Seven

Cop cars clogged Azalea Court, along with television vans with satellite dishes cranked high and haphazardly parked vehicles in need of a wash.

Those last, Lola figured, belonged to all of the other reporters who’d beaten her to the scene. She left her rental car a block away, so as not to get caught in snarled traffic should any new development arise that would send the pack of reporters howling after it, and hiked toward the story that everybody else already had.

Not that there was much to see. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded both the Ballard and Shumway houses, fronted by scowling cops who waved away photographers and cameramen venturing too close, mad at being relegated to riding herd on journalists instead of being inside where the real work was happening. The two homes had that just-abandoned look particular to a murder scene, despite the fact that just a few hours earlier, normal life had gone on within each. Until it hadn’t.

A small rock sat lonely on the Ballards’ walk, at odds with the fastidiousness of the home’s landscaping, low bushy shrubs alternating with artfully constructed stone cairns, nothing like the haphazard piles Lola sometimes encountered on hikes in Montana. By contrast, the Shumway lawn next door was a riot of color, late-blooming yarrow and windflower and catmint crowding close to the door and stretching toward the window frames. A black Suburban sat in the driveway. Lola thought she saw a twitch in the drawn-tight drapes there.

More movement, farther down the street, caught her eye. A reporter marched up to a house, knocked on the door, and stood awhile. No response. He moved on to the next house in quest of quotes from a neighbor—futile at this point, Lola knew. The first-arriving reporters would have reached the neighbors before they even were aware Sariah was dead, snagging the quotes that dominated this sort of story: “Shocking.” “Such a terrible shame.” “Lovely woman.” And the inevitable “We never lock our doors here. Now we will.”

It wouldn’t take long, an hour at most, for the neighbors to tire of the parade of interviews, for their own words to stick in their throats after so many repetitions. They, like the Shumways, would ignore the doorbells, along with the ringtones from phones whose numbers had been obtained from online sites. The smarter ones would flee the neighborhood, to their jobs or to relatives’ homes, until the fuss had died down. A very few would continue to open their doors for the sheer satisfaction of slamming them in a reporter’s face after a shouted “No comment” or the more pointed “Vulture.”

The bright light of late autumn, a last hurrah before winter’s descent, threw the scene into high relief. Lola had covered a school shooting on just such a bluebird day. Then a snowstorm had blown in, wet and angry, as though to underscore the obscenity of it all. She glanced at the cloudless sky. For the moment, at least, the gods held their wrath in abeyance.

Lola sidled up to one of the reporters and tried to act as though she knew what was going on. “The boy next door, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

She knew that short, don’t-bother-me tone. Usually she was the one employing it. She tried again. “A hockey stick. That’s cold.”

The woman, shorter than Lola, somehow pulled off the feat of looking down her nose. “Yeah. Except that’s not what killed her.”

Busted. Lola choked out the question that had always provoked disdain when she was on the receiving end. “What’d I miss?”

“Who are you? And who are you with?” Unlike most of the jeans-clad reporters jostling for position, the woman wore a suit, although with the flats that women reporters learned early on would prove an advantage when sprinting toward a breaking story. Lola assessed the suit and guessed the woman covered the court beat, the formality a nod of respect to the attorneys with whom she spoke daily, the same way Lola had worn a headscarf in Afghanistan.

She mumbled her name, hoping the woman would forget it. The last thing she needed was to be embedded in someone’s memory as incompetent. Nor did she want to be associated with Families of Faith any longer than she had to be. “I’m freelancing,” she added. “From out of town.” She broke down and resorted to shameless fishing. “What is it? A burglary gone bad?”

“Apparently not. Nothing taken from the house. They’re going to hold a press conference with an update. We’re just waiting to find out the time. Then we’ll head to the police station. Do you know where that is?”

Lola had had about as much embarrassment as she could take. “I’ll find it, thanks.” She began to edge away.

The woman called after her, taking pity on someone who clearly represented no threat. “She was stabbed.”

Lola turned back. “What about the hockey stick?”

The woman shrugged. “It didn’t kill her. A single cut did. That’s what I heard.” She drew a finger across her throat.

Her look challenged Lola to ask where she’d heard it. Lola knew better than to take the bait. As a local, the woman would have her own long-nurtured sources, just as Lola had hers back in Magpie. And she knew that Lola couldn’t use the information without confirming it herself. Lola had been on the receiving end of out-of-town reporters trying to get her to give up her sources when the rare big story broke in Magpie. Damned if she’d similarly lower herself with … “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t say. But it’s Anne Peterson. See you at the news conference.”

“Doubtful,” Lola murmured as she pushed her way out of the mob. She hated news conferences, which she viewed as little more than attempts to control the dissemination of the information that the police, or sheriff’s department, or whomever handled such cases in this part of the world would probably post on social media before the conference even started. Everybody who went would have the same story. Lola, never a fan of pack journalism, wasn’t about to start practicing it.

Time to go—to Munro’s office for the official kiss-off on the story. She reached her rental car and stood there, grasping the door handle. Home meant facing Amanda Richards and her damned appointment. She let go of the handle and kept moving, even as she refused to acknowledge that beyond her apprehension about Amanda Richards lay the compulsion Jan had recognized when she’d thrown the story her way. Lola was no more likely to walk away from a breaking story than she was to get rid of the pills in her pocket.

Just a quick check, she told herself. Then she’d go. She circled back down a street that vaguely paralleled Azalea Court until she came to the house behind the Shumway home, where at this very moment she was supposed to have been well into an interview with the teenage adoptee.

Like the others on the street, this house looked just as emptied out as the homes on Azalea. Lola glanced around and then dashed into the back yard. She pressed herself to the home’s wall while scanning the rear of the Shumway house. No crime scene tape there. Or cops. A low fence divided the yards. On the far side of that fence might be the subject every reporter most dreaded—the bereaved family member. Or, in this case, the best friend. The first time, while still in college, that Lola had done such an interview, she’d assumed it would get easier. Nearly two decades later, she knew better. She also knew that the only thing worse than such an interview was not getting one at all.

She tried to remember the vaulting lessons from her high school gym classes, took a running start, and—improbably—soared over the fence.

Lola tapped at the back door, readying an explanation if a cop opened it: I’m a friend. I just wanted to make sure Melena is all right. She wished she’d thought to stop at a convenience store for a package of cinnamon buns, or better yet, a bouquet. Anything but the damning reporter’s notebook in her hand.

No one answered. She shoved the notebook into a back pocket and retrieved a business card to compose a short note on, one that would end with a plea to contact her. I’m so sorry, she began. Then she thought to try the door, which should have been a matter of habit.

For the first time, she cursed the pills, the way they fogged her brain. Because, of course, the door was unlocked. She’d yet to meet a person in the West who locked his doors. She’d gotten used to that default trust in a place like Magpie but had wondered if things were different in a city the size of Salt Lake. But then Camellia was a suburb, doing its best to re-create life in Mayberry. She let the card flutter to the ground, opened the door, stepped into a darkened kitchen, and waited for her eyes to focus.

“Hello?” Nothing. Lola raised her voice and tried again.

“In here.” A muffled voice, a woman’s. Melena’s?

Lola skirted yards of marble-topped counters and glass-fronted cabinets, made her way past a breakfast area whose capacity gave lie to the word nook, and found her way into the living room, darker still with the drapes drawn against prying camera lenses. A pale gray sofa floated in the gloom like a cumulus cloud, puffy and overly soft. Heaps of throw pillows nearly buried a slight woman tucked into one corner. The woman’s arm jerked as though yanked by a puppeteer, the motion dislodging two of the pillows, which landed noiselessly at Lola’s feet.

A finger pointed. A voice like smoke wafted toward her. “Shoes.”

Lola looked down at the snowy expanse beneath the hiking boots she usually wore. Who—especially with kids—had a white carpet? And who worried about tracking it up at a time like this?

“Sorry, detective. I know it’s a bother.”

Lola paused in mid-unlacing. Best to keep her boots on, given the extremely likely possibility that the woman might kick her out. She sank down and down into the sofa and resumed fiddling with her boots as though she intended to remove them. Harder to get rid of someone when the person is sitting right next to you. “Melena?” Her voice rang in the hushed room.

“Nice of you to keep me company after everyone else has gone. So kind.” Rote phrases dragged up from somewhere deep in the mind’s defenses, albeit in the monotone of shock. Lola, fingers still wound in her bootlaces, sneaked a glance. Even on this, the worst day of her life, Melena Shumway had applied makeup with a practiced hand, had sprayed her graying hair—a sixties-style bouffant pageboy, a roll of curled-under bangs—into stiff submission. But crying had defeated her efforts. Veins mapped the prominent brown eyes; the nose showed red through its powder. Combined with an unfortunate underbite, the effect was that of a rabbit, small, vulnerable, trapped.

Lola lowered her voice to a half-decibel above Melena’s. “I’m not a detective. We talked yesterday on the phone. Lola Wicks. Remember?” She deliberately avoided the word reporter, something that tended to evoke a visceral response, especially under the circumstances. She hurried on, hoping to distract Melena from the fact of her profession. “What are you doing here all alone? Where is everyone?”

Again, Melena flung out an arm. Another pillow tumbled. “Bryce. My husband. Police station. You’re here to meet Frank. He’s at the police station, too. Your interview. So sorry.”

She spoke with the peculiar hitch between phrases common to people hit with the worst thing in their lives, synapses shorting out under the strain of trying to make sense of the incomprehensible, speech an almost unbearable strain on a system pushed to the point of breakdown.

“I’m here because I heard what happened,” Lola said. Which was true. “How can I help?” Translation: What can I say that will keep you talking?

Melena caught at her hand in a grip as strong as her voice was insubstantial. Not the defenseless creature she appeared to be, then. Or, more likely, made desperate by grief and fear. “Stay with me.”

Lola held herself stiff within the clutch. These moments were the worst, when the grief-stricken sought comfort from the person least able to give it. She fought hard to tamp down her natural sympathy—the woman’s best friend was dead and her son accused of murder, for God’s sake—and to focus on her neutral role as a reporter.

“About Frank. I wish I could have met him before …” Before he killed someone? Before he wrecked two families’ lives? Lola scrambled to get herself out of a thoughtless sentence. “I wish I could have met him,” she backtracked.

“Here. I’ll show you.” Melena stood, tugging at Lola’s hand. Lola struggled from the sofa’s enveloping embrace. Melena looked again at her boots. Lola freed her hand from Melena’s, freed her feet from the boots, and followed Melena down a long hallway toward the front door.

A photo display lined the walls, a quintet of somber, dark-haired girls stair-stepping in age from childhood to teens and beyond. In the most recent photo, three held babies. “Our girls,” said Melena. “College. Married.” She pointed to another photo, of a skinny brown boy, head bent, hair hanging over his eyes, face in shadows. “That’s Frank when we got him. He was just ten.”

When we got him. Like something they’d picked up at a store. “May I?” Lola took the photo from the wall and studied it. Frank’s outline was indistinct, as though he’d tried to turn away as the shutter clicked. She hung it back on the wall.

Melena straightened it and indicated another. “Look at this one. See how much he’s changed?”

The youth towered on hockey skates. Pads exaggerated his shoulders. He thrust the stick before him like a sword and, unlike the image of his younger self, stared directly into the camera, a teasing smile on his face. “I’ll turn on the light so that you can see better,” Melena offered.

Shadows moved on the other side of the front door’s frosted glass pane. Cops. Melena reached for the switch. Lola stopped her hand. “I can see fine.” The last thing she needed was for the cops to realize Melena had company.

“Here’s one with Kwesi. He’s from Ghana. They’re best friends. He’s Sa—Sa—he’s her son.” Unable to say Sariah’s name.

Frank, his muscular bulk still impressive even without the pads, stood beside a black youth holding a soccer ball.

“It was taken at the annual picnic for adoptive parents. And look!” Melena lifted another photo from its hook and thrust it toward Lola. “That’s me and Sariah in high school. We’ve been friends forever.”

Lola looked at the photo and back at Melena. The girls stood with their arms around one another, Sariah facing front, her sweater and pleated skirt failing to disguise curves already generous. Beside her, Melena looked almost boyishly angular, eyes downcast, shoulders hunched, the obligatory plain friend of the pretty girl. Nothing about her suggested the exuberant sort of personality implied by … “Cheerleaders? Really?” Lola couldn’t help herself. “Were your husbands cocaptains of the football team?”

Melena’s head tipped forward, irony either missed or ignored. “Bryce. My husband. He was. Sa—hers was on the ski team. Here they are, hunting.” Two men in camo, rifles angled against hips. Between them two deer, gutted, impressive racks nearly scraping the garage rafter from which they hung.

She replaced the photo on the wall and handed Lola another. “Here’s a better one, all of us together. Me and Bryce, Galon and … ” Her voice disappeared.

Lola held the photo close to her face. Even in miniature and one-dimensional, Sariah dominated, again standing a step closer to the viewer than anyone else in the photo, assaulting the camera with a megawatt smile. Still, Sariah’s husband gave her a run for her money in the look-at-me department. Galon Ballard had the shoulders-back posture, careful hair, and cleft chin of a catalogue model. No one would have mistaken him and Sariah for siblings, but cousins wouldn’t have been a stretch. The men stood between their wives, Galon’s head thrown back, evidently laughing at something the photographer had said. Bryce bristled beside him, thick hair barely tamed by a brush cut, jawline shaded by the beard threatening to break through, brows a single black slash. He was nearly as tall as Galon but with the meaty shoulders of the football player he’d been, and a body that had filled out to match them. As in the earlier photo, Melena hung a little behind Sariah, almost a shadow. Lola wondered if Donovan Munro had picked the wrong couple for his magazine’s feature. Which didn’t matter now.

Melena replaced the photo and leaned against Lola, who wrapped a reluctant arm around her and worked at saying something solicitous. “Can I fix you some tea? Coffee?” Too late, she remembered that caffeine was on the LDS forbidden list.

Melena politely ignored her gaffe. “I just want to sit down.”

Lola steered her back toward the living room, away from the front door and the unnerving proximity to the police. Her arm brushed a piece of wood affixed to the wall. Three pieces, actually, two uprights and a bar across the top in a sort of pi shape, the wood smooth and silvery, two deep hollows worn in the crossbar.

“What’s this?”

“Ah.” Melena’s face, frozen with the prolonged effort of keeping her panic under control, thawed a degree. “It’s the shafts and crossbar from my family’s handcart.” She fitted her hands into the crossbar’s hollows. “It took months. Two of their children died. But their faith was strong. They made it.”

What was a handcart? What took months? And—dead children? Lola wanted to ask. She glanced behind her, toward the front door, cops lurking on the other side. The handcart, whatever it was, could wait.

Once again imprisoned within the sofa, she went for direct. Almost. Melena wouldn’t be ready yet, if she ever was, to hear words like kill and murder and arrested. “What happened? I just heard that Sariah … ”

“Oh, it was awful. Bryce found her.”

“Bryce? Not her husband? Or kids?”

Melena batted some of the throw pillows out of her way. “Galon and Kwesi were at a soccer tournament. They just got back a little while ago. They’re at the police station.”

Lola rubbed at her arms, trying to smooth away the sudden gooseflesh. Reporters and cops alike knew the most basic guideline. When a woman is killed, look to the husband. And if the husband’s ruled out, check for a lover. Bryce, right next door, who “found” Sariah?

But why on earth had Frank been arrested so quickly? Because of the hockey stick? Something so obviously connected to the boy as to easily have been a plant.

Lola had been silent too long, her thoughts lurching around in the realm of the obvious. “What about—” She couldn’t remember, if she’d ever known it, the name of Sariah’s daughter, to whom Frank apparently was engaged. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to use the word fiancée about a high school student. “What about your son’s girlfriend?”

Melena blanched and cringed away. Lola scooted a safe distance down the couch, awaiting a terrible pronouncement.

Melena’s voice rose in a wail. “Everyone will find out.”

Lola couldn’t help herself. “Everyone already knows,” she said. “Your lawn is crawling with reporters.” Hoping that the disparaging twist that accompanied reporters would somehow separate her in Melena’s mind from the mob.

Melena shrank still further into herself. “This is going to ruin the family. Both families.”

Well, yes. Murder had a way of doing that. Lola waited.

“I can’t believe it. Tynslee was—they both were—raised to be pure. I never once suspected this. No one ever even saw them alone together.” A long shudder ran through Melena’s body, so intense that Lola felt it even through the overstuffed cushions.

She thought she was beginning to understand what, beyond murder, Melena so dreaded people knowing. “She was, ah, involved, with Frank?”

Melena bent double, pressing her face against her knees. “Involved. Yes. Disgusting!”

Melena hadn’t specified the timing. Lola suggested a possibility. “If she and Frank were together last night, you don’t have anything to worry about. He couldn’t have done it. The police will question him and then let him go. And no one will have to know anything. They’ll just say there wasn’t enough evidence to hold him.”

Another mood seesaw, to moist-eyed hope. “Do you really think so? Oh, that would be wonderful. I mean”—the shame of it all still front and center—“under the circumstances.” Ignoring Lola’s fumbling attempt to find out whether the young people had been together when Sariah was killed.

“Mmm.” Even if Frank’s alibi were to be firmly established, the police would then look to the next logical suspects, and nothing about that would be wonderful. Lola wondered when Melena would realize that. “Where is Tynslee now?”

“She’s at my sister’s house. Bryce’s idea. The press won’t think to bother her there.”

Lola silently thanked her for bringing up Bryce. “Melena, how did he find Sariah?”

“Rex woke him up.”

Lola tried to place Rex among the Shumways’ brood—she’d seen only girls in the photos—and failed. “Rex?”

“Sa—her dog. The whole family’s, I guess, but he worshipped her. Bryce said he got up early and went outside to get the newspaper.” Lola took a brief moment to be thankful the Ballards still got a daily newspaper. “He saw Rex running around on the street. So he caught him and brought him back to their house and put him inside.”

“Because the house was unlocked.” Of course it was. Lola wondered why Bryce hadn’t simply deposited Rex inside, closed the door behind him, and gone home. Why he’d instead followed the dog in and walked the length of the hallway and up the stairs—the Ballard home looked to be a variation of the Shumways’—and into the bedroom.

Bryce, in the hallway photo, posing next to the gutted deer. The precision involved to remove the organs without piercing intestines and ruining the meat. Whoever killed Sariah must have sliced an artery, sending blood pumping in great spurts across the bedding, the carpet. Done it so silently as to not alert the daughter down the hall.

“I just don’t get it,” she said aloud.

“Get what?”

“Why they arrested Frank so fast.”

Melena clutched a pillow to her chest. “They warned me. They warned me.”

Heavy footsteps sounded outside. Cops. Probably coming back to ask Melena the same sorts of questions she herself was asking.

Lola forgot that she hated touchy-feely. She reached for Melena’s hand and tugged, unwinding the woman until she again faced her. “Melena, who warned you? Warned you of what?”

“Not to adopt. A foreigner. Especially an older child, and a boy besides.”

The knock boomed throughout the house, three sharp raps, a pause, then a fourth.

Melena lifted herself from the sofa. Lola pulled her back. “Melena. You were saying.”

Melena gulped air. Her voice gained strength, the words nearly running together. “So many of our friends had adopted. Look at Kwesi. He was a mess when Sariah got him. Scrawny, some sort of skin infection. Screaming nightmares. Bryce said she was a saint, taking that on. Frank, though. You should have seen him in that orphanage. Oh, Lola. He was such a beautiful boy.”