Читать книгу Caught In A Bind - Gayle Roper - Страница 11

I made a noise halfway between a scream and a burp at the sight of the body. My first thought was that Tom had finally come home.

“What’s the matter with you?” Randy demanded, ever sympathetic to a woman in distress.

I couldn’t find my voice, so I pointed. He bent and peered in. Next thing I knew he was retching in the corner. So much for perpetual cool.

I made myself look in the car again. I had to know if the corpse was indeed Tom.

It wasn’t. First, the body looked too tall, even slumped. Tom was slight all over, and this man had wide shoulders and a paunch. Also, Tom wore his hair closely cropped, and this man had straggly hair that should have been cut weeks ago. And of course, this man had the wrong face, with strong, broad features instead of the narrow, almost delicate ones that typified Tom.

I straightened from my quick second glance with a deep sigh of relief and turned to Randy, who by now was leaning weakly against the side of the car.

“Get off the car! It’s a crime scene!”

Randy, green around the gills, jumped and obeyed.

“We don’t want to touch it and contaminate any evidence.” Randy nodded as he swayed.

I gave him a push. “Back into the house. We need to call 911.”

Edie took one look at Randy as we stumbled inside and surged to her feet. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a dead guy in my car!” Disbelief was Randy’s dominant emotion now that he was away from the scene. Feelings of outrage and violation would follow shortly. “And there’s blood all over!”

Edie looked wide-eyed at me, seeking confirmation—or denial—of Randy’s comments.

I nodded. “Where’s the phone?”

They both pointed to the kitchen.

I called 911 and returned to the family room just as Edie and Randy walked back in from the garage.

Edie was white-faced as she looked back toward the garage. “I never saw him before in my life.”

The police didn’t recognize the corpse either.

“How’d he get here?” Randy demanded of anyone who’d listen, and that was usually me. “And why in my car?”

Like I knew.

“How long’s he been dead?” he demanded of the police. “How did he die? And why in my car?”

“Speaking of your car, son,” William Poole said quietly, “when was the last time you looked into it?”

“Ah.” Randy looked very wise. “You want to know when the body got there.”

William nodded. “That’s the idea.”

“Well, I sat in it just before I left for dinner. I met Mom at Ferretti’s, not that she invited me.”

“And there was nothing unusual about the car or the garage when you last saw it at what? About 5:30?”

Randy thought for a minute. “Yeah, about 5:30. And if by unusual you mean there was a dead body lying around bleeding all over the place, no, there was nothing at all unusual. I just sat behind the wheel making believe I was driving.” Randy’s hands were in front of him, steering.

William adjusted his gun on his hip. “One piece of advice, son. Don’t even think about taking that car onto the road before you have your license.”

Randy blinked and flushed. “I’d never do something like that.”

I could almost hear William’s mental Right.

“Besides,” Randy continued, “Mom has the keys.”

William nodded. “Good. Make certain you leave them in her care. If you break the law here, we can make it twenty-one before you get a license.”

Randy stared. “Twenty-one?”

“Twenty-one,” William repeated. “But since you’re not going to take her out early, there’s no problem. Right?”

Randy nodded reluctantly. Busted by the cops before he even committed the crime!

“And when you do get your license,” William continued, “don’t see how fast she can go.”

Randy held up his hand. “That’s two pieces of advice. You said one. Two’s one too many.”

William ignored the disrespect, and Randy resumed pacing, cursing and muttering under his breath. I suspected that beneath the distress and excitement of being part of an official murder investigation, he was livid about the blood spilled all over his new upholstery.

This suspicion was confirmed when he leaned close and whispered out of the side of his mouth like a gangster in a B movie, “How do you get blood out of things?”

I was tempted to say, “Wash it thoroughly in cold water,” and offer him the hose, but he was just being fifteen and Randy.

For Edie a dead man in the garage upped the ante considerably on the scariness of Tom’s disappearance. The fact that the police no longer seemed to see Tom as a husband jumping his matrimonial ship added to her tension. The big question became whether they now saw him as another potential victim like their John Doe, or whether they saw him as a thief and a murderer. Neither option was comforting.

Edie lay on her sofa under a blanket that I’d brought from upstairs, and still she shivered as with a terrible chill.

“I know this is hard, Edie,” William said. “But you know the drill.”

She nodded. “I’ve never seen him. I don’t know who he is.”

William was unfailingly polite, but I thought I detected a subtle skepticism. Not a happy observation.

After the police, the coroner and the body left, Randy disappeared in the general direction of upstairs and, I presumed, his bed. I knew he would have preferred to begin clean-up operations on his car, but it was off-limits as part of a crime scene. With any luck, the police would impound it until his twenty-first birthday, saving themselves a few years of dealing with him behind the wheel of that speed machine.

Edie and I stayed in the living room where she slept restlessly on the sofa, muttering occasionally in her sleep, at other times sighing as though in despair. I took catnaps in my cushy leather chair.

I pulled myself awake at seven and took my burning eyes and sour mouth into the guest bath where I did my best to transform myself. It was about as hopeless as turning coffee dregs into fresh brew. Still, when I pulled up to the window at McDonald’s and ordered an Egg McMuffin, the sleepy teen who took my order and money understood what I said.

I wrote the story on Edie’s mysterious body, still a John Doe when we went to press. He had carried no wallet, no driver’s license, no credit cards. His clothes were from Penney’s, his jeans were Levis, available countless places, and his sneakers Reeboks, same thing.

With Mac’s approval I had chosen not to mention the missing money in my story. There was, after all, no definitive connection between the murder and the money. As soon as I finished writing, I turned the article in to Mac and left the News before he thought of anything else I should do. I made it to bell choir practice with one minute to spare.

The good thing about bell choir is that it takes every ounce of my concentration not to mess things up, so every other worry gets put aside for the duration. It’s the only real benefit I have found to being a marginal musician. Smiling to myself, I lined my bells up, C-sharp, C, B and B-flat, glad to put Edie, Tom, Randy and the corpse aside for a while.

When we played the first piece for the third time and I actually got it right, I was euphoric.

“Maddie, did you hear that?” I turned to my best church friend who stood next to me and played the D and E bells. “I got it right!”

“You’re wonderful,” she said. “Talented and beautiful and…” She peered at me. “And you’ve got dark circles under your eyes that rival mine. I know it wasn’t a late night with Curt because he’s on the retreat with my Doug and the rest of the men. And you can’t blame it on a baby like I can. What gives?”

“Covering a story,” I said. “Read about it in the News.” I didn’t want to shatter the respite of bell choir by reviewing the crime. To divert her, I asked, “How’s Holly?”

Maddie’s face lit up. “Even after a sleepless night like last night, I wouldn’t trade her for anything.” She turned toward her pocketbook resting on the floor behind her. “I’ve got pictures of her getting her bath.”

In the few months of Holly’s life, her every move had been recorded and lovingly shared with anyone breathing. I was tempted to ask how this week’s pictures of Holly bathing differed from last week’s pictures of Holly in the tub, but I was afraid Maddie would tell me. “See? She’s got a bigger smile. And that’s a boat floating there, not the rubber ducky. And her hair is a sixteenth of an inch longer!”

“All right, people,” said Ned, our director, arresting Maddie mid-search.

“Later,” she whispered.

“Later,” I agreed.

“You may remember,” Ned said, “that we will be accompanying the youth choir on Easter morning. We won’t actually practice with all the kids until next weekend, but today we’re going to practice with the soloist, Sherrie Bauer.”

As he spoke, a familiar raven-haired beauty walked in. She had music in one hand and dangled a backpack from the other. I half expected to see Randy trailing after her, tongue lolling.

Sherrie Bauer had a wonderful voice, very full and controlled for someone as young as she. For her solo, we traded our bells for chimes which made a much softer sound and didn’t drown out her voice. They also didn’t amplify my mistakes as clearly as the bells.

As I listened to Sherrie and concentrated on my notes, I thought that Ned might have inadvertently given me the perfect combination of things to get Edie and Randy and hopefully Tom (fully restored to his family from wherever he was) to church. Easter and Sherrie sounded like an unbeatable combination to me.

When rehearsal finally ended, I managed to escape before Maddie remembered Holly’s pix. I felt like a lousy friend, but I was just too exhausted to wax enthusiastic over chubby little knees and shampoo Mohawks. All I wanted to do was collapse and sleep for hours, but I couldn’t. I had an interview ahead with just enough time for lunch and a shower first.

Whiskers met me at the apartment door with several gruff meows. For a time he stalked around the living room, tail held high, mad at me for being away so long. Then he forgave me and butted my shins until I picked him up. He purred like a formula car awaiting the green flag at Indy.

I fed him, and while he ate I listened to my answering machine.

Jolene: “So what happened when you went home with Edie last night? Terminal boring, I’ll bet. Sort of like my night without Reilly.”

Wait until she read the paper. That’d teach her to shirk doing good deeds.

Curt: “Where are you, darlin’? Out carousing with the girls, I bet. Sigh. I miss your sweet voice, Merry. I remember when a weekend with the boys was at the top of my fun-things list. Not anymore. I’ll see you tomorrow evening at 7:30—if I last that long.”

I smiled, delighted that I had replaced the boys in his life. He’d certainly replaced everyone else in mine.

I glanced at the clock. 1 p.m. An hour before I had to meet Stephanie Bauer at Freedom House. Six and a half before I saw Curt. I smothered a yawn and hoped a shower would do something to stimulate my brain cells.

Forty-five minutes later I drove to Freedom House. I loved interviewing people, learning about them, looking for what made them tick, finding out what mattered to them. I parked in front of a large Victorian in what used to be the elite section of Amhearst. In fact the whole street was full of once-great homes that were now medical and dental suites, photography studios and offices for financial planners, psychologists and ministries. Some of the homes still had their pride intact with their well-tended lawns, fresh paint and gilt signs. Some were showing their age, all wrinkles and creaky joints, peeling paint and sagging shutters.

Freedom House was in the latter category, a dull gray with white-and-rose trim. It desperately needed painting before the rose became grayer than the gray. The wooden steps were soft underfoot, and the wraparound porch rippled like a lake under a strong breeze. Two spindles were missing from the porch railing, and the shutters looked like they had a bad case of psoriasis.

No financial resources to speak of, I guessed. The perennial problem of ministries.

Stephanie Bauer met me in the front hall. “Welcome!”

Her smile was so warm I smiled back automatically. “Hi. I think I saw you last night at Ferretti’s.”

Stephanie nodded. “I was there with my son and daughter.”

“I was there with the mother of the tall kid who crashed your family party.”

“Randy.” Stephanie laughed. “What a delightful, funny guy.” Randy? Delightful? Funny? Wow! Wouldn’t Edie love to hear that.

“I’m also in the bell choir, and I heard Sherrie sing this morning. She’s wonderful.”

Stephanie beamed, a proud mama. “She is, but I’m proudest of her for her commitment to the Lord.”

What a refreshing thing to hear a mother say about her child. “It’s probably from watching you and Freedom House.”

Stephanie grimaced. “I haven’t always been the best example of a healthy Christian woman.” She turned toward the back of the house. “My office is in the old dining room. Follow me.”

On the way we had to step around considerable clutter in the entry hall.

“We’re getting ready to open a secondhand clothing shop,” Stephanie explained. “We’re collecting both clothes and supplies in preparation.” She waved her hand at a couple of clothing racks, a slightly dirty, well-used store counter and several bags of clothing shoved into a corner. “We want to use the store as a training facility so that the women we counsel can become financially independent if they need to. Too many women stay in abusive situations because of lack of money.”

“When will the store open?”

“In a couple of months. We’re going to call it Like New. That’s what the women are when they find Christ and learn that with His help, they can control their lives.” She grinned. “We just signed the lease for a store in the center of town, and I have no idea where the monthly rent is going to come from. As you undoubtedly noticed, we can’t even afford to paint this place. If the store succeeds, it’ll be all because of God.”

She spoke as if trusting God this way were commonplace, and I thought that for her, it probably was.

I peered into the living room as we walked past. It was filled with chairs of all sizes, colors and fabrics.

“A motley mess, isn’t it?” Stephanie said cheerfully. “But we don’t have the luxury of being choosy. If someone offers us a chair, we take it. As long as it’ll hold a woman up safely, we don’t complain about the looks.”

We settled on a dirty, well-used sofa and chair in a corner of Stephanie’s office. I checked my little tape recorder to make certain it was working properly. Satisfied, I leaned back.

Stephanie patted her chair, and thousands of dust motes burst free, sailing through the air like seeds from an exploding pod. “A mission in Allentown was going out of business and they offered us first dibs on their furniture. Isn’t it comfortable?” She was clearly delighted.

“It is,” I agreed, though I had just been thinking that I wouldn’t give the ratty stuff house room. I swallowed, feeling shallow and materialistic.

“How did you get involved in Freedom House?” I asked. I knew the short answer to this question from my research, but it was still a good place to begin.

Stephanie looked away from me for a minute, staring out the window.

“It always amazes me when I have to admit that I was an abused wife. Not that I’m ashamed or feel guilty. I’m just amazed. How did I let myself get trapped like that?”

“How did you?” I marveled that someone as strong and assured as the Stephanie sitting in front of me had once been a victim.

“I got trapped for two reasons. I wanted to please. And no one had ever taught me the power of choice. And I was only eighteen when I married.”

“Is marrying at a young age typical of abusive situations?”

She nodded. “Often, though not always. In our case it was too many stresses before we had the ability to handle them. When I married Wes, I was in a romantic fantasy. I saw him as strong and knowing, my knight to protect me from the world. I would be the best wife a man could ever have, and he wouldn’t lose his temper at me anymore because I’d make him so happy.”

She looked into space, I suspected seeing herself at eighteen, twenty, twenty-five. “I bent over backwards to please him. When he got angry, I knew it was my fault because I hadn’t tried hard enough. When he hit me, I knew I deserved it. When he heaped verbal abuse on me, I knew I was all those terrible things he called me. After all, he’d never say them if they weren’t true.”

“But you’re an intelligent woman,” I protested.

She nodded. “But he was incredibly clever, a master manipulator. And he always begged for forgiveness with tears in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you. You just made me so mad. Let’s agree that you’ll never do that again. Then I won’t have to hurt you again.’”

“That’s no apology at all.”

Stephanie nodded. “I know that now, but then I only heard the I’m-sorry part, not the it-was-Stephanie’s-fault part.”

“How long were you married?”

“Nine years. Nine long years.”

“Why did you finally leave?”

“Deep inside I knew it was wrong to hit people, even stupid wives. I just couldn’t admit it out loud. But I started reading things about abuse after a nurse talked to me the time Wes gave me a concussion and broke my arm.”

“How did he break your arm?” I cut in.

“He threw me down the stairs for not making the bed with the sheets he wanted.”

I blinked. “You’re kidding.”

She shrugged. “At least that’s what he said.

In reality he was about to lose another job and was taking it out on me. You see, if it was my fault he hit me, then he was still the good guy. I was the evil woman.”

She smiled grimly. “When you’re in an abusive marriage, it’s like you’re addicted. There’s this intimacy and these soul ties from the sex, often violent or demeaning. You think you can’t live without him even as he’s killing you. You think it’s normal to live with this tension, this pain. And you know everything will be all right if you can just love him enough.

“Which of course you can never do because for him the issue isn’t love but absolute authority. Total control. That’s the goal of every abuser.”

“The puppeteer pulling the strings,” I said.

“That’s too kind an image, but it definitely gives the idea.”

“How were the kids during this time?”

Stephanie smiled. “They were the one bright spot in my life. But they misbehaved, as all kids do, and I began to fear that Wes would beat them too.”

I thought of vivacious Sherrie and felt sick at the thought of someone hitting her. “Did he?”

She shook her head. “Wes never laid a hand on them, but they learned what they saw modeled. One day I was outside in the garden when I heard Sherrie begin to cry. She was about five years old. I rushed inside and found her and Rob in the living room. Rob was yelling at her like Wes yelled at me. He was calling her the same names that Wes called me. And on her cheek was a red handprint from where Rob had hit her.”

My blood chilled as I thought of the handsome kid in the booth last night at Ferretti’s.

“‘She didn’t do what I asked,’ Rob said. ‘I told her to get me something to drink and she didn’t.’ ‘I didn’t, Mom,’Sherrie said, hanging her head. ‘I’m sorry.’”

Stephanie swallowed hard, the memory obviously still painful. “‘You can’t hit her like that, Rob,’ I told him. ‘It’s not right.’ ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Daddy hits you.’” Stephanie looked at me. “That’s when I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t let my children become Wes and me. I called that nurse and she sent me to a safe house. We lived there for two months. I couldn’t go to my regular job because Wes could find me there, but I found another one in another town nearby. And for some reason I began to go to church.”

She turned and pointed to the photo of a little white building that looked more like a VFW hall than a church. It hung on the wall beside this year’s school pictures of Sherrie and Rob.

“The safe house gave me protection when I needed it and helped restore order to our lives, but it was at church that I met Jesus. There I learned the power of choosing God’s way. That’s when I determined to offer women everything the safe house had offered me plus the power of God to redeem broken lives.”

“And Freedom House is the result?”

Stephanie nodded. “We only make a small dent in a very large problem, but we can do that.”

“Did you ever see your husband after you left?”

“I saw him in court when I fought for sole custody of the kids.” Stephanie smiled. “I won. After all, I had all those medical records of my various injuries. And a judge who understood the issues at stake.”

The phone rang.

“Excuse me.” Stephanie went to her desk. “I’m on a twenty-four-hour page because of the nature of Freedom House.”

I thought of my father, who was an absolutely wonderful husband and father. I thought of Curt, so kind and loving, and I was suddenly ashamed for all I’d taken for granted.

“Tina!” The command in Stephanie’s voice drew me. “Tina! Now listen to me. A bad morning at work doesn’t give him the right to unload on you.”

Tina murmured something.

“We’ve talked about this before, Tina. You’re panicking, doing what comes naturally to you. Don’t let yourself do that. You’ve got to choose to do the right thing, not the known thing. It’s your choice. To stay or to go—it’s your choice.” She listened for a minute. “I know it’s scary. Oh, Lord, please give Tina Your strength and Your courage. Help her make wise choices for her children’s sakes. And protect all of them, Father. Protect all of them.”

I listened to Stephanie’s prayer and wondered how many women she’d prayed with through the years, either over the phone or in person. How many women now lived without fear because of Freedom House?

Stephanie hung up and sat quietly for a minute or two with her eyes closed. Then she looked at me.

“One of the things we do for women who want to escape and are willing to take that risk is plan what to take and where to go. Some, like Tina, have been under their husbands’ thumbs so long that we have to begin with things as elementary as getting their purse and the kids. And some like Tina need time to save the taxi fare.”

“Do they live here if they bolt?”

She shook her head. “Once in a while someone stays here if there’s no other option. But I don’t take people in often for two reasons. My family and I live here, and I don’t want to endanger my kids. Also, we’re too public to be a safe house. A true safe house is a closely guarded location.”

“If this isn’t a residential facility, what do you do besides plan escape routes?”

Stephanie stood and walked back to the easy chair across from me. “We’re basically a training ministry. We teach women all about the power and freedom of choice. We teach them they can make good choices or bad choices. It sounds so obvious, this choosing well, when we say it to each other, but it’s a new truth to many women. And of course we teach the women that the greatest power and freedom of all come from choosing to believe in Christ.”

“So how do you teach this? What specific programs do you have?”

“I have a staff, mostly volunteers, who work with me. We teach Bible studies. We have support groups. We counsel. These programs might not sound like much, but they represent hours and hours of work each week.”

I didn’t doubt that for a minute. “May I come to one of the Bible studies?”

She looked at me carefully. “I need to know that you’ll respect the privacy of these women. It’s crucial to protect them. Their lives are literally at risk.”

“Believe me,” I said, hastening to reassure her, “I understand that. I promise to protect them.”

She nodded. “Okay then.”

A knock sounded on the door of the office, and there was Sherrie grinning at us.

“Hey, honey,” Stephanie said. “Is it three already?”

“Just about.” Sherrie came in and sat on the sofa beside me. Her eyes sparkled with life and good humor.

“This is Merry Kramer,” Stephanie said. “She’s a reporter at the News. She’s going to write an article about Freedom House.”

Sherrie looked at me. “Hey, that’s great. Somebody needs to write about Mom and all the good stuff she does.”

The phone rang again, and Stephanie went back to her desk to take the call.

Sherrie leaned toward me. “Can I be in the Freedom House article? I’ve got stuff I want to say, stuff I think kids need to hear.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve lived here for a long time now, and I watch the women.” Her young face was serious, her brow furrowed. “I listen to Mom when she talks to them. I even go to some of the Bible studies. I’ve reached some conclusions that might keep girls from getting into marriages with the wrong guy. Sort of preventative stuff.”

I smiled broadly. “I think I’d like to talk with you. Monday after school at the News?”

“I’ll be there.” She grinned happily.

A high-pitched, desperate voice wept through the phone loudly enough to attract both Sherrie and me.

“Easy, Tina,” Stephanie said calmly. “Tell me the place you’ve chosen to go in times of trouble.”

“Poor Tina.” Sherrie shook her head. “She’s a nice person, but she’s a waffler.”

“A waffler?”

“She can’t decide whether to get out or not. One minute she’s leaving him, the next she’s going back because he loves her.” Sherrie snorted. “He doesn’t love her. He likes to control her.”

Tina’s terrified voice cut across the room again, her apprehension clear even if her words were not.

“How will you get to your parents?” Stephanie said into the phone.

I was now openly listening and thinking like mad. I had Stephanie’s personal story. I had the facts about Freedom House and the services provided. I might even have a sidebar article from Sherrie aimed at kids. But an interview with an abused wife! And right in the middle of a crisis! Wow.

I leaned toward Stephanie. “Can I help Tina? Drive her somewhere?”

Stephanie looked at me thoughtfully. “Just a minute, Tina. I need to check something.”

“I mean it. I’ll be glad to help.”

“She’s not just fodder for an article,” Stephanie said bluntly.

I flushed, caught. “I know that.”

“Promise you won’t write about her without her permission, and promise you’ll flatten her story so she can’t be identified.”

That wasn’t a hard promise to make. I certainly didn’t want Tina to suffer any more harm or hurt. “I promise.”

Stephanie nodded, satisfied. “She needs a ride to Phoenixville. Public transportation isn’t a possibility. And for financial reasons neither’s a cab.”

“Phoenixville’s not that far,” I said. “About a half hour up Route 113.”

“It’ll be very messy emotionally,” Stephanie warned. “And that’s the best possible scenario.”

“That doesn’t bother me.” Anything for story color. “Has her husband come home? Is that why the sudden panic?”

“He called from work and is full of fury. Apparently things have gone badly today, and she and the kids are about to bear the brunt of his frustration if we don’t get her out.”

“Where does she live?”

Stephanie returned to the phone. “Tina, I have someone here who can take you to your mother’s. I want you to tell her how to get to your house.”

I took the phone. “Hi, Tina. I’m Merry. I’ll be glad to drive you where you need to go.”

“I’m scared,” she said, her voice a mere whisper.

“I know. Now tell me how to get to your house.”

She gave me directions hesitantly, pausing several times to yell at a crying child who responded by wailing louder.

“I’ll be there in about ten minutes,” I assured her.

She sniffed. “The kids and I will be waiting. And please, please hurry!”