Too Near the Edge (16 page)

Propelled by my fury, I didn’t bother to
knock—just barged right in, anger and righteousness front and
center. “I thought you were supposed to be a scientist. You don’t
even know anything about my work, but yet you feel perfectly free
to accuse me of fraudulent and unsafe practice? Where’s your
evidence?”

Waycroft slowly swiveled his desk chair
around to face me. “I see I finally managed to get your attention,”
he smirked. “Look, I warned you to stay away from Sharon with your
witchcraft or ghost-finding scams. So now we’ll see how your work
holds up to scientific scrutiny.”

He spoke calmly, which disarmed me. I’d
expected the red-faced, roaring Waycroft. I sat gingerly on the
edge of a hard wooden chair next to his cluttered desk. “Sharon’s
an adult. She can make her own decisions without your approval. I’m
licensed to provide services. She chose to take advantage of those
services.” At first, I matched his calm tone, but couldn’t maintain
it as my anger rose up again like acid reflux. “You’re not involved
and it’s none of your business. So where do you get off attacking
me?”

“Cleo, you’re demonstrating your lack of
professionalism right now.” Waycroft kept his cool—probably a skill
he had developed over years of confrontations with surly students
disputing grades they thought were lower than they deserved. “I’ll
tell you what. You could consider that notice a warning. If you
back off now, don’t give Sharon any more therapy or whatever you
call it, quit pretending to hook her up with the dearly departed,
I’ll withdraw the complaint. You can’t say that’s not a fair
offer.” He gave me a self-satisfied look and leaned back in his
chair.

Could he really think I’d agree to this? I
couldn’t even begin to see his perspective on this situation.
“Wrong!” I shouted, abandoning any pretense of reasonable
discussion. “I absolutely do not think that’s a fair offer. You
have no right to tell me who I can or can’t see as a client. And
going against your wishes does not constitute malpractice in this
state or any other that I know of.”

Waycroft straightened in his chair and gave
me a steely look. “I’m offering you a chance to save yourself here,
but you are bent on self-destruction. So be it. Your choice will
have consequences. You will be exposed as a fake, you will lose the
money from whoever is funding that Contact Project, and you will be
out of business as a therapist. And your friend Elisa is likely to
have some difficulty getting tenure in the Psychology Department
here.”

I felt tears rising to the surface, but I
didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of showing my distress. So
I attacked again. “Taking this stand could seriously hurt your
relationship with Sharon, you know. She’s had about enough of being
told what to do. And seeing her friends hurt could be the last
straw.”

“You want to talk about how Sharon and I get
along?” Another smirk. “She knows she’s on shaky ground with the
way she’s raising Nathan. It’s all wrong—no rules, messy house, no
consistent structure. Adam was even worse—encouraged her to be
irresponsible and left her in debt. And her involvement in your
nutty spiritualism thing clearly raises questions about her ability
to take care of Nathan. Plus, she can’t legally keep Nathan from
seeing his real father. So she may face consequences of her
own.”

“As a behaviorist, you must know your actions
will also have consequences. Threats and retribution can go both
ways, so I’d suggest you watch your back.” With that, I rose and
walked out with as much dignity as I could muster.

I walked back across campus to my car in a
fog. I couldn’t abandon Sharon now, no matter what consequences
Waycroft threatened. She needed help and as long as I saw some
possibility I could help her, I’d be there. Grampa always used to
say, “Trust yourself, Cleo. Never be afraid to stand up for what
you believe.” And—for a lot of reasons—I believe in Tyler and his
messages. I’ve learned he comes for a reason, and it’s important
for me to follow his directions. It can be problematic to figure
out what he’s telling me, but I was pretty clear I was supposed to
help Sharon.

I didn’t think Sharon or Elisa would be
willing to give up trying to find out what happened to Adam,
either. But I did think we needed to talk about Waycroft’s threats
and decide how we wanted to respond. So I grabbed my cell phone out
of my purse and gave them each a call to find a time to meet.

After a few messages back and forth, we
agreed to meet for dinner at The Rio, a popular Mexican restaurant
on the Pearl Street mall, famous for its deliciously strong
margaritas. They offer only one type of margarita—no premium, no
extra-premium, no very special gold like other places—but the one
they make is hands down the best. The drinks are made from a secret
recipe its owners reportedly stumbled upon in the nick of time just
before they opened their first restaurant. I’ve never tasted a
better margarita anywhere, and after my session with Waycroft, I
could hardly wait to decompress with at least one that evening.

It was early enough that we got seated right
away in a booth next to a mirrored wall in the main room. Elisa
looked sleek in a black silk tank top, white pants and high-heeled
sandals. Sharon and I were the casual contrast, wearing shorts, tee
shirts and flip-flops.

The Rio is informal, no tablecloths on the
laminated black hand-painted tables, and the traditional tex-mex
food made fresh every day makes it one of my favorite places. As
soon as the server brought our drinks, chips and salsa, we dove
in.

“Whew baby—that’s a margarita!” Elisa licked
her lips and sighed.

“Always the same, always the best,” I agreed,
relaxing into the casual party atmosphere. Revived, I recounted the
gory details of my meeting with Waycroft.

“Maybe I could have handled it better, but he
was so patronizing, I couldn’t stay cool,” I said. “Well, actually
I could have stayed cool, but I didn’t feel like having a civilized
reasonable conversation with him after he had filed a complaint
against me.”

“He has that effect on people,” Sharon said
quickly. “In fact, that’s one of his techniques. He shows you that
he can stay rational, while you explode.”

“He doesn’t stay especially rational around
you when he’s not getting what he wants,” I pointed out, gesturing
with my salsa-covered chip, which left a trail of red dots across
the table.

“I’ve had a lot of practice pushing his
buttons,” Sharon said. “Whether you want to or not, you learn about
stimulus and response when you live with a behaviorist.” She
laughed and raised her hands in a what-can-you-do shrug. Then she
looked a little melancholy as she said, “It’s not that I want to
irritate him. I do care about him and I appreciate a lot of what
he’s done for me. But he’s so controlling that I have to push him
to the wall before he’ll give me any space at all.”

The server brought our fajitas—sizzling
strips of chargrilled chicken, with grilled onion, peppers, tomato,
guacamole, sour cream, pico de gallo sauce, and handmade flour
tortillas on the side—accompanied by Spanish rice and black beans.
We took a break from the Waycroft bashing to fill our tortillas and
enjoy.

“So we need a plan to force him to back off,”
Elisa said. “We should speak a language he
appreciates—consequences. Somehow we have to find a way to convince
him that the costs of his attacks on us will outweigh the
benefits.”

We spent the next hour or so brainstorming
possibilities. With the help of another round of margaritas, we
arrived at a plan. Elisa agreed to do some searching around in
Waycroft’s projects at the university to see if she could find an
area where he was vulnerable. Sharon decided she would keep Nathan
away from Waycroft, since that was the main way she could get to
him. I would talk to a woman named Holly with whom Sharon said
Waycroft had had an on-again, off-again relationship for years. I
knew Holly because she was an artist who had studied with my
grandmother years ago. Since then we had kept in touch through our
involvement in the art community.

After dinner, we went back to Sharon’s for
ice cream. Escaping the cluttered living room, we sat around the
kitchen table. Nathan was off at a Rockies game in Denver with
Erik.

As she sliced strawberries over scoops of
vanilla ice cream, Sharon told us a piece of good news. She had
invited Joel over to meet Nathan, and he fit in like a missing
puzzle piece. Sharon admitted she saw changes in Joel, and that it
could be good for Nathan to have him in his life—at least on
occasion, and in circumstances she agreed to.

“So I think I’ll make a deal with Nathan that
he can spend time with Joel if he agrees not to make a fuss about
not seeing Dad for a while,” Sharon said.

“Do you think Nathan will go for that?” Elisa
asked. “Maria says he’s tight with Donald.”

“They have their issues,” Sharon said. “Dad
can be strict, which Nathan doesn’t like. And now that I’ve put a
stop to the point system Dad had Nathan hooked on, Nathan’s not so
willing to do things Dad’s way. You know, you’d think Dad would
learn that the downside of rewarding good behavior with points is
that if you ever stop the points, you lose the behavior. I’m a
living example.”

Sharon stopped talking and looked down at her
hands. She frowned, licked her lips and said hesitantly, “There is
one thing that concerns me about Nathan seeing Joel. It’s that Erik
is against it. I’m worried that Erik feels threatened by Joel.”

“Does it have to be a competition?” Elisa
asked. “Can’t you and Nathan have two men involved in your
lives?”

Sharon looked up and turned toward Elisa.
“The thing is, Erik’s been sort of like part of our family since
Jenny died,” she said. “ He doesn’t have any family of his own, and
Jenny’s family blames him for not getting help fast enough to save
her. So he’s been lonely and depressed. He and Adam were close, so
Erik started spending time with us, sharing holidays, stuff like
that. Since Adam died he’s been amazing and so close to Nathan. I
don’t want to hurt him.”

I decided to move deeper. “Okay, don’t answer
this if you don’t want to—but how do you feel about Erik?”

Sharon frowned. “Well, I…” She stopped.
“Sometimes he…” She stopped again. “I guess I’m not sure.” She got
up, grabbed a glass from a cabinet and filled it with water from a
five-gallon dispenser in the corner. “Would you like some
water?”

After getting us set with glasses of spring
water, Sharon came back to the table. “Okay, here’s the best I can
do. I don’t know what we would have done without Erik. But he can
be moody and odd. In a way, I feel guilty because I know he wants
more, but I’m not there. It’s too soon for me.”

“You seem to be taking a lot of
responsibility for him,” Elisa said. “He’s a grownup. Maybe you
could…”

We heard the front door open, and Erik and
Nathan laughing in the living room. “It was a great game. You
should have been there.” Erik passed out grins all around as he
came into the kitchen.

“Look Mom, Erik got me a Rockies cap.” Nathan
bounced in sporting a black baseball cap with a gray CR embroidered
on the front—or what would have been the front if he hadn’t been
wearing it backwards.

Sharon gave Nathan a big hug. “Hey, thanks
Erik—and for taking him to the game. Nathan, you need to get to bed
right away. It’s late.”

Sharon and Nathan headed off down the hall.
Elisa followed them out of the room, saying she needed to get home.
I decided to stay, so I could ask Erik about Adam’s computer. It
turned out he had the emergency boot disk in his truck, so we
decided we’d try booting it up as soon as Nathan was settled.

Sharon got Nathan to bed, Erik brought in the
disk and we were ready to work on the computer. But after fifteen
minutes of looking, Sharon couldn’t find the key to Adam’s office.
“Never mind, I can pick the lock,” Erik said. “I’ve got some tools
in my truck.”

Sharon and I went out to the office door to
watch. Erik stuck a sort of screwdriver-looking tool into the lock
and turned it. Then he stuck in a long curvy metal thing and
jiggled it around, listening as if for a secret code. And we were
in.

We headed toward the desk. “Wait a minute!
It’s not here!” Sharon pointed at the empty space under Adam’s desk
where the computer tower had been. I looked around. Everything else
in the office looked the same as it had last Friday.

“When was the last time you saw it?” Erik
asked.

“I haven’t been out here since Friday, when
Cleo and I were here,” Sharon said, “and neither has anyone else
that I know of.” She moved around the office opening drawers and
cabinets. “It doesn’t look like anything else was stolen, but to be
honest, I don’t exactly know what was where.”

“Well, the key is missing and the lock is
easy to pick, so who knows who may have been in here,” I pointed
out. “We need to call the police.”

About an hour later, a couple of uniformed
Boulder police officers came to the house and took the report, but
gave us no reason to believe we’d see that computer again. In fact,
they were a tad patronizing when we admitted we didn’t know the
computer’s serial number. Do most people write those things
down?

And of course there was no forced entry, so
they weren’t willing to call it burglary. Like maybe Sharon had
somehow misplaced the computer or loaned it to a friend? We played
the strange phone message on Adam’s machine for them, and they took
the tape, but didn’t think it would help much.

What interested them most was Erik’s
lock-picking tools and skill. He maintained he had a habit of
forgetting keys and was fed up with paying locksmiths, so he
learned to pick locks. The police kept teasing him about whether he
picked other locks, and was he a recreational hacker who picks
locks for the fun of it, and otherwise why did he carry those tools
around. He denied picking any locks except when he or a friend was
locked out—and pushed the cops to admit it’s not illegal to own the
tools. Still, the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I
felt with the idea that Erik could get into my house in five
minutes flat.