True Blend (12 page)

“Have to. Health regulations.”

“That’s what I figured.” He points to George’s face. “You’re sweating.”

“Jesus.” George quickly brings his hand to his forehead.

“It’s tough, I know,” Hayes adds, snapping the case closed. “Being involved in a crime does funny things.” He stands then, the briefcase hanging from his grip. “Listen, if you think of anything, give me a call, would you?” Hayes reaches into his pocket and hands him a business card.

“Sure.” George walks him out into the showroom while tucking Hayes’ card in his pocket. “You, too.”

“What’s that?” Detective Hayes turns toward George.

“If you catch those guys, let me know. We’ll all rest easier.”

“Oh, you’ll know about it. You’re an eyewitness. I’m hoping you could identify a voice at least.” He extends his hand for a shake. “We’ll be in touch.”

George shakes the detective’s hand and watches him leave, waiting at the door until he is long out of sight.

Ten

IT MIGHT HELP HER TO have an emotional release
. The child psychologist saw right through Grace’s growing silence to the source of it.
At our next appointment, we’ll try play-acting, association cards, that sort of thing. Her fear is bottled up inside her and she needs to rid the feelings from her system, to get mad, to cry
, Dr. Brina had said.

Are there association cards for adults? What would elicit a response from Amy? Because she needs it too, to get mad, to purge the rage from her system. Slamming her hand on the steering wheel while driving isn’t cutting it. Wouldn’t she love to go face-to-face with the men who subjected her child to this? To lean in like a drill sergeant and spew her thoughts at them?

By the time she gets home and unbuckles Grace from the car seat, she’s still too mad to get afraid of the voices coming from the house. How can someone be inside? If anything, it makes her even angrier, this violation of her home, this thought of what else can go wrong. She and Grace walk the flagstone path from the driveway to the back door and hear conversing, arguing even, in her kitchen. She turns to Grace and holds a stern finger to her pursed lips, shushing her firmly. Standing off to the side, she peers through the paned windows on the farm-style door but sees nothing out of place. It’s only when she turns the key in the lock does she realize the voices come from a talk show on the radio.

But still, something’s not right. Something that has her set the keys lightly on the kitchen table and silently tug Grace’s jacket from her arms. Something that keeps her ears tuned as she shuts off the countertop radio and walks through the rooms.

Something that makes her question what she thought she knew, that she shut the radio off before they left earlier.

*  *  *

George cuts off a stretch of butcher’s twine. He slides it beneath the pork loin, pulls the twine tightly around one end and makes a square knot, leaving a long length on one side of the knot. Laying the twine along the length of the roast, his thumb holds the knot firmly in place as he wraps the string around the meat. A quick visual check confirms the tension is just right as very little of the juices seep out. He lifts the loop at his thumb and passes the end of the twine underneath, then pulls the twine upward to tighten it around the roast.

Dean serves the lunch customers out front and has switched the stereo from Sinatra to a midday news report. The armored truck heist manhunt has been expanded from the eastern seaboard to the west coast. Reward amounts spiral as authorities suggest that professional, lifelong criminals played a hand in Addison’s headlines.

Played a hand
. George stands at the counter in his black apron and continues wrapping and tying the pork loin in one-inch increments until the entire length has been tied. If only they knew how
playing a hand
spiked the crime. It’s like paging through some old photo album in his mind, the images he remembers of Nate always playing a hand with fate. There he is climbing trees unfit for climbing, staying in the water until lightning strikes close, flirting with fast cars and bikes, skiing precipitous black-diamond slopes and walking blindly into an early volatile marriage. Moving back home after his divorce, he seemed to regroup. But after their father died, the gamble took different shapes as it escalated from weekly poker games to horse racing to the slots, each one strung together somehow, with Nate incrementally increasing the tension and tightening the knot of risk.

George manipulates the roast, checking for tautness. He tightens each tie, then wraps the string around the meat lengthwise, bringing it back to the original knot. Too much pressure on the twine will misshape the roast. He pulls just tight enough, then ties one last knot in the string to secure the work he has done.

Just like Nate did, perfectly securing his work. He tied him up hand and foot in his ultimate gamble until George can’t make a single move without feeling those strings pull.

*  *  *

“Now don’t get mad at me,” Celia says when she turns her car into the driveway of a small ranch house and parks in the shade of an oak tree. They had gotten cones to-go on the way, and she bites into the last of hers before wiping her fingers on a napkin. “The listing agent needs me to stage this for an open house, but I wanted to ask you something first.”

“I won’t get mad, Cee,” Amy answers, holding a double-scoop, fudge-swirled vanilla cone. “What’s up?”

“For starters, what do you think of this house?”

Amy glances out the passenger window, aware of Grace behind her in the car seat, spooning her strawberry ice cream from a small cup. The neighborhood is one with older homes pressed close together on shaded lots. “It’s pretty,” she says of the cream and brick-front ranch.

“It’s got new siding and a new roof, too. Move-in condition.” Celia steps out, opens the car’s back door and lifts Grace up, ice cream and all. Together they walk to the front entranceway where a garden bench and antique milk can sit on the stoop. Celia holds Grace on her hip and shifts a notepad and pen from one hand to the other. A realtor’s lock box hangs from the front door handle. “Do me a favor?” she asks Amy. “Punch my password on the keypad and get the key out.”

“What’s the code?” Amy tips up the lock box, waiting.

“Twelve fifteen. My birthday.”

Amy presses the numbers, one, two, one, five and the lock releases.

“Go ahead and open it up,” Celia says around Grace in her arms. She strokes the girl’s hair as they step inside, where the living room leads to a small dining room with sliders to a deck. “Okay,” she says, setting Grace and her ice cream down before taking a quick breath. “Now for my real question. I’m just going to put it out there.”

“Celia. What is it already?”

“It’s just that … Well I’m wondering if you would consider buying this house.”

“Wait. You want
me
to buy it?”

Celia nods. “When it came on the market, I thought of you right away.”

“Why?” They walk through to the kitchen, finding sleek modern cabinets and countertops, an island with pendant lights and stainless steel appliances. Amy sits at a stool at the breakfast bar and hands Celia her cone so she can lift Grace and her ice cream cup. “Upsy-daisy,” she says, settling her daughter on her lap.

Celia sits on a stool beside Amy and gives her the cone back. “It’s just that you’re all alone in that big old farmhouse now and I get worried.”

“But I’m not alone. I’ve got Grace and you’re right down the street. My parents are a phone call away. Even Mark’s things are still there,” she adds while licking around the fudge-swirled scoop. “My life’s in that house, Celia.”

“But it’s a big place to take care of alone. This house is small, the yard work is next to nothing, so upkeep is easy. And hey, it’s really close to your shop and to the school. You and Grace can walk together in a few years.”

Amy shakes her head no while biting into the cone.

“I thought it was something I could do to help. You know. That maybe you’d feel safer in a nice, small place?”

“With a concrete countertop and subway tile backsplash? Seriously?” Amy takes Grace’s plastic spoon and helps her fill it with strawberry ice cream from her cup.

“I know,” Celia says. “Your kitchen, that beautiful country kitchen. The knotty pine cabinets, that awesome blue farm table, your hearts and roosters everywhere. And the food, the coffee, the life that happens in that gorgeous room. Okay, what was I thinking? Even
my
heart would break if you parted with it.”

Amy stuffs the last of her cone into her mouth and pulls a paper napkin from her purse. “Wait,” she says around the ice cream. “You tricked me, didn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Taking me and Grace out for ice cream was all a ruse. Just to get us here, wasn’t it?”

Celia shrugs. “It worked.”

“Oh you owe me one. Seriously. Like, right now. Because I could definitely go for another scoop. How about you, Gracie. Hm?” Grace scrapes her spoon around the empty cup that Amy holds. “Want more ice cream?” So this is new, the way she always presses Grace to respond now. It scares her that her words are fewer and fewer each day.

“I thought it might distract Grace, too. Get some smiles going on,” Celia adds quietly.

“Thanks.” Amy wipes a dribble of ice cream from Grace’s chin, then lightly tickles her cheek.

“Okay then, so no to this house. But would you at least get a security system? Or even a dog?” Celia asks.

“We’ll see. I’ll think about it, anyway.”

Celia gives her a smile and a quick hug. “If you ever change your mind though, you let me know.”

From Amy’s lap, Grace reaches her open arms up for a hug, too. “You’re such a sweetie!” Celia bends and hugs her close. “After a hug like that, one more ice cream coming up, ladies. Let me just take some quick notes on lighting and furniture groupings here, first.”

Amy glances back into the empty dining room. “It amazes me how you transform these houses, Cee. How do you even know where to begin?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned staging homes, it’s this. Buyers love picturing themselves in staged homes. But the secret, for me, is not to show them the lives they already have. A house sells every time I show them the lives they
want
to have.”

As she walks away jotting down design notes, all Amy can think is this: If Celia could somehow stage this house with the life she
used
to have, one without fear, one where Grace’s happy voice filled the rooms again, one where she didn’t do a double take at every shadow or turn at every noise or see a bank parking lot every night before falling asleep, she’d buy this house in a heartbeat.

Eleven

NIGHTMARES COME TO LIFE WITH strangers. George knows that going out in public still frightens Amy. At the Strawberry Festival, people mill about, coming up from behind, turning corners in front of them like looming reflections in a crowded house of mirrors. He stays close, linking his arm through hers, talking and pointing out the sights.

“Look,” he says. “Maybe Grace would like that?” Two young women paint strawberries high on the children’s cheeks. Amy lifts Grace onto the bench and keeps her hands on her daughter’s shoulders the entire time. Grace tips her head down as the paintbrush strokes her face and the painter speaks softly, telling her how pretty she is, asking her age.

Afterward they walk slowly around Addison’s Green. Craft booths line one end, selling twig wreaths, sterling jewelry, handmade rag dolls and driftwood paintings. At the Women’s Club booth, Amy buys Grace a sweatshirt screen-printed with smiling strawberries. She ties it around her daughter’s waist.

“Do they come in adult sizes?” George asks the attendant.

“Oh sure,” she answers. “They’re all the rage today.”

He looks at Amy, sizing her up. “Give me an adult small,” he says, pulling his wallet from his pocket. He drapes the sweatshirt over her back, tying the sleeves loosely around her shoulders.

Food booths selling sausage sandwiches and foot-long hotdogs and cotton candy crowd the center of The Green. They walk past to a midway where a half dozen game tents boast stuffed animals and fuzzy stuffed strawberries as prizes.

“Do you want to play something?” Amy asks.

“Well. It’s been a long time, I might be a little rusty.” He steers them over to the games and tries his hand at tossing Ping-Pong balls into clustered fish bowls, consistently missing his target. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is the way Amy hoists Grace up to see, the way they laugh together. They move on and pick the wrong numbers in the big spinning wheel of chance.

“Three baseballs, three tries! Win a prize!” a caller yells out.

George turns to see six clay bottles stacked pyramid-like on a table. “Now we’re talking,” he says. “The midway meets its match.”

“Knock them all down in three shots, you win a keychain,” the caller explains. “You’ve got a pretty good arm, so do it in two shots for the fuzzy strawberry. One shot, you hit the jackpot.”

George takes three baseballs in his open hand. He sets two down, turns sideways and eyes the towering bottles. It all comes back to him: the weight of the ball in his palm, the eye-hand coordination, the focus of the game. But something else is there, too. He turns and scans the midway crowd, sensing that someone is following him, watching his every move.

“What are you doing?” Amy asks. “Eyeing the runner back to first?”

He looks long at Amy, certain the odd game of hide and seek continues behind them. “He wanted to steal second,” George tells her. “Now. Here’s the pitch.” He joggles the ball and follows through with a strong shot, clearing the tower from the table in one loud clatter. The caller presses a button setting off whistles and whoops so that people passing by stop and look.

“Here you go,” George says when he bends down to Grace. She opens her arms to a teddy bear the color of honey. When she looks back up at George, he winks at her. “Say hi to Bear.”

“Bear?” She pulls the stuffed animal close and presses her cheek against its soft fur.