The Unbidden Truth (4 page)

Todd stood up. He was twelve, still enough of a child to be direct with his gaze and his questions, the flush of childhood still on his cheeks. He looked very much like his father, pale hair, pale blue eyes, wide shoulders. “You want to go on a bike ride with us?” he asked Barbara. “Dad fixed up your bike.”

She glared at Darren, then at Frank, who looked as innocent as a newborn. “What do you mean, fixed it up?”

“Just some tires, a little oil,” Darren said.

“I haven't ridden a bicycle in years,” she said.

“Don't you know how to ride?” Todd asked in amazement.

“Sure she does,” Darren said. “It's like swimming. Once you know how, you never lose it. Your body remembers.”

“You kids go on,” Frank said. “Think I'll mosey over to Jerry's, pick up a few pieces of wood and some screening. I wonder where I left my old stapler?”

He knew perfectly well where he left it, Barbara thought, watching him saunter toward the house. He never misplaced anything.

“You game to give it a try?” Darren asked.

She shrugged. “Sure. Why not. We'll see if my body remembers squat.”

Darren led the way through side streets. The neighborhood they rode in was quiet, with little traffic on the streets, and it was pleasant pedaling from sunshine to shade to sunshine. Some patches of lawn, not irrigated, had already turned golden brown, but flowers and shrubs were in full bloom. The grass was summer-expendable, and also winter-reliable. It would be green again with the first fall rains and then stay green until the following year's summer drought. Soon she stopped admiring the yards and gardens, and was aware only of the increasing soreness of her bottom. She shifted her position again and again; it didn't help, and finally she slowed down, then stopped altogether and got off the bike.

Darren wheeled about and returned to her side. “Problem?”

“Sore butt,” she said. “You guys go on, I'll walk back.”

He swung off his bike. “I'll walk with you. Actually you were doing great for someone who hasn't ridden in twenty years. I was betting myself that you wouldn't last this long.”

Todd joined them, looking disappointed. “That's it?”

“Todd, be kind to me,” Barbara said. “I am an old woman, and my butt is sore.”

He whooped with laughter and raced on ahead.

“Why did you decide to come along?” Darren asked after a minute or two of silence.

“I wanted to see if it was true that the body remembers. I remember how I struggled to learn in the first place. I kept falling over.”

“Yeah, I know. It's an impossible task, keeping your balance, learning to steer and pedal at the same time. You have to learn it all together, but once it's there, it's always there.”

“Do you think it would be like that for other things people learn? Like a foreign language, or playing an instrument? Once you learn it, you remember, or your body or hands remember?”

“Pretty much. You had a wobbly moment at first, then somatic memory took over. Your body responded to synapses your brain formed years ago. I had a patient once, a Hungarian woman in her fifties, brought over when she was five or six and never spoke or heard Hungarian again until she was forty. She said she heard Hungarian being spoken on a train in France, and at first it was like gibberish, her wobbly moment, but suddenly it was music to her ears.”

“You think it would be like that with a musical instrument? A violin or guitar, or a piano?”

“I think so. Every bit of real learning involves synapse formation, and once there and reinforced through usage, they remain, ready to fire again given the proper cues. The younger you are when you learn, the stronger the synapse linkages are, the more ineradicable they are. That's what we work with all the time in physical therapy, forming new synapses, teaching an undamaged part of the brain to take over the functions that the previously trained part can't do any longer. Anything particular on your mind?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I'm not sure.”

They walked on in silence, and she was thinking about Carrie in her cell practicing on an imaginary piano, listening to imaginary music, correcting her wobbles as she went.

It took longer to walk back to Frank's house than she had anticipated; the ride had not seemed that long. Todd raced up the streets, back down, waited for them at the corners, then raced on again. Showing off for her, Darren said, when he came zooming by “no hands.”

“Why me? Why not you?”

Darren just laughed.

At Frank's house, he didn't go in with her. “I told the brat we'd take our ride, then have pizza,” he said in the driveway. “A soaking bath with Epsom salts is what you need.”

She grimaced, then nodded. “Exactly.”

Todd caught up with them again and grinned at her. “It won't hurt so much next time.”

“Next week,” Darren said, “after they toast you royally, will you bring Frank over to my place? I'll grill some steaks or something.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Great,” Darren said and got on his bike again; he and Todd headed toward the park. She understood that he had led before to avoid the crowded path there, to let her practice without an audience.

 

“I don't know, Dad,” she said later in the kitchen. “It looks like I'll have to find the foster parents eventually and see what they can tell me. I hate that amnesia thing. She learned to play the piano before she was eight, and evidently didn't touch one again until she spotted the grand piano in the lounge. You'd think she would have come across a piano somewhere along the line before that.”

He paused in slicing tomatoes. “Maybe it took a grand piano to stir up her memory if that's what she learned on. Maybe just any keyboard wouldn't have done it.”

“And just how many houses have grand pianos hanging around?”

“Good point. So come up with a better explanation.” He resumed slicing.

She sipped her wine, watching him do his thing with dinner. While she could admire his skill, she had absolutely no desire to emulate it. Or try to.

“You want to set the table?” he asked. “Maybe out on the porch. Nice out there this time of day.”

Or any time of day, she thought and stood up. She groaned. It hurt to stand up, and it hurt more when she first sat down. Frank chuckled and tried to disguise it with a cough.

She didn't linger long after dinner; her mind was on a soaking bath with Epsom salts, and the things she had to do the following day. First, formalize her arrangement with Carrie, then arrange for bail. Before, it had not been an option; now it was. Consult with Shelley and Bailey, get them started. But first a good soak.

 

That night Carrie was too restless to go to sleep. All those questions, and there would be more and more with no end. Questions she couldn't answer. Then one of the snapshot memories that tormented her rushed in.

 

She saw herself lying in bed, her eyes closed hard, hands over her ears, but there was no way she could block the voices, or stop the images. They were yelling again, Stuart and Adrienne, in the living room. She crept down the hall and listened.

“For God's sake, I can't stand much more of this! She's been telling Wanda's kids her fantasies like they're real. A house with a thousand rooms! Her father and that goddamn king. Uncle Silly and Aunt Loony. She's the loony one! They didn't tell us that she's a mental case. I want to send her back.”

“Adrienne, give her time. You know what they said. Post-
traumatic stress, that's all it is. The poor kid lost her parents, she nearly died. She just needs a little time.”

“Time isn't going to cure her! You heard that caseworker. Schizophrenia. She can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, dreams and being awake. It's all the same to her, and it just gets worse. She's crazy! She might even become dangerous. She belongs in an institution, a mental hospital.”

She was crawling backward, faster, faster, then rose and ran to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet. Hospital and pain, send her back there. She washed her face and studied herself in the mirror, looking for craziness. Her hair was still short from where they shaved it off. It stuck out like a porcupine or something. Ugly. She'll never cut it again, and she won't talk about the house with the thousand rooms and Uncle Silly and Aunt Loony. They weren't real, nothing she remembered was real. That's what crazy meant. You couldn't tell what's real and what wasn't.

 

A train whistle jolted her and the memory was gone as swiftly as it had come. Sometimes it sounded as if the trains were coming through the jail, they were so close. That was real, she thought. Down the corridor someone was sobbing. That was real. She was in jail, charged with murder. And that was real, too.

B
y late Monday afternoon Barbara had finished most of the tasks on her list. She entered her office, waved to Maria, who was on the phone, and looked in on Shelley, who was at her computer.

“When you have a minute, come on back,” Barbara said, and headed to her own office.

“Coffee?” Maria asked, hanging up the phone. “I just made it.”

“You're an angel, you know that?” Barbara said. In her office, she put her briefcase on the round table with its lovely inlaid semiprecious stones, sat down and put her feet on the table next to the briefcase.

Shelley came after her and held the door for Maria, who was bringing a tray and the coffee service. “What's up?” Shelley asked, seating herself across from Barbara.

“Your father called and asked me to give him a ring when you got here,” Maria said. “Okay?”

“Sure, call him. Send him on back when he gets here. Anything else cooking?”

“Not a thing.” She left again. Not only did she have an uncanny sense of when to expect Barbara to return, she also knew when to bring up inconsequential matters and when to pretend they didn't exist.

Shelley poured coffee, then settled back waiting.

Barbara told her about Louise Braniff's visit and her follow-up, and was still at it when Frank tapped on the door and came in.

“So there it is,” Barbara said, including him now. “I posted her bail bond, and we retrieved her car and picked up her belongings from the house, and got her a motel room, where she said she intended to take two or three baths. She can't stay in a motel room more than a few days. We'll need to help her find an apartment, and that won't be easy. No references and awaiting trial. Not a great recommendation.”

She didn't add the comments Bill Spassero had made: that Carrie would have realized exactly what prison meant in a couple of weeks and then copped a plea for any sentence less than what faced her for conviction for murder, which was a sure bet. He had not yet looked at all the material the investigators had collected, and he wouldn't have done so until closer to the trial, she well knew. Overworked was hardly the word for the caseload he had.

And there was no reason to add his comment about Shelley, that he had been seeing her around, and she looked terrific, but different. And she was different. She was keeping her golden hair cut short, but more than that, she had matured
in the past year and was no longer simply Valley-girl pretty, but rather beautiful, with a radiance she had not shown before. No longer floating in her bubble of happiness, with her feet firmly attached to the ground now, she still could not conceal her contentment.

“I'll find her an apartment,” Shelley said. “What else?”

“See if you can track down the Colberts. Last known address was in Terre Haute, but that was fourteen years ago. God knows where they are now.” She got out her notes with the address and gave it to Shelley, then handed her a copy of the newspaper clipping about Ronald and Marla Frederick. “This will be harder, to find out anything about them, and I might have to sic Bailey on to it, but see if there's anything readily available. They died twenty-four years ago, death certificates issued in Boston. Can do?”

“Sure.”

If she failed to find them, Barbara knew that Bailey would dig until he did. He was the best detective in the business.

“I called Barry Longner,” Frank said. “There most certainly is a Benevolent Ladies Club, and they do good works, and hasn't the weather been fine recently.”

Barbara grinned. “And Louise Braniff has been with the university for twenty-some years, does volunteer work here and there, and has not a single blemish. Way it goes.” She stretched. “Well, I'll read the material Bill gave me, have Bailey in in the morning to get him digging, and Carrie's coming in at ten and we'll go over all that stuff together. I want you to meet her, Shelley.”

“When you're done here drop by the house and I'll give you some dinner,” Frank said, rising.

“And I'll get started with the Colberts,” Shelley added.

After they left together, Barbara pulled her briefcase around and withdrew the folder Bill Spassero had handed her.

 

“Okay,” she said to Bailey the next morning. “That's the basic story.” He was actually sitting upright with a notebook out, coffee at hand. He was dressed in chinos and a sport shirt open at the neck, with a lightweight jacket draped over his chair back. He carried the jacket, but never wore it. She suspected he believed it made him look respectable, and he was wrong. He would never look respectable. He looked like a bum who bought every stitch of clothing he owned at Goodwill.

“Apparently no one heard a gunshot. It was Wenzel's gun. His only brother, Larry Wenzel, and Larry's son, Luther, were at Bellingham from Saturday morning until they were notified on Sunday that Joe had been killed. The other son, Gregory, was home with his mother until about eleven, when he left to join friends who had been to a movie. He was with them until two, and left with a woman. They were together in her apartment about an hour or so. Time of death between twelve and two. Larry's wife was home on the telephone talking to her daughter-in-law—Luther's wife—and her daughter-in-law's mother from about eleven until twenty minutes later, her car in a garage being serviced.” Bailey raised his eyebrows, and she added, “Larry had taken his car to the airport and left it there. Moving on, two different couples saw Joe and Carrie outside the motel.” She gave him their names. “One couple said Carrie was walking and he was tagging along toward the rear of the parking lot. The other two said she was at his open door, apparently talking to him, and she entered and closed the door.

“There's a Web site for the company, but I want more than
the puff piece there. Dig into them a bit, and check them all out.” She gave him the manager's name, and that of the bartender. “Shelley found the Colberts, but not a thing about Ronald and Marla Frederick. Here's a copy of their death certificates, and the article about their deaths.” She studied the copy of the article one more time, then drew in her breath and handed it to Bailey. “What's wrong with that?”

He read it, glanced at her and read it again, then grunted. “Where's it from? What town or city? What's the date? Frontage Road. Jeez, every town in America has a Frontage Road.”

“And where did the newspaper get the photograph?” she said. “It says there that all their possessions were destroyed in the fire after the crash. Where did the photo come from?”

He nodded, put the article down and made another note.

“Just a little more,” she said then. “Apparently Joe went to the bank on Friday, visited his safe-deposit box, deposited a check for five thousand and withdrew a thousand. It was missing when they found his body.” She told him which bank.

“I sure hope your client didn't turn up with a thousand bucks in her pocket when they nabbed her,” he said.

“Almost that bad. She put two new tires on her car the next week.”

“And they let her out on bail? Incredible.”

“Okay, that's it for now.” He was hardly out the door before she was at the phone dialing the number for Stuart Colbert. She reached Adrienne Colbert and made an appointment to talk with them both on Friday afternoon. Adrienne had a shrill voice and asked many questions before agreeing to see her. Barbara walked to the outer office and asked Maria to get her a seat on a flight to Phoenix. Carrie arrived then.

She was still in the outer office after introducing Carrie to
Shelley and Maria, when to her surprise Frank turned up. “Good morning,” he said. “I was on the way to my office and thought I'd drop in to meet our new client.”

He looked very much the successful attorney in his pale gray summer suit and white shirt and tie. Barbara made the introduction, then added, “Dad often works on my cases with us.”

“How do you do, Ms. Frederick,” Frank said, taking her hand. “I won't stay this morning, but I hope to see more of you as we work on your behalf. Are you comfortable enough in your motel room?”

Although Carrie had appeared measurably more relaxed when she arrived, she looked puzzled and a touch apprehensive as they shook hands. “My room is a lot more comfortable than the one I just left,” she said. “It's fine.”

“Good. Well, I'll be on my way.”

And what was that all about? Barbara wondered, shook her head and took Carrie on back to her office.

“What we'll do is sit over here,” Barbara said, motioning to the sofa and chairs by the coffee table. “Coffee, tea, soda, anything like that for you?” Carrie said no. “Okay, maybe a little later. Just get comfortable and we'll talk. I want to go over the statements the police collected, tell you what they have and ask questions. If you get tired, or want to use the rest room, or decide you want something to drink, just holler. Okay?”

“Sure.” Carrie looked around at the office, then said, “This looks good. Impressive.”

“Shelley's father and mine outfitted it,” Barbara said. “Proud daddies, I guess. On my budget it would have been secondhand stuff, crates, cushions on the floor.”

Carrie flashed her big toothy smile, not believing a word of it apparently.

“What I want to start with is the night Wenzel was killed. Tell me what you did when you finished playing.”

“I told you. I got up and left. Out to my car—”

“Hold it. I mean a step-by-step playback. You finished playing, then what?”

“I got up and walked around the bar, through the door to the office behind the bar.” She paused. “Like that?”

“Exactly. Did you take your glass with you?”

“No. I never did. Or the bowl with tips either. Mickey always waited a few minutes for customers to toss tips into the bowl and then brought the bowl back to the office for me. Anyway, next to the office there's a dressing room with lockers, and I went there for my purse. I washed my face. I get sweaty playing that long. And tied my hair up off my neck. Mark told me to let it down when I play, more glamorous that way, he said. So I tied it up, went back to the office and put the tips in my purse, and gave Mickey a five. He's the bartender. And I left. Wenzel was by his door when I passed and grabbed my arm. I pulled away and walked faster. The employees had to park in the back. He followed me and I just kept walking. At the car he tried to hold the door open. I already told you all this.”

“Right. Let's backtrack a little. Did you always tip the bartender?”

“Yes. The first night I played he brought me a mixed drink and I told him I don't drink. I do, a little, but only wine and only with food. Hard liquor makes me sick. He said a customer ordered it, and if I didn't have something there, someone else probably would order another one. I asked him to bring me water, and he did. After that he always brought a glass of ice water.”

“You just left it on the piano when you were finished?”

Carrie looked shocked. “I never had it on the piano. He started to put it there the first time, and I told him not to do that. You don't put a glass on the piano. He brought a little table over, and that's where the water was.”

“You always left it there after playing?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“What did you do on your breaks? Where did you go then?”

“Back to the dressing room to hang out. Like I said, I get sweaty. I wash my face and put on fresh makeup usually. Probably I did that night. I don't remember.”

“You didn't walk outside for some fresh air, anything like that?”

“No. I usually did some stretches maybe, just relaxed.”

Barbara nodded. “You had seven hundred dollars when they arrested you, and you had put two new tires on your car that last week. Where did that money come from?”

“My tips. I was making more money than I'd ever made before. I need two more tires. I was going to get them the next week, and still have enough for my share of the rent and food.”

Impressed, Barbara asked, “How much were you making in tips?'

“About a hundred or hundred fifty a night. Once it was two hundred. I worked three nights a week. My car needs a tune-up. I figured a few more weeks and the tires would be good, and I'd get a tune-up, a few clothes and then move on probably.”

“Why, Carrie? You were doing so well, why move on?”

She had been open, talking freely without hesitation, now she closed, and that tightness appeared around her mouth.
After a moment, she shrugged. “I don't know why. I just don't like to stay in one place long. I like to keep moving.”

“Maybe we'll have coffee now,” Barbara said, rising. “Would you rather have something else?”

“Coffee's okay.”

 

Later, talking about her life as a wanderer, Carrie said, “I slept in the car pretty often, sometimes at the rest stops on the interstates. No one bugs you if you look like a tourist, and I guess I did. And when I got a job, I usually could find a pretty cheap room somewhere. It wasn't too bad.”