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Also Friday, December 20th
A soft rapping on the window startled her, and she turned, almost afraid to look, but the dark hulking parka turned out to be Detective Gordon Barnes. She was so relieved she almost smiled.
“Boy, am I glad to see you,” she said, leaning on the car door as she got out. Her boots crunched on the snow and her breath came out in steam. “Could I go? I had a—”
He cut her off with a small shake of his head. Charlotte felt herself deflate as she realized she was embarrassing herself. Of course she couldn’t go just yet. A man was shot dead. This was going to take as long as it took.
Barnes gestured over his shoulder toward the lab. “What do you know about this?”
The detective’s slight emphasis on “you” was warranted, given that a mere three months earlier she had discovered the nearly-dead body of her elderly employer the first day on the job. Barnes, a detective with the Indiana State Police, seemed to find her observations useful as she moved from suspect to potential victim. Eventually, he intervened to save her life.
Charlotte explained her relationship to Alexa, and the reason for being there.
He nodded, and seemed to think about it until they heard raised voices and turned to observe Hewey Sawyer breaking away from the interviewing officers and rushing to Janice Garibaldi’s side. He appeared to be asking the paramedics if he could ride with her, but the cops held him back.
An investigator called out to Barnes; he excused himself to Charlotte. “Give me a few minutes, will you? Then I’d like to hear everything that happened today, everything you’ve seen, in detail.” He turned and opened the passenger door of his own unmarked black sedan, gesturing for her to get in. “My car is warmer.”
His car was considerably warmer, and cleaner. She had a better view of the ambulance, where Alexa had now joined her mother. Charlotte was glad for her, as the ambulance looked warm, and the paramedics were taking her friend’s blood pressure and giving her something to drink. She thought over the events of the day, particularly from when she and Alexa first arrived at the Garibaldi homestead. Barnes would want as clearly sequenced an account as she could possibly give.
After her lunch with Alexa, she had driven carefully from Penn House through the rattier sections of town to Progress Street, where two different train lines crossed, passing long-abandoned small factories with dark-paned windows and crumbling brick walls, a couple of pocket cornfields, and several small woods.
“Is this the right way? I can’t remember,” she asked.
Alexa pointed toward the bottom of a hill as they descended. “The driveway is right by that mailbox.”
Charlotte managed to turn between the substantial stone gateposts of the driveway, which wasn’t plowed so much as plowed through from quite a few tire tracks. The stately house was right up ahead, as well as some outbuildings and the barn, which Helene had said was Dr. Garibaldi’s laboratory.
There was only one vehicle in the yard, a dark green SUV that had several inches of snow on it. The snow had stopped, and all was utterly quiet, with not even the distant sound of cars going by on the highway that Charlotte knew was not far away. She turned to Alexa, who looked pale and, unsurprisingly, nervous.
“Ready?” she asked.
Alexa nodded and grabbed Charlotte’s hand. “Thank you for this, thank you so much, Charlotte.”
Charlotte squeezed her hand back. “I’ll be right behind you.”
They made their way through the uneven mounds of snow in the driveway to the main walkway between the house and the barn, which had been properly shoveled earlier in the day, but had since been covered with another four inches of snow. They went up the steps of the wide covered porch and Alexa lightly rapped on the front door. Charlotte recalled the porch filled with Adirondack and wicker furniture in the summer, but now it looked simply large and forlorn with nothing but snow.
There was no answer. Alexa peered through the clearer places in the etched glass of the door’s window and sidelights. She rapped harder, and rang the doorbell, but there was still no answer.
She looked confused, even a bit angry. “Could they have stood me up, turned this into some kind of game?”
Charlotte didn’t know the Garibaldis well enough to guess, and just shrugged. “Maybe they’re in the lab?” she asked, noting that Alexa did not seem comfortable enough to go into her parents’ house without being invited.
“Mom probably wouldn’t be, but we might as well check it out.” Alexa led the way down the path, hugging her arms to herself as if she wasn’t wearing a warm coat.
It was a cold walk in the sharp wind, made colder by the early gloom and purple clouds. The gray barn loomed over the back half of the property, and most of the light seemed to come from the snow itself. A crow called from the trees, but there was no answering cry.
Alexa pushed open a heavy double door at the side of the barn, the kind with hydraulic closers that one finds in schools and public buildings. Charlotte followed her into a plain foyer with pegs on the wall; a hooded parka hung from one of them, accompanied by a pair of boots on the floor beneath it. Someone was likely here, then. They turned left to walk down a hall that ran almost the length of the barn, stopping at a bank of observation windows in the middle.
Through the windows they saw a greenhouse, of sorts, the ceiling covered with drip irrigation tubes and full-spectrum lights illuminating groups of plants in raised beds. Except half of this greenhouse was in shambles, dirt and leaves scattered everywhere. It was in complete contrast to the other half at the opposite end of the room, pristine as a laboratory ought to be.
They hurried down the hall to the laboratory antechamber, and saw the door to the greenhouse standing open.
“This door is supposed to be closed all the time,” said Alexa, who pushed it shut, then turned to look at the mess. “Looks like there’s been a raid or something.”
Charlotte nudged a plant with the toe of her boot and thought it looked an awful lot like cannabis, although her knowledge of the plant itself was limited to pictures and the stuff inside of a joint. “Is that what I think it is?”
Alexa looked at it and shrugged. She nodded toward the intact part of the room, where a different kind of plant seemed to flourish. “Those aren’t. I wouldn’t put it past my father, though.”
They continued around the edge of the room to another wall with a bank of windows and a door that said “Office.” The windows were dark, save for the glow from several computer monitors. Alexa opened the door, turned on the lights, and gasped when she saw her father’s body. They stood there in shock for several silent seconds, then Alexa suddenly turned and ran back outside.
Charlotte called 911 and checked for a pulse, but there was none. He was gone. She went back outside herself, and was surprised to hear sirens so soon; shock could very well have altered her sense of time passing. Alexa was nowhere to be seen, but from the extra footprints in the snow Charlotte guessed that she probably ran to the house. A police cruiser, lights flashing, barreled up the drive and barely stopped before two officers jumped out. Charlotte knew enough to stay still and keep her hands visible, reassuring the officers that she was the one who called. One of them went into the lab, and the other put his hand on his holster when the storm door of the house slammed as Alexa came out. He relaxed when Charlotte explained who it was and Alexa came forward, palms up in a gesture of confusion.
“Mom’s not in there.” She stood and looked around helplessly, eyes wide. “Oh, I hope she’s okay.”
Charlotte stood back and listened to the officer ask questions.
“Do you have any idea where she could be, where she would go?”
Alexa shook her head. “I talked to her on the phone last night, and she said it was okay to come, they would be here.”
The officer continued to ask questions, when Charlotte noticed a movement at the edge of the woods behind one of the smaller outbuildings, and thought at first it was a deer. The policeman who was in the lab came out and spotted it at the same time, pulling his gun from his holster and commanding whoever it was back there to come out.
“Mom!” cried Alexa, who started to go forward, but the interviewing officer reacted in a flash and stopped her, ordering her to stay put. Charlotte nodded in agreement with this idea, putting her arms around Alexa’s shoulders to keep her calm.
They watched as two people came out of the shadows into what light was left. The taller one, a stocky blond man around forty, was supporting a slim older woman as they approached. Charlotte barely recognized her as Janice Garibaldi. They shuffled through the deep snow, like refugees plodding with one foot in front of the other toward someplace, anyplace, better than where they were.
When Janice saw Alexa, she stopped in her tracks, eyes wide in surprise, and covered her mouth with her mittened hand.
The sound and movement of Barnes getting into the driver’s seat jerked Charlotte back into the present.
“Isn’t this an awful lot of cops for a robbery gone bad—and the State Police?” asked Charlotte, noting the number of investigators going over the tire tracks in the driveway closest to the laboratory, the lab itself, and the house.
“Normally, yes. But Dr. Garibaldi is a little more high-profile than most, as was the stuff that was stolen. It could be corporate espionage, or it could be drug-related.”
“I thought some of the plants looked like marijuana.”
Barnes shook his head. “So did the locals,” he referred to the town police. “That’s how they called it in, but it’s not marijuana.”
There was a shout and they turned to look, Barnes lowering the window to listen: Hewey was trying to get around a cop, pointing toward Alexa, yelling over and over again, “She killed her father! She killed her father!”
What in the world? That didn’t make any sense to Charlotte, because Alexa was on a train or with her up until the time they found Dr. Garibaldi.
The officers had enough. They cuffed the angry man and shoved him into the back of a cruiser.
Charlotte sat in the lobby of Elmhurst County Memorial Hospital, trying to sort out her own life via cell phone. She had called Ellis while waiting in Detective Barnes’ car, got voice mail, left a message, and now there were four messages back. The gist of each, in order: Oh no! Book another flight! Call me back asap! There’s another flight Sunday on Jetflights dot com!
But first she called her landlord Larry to let him know that the cat didn’t need looking after just yet, and that she’d keep him updated. Then she called Simon, to let him know she was still in town and hoped to see him the next day. There was no answer, which was odd, so she left a message on his voice mail.
She called Ellis back.
The 16-year-old answered with enough energy to recharge the phone’s battery. “Mom! What’s happening? Did you book another flight?”
Charlotte sighed. “Not yet. I haven’t been home for hours. Took Alexa to the hospital to get her mother settled in. Mrs. Garibaldi has a heart problem and they want to keep her overnight.”
“You sound exhausted.”
“Well, yeah, I suppose I am. It’s pretty upsetting, finding someone shot. And there’s a lot of waiting around.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to get another flight booked tonight?”
Charlotte was taken aback by Ellis’ one-track mind. “Ellis, do you understand what’s happened here?”
“Yeah, I do, and I feel bad for Alexa and her mom, and that you’re in the middle of it, but I really need to see you and be with you for Christmas. I miss you so much, Mom, and this might be the only chance we’ll get to see each other for ages and ages.” She suddenly stopped talking, then lowered her voice so that Charlotte could barely hear her: “You know what Grandmother is like.”
They signed off, agreeing to talk again the next day. Charlotte felt a lump in her throat, and fought back tears.
When Ellis announced she was coming home for the holidays, Charlotte was in seventh heaven for an entire week. She immediately made plans, put up holiday decorations, talked it up with her friends, and even bought a few presents. Then came the call from Miranda Anthony, her former mother-in-law, inviting Charlotte—and a guest, if she’d like (a veiled way of pointing out that Jack was remarried, but Charlotte wasn’t)—to stay at the Anthonys’ ski lodge in Aspen for the holidays while Ellis was there. That’s when it began to be clear that things were no longer in Charlotte’s control.
She had never admitted to her ex and his family that she could no longer afford a somewhat upper-middle-class lifestyle. As far as they were concerned, she was selling her Lake Parkerton house because she was now an empty-nester and fancied a change. Miranda was the type of person that could make you feel inadequate for having anything less than a six-figure income, and even worse if you didn’t and got caught putting on a brave front. And that was the position Charlotte was in now. She not only couldn’t afford a trip to Paris to see Ellis, she couldn’t really afford Aspen, either, not without dipping into the money she’d set aside for living expenses while waiting for her house to sell and rebuilding her career. Worse, it was the holidays, and that meant also buying très chic gifts to hand out.
Worst of all was the effect it would have—and apparently was having—on Ellis. Charlotte imagined Miranda’s comments at her expense if she didn’t show up for the Aspen holidays, or if she did show up but watched every dime. Ellis would feel awful, and yet wouldn’t be able to say anything, feeling obliged for the trip home. Jack would be useless—he was always cowed by his mother—and Mrs. Jack took her cue from him.
Oh, and spending the holidays with Jack and Mrs. Jack, there was that, too. Ho ho bloody ho.
Charlotte was willing to endure all of this for the chance to be with her daughter and to make the holidays as happy as possible for her, too. Yet she couldn’t help but feel glad that for tonight, at least, she didn’t have to deal with Miranda.
The elevator signal beeped and Alexa stepped out, holding her coat, but barely holding up herself.
Charlotte was expecting to order a pizza, pour some wine, and make up the sofa for Alexa to sleep on. She was exhausted after the evening’s ordeal, and Alexa, too, said little on the drive from the hospital.
So she wasn’t expecting, after unlocking the carved black 19th-century door of 222 Harvey Street and entering the stairwell foyer to her studio apartment above The Good Stuff gift shop, for Alexa’s first comment to be, “My god, Charlotte, you live here?”
Nor was she expecting to feel so embarrassed as Alexa looked with amazement at the cracked plaster walls, the threadbare floral carpet runner on the stair steps, and the bare overhead bulb that switched on with a string pull.
Charlotte stopped on the third or fourth step and turned to look down on her old friend. “I’ll help you arrange for a room at the Corton Inn, if you like.”
“Oh, no, it’s not that, it’s just that after that amazing house at Lake Parkerton—.” She left the rest unsaid, and continued to look around with a mixture of distaste and puzzlement, then back up at Charlotte. “I guess I didn’t realize the extent everything had changed.”
Charlotte continued up the stairs without answering, counting her breaths: one, inhale; two, exhale; three, inhale; four, ex—. Then she spotted Shamus the tuxedo cat sitting atop the newel post. I’ve got you, the coolest cat in the universe. She stopped at the top of the stairs to give him a scratch under the chin and play a couple swipes of their mock boxing game.
“And a cat,” Alexa proclaimed. “I don’t remember you being too fond of cats.”
“This is Shamus,” said Charlotte, who continued up the last steps into the apartment and began to hang her coat on a wall peg and kick off her boots. Shamus backed away when Alexa tried to pet him, but he didn’t run away, merely hopped down onto the big library table to watch her from the safety of the computer.
“So!” Alexa dropped her bag on the floor and looked around from one end of the apartment to the other while taking off her own coat and boots. “It’s got a certain charm, I’ll give you that. Where’s the rest of it?”
“You’re looking at it, except for the bathroom, which is over there.”
“Oh, good, I really gotta go.” Alexa walked quickly to the door off the kitchen area and closed it.
Charlotte was thoroughly bummed. Maybe things were a lot shabbier than she realized if Alexa noticed them even in her upset state. Shamus, still on the table, got up and stretched, then waved his right front paw at her, almost as if gesturing for her to come closer, and she did. He rose up on his hind legs and put one front paw on either side of her neck, then leaned forward and rubbed the top of his head on her chin. Charlotte scooped him up into her arms and walked with him over to the windows behind the sofa.
The wind had died down, the snowplows had cleared the streets, people were coming and going from the restaurants and bars. The holiday lights and decorations wrapped around the street lamps and the storefronts were irresistibly cheering. Really, thought Charlotte, it isn’t so bad here at all. It’s warm and interesting, it’s affordable, it’s enough, and it’s a lot better than languishing alone in Lake Parkerton, nice as it was. “And I’ve got you,” she murmured to Shamus, who was purring madly.
Charlotte walked around the apartment with the cat, trying to see the place through Alexa’s eyes: it was a studio apartment above a small-town store, not an architecturally significant house in a breathtaking resort area; the sofa was an old well-worn oxblood Chesterfield from a lawyer’s office, not a butter-colored Italian leather sectional; the bedroom area was barely screened off from the living room, and it didn’t have a balcony that looked out over a pristine lake surrounded by hills and woods; the kitchen stove was a tiny dented electric-coil range, not a six-burner commercial model that cost more than several years’ worth of rent. But the abstract floral still life above the big table was the same one that had hung high over the fireplace mantel at the Lake Parkerton house, painted for her by her old classmate, the well-regarded Hannah Verhagen. Charlotte had forced herself to sell it at auction, but Helene purchased it and gave it back in thanks for solving the mysteries surrounding her sister Olivia’s death. The table not only had her laptop computer and Shamus’ basket, but was covered with the journals and research for her latest project, so she could honestly say she was gainfully employed, if self-employed—and doing work she really cared about. As much as she loved her former house and lifestyle, it was, after all, part of what she felt she had to do to for Ellis’ sake. Now Ellis was on her way to great things. It had been worth it.
Alexa came back out, and Shamus jumped from Charlotte’s arms to the sofa and back up to the table, where he sat near the painting as if he was guarding it from this newcomer. Charlotte smiled to herself, and, after conferring with Alexa about toppings, ordered the pizza from the joint across the street.
“I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that you’re here instead of at your house,” said Alexa, settling into a corner of the sofa with half a glass of wine. “And drinking boxed wine.” She took a sip and looked skeptical. “Drinkable, but not what I’d associate with you.”
Charlotte gave the briefest version of what happened that she could manage. “The economy forced the shutdown of both the magazines I worked for. Since Jack is covering Ellis’ expenses at the Paris Conservatoire, there’s understandably no child support, either. It all happened rather quickly. I got a deal on this apartment, then had an estate sale and put the Lake Parkerton house on the market. Unfortunately nearly half the other houses there are also on the market.”
“Ellis is in college already?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, but it’s secondary. Jack and his wife are working in Paris, too, at the Sorbonne.”
“She must be good to get in that young.” Alexa took another sip of wine. She might not have approved of it, but it didn’t stop her from drinking it. Charlotte wondered if someone with kidney failure ought to be drinking wine at all.
“She is very, very good. It’s a great opportunity for her. I miss her, of course, but I’m putting together a good life here.”
Alexa snorted. “If you say so. I’d be over there in Paris with her!” She got up and went over to the windows, looking out over the town.
Neither said anything. Charlotte felt defensive, and repeatedly reminded herself that Alexa was understandably out of sorts. Then Alexa turned to look at her.
“You wanted out of this town so badly, never to return, remember? Everywhere you looked, there was another reminder of Jack, of the life you made with him, of the mess he’d made of things. And the town was full of people and colleagues who knew about it. I know I’m not dreaming this, I was there, Charlotte. I mean, okay, I understand having to sell everything and move on, but why come back to the place where he and your old university connections humiliated you? I-I don’t get it.”
“That’s perfectly understandable,” Charlotte said with a forced smile. “I didn’t think I’d come back here, either. But things change in ten years. I’ve become good friends with Ellis’ piano teacher, Helene Dalmier, you remember her. A couple of years ago, Helene wanted a smaller place closer to her sister and things like doctors and grocery stores, so she moved to a condo here in Elm Grove. Jack sold our old house and isn’t in town anymore. I like not having to drive everywhere. Ellis still has a lot of friends here, and this way she can see them when she comes home. All the changes that happened in such a short time felt like a sign. I also decided not to stay in the design industry, but to be a freelance writer and editor, to do the kinds of projects that I really care about, even if my income won’t match what it used to be.” She was glad when the pizza arrived, bringing that part of the conversation to an end.
The sight of the pizza, however, made them both pause; for Charlotte, the deep round red of sauce against the white cardboard box was like a blow-up of Dr. Garibaldi’s wound. She took a deep breath. “We gotta eat something. Just take a bite, one bite.” She picked up a slice and did just that.
Alexa followed suit, and once she started eating, her brittleness seemed to ease up. “I’m sorry to be such a bitch, Charlotte. You’re right, you’ve got the freedom to do what you want now that Ellis is grown up. I’m probably projecting my own anxieties.”
“It’s understandable. Just when you really needed your parents there for you, they’re—.” Charlotte shrugged, not knowing how to finish the sentence.
“Yeah.” Alexa took another slice and shook her head at her circumstances. “Mom was at least speaking to me. In fact, she was nicer to me in the hospital than she’s been since before I left town. Maybe there’s hope.”