The Bad Daughter(13)
Assuming the child survived.
Who could have done such an awful thing?
Robin had watched enough television to know that if a crime wasn’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, it likely never would be. How could she leave without knowing who was responsible? How could she leave Red Bluff before she knew whether her father would survive his injuries?
How could she stay?
In the next instant, the room was spinning, and the floor was falling away. Robin tried to cling to Cassidy’s hand but felt her fingers slipping. She heard Sheriff Prescott’s voice in the distance—“Can we get a nurse in here?”
The last voice she heard before she lost consciousness belonged to her sister. “She always was a drama queen,” Melanie said.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Well, what do you know? She awakens,” Melanie said from behind the wheel of her car as Robin opened her eyes and bolted upright in the passenger seat, her eyes darting in all directions at once. “Relax. You were only out a few minutes.”
Robin stared out the window at the few middle-class houses scattered among the profusion of vacant lots. A street sign revealed that they were at the corner of South Jackson Street and Luther Road. They turned left, heading west toward Paskenta Road.
“How many of those pills did you take, anyway?” Melanie asked.
Obviously not enough, Robin thought, picturing the young doctor with short, frizzy red hair whose huge green eyes had been the first thing she’d seen when she came to on the floor of Cassidy’s hospital room. The doctor had checked her blood pressure and listened to her heartbeat before pronouncing a diagnosis of stress and writing out a prescription for Ativan. Robin had filled the prescription as soon as they left the hospital, running into the pharmacy next to the clock tower on Main Street while Melanie waited in the car, then swallowing two of the tiny white pills without the benefit of water before even walking out the door. The last thing she remembered was climbing back into the front seat and trying to block out the excruciating sound of Enya on the radio by closing her eyes and pretending to be floating on her back in the ocean.
“What’s the matter—you didn’t do enough drugs at Berkeley to develop a tolerance?” Melanie was asking now. “I thought that was the whole point of going there.”
Actually, Robin had stopped doing drugs at Berkeley, her panic attacks having abated once she was a safe distance from Red Bluff. Until then, drugs had been part of her regular routine. A few tokes to get her through the day, a mild sedative at night to help her sleep.
Tara had been her chief supplier.
Should she tell Sheriff Prescott that?
“You didn’t recognize Dr. Simpson, did you?” Melanie was saying.
“Should I have?”
“Think. Red hair, green eyes, a nose full of freckles. Of course she tries to hide them with all that makeup.”
“Oh, my God,” Robin said, vaguely recalling the Annie look-alike who’d been a year behind her in high school. “That was Jimmy Kessler’s little sister, Arlene?”
“She married Freddy Simpson a few years ago. He was president of the student council the year I graduated. Captain of the debate team. A real know-it-all. Surely you remember him.”
Robin shook her head. She’d done her best to forget everything about Red Bluff.
“She’s calling herself Arla now.”
“Oh, my.” The sisters shared a welcome laugh. “She should have said something.”
“She probably didn’t think it was the best time to play catch-up. Or maybe she was just embarrassed.”
“Why would she be embarrassed?”
“I guess some people find murder embarrassing.” The car crossed Paskenta Road, continuing west.
Murder, Robin repeated silently, flipping the word over on her tongue, the pleasant buzz from the Ativan softening its impact. Tara didn’t just die. She was murdered. “Has anyone notified Tara’s parents?”
“I doubt it.”
“Should we?”
“I wouldn’t have a clue where to find them. Would you?”
Robin shook her head, concentrating on the increasingly barren vista beyond her side window. She tried picturing Tara’s parents, but all she managed to conjure up was a vague outline. Tara had never been close to either her mother or her father, and they’d all but disowned her after she’d married Dylan. They’d separated the same year that Cassidy was born, and Tara’s father had run off to Florida soon after with the woman who cut his hair. Her mother had joined some religious cult and disappeared into the wilderness of Oregon at least a decade ago. Who knew if either of them was even still alive?
“Almost home,” Melanie announced unnecessarily, turning onto Walnut Street.
So intense was her revulsion that Robin had to fight the impulse to open the car door and hurl herself out, despite the Ativan. Maybe I should have stayed in a hotel, she was thinking. Except she’d already decided that this trip, however unplanned and unpleasant it might be, presented a good opportunity to mend fences with her sister, however high those fences might be. And Melanie had been adamant that it would give the locals more to gossip about if Robin stayed anywhere but the family home and that the press would likely hound her. She wouldn’t be here long in any event, and this way they’d be able to maintain at least some control over the situation.