Safe from Harm (9781101619629) (2 page)

One

A
nnie Laurie and I had long since finished dinner at Gina and John Redman's house. It had been dusk when we arrived and now it was full dark out on their back porch where we'd all eaten Gina's wonderful dinner by the light of oil lamps. The Gulf Coast of Texas had at last cooled and the October night was brisk for an alfresco meal, but John had called ahead to warn us to dress warmly. In jeans and sweaters, we were comfortable and the dinner had been a delight. Our older daughter, Merrie, was back at Texas Tech, starting her sophomore year, our fifteen-year-old, Jo, was at a friend's. It was nice to have an adult evening.

It was time to go, but we were enjoying the conversation, and the excellent pinot noir, and the companionship of really good friends.

As a preacher, I get plenty of dinner invitations. Preachers, like politicians, are treated like dignitaries, even if, in my case that would be a minor dignitary. A dinner invitation from the Redmans, though, was not a command performance; it was a privilege. John and Gina are both close to sixty, more than ten years older than me and Annie Laurie, more than fifteen years for Annie. But the age difference has never affected our relationship. The Redmans had welcomed us to our new congregation from the beginning. When I found that John had played football for Texas A&M, a rival of my own alma mater, the University of Texas, that sealed it. John liked to joke that he had played running back, a brain position, whereas I had played offensive lineman, a brawn position, but we both know that without my position, his position would be turf jam. I'd gotten my nickname, Bear, from playing offensive lineman—my real name, Walker Wells, sounded too leisurely for a guy who was powering two-hundred and fifty pounders off their feet.

My cell phone pinged to tell me I had a text message. It was from Jo, our youngest daughter. The message said, “Come home.” Nothing else. Not a lot of information there. Just enough to make a dad worry.

I called Jo's cell, but she didn't pick up. I called the house and let it ring until the voice mail picked up. Did it again. I told myself everything was fine. Jo was fine.

I handed my phone to Annie Laurie so she could see Jo's text, and we made our goodbyes, accepted a bag of Gina's homemade rolls, said the next time was our turn and got in the car. Annie Laurie pushed the Call button six times every minute of the ten it took us to get home.

The house was dark, as we'd left it, except for the lamp on the foyer table. Our Newfoundland, Baby Bear, wasn't there to greet us and Jo didn't answer when we called her name. My heart was cinching up inside me and I put a hand out to keep Annie Laurie back, but she pushed past me and ran up the stairs to Jo's room. I was on her heels.

Jo sat cross-legged on the floor of her dark room. Baby Bear sat next to her and leaned his heavy, hairy frame against Jo's thin back. His breath came out in little whistling cries and his tail made anxious, uncertain sweeps. He glanced from me to Annie Laurie and gave a pleading yowl, then pushed up firmer behind Jo and panted in her ear.

Jo's waist-length hair was loose, and tented over the body of the loose-limbed girl she rocked back and forth in her arms. The girl's long, lanky legs stretched out awkwardly, and her head lolled against Jo's shoulder, her eyes open and sightless, the pupils like pinpricks. It was Phoebe Pickersley, Jo's friend who had not been a friend.

As my fingers dialed 911, my head started saying,
Please God, please God, please God
without any help from me.

Annie dropped to her knees and put a hand against the girl's throat. Her fingers searched. She said, “Oh, my Lord.” It was a cry.

I knew God had said, “No.”

As I spoke to the 911 operator, Jo looked up. Her eyes were clear and wide and there were no tears. She pushed her mother's hand away.

“She's not dead, Mom,” Jo said.

“Okay, sweetheart.” Annie's voice was squeezed tight.

“She's
not
, right?” Jo is at that halfway age where she wants us to fix things, even when she knows we can't.

“All right, Jo.” Annie cleared her throat. “Daddy's going to put Phoebe on the bed, okay?” Annie Laurie stroked Jo's hair back from her face.

I disconnected, having told the dispatcher everything I could. On an impulse, I texted James Wanderley, a local detective I knew who'd once told me he'd like to shoot me. He didn't mean it. I don't think he meant it.

I said, “We shouldn't move her . . .”

Annie gave me a sharp look. “This is Sugar Land, Bear, not
CSI
.”

I didn't think it mattered where we were, but I crossed to Jo and gently lifted Phoebe from her arms. The girl was clammy, pale, and as light and boneless as a dead kitten. Light enough to crush your heart. Phoebe's eyes stared and her bluish lips opened when her head fell back against my arm. Her open mouth was stained a deep purple, like a child who'd been eating popsicles, which made the alterations she had made to her body seem all the more like mutilations. Phoebe's short hair was dyed black, but natural blonde roots showed beneath. Dime-sized gold circles rimmed the holes in her earlobes, holes large enough to stick a pencil through. There was a gold ring through one nostril, another through an inky eyebrow. Her navel was pierced, and circled with a tattoo—a snake swallowing its tail. Her toes had black polish on the broken nails, and her bare, white feet were chafed and raw and scratched. It was those cold feet that did it to me. Poor thing, I thought.
Poor, poor baby girl.

But mixed with my horror and compassion was a guilty gratitude that Phoebe was not my child.

I laid the dead girl on the bed next to Jo's. I straightened her arms and legs, and smoothed back the short, black hair that framed her empty face. I drew her lids down over the blank eyes and closed her mouth. There was a quilt folded over the brass headboard, one my mother had pieced before Jo was born. It looked soft and warm and I draped it over this lost child and tucked it around her cold, white feet.

Annie Laurie knelt before Jo, her arms around Jo's neck, her fingers combing through the silky mass of Jo's hair. Jo clutched her sweatshirt to her and kept rocking. Annie murmured and cajoled, trying to get Jo out of the room. Jo used her mother's shoulder to get to her feet, my tiny dancer clumsy and awkward. Jo reached a hand out, unseeing. Baby Bear laid his muzzle in the open, expectant palm, and followed as Jo drew him with her. She stumbled out the door and across the hall to the bathroom, and I heard her running water in the sink before puzzle pieces clicked together in my head and I threw myself across the hall and into Jo's bathroom.

Jo had a Dixie Cup of water in one hand, and the other raised to her mouth.

I snatched Jo's hand away and pried her fingers open. Two orange tablets. I picked them up and slapped at my pockets, searching for my glasses.

Annie Laurie, behind me, said, “Give them to me, Bear.”

Jo slumped against the wall.

I handed them to her and cradled Jo in my arms, holding her like the baby she'd once been, still was.

Annie Laurie sighed and passed the tablets back to Jo.

“Acetaminophen. Generic.”

I felt an internal collapse of relief and pressed my face into the back of Jo's warm neck and breathed in my child's salty smell.

The doorbell rang; there was a pounding; the bell rang again. I sat Jo on the toilet seat and ran downstairs to open the door to the EMS men who would be able to do nothing, nothing, nothing . . . except take Phoebe away.

And I knew in my heart that while some would grieve for the loss of this heartbreak of a girl, there were some who would not be sorry at all. There were some who would be glad Phoebe was dead. I wasn't counting Jo.

Jo hadn't meant it when she'd said she wished Phoebe was dead.

Two

I
met Phoebe's father and stepmother two years before I met Phoebe. Mark and Lizabeth Pickersley-Smythe. “Smythe” pronounced so that it rhymes with “writhe.” Make of that what you will.

More than two years ago, Mark and Liz and their twin baby boys had joined the church I serve as minister. Mark and Liz were in their early forties which made them old to be starting a family, but with all the wondertechs working on fertility, it wasn't unheard of.

Mark had the easy grace of a natural athlete, too, and though he hadn't played college ball, it was only because an injury stopped him. He'd had the offers. I knew because John Redman told me. In the first couple of months after they joined, I had about fifty women in my church tell me Mark was a good-looking guy, in more detail than I cared for, and the oldest of these could have been my grandmother. She's the one who told me that Mark looked “So fine, I could eat that boy with a spoon.” I didn't need to hear that.

Lizabeth was different. All that came effortlessly to Mark had clearly been labored for in Liz. Even with the adjustments I suspected a surgeon had made, she wasn't a beauty. Some might call her handsome. I don't know. She just didn't fit together well. Her button nose didn't fit the strong bones of her face—and her eyes were on the small side. Just as she didn't have her husband's looks and grace, neither did she have his way with people. She could get people to do what she wanted them to—she was aces at that, but she couldn't make them like her. And looking back with all I know now, I know Liz was lonely. That maybe she had always been lonely. I felt uncomfortable and edgy around her, and instead of taking the time to know her, to understand where those words were coming from, I avoided her. I failed her in that way.

At the “get-to-know-you” session in the new members' class, Liz told us she had gone to work at a failing packaging company (which meant they made cardboard boxes if I understood right) straight out of grad school. Within three years she was running it; in ten, she owned it. She sold to the big boys months before the economic free fall that left a number of church members with half the retirement funds they had had months earlier. She got married and had the twins, and bought a house in the Sweetwater neighborhood. Homes there start at a million and a half; when she told us what their neighborhood was, she was telling us how much the house cost. And there was nothing about how
they
got married, and
they
had twins and
they
bought a house. I'm not saying the pronoun thing meant all that much. It was interesting, that's all.

“Now it's time to enjoy the life I worked for,” she ended brightly.

It was one of the more self-congratulatory speeches I'd heard, and I found Liz off-putting right there at the beginning, but Lizabeth's frank and unself-conscious enjoyment of her achievements went some way toward disarming me. Finally one other brave soul in a skirt and cardigan spoke up.

“I guess I'll go next. My name is Melinda Turnipseed, and yes, that's my real name.”

There was relieved laughter all around. Nobody else in the circle said more than they had to, including Mark, who said only that he'd met Lizabeth through work and was glad to know us. He had a soft, self-deprecating way of speaking that didn't match his expensive suit. Lizabeth's eyes were on him, bright and approving and possessive. She gave a nod when he'd finished, the kind you'd give a well-coached kindergartener. For all her off-putting ways, though, I have to give Liz credit, too. Liz labored for our church.

•   •   •

Lizabeth took to church volunteer opportunities like a CEO with time on her hands, which is what she was, and if she was high-handed in her dealings with the other volunteers (which she was), she was also effective. Shortly after the Pickersley-Smythes had placed membership, I'd begun to hear stories from Rebecca, my secretary.

“Your new couple, the Pickersley-Smythes . . .” Rebecca over enunciated the complicated last name—everybody did. It wasn't a name that rolled off the tongue.

“. . . they're stepping on toes.” Rebecca had tapped on my door and walked in without waiting for an answer. I was working on my sermon, but I looked up. She stood in front of me, her arms crossed over her bosom.

Rebecca stands about five foot five, but she's got the bosom of a six-footer. Since she's slim-hipped and slim-legged, I never feel like there's quite enough surface area tying her to the ground. She looks precariously balanced.

“Let me clarify,” Rebecca said. “
She's
stepping on toes. Lizabeth. I only hear good things about Mark.”

Mark played golf with the men's golf fellowship and tennis with some of the die-hard tennis players, and both groups had reported that he could sub as a pro at the Bridgewater Country Club. He was that good.

“So, whose toes?” I asked.

“Katherine isn't heading up the bookstore ministry anymore.”

“She's not?”

“No,” Rebecca said, “Lizabeth Pickersley-Smythe is. She said we were paying too much for the books, and selling them for too little. She has a contact who can get them for us cheaper.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And how's that working out?” I highlighted a scripture that clarified the point I was trying to make in Sunday's sermon.

“She
can
get the books cheaper, and it's too early to tell if we can sell them for more than we were.”

“Weren't we selling them at our cost?” I thought the idea was to get helpful books and CDs and DVDs into people's hands.

“Lizabeth did a big sell on how profits from the bookstore could help fund our food distribution program; then she called for a vote—something that has never been done at a bookstore ministry meeting. Everyone was so wound up that she carried the day. Katherine e-mailed this morning to say she was stepping down, due to scheduling conflicts.”

“But you don't think Katherine quit because of scheduling conflicts.” I pushed away from the keyboard.

“I think Katherine decided that any schedule that included Lizabeth meant there was going to be conflict.” Rebecca pulled aside one of my guest chairs and sat down. Rebecca almost never sits down in my office.

“What do you want to tell me, Rebecca?”

“A couple of things,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I don't want you to think I'm gossiping.”

Rebecca doesn't gossip. I have a lot of respect for her judgment. When there is congregational news she thinks I should know, she tells me, and only me. Even though Rebecca actually attends the Baptist Church across the freeway, not our church, she hears more than I do. Now, the way she goes about telling me things, that's something that could be improved on. She's a tad circuitous.

“All right.” I shut my laptop.

“Okay.” Rebecca settled in her chair and adjusted the back cushion. “Well, Lizabeth has reorganized the church kitchen, which I think has needed reorganization since long past. But Lizabeth didn't say a word to anyone. She must have checked the kitchen out at the last Ladies' Bible Class luncheon, because two days later, Lizabeth shows up and by the time she left, around five or so, the kitchen was done. Every lid without a pot got thrown out. Mismatched Tupperware, gone. Those grills that fit the old stove but don't fit the new? Gone. A place for everything and everything in its place.

“That woman cleaned around the fridge handle with a toothpick. I saw her do it. I was about to get myself a grapefruit seltzer and there she is, she takes a toothpick, puts it in her mouth and nibbles the tip so it's frayed, then dips it in a mayonnaise jar lid where she's poured Pine-Sol, and careful, careful, she cleans all around the fridge handle where the handle meets the door.”

“With mayonnaise and Pine-Sol?”

Rebecca leveled her eyes at me.

“Bear. It was a clean jar lid. She was using it like a little bowl. One she could throw out later. And she has laminated a how-to sheet, how everything is supposed to be cleaned and stored, put it in a magnetic frame and put it front and center on the freezer door. And she's labeled every single drawer and cabinet in the kitchen. ‘Paring knives and peelers.' That's a for-instance.”

“So, that's a good thing, right?”

I was looking for the problem here. I mean, Lizabeth wasn't smoking in the girls' room, or anything, right?

“Yeah, it's a good thing, Bear, everything Lizabeth puts her hand to is done well. That's who Lizabeth is.”

“Okay . . .” I said.

“Thing is, she's not exactly a team player. It's not like she doesn't ask for everyone's input, but that's all for show, like some kind of management ploy she learned in grad school. She takes in all the ideas, points out their pros and cons—and she's great at this, Bear, leaves each speaker feeling heard and appreciated— then she does a recap, calls for a vote, and, surprise! It's Lizabeth's idea that wins the vote, hands down.” Rebecca slapped the top of my desk for emphasis.

“But her ideas
are
voted on . . . ?” I asked.

“I just said so,” said Rebecca.

“And her ideas are best?” I linked a couple of paper clips, added a rubber band to the chain.

Rebecca stared at me long enough for it to get uncomfortable. Then she got up from her chair and headed out of the office.

“Right. Whatever, Bear. I'm letting you know you've got a barracuda swimming with your guppies. Do what you want to about it.”

So even back then I knew that Liz was a force to be reckoned with.

I just figured there had to be room in the church for the overcontrolling.

Then that overcontrolling woman had an out-of-control teenage stepdaughter dropped in her life. Turned out, Mark had a daughter from his first marriage. This was a surprise because no one I'd talked to had mentioned either an ex or a daughter.

Two years after Mark and Liz joined our congregation, Jenny, Mark's ex-wife, died, and Phoebe came to live with Liz and Mark and the three-year-old twins. Phoebe moved in with Mark and Liz the same month I got shot—not my fault, in spite of what some people had to say about it—so it was a few weeks before I met her. That business on TV where the guy gets shot and he bounces right back up, ready for more action? Not so much. It was Annie who told me about the new addition over at the Pickersley-Smythes.

“When I married Mark I did
not
bargain on having his scarecrow of a daughter come to live with us, I can tell you that.” That's what Annie told me Liz had said to her. Get what I mean about the things that come out of Liz's mouth?

“What did you say back?” I asked Annie Laurie.

“Not a thing. I stood there gaping like a gaffed fish, Bear—I couldn't get my jaw back in place. That girl's mother had just died and she has come to live with her dad, and Liz acts like she's just learned she struck a bad bargain.”

It wasn't a good beginning, and it didn't get better.

My first look at Phoebe was when Jo, my youngest, brought her home after school. I wouldn't have called Phoebe a scarecrow. But I understood why Liz had.

I was home that April day, still recuperating. I had been back at the church office and in the pulpit within three weeks, but I wasn't yet back at my old schedule, so that afternoon I'd been in our front yard giving Baby Bear some air when a fire-engine-red Ford F-150 jacked up on monster tires came to a sedate stop in front of our house. I knew that truck. It was Alex Garcia's. Which meant that Alex had driven Jo home from school. I didn't like Alex driving Jo anywhere—she was just fourteen, though until recently, Alex had been driving Jo all over the place. That was something Alex and Jo had not shared with me and Annie, or he wouldn't have been. Alex was sixteen and a junior while Jo was only fourteen and a freshman. We'd found out that Jo had been sneaking out her second-story window to the garage roof where she would drop into the backyard and slip out the back gate to meet Alex. I wasn't happy when I found out about it. You're hearing the understatement, there, right?

When I finally released Jo from being permanently grounded (do you know private citizens are not allowed to buy those ankle-bracelet things they put on at-loose criminals?), I had stipulated that Alex could drive Jo from the high school to our house—that was a journey of all of one-half mile, and it was on residential streets, no stoplights and only two stop signs. The concession still made me feel like an appeasement monkey. But a man's got to have some peace in the house.

On this particular day, Jo hopped out of the truck and dropped to her knees to greet Baby Bear who acted like he hadn't seen her in a year, and said, “Hey, Dad! This is Phoebe Pickersley. Her parents go to our church.”

A long gangle of a girl descended from the passenger side. She clambered out backward, her booted foot feeling for the running board, and then turned to face me.

This was Phoebe.

There's my Jo, a tiny five feet two inches, slim as a sprite, in jeans and a T-shirt, her dark hair flowing to her waist, and Alex, closing in on six feet, blond, blue-eyed and tan, and then, next to them, stood Phoebe.

Phoebe was nearly as tall as Alex. She was breastless and skinny in a boneless, sexless way, an impression enhanced by her short, choppy haircut and the black dye she had covered it with. I knew it was dyed because she had about an inch of pale, blonde roots showing. Phoebe was fighting the androgynous look with heaps of makeup. Her nose and one eyebrow were pierced, and a constellation of tiny silver earrings rose from her earlobe and up around the auricle of her left ear.

She had big blue eyes and a weak chin and round, red cheeks—a childish face. That made her piercings seem especially brutal. Her clothes were like nothing I'd ever seen before. I don't even know how to describe them—like a smashup between a biker babe and an elf, maybe. With her long, skinny limbs and exotic coloring, she looked like a tropical insect set down in suburban Texas.