The Unbidden Truth (6 page)

“Was she mentally retarded?” Barbara asked when he paused.

“No. Traumatized, that's all. She forgot a lot of her schooling apparently, but after a year or two she caught up and after that she stayed in the top five percentile of her class. She could have had a scholarship if she had chosen that route.”

He told Barbara the name of the social agency and the caseworker, then spread his hands. “I don't know if any of this will prove helpful to you. Same incidents, same kid, different slant, that's what it amounts to. I hope she isn't in serious trouble. No one should have to go through hell twice in one lifetime.” He eased himself out of the booth.

“You've been very helpful,” Barbara said. “I'm grateful. Thank you.”

 

Deeply frustrated, she started the drive back to her motel in Phoenix. The heat was as intense as it had been earlier, the glare as bright, and it didn't help her mood a bit when she saw dust devils spinning across the white sand in the distance. An itinerant housepainter who lived in his truck with his family, migrating like swallows to follow the work, did not seem a likely person to have taught Carrie to read music and play the piano.

“A
ll I want to do is walk and breathe,” Barbara told Frank on the phone when she got home Saturday. “Just breathe and take in the cool air.”

“Hot, was it? Well, August in Arizona,” he said.

“Not too bad. It got down to ninety.”

“Oh?”

“At two in the morning.”

“Oh. Well, don't forget we have a date at the clinic tomorrow. Want to come around and pick me up? The reception's from four until six. I reckon if we make our appearance near five-thirty, that will be plenty of time for both of us.”

She had forgotten entirely. Now she remembered that they were to go to Darren's afterward. “Okay. I'll come earlier and fill you in on the Colberts. See you tomorrow.”

This was one of her favorite places on Earth, she thought
a few minutes later on the bike path by the river. Temperature about seventy-eight, a light breeze, sparkling water flashing brilliantly at little rapids, egrets and herons, blackberries ripening on the side of the path…Two kayaks in the river. Kids on bikes, other walkers, perfect. She had made her notes in the motel, had caught up with her e-mail and phone messages—Bailey would check in first thing Monday morning, and Shelley had settled Carrie into an apartment—and now she could relax. Except, she thought, she couldn't. Instead, she brooded about Carrie's lost childhood and what Stuart Colbert had said: she had left Indiana to track down her family. An endless exercise in futility.

Barbara thought with regret that if she had played her hand just a little better, she would have taken her trip a day later, arrived home on Sunday with a perfect excuse not to attend the reception. And then Darren's place. She had agreed only because she had sensed that he wanted to show off his new house now that he had moved in, and she owed him something for giving her an insight into somatic memory. She had remembered how to ride, and obviously Carrie remembered how to play the piano. That was something. But when the devil had she learned?

 

The reception was easier than she had thought it would be, and over quicker than she had hoped. It was good to see them all happy and excited about the foundation, and they very clearly had been grateful to her for getting them out of a jam. But when she caught Frank's eye after their obligatory half hour, he had nodded ever so slightly toward the door, and they had made their exit. He enjoyed cocktail parties just about as much as she did.

“Done our duty,” Frank said in the car. “Darren's going to be delayed a bit, and Todd will be our host until he gets home.”

It was only a five-minute drive to Darren's house, and already it looked like a home. A basketball hoop over the garage door was a dead giveaway. Todd proved to be a gracious host, ushering them with aplomb to the back patio where a table was set up with a covered tray of cheese and crackers, to which he added a decanter of wine. His cat Nappy circled the table, then sat as if watching for a chance to make a leap. The last time Barbara had seen Nappy he had been little more than a kitten. Now he was a full-grown, handsome tiger-striped cat with ideas.

“Dad said I should offer to show you the house,” Todd said. “You want to see my posters?”

Frank nodded. “I'd like very much to see them.” He glanced at Barbara, who had her head cocked in a listening attitude. Then he heard it, too. Piano music. He suspected that Darren's plan was to have her discover Carrie before he got home, get the fireworks over without him.

“Who's playing?” Barbara asked, but she knew. She turned a cold eye on her father. “Do you know who's playing?”

“It's Carrie,” Todd said. “She moved in yesterday. She's cool.”

“She moved in yesterday,” Barbara said in a carefully measured way. “I see.” She continued to regard her father. “Why are you not surprised as much as I am?”

“Well, it seemed an ideal solution to her problem, and Darren was agreeable.”

“I bet he was. I think I'm getting a headache.”

The music stopped, and a moment later Carrie hurried around the side of the house. “Barbara, how can I thank you? It's perfect! The apartment, even a piano!” She stopped her
forward momentum just short of Barbara, as if restraining herself from throwing her arms around her. “Just thank you, more than I can say.”

Another new expression, Barbara realized, and this one made her look beautiful. Her eyes were shining and high color fired her cheeks.

“Thank Dad,” Barbara said. “He's responsible. And I imagine Shelley was his accomplice.”

Carrie drew back slightly and said to Frank, “Mr. Holloway, thank you very much. How did you know about the piano?”

He nodded toward Barbara. “Why don't you two go inspect the apartment, make sure everything's there that should be? I'll have a look at Todd's posters. Should we cover the cheese?” he asked the boy.

Todd took the cheese plate inside with Frank following closely behind him. Barbara nodded to Carrie. “I'd like to see the apartment. All right with you?”

“Oh, yes. I want you to. It's the nicest place I've had in years, maybe ever.”

It was nice, Barbara had to admit, and furnished better than her own apartment, with a velour-covered sofa in a deep red, a comfortable brocade-covered chair with a good lamp, end tables, a small bookcase, television and an upright piano. A Scandinavian rug in a geometric pattern of gold and deep blue finished the room. A folding screen separated the living room from the kitchen space. The bedroom was smaller, and crowded with the bed, a dresser and a bureau. A quilted comforter with forest-green trees covered the bed that even had a tailored dust ruffle.

Shelley had done it all, Barbara knew. Good taste, everything harmonious, in scale with the size of the apartment.

Carrie said it didn't need a thing. The piano was a rental,
and the television was from Shelley's house. She hadn't used it in months, Shelley had said, and it was good that someone would get some use out of it.

After she had shown it all to Barbara, Carrie said, with a touch of shyness, “Last night, when I was getting ready for bed, I cried. I mean it just hit me, what trouble I'm in, and that you guys are there for me. I haven't cried in years. I can't remember the last time. I think I needed that.”

Helplessly Barbara felt her icy fury melt away in the face of Carrie's gratitude. But she would get him, she told herself; she would fix that old fox one of these days.

 

When Barbara returned to the patio Frank and Todd were having a discussion about training cats. “I doubt that you can,” Frank said. “I didn't teach those monsters at the house to retrieve. It was their game from the start. It might help if you keep a little catnip handy, and the first time Nappy brings something back to you, reward him. I'll bring you a start of catnip. I grow mine in a cage, to keep the brutes from eating it down to the ground and digging up the roots. Anything that makes it above the cage is fair game.”

He glanced at Barbara, then hurriedly away. “Everything all right up there?”

“It's fine,” she said.

“What kind of cage?” Todd asked.

Frank described his wire cage, and Barbara sipped Darren's wine. Carrie had started to play. It was faint, not intrusive, and very pleasant.

When Darren joined them, he started the grill, apologized for his delay, then said, “Would you object to having Carrie come eat with us?”

No one objected and he went to invite her. Ah, Barbara thought then, maybe that was the solution to the Darren problem. Darren and Carrie. She could not account for the unexpected twinge of unease the idea brought her.

Through dinner Frank and Darren carried the conversation; Carrie said practically nothing, and Barbara was polite. Then, eating ice cream with raspberries, Todd asked Carrie, “Why do you keep playing the same thing over and over?”

“Does it bother you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I just wondered.”

“She's doing classical scales and key progressions,” Darren said. “Even concert pianists practice more hours than they perform. Isn't that right?” he asked Carrie.

“I don't know,” she said. “I didn't know there was a name for that kind of practice.”

“Practice before theory,” Darren said approvingly. “That's the best way to learn anything. It's how we learn language. I'd bet that you started by three or four, and practiced several hours a day. Also, I'd bet that your rostromedial prefrontal cortex is ten to fifteen percent bigger than the average person's. That's the part that recognizes harmonic relationships and can pick out a sour note in a flash.”

Carrie was watching him intently. “I don't have any memory of learning and practicing. It just seemed like what I should do now. I hear my mistakes, all right.”

Barbara was watching him also, and he caught her gaze and spread his hands. “No, I'm not an expert in music. Can't play a note. But neural bridges and synapses fall into my domain, after all.”

He had made the connection, she realized; he knew she had been talking about Carrie when they took the bicycle
ride. She suspected that he had done some research in the meantime.

“No matter what the subject is,” she said, “you seem to have some basic information at hand.”

“Jack-of-all-trades. I know a smidgen about a lot of things, nothing except my own field in depth. I suspect it's very much like that with the law.”

Frank nodded. “Very much so. You learn what you need to know in each individual case, and too often forget it again when the case is concluded. Ongoing process.”

Later, when Barbara drove Frank home, he said, “Mad at me?”

“Conflicted, Dad. Isn't that a good word? Conflicted. Good night.”

“W
hat do you have?” she asked Bailey on Monday morning.

“A lot, but you won't like it,” he said. “Just starting, you understand, but still, it doesn't look great for your client.”

He slouched into a chair as she left her desk to sit on the sofa. Shelley was in the other chair with her notebook out.

“Okeydokey,” Bailey said. “First, all those Wenzel alibis check out so far. Can't find a crack. The cops looked there first and did a good job.”

Barbara was scowling at him. He shrugged. “Just reporting. The bartender, Mickey Truelove, took Carrie's glass and tips to the office just as she was coming from the dressing room about ten after twelve. When she left, he took the glass to the kitchen. Mickey said the younger Wenzel boy, Gregory, has a key to one of the rooms, one he keeps, and now and then he takes a girl there, but not that night. Confirmed by the
maid. Gregory still lives at home, and he's still playing the field. Older son Luther is married, stable, starting a family, churchgoer, the whole virtuous works. He's never been known to have used that room.”

He consulted his notes, then continued. “The couple who saw her walking toward the rear of the parking lot, nothing there. He's a computer geek out at Symantec. She's a medical technician at Sacred Heart Hospital. They saw her walking, Wenzel following, got in their car and left. The other couple, married five years, with a two-year-old son. He's a sound engineer at a radio station, she's a stay-at-home mom. They saw her at Wenzel's door, talking to him, then saw her go in and close the door.”

He glanced at Barbara and said, “If your face freezes like that, you'll be sorry.”

“I don't worry about eyewitnesses,” she muttered.

“She's pretty distinctive. Black skirt, white blouse, that long black hair. They seem pretty positive.”

“What about the company? Another blank?”

“Just about. Larry and Joe Wenzel started from scratch down in California, saved, worked hard and made good. Joe took a leave of absence to go to business school in 1972, and in '75 they moved the business to Eugene, where they've done fine. Their motto is ‘We Do It All,' and they do, from buying the land to finishing whatever. They built this complex you're in, in fact. Good work, no complaints. It's a respected company, they've always had a lot of work lined up until the downturn in the economy. Strip malls, apartments, office buildings, a church or two, but mostly commercial projects. Featured in national magazines a couple of times for innovative design, and so on.”

He grinned at the expression on her face. “It gets a little more interesting.”

“It better, or you can take a hike for all the good you're doing.”

“The brothers are as different as bottled water and pond murk. Larry's stable, married forever to one woman, two sons, pillar of the community type. Joe's a case,” he said. “Or was, I should say. Three-time loser in the marriage game. No kids. Three exes. He had two passions, gambling and music.”

Barbara sat up straighter. “What about music?”

“Rock. He followed bands around and taped them. One of the biggest tape collections known before the house burned. And he was a real horse nut, Hialeah, Churchill Downs, Pimlico, even England, Epsom Downs.”

“What do you mean? Bet on races?”

“Not just that. Followed them to Miami, Kentucky, New York. Three, four, five times a year he took off for weeks at a time. Horse races or else Vegas, even Monte Carlo. It raises an interesting question.”

“When did he work?”

“That's the question. The company built the new headquarters back in '92, and although wife Nora has an office, curiously they forgot to put in an office for brother Joe.”

“Where did he get money?”

“He was on full salary until the day he died.”

Barbara leaned back and drew in a breath. “Now that is interesting,” she said. “How long did that go on?”

“Don't know yet. Working on it.”

She thought a moment, then said, “The ex-wives. They'll know something. Do you have their names, addresses?”

“Nope. Give me a day or two. They've probably all remarried by now. Want me to go after them?”

She shook her head. “I think that's a job for Shelley and me. Anything else?”

“The fire roused some suspicion, but it died down. Electrical wire went sour, they say. No one home. It got out of hand before anyone reported it. And Joe's signature at the safe-deposit box raised some suspicion, but it turns out that he was wearing a wrist brace and that accounts for it. Nothing there. The teller and the safe-deposit attendant made positive IDs.”

“No enemy list, anything like that?”

“Nothing real. He paid his debts when due and was a good tipper. I guess he figured easy come, easy go. He was a drunk, but he didn't cause trouble with it, except for women, and they just shied away from him for the most part, except those he paid. I think the cops figure the missing thousand bucks was to buy himself a new girlfriend.”

“Keep digging into the family, company, finances, house help, whoever you can get to talk about them.” She told him what little she had learned from Stuart Colbert. “So last we know, Frederick was in Virginia heading for Boston. See if you can dig out anything from the agency and the caseworker. Just a last name for her, Bergstrom, in Terre Haute, twenty-four years ago. She may be dead by now, and the case may be gone from the files.”

“Virginia,” he said. Now he was scowling. “Better than before. Then it was just back east somewhere. Barbara, tell me something. What difference does it make?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “I don't like blanks in my cases, and that's a big one. No hospital record of her birth, just a home delivery by a midwife, who also could be dead by now, or has had three name changes.”

There were a few more details, then Bailey saluted and ambled out.

“What do you want me to do?” Shelley asked after Bailey left.

Barbara's first thought was:
You've done quite enough,
but she did not voice it. Anyone who had heard her father argue a case would know that Shelley hadn't had a chance against him once he had decided to place Carrie in Darren's apartment. “Not much to do yet, not until we get more information,” Barbara said. “I received a new packet from the D.A.'s office this morning. I'll go over that and see if there's anything worth following up on. When we get the ex-wives' addresses, I'd like you to tackle the last two, and I'll go after wife number one. Meanwhile, if you could go to Martin's today, that would be helpful.”

“No problem,” Shelley said. “I know it's early, but it does look bad, doesn't it? I hate that. I like her.”

“It's early,” Barbara agreed. She also agreed that it continued to look as bad as her first assessment had been. “Dad always advised that an attorney shouldn't become attached to a client. One can break your heart.”

 

On Wednesday they had the names of the ex-wives, one in Seattle, one in Portland and one, Inez Carnero, in El Cajon, California. Barbara had to look it up on a map.

“I'll take her, if you don't want to,” Shelley said, regarding the map with Barbara. El Cajon was in the San Diego area and sure to be as hot as Arizona had been.

“Nope. A deal's a deal. I'll manage. Are you sure Alex won't mind if you're gone a couple of days?”

Shelley looked surprised and a little indignant at the question. “He knows what I do, and that I might be gone from time to time.
He'd never interfere with my work. I think it might be easier for me to drive than fly. Labor Day on Monday, you know.”

 

Barbara was in a foul mood by the time she checked into a motel that Friday evening. She had been searched at the Eugene airport, again in San Francisco, had a bumpy airplane ride, and endured gridlock on the interstate from the San Diego terminal to El Cajon. An all-day trip from hell, she thought irritably. On Saturday she would talk to Inez Carnero, and on Sunday reverse her trip, and no doubt face the same kind of journey. Her room smelled of chemicals, and the air conditioner either blasted icy air or let the room get overheated.

She stripped off her clothes, showered, put on her swimsuit and went out to the pool. It was crowded and so heavily chlorinated that she lasted only a minute or two. Life in the fast lane, she told herself, heading back in for another shower.

 

Inez Carnero's house was a neat little stucco hacienda with a wide overhang, two palm trees in the front yard and on the edge of a golf course that was miraculously green. Nothing else visible was green. Even the palm fronds were a dusky olive color.

Inez was a pretty woman not an inch over five feet tall, and to all appearances perfectly round. It was hard to tell because she was wearing a loose cotton print garment, splashed with red poppies, that reached her ankles. Her black hair was streaked with gray, done up in an elaborate coil with combs.

“Ms. Holloway? Come in. Come in,” she said. “You must be so hot, not used to our weather. And so overdressed.”

Barbara was wearing cotton pants and a short-sleeved shirt neatly tucked in. But she felt overdressed.

“I have a cold drink waiting for you,” Inez said, leading the way through a living room to a room at the back of the house. There was no air conditioning, but the room had a wall of windows all wide open, and a faint breeze wafted in bringing desert smells of heat and sand. The room was furnished with wicker chairs and a glider, a glass-topped table and a television. A big ceiling fan whirred and helped stir the air. A pitcher and two glasses were on the table, along with a cigar box.

Inez talked as she poured drinks for them both. “After you called, I got to thinking about Joe and the old days. I haven't thought of that time in years. Like another life.” She handed Barbara a glass. “Try that, see if it doesn't help.”

It did. It was pale green and frothy, with fruit juices that she could not identify, and it was delicious. “That's good,” she said. “Thank you. And thank you for seeing me.”

“I read about his murder. Done by a woman. I always thought that some day a woman would finish him, and now…” She sighed. “What can I tell you?”

“I'm trying to fill in Joe's past,” Barbara said. “How the brothers got started in business, things like that. You know they became very successful developers?”

“Yes. They were bound to, they were so hardworking, both of them, and smart. We all went to the same high school, sort of grew up together. Larry was older, and when he got out he went right to work, learning to be a carpenter. Then Joe graduated and joined him. We got married when he was twenty, and I was nineteen. Too young. That's way too young. My girls did the same thing, married too young, but what can you do?”

Barbara sipped her drink and did not interrupt as Inez rambled on. Joe's mother drowned in a boating accident when he was still in high school and his father took to drink, and a few
years later drank himself to death. “I always thought that was what happened to him, being left so young, but I don't know. Anyway, we had some good times, the four of us, Larry and Nora, Joe and me. We were poor, but it didn't seem to matter so much then. And they were ambitious.”

They fixed up a house or two and sold them, and they met a man, H. L. Blount, who had a big pickup truck and helped them buy a piece of land to build a gas station and motel. “That was the start of the real business,” she said. “They worked on the truck, put in seats and a canopy, and even side covers that could be let down, against the sand, you know, and they'd go down across the border and bring back workers. Those Mexican men worked like slaves, and they did good work and were glad to get it. And that left Larry and Joe free to go look for other places to build on, and that's how they began to get the business going. H.L. told them they were crazy to do the work themselves, they should hire it out and work as developers, and they did.

“I used to go down to Mexico with Joe once in a while. We'd park the truck and spend a day shopping and eating and then drive back the next day with the workers. Nora always went with Larry when it was his turn. She was a hustler, more than Larry even, right from the start. Her and H.L. did most of the planning, what to buy next, what to put on it, like that. After I talked with you, just remembering those days, the good times we had after it cooled off at night, drinking a little beer, singing, dancing, it seems like a dream. I found a box of pictures. You want to see them?” She opened the cigar box.

They spent the next hour looking at the pictures, with Inez talking about them. “That's the first big job they did, the gas station and motel, out on Highway 79.” The buildings looked to be in a vast rocky desert.

“Out in the middle of nowhere?” Barbara asked.

“It was all desert back then,” Inez said, waving her hand to take in everything. “You'd never know from the way it's built up now, but this, all of this was desert, with little tiny villages where there's towns now, or maybe just a gas station, or not even that much, just a crossroad. Just desert and more desert, but they knew it would grow. H.L. knew it would all grow.”