Over Her Head (5 page)

Maggie was watching at her front window, and in a couple of minutes they were heading down the highway to the newer part of
Glendale.

Tanya lived in one of the units in a new building, but Laurie had her doubts about the construction of the place. The walls
seemed flimsy and the view was, well, the Wal-Mart parking lot. At least it was convenient when Tanya had to do a run for
socks and school supplies.

Would have been convenient.
Oh, Tanya,
she thought.

The building had no security—just an exterior staircase, like a motel. A woman Laurie had never seen before answered the door
of the second-floor apartment.

“We’re friends of Tanya’s, from her Bible study group,” Laurie explained. The woman looked to be in her mid-fifties and wore
her hair cropped short, as though she had recently undergone chemotherapy and it was beginning to grow back in. “Is she home?”

The woman didn’t smile. “I’m Patty. I live next door. Yes, she’s home. The poor thing has no one to sit with her.”

If you’re such good friends, how come it’s taken you this long to show up?
Laurie heard the unspoken accusation clearly.

“We just found out the girl who drowned was Tanya’s daughter.” Why was she explaining herself to this nasty woman? “We brought
some supper for her. Does she have any family? Is anyone coming?”

“If they are, no one’s told me. I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got things to do.”

“Thank you for being with her.” Laurie put as much sincerity into her voice as she could. “If you want to take a break, we
can sit with her for a while, and try to find out what’s going on.”

Without a word, the woman grabbed a coat off a chair next to the door and pushed past them.

“Just who I’d want with me at a time like this,” Maggie whispered as she closed the door.

They found Tanya passed out on the bed, a quilt over her and a bottle of prescription tablets on the nightstand. Laurie took
one look around the eight-by-ten bedroom and made a few decisions.

“Don’t wake her up. Sleep is probably a blessing right now. We can’t do much, but one thing we can do is pick this place up.”
She glanced at Maggie. “Would you take a stab at those dishes in the sink? I’ll do this room and the living room and get started
on the laundry. I think I have enough quarters in my purse for a load of whites, anyway. You certainly can’t face the world
if you don’t have any clean underwear.”

“Good plan.”

Maggie headed into the kitchen, carrying a casserole dish in two pot holders, and Laurie got to work. Tanya didn’t seem to
have many clothes, and most of them were on the floor. Laurie sorted some into a laundry pile and hung some of them up in
the tiny closet. Shoes went on the closet floor in a neat row, and a number of scattered paperback novels were placed in a
stack on the dresser.

Laurie pushed open the door of Randi’s room and came out of housemother mode with a jolt. The bed was unmade and clothes—a
purple camisole, a black skirt, several pairs of stockings in colors that hurt the eyes—lay draped on the bed and on the chair
in front of the student desk. On the bulletin board above the desk, pictures, concert notices, tickets, and other minutiae
of a teenager’s life were tacked with push pins. Huge posters of scary-looking rock bands were tacked to the walls with blissful
disregard for the apartment’s security deposit.

The room needed a cleanup in the worst way, but Laurie backed out and closed the door gently. The mess was all that Tanya
had left. When she was able to deal with it, she could grieve her daughter’s death as she folded the camisole and the skirt
and put away books and magazines. If Laurie and Maggie did it, Tanya wouldn’t see it as a favor. She’d see it as an insensitive
invasion of the relationship between herself and Randi—whatever that had been.

Laurie piled the laundry into the half-f basket she found in the bathroom and made her way downstairs to the laundry room.
Once she had that going, she took on the living room. Tanya didn’t have much in the way of clutter, other than clothes. Laurie
supposed that when you moved a lot, you kept your possessions to a bare minimum. Clothes. Cookware. Something to sit on. Practically
everything here would fit in the back of a pickup.

When the Hales had moved into their dream house, it had taken an entire Allied van and a solid week of work. Laurie had decided
then and there that they were never moving again. And there was no reason to. Everything she and Colin loved and needed was
right here.

Except for the occasional big night out in Pittsburgh, like seeing a play or going to a Penguins game, or, in Anna’s case,
a major shopping trip, they hardly ever left town.

“Now what?” With the dishes done and all four feet of counter spotless, Maggie joined her in the living room. “Leave a note
and be on our way?”

Something rustled behind them, and both Laurie and Maggie turned.

Tanya Peizer swayed in the hallway, her face so pale it was nearly green. Her hair was matted down on one side, as if she’d
been asleep for hours. Laurie’s breath caught at the haunted expression in her eyes, as if she knew something was wrong, but
couldn’t quite remember what.

“What are you guys doing here?” she croaked. “Has Randi done something wrong?”

T
hose were the
last coherent words Tanya said. And it was a good thing, too, because Laurie’s brain had frozen up with horror and she wouldn’t
have been capable of even a comforting but vague reply. She and Maggie got Tanya back into bed, and the young woman slid back
into unconsciousness as abruptly as she’d come out of it.

“That was close.” Maggie glanced at Laurie as they gave the apartment a final check. “She knows, right? That Randi’s gone?”

“The paper said she was told. But if the doctor gave her a sedative, she probably doesn’t remember, and thank goodness for
that. We need to organize people to sit with her. And we should find out who’s making arrangements for the funeral, too.”

“I’ll stay till suppertime,” Maggie said. “Ben can look after the kids till then.”

“Okay, you organize a roster and call everyone in study group, and I’ll get ahold of Cale Dayton.”

It was easier to handle a crisis when you had a plan. As Laurie drove away from the apartment complex, half her brain concentrated
on the drive home and the other half on dialing their pastor on her cell.

“Cale, it’s Laurie,” she said. “We’ve just been to see Tanya Peizer. Did you hear that it was her daughter I—who was found
in the river?”

“I read it in the paper,” he said. “I’ve been calling over there but got no answer. Have you seen her? How is she?”

“Sedated.” Laurie’s tone was wry as she made a left turn and sped down the county road. “And who can blame her? Maggie and
I are organizing a roster of people to sit with her. I don’t think she realizes what’s happened yet—or her brain isn’t letting
her realize it. But when the shock and the drugs wear off, she’ll need help.”

“Thank you for spearheading this.” His bass voice rumbled through her cell phone. “I should have known you’d already be on
it.”

“The thing is, we don’t know if she has any family. Have they been told? And I assume you’re taking the funeral . . .”

“To my knowledge, she doesn’t have family. Sophie and I have gone over there a couple of times in the past few months, and
she never mentioned any relatives. There were no pictures. I think there’s an ex-husband somewhere, though.”

“I’ll get Maggie to find out. There has to be an emergency contact number in the apartment. Probably in her purse. Or maybe
we could call the school and see if there’s a name in Randi’s file.”

“As for a funeral, we’ll need to contact the police about—about when Randi’s body will be released.”

Laurie digested this for a second. “What do you mean, released?”

“In case it’s being . . . you know. Treated as a suspicious death.”

Colin had said something about that, too. “That’s ridiculous. The poor girl had an accident.”

“I guess the police are taking everything into account. We’ll need to know what’s going on there before we do anything else.”

Poor Tanya. Laurie’s very next call was going to be to Nick. “Thanks, Cale. I’ll talk to you later.”

She rang off and dialed her cousin, who was not where he was supposed to be when she needed him. “Nick, it’s Laurie,” she
told his voice mail. “Pastor Dayton tells me Randi’s body might not be released for a funeral because you guys might be treating
it as a suspicious death. I’m on my way home from Tanya Peizer’s place now, and trust me, we don’t want to drag this out any
longer than we have to. The poor woman is sedated, and it would be great if the funeral were over before the prescription
runs out. Call me.”

But he didn’t. Laurie kept her phone clipped to her waistband while she oversaw Tim’s homework and made dinner. Afterward,
she checked it to make sure the charge hadn’t run down. What was the matter with that guy? He always returned her calls. It
was a lucky thing she wasn’t lying in the street with a broken leg, trying to call him for help.

Nick never did call back. Instead, he and his partner Gil Schwartz turned up on the doorstep at ten minutes after seven. Laurie
could tell right away he wasn’t there to sell tickets for the policemen’s annual Christmas ball.

“Laurie, can we talk to Anna for a minute?” He and Gil stood a little awkwardly in the foyer, the crowns of their caps and
the shoulders of their jackets misted with rain that had just begun to fall.

She gaped at him a little stupidly while her brain rearranged her expectations to line up with reality.

“Aren’t you here to answer my page?” She’d assumed he’d been driving by and figured it was just as easy to stop in as it was
to call.

“No. I got it, but that’s not why we’re here. Is Anna home?”

“Of course she’s home. But what do you need to talk to her about?”

Colin came out of his office and smiled at Nick and Gil, both of whom were men like him—practical, sensible, and handy with
a hammer in their off-hours.

“Hey, guys. What’s up?”

“They want to talk to Anna,” Laurie said before Nick could open his mouth.

“We should call her, then.” He loped up the stairs to do that very thing instead of something sensible, like finding out why
first.

“It’s okay, Laurie,” Nick assured her over the murmur of voices upstairs. “We just need to ask her a couple of questions about
Miranda Peizer.”

“She didn’t hang around with her, if that’s what you mean,” Laurie said. “Not that I know of, anyway.” And she would have
known. Tanya would have said something at Bible study about their daughters being friends. It had mattered deeply to her that
Randi find nice kids to hang around with, though it seemed she didn’t really know how to go about making sure it happened.
She worked two jobs, and keeping up with a teenager like Randi seemed to be a full-time job in itself.

Anna thumped down the stairs in her stocking feet, her dad behind her, giving the odd impression that he was cutting off an
escape route. Anna wore fraying cargo pants and a camisole under a plaid flannel shirt. She also wore a set, wary expression
that Laurie had never seen before. She came to a slow stop on the bottom step, and instead of flying into Nick’s arms the
way she usually did, Anna looked at him as if he were about to whip out the handcuffs.

“Hey, kiddo,” Nick said easily. “Gil and I need to talk to you for a sec.”

She retreated one step, eyeing him as though she were searching for an ulterior motive. “Why?” With one foot, she felt for
the next step.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Colin assured her. “No big deal.”

“No.” She turned an appealing gaze on her dad. “Daddy, I don’t want to.”

Laurie blinked. “Anna, don’t be silly. Go into the living room and offer your cousin a seat.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Nick said. “We’re just gathering information right now, and we hope you can help us.”

This seemed to reassure her a little, but she still looked spooked as she led the way into the living room. Laurie followed.

“Mom.” Anna flopped into the easy chair that sat kitty-corner from the couch. “They want to talk to
me
.”

“
Not you—my mom, who is always hogging the spotlight,
” Laurie heard. Why did everyone think that?

“I can’t imagine anything that Nick couldn’t say in front of Dad and me,” she said easily and made herself comfortable on
the love seat.

Nick and Gil folded themselves onto the edges of the couch cushions, and Colin leaned on the mantel while the fire snapped
and popped in a silence that was unusual in their talkative family.

“You or your husband need to be here, anyway, Mrs. Hale,” Gil said, getting down to business. “We wouldn’t interview a person
under sixteen without a parent or guardian present.”

“What exactly are you interviewing her for? She hardly knows—knew—Randi Peizer.” If they didn’t answer that question soon,
she was going to abandon politeness and give her cousin the kind of healthy whack upside the head that had done wonders for
his cooperation when he’d been a little boy.

Anna’s smooth forehead creased under her bangs. “I don’t know anything about Randi.”

“Well, you might be surprised at what could help us. How well did you know her?” Nick said, as if Laurie hadn’t just told
him.

Anna shrugged and the wary look settled on her features again. “Not very. She’s in third-period science with me, and last-period
phys ed.”

“Did you talk with her much?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Why not?”

Anna’s clear gaze fell to the carpet. “Well, she’s new. And . . .”

“And?”

“And she’s kind of a . . . the kids don’t—didn’t—like her very much.”

“Why not?”

“She’s a poser.” At the two cops’ blank looks, she expanded. “You know, she says stuff that it’s obvious she hasn’t done to
look cool, like she said she was in a gang in Columbus. And she met some lame rock star and was friends with his daughter.
Stuff like that.” She paused a moment. “That’s where she got her nickname. Poser. You know. Instead of Peizer.”