Eleven

“It looks like I’m going to be here a little longer.”

Lola delivered the news to Jan instead of Margaret, who’d handed off the phone as soon as she heard her mother’s voice.

“Good. That’s really good.”

Usually, Lola liked Jan’s lack of ambiguity. No need for gamesmanship, for guessing at what she really meant. But on this day, she would have welcomed some tact. “Good? Does that mean you’re glad I’m not coming home right away?”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

Margaret’s voice sounded in the background, calling to Bub. Probably trying to teach him some new tricks. She’d schooled her chickens in a circus array of stunts but had less success with Bub. A border collie, he was smart enough to learn whatever she was trying to teach him, which also meant he was smart enough to realize it wasn’t in his best interest to become a performer.

Lola sat in her hotel room with its king-size bed and thick, yielding carpet and bathroom all to herself and pictured the house in Montana. This time of year, with its honeyed last-of-autumn days alternating with early snow and the resulting mud, the kitchen’s worn linoleum would likely be gritty with Bub’s pawprints. Margaret’s schoolbooks would litter the kitchen table in a fakery designed to indicate that she’d paid attention to her homework. If one of the aunties had dropped by with a casserole, the kitchen would smell good. If not, Jan would be boiling water for something instant.

Lola had backed off from a fight with Munro, but with Jan, she didn’t have to respect niceties. “Why in the name of God is it good that I’m not coming home? First you say I’m not paying enough attention to Margaret. Now you want me to stay away from her.”

“Hold on.” Jan’s voice grew faint as she directed it away from the phone. “Miss Margaret Laurendeau, don’t you even think of trying to make Bub carry a chicken around in his mouth. The chicken’ll bite him, and then he’ll bite the chicken, and how do you think that’s going to end up?”

Words that could have come out of Lola’s own mouth. And would have, if she were there with her daughter. A feeling grown too familiar jabbed at her. Maybe she’d have put a stop to Margaret’s shenanigans if she were there. Or maybe she’d be “napping” in the bedroom, sleeping off the effects of her most recent pill.

Jan didn’t know about the pills, but she knew what the last few months had been like. Her words sped through the phone like slaps, hitting all of Lola’s sore spots. “Damn straight I want you away from her, at least until you can ditch the zombie routine. Look, you’re depressed. I get it. And you’ve got good reason. Unfortunately, you can’t afford to be. I know you. The one thing that’ll snap you out of it is work. And it looks like you’re going to be working your butt off for the next couple of weeks.”

“You talked to Munro.”

“Yep.”

Lola cursed under her breath. At least, she thought she did.

“What was that? What do you think of him, anyway? Great guy, huh? Really old-school.”

“He’s keeping me busy.”

Jan’s laugh rang out. “You mean he’s riding you. Excellent. That’s just what you need.”

“What I need is to talk to Margaret.” Lola forced the words through gritted teeth.

Jan set the phone down with a thunk. Lola heard a prolonged negotiation, too far from the phone for her to catch the words. The next voice that reached her was Jan’s.

“She’s pretty busy right now. Why don’t you try again tonight?” At least Jan had the grace to sound abashed.

Lola knew she wasn’t helping her own cause, but she acted on her first impulse and hung up without responding.

Talk with the girlfriend, Munro had said.

The next morning, Lola dug around in her brain for the name of Frank’s fiancée—Tina, Lindsey, something like that—certainty lost amid the other, more urgent, details. She pulled out her iPad and searched engagement announcements on the Salt Lake Tribune’s site. Nothing. She googled “Sariah Ballard.” Surely anything about Sariah would mention her children. Stories about the killing filled the screen. Most mentioned that Sariah had a husband and children. None mentioned their names. Lola went prospecting through her gray matter again.

Melena had pointed out Sariah and her husband in the photo of the two couples. Gay-something. Gaylord? But a search for Gaylord Ballard came up blank. In more than a decade of reporting, Lola had amassed a reserve of Hail Marys. She called upon another one now, googling “Boys’ Names” and searching through a pastel-blue website for names starting with G, looking for one that snagged her memory.

“Yes!” She punched the air. Galon.

There he was, all over Google. No question of a mix-up with some other Galon Ballard. The same square jaw and Chiclets grin she’d seen in the hallway photos dominated the ones online. Galon the church leader. A decades-younger Galon in college, on the slopes, low to the ground, mere inches between his skis, a fan of snow as he carved a turn. Galon in group shots for any number of civic organizations. And—more air punches—the entire Ballard family at, wouldn’t you know, the annual picnic for adoptive families.

A tall blond girl, her pulled-back hair accentuating a thin face, clasped hands with her adopted brother, Kwesi. Tynslee, Frank’s girlfriend. Fiancée, Lola corrected herself. Now that she had the name, she had only to find the girl.

Galon Ballard had taken Tynslee to Melena’s sister’s house, Melena had said. Lola wished she’d thought to ask Melena her sister’s name. She pounded at her tablet’s tiny keyboard, keystrokes heavy with purpose, giving herself ten minutes of googling to find the sister.

It didn’t even take five. Bryce and Melena’s wedding announcement lived online, informing her that the bride’s only sister had served as maid of honor. From there, it was another few clicks to get to the maid-of-honor’s own wedding announcement, and thus her husband’s name, and from there, Lola turned away from the laptop and to that most retro of search engines, the hotel’s telephone book, betting that Melena and her extended family were the types to hang onto their landlines.

She’d bet right.

She fed the sister’s address to the Directions Bitch and tossed a finger toward Donovan Munro on her way out the door.

Getting to the sister’s house was the easy part. But as Lola sat in the car across the street, staring at another paragon of the American dream—this one even had a picket fence—she realized she’d forgotten a key element: how to get to Tynslee alone, away from the gaggle of relatives drawn by the guilty excitement of tragedy. She couldn’t risk calling the landline. The aunt or another relative might answer, and almost certainly would want to know who was calling. A hulking black Suburban sat at the curb. Melena or Bryce—or maybe both—were there, too. She needed Tynslee’s cell number.

She slid down in the seat and went back to Google. She prayed that Tynslee’s name would come up in some sort of activity that required a phone number. Photos flashed past, Tynslee at various track meets, not the sorts of things that would be accompanied by a phone number. Still, Lola’s finger hovered over them. Gone was the demure girl of the adoptive families picnic. In the posed photos, she stood fierce and focused, jaw set, with the careless beauty of girls who have yet to realize their power. Lola swiped through more: Tynslee breaking the tape at the finish line, thighs and calves a mass of flexed muscle, propelling her far ahead of her hapless opponents.

The captions told her Tynslee was a statewide champion. She’d broken records. Scholarships must have been dangled. And Tynslee was going to give that up to be a wife at eighteen, almost certainly a mother by nineteen or twenty? Lola shook her head and forced herself to concentrate on her search.

Within moments, the journalism gods winked, flashing a number attached to a story about a Meals on Wheels program. Evidently Tynslee was a do-gooder when she wasn’t breaking records in the 800- and 1500-meter events. Lola dialed fast.

It rang. And rang. And rang. And picked up on the fourth ring. “Ballard residence,” said a recorded voice. The family landline. Lola imagined it ringing in the empty house, the evidence crews done with their work, nothing left now but for a practical-minded family member to call the sort of specialized cleaning crew who’d polish the granite countertops free of the circles left by the cops’ coffee mugs, replace the bloodstained bedroom carpet with its pieces cut out and sealed in evidence bags, buy a new mattress to replace the one on which Sariah had breathed her agonized last.

Lola went back to Google. Again, a number, a different one. Tynslee also was a contact for a local mentoring program involving disadvantaged teens. Lola looked skyward, although she was never sure that was the right direction for the journalism gods. More likely, they lurked in a bar. Wherever they were, this time she got a full smile when she called.

“Hello?” A choked voice, barely more than a whisper. “Who’s this?”

Lola tucked the phone between ear and shoulder, crossed the fingers on both hands, and wriggled her toes inside her boots in an attempt to cross them, too. “Lola Wicks.” Normally she’d avoid revealing herself as a reporter until they’d exchanged at least a few sentences, enough to establish even a tenuous bond, one that would make it harder for the girl to hang up on her. But she made a leap of logic that the girl would find the magazine’s name reassuring. “I was supposed to interview you yesterday at Frank’s house for Families of Faith.”

“Wait a minute.” Lola heard people talking in the background, then the sound of a door closing. Silence. “The interview got canceled. I’m sorry that nobody told you.”

Falling back on civility in the midst of grief. Tynslee operated far better on automatic pilot than Lola had when Charlie died.

“I know what happened,” Lola said, and varnished the words with her own belated courtesy. “I’m so sorry.”

“What do you want?”

Tiptoe, Lola warned herself. Don’t go stomping into this one. “Mostly, I just wanted to know how you’re doing.”

She held the phone away as sobs assaulted her. When the sounds began to resemble words, she put the phone to her ear again.

“He didn’t kill Mom, Miss Wicks! You have to believe me!”

Lola pitched her voice as low and reassuring as possible, trying to hide her eagerness. “I want to believe you. That’s why I’m calling you. Because you know the real story. Can we meet somewhere?”

No matter where Lola suggested getting together, Tynslee came back with a veto.

“You don’t understand.” Her sobs had subsided. “If I get caught talking to you, to anyone, I’m dead. They won’t even let the police talk to me alone. Because—because—”

Lola decided to save her the agony. “I know about you and Frank. Not only that you’re engaged. That you’re … ” What was the word she’d used with Melena? “Involved. No judgment here. None at all.”

But Tynslee wailed afresh. Lola had forgotten the intensity of a teenage girl’s emotions. First love. First sex. Had her own youthful romances been so fraught with drama? Just in time, she checked an impulse to speak sharply to Tynslee, to shock her into composure. Teenage romances, hell. Look how she’d fallen apart over Charlie’s death.

She glanced up and down the street, worried that if she lingered too long it would attract the neighbors’ attention. After all, how long would it take other reporters—the local ones, anyone, the ones who had a cousin who knew someone, who knew someone else who’d know where the Ballards had decamped—to show up? The street ended in the inevitable cul-de-sac, but instead of a semicircle of houses, a park stretched into the distance.

“Tynslee. Tynslee. Listen to me. Is your dog there with you? What’s his name?”

“Rex. Yes, he’s here. We couldn’t leave him alone in the house with Mom.” Another strangled sob.

Lola countered emotion with logic. “He’ll be upset, too. Dogs know when things are wrong. And he’s out of his element, in a different house, surrounded by too many people. He needs a walk. You take him. Meet me in the park at the end of the street.”