Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (36 page)

“You want me to watch them for you?”

“Would you, please? It won't be more than a couple of hours,” I fibbed, knowing it would likely be more than a couple of hours. “I'll pay you.”

“You're a preacher, aren't you? That's what that boy called you?” She was talking about Wanderley.

“I am, yes.”

“You don't have to pay me. I'll do you the favor. Maybe you'll do me a favor in return.”

Ah. “What would that be?”

“We'll talk about it. Go on, they're waiting for you.”

I gave the dogs some love, told them to stay, and started off. The pugs had a meltdown. Baby Bear wasn't too happy, either.

“You know what Miss Lacey has in the house?” I heard Lacey Corinda tell the dogs. “Miss Lacey has some ham bone and beans. You like ham bone and beans?” All three were sure they would. I should have warned her about the beans.

Twenty-four

I
t was four o'clock in the morning when I called Annie Laurie to tell her that Jo and I were on our way to the police station. Again. If Annie hadn't fallen asleep holding her phone while playing Scramble on her iPhone, I never would have woken her. The Bose headphones are that good. The iPhone's vibration woke her.

“Are you serious?”

I said I was. I told her where the dogs were and heard her swing her legs out of bed.

“I'll go get them,” she said.

I explained that she couldn't do that because I had taken my car and Jo had taken hers. I told her the dogs would be fine.

“Are you serious?” she said again. “Jo took my car? Jo can't drive.”

“She can apparently drive well enough to get to Telephone Road,” I said. “Call Brick and tell him he's the pulpit minister this morning. Three services. Tell him he has my prayers and he'll do fine. Tell him no jailbird preacher jokes.”

“Bear,” Annie said. “All this? This is from your side of the family. Stacy and I never gave our folks a minute's worry.”

•   •   •

James Wanderley was right. I owed him. If Jo and I hadn't been accompanied by a police officer, albeit a Sugar Land police officer, I'm sure I would have gotten to know a whole new cell full of strangers and Jo—well, I'm not going to go there. The idea of my girl behind bars . . .

As it was, an officer herded Chloe, Wanderley, Jo and me into a room with a big table and lots of hard plastic chairs. Someone brought in a tray with a thermos of hot water, cups, plastic stirrers and an offering of instant coffee, hot chocolate packets, and tea bags. I made Jo some tea. She sat with her legs tucked under her. Even with the heavy flannel shirt, she gave a shiver now and then. After a good while, two plainclothes detectives came in. The tall, beefy one introduced himself as Detective Gustav Ruiz and the thin, weedy woman who looked like she should be teaching economics to college freshmen told us she was Detective Bianca Dabriel.

Ruiz said, “Where do we start? Mr. Wells, you first called Detective Wanderley at . . . what time would that have been?”

I took my phone out, pulled up my call history and told Ruiz, “Two twenty-eight this morning.”

Wanderley took over, relaying the gist of my phone call and the story behind it. I was glad he did. He was concise and clear and I wouldn't have been. I was tired and aching and the cop coffee I'd drunk was sitting in my stomach like a cup of pickle juice.

Ruiz and Dabriel asked few questions. They both took notes. When Wanderley had finished, Ruiz looked down the table at Jo.

“Tonight's story starts with you, Miss Wells.”

“Jo.”

“Jo. Want to tell us what happened?”

Jo uncurled her legs and sat up straight. She twisted her hair into a rope, tied it in a knot and pushed it behind her shoulder.

“Mrs. Pickersley, Phoebe's stepmother, died today. Yesterday. And Dad came home and told us, and he said how Phoebe's grandfather got all Phoebe's money and the trailer, too, when she died, and I remembered how her grandfather was so mad at Phoebe's dad and said that Phoebe's dad would get his and he did.”

Dabriel said, “Can you please be more clear?”

Jo sighed. “Mr. DeWitt, Phoebe's grandfather? He blamed Phoebe's dad for Phoebe's mom dying. She was Mr. DeWitt's daughter. And then Phoebe died—so Mr. Pickersley did ‘get his' if you saw things that way, right?” She looked up at us to see if we were following and everyone nodded. “Then when I asked Dad again about how Phoebe had died, and he said she drank the Diloudid but the thing is, I don't think she did, you know?” Jo gulped the last of her tea and put the cup on the table. “But Dad, remember how I told you that Phoebe's grandfather would make her his disgusting power punch? That Phoebe made it for me and Alex, and it totally stains your mouth? I started thinking about how if someone said those bad things to me like her stepmom said to Phoebe, and I wasn't the kind of person who would kill herself—and Phoebe wasn't—then I would want to go be with someone who liked me. Phoebe thought her grandfather
loved
her. Only I don't think he did, which is really sad.” She looked up again and we all nodded, less certainly, but still, we were with her.

“On the video, Mrs. Pickersley said she had some of the medicine, that stuff that killed Phoebe. She didn't say she had it all. So some of it could've still been at the trailer and Phoebe's grandfather could have made her power punch and put that stuff in it and when Phoebe was in my room she didn't know she was dying, she only wanted to prove to me that the bad things she said about her stepmother were true and that's why she left me her phone only she got too sick to leave. I looked it up online and that stuff can make you hallucinate. Right. It makes you itchy and hot, too, if you take too much—I think that's why she took all her clothes off.” This time only Chloe nodded.

“Go on, Jo.”

“So I wanted to know. Even though I still think Mrs. Pickersley really did want Phoebe to kill herself, she really did want her dead, and that's the same thing as killing someone.”

“Not in a court of law, it isn't,” said Ruiz.

“It is in the Bible. Ask my dad.” Five heads turned my way.

“She's paraphrasing, but, yeah. First John, three fifteen—‘anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.'”

With her thumbnail, Jo prized half-moon chips from her foam cup. She did this methodically, with concentration, her head down. “I didn't want Mrs. Pickersley dead, though. For what she did.”

Detective Dabriel said, “Tell me why you broke into Mr. DeWitt's trailer again, Jo.”

Jo's head came up. “I didn't break in. Not the second time.” Her brow creased. “Oh, wait. Not the third time.”

I said, “What?” and Wanderley made a slicing motion with his hand. I shut up.

“So, the first time I used Phoebe's key which she said I could, so that wasn't breaking in. And tonight, first I used the key and I went in and got his gun and put it outside so he wouldn't shoot me . . .” Meaning that Jo was the other moron Wanderley had referred to—I gave Wanderley a smile so he would know there were no hard feelings. “. . . and then I locked the door behind me and I knocked on the door. So that can't be breaking in at all, since he let me in. Really, it never was because I used a key the other two times and that doesn't count.”

Jo used the side of her hand to sweep the cup chips into a pile. “Did you know it's seriously better for the environment to use those cardboard paper cups with little handles on the side? Plastic foam is a total Earth-killer. It won't decay. Five hundred years from now you could pull any of these cups out of a landfill, wash it out and use it all over again.”

Ruiz gestured to the pile in front of Jo. “Not that one, you couldn't.”

Dabriel put her hand over Jo's, stilling the sweeping and flattening and mound-shaping Jo was doing with the chips. “A man was shot tonight, Jo. You directly precipitated that shooting—”

I said, “Hold on, now—”

Dabriel cut her eyes my way. “Be quiet, Mr. Wells.” I shut my mouth. She gave her attention to Jo. “We're taking that very seriously. I want you to stop waffling and give us an answer. Why did you go to Mr. DeWitt's trailer tonight?”

Tears leaked out from under Jo's lashes. I said, “Come here, honey,” but Dabriel pressed her hand down on Jo's and kept her in her seat.

“I wanted him to tell me,” Jo said.

“Tell you what?” Dabriel let go of Jo and picked her pen up. Wanderley uncapped his pen and stuck the cap in his mouth.

“I wanted him to tell me if he had killed Phoebe.” Jo closed her eyes.

The three detectives put on smug, adult smiles.

“He said he did,” she continued.

The smiles vanished. “What did you say?” Dabriel asked.

Jo opened her eyes. Her mouth was twisted. “He said he did.”

Ruiz pushed his chair closer to the table and the chair screeched on the floor. “Start at the beginning and tell it to the end.”

Jo nodded. “After I moved the gun outside, I knocked on the door and Mr. DeWitt took a long time answering but I knew he was in there because I'd already heard him snoring and, anyway, he smells bad and I could smell him. But finally he comes to the door and he opens it and he stares at me like he's never seen me before and he says ‘What the hell do you want?' and I introduced myself because I didn't think he remembered me from the first time. Probably because he was really drunk. But I introduced myself and said, ‘Remember, I was Phoebe's friend.' Which I was once, but not a good friend. She wasn't, either.” Jo looked around at us again. “I'm only saying. Dying doesn't make you all perfect.” She shivered.

Chloe got out of her chair, slipped Wanderley's jacket off her shoulders and draped it over Jo's. She sat down next to Jo and put her arm across the back of Jo's chair. I glanced at Wanderley, but looked away. He was watching Chloe, and his eyes were heavy with love and longing. It was a private look and I was sorry I'd intruded.

“He wanted to know what I was doing there, and I said I thought he knew because I saw that in a movie. He said he was going to call the police and I said, ‘Call them, then,' because I knew he wouldn't and he just stood there holding the door open with one arm and pouring down underarm odor all over me but I didn't make a face and he said, ‘Come in, then,' and I did because I knew his gun was outside and I'm stronger and faster than he is—”

Ruiz thumped the table and we all jumped. He got up and leaned over the table, putting his face right into Jo's. I stood up and said, “Back off.” Wanderley stood up and put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Bear.” Ruiz barked, “Sit down!” I didn't move. Ruiz moved back a foot. I waited and he waited and we sat down together.

He said, “I'm going to interrupt you for a minute. You're from Sugar Land, aren't you? Lotus-eater land. Maybe your daddy thinks life is so safe out there in outer suburbia he doesn't need to teach his girl how to protect herself.” He lowered his black brows at me. “I'm here to tell you that you aren't anywhere near as strong as Mr. DeWitt—”

Jo interrupted, “I'm a dancer. I train every day. I can—”

“No!” Ruiz didn't get out of his seat but he leaned as close to her as he could without getting up. “You are a hundred pounds of nothing. You know what strength is in a fight? It's weight. It's mass.”

Jo said, “Yes, but—”

“I'd be hard-pressed to find a single guy in this whole building, and I'm including all the skinny little white guys, who couldn't take you down. And your self-confidence, your self-
delusion
, is stupid and dangerous. Bianca, tell her.”

Dabriel said, “First, let's—”

“Would you
tell
her
?”

Dabriel made a
tchh
noise with her teeth and put her pen down. She faced Jo. “I'm trained and I'm trained well. If I have to, I fight and I fight hard. But the number one rule is, don't get in the fight. A man held a gun on you and you went back for more. Alone and at night. What you did was criminally stupid. I'm embarrassed for you.”

Jo was scarlet and her eyes flooded. My heart felt for her but Dabriel was right. She just was. I was going to let Jo take that one. Chloe didn't like it one bit, though. She dropped her arm from the back of the chair to Jo's shoulders, looking daggers at Wanderley who said nothing.

“Okay,” Jo said, “then I'm stupid.” She tried to control the tremble in her voice. “Do you want to hear, or not?”

Dabriel said, very controlled, very patient, “I didn't say you were stupid. I said you had behaved stupidly. Everyone in this room has behaved stupidly. Don't do it again. That's the message you should be hearing. Now. Tell us what happened.”

But Jo was lost in tears now. She started to talk twice, choked on her tears and buried her face in her hands. I picked my chair up and put it down behind Jo's. I turned Jo's chair around until she was facing me. I took Jo's tearstained face in my hands and I kissed her forehead. Found my handkerchief and gave it to her and she gave her nose a good blow.

“Josephine Amelia,” I said, “Here's the thing. Right this second, I do not give a dang what you did. By the grace of God, and by that grace alone, you are here and you are safe and right now, that's all I care about. That's all. You want to go home and I want to go home and all these good people have homes to go home to, as well. And Baby Bear and the pugs are at a stranger's house and they probably want to go home, too. And no one
can
go home until you tell us what happened. So take a breath, and ask God for strength, and tell us the rest of your story. Can you do that?”

Jo took a long, shuddery breath, and nodded.

“Okay, then,” I said, “let's turn your chair around.” I turned her chair around. “And you hold your head high, and you tell us what happened.”

Jo gathered herself and began again. “Mr. DeWitt let me in and he told me to take a seat. I sat down on that booth seat at the kitchen table and he said to tell him straight why I was there and I said it was because he was the one who killed Phoebe and he did it by putting Phoebe's mom's medicine in a power punch and I knew it because Phoebe had left me a message on her phone and I was going to tell the police. All that was made up, but, see, I thought that if he got all upset and started crying and said he would never, ever hurt Phoebe, that he loved her and couldn't get over her dying, then I would have told him I made it all up and told him how sorry I was and that Phoebe really loved him and always said such good things about him. But he didn't say any of that. Instead, he said why hadn't I, then, called the police, and I said because I wanted to know
why
he'd killed her. And he said he was going to get a drink and he went to the sink, and when he turned around he had a gun in his hand. And that was when he taped me to the table and I knew he meant to kill me, too.” More tears but she wiped them away. I reached my arm around her and took her hand.