Love the Sinner Read online

  “Ms. Harris?” Okay, this was decidedly odd. I was so used to everybody I met in the past week calling me Mrs. Peete that somebody actually knowing or guessing who I was felt unsettling.

  “Yes. Do I know you?” He didn’t look familiar, but my stress level was high enough I wasn’t sure that mattered.

  “Not yet. My name’s Sam Blankenship and I’m from the Ventura County Star.”

  Great. The media had been alerted. In the back of my mind I’d been wondering about something like this ever since the detective said that Dennis’s death had been ruled a homicide. When I thought about all the stories I’d seen in the local paper in the past six months about a suspicious death here or there, I knew that somebody would be calling eventually. Now, apparently, they had called.

  That still didn’t mean I had any idea what to do now. I should probably be dialing Fernandez on my cell phone, I thought. He wouldn’t want me talking to a reporter, even one as young and basically harmless looking as this one. Still, part of this was a matter of public record, wasn’t it? Surely I couldn’t get into more trouble if I just stuck to the facts.

  “Sam, I’d like to ask you kindly to get out of my garage. Go sit on one of those chairs on the porch again, and I’ll come back out and talk to you in five minutes. I promise.” He looked skeptical, but apparently Sam was still pretty new to this reporter business on a professional level because he didn’t argue.

  After a moment or two I won our staring contest and he headed out to the chairs on the porch. I closed the garage and went in the house for a minute to compose myself. Cub reporter or not, this was going to be a challenge. For the first time in a long time, my immediate response was prayer. With all the stuff facing me that was coming down, I figured I needed every scrap of help I could possibly muster.

  7

  When I went back to the porch I offered Sam coffee, which he declined. He looked more like somebody who’d drink one of those caffeinated power drink things, anyway. The funniest thing was that when I told him that, he totally blew away my perception of him. “Nope, no caffeine here, thanks. Not my thing.”

  A reporter who didn’t do caffeine. It boggled the mind. “Okay. So how about orange juice or something?”

  “Thanks, I’m cool.” He opened a reporter’s notebook that looked a lot like the one the detective carried. I was glad he hadn’t pulled out a tape recorder, because I would have refused right away to talk to him. My head just wasn’t together enough at this point for me to be comfortable with someone recording my words that accurately. “Okay, so let me make sure I have things straight so far. I came out to talk to you about the death of your husband, Dennis Peete. You are aware that his death has been ruled a homicide, right?” All I could do was nod and shrug.

  “My notes say he passed away at the Conejo Board and Care last week when someone there apparently gave him a cup of liquid laced with an illegal substance. Is this correct?”

  “So far it matches what I’ve been told or what I know.” He might not look much older than Ben, but so far the kid was succinct and accurate.

  “Do you or any of the rest of Mr. Peete’s family plan any sort of lawsuit regarding the Board and Care?”

  “Not at this time.” I kept my voice as calm as possible, amazed that Detective Fernandez had let so little information out. Was it lying to let this young man think that there might be some involvement by the Board and Care in Dennis’s death? It felt like a sin of omission, somehow, but not one I was willing to correct, either.

  “Since there’s no record of you having been arrested, Ms. Harris, I’ve got to assume the police don’t think you had anything to do with your husband’s death. Care to point me in the right direction?”

  “No direction to point you in, Mr. Blankenship.” Might as well keep things as detached as possible. It certainly couldn’t hurt. “I’m just close enough to the investigation, at least the wrong end of it, that if the police have any theories they certainly aren’t sharing them with me.”

  “Is there any chance I could speak with Mr. Peete’s mother? I understand this is her house.”

  This kid was way too sharp. But then, he could have found that out a number of ways, from property records to a reverse directory that listed the names of owners of record of every business and home. After working in the offices at the community college back in Missouri, I knew a little bit about finding people just from having to track down students who failed to give us the right address. Back then it was usually a mixture of spaciness and the vague hopes their tuition bills might go astray. The ploy seldom, if ever, worked.

  “This is her house, but she’s not home right now.” I didn’t feel like sharing with him that she hadn’t been home for a number of days. Another sin of omission. If there were a confession section of Christian Friends meetings, I was going to have a lot to tell them sometime in the near future. Maybe even tonight if I got a chance. “If you’ll leave a business card, I can see that she gets it when I see her. I can’t promise you anything, though, because I’m not sure when she’s going to be back, and she’s not big on communication.”

  “Okay. I’d appreciate it anyway,” he said, fishing around in his jeans pocket and coming out with a business card. “I keep a few of these around for the folks that don’t do e-mail.”

  “I imagine they’re getting fewer and farther between these days,” I said, mainly to make conversation.

  “All the time. Even my grandmother has a Web site,” he said with a grin. “Of course, I helped her set it up, but now she loads pictures and messages on it herself.”

  Even in my wildest dreams I couldn’t imagine Edna uploading anything to a Web site. Still, she’d get a kick out of communicating that way. I made a mental note to push the computer literacy once she came back. Maybe I could use the argument that she’d have more pictures of Ollie that way to show her seniors’ group. Just thinking about it made me tear up a little. I was awfully tired of most of my life right now.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask you all this,” Sam said, apparently thinking that he was the one aggravating me. “But there’s nobody else to ask, and I’m sure you’re familiar with how little information the county sheriff’s department funnels through their public information officer. And the medical examiner’s office is even worse.”

  Knowing how tight-lipped Detective Fernandez was, I could imagine. “You have to do your job,” I said, thinking that actually he could be a lot worse. And talking to him had let me know more about what the police were putting out than I’d known before.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t always make it a pleasant job,” he said, looking grimmer than I’d expect a young man his age to look. “Have Mrs. Peete call me when you can, will you?”

  “I’ll try my best,” I promised, hoping that I’d get a chance to try soon. The longer that Edna was gone, the more I wondered about where she was hiding out. She’d left Dennis’s bedside with nothing but her purse and the clothes on her back.

  Just thinking about that made me wonder if that was still all she had. I didn’t go back to the house for hours after Dennis died, so I assumed that Edna hadn’t been back, either. I wasn’t sure if a quick look through her closet or dresser drawers would tell me what, if anything was missing. I’d never done much of an inventory on what she wore, other than the fact that a lot of it seemed to be some shade of aqua.

  Waving goodbye to the reporter, I tried to keep any and all of this thought process off my face, while inwardly urging him down the driveway so that I could go in and look in Edna’s room. Once he pulled away I tried not to race back into the house.

  Edna’s room looked the same way it had the few times I’d been in it. Her furniture dated back to at least 1950 if not before—blond wood and a nondescript bedspread in ice-blue and—surprise!—aqua. On the wall near the dresser there were black-and-white baby pictures of someone I could only assume was Dennis, and a few knickknacks strewn on the top of the furniture.

  The walk-in closet had a fe
w hints that perhaps she’d been in here recently. There was a square indentation in the carpet that was empty now, as if a carry-on-sized suitcase normally rested there and was seldom moved. In among the neatly hung blouses, sweaters and polyester pants were several empty hangers, as if garments had been quickly pulled off and put in that missing suitcase. And to top things off, two of the different clear plastic containers that held her everyday shoes were empty. One at a time I could understand, but two empties meant Edna had been back here and packed.

  This was definitely information I needed to share with Detective Fernandez. He wouldn’t like hearing it and he might not even go along with my reasoning, but I owed it to him to let him in on what I’d found out.

  Once I was sure that the reporter was long gone, I called the sheriff’s department. I got Fernandez’s voice mail, and debated on what to do. Would he appreciate the message, even if it wasn’t given in person? It was hard to say. In the end I settled on giving him a shortened version of things.

  “This is Gracie Lee Harris,” I said, hating the way I sounded giving information to a machine. “I think there are some things missing from Edna’s closet. I can’t say how much, and when it might have happened. Just thought you should know.” Hanging up, I felt a little silly. When I really analyzed what I’d told him, this didn’t sound like much. As far as I knew, this could have been things that Edna had pulled together to give to the Salvation Army a month ago, not a hastily packed suitcase last week. Without knowing more about when things happened, and how, it certainly wasn’t much to go on.

  Still, there was at least a hint here that Edna had probably been back home, packed a bag and taken off. I resolved to tell Linnette and the rest of the Christian Friends that night when I went up to Conejo Chapel. They could help me sort things out, anyway.

  There was no lack of help in sorting out that night. Paula had apparently decided to stay home, and nobody much minded. Linnette made plenty of coffee and even had cute little cookies that weren’t chocolate chip. “They were in the grocery store bakery for Valentine’s Day. That’s why they’re pink,” she confessed, as she put them out on a plate on the coffee table. “Just because we’re a week early, I figured that wasn’t going to keep anybody from eating them.”

  “Definitely not,” I told her, loading three of them onto a paper plate and adding cream to my coffee.

  She gave me a stern look over her reading glasses. “That wouldn’t happen to be dinner, would it?”

  “Well, yeah.” It was hard to get interested in food right now, alone in that house and with all the problems facing me. I hadn’t counted on anybody catching me in the act, though.

  “I want you to promise me that you’ll plan regular meals tomorrow and the next day. You’re in a rough situation right now, and if you neglect healthy eating it will just get worse,” she lectured, sounding just like I knew my own mother would if she weren’t two thousand miles away. Even Edna would never have let me get away with cookies and coffee for dinner.

  “I’ll do it. But it’s such an effort right now.”

  She nodded. “I can just imagine. You still haven’t figured out where Dennis’s money went, right? And Edna hasn’t shown up, either?”

  “No, but remind me when the meeting gets under way that I actually have something to tell the group about that,” I told her, as simultaneously Linnette’s cell phone rang and Lexy came in shaking out a bright yellow jacket that looked like a stylish rain slicker.

  “Wet out there again,” she said, tossing her long blond hair like a cocker spaniel. “Sure ties up the 101. Oohh, cookies. Great.” She picked up a few with the same gusto I’d shown. Having cookies for dinner seemed to be the common theme tonight.

  Dot bustled in a moment later, closing down an umbrella with a handle shaped like a duck’s head. It made me smile. Linnette was back, as well, motioning everybody to get their goodies and sit down. “That was Heather on the phone and she’s going to be a few minutes late. So let’s get started and we’ll catch her up when she gets here.”

  There were the prayers and opening statements about Christian Friends that sounded more familiar now. I especially liked the part that reminded us, Linnette looking over the rims of her reading glasses, that “what was said in this room stayed in this room,” unless you got the permission of the others involved to do anything different. I felt like I needed friends close enough to really let go with right now, and this felt like the group to be that close with.

  Dot gave a brief devotion. It was so good that I got a moment of panic wondering where on earth I’d find something like that if they ever asked me to do that. Maybe they had a grace period for newcomers. I hoped so. Then Linnette went around the group asking for specific concerns, warning me in advance that everybody else would get to go first since they hadn’t had a chance last time.

  “I’ll start out myself, since I haven’t said anything in a while. Actually I’m pretty stable. Both of the girls are doing well in school and work, and my job’s been good. I’m on a reduced dose of meds and that seems to be keeping the demons at bay.” Her reading glasses were put away now, and she looked over at me with the same kind, interested gaze she’d had most of the time I’d known her.

  “I’ve been widowed about five years,” she explained, “and it was rough at first handling everything that Tom and I used to together. Both girls were teenagers at the time of his death, and I didn’t know how I was going to cope. Plus there were some other things I don’t need to go into tonight. Let’s just say I dealt with major depression, and it took me a good two years to find my way out of it.

  “With the help of Pastor George, and a good doctor, life’s a lot better now. Once I got through all this myself, the pastor thought I’d be a good leader for a Christian Friends group. I couldn’t argue, seeing as how the group I was in at the time was what pointed me in the right direction to get my depression under control.”

  “And now she gets the rest of us under control instead,” Dot quipped, a soft grin on her face. “Truthfully, though, you’re a real inspiration, Linnette. We just don’t say it often enough. Is there anything specific for us to keep you in prayer for?”

  “Not right now. I just have to keep moving one day at a time. Although a relatively wealthy guy who wouldn’t mind a forty-five-year-old with baggage couldn’t hurt,” she said, smiling back.

  “I don’t know. They always say to be careful what you pray for….” Dot let us fill in the blanks.

  “That’s true. I might get a whole different set of circumstances than I’m looking for,” Linnette said. It was nice to hear her story, although I ached for her while she was filling me in. It made more sense now to know why she had so much insight into my situation; in some ways she’d been there herself. I hoped her husband hadn’t been quite the same kind of guy Dennis was. That was pretty unlikely. Most middle-aged married guys seemed to be pretty boring sorts on the outside, at least.

  Dot waved on the line of discussion when it came to her next. “Nothing big to talk about right now. Candace is good and likes her group home real well. Buck’s busy on the computer when he’s not out with the dogs. Life is pretty good.”

  She turned to me to fill me in on all that. Aside from Candace, whoever she was, none of it was news. “Candace is my daughter. She’s thirty years old and I think the current politically correct term for her would be ‘developmentally disabled. ’I knew from the moment she was born that she had Down syndrome, but nobody told Candace, especially us, that it would keep her from doing things, so she did quite a bit. She holds down a simple job with a lot of help and support, and slowly but surely we have gotten less involved in her life.”

  “Which is quite an accomplishment when you think of everything you started out doing for her,” Linnette added. “Dot and Buck have an apartment over their garage that Candace and a friend lived in for quite a while, just to give them some transition. Now she lives in Camarillo and comes home to visit and go to church on about the same schedu
le you’d expect from a mostly independent college student.”

  “And with the same amount of laundry,” Dot said with a laugh. “I won’t do it for her, but she sure likes using that machine at home that doesn’t eat quarters like the one at the Laundromat.”

  Even tonight when she wasn’t here, I wondered what possible problems brought Paula here. She didn’t seem to have the same warm, outgoing bond with the group that most of the rest of these women did, but maybe she just had a prickly nature. Some people did, and I always felt sorry for them once I got over being aggravated by them, because I couldn’t imagine going through life with that thin a skin.

  I mean, I cry at the drop of a hat, but otherwise nothing much really bothers me, and I’d call myself easy to get along with. Maybe I was too easy to get along with, given that Dennis managed to pull everything he did on me. It was something to talk about here, once I got a chance. Right now it was Lexy’s turn, and tonight she looked less like the savvy attorney than she had before.

  She wore a soft sweater and worn jeans, and a bemused expression. “I’ve just had babies on the brain lately. Same old stuff, I guess. I know lots of people wait until their thirties to get pregnant and don’t have any problems, but that sure hasn’t been the case for us.” She gave a deep sigh, and almost looked like a woman in her thirties for a change, instead of the perky cheerleader that I’d seen so far.

  “Steve and I are trying to decide whether to get on the waiting list for a fertility specialist who practices at UCLA Med Center. It’s so expensive, and I don’t know if I could put him, or even myself, through half the stuff I know they’d probably want to do. But it’s been four solid years of trying so far, and let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger. Besides, the whole mindset is starting to affect my work.”

  “That’s almost difficult for me to believe,” Linnette said, looking a little startled. “You’re usually more grounded than anybody else here.”