The Baker's Wife (6 page)

And in front of Jack, sitting on the curb where the sticky footprints led away from the scene, was none other than Audrey Bofinger.

No leap at all, this: the other two men must be Geoff and Ed.

Audrey flinched when the glare of Jack's light hit her eyes. She raised her left arm as a shield, and Jack saw the cuts on her palm and the smears down the sleeve of her shirt. The left side of her pants was coated with the blood.

“You three know how to find trouble,” he said.

“Jack,” she said, not all that surprised. Maybe she'd recognized the bike. Maybe she'd premeditated the whole event.

“Best keep this formal. Call me Sergeant Mansfield.”

“I don't see what difference that'll make.”

“Were you driving the car that hit the scooter?”

“Jack—”

“Ma'am.”

Audrey sighed. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I already told the other officer.”

“Tell me again.”

“Please, I—”

“You really need to consider what it will look like if you're uncooperative with me.”

The woman's eyes challenged his threat. Some people were so hard to keep in-line. Their sense of entitlement was ruining the world.

“When are you going to let go of this thing?” she said in a voice that Carlisle wouldn't be able to hear. Jack matched her tone.

“Your own sins were your downfall. Nothing to do with me.”

“It's time to put all of it behind you.”

“Why don't we head on down to the station?” he said, and Audrey relented. She gave an unhelpful statement that failed to shed any more light on who was driving the scooter or where that person might have gone.

“Are you injured?” he asked when she was done. All the blood he could see on her was consistent with her story and the smeared blood at the site. He flicked his light in Ed's direction. The kid scowled at him, but he was clean. At least outwardly.

“Not really,” Audrey said. “My wrist—”

“I'll get you a first-aid kit.” He turned to the car.

“Has anyone found your wife?” Audrey asked. “We looked for—”

“Julie wasn't riding,” Jack said.

“I'm glad to hear it.” The relief in her voice might have been motivated by guilt.

“Don't get too happy. That blood belongs to someone, and you're covered in it.”

Jack went to find the Band-Aids. He felt a prick of irritation that his wife was ignoring his calls.

CHAPTER 5

Audrey sat on the bakery stoop between its twin bay windows, worrying about leaning against the door and transferring blood to the fresh white paint that Geoff had applied a week ago. Then she worried about why she would worry about such a petty thing at a time like this. She might have killed someone.

Closing her eyes, she wished for some sensation that was bigger than fear, some feeling that was deeper than anxiety. She prayed for that weighty supernatural arm to slip across her shoulders, to support her on jelly legs and guide her to the person she'd launched from that scooter. She could help.

She could help.
Please
.

Nothing. Audrey opened her eyes. The tule fog hid everything.
Tule
rhymed with
Julie
. She shivered.

After Jack left her she was questioned yet again by one more investigator who asked her the same questions repeatedly. Someone who was not in uniform took samples of the blood on her arms and photographs of her. She tried to catch Ed's eyes, to affirm with a mother's gaze that everything would be fine, that telling the truth as he saw it was all he needed to do. But they kept him at a distance from her. Geoff, who'd rushed out of the bakery after the crash and had helped her and Ed look for Julie—or whoever—wasn't allowed to talk with her again until she was released from questioning.

Sunrise came around six thirty, but little sunlight reached the scene. This fog might last for days, or it might lift by afternoon if the temperatures warmed enough or another storm rolled through the basin. Audrey couldn't remember the forecast.

An EMT cleaned up her hands and said her wrist didn't appear to be broken, but she should make an appointment to have it x-rayed for fractures. He wrapped the swelling limb and applied antibiotic ointment to the minor cuts from her fall. She would need an HIV test in about six weeks, he explained. She really ought to wait three months, which was the time her body needed to develop the antibodies that would give the most accurate test results. Then the photographer returned with a bag and asked her to give him her bloody clothes.

Numb—her mind stuck on
HIV test
and
still no body
—she started to unbutton her blouse. It was a clumsy effort with her bandaged wrist. She felt Geoff's hand on her shoulder.

“She can have a little privacy for that, can't she?” he said, taking the bag from the investigator, firm but respectful. The man agreed but asked a female officer to go into the bakery with them.

Geoff held the door open. Audrey took off her shoes and dropped them into the bag.

“Our customers shouldn't see that kind of mess,” she whispered.

“We'll close up for today,” Geoff said.

“No. All that bread! We've got bread, don't we?” She looked up. The racks and cases were nearly full with loaves of the honey oat and semolina and rye, even though Geoff had been out with her for more than an hour.

Her husband nodded and guided her by the elbow toward the hall with the bathrooms. “Estrella came in a half hour ago. She's got everything under control.”

“She's so good to us. Look at that.” Audrey gestured to the cases full of pastries.

An overweight woman with a clear, silky complexion and thick wavy hair was seated at a table near the window. The bread basket in front of her held a miniature baguette, untouched. The woman's sad eyes were locked on Audrey's horrifying outfit, and Audrey wished she had come in through the back.

“I'm so sorry about this,” Audrey said to her.

The woman squinted in the way one does to hold back tears.

Geoff said, “Let me get a blanket from the truck until I can go home and get something for you to change into.”

“I'd rather you stayed with Ed. See if Estrella has anything I could borrow?” Audrey placed her hand on the swinging door that led to the bathrooms as Geoff made his way toward the kitchen.

“I have a shirt,” someone said. The woman at the table. She was leaning down toward the backpack at her feet. “And some jeans. They're way too big for you, but they're clean.”

She rose, unzipping the bag, and pulled out the clothing as she walked toward Audrey, who found herself thinking that this woman was giving her the only other clothes she owned, which was an odd impression to have of a person who parted so easily with her belongings. It might have been the way she clutched the backpack—close to her breast, like a woman on a sinking ship— or the frayed hem of the jeans she wore, or the unwrapped bar of soap that fell out of the pack.

“That's generous of you,” Audrey said, hesitating to take the clothes because she was still such a mess. “Are you sure?”

The woman thrust the articles at Audrey, then stooped to pick up the soap. “Maybe you could use a dish towel or string for a belt? I can ask Mr. Bofinger to find something for you.”

“Thanks.”

“This is a real nice place you got here,” she said, walking toward the display cases.

Audrey watched her go, confused by her conflicting impressions of the woman.

In the restroom Audrey stripped down to her bra and panties in front of the policewoman, peeling off her wet clothes and depositing them in the evidence bag. The officer gave her instructions on where the Bofingers would need to go to be fingerprinted, so their prints at the scene could be identified. “Eliminated,” the officer said. But Audrey feared they might somehow condemn.

After the woman left with the clothes, Audrey washed off her legs and torso at the sink with hand soap and damp brown paper towels. The weather had flattened her short, dryer-tossed blond hair, making her wide jaw seem wider than usual, and the fluorescent light made her sun-damaged skin seem more deeply lined and blotchy. Or the stress of the morning might account for that. She stared at her reflection for a minute, sensing that her life had just changed in ways she wouldn't comprehend for a long, long time.

A small pain like a cramp poked just under her belly button. She applied pressure to it with her palm for a few seconds, wondering if her period would start early—oddly early—then the feeling passed.

The woman's flannel shirt hung to Audrey's knees and smelled like dryer sheets. Audrey gripped the size 18 pants in a fist at her size 10 waist and went in her stocking feet to find Geoff.

He was standing outside the restroom door with a cup of coffee and a leather belt she recognized as Ed's.

“That's a new look for you,” he said, assessing her baggy gear.

“Compliments of our customer.”

“Diane Hall. She was at the window before five. I let her in.”

“Of course you did.” Audrey said it lovingly.

“I gave her a muffin. Estrella gave her the baguette. She needs something else though, something that has nothing to do with food. Don't know what it is.”

“Bet you'll have it figured out before she leaves.”

“I don't think she's leaving soon. She's been pacing in that corner since the accident. I keep expecting her to bolt, but she just sits awhile, then starts at it again.”

Audrey cinched the belt around the jeans, not bothering with the loops on the high waist, and tightened the buckle over the last notch.

“Hopefully we won't have everyone's pants falling down today,” she said, referring to her son's style preferences.

“Ed assures me the world is safe from indecent exposure.” Geoff handed her the mug. “How are you holding up?”

She held the coffee in her right hand and raised her left, with bandages on the heel. Her fingers quivered slightly. “Still a little shaky. I'm so sorry about the car.”

“I'm not worried about the car.”

“Jack,” she said.

Geoff nodded. “But I haven't seen him since he talked to you.”

“The older I get the less I understand what God is up to.” Audrey sipped the coffee and found comfort in the bitter warmth. “Did Jack question Ed?”

“I think someone else did that.”

“Good. He said Julie wasn't riding that scooter.”

“Which is something to be glad about, but . . .”

“But someone is hurt. Somewhere.”

“Looks that way. But I was going to say that I don't think anyone knows where Julie is. Still.”

Jack might have been lying to her, though that seemed out of character. Audrey studied Geoff's face to gauge how worried he might be by this unexpected encounter with the Mansfields. When the church had unceremoniously booted their family out the front doors at Jack's insistence, Geoff had shaved his head. He never said much about the gesture, and she didn't nose around in it, sensing it to be something between him and God that might be destabilized if she butted in. Besides, she liked the super short shave. He let a month's worth of growth return, then decided to keep the scruffy look and adopted the new style for his face too. And although the less-than-clean-cut statement made him look younger and less troubled by life's conventions, it had the disadvantage of slightly altering expressions Audrey had come to interpret easily over two decades of marriage.

“Here's what we're going to do,” she announced. “We're going to go out there and give bagels to Jack's crew. And we're going to be cooperative, model citizens, and we're going to stay open and sell bread and help Ed keep his perspective on the straight and narrow until all of this is resolved.”

“Scared, huh?”

“You're the only one allowed to know it.”

Geoff pulled her close to him and kissed the top of her head. “Likewise.”

“They said I should take an HIV test,” she whispered into his chest.

“I heard. But they've got plenty of the same blood to test first. And it won't take them three months to do it. So let's not jump into a river of worry.”

“Okay.” She took a breath. “Let's go. Maybe we'll attract a crowd of hungry looky-loos.”

“Wait.” Geoff held on to her, and Audrey smiled. After all these years, prayer was rarely her first thought, which made her all the more grateful for her husband. Geoff prayed over her like a man who wanted nothing more than to protect his wife but knew he'd need God's help to do it. These prayers, which were different from his “pastor prayers,” as she called them, were spoken with such a loving combination of faith, intimacy, and affectionate teasing that Audrey embraced them like a sacred form of lovemaking.
This
woman you gave me, God
, Geoff would say, an inside joke between them and their Maker,
this woman you gave me deserves the miracles
only you can give, and I'm asking you for them on her behalf .
. .