The Silent Sister (31 page)

“Can I help you?” she heard Grady ask.

“Maybe,” a deep male voice answered. Something about the voice made her still her hands on the records to listen. “I'm a private investigator,” he said. “My name's Arthur Jones and I'm trying to find this girl.”

She lowered her hands from the box to her lap.
Be calm
, she told herself. Ocean Beach was full of runaways. People were always searching for their missing kids in this town.

“This is an old picture,” the man said. “She'd be twenty-three now. She's probably changed her looks. Maybe wears a wig or dyed her hair.”

She pressed her fist to her mouth, waiting. For a really long moment, no one said a word. “Looks like some kind of promotional shot,” Grady said finally.

“Right. She's a violinist, as you can see. She was one of those prodigies.”

She shut her eyes. She could guess which photo he was showing Grady—the one they'd splashed all over the news after Steven's death.

Six years,
she thought. For six years, she'd been safe. She'd believed it could last forever.

“She doesn't look familiar,” Grady said, and she let out her breath.

“No?” Arthur Jones said. “I showed this to someone on the street out there and he thought he saw a girl who looked like her working in here.”

“Bunch of space cadets out on the street.” Grady sounded annoyed.

“Let me see it,” Charlie said.

“Well, she'll look different now,” Arthur Jones said. “Older, like I said, and try to picture her with a different hair color or maybe cut short.”

“Pretty girl,” Charlie said. “Why're you looking for her?”

“She's wanted for murder,” the man said, just like that. She heard Grady laugh.

“That's funny?” the man asked.

“Just, she doesn't look like much of a murderer,” Grady said. “What did she do? Hit someone over the head with her violin?”

“No, she shot a guy in the head with a .357 Magnum.”

Silence.

“Damn,” Charlie said after a moment. “You've got to be kidding.”

“So, you're just going around to all the stores, showing that picture?” Grady asked.

“We know she's a musician and we're pretty sure she's in San Diego,” Arthur Jones said, “so checking music stores makes sense, don't you think?”

How did they know she was in San Diego? How did they know she hadn't killed herself in 1990, for that matter? She thought of those letters she'd exchanged with her father the month before. Had they been a terrible mistake?

“Well, I don't think she's been in here,” Grady said.

“I know everyone in Ocean Beach and I've never seen anyone who looks like her,” Charlie added. “I think you're barking up the wrong tree.”

“Anyone else here I can show her picture to?” the man asked.

“No,” Grady said quickly. “Slow day.”

“All right, then. Thanks for your time.”

She heard the jingle of the door, but didn't move. Should she go out the back door to the alley? And then what would she do?

Slowly, she slid off the stool on legs that threatened to give out on her and walked into the shop. The two of them stood there like statues, staring at her, Charlie with an LP in his hands, Grady behind the counter.

“You're white as a ghost,” Grady said, and Charlie held up his free hand.

“Just tell me you didn't do it,” he said.

She swallowed, her throat dry as a piece of toast. “I didn't do it.” What else could she say?

“That's good enough for me,” Charlie said.

“How long till it occurs to him to check the music department at State?” Grady asked, and her heart nearly stopped beating.

“I have to leave,” she said. “I have to leave Ocean Beach.”

“Go to Celia,” Charlie said. “But tell Ingrid you're going someplace else.”

She nodded.

Grady opened the cash drawer, counted out five twenties and handed them to her. “We'll miss you,” he said, then added, “We love you, Jade. Take care.”

*   *   *

She cleaned out her cottage quickly. She had little to pack and less that she cared about, but she thought she'd better take everything. Her fingerprints were all over the place! She hoped that private investigator never spoke to anyone who would lead him to Ingrid and this cottage. If he was only looking at music shops she'd be safe, but if he took that photograph to the market, someone there was sure to recognize her. And as Grady said, the music department at State … oh, God. How could this be happening?

It took her four trips to carry everything she owned out to her car. She had the one suitcase she'd arrived with. Her textbooks, which she imagined she'd never need again but didn't want to leave behind in her room. Her laptop computer. The violin and music and music stand. That was it. With every trip to her car, she scoured the neighborhood for Arthur Jones, wishing she'd gotten a look at him. She didn't know who to fear.

Once the car was full, she found Ingrid hoeing in her small garden behind the shed.

“Ingrid,” she said. “I'm sorry to do this so quickly, but I have to go home.”

“Home?” Ingrid stopped her work and looked at her in absolute shock. “You mean, to your family in Maryland?” Jade hadn't so much as mentioned that nonexistent family in years.

Jade nodded. “My father somehow found out I'm going to State and he got a message to me that my mother's really sick.”

Ingrid didn't say a word. She stared at her, and Jade had to fill the silence.

“And honestly,” she said, “I've been missing them. I just have to go. So my rent's paid up till the end of the month … is that okay? Do I need to give you more? I could—”

“No, Jade.” Ingrid held the hoe upright at her side. “That's fine. I'm sorry about your mother.” She laid down the hoe and walked over to her, putting her hands on Jade's shoulders. “You've been the best tenant I could ask for, but I've always felt you should go home,” she said. “Be with your family. What about school, though?”

“I'll have to transfer. It's okay. Family's more important.” She choked up a little at that. She wished she
could
go home.

“Are you driving all the way to Maryland?” Ingrid lowered her arms, a worried look on her face. “That will take you days.”

“I know. That's why I'm going right away. I don't want to leave my car here.” Was she making any sense or digging herself in deeper? “Thanks so much for everything,” she said.

“Let me get you some food to take with you.” Ingrid took a step toward the house, but Jade grabbed her arm.

“That's all right, thanks,” she said, afraid that with every second that passed, Arthur Jones was getting closer to her. “I'll be fine.”

*   *   *

She had one more stop to make before leaving Ocean Beach: the bank. She still had nearly two thousand dollars in her account. She took the money in cash, stuffing it into her purse, and hoped that she hadn't set off some kind of alarm in the teller's head. She was sure she looked like the frightened, guilty woman she was.

*   *   *

She made it all the way to a rest stop near a town called Redding in northern California before she absolutely had to sleep. Even so, she only managed to doze for about an hour, cramped in the backseat of her car, before fear woke her up. Maybe she should have called Celia before heading to Portland, but she was afraid of what Celia might say. What if she told her not to come? Everything was going wrong for her all of a sudden, and if things went wrong with Celia, too, she couldn't take it. She didn't know how she'd explain showing up at her apartment out of the blue, though. Suddenly she felt like she didn't know Celia well at all. Charlie'd said to go to her, though, and he knew her best.

*   *   *

She was numb from worry and the road by the time she reached Celia's apartment the next afternoon. Celia wasn't there, and Jade sat on the landing outside her door. She had to pee and she was starving as she went over and over in her mind what she planned to say to her. She had it worked out, a long and elaborate string of lies. But when Celia walked up the steps, her face registering surprise at seeing her there, Jade burst into tears.

And then she told Celia everything.
Everything.
Even the things Daddy had no idea about.

Even the things he couldn't possibly guess.

 

PART THREE

 

40.

Riley

Once I pulled myself together after leaving the message for Suzanne, I drove the rest of the way home with a thrill of excitement running through my body. Lisa was alive! Unless she'd met with some terrible illness or accident—but how likely was that? She was only forty years old. I would find her, and nothing would stop me. I knew, though, that I'd have to be cautious. That meant not telling Danny what I knew, for starters. I'd look for Lisa in a way that put her in no danger, remembering what Tom had said:
If Lisa wanted to see you, she could have found you.
She had to be afraid of being found. Did she know Daddy was dead? Did she know about our mother, for that matter? Would she care if she did?

*   *   *

When I walked in the house, Christine grabbed my hand. “Where've you been?” she asked. “We hit the mother lode in the attic!” She dragged me into the dining room where she had completely covered the table with knickknacks and stacks of old books and other odds and ends I'd never seen before. I yanked my hand away from her, not at all in the mood to deal with details of the estate sale.

Jeannie walked into the room, her arms overflowing with old sewing patterns.

“Look at these!” she said. “Deb must have saved these from when we were teens just learning to sew. Check out the styles on the packages!”

I looked around my mother's warm, cozy dining room, now turned into a junk store. I saw the gleam in Christine's eyes and the dress patterns spilling out of Jeannie's arms onto the floor. The two of them were now more familiar with the house of my childhood than I was, treating it like their own. I wanted them gone.

“I can't take this anymore!” I shouted, my voice so loud even I was surprised.

Jeannie stopped walking toward the table, a few more of the patterns falling from her arms. Christine held a small ceramic horse frozen in midair.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “What can't you take?”

“This!” I waved my arm through the air above the table and the hundreds of items from the attic. “The mess in my house! People in my house! I really—”

“Honey”—Jeannie dropped the patterns onto one of the dining room chairs, where they spilled like a fountain onto the rug—“you just need to let Christine and me handle everything. I've told you. There's absolutely nothing you have to do.”

“I need some peace and quiet,” I said, trying to lower my voice. Trying to keep myself calm. “I know you two are doing a ton of work and I appreciate it, but I need some time to myself.”

They looked at one another. “We could go get a cup of coffee and come back in an hour,” Jeannie suggested to her daughter.

“No.”
I looked from one of them to the other. They wore puzzled expressions as if I were speaking a foreign language. “You don't understand,” I said. “I need
days
to myself. Maybe
weeks.
”

“But the sale is in eight days, Riley,” Christine said, “and we're making fabulous progress, but we have a lot more to—”

“You'll need to move the sale,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘move it'?” Christine said. “We can't cart all this stuff someplace—”

“I mean, postpone it,” I said.

“Oh, no.” Christine finally caught on. “The date is already set and we're—”

“I don't care!” I gripped the back of one of the dining room chairs. “I hate this! I hate people in my house, taking it apart bit by bit until I don't recognize it anymore!” My voice rose to a hysterical pitch and it felt good. “I just lost my father, and now I'm losing the house I grew up in!”

“You should have thought of that before you hired me.” Christine put her hands on her hips. “Everything was ‘rush rush rush' and now suddenly the brakes are on?”

“Christine.” Jeannie moved to her daughter's side, a hand on her arm as she tried to calm her down, but that did nothing to temper the anger in Christine's eyes.

“Yes,” I said, more quietly now. “The brakes are on. I'm not ready to let go of everything. You need to wait until I am.”

Complete silence fell over the dining room. Finally, Jeannie spoke. “All right,” she said, “I'm sorry if we've been in your way, Riley. I wanted to make things easier for you, not harder. Let Christine and me organize this mess we made today, and then we'll postpone the sale and we won't come back until you're ready. How's that?”

“That would be excellent,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Mother!” Christine shot a look of daggers at Jeannie.

“Of course that means the house won't go on the market until late in the season,” Jeannie said. “We can't get the repairs and painting and everything done until after the estate sale, but maybe we can—”

“It'll be fine,” I said calmly, heading for the living room. Suddenly, though, I turned back to face them. “Oh, but the RV park?” I said to Jeannie.

“What about it?” she asked.

“You can put that on the market right away.”

 

41.

In my bedroom, I closed and locked my door, then sat in the armchair by the front window waiting for them to leave. I could hear them downstairs; the dining room was right below my room. Their voices were muffled, but I imagined they wondered what had gotten into me. I didn't give a damn. It had been such a relief to tell them to go. I'd still be uncomfortable, living in a house that had been turned upside down, little price tags on every lamp and chair and dish, but I could deal with that, and my own bedroom was an untouched haven.