Safe Keeping

Lissa kept Tucker’s gaze, and he hung in with her, not letting hers go this time, and she was somehow relieved. Liars couldn’t look you in the eye. She said, “A man with a band, huh? I figured it would be one of your stray-dog friends.”

“Not this time.”

Lissa went to the pantry. “Do you want something to eat?”

“Nah. Thanks. I stopped at Mickey D’s on the way here. I’d take a cup of coffee, though, if it’s no trouble.”

“Since when do you drink coffee?”

“Since it got colder than hell outside.” The grin he shot her was surface, a token meant to placate her. It didn’t.

“You need to call Mom and Dad, Tuck.”

“I’ll call Mom, but I’ve got nothing to say to the old man.”

Lissa could have asked him right then why the police were looking for him, but she didn’t. Instead, she rinsed out the carafe while he told her about his Tahoe, that it had died coming back into town and that he’d gotten lucky when a girl pulled off the road to help him.

“Did you know her?” Lissa asked.

“I do now,” Tucker answered, cocking an eyebrow. “I spent the night at her place.”

“You’re hopeless, you know that?”

“Yeah, but you still love me, right?” His smile now was pure Tucker, full of mischief and his affection for her. Full of so many small teasing moments they’d shared just like this one. Full of all that connected them—family secrets, sibling histories, the ties that bind.

Lissa would tell people they were close, and in her next breath she would say they had nothing in common. Either way it was true. She’d taught him to read; she’d taught him to tie his shoes and how to color inside the lines. She’d read aloud to him and sung songs with him. “Itsy Bitsy Spider” was his favorite. He’d loved playing the finger game that went with it. At one time he’d even slept with a big, stuffed spider. It had been purple, and he’d named it Itsy. She wondered what had become of it. They’d played endless rounds of Clue and Monopoly on rainy days and shared a love of Bon Jovi and the first Rocky movie. Sometimes she understood Tucker completely; other times he was an enigma, a puzzle to which she was missing a vital piece.

She turned off the tap. “What happened to your face?”

He touched his cheek. “This? Cut myself shaving.” His feet danced.

She looked out the kitchen window. The coffeemaker sighed. She said, “I hate what’s happening, Tuck.”

“It’s not your fault Pop’s an asshole.”

He thought she was referring to the fight he’d had with their father, the latest blowout, and she was, but that was only part of it. The cup and saucer she handed him rattled in his big, work-roughened hands. He had strong, narrow wrists and long, tapered fingers that could measure an octave on the piano. Their mother had taught him to play, and he’d been a willing student until he picked up a friend’s guitar one day in high school. He’d played in a couple of bands, and Lissa thought he was good, but she wasn’t an expert. She only knew what she liked, and anyway, she kind of agreed with her dad. It wouldn’t be reliable, earning a living that way.

Dad had wanted Tucker to play baseball, as if that would be a more stable occupation.

“The old man told me not to come back.” Tucker blew over the top of his coffee cup. “So now, in addition to being jobless, I’m homeless.”

“He didn’t mean it. You know how he is. He’s cooled off now. Trust me.”

“I think I’m going to move in with Morgan, anyway.”

“Who’s Morgan?” Lissa sat across from him and stirred the sugar substitute from two blue packets into her cup.

“The girl I met last night. Her dad owns a car dealership. She thinks he’ll hire me.”

“What about the band? I thought going on the road with them was the plan.”

“Whichever works out, I guess.”

Where were you really? Lissa couldn’t bring herself to ask. She was filled with foreboding, heavy with it. She cleared her throat.

“What?” Tucker gulped his coffee.

Too fast, she thought, because he grimaced as if he’d burned his mouth. When he asked for a Coke, she brought it to him, along with the Houston Chronicle. She unfolded it.

He popped the top on his soft drink. “What’s this?”

“Do you know her?” Lissa sat down.

“This girl?” Tucker studied the picture. Nothing altered in his expression or in his voice. Lissa started to breathe, and then he said, “It’s Jessica Sweet. Holy shit!” He brought his glance to Lissa’s. “She’s dead?”

“You knew her.” Lissa’s heart throbbed in her ears.

“Yeah. Miranda introduced us. They were friends.”

“Oh, Tucker. She was a dancer, too? Did they work at the same club?”

“Yeah. So what? After Miranda was killed, we hung out together, but really, I hardly knew her. Jessica was Senator Sweet’s daughter. You remember him, U.S. senator, back in the day? She was kind of wild, got into trouble with drugs and stuff. I heard she cost her old man his last campaign—”

“Tucker! She’s dead!”

“Yeah, that’s what it says here. I can’t believe it.”

“She and Miranda were friends. They worked at the same club. You knew her. The police are looking for you. It’s happening all over again....”

“No, Liss. There’s no history between us, no big soap-opera drama. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t find her body.”

Lissa didn’t answer.

“Come on, you know I had nothing to do with this, right? I mean you’re not stressing because you think I’m, like, guilty, are you? I didn’t even know the chick was missing until this morning when I saw the news.”

“A second ago, you said you couldn’t believe it, as if you hadn’t heard—”

“I should have known!” He tossed up his hands. “I should have guessed what you’d think. I bet Pop’s all over it, too. I’m a killer, right? The family lunatic, the psycho. That’s why Pop doesn’t want me home.” He stood up fast enough to rock the chair, grabbing his jacket, shoving his arms into the sleeves.

“Come on, Tucker. You have to admit it’s weird. Twice? In two years? Jessica was found in almost the exact location where Miranda was. You knew both of them. You must see how it looks.”

“Yeah. I see how it looks. I just never expected you would believe in how it looks. I thought you would believe in me.”

“I do, of course I do!” Lissa picked up a towel, wound her hands in it. “It’s just—”

“I’m only going to say this one time, okay? I didn’t kill Jessica. I didn’t kill Miranda. I’ve never killed anybody.” His gaze was hard on hers.

She tented her hands over her mouth, said his name, fighting tears, fighting for breath.

“I’ve got to go.” He shoved the chair under the table. “Thanks for the Coke.”

“No, wait. Where will you go? The police—”

“Fuck ’em,” he said, and then he was gone, slamming the back door behind him.

4

WHEN LISSA CALLED late that morning to say Tucker was with her and seemed all right, Roy didn’t share Emily’s relief; he acted as if it didn’t matter to him at all. He went out the back door and down the steps, and Emily watched him cross the backyard and disappear into his workshop. She got out the ingredients to bake a chocolate cake, Tucker’s favorite. She wanted to have something special on hand to feed him when he got home, but she was irked at Roy. Suppose he wouldn’t even try and sort things out this time? She creamed the sugar with the butter in the bowl, but all at once, the mood to bake left her, and untying her apron, she walked out of her kitchen and around the corner to Anna Brinker’s house.

They were lifelong friends, still living in the houses they were raised in and that their mothers had been raised in. Like many of the other historic homes in the neighborhood, Anna’s house, a pale green, turreted Eastlake, was also a Hiram Winter creation. When Emily and Anna were sixteen, a new girl their same age moved with her family into the Winter-built, red-brick, Georgian colonial next door to Anna. Natalie’s closet was crammed with great-looking clothes she was willing to share and she could use her mother’s turquoise-blue Cadillac convertible pretty much whenever she wanted it. She drove Anna and Emily everywhere, top down, radio blasting. They became inseparable and never really lost touch, not even after high school. It was their good fortune when as newlyweds they returned with husbands in tow to the old neighborhood, like migratory birds, to live in the homes of their girlhood.

They shared nearly everything: pregnancies and diapers, recipes, celebrations. They raised their children together. Emily and Roy had Lissa and Tucker; Anna and her husband, Harvey, had their son, Cory; and Nat and her husband, Benny McPherson, had their daughter, Holly. Lissa was the oldest, Cory was the youngest and Tucker and Holly were the same age, born only weeks apart. It was a good life, filled with good times.

But like all good things, those times ended. Not easily. Not in any way Emily cared to remember.

Stirring a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee now, she glanced at Anna. “I probably shouldn’t have come. I’m not fit company in the mood I’m in.”

“Nonsense.” Anna patted Emily’s arm. “Is Tucker coming home? Did Lissa say?”

“She didn’t, and it worries me. I have a feeling they got into it, but it’s not as if she’d tell me. You know how those two keep secrets.” She was no different, Emily thought. She was keeping her own secrets. But when tempers were already strained to the max, sometimes keeping what you knew to yourself was for the best. Sometimes, if you just gave a situation a little time, it would resolve itself.

“We need something to nibble on.” Anna scooted from her chair and went to rummage in the pantry.

She was biting her tongue, but soon enough, she would speak her mind. She would give Emily her opinion, the benefit of her advice. In times of trouble, that’s what friends did, but Emily didn’t necessarily always want to hear what Anna had to say. As close as they were, and as much as they shared, Emily didn’t feel that Anna understood about Tucker. How could she? His nature was so much more complicated than Cory’s or Lissa’s. Who knew how or why? Emily had used up Tucker’s childhood trying to sort it out, to sort him out. It still mystified her that two children, who shared the same parents, could be so utterly different in almost every way. But it was watching Tucker struggle with those very differences, watching him try so hard to fit in, that made Emily want to defend him, to shield him. She could wish all she liked to have a son like Cory, one who fit the norm, a regular kid, but she didn’t.

Perfect Cory, Emily thought, and then she was ashamed.

Anna turned from the pantry, holding out a box of Milanos, her favorite cookie. She smiled.

“I don’t think those are on our diet, are they?” Emily smiled, too.

“Think of it this way. We can eat these or take Prozac. I think these are cheaper and better for us. Am I right?” Anna waggled her eyebrows, making a joke.

Emily laughed outright and then wondered how she could, given the circumstances.

Anna arranged the cookies on a plate and brought it to the table. “What has Roy said?”

Her casual tone didn’t fool Emily for a moment. “Oh, you know Roy,” she said just as casually, wanting to avoid contention, while at the same time knowing the impossibility, because she needed to talk this out, and who else was there but Anna? Emily flashed a glance at her and found her looking back.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Emily said, “but it isn’t as simple as blaming Roy every time Tucker disappears.”

“Did I say I blamed him?”

“You don’t have to. I know you think he’s controlling.”

“I’ve heard you say it yourself.”

“Yes, and you know why.”

“Look, I’m as sorry as you that Roy’s parents were tough on him and that he lost his leg in a war few of us wanted any part of, but you aren’t responsible for that. If memory serves, you tried to keep him from going.”

It was true. Roy had been two weeks into his first spring training camp with the Astros in Kissimmee, and happier, he said, than any man had a right to be, when his draft notice came. The effect was devastating. He was terrified of losing her and his budding baseball career. She was the one who said they should go to Canada. She had often wondered since what would have happened if he had agreed. Who would they be now? He would have been granted amnesty eventually. Maybe he would have found a place to work in baseball again. One thing was certain: he would still have both his legs.

Anna said, “I’m not passing judgment, Em. You know that, don’t you?”

Emily said she did, although Anna’s opinion of Roy always seemed faintly condemnatory to her. She toyed with her teaspoon, feeling Anna’s concern, and she was sorry for it. She regretted being the cause, and when Anna asked, “What is it?” she hesitated a long moment, drawing in a breath, before admitting that she was worried about Roy.

“He’s so quiet and withdrawn since he retired, and this morning, he talked to Lissa about tearing down the lake house.” She caught Anna’s gaze. “What if it’s coming back, all that old post-traumatic stress business?”

“You don’t think he’s drinking.”

“No.” Emily was definite.

“But you think he might—what? Hurt someone, himself? Is it that bad again?”

“I don’t know. I’m afraid to talk to him about it.” She paused. “He’s really had it with Tucker this time. I’m not sure what will happen when he comes home. I kind of dread it, actually.”

“Oh, Em.”

She stood up in the silence that fell and went to Anna’s kitchen sink to look out the window. “I was foolish to think that because Miranda was dead the craziness would be over. I so wanted to believe Tucker would come to his senses, but he hasn’t. He still associates with those people, her friends. Other women like her. It’s as if she’s still manipulating him, even from the grave.”

“They were together a long time.”

“I should have put my foot down at the very beginning. They were too serious about each other. But Roy said if we argued, if I made a thing of it, it would only make them more determined. How I wish I had listened to my own intuition.”

“You can’t blame yourself, Em. Miranda was a sweet girl growing up, remember? No one, not even her parents, knew why she went so far off the track. Tucker only wanted to help her.”

“For all the good it did him, and still, he persists. If he’s so determined to rescue the downtrodden, I’d much rather he’d become a missionary and render aid in some third-world country. It would be safer.”

When Emily sat down again, Anna patted her arm, and they shared a look deepened by years of familiarity and affection.

“The girl who was missing,” Emily said, “Jessica Sweet, did you hear they found her?”

Anna nodded, and Emily sensed that Anna had been biding the time, waiting until Emily brought it up.

“I’m so worried she’ll have some connection to Miranda. They were found in the same patch of woods.”

“I heard that on the news.”

“I need for him to come home, Anna. I need to look into his eyes, then I’ll know—”

“Know?”

“Whether he—” Emily hesitated. Whether he is a murderer. She wanted to say it—to test out the possibility of it being true with Anna, her dearest friend in all the world—but even if she could have brought the words past the knot in her throat, they wouldn’t be accurate. She couldn’t really tell anything about Tucker by looking at him anymore. Now that he was grown, he was as much of an enigma to her as to anyone. All smoke and mirrors. Mercurial. Here and gone. All his life she’d sought answers, the key to understanding his nature. Had he come with a different temperament, one that was more tightly wired? Was it the fault of genetics, or had he been marked by early childhood trauma, that handful of years when Roy had been so unstable? She didn’t know.

Like Roy, Tucker suffered from night terrors. When he was a child, Emily had gone to him on those nights when he’d wakened, flailing and shouting out, and she had comforted him as best she could until he fell back asleep. But she no longer did that. He was a man now, and she imagined the man’s fear exceeded the scope of her ability to reassure him; by now, its boundaries would be much larger than the mother-size shelter of her embrace. Or so she assumed.

He got his comfort elsewhere, in places she didn’t want to think about. And that was the worst part of it for her. That in the wake of his random disappearances she was left to form assumptions based on nothing of substance, the fallout from a single childhood trauma, the failure to properly parent versus the heritability of a hotter temper. What, of any of it, was valid?

“Em?” Anna urged. “You can talk to me. You know that, right? You know nothing you tell me—”

A knock came on the back door, a sharp rapping, and they both turned to look in that direction. Anna went to answer it, and when she reappeared, Emily was alarmed to see that Roy was behind her. He was white-faced, and a muscle that might be rage or fear or both was darting like a minnow under the skin at the corner of his jaw.

Emily’s heart closed as tightly as a fist. Her breath stopped. “Tucker?” she said faintly. “Has something happened to him?”

“The cops are questioning a suspect about that girl’s murder,” Roy said. “It was just on the news. It’s Tucker, Em. They’ve got him.”

She felt her knees weaken. Anna’s palm slid under her forearm. Their eyes met. “Do you want me to call Joe?”

Emily’s face warmed. Joe Merchant was a Houston homicide detective now, but once, while Roy was away fighting in Vietnam, Joe had worked as a security guard for her mother, and she and Joe had very briefly been lovers. The affair ended; the friendship didn’t. Emily had needed for it not to end. When Roy came home from the war, he’d been so damaged in every possible way, and out of her grief for him, and feeling unable to cope with the magnitude of his injuries, she relied on Joe for his strength, his advice. Once Roy healed, the bond persisted, even though they would go months without speaking. Anna knew of their relationship, but Emily wasn’t sure about Roy. He didn’t ask, and it didn’t feel wrong to her, keeping it for herself.

But Anna’s mention of Joe’s name now worried her. Not because of her history with Joe, but because of the legal bind Tucker had gotten himself into last November that Joe had helped her to resolve. Wanting to spare Roy the stress, she had said nothing to him about it, and she’d been afraid ever since of the consequences if he were to find out. She looked at him, but if he was aware of her gaze, her anxiety, he gave no sign. He was informing Anna sharply that since it was a Lincoln County case, he doubted they’d want interference from Houston.

“Is Tucker all right?” Emily knew her question was ridiculous, but she wanted Joe, the whole idea of him, banished, gone from the room.

“Oh, sure, Em. He’s great. Jesus Christ.” Disgust rimmed Roy’s tone, but remembering Anna, he worked his mouth into something that was meant to resemble a smile, and taking Emily’s elbow, he said, “We need to get home.”

Leading her from Anna’s kitchen, his gait was unsteady, and when he staggered, if it hadn’t been for Emily, that she was somehow able to keep him upright, he might have fallen. She knew he knew it, too. She felt his humiliation, the blow leaning on her, even for a moment, was to his pride.

“Call me,” Anna said after them, and Emily heard the apprehension in her voice.

“I talked to Lissa,” Roy said once they were out of Anna’s house and out of her earshot. “She and Evan are on their way to the sheriff’s office to see what they can find out.”

“Has Tucker been arrested?”

“I guess we’ll know soon enough.”

They climbed the back porch stairs, and going into the kitchen, Emily’s gaze fell on the abandoned mixing bowl with the ingredients for a chocolate cake scattered around it; her apron was discarded over the back of a kitchen chair. The sight was so ordinary, and she felt out of place somehow, as if given all the brewing calamity she had no right to be here, to even think of baking a cake. And yet, it was all she wanted to do. “They shouldn’t be the ones who have to go after Tucker every time,” she said to Roy.

“You can’t handle it, and you damn sure don’t want me going down there,” he answered. “That’s what you told me last time,” he said in response to her heated look.

She held his gaze, clinging to the hope that Roy was referring to the time in April when they’d given Tucker two thousand dollars to clear his traffic tickets, and not to the time in November when she’d contacted Joe for help after Tucker was arrested and charged with stalking. Keeping Roy in ignorance then had been out of concern for him, but he would likely not see it that way.

“You do remember telling me that?” Roy’s stare was penetrating, unnerving.

“You always lose your temper. It doesn’t help.”

He didn’t argue.

“Will they bring Tucker home?” Tying her apron around her waist, she crossed to the refrigerator. “I was going to bake a chicken for dinner. If I do two, there will be enough for all of us. We can sit down together when they get here.”

“I don’t want Tucker here, if they let him go.”

“What?” Emily turned to Roy. “He’s our son. Of course you want him here.”

“Not if it’s going to be the way it was when Miranda was murdered. Cops and reporters everywhere. Phone ringing all the goddamn time. I swear if Tucker gets pulled into this, if he knew this girl, too—” Roy pivoted on his metal foot, then pivoted back, locking Emily with his glare. “If that’s the case, you and your friend Joe won’t be able to pay his way out of this one, Em. None of us will. You do realize that?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” She didn’t know how she managed to keep her voice level. Her heart was beating fast, so fast, she put her hand there.

Roy huffed his disdain and, leaving the kitchen, disappeared into his office, closing the door.

Emily followed him; she balanced her hand on the knob, and resting her forehead against the panel, she said, “I’m sorry, I was only trying to protect you.” But then, lifting her head, she thought how badly she had failed, that in truth, she hadn’t protected any one of them at all.

5

THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE and the county jail were housed in the courthouse, an imposing three-story, old colonial-style building on the Hardys Walk town square. Evan pulled into a space in the parking lot at the back, where parking was free. Out in front they’d have to feed a meter, and Lissa knew from previous experience there wasn’t any telling how long they’d be.

Inside, the duty officer, a heavyset guy, didn’t bother looking up when Lissa and Evan approached. He was engrossed in reading a magazine, or pretending to be, like maybe if he didn’t look up, they would go away. Lissa steadied her breath. “I’m looking for my brother,” she said. “Tucker Lebay?”

The officer took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes.

“We were told he was brought in here earlier this afternoon for questioning,” Evan said.

“Wait here.” The duty officer slid off the stool and headed for a door at the end of the counter.

Lissa turned to Evan, running her fingers around her ears. Her hands were shaking; she was shaking. Evan slipped his arm around her.

“I hate this,” she said.

“I know, babe. Me, too.”

“Daddy said not to bring Tucker home. What are we going to do? I can’t tell Tucker that.”

Before Evan could answer, the duty cop reappeared, resuming his post. “Sergeant Garza’ll be out in a sec. You can sit over there on the bench, if you want.”

Evan sat, but Lissa didn’t. She paced and watched the big white-faced wall clock, marking the tiny jerks of the minute hand as it hooked each second, and when the door at the end of the counter opened again, she flinched. Evan stood up and came to Lissa’s side as the woman approached them. She appeared to be Hispanic, dark-haired, slim, maybe thirty-five, dressed in a dark gray jacket and skirt, a pair of low-heeled black pumps. She looked businesslike, professional. Lissa couldn’t read her expression. She didn’t give it much thought other than to assume it was deliberate, that looking impassive was part of Garza’s uniform. It didn’t occur to her then there might be more to it.