dispenser, holding the paper with trembling hands, reading the story, which, because of Dylan’s age, carefully did not mention Dylan’s name but referred to him as the fourteen-year-old stepson of Mark Weaver, a prominent local attorney whose drowning death was now being treated as suspicious by the D.A.’s office.

Maureen Chase was quoted extensively in the article, saying that in light of the boy’s role in the death of his father, her office was reevaluating information about Mark Weaver’s death. Keely’s dream of the night before came rushing back at her, making her feel as if she was going to throw up.

She crushed the paper in her hands, furious with Maureen Chase, a
woman she didn’t even know.
How dare she?
Keely thought.
Pillorying an innocent kid in the newspaper with her ugly innuendoes. My boy,
Keely thought.
My baby.
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. That was just what Maureen Chase wanted to do—to use her power to hurt and humiliate them. “That does it,” Keely said aloud. “She is not going to get away with this.”

Abby, reacting to the anger and tension in her mother’s voice, began to whimper.

Keely looked down at the baby in the stroller. She wanted to march over to Maureen Chase’s office this minute, barge past her secretary, and tell her exactly what she thought of her. But Abby, her face covered with cookie crumbs, was staring up at her, and Keely knew she would be at a disadvantage confronting the district attorney while she had a baby in tow. What was she going to do? Ask Maureen Chase’s secretary to watch Abby while Keely went in and shouted at her boss? She felt hamstrung and frustrated. She jerked the stroller around and started back toward the car. “Come on, baby,” she muttered. “We have to go home.”
Not to Ingrid,
she thought.
I don’t even want to speak to her. Chattering on about Richard to a man who was plotting to publicly destroy Dylan—I hope she’s satisfied,
Keely thought. She hardly noticed where she was going, she was so busy fuming. But Abby put a hand out, as if to trying to hold on to the air breezing past her, the beautiful golden day now suddenly grown cold.