“You don’t need drugs.”
I could picture his scowl. “I know,” I said.
“I think all you need is to be in better touch with God, Laurel,” he said seriously. “You’ve lost that part of yourself. Where did you experience God this week?”
I wanted to punch him. If he’d been there with me instead of miles away in his office, I would have. “Nowhere,” I said sharply. “I haven’t experienced God in six long, miserable weeks.”
Jamie was undaunted. “Well,” he said, “I think we’ve identified the problem.”
Sara stopped by a few weeks later. I was lying on the sofa in front of the TV watching an ancient rerun of I Dream of Jeannie when she knocked on the screen door.
“Let yourself in,” I said.
She was carrying a pan of something as she shouldered her way through the doorway.
“I’m going to put a casserole in the fridge for you,” she said, walking into the kitchen.
“Where’s the baby?” I asked.
“I left her with Jamie. He’s doing some paperwork at the chapel,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Oh, no.
Sara pulled one of the dining room chairs over until it was next to the sofa. I looked at the TV screen instead of at her. It was the episode where Tony and Jeannie got married, not that I cared.
“How are you feeling?” Sara asked.
“Okay,” I said.
She leaned forward. “Really, how are you feeling?”
I sighed, wishing she would leave.
“Tired,” I said.
“What does your doctor say?”
“About what?”
“Your tiredness.”
I didn’t like her pushiness. “I’m anemic,” I said, although I doubted I still was.
“Jamie told me your doctor offered you Prozac.”
“That’s really personal information.”
“He told me because he’s worried about you,” she said. “Jamie’s kind of old-fashioned about taking antidepressants, but I wanted to tell you that I have a friend in Michigan who takes Prozac and it’s really helped her.”
“I’m not that depressed, Sara,” I said. “I’m tired. You’d be tired too if you were up all night with a screaming baby.”
“Laurel, you’re a nurse,” she said. “I didn’t even finish college and I can tell you’re depressed. You want to sleep all the time. Jamie says you don’t get excited about anything. Especially not about Maggie.” She nearly whispered the last sentence as though someone might overhear her. “It’s not normal to be so…uninterested in your baby.”
I lifted my gaze to hers. “I want you to leave,” I said.
“I’m sorry.” She leaned back in the chair but made no move to get up. “I didn’t mean to upset you, but I think you need help. It’s not fair to Jamie to make him…” She made a clicking sound with her tongue and let out a sigh. “It’s like he’s a single parent,” she said. “He’s great with her, but that baby isn’t even going to know who you are. Who her mother is.”
I heard the screen door creak open again and looked up to see Marcus, home for lunch.
Sara finally got to her feet. “You must be Marcus,” she said, reaching out a hand. “I’m Sara Weston.”
Marcus shook her hand. I could smell booze on him from where I sat.
“You’re the babysitter,” Marcus said.
“Right. I just stopped over to—”
“To tell me I’m a basket case and a shitty mother,” I said.
“Laurel!” Sara said. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I asked her to go but she won’t leave,” I said to Marcus, barely able to believe my own rudeness.
“You should go,” Marcus said to her.
Sara raised her hands in surrender, as if trying to keep us calm. “I’m going,” she said, heading for the door. She turned one more time before leaving. “The casserole goes in a three-hundred-fifty-degree oven for half an hour.”
That night, Maggie started getting a cold. Her nose ran and her throat must have hurt because she screamed from nine o’clock until two in the morning. By that time, Jamie and I were both completely exhausted. I fell into a sleep so deep that when the phone rang, I thought it was the smoke alarm and I leaped out of bed and ran into the nursery—one very rare, small sign that I did indeed care about my baby girl.
I came back to the bedroom as Jamie was picking up the phone from the nightstand. I listened to his end of the conversation and knew it was Marcus.
“No, damn it, you can wait there until morning!” Jamie shouted before slamming the receiver into the cradle.
I sat down on the bed. “Marcus?”
“I’ve had it with him!” Jamie got out of bed and opened the dresser drawer, pulling out a T-shirt. “He got another DUI,” he said. “He’s at the jail in Jacksonville. Wants me to come bail him out.”
“Are you going now?”
“Yes.” He sounded tired. “I can’t leave him there. But this is it, Laurel. This is the end. He’s out of this house.”
I knew Jamie was right. Kicking him out had seemed inevitable from the start.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Jamie said as he sat down on the bed to put on his sandals. “He’s a big part of the problem.”
“What problem?” I asked.
“With you. With your tiredness and everything. You have to worry about him as well as Maggie and me. You have to clean up after him. You can never predict what he’ll do next, what woman he’ll drag home with him. He wakes the baby up with his music. He’s never sober. When’s the last time you’ve seen him sober?”
I tried to think, but then realized Jamie wasn’t really after an answer.
“He’s keeping us from becoming a family. You, me and Maggie. And this is it. It’s over. The great save-Marcus-from-himself experiment comes to an end tonight.”
Marcus left The Sea Tender the following day. He packed up his stereo, his CDs, his clothes and his beer and moved into another of his father’s many properties—Talos, the house next door to ours.
Chapter Fifteen
Marcus
FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE FIRE, I took my kayak out on the sound at sunrise. Not a ripple in the water. The air full of marshland and salt. I was able to put the fire out of my mind for forty minutes while I paddled hard. Sometimes out there, I felt a bit of what Jamie called “experiencing God.” I thought he was so full of it back then. I wished I could tell him I was wrong.
I lived in one of the old Operation Bumblebee towers that I’d converted into a house, and I made it home in time to catch Andy and Laurel’s interview on the Today show. I was taping it just in case, but I got a kick out of seeing them live. Andy’s knee jumped the whole time. He handled Ann Curry’s questions like a pro. Laurel got her bit in, of course. Maggie’d already e-mailed me about the lighter fiasco, but I still got queasy hearing Laurel describe what happened. I’d have to have a talk with Andy about smoking. They both looked fantastic. Laurel had her hair down and she smiled a lot, which made me realize she doesn’t smile much around me. And Andy was a good-looking kid. So young, though. More like twelve than fifteen.
Then it was back to reality at the fire station. I poured my first mug of coffee and was heading across the hall to my office when I collided—literally—with good ol’ Reverend William Jesperson. Ordinarily, Reverend Bill and I went out of our way to avoid each other, but my shoulder connecting with his chest made that impossible.
“’Scuse me.” I was glad I didn’t spill on him. Wouldn’t put it past him to sue my sorry Lockwood ass.
He looked down the hall toward Pete’s office. “The chief in?” he asked.
“Just stepped out,” I said. “Is this about the fire? Because if it is, it’s me you should be talking to anyway.”
He scowled. “Now come on, Lockwood. You know I’m not going to talk with you, so just tell Pete to call me.”
Pete picked that moment to walk in the door carr
ying coffee and a pastry bag from Jabeen’s. He stopped in the hall and looked from me to Reverend Bill and back again.
“Can I help you, Reverend?” he asked.
“You have any leads yet?” Reverend Bill asked him.
“You know we’ll tell you soon’s we know anything,” Pete said.
“Oh, come on,” Reverend Bill said. “You fellas know more than you’re saying, and I think I have a right to know what your investigation’s turned up so far, don’t you?”
“It’s ongoing, Reverend,” I said. “Nothing solid yet.” That was putting it mildly.
“Did you see his nephew on TV this morning?” Reverend Bill jerked his head in my direction.
“I missed it.” Pete took a sip from his coffee. I knew he was itching to get at whatever he had in the bag.
“Well, it was quite informative,” Reverend Bill said. “For example, did you know that Andy Lockwood got kicked off his flight to New York for concealing a cigarette lighter in his sock?”
Pete raised his eyebrows at me. “Andy?”
Son of a bitch. “He didn’t get kicked off, Pete. You know what Andy’s like. He saw the sign saying you couldn’t carry a lighter onboard, so he stuck it in his sock.”
“And they didn’t let him board,” Reverend Bill said.
“Security needed to talk to him, so he and Laurel missed their plane. They got on the next one.”
Pete’s jaw had dropped sometime during the back and forth.
“The boy carries a lighter around with him,” Reverend Bill said. “And he turned out to be the big hero at the lock-in. Doesn’t that seem a bit suspicious?”
“Andy’s experimenting like every other fifteen-year-old,” I said. “Didn’t you try smoking when you were a kid?”
“Frankly, no. I thought it was disgusting then and I still think so now.”
Bullshit. He grew up in tobacco country and never lit up?
“Look,” I said, “we haven’t ruled anyone out at this point.”
“I’m really talking to Pete here, Mr. Lockwood.” Reverend Bill cut his eyes at me.
“And I appreciate you bringing this to our attention,” Pete said. “Like Marcus told you, we haven’t ruled anyone out.” He ushered Reverend Bill toward the door, his hand in a death grip on the pastry bag. “If you think of anything else, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”
Reverend Bill held his ground. “You know, it’s easy for y’all to take this lightly,” he said. “It wasn’t your church that burned to the ground.”
Now I was pissed. “Three people died,” I said. “We didn’t take the fire lightly when we were fighting it and you can bet we’re not taking it lightly now.” I turned and walked into my office, steam coming out of my ears.
As far as I was concerned, Reverend Bill looked like a mighty good suspect himself. He’d been bitchin’ and moanin’ about his raggedy old church for years, and his congregation was still a good bit shy of their fund-raising goal to build a new one. Why not set fire to his church, collect the insurance money for a new one and pass the guilt along to some innocent kid? Andy was a perfect target. Theory didn’t hold water, though. Even Reverend Bill wasn’t callous enough to burn the church with kids in it. Or stupid enough. Lawyers were already sniffing around for negligence. And the ATF agent said the good Reverend was at a parishioner’s house when the fire broke out, anyway. Airtight alibi, he said.
The forensic evidence was slight so far. We’d cut portions of the remaining clapboard and sent it to the lab. It looked like the accelerant was a mix of gasoline and diesel. That set off lightbulbs in all our heads: the same mixture had been used in a fire in Wilmington about six months ago. Old black church slated to be turned into a museum, so they’d figured that one for a hate crime. Plus, that building was abandoned. No one was hurt. This fire was definitely different.
From the burn pattern, it looked like the mixture had been poured all around the perimeter, as I’d figured out from my walk-around. The only place no accelerant had been spread was between the air-conditioning unit Andy’d climbed over and the building.
“Why’s that fella hate your guts?” Pete walked into my office and sat down across from me. He pulled a blueberry muffin from the bag and took a bite. Pete’d come to the department a year ago from Atlanta. He didn’t know much when it came to the island’s history.
“He hated my brother, and I’m a relation.” I didn’t add that Reverend Bill, like a handful of the old-timers, also had me figured for a murderer.
“Your brother who had that Free Seekers Chapel?”
“Uh-huh. Ol’ Bill didn’t like the competition.”
“Do you think there’s anything to his concern?”
I looked at him over the rim of my mug. “About Andy?”
He nodded. “Does he smoke?”
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “He might just carry a lighter to be cool. To fit in. One thing for sure is that Andy’d never intentionally hurt anyone.”
“Well, he did fight with that kid, Keith Weston.” Pete wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Roughed him up a bit.”
“Pete,” I said with a laugh, “that dog don’t hunt.”
There were only two people from the lock-in we hadn’t been able to interview: Keith Weston, still in a medicated coma, and Emily Carmichael. Emily’d been tight in the grip of posttraumatic stress and wouldn’t even look at us, much less talk. But that afternoon, Robin Carmichael called, saying she thought her daughter was well enough to answer our questions now. We’d already spoken with Robin, who’d been a chaperone at the lock-in.
“Could you bring her in after school tomorrow?” I held the phone between my chin and shoulder as I poured a tube of peanuts into a bottle of Coke.
“She’s not in school,” Robin said. “She’s got separation anxiety somethin’ terrible. Won’t leave my side. But you can talk to her here, if that suits you.”
I changed into street clothes before picking up Flip Cates, the Surf City detective involved in the investigation. I figured it’d be easier on Emily if I wasn’t wearing a uniform. Flip apparently had the same idea. So when we walked into the Carmichaels’ Sneads Ferry living room, with its dark paneling and the cloudy mirror above the sofa, we looked like your average guys on the street.
“Emily, you remember Andy’s Uncle Marcus,” Robin said. “And this is Detective Cates.”
“Hey, Emily,” I said, as Flip and I sat down on the sofa.
Emily sat in an old threadbare wing chair, hands folded in her lap. She looked at me with her good eye. She had on a pink T-shirt, inside out, and white capris. No shoes or socks.
Every time I saw Emily, I felt for her and her parents. There was a prettiness behind the funny eyes and repaired cleft palate. Couldn’t they operate on that eye? Give her a chance at a normal teenage life? Not much money in this house, though. And not much normal about Emily.
“Robin,” I said, “can we try talking to Emily alone?”
“No!” Emily wailed.
Well, it had been worth a shot.
Robin shrugged her apology as she sat down on an ottoman near her daughter.
“Tell us everything you remember from the time you arrived at the lock-in, Emily,” Flip asked.
Emily looked at her mother. “It got moved,” she said.
“Right,” Flip said. “Did you notice anything unusual when you got to the church?”
“We walked there.”
“Right. From the youth building.” Flip had a notepad open on his thigh, but so far, the page was blank. “Did you see anyone you didn’t know hanging around the church?”
“I didn’t know lots of kids. They came from all over.”
“Did you see anyone pouring or spraying something around the outside of the church?”
She shook her head.
“When you got inside the church, what did you do?” Flip asked
“What do you mean?”
“Did you play games? Who did you hang around with?”<
br />
“Andy.” She looked at me as if remembering my connection to Andy.
“Were you with Andy the whole time?” I asked.
“Right.”
“Even when you left the youth building, was it Andy you walked with to the church?” Flip asked.
“Right—”
“No, honey…” Robin interrupted.
“Oh, no!” Emily corrected herself. “Actually—” she pronounced every syllable of the word “—I walked over with my mom.”
Robin nodded. “That’s right,” she said to Flip and me.
I knew Robin thought she’d smelled gasoline as they walked toward the church. She’d told that to the police the night of the fire, but added that she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t from someone filling a car or boat nearby. “It was just in the air,” she’d said.
“Andy liked a girl at the lock-in,” Emily volunteered. “She was dancing with a boy, Keith. Do you know Keith?”
She looked at me, but Flip and I both nodded. We knew every detail of the fight between Andy and Keith. That was one thing most of the people we’d interviewed remembered.
“Andy got in a fight with him,” Emily said. “I hate fights.”
Flip looked at his notepad. “Emily, did you happen to notice anyone outside the church in the hour before the fire?”
“How could I?” she said. “I was inside the whole time.”
“Right.” Flip ran a hand over his brown buzz cut. “Did you notice anyone leave the church during the lock-in?”
“You mean besides Andy?”
Huh?
Flip and I both hesitated.
“Did Andy leave the church during the lock-in?” Flip asked after a moment.
Emily nodded. “I told him he wasn’t supposed to, but sometimes Andy don’t understand.”
“Are you talking about when Andy left during the fire?” I asked. “You know, when he climbed out the bathroom window?”
Emily glanced at her mother.
“Is that what you mean, honey?” Robin asked. “Is that when Andy left the lock-in?”
“He left when people started dancing and I couldn’t find him.”