The doorbell rang about ten that morning, and because any caller could be bringing news, Robin hurried to the front door. I was on a step stool putting ornaments on the higher branches. I didn’t recognize the voices I’d heard, and I turned slightly to see who was coming into the family room. A man and a woman I’d never seen before were looking around, and the cold outside air hung around them in a cloud. She was a tall woman whose black hair was streaked with gray; and she was wearing a gray coat, making a very striking impression. She was pulling off black gloves. Her partner was less memorable, a slight brown-haired man with narrow features, doffing a rather nice olive wool coat to reveal an equally nice suit.
“Please have a seat,” Robin told them, and he zoomed over to me to give me a hand down from the stepstool. “FBI,” he said in answer to my inquiring look.
“Do you want some coffee or some water or Coca-Cola?” I asked, feeling a little more energized. “Or maybe we have juice?” I’d lost track of what was in my refrigerator.
“I’d love a cup of coffee,” the woman said. “I’m Bernadette Crowley, by the way, and this is Les Van Winkle.”
No problem remembering those names, I thought. “I’ll just be a minute,” I said, and went into the kitchen to put the coffee on. I hadn’t been drinking any because of my morning sickness, and I hoped I could get a cup down now. It might pull me out of this malaise.
“It’s perking,” I said blankly. I found I was back in the living room. “Be ready in a minute.”
“Great,” said Bernadette Crowley. She tucked her chin-length hair behind her ears and took out a small notebook. “Ms. Teagarden, Mr. Crusoe, Les and I are from the FBI, and we’ve come to help the local law enforcement with this case.”
“Good,” Robin said, and I nodded.
“How so, Mr. Crusoe?” Van Winkle’s voice was quiet and neutral, an inviting kind of voice.
“Anything that might show us some progress is welcome,” Robin said, surprised. “But I don’t think we’re dissatisfied with what they’ve done, right, Roe?”
“No,” I said, and realized that was open to interpretation. “I think the local guys have been doing everything they can,” I explained. “But if there is something you can do to turn over a few more rocks, and give any new leads, of course…” and my voice trailed off.
“An investigation like this, we turn over a lot of rocks,” Crowley said, with a wry smile. “For example, the gambling debts your father has incurred.”
“That was bad news,” I agreed. “And we didn’t have any idea until just—two days ago? I don’t talk to my father very often. And even less now.”
“Why is that?” Van Winkle said, only polite curiosity on his face.
“He’s a disappointing father,” I said. “He behaved badly enough to run Phillip out of the house, and he made Betty Jo’s life so unhappy that she ran away, too. Now we know about the gambling.” I shook my head. “I’ve reached the end of my rope with him.”
“Please tell us about this,” Crowley said. “Because this is the first time we’re hearing this story from you. We want to know how your half brother happened to be in that alley with the Finstermeyer twins and the Scotts’ little girl, and Tammy Ribble.”
“And Clayton,” I said. “And Connie. And maybe Marlea, Clayton’s sister.”
“You think they were there, too?”
“Sure. Clayton’s missing, too, right? Connie must have witnessed what happened. And she must have kept what she saw secret. Because otherwise, why would she kill herself? And Clayton had just been seen at the soccer field. Maybe he’d come to pick up Marlea. She was there with her two friends.”
“Sienna Andrews and Kesha Windham?”
I nodded.
“Sarah Washington told us about that,” Crowley said.
“We’re coming back to Phillip,” Van Winkle said, “but I’m interested to know why you think Connie was in the alley. And why she wouldn’t talk about what she saw?”
That was a good question, and it pulled me up short as though I’d walked into a wall. My brain cleared a little.
“The kids tell me Connie went everywhere with Clayton. I assumed that Connie kept what she saw secret because she feared for Clayton’s safety,” I said, figuring it out as I spoke. “Or maybe she had been threatened by the kidnapper that something would happen to Clayton if she talked.”
Robin murmured that he’d get the coffee and came back in minutes with everything we needed on a tray except spoons. And I retrieved those.
“Or maybe,” Robin said after he put the tray on the coffee table, “Connie knew the kidnapper and couldn’t bear having that knowledge.”
I looked at my husband in some astonishment. I’d never thought of that. I should have, though. The FBI agents certainly weren’t surprised. I felt like I was shaking off cobwebs from my brain. I hadn’t been thinking. I’d only been sinking deeper into a quicksand of misery.
“Let’s hear about Phillip, if you don’t mind,” Crowley said. “Tell me how well you know your half brother.”
“I used to babysit him,” I said, and explained that my father and Betty Jo had lived nearby until Phillip had had a scary thing happen to him. While he’d been staying with me. So my father and Betty Jo had decided that he needed to deal with it by moving to California.
“We started e-mailing each other when he got old enough to get on the computer by himself, though,” I said, smiling as I remembered how glad I had been to hear from him.
“So your father kept you two apart?”
“Yes, he did,” I said. “I flew out to see Phillip a couple of times, and we went out by ourselves. During my first marriage, Martin and I flew out to California to spend time with Phillip. It was great. But Dad wouldn’t let him come to Lawrenceton.”
“So how did Phillip come to be here with you?”
“He hitchhiked here,” I said. “It scared the hell out of me. I had no idea he was coming. I would have sent him some money, or gone to get him. And he had some very tense moments along the way, he told me. I was scared all over when I thought of what could have happened. But he made it here, and he showed up at the library where I work.” I smiled and shook my head, remembering. “I didn’t even recognize him for a second, he was so grown-up.”
“And then what?”
“Well, I called my father and Betty Jo, of course, and told him that Phillip was here, and safe. And that Phillip had asked to stay with me.”
“Quite an adjustment for you, a newlywed, to have a teenager living with you.” Van Winkle was stirring his coffee, looking wise and understanding.
I wasn’t buying that, not completely, but I was sure going to tell them the truth. I didn’t know what might turn out to be important, and what might not.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “But in the end, I didn’t mind.”
“Why is that?” Crowley looked only quizzical.
“Because I love my brother,” I said. “And Robin was willing, thank God. We weren’t married at the moment, but we got married.”
“Late last month,” Robin said. I could scarcely believe it.
“And I understand you are expecting?” Crowley said, nodding at my middle.
“Yes,” I said, and felt a little smile curl my lips up. “We are.”
“So did Phillip feel that he’d been edged out by the baby?”
“He didn’t seem to. He was pretty excited. But he had barely learned about it before he was gone.”
“So how was Phillip’s schooling arranged?”
“Well, he’d been taking these classes in California, at some kind of joint classroom for home-schooled students,” I said. “I didn’t know anything about it, but as it turned out, this system is nationwide.”
They both nodded, as if this was a well-known established educational mode. I’d had no idea.
“Phillip took off from California before the end of a semester, but after about a million phone calls and e-mails, we worked it out so he could finish his semester fr
om here, which he did. In January, he was going to go to the high school here.”
“Because he’d already made friends,” Crowley said, nodding.
“Right,” I said. “I knew Josh from the library, he was a frequent patron and a good kid, so I asked him to come by to meet Phillip. I didn’t want Phillip to be stuck with me all of the time.”
“Or you didn’t want him to be around all of the time,” Van Winkle suggested.
Oooooh. A snake in the grass. “Phillip is nice to have around the house,” I said. “He’s even reasonably helpful. But teenagers need to hang around with other teenagers, and they need a social network. So of course I was hoping he’d make friends.”
“Of course,” Crowley said smoothly. “And did that work out?”
“Better than I’d ever imagined. He and Josh really hit it off, and Phillip liked Jocelyn, too. Joss and Josh are very close, naturally, so that made it a good match.”
“Your brother had romantic feelings for Jocelyn?”
I smiled. “He thought Joss was pretty, and he admired the fact that she was a good athlete,” I said. “He did like her. But Phillip found out fairly quickly that he wasn’t what she was looking for.”
“In fact, Jocelyn is gay,” Van Winkle murmured.
“Yes, that’s what Phillip told me,” I said. “That she and Tammy Ribble were girlfriends.”
“Who did you tell about this?”
“No one. It wasn’t my business.”
“Did it disgust you?”
“Disgust me? It’s not my business to be disgusted,” I said slowly. “I’ve known girls who liked girls before. I don’t think that’s really big news these days, do you?”
“Did Phillip take it hard, that his crush didn’t give him the time of day?” Van Winkle said. He looked so kind and understanding!
I laughed, for the first time in forever. “No, he didn’t take it hard,” I said. “Phillip is an optimist, and he’s blessed with good looks. I understand he and Sarah Washington were ‘talking.’ Phillip was content to be a friend of Joss’s. Which you’d have to, to be friends with Josh.”
“So the twins were devoted to each other?” Crowley asked.
Robin and I nodded simultaneously. “They seemed to be,” I added cautiously. “We didn’t see as much of Joss as we did of Josh.”
“Close, despite being so different?” Crowley inquired.
“Are they so different?” I considered. “Well, I guess so. Joss is more athletic and really direct. Josh is more of a reader, and Phillip said he makes all A’s. But they’re both popular at school, and both very involved in activities.”
“What about Tammy Ribble?”
“I only knew her by sight,” I said. “I had never talked to her.”
Crowley looked inquiringly at Robin, who shook his head.
“And Liza Scott?”
“I’ve known Liza since she was a small girl,” I said. “When her mom moved here and started coming to church, Liza came too, of course, and then Emily married Aubrey, our priest, and Aubrey adopted Liza. He’s always adored her. So I still think of Liza as a little kid, though she’s eleven now. Little enough,” I added, feeling a wave of sadness.
“And I understand she was fond of Phillip?” Van Winkle said gently.
“That’s what I hear,” I said. “I wasn’t aware of it, but Sarah mentioned that.”
“Did Phillip discourage her?”
“Not by being mean,” I said instantly. “Liza was in a vulnerable position, because of the situation at her school. Maybe she was looking for a champion?” I thought of Phillip’s drawings, now in the hands of the police. “Phillip did feel a lot of sympathy for Liza. And he was always nice to her, as far as I know.” I remembered being a teenager, and I remembered that impatience could get the better of someone who wanted everything to happen now. Plus, I knew it must have been not a little embarrassing for Phillip … right? To have a preteen hanging around with pleading eyes?
They asked me to talk about the bullying, but I had no firsthand knowledge. I hadn’t known the full scope of the problem until Phillip had gone missing. I did tell them about Tiffany Andrews’ visit.
Then Crowley and Van Winkle took me over Phillip’s call of the day before, in exhaustive detail. At least at that moment, I reminded myself, Phillip had been alive and able to talk. It broke my heart that he had called me, and I hadn’t been able to help him. Though Van Winkle and Crowley took me over his words again and again, I could not wring any more meaning or information out of them.
“The call came from a cell phone,” Crowley told me. “That makes its location impossible to pinpoint exactly in a semi-rural area like Lawrenceton, though we know the call originated from the area to the west side of the town, and a little farther out. Before you ask me, he didn’t call again. The only calls on your log are from your family and one of your coworkers.”
My heart sank. She returned my phone. I looked at it, longing for it to ring again, to hear Phillip on the other end.
But while I spoke to the FBI agents, hoping against hope that they would find something new in my words, or be set off on some investigative angle they hadn’t visited, I had my own new thought.
Liza Scott’s three persecutors weren’t the only bullies who played roles in the tumult surrounding our missing kids.
Clayton Harrison had a reputation as a bully, too. And he was something of a classic bully, if the stories I’d heard about him were true: that he dominated everywhere he went, that he was quick to gibe at kids who had less, were different, were smarter or dumber. He liked to snap towels at other guys in the locker room, and if he didn’t like something, he proclaimed it “gay.”
So why had he been seeking out Josh, Phillip, and Joss? After all, they were more-or-less two years younger. Or had he just come to the field to pick up his sister? If that were the case how had Marlea and the other two girls gotten home?
Tammy Ribble had encountered the other kids not thirty minutes later. And ended up dead. The kidnappers had appeared and forced all the teenagers, and Liza, into cooperation. Some terrible confrontation had taken place, something so bad that Connie had killed herself rather than live with it.
I’d been assuming that that “something” was the forceful abduction of the kids in the car. That Tammy, coming out the back door of the beauty salon, had witnessed this crime and been killed because she knew the abductor, or at the very least could give information leading to his (their?) arrest.
I could at least understand that.
But I sure couldn’t understand Connie’s drastic action. Had she been on the scene? Had the girl been so fragile that seeing Tammy die had unhinged her? It couldn’t be the mere absence of her boyfriend that had precipitated her death. She would hope for his rescue, right? Connie had to know something about where Clayton was, who had taken him. I thought again that Connie must have been threatened with Clayton’s murder if she talked.
The picture we’d been looking at (all the kids in one car, all abducted) did not make sense, like so many things about this crime.
Lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t notice my visitors had gotten up to leave until Robin touched my shoulder. “Sorry,” I said, with an effort. “Can I ask you something?”
“I’ll answer if I can,” said Crowley. She waited with brows raised for me to speak.
“Connie really died from the pills, right?” I asked. “Nothing suspect about it?”
Whatever they’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. Both the agents looked just the slightest bit disapproving. Perhaps they thought I was asking out of ghoulish curiosity. “Yes, she took all of her mother’s sleeping pills,” Crowley told me.
“But why?” I just couldn’t understand it.
“The assumption is she despaired of her boyfriend’s ever coming back, since his parents paid the ransom and he never showed up,” Van Winkle said.
And the way he said it told me that the two agents also had their doubts about Connie’s motivati
on for such a drastic act.
“So the Harrisons told Connie, from the get-go, that they’d gotten a ransom demand for Clayton?”
Crowley looked surprised. And thoughtful. “Maybe since she’d told you and George and Beth, Karina figured she ought to tell Connie,” she said. “But that wouldn’t have been my choice.”
“There’s no doubt she took the pills voluntarily?” I said.
And they were both looking at me with quizzical gazes now.
“No doubt,” Crowley told me. “She was alone in the house. Her father was at work and her mother was visiting her own mother’s nursing home.”
“She was lying on her own bed, and the pill container was beside her, along with a bottle of water,” Van Winkle added. “The autopsy has shown she took the pills, and she hadn’t sustained any bruises or other injuries.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. That seemed conclusive. I still could not understand why it had happened. “There was a note, I hear?”
“A very brief one.” Les Van Winkle was looking at me funny. “Do you have a theory about Connie Bell’s death?”
“It just seems so unlikely,” I said. “Unlikely and unnecessary. Based on the facts as we know them.”
“Any kid’s death seems unnecessary,” Crowley said. She and her partner pulled their coats on.
“Can you tell me what you think happened in that alley?” I said.
Van Winkle smiled cryptically. “No,” he said. “We can’t share our speculations with you.”
And then they were gone.
Two hours later, the tree was up. Robin and I had a lackluster lunch while we looked at it and tried to feel a spark of optimism. Robin had also wound lights around the bushes in front of the house and then told me our lighting was complete. I had hung an artificial wreath on the front door. That was as much as we could do, and more than we had heart for.
Though the visit of the FBI agents had given me food for thought, all that thought didn’t lead anywhere. Robin went to his office and tried to work. I sat and held a book in front of me, though I could not have told you what I read. Instead of staring at a book, sometimes I stared at the television. I missed work more than I ever thought I would, yet I was sure I couldn’t get through a whole day at the library.