Whittaker 03 The Secrets We Keep Read online

  I flipped through some pages, and a sheaf of papers fell out, covered in a barely discernible scrawl. Trinnie’s attempt at a Fourth Step. She’d talked about that when she’d called, but I’d dismissed it since she hadn’t even managed the First Step yet.

  Uncontrollable sobs engulfed me. I found myself being led out of the meeting by a thoroughly confused Harry. We stumbled into the main room with Harry desperately hollering for a glass of water and asking why in Sam Hill didn’t anyone have enough sense to put tissues where people could find them? Every time I tried to tell him I was okay, I would burst out with enormous, rasping cries that shook us both, covering the poor gallant soul with snot and salt. Suddenly, I found myself wrenched out of Harry’s arms, into Beth’s. She hauled me over to a couch where we sat rocking as she made those magic-crooning comfort sounds of mothers the world over.

  Eventually, I made myself sit up. Taking in a deep breath, my whole body jerked in spasms of those half-breaths that shudder through the body after a big cry. Grandma called them the “huff-n-puffs.” Hadn’t had those since I was ten.

  “Hey, girl. You okay now?”

  Avoiding her eyes, I grabbed a tissue from Harry who still hovered like a bewildered bear. His willingness to overcome the usual male-aversion toward females in break-down mode touched my heart. Smiling weakly at him, I suffered one last huffy shudder.

  Feeling like a fool, I finally looked at Beth. “I’ve got Trinnie’s Big Book. I must have switched them or something.” I stopped there, afraid to say too much.

  Beth sat silent, chewing her lip. Coming to a decision, she turned to Harry, and gave him a brief, purposefully vague explanation about a close friend who had just died. His bullshit-detector must have twanged a bit because his eyes didn’t lose their look of wary protectiveness. Still, instead he hunkered down, eye to eye. His breath fluttered off my face in coffee-scented waves. “You need me, hon, I’ll be in the meeting.”

  Moving to an empty side room, we each grabbed a folding chair and sat at the card table. As soon as my butt hit the cold metal, I jumped back up. I’d left Trinnie’s book in the other room. The guys stared as I barreled in, but I refused to make eye contact.

  The rush of relief that I felt when I returned to Beth surprised me. Normally, it took a long time for me to feel comfortable with someone, but right now I felt closer to her than if she was my own mother. Actually, considering my relationship with my mother, that wasn’t saying much.

  In contrast to her down-to-earth nature, she had a flamboyant fashion sense, chemically engineered auburn-hair, and “enhanced” emerald green eyes that created a certain style just this side of bawdy. Barely. She was also the richest drunk I’d ever met. Rumor had it that she possessed the capacity to restrain herself in a dignified manner, but she rarely chose to do so, especially in the Club.

  Not today.

  For the first time, I saw a real life example of someone having “aged ten years.” The dark rings underneath Beth’s eyes looked like she was gearing up to play pro-football. Except for that she’d need energy and Beth’s spark had certainly dimmed. When I walked in, I caught her staring blankly at the far wall. It’s possible she was studying the yellowed notice about last year’s Halloween dance, but I doubted it.

  I reached across the table to hold her hand. We sat in silence several minutes. Eventually, Beth breathed out a deep, shaky sigh and straightened up. “Enough, already. I spent all night feeling sorry for myself; I don’t plan to spend all day doing it, too. Tell me what happened just now.”

  “Mostly what I already said. Out of the blue, I’m sitting there holding Trinnie’s Big Book. It blew me away. I just… I have no idea how I’m going to explain this to Harry.”

  “Tell him you’re getting your period. He’ll drop it like a hot potato.”

  I giggled, then quickly stopped. Slowly, I rubbed my hand across the cover of the book. “Do you think the cops believed Trinnie was getting sober?”

  “They don’t get paid to be credulous, you know. Still, it was rough, wasn’t it? It reminded me of when I landed in jail. Drunk, of course. I ended up barfing all over the arresting officer. Nice, huh? Didn’t remember any of it when I woke up in the cell, but they were sure happy to fill me in. That was the bottom for me. I went to AA the next day. And last night,” she shook her head in disgust, “my main concern was whether any of those cops there were the ones who’d arrested me. In the middle of that horror, I’m thinking of myself. Talk about selfish. You can bet that kept me up last night.”

  “I was—am—afraid of disclosure,” I said. “The only one at work who knew I was in recovery was Regina.”

  Beth and I had “officially” met soon after Regina’s death when I’d worked to clear up Regina’s case load at a clinic where Beth was on the board of directors. More silence.

  “These guys are professionals,” Beth eventually said. “They’ll figure out who did this. They have all the resources.” Her words made sense, but her face hung with doubt.

  “I agree, and if this thing has to do with her current life, like a boyfriend or her prostitution, then I think they’ll figure it out. I do believe that.”

  “But?”

  “But Trinnie spent all last week calling people up, apologizing, supposedly making amends. If she was on a binge, then she must have pissed off a lot of people. People from her past.”

  “Like anybody wants to hear ‘true remorse’ from someone who’s pig-drunk at the time. They barely want to hear it when you’re sober.”

  “Exactly. And even if the cops do start looking into her past, it probably won’t be for a while. They’ll be checking out recent stuff, or some ‘nut job.’ I told Belch about the phone calls, but I don’t think he was too impressed and they would have covered several days. So, it’s not like they’d stand out, even if he pulls her records.”

  “What can you do about it? The cops aren’t going to be interested in taking suggestions from us about where they should start and if you tell them all this, you’ll be outting yourself.”

  “I know. But listen—I found her Fourth Step. I think I can figure out who—and maybe why—she was calling. If I get that far, then I can turn it over to the cops.”

  “And here’s another thing,” I continued before she could break in. “What if he saw us? I mean, of course he saw me. But he could have seen you, too. Or your car, for that matter.”

  “My car?”

  “Beth, it’s bright green with personalized plates. It stands out.”

  Beth didn’t answer for several minutes, then she leaned forward, eye-to-eye. I steeled myself for a tirade about insanity or recklessness.

  FOUR

  “I‘m in,” she said. “Besides, I can’t let you go running around on your own.”

  I puffed out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding. Now what? Beth went to get coffee refills, and a cigarette craving sucker punched me. Every now and then the urge snuck up on me.

  As soon as she got back, we ransacked Trinnie’s Big Book. I pored over her Fourth Step paperwork trying to decipher her handwriting and her seemingly coded notations. As a Fourth Step list, it wasn’t fully developed—just names and a brief note after most of them. Trinnie’s handwriting, written it at different levels of drunkenness, varied widely.

  Her habit of bestowing nicknames on people increased the difficulty. Some were more outlandish than others. She called me “Letty-kins,” which had always annoyed me. Other names were far more esoteric. Exasperated, I finally went and got a couple of sheets of paper to rewrite the material over in my own hand, a trick I’d learned in college that helped recall material later. When I finished, I handed Beth the new list while I studied the original.

  Beth looked it over and snorted. She raised one sleek eyebrow, and I answered her silent question.

  “I’ve heard her speak of some of these people, but not all. Angel was one of her exes. She may have been married more than once. I wish I could remember.”

  “Well, if
wishes were fishes and so on and so forth. Anyone on this list that you do recognize?”

  I looked the sheet over carefully, trying to pull some names out of a year old memory. I thought I recognized a couple, and one for sure.

  Shit.

  Beth noticed my sudden stillness. “What? What’s the matter?”

  I sighed. “Paul’s on here.”

  “Paul? The jock Paul or the geek Paul?”

  Unfortunately, when members shared the same first name, we used descriptors instead of last names. It protected anonymity, but not our egos.

  “Geek Paul,” I said. “She calls him ‘Paulie-Boy,’ even though we told her to stop. No one in AA should be nicknamed after a beer.”

  Beth hid a grin. “What’s she say?”

  I cleared my throat. “Um, ‘won’t leave me alone.’” Our eyes met. “Look, don’t even think it. I know Paul. He wouldn’t… He would never…”

  Paul and I had history. Not romantic, to his disappointment, but we’d been through some life-and-death stuff. You get to know a fella.

  Beth, aware of what Paul and I had gone through, chose to move on. “Let’s see what the rest of the list says. Maybe it won’t be that hard to figure out who she’s talking about, after all.”

  There was silence while we both read. Once I’d pulled myself together, I saw another name I knew.

  “Here’s one—Kitty. We talked about her quite a bit. In fact, we saw her one time going into Younker’s at the mall. She saw us, too, but it was strange. Really creepy. It was like she looked right through us. Trinnie refused to go anywhere near her.”

  “Wow, that sounds promising. So, who was it?”

  “Her mother.”

  “Well, shit. But could you see her mom hacking her up like that?”

  “Probably not. I mean, I know you hear of moms who kill their own kids, but it’s usually post-partum, or when the kids are young. I know it sounds terrible, but once a kid reaches a certain age, the parents can just write them off. In fact, that’s what happened to Trinnie. She was the black sheep.”

  “Another name on here that’s familiar,” I continued, “is this one here, Mouse. I’m pretty sure that was an old boss of Trinnie’s.”

  “Trinnie describes her in here as a wimp, huh? Do wimps kill? I know this is an understatement, but murder is kind of forceful, wouldn’t you say?”

  I paced around the small room. My back was coiled like a watch-spring, ticking a countdown to an encroaching headache. My body liked to fall apart under stress. Of course, I knew all about healthy ways of coping, but I was a better teacher than student. Since I’d gotten so damn virtuous, all that I had left was comfort food. I suggested a run to the bakery across the street, barely managing to get out of the way as Beth torpedoed past. That meant yes.

  Besides, since we had already loaded up on caffeine, we needed to even out the chemical tightrope. Everyone knows a balanced diet is essential.

  We sat in the bakery with our treasures, relaxed for the first time that day. Feeling better, I stated the obvious. “The big problem is we don’t have any clue who she’s talking about.”

  Beth was communing with a raspberry jelly donut, so it took a while for her to respond. “If we knew where she’s been drinking lately, we could probably backtrack. Did she have a favorite hangout?”

  “Probably, but I don’t know where. Any ideas?”

  “Actually, I do,” she said. “Who do we know has been hangin’ around the gutter end of the bar scene?”

  “Who?”

  “Newbies,” she said with a smug smile. “They’ve just dragged themselves out of the bars and clubs. Some of ‘em are still shaking, for crying out loud. We just have to ask around. Since tonight’s Friday, a lot of them will be at the Open Speaker meeting.”

  She was right. Friday was a great night to ask around because drunks, especially newcomers, are still in the habit of going out on weekends. Recovery clubs recognize this and typically have the more social, entertaining meetings on Friday and Saturday nights. A cool way of spending a weekend evening. Plus, you don’t wake up sweating and puking the next day. Such a deal.

  While Beth finished the last donut, we contemplated her genius. Well, she did, at anyway. I concentrated on not snatching the long john. It was chocolate, too. With sprinkles.

  Sated for the moment, we walked back over to the club and ran the gauntlet of the donut-deprived who berated us for not bringing over freebies. Ignoring even the most obnoxious—Harry, of course—we returned to our table and pulled the lists back out. I read out loud since Beth had forgotten her reading glasses and was too lethargic from the sugar binge to keep the list held out at arm’s length for longer than ten seconds. I offered to prop it up on a table across the room, but she only glared at me like a sleepy lioness.

  “OK,” I started out. “First one is Kitty. That’s Trinnie’s mom. She wrote: Evil bitch. I hate her!”

  “Doesn’t that sound teenager-ish? I know my step-kids were forever shrieking that at either me or Jimmy… or both. Did she have a rotten childhood?”

  I hesitated. “Everybody has their own idea of bad. I only heard Trinnie’s side of it. Her mom had been married before and apparently the second husband, Trinnie’s dad, didn’t measure up. There was a son from the first marriage, too. Trinnie hated him.”

  I paused, thinking back to the afternoons spent with Trinnie. “I remember thinking that there might have been something more there. More than just playing favorites or sibling rivalry, but Trinnie would never expand on it.”

  “So, what? You think maybe abuse or something?”

  “Emotional abuse, at least. Maybe more. Maybe something sexual. It had that undercurrent when she talked about her past, you know? Just a gut feeling.” A gut feeling developed from years of watching people struggle with decades-old, childhood secrets.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Second one down. Bruce. She wrote: Jealous pig—pervert. But I can’t tell if that meant she was jealous, or he was.”

  “Either one or both, probably. Is that what you mean about the sexual stuff? The pervert part, I mean.”

  I nodded. “Anyway, both her mother and half-brother should be considered suspects.”

  Beth agreed. “Oh yeah. Don’t they say that family is often suspected in murders? At least, husbands are. All that drama and betrayal and stuff. Anyway, they should be easy to find. Some of these others might not be. Who’s next?”

  “Number three in our little hit parade: Daddy. Here’s why: Never around when I needed him—left me. I loved him so much.”

  “He left her?”

  “He died when Trinnie was in her teens. No coincidence, that’s when she started drinking.” Although we hadn’t talked about it much, we’d shared that in common. “He’s off the suspect list, anyway.”

  “That’s a relief,” Beth snorted. “One down, a bazillion to go.”

  “Four—Lover Boy. And she wrote: Wouldn’t leave the bitch.

  “Married guy, huh? That gets sticky. And it’s not going to be easy to find him.”

  “Next is Saint Bitch, and her comment is: Didn’t love him, won’t let him go. There’s the second half—the wife. Definitely suspects, if we can figure out who they are in real life. Lust, revenge, blackmail—look at all of those reasons for killing someone.”

  “Or at least, wanting to,” Beth said quietly.

  I thought about what I’d just said. As if there was ever a good enough reason to murder. I felt heat rising to my cheeks. The sight of Trinnie’s handwriting wandering drunkenly across the white pages made my heart cramp. Clearing my throat, I continued, “Birdie… Laughed at me. Fat pig.”

  “In this case,” Beth said, “it sounds more like Trinnie was angry at her, not vice versa. I wonder what this Birdie character was laughing about?”

  “I don’t know. At least, it’s a distinctive nickname.”

  “What kind of bird? Crow? Humming bird?”

  “We must be in the animal ki
ngdom,” I said. “Next on the list is Foxy.

  “Foxy? Must be a guy. What’d she say about him?”

  “Um… let’s see… She wrote: Blamed me. Blamed her for what? That could be anything. The next one is Mick: Drank too much. That’s kind of the pot calling the kettle black, huh?”

  “I bet Mick was a boyfriend or something. Otherwise why would she care? I mean, why would she resent him if it was just a neighbor guy who drank too much?

  “Could be. Plus, the next guy on the list is Angel, and we already know he was married to Trinnie. So it looks like she’s listing her boyfriends here. Lover Boy, Foxy, Mick, etc. She says Angel Made me feel like dirt. Always on me about my drinking. Next comes Mouse; we already covered her. After her is…” I snorted. “Studly Do Right? Can you believe that?”

  It felt good to laugh.

  “I love it,” Beth giggled. “Isn’t that a cartoon character? No, wait, that’s Duddly. I can’t wait til we meet this guy. What does she say about him?”

  “Um… Let’s see.” My eyes skimmed down the paper. “She doesn’t say anything. First time for that. All of the others have some comment or other after them. The next name is Big Dude, and she says: Pig was scary.

  We got serious again.

  “Scary, huh? I wonder what he did to her.” Beth’s face had furrowed.

  “At least we have some kind of physical description on this guy. That’s helpful.”

  “Yeah, great. So, we go out looking for a big, scary, possible-murderer dude. Can’t wait. Why are we doing this again?”

  “Maybe we should take a break or something?” I suggested.

  “Do we have a lot left?”

  “Just four. We might as well finish up. Let’s see, Twink. I would hate that name; it sounds like a ditz. Anyway, she writes: Still owes me $$—liar.”

  “Yeah, that’ll build resentment,” Beth said. “I could retire on the money my so-called bar friends still owe me. Oh well, I probably owe a couple I’ve forgotten about.”