Back home, I showered and was out weeding the daisy beds when Joella got home from work. She was carrying a big plas-tic bag from the bakery. Neil always kept her supplied with day-old goodies. The birds got what we couldn’t eat.
She waved the bag at me as she got out of the car. “Hey, come on over later. I have some of Neil’s new blueberry strudels. They’re luscious.” She sounded cheerful, but she looked as if she could barely drag one foot in front of the other. She was a little over seven months along now and, as she put it, “expanding like your average hot air balloon.”
“You look beat. How about if I bring over some leftover chicken casserole from the freezer, and you can just put your feet up and relax? I’ll tell you all about A Day in the Life of a Lady Sleuth. And then we’ll have blueberry strudel for dessert.”
Joella smiled. She reached down to rub a swollen ankle. “My guardian angel. Thank you.”
By the time I went over an hour or so later, she’d showered and perked up a little. While I nuked the casserole, I told her about our search in Jerry’s condo, the ugly details I’d learned about his personal life, and that I had this phone number.
“Who do you think it might be?”
“Who knows? Maybe a girlfriend. Maybe somebody he’s dealt with on the Web site business. Maybe some bookie he placed bets with. Maybe the murderer, saying, ‘We are unable to come to the phone right now, but please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Your call is important to Murder-by-Phone, Inc.’”
Joella wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. But what if it really is the murderer? And he or she has caller ID, and it shows that per-son your number?”
That jolted me. “But if I don’t bring up the subject and ask, ‘Did you murder Jerry?’ they won’t know why I’m calling, will they?”
“If it’s an unlisted number, they might be curious about how you got it.”
The possibility of caller ID was enough to give me second thoughts. Okay, this called for a change in tactics. Do cell phone numbers show up on caller ID? Could someone knowledgeable trace that number back to a name and address?
I didn’t know, but it wasn’t something I wanted to risk.
Joella had news of her own. Detective Sergeant Molino had come to the coffee shop that afternoon to question her.
“One of the questions he asked was whether I’d ever been in the limo, and when I said yes, he asked me to come in so they could take my fingerprints. So I’m going to do that tomorrow.”
“Oh, Jo, I’m sorry. I hate having you dragged into this.”
“I don’t mind. Actually, he seemed very nice. He had a straw-berry smoothie and said it was really good. He was on his way to pick up his cat at the vet’s. It has some kind of skin problem.”
The man had a cat? If I’d speculated about a pet for Detective Sergeant Molino, it would be something slithery or scaly.
“What kind of questions did he ask?”
“You were the main topic, of course. But he also asked a few questions about Tom Bolton. And about me, too. I think he’d have liked to know about my pregnancy sans husband, but he was too polite to ask.”
Polite? Okay, I had to admit Detective Sergeant Molino hadn’t been truly rude to me. But I figured it was a pit bull kind of politeness, with big teeth behind it.
When I went to set the table for dinner, Joella’s mail was sitting on one of the place mats. I started to push it aside, then looked more closely.
“Hey, this is a birthday card! You’re having a birthday and you never even told me?”
She jumped up with surprising alacrity and snatched the card out of my hand. “And you accused Fitz of being nosy when he read your letter,” she said indignantly. “Now look what you’re doing!”
Point well taken. I ignored it. “When is this birthday?”
“Sunday,” she said reluctantly.
“And you’ll be twenty-one.”
“That’s what my birth certificate indicates.”
Something in her tone made me ask, “But?”
“But sometimes I feel about ten. Other times closer to ninety.”
Oddly enough, I knew the feeling. Sometimes my sixty seemed impossible. How could I be sixty when I felt seventeen inside? Other times, sixty seemed impossible from the other direction. How could I be only sixty when I looked at younger people around me and realized I had clothes—and wrinkles—older than they were?
“Why were you hiding this from me?” I said severely.
“I wasn’t hiding it. I just didn’t want a big fuss.”
“But you made a big fuss over my birthday.”
“That’s different.”
Since I’d already been duly charged with nosiness, I grabbed the card again and looked to see who it was from. “Hey, this is from your mother! Have they changed their attitude?”
“Does ol’ Moose change his black-on-white spots? Does the broken toaster heal itself? Does the woman in the exercise-machine ads on TV ever admit she was always skinny and didn’t get that way using that machine?”
I wasn’t sure all those references were relevant, but I saw what she was getting at. No change in the Picault parents.
“There was one small change,” she conceded. “But if you’re thinking maybe they sent a gift certificate to buy cute baby clothes or fuzzy toys, think again.”
“Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry.” I went over and put my arms around her. Joella covered her feelings with these tart comments, but I knew how much her parents’ attitude hurt her.
I didn’t understand her wealthy parents, so smug and righteous over in their big house in Seattle. By Joella’s own admission she hadn’t been an ideal daughter. She’d kept her grades up, but she’d been into smoking pot in high school and had dabbled in stronger drugs when she was in college down in California.
But had they been there to offer support or comfort or help when the worst that could happen to a girl had happened? No. All they’d offered were demands and ultimatums.
She’d told me her story. She’d had a fight and broken up with her boyfriend one Friday night, then defiantly gone to an off-campus party alone. She met people there, friends of friends of friends. Things got fuzzy.
She didn’t recall leaving the party, much less who she’d left it with. But hours later she’d returned to consciousness alone in her own car with ugly physical proof of what had happened, but no memory of it. She figured out later that she’d probably been given Rohypnol in a drink, a favorite “date-rape” drug because it not only knocks the girl out; it destroys short-term memory of whatever happened. She hadn’t gone to the police immediately, guiltily blaming herself because there had been warnings on campus about the drug, and she knew she’d acted foolishly. Then, by the time she did go to the authorities, when she knew she was pregnant, the event was several weeks in the past, and there was no evidence of the rape or of the drug in her system.
She’d given the police names of several people at the party, but nothing had ever come of it. Perhaps because Don and Scott and Mike weren’t all that definitive. Or perhaps, she’d added when telling me, because the police suspected she was just making up a wild story to cover something she’d done will-ingly. In any case, nothing had ever come of her report to the police.
Her parents’ reaction when she told them was a scathing blast of scorn and anger for letting it happen, and the demand that she have an immediate abortion. When she resisted, they were adamant. No abortion, no help. No comfort, no support, nothing.
“I’m not even sure why I refused at first,” Joella had told me the only time we talked about it. She hadn’t been a Christian then. But in exploring her inner feelings and looking for answers, what she’d done, she said, was “find myself . . . and God.” She also found the inner conviction that she couldn’t kill this unborn baby. No matter what its origins, it was still one of God’s precious creations.
None of this mattered to her parents. They didn’t care about her spiritual awakening. They had their ultimatum: have an abortion, or you’re on your own. Which was when Joella pulled out and came to Vigland, intending to room with a friend. That fell through when the friend got an unexpected job offer in Portland and took it. Joella stayed on, even though she knew no one else in Vigland and had never even been in the town before.
“Where else did I have to go?” she’d said wryly.
She’d answered my ad to rent the duplex, sold her snappy little Mustang, bought the old Subaru, and got a job in the cof-fee shop. When I found out what her real situation was, I low-ered the rent so she wouldn’t be skimping so much on food or medical care.
“So what is this change?” I asked as I set the bottle of ranch dressing beside the salad on the table.
“I can come home, or they’ll send money to help me out here. On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“That I give the baby up for adoption as soon as she’s born. That I not only promise to give her up, but that I make all the arrangements now, so it’s a sure thing.”
Another harsh ultimatum. Their view was basically the same: one way or the other, this baby had to go. Although I had to wonder if they’d ever really thought of it as a baby. Their grandchild, to be exact.
And yet . . . “You’re thinking about doing that anyway.”
She nodded. “I know. I want what’s best for my baby.”
“We’re always hearing about how many couples are trying to adopt.”
“And doing that would solve a bunch of problems, wouldn’t it? I could go back to college and basically start my life over. The baby would have good parents with everything to offer her, and I’d be . . . free.”
“Maybe that’s the solution, then.”
“Maybe it is. But I won’t take a bribe from my folks just to make life easier for myself,” she added almost fiercely.
This was where I backed off. I could see strong arguments on both sides. I couldn’t imagine ever giving up Sarah under any circumstances, but I knew how tough life would be for Joella if she kept the baby. Raising a child alone, without fam-ily support of any kind, was a daunting prospect. And so many childless couples desperately wanted a baby.
“Did you decide on a name?” I asked tentatively.
She shook her head, but not before I caught a glint of tears in her eyes. “If she has . . . other parents, I figure they’ll want to name her themselves.”
A tough decision. And a decision, as I’d earlier said to her, she had to make alone.
“No, not alone,” Joella had said firmly.
I knew what that meant. God was in all her decisions.
It must be a nice feeling, I thought. A secure feeling, to know help was there, that there was a greater strength to lean on. There’d been times in my life when I felt as alone as a bird lost on a mountaintop. And yet I doubted God was going to be sending her a check to help out every month.
After dinner, I put the dishes in the dishwasher, then said, “Okay, I have to run. See you later.”
“What’s your hurry?”
“Oh, you know. Things to do.”
My evasion didn’t work.
“You’re going to call that number, aren’t you?”
“I can’t just ignore it. It might be an important clue.”
“It might be a hotline to you. And an hour after the call, the murderer will be knocking on your door!”
“I don’t think murderers come politely knocking.” I patted her hand. “But don’t worry. I’m going to call from a pay phone. The one up by McDonald’s, I think.”
“Hey, great idea! I’ll come along.”
“No reason to do that.”
She smiled and slipped her bare feet into sandals. “Maybe nosiness is catching.”
We parked in the shopping center where the big yellow arch rose over a stucco building. I couldn’t see any danger in this, but I already had a fast exit from the parking lot figured out, just in case some high-tech identification system instantly latched onto me.
I punched in the number. The prefix showed it was located in Vigland. I had an innocent-sounding spiel ready. I was this querulous, confused little old lady wanting to know who I’d reached because this was supposed to be my cousin Phoebe’s number.
It rang four times before an answering machine picked up. I held my breath, expecting anything from sultry female tones to the growl of a bookie named Bubba.
I listened a few moments, then hung up the receiver.
Joella pounded my arm. “Who was it? What’s wrong? Why did you hang up? Did they sound threatening or dangerous?”
“Not unless you’re afraid of chiropractic treatment.”
“Chiropractic treatment!”
“It was a chiropractor’s office. Their hours are eight thirty to five on weekdays, eight thirty to noon on Saturdays. Although there’s another number you can call if you’re having a chiropractic emergency.”
Joella looked bemused, then giggled, and I maintained my dignity by saying, “It might have been an important clue.”
Okay, as a sleuth, I was learning things. About Jerry’s gambling. About his stomach problems. About his married state. And that he’d had some unknown condition possibly requiring chiropractic attention.
I was also learning that in real-life sleuthing there were considerably more dead ends than there had been in Ed Montrose’s weekly half hour of detective work, where every clue had meaning.