The Baker's Wife (25 page)

She hadn't considered that her parents would stay in this small town and steep in the family tragedy. She hadn't thought that Juliet would have stood in for her as her parents' surrogate daughter all these years. Had she used the necklace to worm her way into their hearts?

She wanted to stay at Juliet's house and ransack it. Find the diamond. Instead she followed Audrey out the front door of the Mansfields' house and heard Miralee lock the door as she exited too. She didn't care why the young woman had changed her mind and decided to come with them. After they met Harlan Hall, Diane would crawl back into whatever dark corner would have her, and it would be nice if Audrey didn't have to search for the woman by herself.

The fog was thicker here than it had been in the cold alley behind the bakery, when Jack had pushed her out the rear door. The sun seemed so powerless against it.

Diane's feet dragged, and Miralee soon caught up with her.

“Are you one of them too?” Miralee asked.

Diane frowned. “One of what?”

“A Christian. Are you in their camp? Churchgoing, law-abiding, brownnosing?”

“I don't think they . . . I don't think I . . . It's . . . I don't think so.”

“What is there to think about? You are or you aren't these days, isn't that how it works? I hear fence straddlers get splinters up their—”

“Then I'm not. No. I definitely have fallen on the wrong side of the fence.”

Miralee held out her hand as if they'd make a pact. “Glad to hear it. One more soul taking a stand against hypocrisy.”

Diane didn't take the girl's palm. She couldn't fathom what Miralee was talking about. “Your mom isn't a Christian, is she?”

“No more than the Dalai Lama!” Miralee laughed.

“I remember her as pretty opposed to religion in general.”

“To this day. She says there's too much suffering in the world for religion to do anyone any good. I guess I have to agree with her there. How do you know her?”

“It seems like you're not very interested in finding out what happened to her.”

“And that's related to religion how?”

“That's what I'm wondering. What are you holding against her, if it's not faith?”

“Oh. Easy. My mother is a hypocrite of a different flavor. Christians are the worst, you know. They have a canned answer for every hard question and don't seem to care when their philosophies don't hold up in real life. But a person doesn't have to be a Christian to be a hypocrite.”

“So you don't care what happens to her?”

Miralee picked up her pace and passed Diane without looking at her again. “I didn't say I don't care.”

Her father was standing in the open doorway five houses down from Juliet's, and Audrey was speaking with him when Diane reached the corner of the property. Her resolve to face him ebbed away.

He looked much older than he was in her own mind, even taking the toll of difficult years into account. His hair had thinned to gray wisps surrounding his crown, and the sagging skin under his eyes was visible from where she stood. She didn't think she'd have recognized him on first glance if she saw him in a lineup.

He might look at her with the same lack of recognition. She was a young woman when he'd turned his back on her. Did he know she'd been released? Had he counted the calendar? Thought of trying to find her?

The walk down the stretch of sidewalk in front of his home was a marathon. She went up the driveway, unable to lift her face toward his, though the girl and Audrey had his full attention. She looked in his direction and saw behind him in the bright living room a mess of card tables bearing radio boxes, components, and tools.

“I've wondered why Juliet hasn't come 'round,” he was saying. “She's usually over here a couple of times a week since Cora Jean passed. But she had some surgery that took a lot out of her by my reckoning. I figured she maybe had some complications, got laid up a bit.”

“Was she complaining about being sick?”

“Oh no, not that one. I don't believe she ever complained about anything.”

“That's the truth,” Diane heard Miralee mutter. “The rain never fell on her, not even when we all could see she was soaking wet.”

That was Miralee's definition of hypocrisy?

“When did you see her last?” Audrey said.

“Well, now, Tuesday I think. She had me pick her up at the mechanic's. Something wrong with her car.”

“No one has seen her since then,” Audrey told him.

“Is that so? What happened?”

“Don't you watch the news?” Miralee said.

“You know we don't, child.”

Miralee looked over her shoulder toward the street.

“Hardly read the paper anymore neither. There's just nothing there to keep my spirits up, as if I need any more to bring us down. Just yesterday—”

“Her husband is very upset, as I'm sure you can guess.” Audrey looked ready to burst.

Harlan hadn't given any indication of noticing Diane.

“I guess he is. He's wound tight, that one. To be expected, living in the line of duty the way he—”

“Did Julie say
anything
to you about being worried about something going on at work, or someone being upset with her, or—”

Harlan shook his head. “Like I said, Juliet wasn't one to whine. I think we were the ones who did all the moaning. She's a good girl, that one. Yes, she is. A good listener. Probably what makes her a good teach—”

“Was she acting strangely at all? Did she do anything out of the ordinary?”

“Strange, no. Uncommon, maybe. She talked me into parting with my Ford just a bit ago. Said she was ready to give up her Honda, for all the trouble she was having with it. I wondered about that, classy girl like her in the old gray mare. But she liked to ride that scooter of hers too, so who am I to say? It was maybe two weeks back? The truck was older than her and running worse than me, but she said she wanted it, and it was just sitting there useless, now that I have Cora Jean's cruise ship to myself.”

Cruise ship? Diane noticed the sleek, late-model Cadillac sitting in the open garage. Her mother had longed for one back when they couldn't afford anything more than a used station wagon.

Audrey looked at Miralee. “The gray truck in the picture?”

“I guess.”

“Paid me cash for it. A grand. I wanted to just give it to her, but the woman is generous. Her husband—not so much. She asked me not to mention it to him. Not that our paths cross often. Juliet's always trying to take care of me, I have to say. A fine, upstanding soul in a world full of morons. She's the daughter we lost, once upon a time.”

Daughter. Singular. It required no thought to deduce which one he referred to. Diane wouldn't even have to look him in the eye in order to be emotionally leveled. He'd already obliterated the very memory of her.

She allowed the cold blanket of the air to numb her mind.

“This is the worst news I've gotten since my Cora Jean's passing,” her father said. “How can I help find her?”

Diane didn't think he could do anything—what were any of them able to do, after all? Poke around her house? Hang out at the bakery with a bunch of police officers who didn't want civilians around?

Audrey was looking past Harlan into his house. “Maybe you could put the word out to whoever's listening,” she suggested, pointing at his radios.

“Sure thing. That's a good idea. I'll do that.”

“Where's the truck now?” Audrey asked. “The one you sold to Julie?”

“Couldn't tell you. The thing was built long before the days of GPS and tracking devices,” Harlan said.

“Tell me the plate number? Maybe the police can have a look for it.”

How would a teacher have come up with a thousand dollars and kept it hidden from her detective husband? All the possibilities of what Juliet might have done with that diamond nibbled at Diane's brain.

What Diane really wanted to know, however, was why God ordained life to work this way: that a beloved woman far better than she, who had been the good daughter Diane could not be, would be mysteriously wiped off the face of the earth, while Diane was allowed to wander.

CHAPTER 24

Coach had passed out from the pain. A waterfall of powdery grain was spilling onto his pants from the split flour sack. Geoff and Estrella worked together to keep him from losing more blood. Geoff was on the phone with paramedics outside, applying their guidance to the wounded feet.

Leslie leaned heavily on Ed's muscled arm. She pored over a notebook, examining complicated equations. The exercise had a calming effect on her. Ed watched Jack sit on the overturned bucket and relax against the cinder-block wall. The detective held his gun across his knees.

Ed wondered if Jack had more than one backup gun, and how they might be wrestled away from a veteran who outweighed him by maybe thirty pounds.

Ed glanced at his watch. It was almost eight. Four and a half hours to go. Forever. Leslie clicked her mechanical pencil and scribbled her way through the pages. Periodically she stopped to flip back through the sheets. Her brow furrowed.

Heat from the brick oven on the other side of the kitchen continued to warm the cold storeroom.

Geoff hung up the phone. “You need to let this man out,” he said to Jack.

“Why? You're doing a fine job.”

“He needs help. I'm no doctor.”

“Who needs a doctor when we have a pastor? Those aren't grave wounds.”

Ed tried to focus on Leslie's math. He'd scraped his way through geometry, trig, and the rest. He'd half believed, while dating Miralee, that the reason Mrs. Mansfield gave him the cold shoulder was because he appeared so unintelligent in this area. The other half, he supposed, had something to do with his faith.

He elbowed her gently, eyes on her paper. “What did you mean when you said this was your fault?”

“Mrs. Mansfield wanted me to enter a state competition up at the university.”

“College stuff?”

“Yes. High-level math. Calculus. Physics. Quantum theory. She was going to be my mentor. Thought I had what it would take to really wow people, maybe even win.”

“It wouldn't surprise me.”

“Thanks.” Leslie blushed. Her pencil bobbed as she continued to write. “It would have given Mazy some national attention. Win some money for me and for the school, for the math department. They could use it, you know, with all the cutbacks.”

“So what's that got to do with this mess we're in?”

“I decided not to enter. I woke up one morning, and it was just too much pressure. I'd do it for her—but for the money? For the whole school? The whole town? I'm supposed to be thinking about prom. Cutting class. Cow-tipping.”

Ed laughed aloud. “You'd never.”

Leslie frowned at him. “Maybe I want to do that stuff. Sometimes it blows, being the responsible one all the time. People have these expectations.”

“But responsible people are influential people. The ones who make great things happen.”

“So the opposite has to be true also. Our actions can be . . . terrible. Mrs. Mansfield was counting on me, and I . . . and I . . . went
cow-tipping
.” She huffed. “In a sense.”

“I still don't get it.”

Leslie's sigh was thick. “I didn't even have the decency to tell her to her face. I wrote her a note. The next time I saw her . . . you should have seen her face. I thought she was going to cry. Which made
me
want to cry.”

Ed hoped she'd connect the dots soon.

“Do you think she killed herself?” Leslie whispered.

“Over that?”

She recoiled as if he'd slapped her.

“You're not that powerful, Leslie. Sure, she was probably disappointed. But do you think you could single-handedly drive her to jump off a cliff?”

Jack's attention swiveled in their direction.

Estrella applied a fresh cloth to Coach's foot and tied it firmly in place with the necktie he had taken off earlier. Geoff sat on the ground next to Coach and was talking to him in low tones. He must have come around.

Jack returned his attention to Leslie. “As much as I hate to say it, I have to agree with your friend on this one. Children don't get to set the course of their authority figures' lives. That's not how God ordained it.”

“But she was so sad.”

“If she was sad, it was only because she hasn't found the courage to accept the one true faith that can make her happy. In due time. I have faith.”

“Blind faith,” murmured Coach. “You can't see what's in front of your own face, Jack. We're trying to help.”

“Fine. What did she tell you about this little girl's power over her? Put the child out of her misery, please.”