Over Her Head (8 page)

Cammie stuck to Tanya like a burr during the service, where Cale Dayton preached on the healing power of love. At the end,
he announced that the memorial service for Randi would be Tuesday afternoon at four.

“Tanya has requested that Randi’s remains be cremated,” he explained, “so we’ll have a memorial service and celebration of
her life. We’ll hold it right here, after school, so her classmates can attend as well.”

When the service was over, people crowded around to offer condolences and help. Tanya looked a little like a drowning woman,
glancing right and left as if she were hoping that the sea would part and she could escape. Laurie made her way to her side
and made sure that people who were serious about their offers of help got their names on the roster for either food or time.

This was one of the reasons she loved Glendale Bible Fellowship—brotherly love translated itself into action here. Nobody
had to be asked first. No one who had a need ever went without, whether it was as practical as making supper for a bereaved
family, or as spiritual as praying for someone who was struggling.

Tanya gripped her arm. “Laurie, please, can we go?” Tears streaked her face, and fine hair that would have been curly if it
had been styled a little better was coming out of its knot.

“Of course, sweetie. I’m just going to finish up with these folks. Cammie, can you take Tanya home?”

The two women made their way to the door and escaped into the chilly morning. The weatherman had predicted snow by mid-afternoon,
and you could really feel it if you were standing near the door.

Thanks to the list and the schedule, someone would be with Tanya whenever she needed it—whether keeping her company during
her hours off, or pulling out a frozen dish and putting it in the oven, or picking up scrapbooking materials for Randi’s memory
book.

It turned out that Tanya was a lapsed scrapbooker, and creating the pages of the album on Monday turned out to be a kind of
therapy. Fortunately, Mary Lou and Debbie were scrapbookers, too, and by the time people had begun to gather for the service
on Tuesday, the album was finished and displayed on a miniature podium, where people could look through it before they entered
the sanctuary.

At the front, Randi’s ninth-grade picture had been enlarged and mounted, and stood on an easel between two elevated baskets
of roses and lilies. Three members of the high-school band played flute, piano, and clarinet onstage, and the melody of “Amazing
Love” floated through the sanctuary.

Anna’s phone rang just as Colin ushered them all up the aisle.

“Turn that off!” Laurie whispered. Anna knew better than that. The whole family automatically turned off their phones on the
way to church every Sunday. Today should have been no different.

Anna glanced at the text message and thumbed the little phone off, then dropped it in her denim messenger bag. As they sat
in their usual pew five rows back on the left side, Laurie heard sniffles and the stifled sound of weeping as the church filled.

Cale opened the service with a eulogy that was as short as Randi’s life had been. His text was 1 John 4:10: “Herein is love,
not that we loved God, but that he loved us . . .” Laurie glanced over at Tanya and hoped that she was able to take it in.
God’s love was active. And so was theirs, right there in the church. Tanya might not be able to see it now, but some day she
would, and the care all around her would comfort her.

Then, one by one, Randi’s classmates got up and walked to the podium. Kate Parsons moved with the confidence and assurance
of the social leader that Laurie wished Anna would be. Even after their uncomfortable conversation of the other night, she
still had hopes. People grew and changed—and a fourteen-year-old changed her mind a dozen times a day.

Kate’s father, Neil, was a lawyer, and as far as Laurie knew, his appearance in church today was a first. His wife, Noreen,
came once in a while, but she’d declined to join their study group even though they’d invited her more than once.

Tears rolled down Kate’s perfect skin as her soft voice filled the church, mourning the loss of a schoolmate “who dressed
like a real original” and who “is remembered every day.” Brendan O’Day spoke next, and a girl called Rose Silverstein, both
of whom Laurie had not met personally, but whose parents she knew by reputation. Everyone knew Brendan O’Day’s father—he was
as full of bombast as the furniture crates in his warehouses. He ran the Hawthorne House chain from its head office in Pittsburgh,
selling reproductions of English country-house interiors to people who thought they deserved them. She couldn’t stand Jack
O’Day, but he and Colin sat on the church board, and she was as sweet as southern tea whenever they met.

Tanya didn’t get up. Laurie was glad that Mary Lou and Debbie had worked with her on the scrapbook—it formed the record of
Randi’s life that Tanya was too shattered to say out loud.

During the last hymn, Laurie and her team slipped downstairs to the multipurpose room and got the coffeepots going and the
trays of cake and cookies and sliced fruit laid out on the tables. It didn’t take long for the room to fill once the memorial
was over. Cammie made sure Tanya had a comfortable place to sit and brought her a plate full of food, heavy on the protein.

Cammie was not a nutritionist for nothing.

Laurie laid a paper doily over a round plastic serving tray and began to arrange her famous pecan tarts on it. On the other
side of the table, Natalie Martinez moved a tray of coconut squares from the meat table onto the one that held sweets, and
said to Maggie Lesser, “I hear the police are making their rounds.”

“I know,” Maggie said. “I just talked to Joyce Silverstein. I can’t tell you how glad I am that my Kevin’s only in fourth
grade. You have to hand it to Rose, though.” She glanced at the other end of the long table, where the teenagers were piling
their paper plates high with sweets. “Interrogated one night and eulogizing her friend the next. That’s character.”

“Why are they interrogating Rose? She babysits for us. She’s the last person who would be involved in . . . something like
this.”

Natalie stole a mini cherry cheesecake. “They’re interrogating everybody. No one is exempt, apparently.” She glanced around
her. “Rose. Kate. Even Anna Hale.”

A skinny man in tight jeans and a silk shirt stepped in front of Laurie, and she restrained herself from pushing him out of
the way.

While she waited impatiently for him to move so she could join her friends, Natalie went on: “Who’d ever have thought something
like this would happen in our town? Especially among kids we all know.”

“How do we really know what they’re thinking?” Maggie asked. “With all this TV violence and sex and shootings in the schools
. . . man,” she said on a sigh. “High school isn’t what it was when we were young, that’s for sure. But still, you’d think
you’d be able to write some kids off the suspect list. Anna, for instance. Or Kyle Edgar or Kelci Platt.”

The skinny guy finally stopped filling his plate with desserts, and Laurie pushed past him.

“I don’t know,” Natalie went on as Laurie came up behind her, “sometimes the quiet types are the worst. I mean, Anna is a
lovely kid, but in a murder investigation you can’t rule anyone out. Still waters run deep, if you know what I mean.”

Laurie could stand it no longer. Natalie’s tone had Anna clothed in jailhouse orange and manacles by sundown. “Come on, Nat,”
she said as she joined them. “We have to stand behind our kids, don’t we?”

She couldn’t help a little internal smile of satisfaction at Natalie’s guilty start. That would teach her to talk behind people’s
backs.

“Of course we do,” Natalie said. She made a quick recovery, Laurie would give her that. “I’m just saying that Anna, like so
many of these other kids, is a deep person. Teenagers don’t put it all out there like younger kids do. They keep secrets.”

“Not about this. Anna was completely up front with Nick and Gil when they came by. I’m sure the others were, too.”

Nick and Gil. She used their first names deliberately. These women could use a reminder that the investigating officer was
family. The Hales and Tremores didn’t harbor criminals. They brought them to justice.

“I’m sure she was,” Maggie said. “But I heard that Anna was one of the ones on the bridge that night.”

“You heard wrong,” Laurie replied. “Anna has already explained that she was at home and in bed. Who is saying this?”

Maggie shrugged. “I can’t remember. There’s so much talk going around.”

“Well, I hope you set them straight. It’s just . . . ridiculous, that’s all.”

Natalie and Maggie looked at one another. What? What did that look mean? Why were they even entertaining for one second the
thought that Anna had been involved in any way? They’d all known one another for most of their lives. Maggie had babysat Anna
herself, times without number, and Laurie had done the same for her three kids.

These women were her friends. If they couldn’t defend Anna, the least they could do was not pass on gossip about her.

Laurie was drawing a breath to tell them so, when Maggie gripped her arm. “Laurie. Is that—?”

She followed Maggie’s gaze to the skinny man, who was sharing his plate of dessert with an equally skinny girl with mousy
brown hair and talking to Kate Parsons and Brendan O’Day.

“Who? The guy in the silk shirt?”

“Yes!” She sounded breathless. “Isn’t that Jimmy Tyler? You know, the lead singer of Wolf?”

Natalie stared. “I haven’t heard anything of them in twenty years. They used to be as big as Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and
bands like that in the seventies, didn’t they?”

Laurie was not ready to talk about aging rock singers. “His daughter was a friend of Randi’s, apparently.”

“Really? Rose said something about that, but I didn’t think it was true. Come on, Nat. Let’s go talk to him.”

“Are you kidding?” But Natalie let Maggie drag her over, and Laurie gave up. She’d talk to them later, or maybe bring it up
at Bible study. They had to stick together, to believe in each other, or where would they be? Gossiping around town and hurting
one another, that’s where.

She turned and practically ran into Janice Edgar. “Oops.” She took the other woman’s forearms to steady her. Fine wool crepe
by some high-end designer crumpled under her fingers. “Sorry about that.”

“Not to worry.” Janice glanced over at Natalie and Maggie, who had taken Jimmy Tyler the plate of coconut squares. “I see
the news of our visiting celebrity is out.”

“Anna told the police that Randi had made him up.” Laurie took one of her own tarts to fortify herself. “Apparently not. No
one could make up clothes like that.”

Janice’s attention swung to her abruptly. “The police came to talk to Anna?”

“Sure. They said they had two hundred teenagers on the list. Practically everyone at the high school. Kyle, too?”

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

At least she believed in her son, even if others didn’t. Laurie felt the first flicker of affinity with Janice.

“Unbelievable or not, I’m glad Anna isn’t involved,” she admitted. “We have enough on our plate with helping Tanya survive
this.”

Janice’s face wavered, and then steely control seemed to bring her features back to their usual smiling calm. “I’m glad you
know Anna had no part in it. I wish I could say the same.”

To group: Budz

From: JohnnysGrrl

Someone’s talking. Better not B u. Nice funeral huh? How bout that Jimmy Tyler? Ha ha.

N
ick didn’t consider
himself a type A kind of guy. He didn’t fly off the handle; he thought things through. He never leaped to conclusions, and
he liked clean evidence and orderly thinking. He’d seen the results of road rage a time or two, and that had even cured him
of any urges he might have had toward reckless driving.

But orderly thinking wasn’t doing him any good today. Not after he’d received Lisa Nguyen’s e-mail with her written preliminary
findings and the attached zip file full of digital photographs of Randi’s autopsy.

Between those and Forrest Christopher’s investigation of the crime scene on the bridge, the sequence of events had become
clear. But even if she had been pushed, and had gone over either accidentally or by design, why had no one jumped in to help,
why had no one called 911? If Randi had still been breathing when she went under, maybe she could have survived.

He glanced again at the photograph of her skull. Maybe.

The list of teenagers on the bridge was now part of the permanent record in his brain. Nobody was admitting to seeing anything.
Kate Parsons and her little crew of two, Rose Silverstein and Kelci Platt, had bought sodas and chocolate bars at the Stop-N-Go
and stopped to talk to Kyle Edgar, Brendan, and another boy named Morgan Williams. According to them, the conversation hadn’t
lasted more than half an hour or so. Kate thought she’d seen Anna Hale and another girl talking to Randi under the trees,
but Kyle said he hadn’t seen Anna since their last class, earlier in the day.

Nick was a little more inclined to believe Kyle than Kate, especially when Anna had said she was at home in bed. In that case,
who had really been talking to Randi under the trees? He’d be extremely interested in interviewing that person.

He’d also be interested in getting a straight story about what had happened to Randi between talking under the trees and falling
into the river, because every statement in this folder said something different.

Were kids really that scatterbrained and unobservant? Or were they just all lying through their orthodontically perfect teeth?

He printed the report and the photographs and slid them into the case folder. With the funeral today, it was only a matter
of time before Randi’s mother would be asking for answers. It was Nick’s job to provide them.

Too bad he didn’t have any at the moment. Just a boatload of new questions.

Those teenagers held the key. One or all of them were hiding the truth about what happened. He was just going to have to lean
harder on them, and sooner or later somebody would crack.