The Unbidden Truth (9 page)

“There's no king, just the queen and the lady workers and babies.”

 

“Carrie? Are you ill?” Barbara asked at her side. She saw a bee on the rose and looked closer at Carrie. Had she been stung? Was she having a reaction?

Barbara's voice jolted Carrie, banished the memory. Her lips felt stiff, and she shivered as if with a chill. “I'm okay,” she said. Again, she thought. They kept coming back, snapshots of a forbidden past. It wasn't real, she told herself. Barbara was real, and the roses all around them, the perfumed air, the heron on the river. That was all real. She clung to them as if to a lifesaver, those things that she knew were real. “I'm fine,” she said then. “I felt dizzy for a second. Too much perfume.”

Barbara stayed at her side as they wandered through the garden for a few more minutes. Was that another phobia to add to the list, she wondered: hospitals, explosions, fire and now bees? Carrie had looked deathly pale and terrified.

Walking back, Carrie was withdrawn, yet at the same time
strangely alert, examining the river, the trees, other strollers and cyclists, everything before her eyes as if committing it all to memory. They returned to Barbara's car and she drove to the office, where they separated, Carrie to retrieve her old Dat-sun and go back to the apartment, Barbara to go back to work.

“If Mama comes up with something for you, I'll give you a call. Do you have a telephone in the apartment yet?”

“Yes. Darren put in an extension. It's his number. Do you have it?” Barbara shook her head, and Carrie told her the number, got in her car and left.

 

She could still see the little girl, Carrie thought fearfully, and the bee heavy with pollen. It was not like the flashes of fantasy; this was a memory lodged in her head like a regular memory, one she could revisit, a part of her. Carrie was shaking too hard to continue to drive. She pulled over and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, willing the false memory to leave, remembering snatches from the many articles she had read about schizophrenia. If the fantasy life became too real, it could replace the reality of the here and now. The voices could become too powerful to resist, the visions could overwhelm the actual world. You were lost in madness.

T
he stack of discovery papers grew day by day. Bailey's reports came in. Barbara asked for the inventory from Wenzel's suite, and days later received it. Bailey said morosely that Sylvia had made contact with the target. Her words, he had added, and Sylvia was as happy as a kid at Christmas to be playing cops and robbers again. Mama had found a part-time job for Carrie, making tamales. Carrie was delighted with it. That's part of the recordless, paperless underground economy, Barbara murmured to Shelley. Shelley had the whole crew out at her house for an end-of-season swimming and cookout party. Darren, Todd and Carrie joined them, and it was a good day, Barbara had to admit later.

“But,” she said to Frank in late September, “a lot of stuff is piling up, and I can't see a way to make the puzzle pieces fit together. Blank walls everywhere I turn.”

They were waiting for Bailey, who had called to say he had something.

“I've got some numbers to play with,” Frank said. “It will keep until Bailey gets here.”

He had been looking into the finances of the Wenzel Corporation, a job his law firm could handle even better than Bailey could. Now and then, he sometimes said, he liked to use the resources at his disposal just to remind his partner, Sam Bixby, that he was still in the game. Frank understood perfectly well that some of the junior partners lusted after his sumptuous office, and he had no intention of relinquishing it until some indefinite future date when his threatened retirement became an actuality.

Bailey and Shelley entered together, and he headed straight to the bar and mixed himself a drink. Barbara watched without comment. If he hadn't earned it, the next time he showed up he would find nothing but orange juice there.

He slouched into a chair, took a long drink and gave her a mean look. “You sent me on a wild-goose chase,” he said. “I found Frederick in spite of everything you told me, not because of.”

“What did you find?”

“Born in 1928, in Wheeling, West Virginia, died 1978. Fifty years old, Barbara. Light brown hair, nearly two hundred pounds. I don't know who the guy in your picture was, but he sure wasn't Ronald Frederick.”

She drew in a breath. “Are you sure?”

“Barbara, come on. I narrowed it down to three guys and then sicced an agency back in Roanoke on it. They got it down to one, and found an old buddy who's still around and who kept in touch once in a while. He gave them a picture,
and a copy of the old school book with pictures. Before and after years, and a paunch happened.” He rooted around in his duffel bag, brought out a folder and handed it to her. Then he emptied his glass and held it up in an inquiring way. He always did that. The first drink was his for the taking, but additional drinks were by consent. Bailey lived by his own set of rules.

She nodded and examined the pictures from his folder while he returned to the bar. This Frederick had been blond as a boy; the later snapshot showed his hair darker, but still fair. And he was overweight. He was not the trim black-haired man in the newspaper picture who was almost certainly Carrie's father. A copy of that clipping was in the folder also. She passed them over to Frank.

“He was a housepainter who migrated with the birds,” Bailey said, sitting again. “Sometimes he got back to Wheeling for a visit. Then, along about 1978 he dropped off the planet, as far as the buddy knew. No more cards, no more visits, nothing. His wife was his age, and I don't have a picture of her. The old buddy didn't know a thing about a daughter.”

Frank was frowning as he handed the set of pictures to Shelley. She studied the clipping, then the other two pictures. “Someone faked the article,” she said then.

“And the death certificates and her birth certificate,” Barbara said. “Her whole history is a fake.” She stood up and walked to her desk, trying to think through it all, then came back. “Let's leave it for a few minutes. Anything else?” she asked Bailey.

“On a more cheerful note,” he said, “Sylvia is making progress. She's organizing a committee to hold an annual benefit to raise money for the homeless. The steering committee
will be no more than eight people, and the qualifications include starting out dirt poor and making it big through hard work and a bit of luck. She invited Nora and Larry Wenzel to join. Larry said nope, no time for anything like that, but Nora walked right in. Sylvia had her out to lunch to discuss the event they'll put on. She's thinking of a masquerade party for Halloween, charge a hundred bucks a head, have a costume judging contest, the whole works, at her place. Nora's all atwitter. She got a peek at Sylvia's little place out in the country.” He took another long drink, then, grinning, said, “Sylvia's going to go as Medusa. Bet she'll use live snakes in her hairdo.”

Frank laughed, thinking how Sylvia must have handled this. She would have dragged out pictures of her cold-water flat in New York, and some publicity pictures of her early work on the stage, and she would have had Nora talking about her early work within minutes. He could imagine the conversations: Oh, I had it a lot worse than that. I was poorer than you were. Worked day and night…All that against the background of one of the biggest estates around, cluttered with expensive art, with semiprecious and precious stones strewn about, a staff of a dozen or so.

“Anything yet on H. L. Blount?” Barbara asked.

Bailey shook his head. “Nada. Probably a pseudonym. If you're going for a funny name, why choose Blount? Why not Green or Smith? I don't even know what the
H
and
L
stood for. Hector? Horatio? Lancelot? Lucifer?” He shrugged. “It's a wash, Barbara.”

She turned to Frank. “You said you have some numbers or something?”

He knew she was as distracted by the mystery of Carrie's parents as he was, and he kept it short. “Yep. The Wenzels ar
rived in Eugene with more than two million, it appears. For the first five years or so they were shelling out more than they were taking in. Buying up parcels of land here and there, building on spec, building their own two big houses and offices. I have all their projects listed, how much they cost, how much they brought in eventually, and so on. For the past two years or so things have been tough, lost contracts, canceled jobs, things of that sort. It's reading material when there's nothing else around.”

“I'll get in touch with Janey Lipscomb,” Barbara said, veering off the subject, confirming his suspicion that she was paying little attention to his report.

Janey Lipscomb was a psychologist who looked like a pixie with a snub nose, curly red hair, freckles and an infectious smile. She was the least threatening psychologist imaginable, and it was impossible to think of her activating anyone's phobia of doctors and hospitals. Also, she was one of the best. She had worked on cases for Barbara in the past. If anyone could break through Carrie's wall of amnesia, it was Janey, if Carrie would talk to her, and if Janey had time to take this on. She worked for the Children's Services Agency, and those people were driven hard by a supervisor, who, Janey said, was a fire-breathing dragon. A children's psychologist was exactly what Barbara thought was called for. She wanted to get in touch with the child locked inside Carrie.

There were a few more matters to discuss, then the others wandered out, and Barbara sat behind her desk considering the best way to approach Janey. Over the years they had become friends who met for lunch once in a while, or had dinner or saw a movie together. They had a lot in common: two single, professional women who couldn't keep a flame going
long enough to get warmed all the way through, was how Janey had put it. She was not supposed to take outside cases, but she was underpaid, working for an underfunded agency, and she was constantly running short of money. That was a starting point. This would have to be another bit of the recordless, paperless economy. She dialed Janey's number and left a message on her voice mail to call back, and while she waited, she planned her strategy, first to interest Janey, and second to make Carrie agree to talk to her.

 

She met Janey that evening at the Electric Station. With live music it was noisy and crowded in the bar and lounge, but very quiet in the back booth in the restaurant proper.

The waiter was at the table the instant they sat down.

“Are you really paying?” Janey asked. “If you are, I want a daiquiri, if you're not, I'll stick with water.”

Barbara ordered two daiquiris.

“So let's clear the decks,” Janey said as soon as the waiter left. “What do you want from me?” She grinned her big elfish grin. “I've noticed over the past few years that when you offer to pay, it's because you want to drain my brain. Drain away.”

Barbara laughed and forgot the strategy she had planned. “Damn, you're on to me. Okay. Here goes.” She began to describe Carrie and was still at it when their drinks were served. The food waiter came and they ordered, then Barbara picked up where she had left off.

She ended her recital as they were eating. Janey's grin had faded, and she shook her head when Barbara became silent.

“Amnesia's a tough one,” she said. “After this many years, it could be intractable, and it isn't something you can get around if you find the right question to ask. No doubt, they
had good psychologists in the hospital where she was treated, and her amnesia was new then, but apparently they got nowhere. I think you're talking about months of therapy with no good prognosis.”

“What about recovered memories through hypnosis?”

“Hogwash for the most part. Read the transcripts. Answers are fed in along with the questions. Under hypnosis most subjects really want to please the hypnotist and, God, can they pick up clues, nuances, subtle influences. Usually they know in advance what the hypnotist is fishing for, and they try to satisfy.” She sipped her drink, took another bite, then said, “Tell me again about the Rose Garden incident.”

Barbara described it again. “I'm sure it wasn't the flower itself, but the configuration of the bee on the flower that set her off. She turned white and looked panic-stricken. I think she remembers things and then loses them again.”

“And her foster parents said she made up stories out of fairy tales,” Janey murmured. She pushed her plate back and drew in a breath. “I'm stuffed to the gills. Let's look at the dessert tray.”

Barbara gave her an incredulous look and she said, “I'm eating for two. Two days, that is. Tomorrow I'll fast.”

Barbara had coffee and watched Janey tuck away cheesecake piled high with raspberries and whipped cream. “You'll have to fast for three days,” she said.

“Worth it. It all evens out,” Janey said and poured coffee for herself. “Look, if Carrie will talk to me, I'll have a go at it. I have an idea or two I want to think about first. And it has to be over the weekend. I'm working overtime these days, and I'm beat by the end of the day.”

“Cash,” Barbara said. “Whatever the going fee is for private consultations.”

“Make that singular,” Janey said. “If it doesn't work, there's little point in continuing. I don't have time, and I don't think it would be worthwhile. Are you going to tell her what Bailey found out?”

Barbara shook her head. “Not yet. Not until I know more than I do now. I'm afraid it would send her spinning out of control to learn that her parents weren't killed in that crash. If that wasn't them, where are they?”

“Exactly,” Janey said. “And who arranged for her to be brainwashed into accepting that story? And maybe more important, why?” She regarded Barbara very seriously then. “Have you thought through what you're doing? That you might be prying open Pandora's box?”