“Did you hear anything—why do they think she would do that?”
“Don’t even ask that question,” Bob said, getting excited. “She didn’t kill anybody. Get in the left lane.”
“It’s hard for me to believe they would arrest a young girl like her for nothing . . .” The streetlight clouded as a fresh shower began to fall. Blue light leaked from behind the curtains of the silent houses.
“They did this time.”
“There must be some evidence,” she said, as much to herself as to Bob. “Something that implied she was involved. Is that why they arrested her, Bob? Did they say anything about what they found?”
“Just junk. Whatever.”
“Could you be more specific?”
He clammed up. She continued to ask questions, but he refused outright to say anything more about the arrest. He looked straight ahead, saying, “We’re almost there,” while she wondered what had set him off.
“Tell me more about Nicole,” she said. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
Nearly three years older than Bob. Holy Mary. “When did you two get to be friends?”
“After the dance. She asked me why was I such a chickenshit and I told her I wasn’t.”
Nina raised her eyebrows.
“We saw each other a few places and started to talk. She’s not my girlfriend, Mom. She’s got lots of guys interested in her plus a boyfriend.”
Worse and worse.
“Anyway, I’m not ready for a relationship. That’s what I told her.”
She skidded around a corner.
“Slow down,” Bob commanded. “Today is not a good day to die.”
She slowed the car down, but could do nothing to steady her racing heart. He was growing up so fast. “What . . . what do you two have in common, do you think?”
“Not much. Nik’s really smart but she doesn’t give a good goddamn about grades.”
“Language, Bob . . .”
“She doesn’t care what people think about her. She plays guitar. She listens to crust bands like Destroy and X Machine. Her mother won’t let her go out so sometimes she sneaks out.” He turned an unnerved face toward her, no doubt surprised at himself for spilling the beans. “I know,” he said before she said anything. “But what am I going to do about it? Tell? She would never trust me again! And please don’t even think about telling what I just said or I won’t be able to trust you.”
“Where does she go when she sneaks out? To meet boys?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really.”
“I don’t!”
She could read the lie in the tensing of muscle in his arm and hear it in the way he breathed.
“Well, then, why are you friends? You do your homework, you don’t like that kind of music, and she’s a lot older than you are.”
“Well, she’s sad underneath. She’s not that tough, really, and she’s kind of pretty”—Bob gave her a sideways glance—“if you like that type. I’m trying to get in this band she’s in.”
“You never mentioned that before.”
“They haven’t had a practice yet.”
“What’s her mother like?” Out of the corner of her eye, she watched his shoulders relax.
“Daria? Nik always says it’s too bad Daria’s mother is dead. She says Daria needs a mother.”
“What does she mean by that?”
“Oh, you’ll see right away when you meet her. Nik’s the one who pays the bills. She got sick of the lights being turned off, and the heat disappearing in the dead of winter. She tried to put her mom on an allowance, if you can believe that.”
Nicole Zack and her mother lived in a broken-down cabin in deep woods not far from the lake. Nina and Bob pulled into the muddy driveway, parking behind a rattletrap VW with a torn convertible roof. A bare bulb burned from the eaves. The windows appeared to be curtained with blankets. The wood in the depleted woodpile next to the dangerously fragile steps was just tossed there, not even stacked. Daria Zack answered the door almost immediately. Tall, maybe a few years younger than Nina, in her early thirties, she wore a thin leotard under slacks and she had tied a tattered pink mohair sweater around her shoulders.
“Thank God!” she said. “Here you are!” She grabbed Nina and hugged her. Then she said, “Bobby,” and pulled Bob in close and kissed him on the cheek, leaving behind a bright pink stain. As they moved inside, she pulled the door closed behind them with a slam. “Bob’s told me everything about you. How brilliant you are, all the work you do helping people . . .” She took Nina’s coat. “It’s so awful. But I knew help would come.”
Nina looked at Bob, who appeared normal except for the crimson burning of his ears.
The door opened directly into the living room. An area beside it had been designated the mud room, with a wooden bench and boots below, and pegs above for two old parkas, where Daria was hanging Nina’s coat now. Candles burned along the windowsills. A wooden chair held a modest boom box with a stack of CDs. In the center of the wall at the far end, a fire burned in an iron stove. A large hooked rug cozied up to the hearth.
That was it for furniture.
Daria had noticed Nina’s eyes. “Times are tough,” she said. “Who needs a couch anyway? Nikki and I sit on the rug. Or on pillows.” She looked around, saying absently, “Maybe Nikki has them in her room. She’s got the computer on the floor in there.”
“We’re fine,” Nina said. They gathered by the fire. Here, the ancients made wise decisions. Here, families shared warmth and food. And here, as in ancient times, strong knees for squatting would help. Bob, who seemed accustomed to the situation, sat right down, and Nina folded her legs and hunched forward toward the fire.
“I’ll just get us some tea.” Daria rushed off toward the kitchen.
“No, really,” Nina said. “We’re okay.”
“You don’t want tea?” She stood in the doorway, framed by a yellow glow from the kitchen, pushing brassy gold hair back with her hand. “I may have some lemonade . . .”
“No,” Bob said. “Daria, just tell her what’s going on.”
Nicole’s mother threw herself down and pulled her long slender legs up into a full lotus. She was as supple as a young birch tree, and Nina thought, she’s a showgirl. But her hair dye job looked lackadaisical. That and the slapdash clothes taken in conjunction with brushy, unplucked eyebrows created a surprisingly run-down effect, given her youth and natural beauty. Even her moist pink lipstick slopped haphazardly around her natural lip lines. She might have been a sexy, healthy girl once, but she had been letting things slide for a while. All clues pointed toward an unemployed showgirl.
“I don’t know what to say. They’ve arrested my daughter. I don’t understand the karma here, because I don’t think we’ve done anything to deserve this. Is it because we’re poor? Do the cops think they can just grab some innocent child and blame her? I’ve been chanting to stay calm, but obviously I’m going to start screaming soon.” She lit a cigarette, her hand shaking. Her wrist was thin and bony.
Bob put out his hand and patted her shoulder. “We’re here,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“But Bobby, she’s scared and alone in a prison barracks and I’m scared to death about it.”
“My mom’ll fix it.” They both turned to look at her, Daria’s face as open and full of trust as Bob’s. Chronological years and emotional years didn’t seem to match up in her case.
“Tell me about it,” Nina said.
“My nephew Chris died in a plane crash on Saturday night—I guess Bob told you about that?”
“In a plane crash?” Nina drew in breath sharply. The plane she had seen? She hadn’t had time to check the paper for details.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In the Carson Range. He was the passenger in a Beechcraft. A charter. The pilot died, too.”
“I’m so sorry.” She saw the terrible light again, sunflower yellow, and could almost feel the heat sweeping across the flats toward her from the mountains where the plane went down. After her husband died, she had imagined the moment of his death many times, trying to visualize something like a soul drifting up from the earth, moving toward something like a heaven. Maybe this boy and the pilot had gone that way.
“Chris was only nineteen. Just starting out in life. We loved him. Everybody did. And then, you’ve probably heard my brother-in-law, Bill Sykes, died the same night, killed by some thug.”
“The same night?”
Tears shiny as tree sap dribbled down Daria’s cheeks. She nodded. “Saturday night. If you read the papers you know there’s a bunch of people getting robbed who have houses on the lake. Bill and Beth had valuable things in that house. He was a surgeon. Wealthy. Obviously, they became targets. He was attacked with a sword he had hanging on the wall of his study for a decoration . . . Thank God Beth was out of town.” Wiping her cheeks with a hand, she blushed all the way to her black roots. “That sounds bad, like I never cared about Bill.”
“You’re focusing on your sister. That’s natural.”
“The timing’s got me completely freaked.” She tossed her spent cigarette into the fire, immediately lighting another with trembling fingers. “Bill dying the same night as Chris. What’s that all about?”
“What kinds of things did they keep at the house?”
“Oh, gee. I don’t know.” She crinkled her forehead and thought hard. “Plates, doodads. Some strange oil paintings of Bill’s. The place was loaded full of stuff. My sister used to like antiques. Something in that house must have been very valuable. I keep thinking how glad I am Beth wasn’t there that night, too, or . . .” The thought was so distressing she stood up and began moving around the room, still smoking, letting the ashes fall where they would. “And now the cops have gone crazy. Should we go down to Placerville tonight? Can we see Nikki? She called just before you got here, but she only had five minutes. She was calm, or I think I’d be—what should I do?”
“Has Nikki ever been in trouble before?” Nina said.
Daria pushed aside a blanket and looked outside. “No big deal,” she said. “Kid stuff.”
“She was arrested before, Mom,” Bob said, “for vandalism.”
“That was dismissed, and rightly so!” said Daria. “What kind of world doesn’t make room for kids to mess with spray paint! In museums they call it
art
!”
“And picked up once for shoplifting . . .”
“That was an accident! She forgot to pay!” Daria turned a beseeching look on Nina. “Haven’t you ever forgotten to pay? When a teenager does it, they are so dead. The way we treat our kids is a shame.”
“Is that all?” Nina asked, as if the list wasn’t long enough.
“Oh, there’s the one time they got her fair and square for trespassing. They let her off with a warning.”
“She was with a bunch of other kids and they lit a bonfire at Pope Beach. At midnight. It’s illegal, it turns out,” Bob said, as if they hadn’t discussed it many times. There were signs all over the place. “Plus the beach was closed.”
“Of course, she had no idea,” said Daria. “At sixteen, who knows these details.” She settled back down on the floor and looked intently at Nina. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m one of those mothers who make endless excuses for their kids. But you’re wrong if you think that. Nikki’s an unusual person. Sensitive. Intelligent, like her dad. Musical like him, too, but she got some of her talent from me. She could really make it but she should go to college first.” She took a drag. “Use her brains, unlike me.
“Anyway. Deep down, she’s very sensible. I rely on her for everything! I was just a kid myself when she was born, seventeen. Married at sixteen. I was way wilder than she is at that age. I mean, she totally organizes things around here, pays bills. Makes grocery lists. Remembers to buy the TP! She ran around with the wrong crowd for a while there. Then she met Bobby.” She reached over and held his hand. To Nina’s amazement, he let her.
“He’s been like a brother to her, only better because they don’t fight like cats and dogs! He’s such a good influence.” She let go. “She was straightening out . . .”
Nina was realizing something about Daria. She had known people like her before. Daria saw the world a certain way, her way. The rest of the world might not agree, but she would stick fast to her version. Opinion carried as much weight as fact, or perhaps more, in her book.
She was still talking in that rapid-fire way she had. “You can imagine. My sister Beth—her heart is broken! She’s having a complete breakdown. I mean, oh my God, first Chris, who was only nineteen years old, and then her husband. This afternoon, she came home from LA with her friend Jan. Her house had police tape all around it and they wouldn’t let her in at first.
“Then she had to go make a statement and then she went to a hotel and called me. Jan and I spent the rest of the afternoon with her. We talked her into taking a sleeping pill, and she finally went to sleep. I dropped Jan at the airport limo stop, because she needed to get back to a job down south, then I got home and Bob and Nikki were in the kitchen and we were going to go for a walk when the rain let up to try to take all this in. And now Nikki.”
“Does your sister know your daughter is accused of killing her husband?”
“Not yet.” Daria turned her chin up, and it was rock hard bone. “I thought about calling her, but figured I’d wait until I talked with you. But don’t worry. Beth will never believe that Nikki did that to Bill. Never. And you shouldn’t either. Don’t entertain one single moment’s doubt!”
“Your sister was in Los Angeles when her husband died?”
“Right. Visiting her friend Jan down in Hollywood. Beth and I . . . we don’t see each other very much. It’s not that we don’t get along. I just love her to death! I want you to know that. She’s a great person. We’ve just kind of drifted apart. And Bill . . . well, he liked to keep her close to him.”
“That happens,” said Nina. “You say he was a surgeon?”
“A cosmetic surgeon,” Daria said. “He never liked the term plastic surgeon. He had his own clinic here in town.” She jumped up again and went into the kitchen, returning with an envelope with writing on it. “This is where Nikki is. I made them write it down for me. There’s supposed to be some kind of hearing tomorrow that we have to go to.”
“I’m familiar with the juvenile detention center, Mrs. Zack.”
“Oh, please call me Daria.”
Nina read the envelope, which said, “Detention Hearing—2 P.M. Juvenile Court, Placerville.” Nina thought. “Have you contacted Nikki’s father?”