Are You Scared Yet?, page 23
"I'll probably stay through supper, too." Monica halted in the doorway, her hand on the doorframe. "Mrs. Santori is making enchiladas. I can run Callie home on my way, if that will help out Detective Swift."
"That's nice. I'll have Callie call and check." Julie gave a wave as she turned her attention to Marty who had taken a seat in a metal folding chair in front of Julie's desk. Leather chairs matching the desk chairs had been donated and ordered from an office supply company, but they hadn't yet arrived. "So, you're expanding the piece," she said, pushing aside a stack of letters Monica had left for her to read through.
The reporter leaned back in the chair, watching Monica as she went down the hall. "I didn't get much of an interview out of her," she said.
"I told you she was shy."
"Even shy people aren't usually shy once they get in front of a camera." Marty shifted her attention to Julie. "What's her story? She wouldn't really give me any background info. Just talked about what a good deed for society people were doing here. How much she loved the girls. So on and so forth." She leaned forward. "And what's with the scar on her arm?" She touched her own slender, tanned forearm. "It looks like a burn or something."
"Marty." Julie pressed her hands to her desk, leaning toward the reporter. "You know very well that if my staff doesn't want to share personal information, I'm not going to share with you."
Marty exhaled, reaching for her notebook in her leather bag beside the chair. "It's my job to ask these kinds of questions."
"I understand that." Julie continued to smile.
"Okay." Marty looked to her notes. "I just need a little bit more background on how this house came about. Let's see... you always wanted to help girls like these. You became a nun, convinced the church of the need, and became the director. You started out with a couple of girls and an old farmhouse. At what point did you begin hiring permanent staff like your mysterious assistant, and creepy penguin woman... Sister Agatha?" She looked up, her pursed pink lipsticked mouth twitching with amusement at her own joke.
This wasn't the first time Marty had made a derogatory remark about Sister Agatha. Julie knew very well that the nun probably wasn't the kind of person the reporter would like, or even understand, but she sensed hostility in Marty's voice that seemed out of place in a supposedly impartial interview.
"At first, the Archdiocese sent different nuns on a rotating basis to help me out. We hired Monica when our funding and our need increased." Julie sat back in her own chair. "Tell me something, Marty. Didn't you mention once that you attended Catholic school?"
Marty tapped her pen on her knee. "Kindergarten through my senior year of high school."
"Me, too. And were you happy with your education?"
"Hated every minute of it," Marty said coolly. "I always found it odd that women who had chosen not to be mothers, women who obviously hated children, would want to be nuns. Want to teach children."
"Because we chose not to be mothers doesn't mean we hate children. What makes you think that?" Julie sensed not just anger, but pain in the reporter's statement.
"Come, Sister, this interview isn't supposed to be about me, now is it?" Marty chuckled warmly, moving her pen to begin taking notes. "Back to Maria's Place's success. When you first started, how were you able to convince parents to send their daughters to you, sometimes all the way across the country?"
Julie talked to Marty about how they had made their presence known through the Catholic Church and how they had miraculously found girls, just through word of mouth. Julie spoke of God's hand in bringing the girls to her but was careful not to sound too preachy, knowing she would quickly lose her audience. She and Marty went over a couple more topics, made an appointment for another taped interview later in the week, and in less than an hour, the reporter was packing up her fancy leather briefcase.
"Thanks again for taking time from your busy day," Marty said, rising from the chair, unfolding her long, suntanned bare legs. "I know News Night will love this longer piece. Once it's released, you'll have more girls wanting to come here than you'll know what to do with."
Julie smiled, finding Marty's implication bittersweet. She wanted to provide a haven for pregnant girls with no place to go, but, at the same time, she wished there was no need for Maria's Place at all. She wished no teen had to find herself pregnant and alone.
"So the piece will be done soon?" Julie rose, but didn't walk around her desk. She had been a little upset that the reporter had turned the piece over to the news station before letting her see it, and even suspected she might have purposely overlooked getting the tape to Julie. But the matter did need to be addressed.
"You had said when we first started this whole process that I'd be able to see it before it was aired," Julie reminded her. "I know you were in a rush to submit it to the news show, but I'd still like to see it. Before you present your final piece."
Marty glanced over her shoulder and the look on her face, though it only lasted an instant, made Julie think the woman had never intended to allow Julie to see it beforehand, if she could help it. Julie waited, deciding she would have to be firm on this matter. So much for her unfounded suspicions...
"A week, you think?" Julie asked sweetly.
"Tops. I'll let myself out." The reporter gave a wave.
Julie walked around her desk, wondering what it was that Marty didn't want her to see in the new program or what she thought Julie would think was questionable. Lost in her thoughts, she nearly ran directly into Sister Agatha, who had to have been right outside the door.
"I don't care for her," Sister Agatha said under her breath, turning to watch as Marty cut across the family room, headed for the front door.
"Why, Sister, what makes you say that?"
"I don't trust her," Sister Agatha hissed. "I don't think she should be left alone with the girls. I don't think any of us for that matter"—she looked Julie up and down—"should be alone with her. A darkness hangs over her." She crossed herself. "I can't explain it, Sister. Just a feeling."
"Why, Sister Agatha, if I didn't know better, I would think you were looking out for me."
"We're all God's children, Sister Julie," Sister Agatha said, brushing by her, entering the office. "I pray for both your souls."
* * *
"I'm going to drop you off and then go to Maria's," Rachel said, lifting her foot off the gas pedal as she entered the town limits and the speed limit dropped to twenty-five miles an hour. "I'll pick up Mattie, swing by Antonio's for pizza, and pick you back up on the way out of town."
"He's been there all day again today?" Noah asked. "You don't think he's making a pest of himself, do you?"
"I'm sure Sister Julie would say if there was a problem. Last time I talked to her, she said he was doing great. He worked hard and the girls liked him." She looked over at Noah in the passenger's seat of her Volvo station wagon. "Probably take me about an hour. That be long enough for your meeting?"
"That'll be fine. I just hate making you do this." Noah watched out the window, not really looking at anything in particular. Though it was early evening, it was still light out. Hazy from the heat of the day. "Still driving me around after over a year."
"Better than me having to hear about you driving that lawn mower around town like some crazy guy."
He met her gaze and couldn't help grinning. He loved Rachel, he loved her so much that it hurt. And it hurt him, even after all this time, that she was still paying the price for his DUI and the deaths he had caused. But she kept such a good attitude. She was so forgiving that Noah was finding that he could forgive himself. Just seeing her smile always made him smile. "Hey, it's not a lawn mower, it's a lawn tractor, and I'll have you know I get around just fine on it," he told her, refusing to allow himself to get maudlin over the fact that he was a forty-two-year-old male without a driver's license.
"Two more months and it will all be over. You'll have completed all your classes, paid your fines, and be driving again."
"God willing," he said.
She reached out to cover his hand with hers. "I'm proud of you, you know. Some people said you wouldn't make it when you got out of prison."
"Said we wouldn't make it," he mused aloud.
She pulled up in front of the Moose lodge and braked.
He climbed out of the car and leaned over to kiss her mouth, closing his eyes, letting his lips linger over hers.
"See you in a bit," she told him.
He waited until she had pulled away before walking up the sidewalk and entering the building. He took the stairwell down, thinking to himself what a cliché it was, AA meetings being held in basements.
He entered the room where men and women were still milling around, just beginning to take their seats. Noah headed straight for the coffeepot the way everyone else did, and grabbed a white Styrofoam cup.
"Ah, I see you're going for the decaf, too."
Noah turned to the woman behind him. "Sister. Good to see you. You want one?"
"Please."
"Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll take your seats, we'll go ahead and get started."
Noah passed the nun the cup of coffee, and took his own, looking for a chair in the middle. As he sat down, he let the events of the day fade from his mind and focused on the speaker's words and his own battle to continue to remain sober.
"I'm Paul," the man behind the podium said. "And I'm an alcoholic."
Chapter 19
"I've got a one thirty with a city councilman," Snowden said to Delilah, glancing at his watch. They were standing in the hallway of the station just behind the glass "fishbowl" where the dispatcher and receptionist worked in a secure office with bulletproof glass walls. The visitors' lobby was in plain view from the hall, through the thick glass. "Give me the bullet," he continued. "Where do we stand on the cases?"
"I'm trying to cross-reference friends, family, even people the two victims might have both come in contact with like store clerks, the mail lady, anything," Delilah said, a file of info she had printed off the Internet perched on her hip. "It's crazy because Rob and Jenny had nothing in common, but as soon as you open the gates to who they came in contact with locally, that no longer holds true. They used the same video rental store, bought slushies in the same convenience store, frequented the same grocery store. They came in contact with the same store clerks, city garbage men, you name it."
"Small town," he mused. "Big pool of potential suspects."
"Just as before," she told him. "The other angle I think we need to look into, although I hate to cause any more pain for the family, is exactly who Mrs. Grove had the affair with."
"There was no sexual assault in either case."
"I know. Neither case appears to be sexually motivated, but why did the killer strip the bodies naked? Is that about sex," she said, thinking aloud, "or is it about stripping them of who they are? I'm thinking I might call Dr. Trubant. See if he could give me any insight." Out of the corner of Delilah's eye, she saw the lobby door open and Callie walk in. The girl waved. Delilah lifted her chin in greeting and then focused her attention back on Snowden. "That okay with you, if I discuss the cases with him?"
"I don't have a problem with it, as long as you keep it professional. Obviously you can't reveal any information the press hasn't already given out."
"Not that there's a lot of info to give."
"You'd be talking to him more about the human mind, in general, rather than these cases?" Snowden continued.
Delilah's gaze drifted from Snowden's face to the lobby again. Callie was hopping up and down, waving her arms to get Delilah's attention. "Exactly," she said. "I think I know what direction I should be going with my profiling, but I was wondering if Dr. Trubant might be able to offer some insight in a direction that I haven't gone yet."
"Go with your instincts, Detective. Just be careful not to reveal any more details than necessary," Snowden continued, unaware of the teenager's antics beyond the glass walls behind him.
Delilah raised a hand at her side, trying to inconspicuously signal Callie to chill out for a minute. Couldn't she see Delilah was talking to her boss?
"Speak in generalities when you can," Snowden said. "I'm sure Dr. Trubant understands the importance of confidentiality in these—" He halted midsentence, turning around to look through the glass.
Callie was now trying to tell Delilah something by speaking with exaggerated mouth movement.
A smile tugged at the corner of Snowden's sensual mouth. "Detective, I believe your niece is attempting to tell you something."
"I know. I saw her." She shifted the file of papers under the other arm. "Sorry, Chief. She can wait." Delilah looked up at him. "Go ahead with what you were saying."
"No. I've got to go anyway. You don't need me on this. You're right on track." He turned away to walk down the hall. "Let me know when you know something. I want to hear it from you before I hear it from that reporter on the evening news."
"Yes, sir." Delilah waited until he was halfway down the hall, then buzzed the door into the lobby and walked out to join Callie. "What are you doing here?" she admonished. "I thought you went to the library. You said you could keep yourself busy for a couple of hours. I told you, hon, I can't have you here every day. This is a police—"
"I got a job," Callie interrupted, grabbing Delilah's free hand. "I got a job!" She hopped up and down in her rhinestone lime green flip-flops.
"You did?" Delilah squeezed her hand before releasing it. "Where? I know you said you were going to check Burton's, but I thought you didn't want to sort nuts and bolts all day."
"Not the hardware store. I went to the library, just like I said I was going." The teen began to bounce again. "I got a job at the library. Miss Calloway hired me."
"You're kidding!" Delilah managed a certain degree of excitement in her voice. You've got to be kidding, she thought. Callie working for Snowden's mother? That had to be a disaster in the making. "What... what are you going to do at the library?"
"I don't know." Her red ponytail swung back and forth. "Whatever she wants me to do. She hired Izzy, too. She can't pay us much, but she said we could check out six books at a time instead of three, and she wants us to read some books for her to tell her if they'd be good to add to her teen shelves. Isn't that cool? The librarian wants to know what I think about a book?" Callie bubbled.
"You're right, that is pretty cool. You could have just called me."
"I could if I had a cell phone like I told you I needed." She lifted a thin brow. She'd asked Delilah twice in the last week about adding a cell phone onto Delilah's account. So far, Delilah wasn't going for it. Even if Callie promised to pay her share each month, even if the phone could be used anywhere in the country to call anywhere, she just wasn't sure if Callie was ready for the responsibility.
"Anyway," Callie went on, snapping her hand at her wrist. "I'm not officially starting until Monday, but Miss Calloway said I could hang out today; she's going to show me around and maybe I could learn how to put books away. There's a lot to it, you know. If a book's not put away right, people can't find it."
Callie was so excited that Delilah couldn't help but be excited for her, but all she could think of was that the teen would be working with Snowden's mother, who she knew from what he said, could be nosy. Even interfering. How was she going to tell Callie to keep her mouth shut, without telling Callie why?
"So it's okay, right? Miss Calloway says that even though she only wants me to work four hours a day and Izzy can't come until one because she has religious training in the mornings,"—she rolled her dark eyes—"I can still come in the mornings when you go to work and just, you know, hang out, and read. I might even get to check people out or something if Miss Calloway is really tied up or something." She gazed eagerly into Delilah's eyes. "So?"
Delilah knew she couldn't say anything but yes. The fact that she was secretly dating the librarian's son was her problem, not Callie's. Delilah didn't even know for sure if they were exactly dating anymore. "Of course." Clasping the file, she raised her hands. "Sure. A job at the library? What parent could argue with that?"
"Thanks. I gotta go." Callie spun around and rushed for the door. "I'm off at five but I'll wait for you on the library steps. I told Izzy we could usually take her home so she doesn't have to call for the van." As she pushed open the heavy door, she looked back. "That's okay, too, right?"
"Sure."
Callie grinned. "I knew it would be. Izzy was afraid to ask, but I knew you'd be fine with it. It's not like you really have a life or anything." She gave a wave. "See you later, Aunt Delilah."
Not like I have a life? Delilah said to herself, signaling to the receptionist in the fish bowl to buzz her back into the hall. "I have a life," she muttered under her breath. "Sort of..."
* * *
"Thank you for seeing me on short notice, Dr. Trubant." Delilah offered him her hand in the doorway of his office.
She had called thinking she could make an appointment for early next week, but his receptionist had put her on hold, then come back on the line to say the doctor had had a cancellation that afternoon and he could see her at four fifteen. The timing was perfect. She could talk to Dr. Trubant, pick up Callie by five; they'd run to the post office and the dry cleaners and eat at a reasonable time tonight. She'd have to take work home, but she and Callie could make dinner together, go for a walk on the beach in the State Park at Cape Henelopen, which the teen seemed to enjoy. Then, when Callie settled down at the computer, Delilah could adjourn to her bedroom where she could spread out the mind-numbing photographs of her victims and try to make sense of the crimes.
"As I think Muriel told you on the phone, I had a reschedule. I'm just glad you called today. Next week is booked solid." Trubant stepped aside. "Come in. Make yourself comfortable. Can I offer you a Diet Coke? Water?"
