Robards, Karen (16 page)

“Why would Paul do such a thing?”

He shrugged. “To get revenge because your daughter took the hamster away from him? As payback because he got in trouble? just to tease? Who knows? Before we go any farther with this, why don’t you call your sister and have her ask him?”

Grace looked at him for a moment without replying, while she turned the possibilities over in her mind. It was just possible that Paul might have Oh, she hoped so!

“I will,” she said and, walking around Marino, headed toward the phone in her bedroom. Marino followed her. While she talked to Jackie, explaining the situation as well as she could without revealing the pivotal fact that a drunken Jessica had been caught buying marijuana, she saw him look around her bedroom.

While Jackie went to question Paul, Grace, on hold, surveyed the room through Tony Marino’s eyes. As she did, she felt increasingly self-conscious. A bedroom was very personal, after all, revealing much about the person who slept there.

The ornate mahogany four-poster was queensize, with a scallop-edged rose-and-green floral spread and a

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cream lace skirt. The dresser, night table, and lingerie chest were, like the bed, crafted of elaborately carved mahogany. The walls were painted soft green. The brass lamps, two on the dresser, one on the bedside table, had dark green shades and provided soft pools of illumination. Celery-striped curtains were drawn over the large window behind the bed and the even larger bay window at the far end of the room. Two armchairs covered in the same floral print as the bedspread stood before the bay window, with a small table bearing a bowl of deep pink silk roses between them. Silverframed family pictures stood on her bedside table. Three books that she was currently reading, her place in each marked by turned-down corners, were stacked beside the pictures. One was a heavy-duty biography of LBJ (for help when she couldn’t go to sleep), one was a thriller by a popular author, and one was a parenting tome entitled The Chronically III Child. The navy pumps she had taken off earlier and neglected to put away stood at the foot of the bed; one had fallen over on its side on the dark green carpet. A tuft of lace from a nightgown peeked out of one improperly closed dresser drawer. The pearl earrings she had worn earlier lay atop the dresser, along with her hair brush.

A gilt-framed oval mirror hung above the dresser, flinging her own stressed-out looking image back at her. She stood with one arm clamped tightly across her chest, her head tilted slightly over the white plastic receiver that she held to her ear. She was pale, with dark shadows under her eyes and cheekbones so sharp she looked almost gaunt. Her lips, devoid of lipstick or any softening hint of color, were clamped tightly together,

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revealing a trio of C-shaped lines on either side of her mouth that she had never noticed before. Another line, a small vertical one, snaked between her eyebrows. Shocked at how old she looked, she immediately relaxed her face. The lines disappeared, but that was the only improvement. She was still, she acknowledged to herself with some chagrin, a not particularly pretty woman of thirty-something, dressed in ancient, unbecoming sweats-too tall, too thin, with a too-long nose and short, untidy hair.

In short, no sex goddess she.

Since there was nothing to be done about that, Grace quit looking at herself and continued her inspection of the room, still attempting to view it through Marino’s eyes. The door to her bathroom was ajar, revealing her cream quilted robe hanging on a hook inside the door, her toothbrush in its holder, and her night cream on the edge of the sink. A fluted blue lipstick tube lay on its side next to the pink jar of night cream. There was the faint smell of flowers and fruit in the air, which Grace had become accustomed to and usually did not notice. It came from the small china Jish of fancy soaps that she kept-just because she liked them-on the other side of the sink.

She noticed the smell tonight because Tony Marino was in her bedroom, standing at the foot of her bed aear her discarded pumps, his nostrils slightly distended is he seemed to sniff the air, his eyes hooded as he .ooked slowly around.

In his charcoal sweat suit, with the lamplight bronzng his skin and throwing an intimiclatingly tall and :)roadshouldered shadow against the far wall, he

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looked big and tough and out of place amidst her belongings.

As if sensing her eyes on him, he looked at her then and met her gaze. In that split second of eye contact, Grace felt a shaft of sexual attraction to him that set her insides quivering. A split second after that, when she realized to her horror what she was feeling, she very casually pivoted, breaking eye contact and turning her back to him. At that moment, thankfully, Jackie came back on the line. Concentrating fiercely, she was able to finish her conversation.

Then she had to hang up the phone and face him again.

“Paul says he didn’t do it,” she said crisply, her gaze meeting his as coolly as if she had never felt that sudden, sizzling bolt of awareness.

His brows lifted. “Is he telling the truth, do you think?”

Grace shrugged, walking toward him and the door. Her aplomb returned as she realized that of course he had no way of knowing what she had been thinkingor feeling. And anyway, she told herself, she was allowed to indulge in little spurts of sexual desire toward hunky men. She was a woman, after all, and single, and her senses were not dead even if she was not stupid enough to constantly indulge them.

The head-to-toe tingle she had felt, looking at him, was harmless. It was even kind of fun.

As long as she recognized it for the purely instinctive thing it was and left it at that.

“Jackie thinks he is. To tell you the truth, I don’t think Paul did it, either. He’s too young, for one thing.

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He can’t write that well. It wouldn’t occur to him. It’s just not something he would do.”

“Somebody did it.”

He stepped out of her way as she approached him, and followed her out the door. Once in the hallway, without the intimacy of his presence in her bedroom to distract her, she was able to turn and confront him with more force.

“Look, Detective, I don’t think this is a prank. Not by Paul. Not by anybody. I think somebody is trying to intimidate Jessica. I think this whole thing has something to do with your drug investigation at Hebron High School. I think somebody thinks Jessica is endangering them by talking to you, and this is their way of warning her to shut up.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Officers Peters and Stein, armed with equipment she couldn’t identify from that distance, entering Jessica’s bedroom. Marino must have seen the same thing, because his gaze flickered past her for an instant before returning.

“It’s possible, I guess,” he said slowly. “But I don’t think so. Jessica doesn’t know that much, to begin with. At this point, she’s not a real player. If this is not a prank, which I have to tell you I’m inclined to think it is, then we have to start looking at other possibilities. You said you had a breakin here, the night Dom and I picked Jessica up. Tell me about it.”

“I …” Grace began just as Jessica emerged from her bedroom.

“Mom, Godzilla’s not in my room anywhere!” Sounding distraught, Jessica spotted her mother and Marino and came toward them. Her face was flushed

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I now instead of pale, and her eyes were red-rimiried and teary.

“Did you remember to take your last insulin shot?” Grace was sidetracked by the telltale flushed cheeks. In all the excitement, It would not be surprising if Jessica had forgotten to give herself the injection.

“Yes, Mother.” Jessica’s eyes grew stormy, and her voice sharp. “And yes, I ate when I was supposed to, and yes, I tested my blood. I’m fine. Would you just please leave me alone about the damned diabetes and help me find Godzilla?”

“Jessica Lee!” Grace exclaimed, protesting both swear word and attitude, but her daughter had already stormed past her and was stomping down the stairs.

Grace’s expression, as she looked back at Marino, dared him to comment. He didn’t, merely meeting her gaze for a pregnant instant before harking back to their interrupted conversation.

“So tell me about the breakin.”

Grace sighed. And answered the question. Reprimanding Jessica for her rudeness and helping in the search for Godzilla would both just have to wait.

11… and so I picked Mr. Bear up and carried him into the house and called the police,” Grace concluded, feeling cold all over again at the memory.

Marino seemed to ponder for a moment. “You know,” he said slowly, “stealing a.teddy bear from a little girl’s bedroom doesn’t sound like something a drug dealer bent on intimidation would do.”

“Then what else could It be?” Grace sounded angry. She realized that as she heard the words come out

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of her mouth. But she wasn’t angry, not really. She was growing increasingly frightened.

“The time line’s not right, for one thing. Dom and I hadn’t even picked her up yet that night while you were running around outside chasing mystery burglars from your yard. Why would anyone want to intimidate Jessica before we had even picked her up?”

“I don’t know. How could I possibly know? But she was already involved with these kids by then. She was already out buying marijuana, and maybe she already knew something she shouldn’t, or they thought she did. Maybe whoever it was that night just wanted to show Jessica that she was vulnerable, that they could get into her house and into her bedroom any time they wanted. Maybe whoever it was meant to harm her-, maybe they didn’t know she wasn’t there. Or maybe they did know, and they were just checking out where she lived for some reason or another. I don’t know what the motivation was, exactly. How could I know? All I know is that on the same night Jessica snuck out, got drunk, bought marijuana, and was picked up by you, someone broke into my house and took her teddy bear from the table beside her bed. And earlier today, she thought someone followed her home from school. And tonight, when we got back from running, there was a tombstone with rest in peace and my daughter’s name inside it drawn on her bathroom mirror. And all that’s changed in our lives since this stuff started happening is that she’s gotten involved with some druggie kids at school, and you.”

Marino held up both hands as if to ward her off as she glared at him. “You know, everything that’s hap—

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pened could easily fall under the heading of pranks,” he said gently.

“Pranks?” Grace’s voice rose. “Pranks? They’re scaring me to death!”

“I know they are.” He said nothing more for a moment, his eyes warm with sympathy as he looked down at her. “And I don’t want to say you’re overreacting. But what’s really happened here, after all? You chased someone out of your yard in the middle of the night. You don’t know who it was. It could have been anyone, a neighboring teenager out wandering just like Jessica was doing that night, one of her friends who got separated from the main crowd and was looking for her, a bum, a neighbor, anyone. You don’t have any proof that whoever it was entered your house; there was no sign of forced entry and nothing of value was missing.” He held up his hand to stop her protest before she could even get the words out. “Okay, except a teddy bear that you found down by the road that was a favorite of your daughter’s. But it could have gotten there any number of ways, it seems to me, the least likely of which is that it was dropped by someone who broke into your house and stole it. Also, today, Jessica never saw anyone following her home. She just had a fieeling she was being followed. It could have been a friend playing a trick, an admiring boy too shy to approach her, or her own imagination. I grant that there is no doubt that someone wroteJessica, R.I.P. inside a tombstone drawn on her mirror. We all agree on that. But was it intended as a death threat? I doubt it. It looks like a prank. Everything that’s happened, even conceding that everything you think happened really

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did, could easily fall under the heading of prank. I’d be more inclined to look at your nephew and niece, or maybe some ofjessica’s friends, ,tIban I would a pissedoff drug dealer out for revenge.

“You’re not going to take this seriously,” Grace said with disbelief. “Someone is threatening my daughter and you’re not going to take it seriously.”

“It’s not that-” he began.

“Leave,” she said, interrupting. “Just leave. If you are not going to treat this incident with the respect it deserves, then you are of no use to me. Leave. Get out of my house. Now.”

“Look, Your Honor, I know that you re upset, but we have to look at this realistically,” he tried again. Down the hall, Dominick Marino and the two uniformed policemen emerged froinjessica’s room carrying a black case, a camera, and other paraphernalia. “All done,” Dominick said as the trio approached.

Tony glanced around as they joined them, then looked down at Grace. The look she returned him was stony. “Head on out, I’ll be with you in a minute,” Tony

said to the other men. When they were on their way downstairs, he spoke to Grace again.

“If I thought there was any danger for your daughter or for you, I’d tell you, and we would leave no stone unturned until the perpetrator was caught,” he said. “I know you don’t agree, but I am almost one hundred percent certain that whoever did this tonight, and did the other things if they happened, had to be a kid. They’re not meant as serious threats. They’re pranks. The kinds of things a kid would do.”

“I understand that you think so,” Grace said icily,

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turning away. ” 1, disagree very strongly. Thank you for coming. Good-bye.”

“Look … … Sounding tired and faintly exasperated, he followed her down the stairs. “If anything else happens, call me. I don’t care if it’s in the middle of the night, or whenever. I’ll come. If you hear a noise at the window, I’ll come. If you see a shadow on the wall, I’ll come. I know it’s scary for you and your daughter to be living here alone, and I know it’s easy to blow things out of proportion when you’re scared. I’ll check out whatever comes up, and I’m going to thoroughly investigate this thing with the mirror no matter what I think happened. Okay?”