The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (11 page)

“What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you?” I snapped.

“Aw, shit.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Rachel, we’ve got to talk.”

“That’s the last thing I want to do right now.”

He grasped my wrist. “Look at me, for God’s sake.”

I tugged my arm free. “Just go, Luke.”

“All right,” he said. “Okay. But we’re going to talk about this, when we’ve got some privacy. Listen—”

He leaned toward me. I turned away, unable to keep pain from breaking through my fragile wall of anger.

“I love you, Rachel. Remember that.” 

I stepped around him and opened the door. After he was gone I stood in the foyer for a moment, listening to the murmur of Mother’s and Michelle’s voices from the kitchen.

Everybody’s got a secret,
I thought.
Everybody’s got something to hide.

Chapter Nine

Mother wouldn’t be quick to probe the wound. Having exposed Luke’s inadequacies, she’d leave me alone to think about my poor choice. My doubts would do the rest, and she knew it. We’d been through this kind of thing before.

It was Michelle who couldn’t contain her curiosity for more than twenty-four hours. The next day, a Sunday, I got out of the house early and stayed gone all day, birdwatching with Damian’s three teenage daughters in the woods of Riverbend Park, then wandering around a shopping mall buying shoes and clothes and books I didn’t need.

When I returned home laden with shopping bags Michelle and Mother were in the kitchen preparing dinner. A note in Mother’s handwriting was tacked to the little bulletin board beside the wall phone: Dr. Campbell called and would like you to call him back. They both watched me jerk the yellow square of paper free of the pushpin and toss it in the trash can, but they didn’t comment, asking me instead what I’d bought.

Mother, who enjoyed cooking on the weekends, had prepared one of my favorite dishes, rice with chicken chunks, almonds and raisins, spices and herbs. Michelle complained all through dinner about her school schedule. I was conscious of Mother’s sidelong glances, knew she was judging my demeanor and the state of my appetite. I ate more than I wanted, and told her the food was delicious. 

Michelle and I cleaned up the dishes, at first in silence. After a few minutes she leaned over the open dishwasher and whispered, even though Mother was upstairs and unable to hear, “What are you going to do about Luke? Are you going to keep seeing him? You didn’t know he’d been married, did you? What a rotten way to find out.”

“It’s no big deal,” I said, not looking at her. I dropped flatware into its basket.

“I don’t understand why he didn’t tell you something that important.”

I scraped bits of rice from a plate into the sink before I said, “I haven’t known him long. There are lots of things we don’t know about each other yet.”

“Well, you know him well enough to sleep with him. You have been sleeping with him, haven’t you?”

I flipped a wall switch and the garbage disposal roared.

As soon as the noise stopped, she said, “I can’t help wondering what else he’s hiding.”

It took an effort to keep my voice level. “Do you think I’ll find out he’s a serial killer? An escaped madman?”

“Oh, Rachel, be serious.”

“I am being serious.” I removed the dishwasher liquid from the under-sink cabinet and squeezed the big yellow bottle. Lemon-scented gelatinous detergent oozed into the cup on the dishwasher door. “Exactly what is it you think he’s hiding?”

“I don’t know.” But her lifted brows, her skeptical eyes, suggested plenty of possibilities.

“Just drop it, will you?” I slammed the dishwasher door and jabbed a button with my index finger. Water hissed into the machine. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Why are you getting mad at me?” Her tone was instantly hot, affronted. “I’m not the one who lied to you.”

“He didn’t lie to—Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not going to talk about this.”

I walked out.

She followed right behind me, up the hallway toward the stairs. “I don’t know what you see in him anyway. He’s an arrogant s.o.b. All that talk about dogs and cats being more deserving than people. Who does he think he is? What do you want with somebody like that?”

I stopped and turned so abruptly that she almost collided with me. “I’m asking you for the last time. Drop it.”

She took a step back, her expression petulant and defensive. When I ran up the stairs she didn’t follow.

***

Later, I was stretched out on the little couch in my room, trying without much success to concentrate on a veterinary journal, when I heard one soft rap on the door.

“Go away,” I muttered under my breath. Aloud, I said, “Come in.”

The door opened a few inches and Michelle poked her head in. She dropped my name into the silence between us. “Rachel?”

For a moment I was swept back to childhood nights, my door slowly swinging open in a slant of moonlight and my sister’s tiny voice reaching for me in the shadows.
“Rachel? I had a bad dream.”
I would lift the covers and she’d crawl in, snuggling close for safety, her bony knees and elbows pressing against me. It was always me she came to when she was scared. I remembered Mother’s distressed little smile as she brushed back Michelle’s blond wisps one morning and murmured, “Why didn’t you come tell Mommy you had a bad dream?” Michelle, perhaps sensing she’d failed Mother somehow, answered in an uncertain whisper, “I just wanted Rachel. Is that okay?”

Now my sister said, “I’m really sorry about all this.”

She withdrew and closed the door. I didn’t know whether she was talking about her own behavior or Luke’s. Certainly not Mother’s.

On Monday and Tuesday Luke tried repeatedly to get me alone at the clinic, tried to make me listen to him, but I resisted even though I knew I was behaving with the maturity of a twelve-year-old. I was afraid of what else he might tell me. I was afraid he would leave me feeling stupid as well as betrayed.

He caught up with me at quitting time Tuesday when I was hanging my lab coat in my staff lounge locker. I turned and found him behind me. I tried to step around him, but he grasped my arm and wouldn’t let go.

“Isn’t it about time you let me explain?”

“Let go of me. You’re acting like a bully.”

I saw he was tempted to tell me what I was acting like, but instead he said, “I’ll let go if you’ll promise to listen.”

I was close enough to catch the scent of his skin, that wonderful smell that had enveloped me when we made love. Meeting his gaze briefly, I saw nothing but an honest appeal. I nodded, and he released my arm.

“Okay,” he said. “First, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the marriage—”

“Your marriage.”

He drew in a breath. “My marriage. I was twenty-three, and it lasted a little over a year, in legal terms, but we only lived together a few months. We were miserable as hell the whole time. It was a mistake from the start, and we both knew it. I haven’t seen her since the divorce.”

This sounded well-rehearsed. I wondered how many times he’d said it over in his head. Leaning back against my locker for support, I asked, “Did you have—Is there a child?”

He took too long to answer. My stomach clenched into a painful knot as he swiped his hair off his forehead and stared at the floor.

“She—We had a baby.” Luke’s voice was low and flat. “He was premature and he died when he was a week old.” He glanced at me, then away. “The baby was the only reason we got married in the first place. Pure stupidity on my part. I hardly knew the girl.”

And you don’t know me,
I thought.
But you’ve already told me you love me. Am I another impulsive mistake? Did you tell her you loved her too?

“Rachel. Say something.”

I shook my head. I had nothing to say.

“Aw, come on, Rachel. Are you going to let this wreck everything?” He moved closer.

I stepped aside. “Don’t pressure me.”

“Oh, man, your mother really did a number on us, didn’t she? I’ve got to admire her technique.”

I bristled. “If you think insulting my mother’s the way to win me over—”

“You’re a different person when you’re around her, you know that?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I knew well enough.

“She’s got you cowed. She’s got you under her thumb, and she doesn’t want some man coming around threatening her control.”

“Now you’re insulting me.”

He gripped my arm again. “Rachel, I love you, I think we could be happy together—”

“We don’t even know each other.” I yanked my arm loose. “Just leave me alone.”

I bolted, got out of the building and into my car, but I was in too much turmoil to go home, where I would have to face the truth of what he’d said. I drove around side streets for a long time, avoiding rush hour traffic on the main roads, barely noticing where I was. Every few minutes my cell phone bleeped inside my shoulderbag, but I ignored it.

I told myself that if I patched things up with Luke and continued the relationship, he’d force me to choose between him and Mother. I couldn’t do that. Mother and Michelle were all I’d ever had, my only family. I wanted Luke desperately, the sight of him and the sound of his voice at work every day tormented me, but my doubts about him and his hostility to Mother would always come between us.

I told myself I couldn’t trust him, that he might have other secrets that would hurt and shock me. I didn’t know what could be worse, though, than hiding a marriage and child. I was jealous of that nameless, faceless woman who’d been his wife, had his baby. His dead son. His dead marriage. Had he meant to keep it from me forever?

Finally I told myself that I was nothing but a fraud. Deep under the layers of hurt and blame lay a kernel of simple truth: I was grateful that Mother had uncovered an excuse for me to retreat from Luke’s intensity, his certainty that we belonged together. He overwhelmed me with all that he wanted to give and expected in return.

But I had no right to hold his secrets against him. God knew I had plenty of secrets of my own.

Chapter Ten

Even as I pored over a book on locks, learning about pins and cylinders and levers, even as I assembled what I imagined to be adequate lock-picking tools, I felt a little sick about what I was planning to do. But that didn’t stop me.

If Mother had kept a file on my childhood problems, it might contain all the information she would never willingly give me. The file might be in her office, but I couldn’t get into her office. I had to hope it was in her study at home, the off-limits place where I’d never before had reason to trespass.

I shifted my schedule so I’d be free on a Wednesday, Rosario’s day off. That morning I left the house before Mother and Michelle, with the explanation that I’d promised to visit several rehabbers and examine the animals they were working with. I did, in fact, drive over to Vienna and examine a blue jay with a broken wing and a litter of orphaned baby rabbits. When I finished, I returned home.

I felt sneaky, pulling into my own driveway just before ten o’clock. I got out and stood by the car for a moment, the sun’s heat pressing along my arms and cheeks. A cacophony of bird song rose in the humid, still air, and I concentrated to pick out a Carolina wren and a song sparrow.

I was stalling, with no good reason. No one would be home until Michelle came in around three. I took a deep breath. My heart thudded.
Do it.

Inside, I sprinted up the stairs and pulled the lock book from under my mattress and the little brown sack of tools from my desk drawer. I thumped back down the steps, grabbed the flashlight from a kitchen drawer, and crossed the hall to Mother’s study.

Sunlight glared through the wide windows, flashing off the desktop and the slick-jacketed books that filled a wall of shelves. The scent of lemon polish hung in the air. Overhead I heard the distant roar of an airplane.

Sitting cross-legged on the beige carpet, I opened the lock book to the right section, then shook out the sack’s contents. Paper clips. A length of stiff wire cut from a coat hanger. A putty knife. Two flathead screwdrivers, a set of slender miniature screwdrivers, a long metal nail file.

All right. I rose to my knees to study the oak filing cabinets. Four drawers in each cabinet, a lock on every drawer. The book made lockpicking seem easy, and I was certain someone with my manual dexterity could do it even with crude tools.

But faced with the reality of bolts and tight drawers, I fumbled and struggled.

If these were ordinary metal cabinets I might have been able to maneuver them open. But Mother had invested in expensive units with strong locks and drawers that fit perfectly flush. I couldn’t get a screwdriver between the cabinet face and a drawer, much less pull a drawer out enough to insert the coat hanger wire behind it and ease back the bolt.

One by one I tried each of my tools in the keyholes. Coat hanger wire, paper clip, mini screwdrivers. With my ear close to the lock I listened for any faint sign that the bolt was yielding.

I was startled by the slap of metal against metal, racketing down the hallway from the front door. I froze. Who? The plop of mail falling through the slot to the foyer floor left me limp with relief.

Swiping at the moisture on my upper lip, I got to my feet, rolled Mother’s red leather chair from under the desk and sank into it. What had possessed me to think I could do this quickly and easily? I’d thought it was like surgery, requiring only a knowledge of the parts involved and a deft touch. But I hadn’t learned surgery from a book, and I couldn’t learn lockpicking by reading about it. Even if I had the right tools, I’d probably have to practice for hours or days before I could do it.

I swiveled to my right. The desk had two file drawers. Expecting resistance, I yanked angrily at one of them. It flew open and banged my right knee, making me yelp. I saw a collection of file folders. With one hand I rubbed my throbbing knee—I’d have a nasty bruise—and with the other I searched the folders. Clippings from psychology journals and newspapers. Drafts of papers Mother was writing.

I swung around and tried the other big drawer. It held only half a dozen folders, all of them containing what appeared to be final drafts of articles.

My disappointment was irrational, since I couldn’t expect to find anything sensitive in an unlocked drawer, but knowing that made no difference in how I felt. Idly, certain it was useless, I slid open each of the desk’s small side and center drawers. Pencils, pens, index cards, sticky notes, all neatly arranged, a place for everything and everything in its place. I was about to close the center drawer when I caught a glint of metal in a rear corner. I reached back and pulled out a key ring.

Most of the dozen keys had familiar shapes. I recognized them as duplicates that would fit the house locks, Mother’s office door, her car’s ignition and trunk. But here was something odd: three small, similar keys attached to their own circle of metal, which was in turn clipped to the key ring. As I fingered them, hope jolted to life again.

I tried them first on the desk drawers. None fit. With mounting excitement I inserted each of them into all the file cabinet locks. “Turn,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Open it!”

Nothing happened. The file drawers with their lode of secrets remained shut tight.

“God damn it!” I slammed a foot against one of the cabinets. Then, alarmed, I bent to check for dents or scratches, anything that would give me away. The oak surface was unmarred.

Slapping the keys against my thigh, I turned in a circle. I skimmed bookshelves, focused momentarily on a small print of Escher’s strange drawing “Belvedere,” in which nothing was what it seemed at first glance. An odd choice for a woman with Mother’s refined taste to hang on her wall, but perhaps not odd for a psychologist who sat in this room writing about people with warped perceptions.

I slid open one of the closet’s louvered doors and found exactly what I expected on the shelves: packages of laser paper, boxes of stationery, myriad other office supplies. On the floor, pushed back against the wall under the bottom shelf, were four fireproof boxes, three smaller ones lined up in front of a single large one.

I knew Mother kept important documents in these boxes, and I wouldn’t find any secrets hidden in them. Still, I got down on my knees, favoring the one that ached, and slid them forward. One was no more than a foot long, a couple were about eighteen inches long and looked like file boxes. The last was close to two feet. They were heavy; the shells of gray space-age plastic had steel liners. All were locked, but maybe I had the keys in my hand.

I tried a key on a medium-sized box. It didn’t work. I tried another key. The lock popped open with a satisfying click, and I lifted the lid.

The contents were in perfect order. An expanding file had been set inside the box, and within the labeled divisions were all of our insurance papers, for the house, our three cars, health care, plus records of car and home repairs. I closed the lid, disappointed at finding exactly what I’d expected.

The next box opened on the first try. It was filled to capacity with manila envelopes.

They weren’t sealed, just closed with their little gold butterfly clasps. Each was labeled on the outside in my mother’s graceful clear handwriting, and contained exactly what she’d written:
Girls’ vaccination records, Rachel’s report cards, Michelle’s report cards
, and so on. She’d kept the minutiae of our progress through school, our grade school drawings and high school essays, the little awards and certificates of accomplishment we’d received along the way. Safe in a box that not even fire could destroy.

I sat back with one of my science fair prize certificates in my hand. Our mother, who considered so little worth saving, had preserved every scrap of her daughters’ lives. Suddenly my actions, my doubts, the questions that had swirled in my mind for weeks seemed the worst kind of betrayal. 

Then I looked at the other two boxes and my guilt vanished as curiosity took over. I stuffed the science fair certificate into its envelope and put all the envelopes back as I’d found them.

None of the keys fit the largest box. I let it go for the moment and moved on to the smallest one. It opened easily, but inside I found only the key to Mother’s safe deposit box and a small green notebook full of account numbers. I closed the lid and locked it.

I ran my fingers across the oblong bulk of the inaccessible box and tried to reason with myself. It wasn’t worth any more effort. The odds were it contained nothing but household records.

And yet.

Mother hadn’t left the key lying around, any more than she’d left the keys to the file cabinets.

For ten minutes I worked on it, sticking each little key into the lock, trying to twist it, pulling it out and starting over, again and again with no result. Frustration fueled my determination. I’d get the damned thing open if it killed me. If I found a method that worked, it might work on the file cabinets too.

I tried the wire, a paper clip, the nail file. Sometimes I heard a faint click inside the lock, but it didn’t open. I ran to the kitchen, rummaged in the drawers for anything I might use, grabbed a corkscrew and a metal skewer. They were also useless. I slammed my fist on the top of the box until pain stopped me.

I sat back and shoved hair off my damp face. A bead of sweat dropped from my chin to the carpet, leaving a dark spot. In spite of the cool air pouring from the overhead vent, my underarms were wet and my blouse clung to the skin between my shoulder blades.

This is nuts,
I told myself.
Calm down.

Then I thought,
A locksmith.

Hire somebody to enter Mother’s private space and break into the cabinets and the box?

No. It was unthinkable.

I shifted the box, judging its weight. I could take it to a locksmith. Obviously I couldn’t take the file cabinets, but I was strong enough to get this box out to my car. It would be back in its proper place by the time Mother came home from work. But no, this had to be done before Michelle came home at three. I glanced at my watch: almost noon. I pulled the yellow pages from a bookshelf and hurriedly thumbed through it.

I found a locksmith shop in Arlington, near enough to reach quickly yet far enough afield that Mother wasn’t likely to ever use its services. The man who answered the phone said he had to leave for an outside appointment soon but he could make a key if I got the box to him within half an hour. Fifteen minutes later I pulled into the narrow parking strip outside the shop on a commercial stretch of Lee Highway.

I staggered in with the box.

“Hey, whoa,” the young locksmith exclaimed. “You shoulda let me do that.” He hustled around the counter and lifted the box in muscular arms bristling with curly black hair. The box seemed to become weightless in his grasp.

“Now, let’s see what we got here,” he said, dropping the box onto the counter with a loud thump. But his attention was still on me. His grin, his appraising look, said I’d made his day just by coming through the door. When he failed to get an answering smile from me, he turned to his task and made a quick examination of the lock.

“Piece of cake. I opened one just like this a couple weeks ago. They don’t make these things for security, you know, just fire resistance. About the only thing the lock’s good for is keeping the lid on real tight so it won’t pop open if a fire heats it up.”

Easy for you to say,
I thought.

Almost apologetically, he added, “I have to get your ID before I can do this. It’s pretty silly, but I gotta have it. I mean, I know the box belongs to you, I’m not saying—”

“That’s all right, that’s fine,” I said, hoping my alarm was well hidden.
Calm down,
I told myself.
This will never get back to Mother.
I showed him my driver’s license and waited while he jotted information on a form.

He described in detail what he was going to do, how he would select a key blank that matched the lock type, and little by little grind it to fit. He inserted the blank in the lock, pulled it out and showed me the faint scrapes that told him where to start cutting. I was nearly crazy with impatience, but nodded and smiled and held my tongue. At last, when he got down to the work of making the key, he became absorbed and fell silent.

Too restless to sit in the single orange plastic chair, I surveyed the display of locks on a side wall. Padlocks ranging from minuscule to monstrous, dead bolts, childproof latches, keyless security locks. All the ways to keep people out of places where they didn’t belong. I couldn’t believe I was here, doing this.

The minutes dragged. I bit my lip to keep from urging the locksmith to hurry. Through the storefront window I watched the traffic start and stop, start and stop in response to the light on the corner. A sharp pain shot through my bruised knee whenever I shifted position.

“Miss? All done.”

I turned. The box sat on the counter with its lid thrown back. I caught a tantalizing glimpse of something inside, a smooth blue surface, before he lowered the lid again.

He grinned and held up the shiny new key. “Want some extras in case you lose this one too?”

“No, thanks,” I said, not bothering to go along with his good-natured joke. I held out my hand and he dropped the key into my palm. The metal was warm from the cutting. What was that in the box?