Leaving Yesterday (14 page)

There were several more pictures of the boys around the dorms, at football games, and clowning around. Then came the photo that took my breath.

Nick was standing on a street corner, his finger pointing down the street behind him. I could tell from the French look of the buildings that this photo had been shot in New Orleans. I looked down the street in the direction Nick pointed and scanned the crowd, wondering if Nick’s killer was standing somewhere in the middle of it.

His name was Lonnie Vandever. When I had seen him, during the long weeks of the trial, he had been short-haired and clean-shaven. That’s not the man that Nick had seen. I searched the photo for the black hair and scraggly beard I’d seen in his mug shot and in many of my nightmares, long before tonight’s dream added Kurt and a baseball bat. I couldn’t make out anyone clearly. Besides, what happened to the boys happened away from all the crowds. Lonnie Vandever wasn’t anywhere near this place.

Another picture showed people on the street with eyes and cheeks as red as flames, their necks stacked high with brightly colored beads. These were the people my son wanted to reach. It was because of them that he was dead. I wished there was some way I could track down the people in this photo, these very ones, and ask them if they realized what had been suffered because of them. I wanted to ask if they were living lives worthy of the sacrifice made on their behalf. Something inside of me stirred at the thought. I sounded like a preacher talking about Jesus, and how we needed to live worthy of the sacrifice He’d made for us. Tonight, more than ever before, I had the realization that I didn’t even come close.

Seventeen

“All I can say, baby, is you must be even more cold-blooded than I am.”

For a second I froze.
She couldn’t know.
Then, confused even further, I looked down at the short-sleeved shirt I was wearing and then back up at Lacey. “Huh?”

“Well, to see the smoke pouring from your chimney yesterday, a day when it was easily sixty-five degrees outside, well, I just figured you must be having cold-flashes instead of hot flashes, or something.”

The smoke! How could I not even consider the fact that it would blow like a beacon? My mind started clicking off the names of all the neighbors who might have been home yesterday morning to have seen it. Maybe Margaret across the street or the Holts.

Lacey reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Well, to see the look on your face, I don’t have to wonder what it was all about.” She snorted. “I wish I’d known for sure that’s what was going on. I would have walked outside, taken a few deep breaths, and seen if I couldn’t get a secondhand high.”

“Oh, Lacey, you would not.” I laughed, although I was in no mood for laughter. I shook my head and started to cry in spite of the brave front I was trying to put on. “How stupid could I have been?”

“Last I heard, there’s nothing illegal about having a fire in your fireplace.”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious there wasn’t a need for a fire yesterday.” I couldn’t voice aloud the thought that troubled me most. What if Detective Thompson had just happened to come by yesterday? Lacey thought I had destroyed drugs. I certainly didn’t want to say anything that would clue her in otherwise.

“Actually, I’m proud to death of you.”

“Proud of me? Whatever for?”

“Most people would just flush the stuff down the toilet. Not the kind of stuff you want to have flowing to our ocean and getting into the groundwater supply. Know what I mean? Yeah, a fire was a much better choice.”

A picture flashed through my mind of trying to flush a bat. The thought almost made me laugh. But it didn’t.

“I understand that you’re planning to send Caroline up to Monte and Jodi’s this summer.” It was the first thing out of Rick’s mouth on Wednesday when he arrived to pick up Caroline, and it was an out-and-out accusation.

I was still on edge from Monday’s fire and didn’t have the strength or the desire to draw my sword and have a sparring match with my husband. “Oh, come on, Rick, you know better than that.”

“I do? All I know is what my daughter tells me. You certainly haven’t mentioned it.”

“I haven’t mentioned it because it’s not true.”

“So Caroline is lying then? Should we call her down here right now and make her apologize?”

Honestly, the man could be so unpredictable and infuriating sometimes. I thought back to our days as homecoming king and queen and wondered what had ever possessed me to marry him. “She was helping Kurt and Monte prune the trees, and Monte made a joke about hiring her. She thought he was serious and got all worked up about it, as Caroline is known for doing. I finally told her that maybe this summer we would go up there and stay a few days while she helped out.”

“So she is going.”

“A few days, with her mother, to see her aunt and uncle. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Do you?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. If it weren’t for Monte’s mind-poisoning, we’d still have Nick here with us right now. Now he’s getting his hands on Kurt, too, which I’d forbid if it weren’t for the fact that Kurt’s twenty-one and there’s nothing I can do about it. But Caroline’s only ten. I’m telling you right now, I’m not letting Monte and Jodi sink their claws into Caroline.”

“Rick, Monte didn’t poison Nick’s mind, and he’s not poisoning Kurt’s. What would make you even suggest such a thing?”

“It’s all his Jesus-love-and-rainbows stuff that put Nick on the streets of New Orleans, right in the middle of the biggest party in the world, walking unarmed through streets most cops would think twice about. Tell you the truth, I’m scared to death that after Kurt’s been up there a few months he’ll be shaving his head and chanting in an airport somewhere. What if Caroline does the same thing in a couple of years? There are worse things that can happen to her than just being beaten to death. I won’t have her up there being exposed to all that.”

“Nick’s decision to go to New Orleans had nothing to do with Monte and you know that. It was his own idea—his and his friends. In fact, it’s the friends he made at USC that helped talk him into it. You insisted that he go to a large secular school instead of the small Christian college where he wanted to go, because you wanted him exposed to more of the world. That’s where his influence came from.”

“That’s not where it started. I don’t have a problem with you taking the kids to church—good morals are important to instill young. But there’s a limit, and I think it’s time that we start making some rules where Caroline is concerned. Maybe I should get her Sunday through Wednesday, and we just take the whole church thing right off the table. That way there’s no problem.”

I closed my eyes, unsure what I felt more, anger or sadness. I knew Rick was never going to be a perfect church husband. But to hear the disgust in his voice over what was so important to me. And Nick. Calmly as I could, I said, “There is a problem, Rick. I want Caroline raised in the Christian home that she’s grown up in. We agreed when she was born that she would be raised with Christian beliefs.”

“Yeah, well, that was before I realized how off-the-wall all this stuff was going to get. I didn’t know that Nick would go over the edge. Even you can’t argue that. It was his fanaticism that got him killed. I think we should be fairly unified on the fact that we don’t want to see that happen with Caroline.”

“It wasn’t Nick’s beliefs that got him killed. It was a man on the streets, who had absolutely no belief in anything other than his own needs, that got Nick killed. If someone had raised that boy with Christian values, we never would have lost our son.”

“I can stop that argument right here and now. You raised Kurt with those values, and it sure didn’t help him, did it?” His voice dripped with the same sarcasm that clouded his face.

This was not the first time he’d thrown similar words at me. Still, they never failed to sting. I heard my voice begin to rise. “I’ll agree that no matter how you raise a child, there’s no guarantee that he will turn out perfect. But once again, Kurt’s problem was caused by the same boy who killed Nick. Kurt was just fine before that. And”—I looked at him, happy that I had the little jab that would help me win this argument—“it was Kurt’s faith that helped bring him back.”

“Says you. I had lunch with Bruce Thompson yesterday; he tells me that Kurt showed up at rehab the very day after Rudy Prince’s murder. It seems more than a little fishy to me, wouldn’t you say? It’s almost like he was looking for an alibi.”

“You had lunch with Detective Thompson?” Something like betrayal twisted in my gut.

“Yes, Bruce and I have met a couple of times now. He’s a nice guy. You know, I don’t know why you’re so afraid to talk to him. I would think that someone with your beliefs more than most people would want to get to the truth of what part our son played in Rudy Prince’s death.”

“That’s because I know he didn’t play a part.” I stood up. “If you don’t have anything good to say about your son—the one who has made great strides in turning his life around— then get out of my house.”

He leaned back against his chair and smirked. “This house is just as much mine as it is yours, in case you’ve forgotten. Just like Kurt is just as much my son as he is yours. I’m not saying he had anything to do with that boy’s death. But if he did, or if he knows anything about it at all, he needs to man up and accept the consequences. That’s been the problem with both our boys. They spent so much time with you, they never understood some of the principles of being a man.”

I wanted to ask him exactly whose fault that was. I was never the one who demanded the ski boat, the Jet Skis, and the cabin at Lake San Antonio. He was always the one who wanted all the toys and all the accessories, and he was prepared to sacrifice time with his family to get it. I finally let it go as, “Yeah, well, funny, I never heard them saying they really hoped Dad would work again this weekend because they sure wanted to hang around me so they could get soft.”

“You’ve enjoyed the fruit of my labor every bit as much as I have. The girls’ trips to the spa, the nice clothes, the SUV we paid cash for.”

“I never asked for those.”

“But I never had to force you to take them just the same.”

“It was my ‘consolation prize’ for having a husband that cared more about the boss’s opinion than his wife’s—or his children’s.” I glared at him, letting every bit of my anger blaze through my eyes.

“Watch yourself. I would hate to see this all turn ugly.” He stood and called, “Come on, Caroline, time to go.” Then he stalked out the front door and out of sight.

Long after he left, I thought about what he’d said. The conversation had already gone way past the point of ugly. He had been talking about something else, I was sure of it.

Eighteen

When I walked into work the next morning, Detective Thompson was waiting in the church office. If it weren’t for the fact that Jana sat right there, I would have told him to get out. Now I would be forced to be a bit more tactful, but I intended to get the message across just the same.

“What are you doing here?”

Jana glanced up from her desk and frowned at my lack of polite preamble. She had no idea how much worse it would have been if I’d said what I wanted to.

“I have an appointment with Pastor Maddox.” He smirked as he looked me directly in the eye. “I had a question about a couple of Scriptures I’ve been reading, and I’ve heard that this is a Bible-based church. I figured if anyone could help me, then he could.”

I crossed my arms and looked down at him. “Oh really? What Scriptures might those be?”

He pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it. “Well, the one that’s really been on my mind lately is this one from Proverbs. It says, ‘A truthful witness does not deceive, but a false witness pours out lies.’ I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this verse, and I wonder if a false witness might also be someone who knows the truth but doesn’t come forward. What do you think?”

To an outside observer, it would appear that he was watching me with detached interest, simply wanting my opinion on a topic. I knew better. What I didn’t know was whether he was fishing or whether he knew something. Maybe he had seen the smoke from my chimney after all. Jana looked up at this exchange, clearly intrigued by the conversation.

I picked up my mail from the sorter and shrugged. “I’m sure that’s a question for Pastor Maddox, not me. He’s more the theologian than I am.”

“But surely you must have an opinion on this. What do you think?”

“I suppose it would depend on the circumstances. I also think there are a few verses in the surrounding chapters about false witnesses who make up things just because it suits them— you know, like they want the public to think they are doing a great job solving cases, so they badger people into saying things that aren’t really true—those kinds of things. Why don’t you ask Pastor Maddox about that?”

Just then the door to Ken’s office opened and Ken came walking out to greet his next appointment. Detective Thompson smiled at me. “Maybe I’ll just do that.” He shook the pastor’s hand and the two of them disappeared into the office.