Don't You Cry(73)

“Esther isn’t trying to kill you,” is what he says to me. He says it like he’s sure, like in his mind there’s no doubt about it. Like he knows.

“What do you mean?” I ask, and, “How do you know?”

And then he goes on to explain.

Detective Davies tells me that he first met Esther a year or so ago when he was investigating the death of Kelsey Bellamy. It was more or less an open-and-shut case, he says. The girl had food allergies, which I know. She ate something she was allergic to; she couldn’t get to her medicine in time. Hundreds of people die from anaphylaxis each year. It’s not that common, and yet it happens. That’s what the detective tells me. Negligence might have played a part in Kelsey’s death, yes, and at the time Esther took a great deal of blame. “People pointed fingers,” he says. “People always want to point fingers. They need someone to blame.” But once Kelsey’s death was ruled an accident, life went on for Esther and for Detective Davies. There was no doubt in his mind that Esther hadn’t purposefully tried to tamper with Kelsey’s meal. “I’ve seen a lot of liars before,” he tells me, “but Esther wasn’t one of them. She passed a lie detector test with flying colors. She cooperated with the investigation. She was an exemplary witness, and clearly contrite. She felt terrible about what had happened to Kelsey. She owned up to it right away—the mix-up with the flour—and was never defensive. I can’t say as much about most witnesses, and certainly not the guilty ones.”

He pauses for a breath and then continues. “Esther called me Saturday night, out of the blue. We hadn’t spoken in months, nearly a year. But she had something to show me,” he says, adding on, “She seemed spooked,” and there’s such conviction in his voice I find myself holding my breath, forgetting to breathe. Esther was spooked. But why? The very thought of this makes me want to cry. Esther was sad, Esther was scared, and neither time did I know.

Why didn’t I know?

What kind of friend am I?

“She didn’t say much on the phone. She wanted to tell me in person. She’d received something, a note. I can only assume it had to do with Ms. Bellamy,” he says.

My heartbeat accelerates and, tucked up into the sleeves of the aqua sweater, my hands begin to sweat.

“When did she call you?” I ask.

“Saturday night, nine o’clock or so,” he says. Nine o’clock. Shortly after I left for that stupid karaoke bar, leaving Esther behind in her pajamas and a blanket. Did Esther purposefully wait until I’d left to call the detective? Was she even sick?

Esther had received a note, I wonder. But no. I consider the notes to My Dearest. Esther wrote those notes. He must be mistaken. The signature line most clearly reads: All my love, EV. Esther Vaughan. She’s signed her name to the letters. They’re hers. Aren’t they?

Is it possible that Esther is somehow My Dearest?

I’m a tad bit skeptical to say the least.

“I have the notes,” I tell Detective Davies then, reaching into my purse and thrusting the two typewritten notes into his hand. “I brought them with me.”

I’ve been carrying them around with me in my purse because I couldn’t think of another safe place to leave them. But I’ve read them, of course, many times, and neither says a thing about Kelsey Bellamy. As Detective Davies’s eyes scan the notes, he, too, seems unimpressed, though he asks if he can keep them, anyway. I nod my head and watch as he slips the notes carefully into some sort of evidence pouch where later I imagine they’ll be dusted for fingerprints and some sort of forensic analyst will try and find the make and model of the typewriter on which the notes were typed.

The notes are completely madcap, don’t get me wrong. They are. But inside, there’s no grand confession, no mention of Kelsey Bellamy. Somehow he’s got it all wrong. He must have misunderstood what Esther said or maybe she was lying or in the very least stretching the truth. Maybe Esther was trying to mislead the detective. But why?

“There was nothing else?” the detective asks, and I say no. “There must be more,” he says, but I assure him there’s not. The look that crosses his face makes me believe I’ve failed again. In some way, I’ve let him down.

Or maybe I’ve just let Esther down. Right now, it’s hard to say for sure.

“But what about the photograph,” I ask, “of me? The one Esther put in the paper shredder, my face with a slit across the throat. That was clearly a threat. She wants me dead.”

“Or...” suggests Detective Davies as I feel the bile rise up inside of me like an active volcano, threatening to erupt. “Maybe whoever sent Esther the letter took the photo of you, too. Maybe that’s who wants you dead.”





Alex

The ground looks hard. Not frozen solid, but hard. The top layer, the sod, seems the hardest to get through as she begins digging into the cold morning earth with her gardening spade, pressing on the steel with the sole of a suede boot. The sod binds together, a million sheaths of grass, clinging together, refusing to let her through. It’s hard work, but Pearl forces her way in, gouging out the land bit by bit. I watch in awe as she thrusts the cold, hard earth up in the blade of the shovel, tossing it into a pile behind her slender frame. As she does, she begins to sweat, a cold sweat that congeals on her skin and makes her shiver, and as I watch from a distance, she removes her coat first, followed by the hat, tossing them both onto the dew-covered lawn, and I’m reminded of the day at the lake, Pearl undressing bit by bit and then walking into the frigid water.