Pretty Girls

  “Mom.” Claire unlocked the door. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “I looped back around the building after I got rid of your tail.”

  “You what?”

  “I saw that man running after you. I went around the other side of the building and clapped my hands to get his attention and—­” Helen was holding on to the door. Her face was flushed. She was breathless. “They let me cut through the main lobby. The guard at the side entrance told me you’d just left. You were running so fast I almost lost you, but then the bellman outside said you were here.”

  Claire stared in open disbelief. Helen was wearing a colorful blue Chico’s blouse with a chunky necklace. She should be hosting a book signing, not running through the streets of downtown Atlanta drawing off a tail.

  Helen asked, “Do you still want me to move your car?” Claire shook her head, but only because she didn’t know what she wanted Helen to do.

  “I know Paul was accused of stealing money.” Helen paused, as if she expected Claire to protest. “That Agent Nolan was at the house yesterday afternoon, and that police captain, Jacob Mayhew, dropped by almost as soon as he left.”

  “He did it,” Claire said, and it felt good to tell her mother even the tiniest bit of truth. “Paul stole three million dollars from the company.”

  Helen seemed appalled. Three million dollars was a hell of a lot of money to her mother. “You’ll pay it back. You’ll move in with me. You can get a job teaching art at the school.”

  Claire laughed, because she made it sound so simple.

  Helen pressed together her lips. She obviously wanted to know what was going on, but she only said, “Do you want me to leave you alone? Do you need my help? Tell me what to do.”

  “I don’t know,” Claire admitted, another slice of truth. “I have to leave for Hapeville in two hours.”

  Helen didn’t ask why. She simply said, “All right. What else?”

  “I need to charge the Tesla. I need to get an iPhone charger.”

  “I have one in my purse.” Helen unzipped her purse, which was brown leather with flowers embroidered around the strap. She told Claire, “You look awful. When was the last time you had something to eat?”

  Lydia had asked her that same thing two nights ago. Claire had let her sister take care of her and now she was Paul’s captive. His bargaining chip. His victim.

  “Sweetheart?” Helen had the charger in her hand. “Let’s go to the lobby and get something to eat.”

  Claire let her mother lead her out of the bathroom the same way she had led her out of the FBI interrogation room. Helen took her deep into the hotel lobby. There were several groupings of large couches and overstuffed chairs. Claire practically fell into the closest one.

  Helen said, “Stay here. I’ll go to the café and get something.”

  Claire leaned back her head. She had to get rid of Helen. The only reason Lydia was in trouble was because Claire had involved her in Paul’s madness. She would not lead her mother down that same path. She had to think of something that would get them all out of this. Paul would want to meet somewhere isolated. Claire should have an alternative space to suggest. Somewhere open with a lot of ­people around. A mall. Claire knew all of the high-­end stores inside Phipps Plaza. She imagined herself walking through Saks with dresses folded over her arm. She would have to try them on because some of the brands were running smaller than usual, or maybe Claire was running larger since she’d stopped playing tennis four hours a day. She wanted to look at the new Prada bags, but the display was too close to the perfume counter and her allergies were acting up.

  “Honey?”

  Claire looked up. The light had changed. So had the scenery. Helen was sitting on the couch beside her. She had a paperback in her hand. She was using her thumb to mark her place.

  She told Claire, “I let you sleep for an hour and a half.”

  “What?” Claire sat up, panicked. She scanned the lobby. There were more ­people now. The front desk was fully staffed. Suitcases were being rolled across the carpet. She checked the faces. No Jacob Mayhew. No Harvey Falke.

  “You said you had two hours.” Helen put the book in her purse. “I charged your iPhone. The Tesla is plugged in one street over on Peachtree Center Avenue. Your purse is right beside you. I put the key in the zippered pocket. There’s some clean underwear in there, too.” She indicated the coffee table. “The food is still warm. You should eat. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Claire looked down at the table. Her mother had bought her a large cup of coffee and a chicken biscuit.

  “Go ahead. You have time.”

  Her mother was right. She needed to get something of caloric value in her system. The coffee she could handle. Claire wasn’t sure about the food. She took the plastic lid off the cup. Helen had poured in enough milk to turn the liquid white, just the way Claire liked it.

  Helen opened a napkin and put it on Claire’s lap. She said, “You know that revolver takes .38 Special ammunition, right?”

  Claire sipped the coffee. Her mother had been inside the Tesla. She would’ve seen the weapon in the door pocket.

  “It’s in your purse. It didn’t seem safe to leave a gun in your car while it’s parked on the street. I couldn’t find a place downtown or I would’ve bought ammunition for you.”

  Claire put down the cup. She unwrapped the biscuit to give her hands something to do. She expected the smell to turn her stomach, but she realized that she was hungry. She took a large bite.

  Helen said, “Huckleberry called me. I know you know about the tape.”

  Claire swallowed. Her throat still hurt from screaming in the backyard of the Fuller house. “You lied to me about Julia.”

  “I protected you. There’s a difference.”

  “I had a right to know.”

  “You are my child. I am your mother.” Helen sounded resolute. “I won’t apologize for doing my job.”

  Claire bit back a sharp comment about how refreshing it was to hear that Helen was back on the job.

  Helen asked, “Did Lydia show you the tape?”

  “No.” She wasn’t going to let her sister take the blame yet again. “I found it on the Internet. I showed it to her.” Lydia’s phone. Helen had seen the unfamiliar number on her caller ID. “I took her phone. Mine was stolen during the robbery, and I needed one, so I took hers.”

  Helen didn’t press for a better explanation, likely because she had investigated countless thefts when the girls were growing up. She only asked, “Are you all right?”

  “I feel better. Thank you.” She looked over her mother’s shoulder because she couldn’t bring herself to look her in the eye. Claire couldn’t tell Helen about Lydia, but she could tell her about Dee. Her mother was a grandmother. She had a beautiful, accomplished grandchild who was hopefully being hidden somewhere that Paul would never find her.

  Which meant that right now, Claire couldn’t let Helen find her, either.

  Helen said, “Earlier, when Wynn Wallace and I were looking for you, I remembered something your father told me.” She gripped her purse in her lap. “He said that children always have different parents, even in the same family.”

  Family. Helen had more than she knew about. Claire felt the weight of her own guilt pressing down on her chest.

  Helen continued, “When Julia was little and it was just the three of us, I think I was a pretty damn good mother.” She laughed, because the memory obviously made her happy. “And then Pepper came along and she was such a handful, but I loved every frustrating, challenging minute of it because she was so opinionated and strong-­willed, and she knocked against Julia all the time.”

  Claire nodded. She could remember the screaming arguments between her older sisters. They were too much alike to get along for more than a few hours at a time.

  “An
d then there was you.” Helen smiled sweetly. “You were so easy compared to your sisters. You were quiet and sweet natured, and your father and I used to sit up at night and talk about how different you were. ‘Are you sure they didn’t mix up the babies at the hospital?’ he would say. ‘Maybe we should go down to the county jail and see if our real child has been arrested for being a public nuisance?’ ”

  Claire smiled, because this sounded just like something her father would say.

  “You watched everything. You noticed everything.” Helen shook her head. “I would see you sitting in your high chair, and your eyes would follow my every move. You were so curious about the world, and so keyed into everybody else—­the tempers and the passions and the overwhelming personalities—­that I was afraid you’d get lost. That’s why I took you on our little outings. Do you remember?” Claire had forgotten, but she remembered now. Her mother had taken her to art museums in Atlanta and to puppet shows and even participated in an ill-­fated pottery class.

  Just the two of them. No Pepper to ruin Claire’s perfectly formed clay bowl. No Julia to spoil the puppet show by commenting on the patriarchal structure of Punch and Judy.

  Helen continued, “I was a really good mother to you for thirteen years, and then I was a really bad one for about five, and I feel like I’ve spent every day since then trying to find my way back to that place where you see me as a good mother again.”

  Claire had been either seeking or avoiding this conversation with Helen for the last twenty years, but she knew if they had it now, she would fall apart.

  So she asked, “What did you think of Paul?”

  Helen twisted the ring on her finger. Paul had been wrong. Claire twisted her own ring because she had seen her mother do it so many times.

  She said, “You won’t hurt my feelings. I want to know the truth.”

  Helen didn’t hold back. “I told your father that Paul was like a hermit crab. They’re scavengers. They don’t have the ability to make their own shells, so they cast around until they find abandoned shells, and then they move in.”

  Claire knew better than anyone that her mother was right. Paul had moved into her shell, the one that had been abandoned by her grief-­stricken family.

  She told Helen, “I’m supposed to drive to Hapeville in half an hour. To a bank up from the Dwarf House. It needs to seem like I’m there, but I have to be somewhere else.”

  “What bank?”

  “Wells Fargo.” Claire took another bite of biscuit. She could tell her mother was desperate for more information. “They’re tracking me. I can’t go to Hapeville, and I can’t let them know where I’m really going.”

  “Then give me your phone and I’ll drive to Hapeville. I should probably take the Tesla. They might be tracking that, too.”

  The phone. How could Claire have been so stupid? Paul had known she was in the FBI building. He had known her exact location on the street. He had told her to take a left toward the hotel. He was using the Find My iPhone app because he knew that Claire would not go anywhere without her only connection to Lydia.

  She told her mother, “I need to be able to answer the phone if it rings. It has to be my voice.”

  “Can’t you use call forwarding?” Helen jabbed her thumb toward the hotel gift shop. “They have a display for prepaid phones. We can buy you one of those, or I can give you my phone.”

  Claire was dumbfounded. In less than a minute, Helen had solved one of her biggest problems.

  “Here.” Helen pulled her car keys out of her purse along with a light blue parking ticket. “You hold on to this. I’ll go check on a phone.”

  Claire took the keys. Ever the cataloguer, her mother had written down the floor level and parking space number on the back of the ticket.

  She watched Helen talking to the clerk in the store. The man was showing her various models of phones. Claire started to ask herself who this confident and efficient person was, but she knew this person. This was the Helen Carroll she had known before Julia was taken.

  Or maybe it was the Helen Carroll who’d come back to Claire after mourning the loss of Julia, because Helen had called Wynn Wallace the second she got off the phone with Claire. She had been searching for Claire all night. She had rescued her from Fred Nolan. She had distracted Harvey Falke so that Claire could get away. And now she was sitting in the lobby of a hotel doing everything possible to offer her aid.

  Claire longed to enlist her mother’s help in solving her other problems, but she was incapable of coming up with a believable story that didn’t reveal the truth, and she knew there was a limit to Helen’s restrained curiosity. She couldn’t believe how resourceful her mother had already been. She had even looked for ammunition for the gun. Paul would be shocked.

  Claire caught herself a moment too late. She wasn’t going to tell Paul this story when he got home from work tonight. They would never share a moment like that ever again.

  “That was easy.” Helen had already taken the phone out of the box. “The battery has a half charge, but I got a car charger and the nice man behind the counter had a coupon, so you got an extra thirty minutes for free. Inasmuch as paying for something to get something is free.” Helen sat back down beside Claire. She was obviously nervous because she was babbling the same way Claire babbled when she was nervous. “I used cash. I’m probably being paranoid, but if the FBI is tracking you, then they might be tracking me. Oh.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a wad of cash. “I got this at the ATM while you were asleep. Five hundred dollars.”

  “I’ll pay you back.” Claire took the money and stuffed it into her purse. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

  “Well, I want to make it clear to you that I’m terrified about what you’re involved in.” She was smiling, but her eyes glistened with tears. “The last time I was terrified about one of my children, I failed everyone in my family. I failed your father and I failed you and Lydia. I’m not going to do that ever again. So, mea culpa all the way to federal prison, if that’s what it takes.”

  Claire realized that Helen thought this was about the embezzled money. The FBI and the police had questioned her. Nolan had brought in Claire for a twelve-­hour interrogation. Claire was sending her to a bank in Hapeville. She clearly thought she’d put all the pieces together, but she had absolutely no idea what was really happening.

  Helen picked up Lydia’s phone. “The nice man at the store told me that you go into settings.”

  Claire took the phone. “It needs the password.” She angled the screen so her mother couldn’t see the last thing she’d looked at—­Paul’s photo of Lydia in the trunk. She got rid of the image and pretended to tap in the password before handing the phone back to Helen, then watched in amazement as her mother navigated the software.

  Helen entered in the burner phone’s number, then exited out of the menu. “Oh, look.” She turned the screen toward Claire. “See that funny thing at the top, the image of a phone and an arrow? That means the calls are being forwarded.” She seemed impressed. “What a wonderful little device.”

  Claire didn’t trust the funny thing at the top. “Call the number and make sure it’s working.”

  Helen took out her iPhone. She found Lydia’s number under recent calls. They both waited. Several seconds passed, then the burner phone started to ring.

  Helen disconnected the line. “My mother used to scold me for calling her on the phone. She said, ‘It’s so impersonal. Why don’t you write me a letter?’ And I scold you for emailing instead of calling. And all of my friends scold their grandchildren for their illiterate texting. Such a strange gallimaufry of needs.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  “I love you, too, Sweetpea.” She cleaned up the mess Claire had left on the coffee table. Helen was trying to appear casual, but her hands were shaking. She still had tears in her eyes. She was obviously conflicted, bu
t she was just as equally determined to do whatever she could to help. “I should get going. How long do I need to stay at the bank?”

  Claire had no idea how long it took to access a safety-­deposit box. “At least half an hour.”

  “And then?”

  “Get back on seventy-­five. I’ll call you on your phone and let you know.” She remembered what Paul had said. “Be careful. That’s not a great area, especially in the Tesla.”

  “The bank will have a security guard in the parking lot.” Helen touched Claire’s cheek. There was still a slight tremor in her hand. “We’ll have dinner after this is over. With drinks—­lots of drinks.”

  “Okay.”

  Claire checked the time so she didn’t have to watch Helen walk away. Adam Quinn had said his presentation was first thing this morning. The offices opened at nine, which meant that Claire had half an hour to walk ten blocks.

  The burner phone went into her back pocket. Her purse went over her shoulder. She finished her coffee as she walked back toward the bathroom. Claire’s appearance had not improved since she’d seen her reflection in the mirror behind Fred Nolan. Her hair was plastered to her head. Her clothes were a mess. She probably smelled sweaty from running full bore through the city.

  The cut on her cheek was still tender. The dark circle under her eye was turning into a full-­on, black bruise. Claire touched her fingers to the skin. Paul had punched Lydia, too. He had made her forehead bleed. He had made her eye swell shut. He had done other things, too, things that had made Lydia give up, to believe that no matter what Claire did, she was already dead.

  “You are not dead, Lydia.” Claire spoke the words aloud for her own sake as much as her sister’s. “I am not going to abandon you.”

  Claire ran water in the sink. She couldn’t go to Adam Quinn looking like this. If Adam was clueless as to what Paul was really involved in, then he’d be much more likely to help Claire if she didn’t look like a homeless person. She washed her face, and then quickly took a whore’s bath. The underwear Helen had bought came up past Claire’s belly button, but she was in no position to complain.