Locust Lane(5)

“Okay. Here we go.”

Gates pulled two big photos from the envelope. She looked at them for a moment, as if having second thoughts, then placed them on the table in front of Danielle. They were close-ups of Eden’s face. Her eyes were half-open. The white of the left one was purply red; its lid was swollen like waterlogged bread. You could see the smallest bit of her tongue.

“Her eye.”

“That would be from internal bleeding,” Gates said.

Danielle touched the edge of one of the photos, adjusting it so it squared up with the other. She nodded. There was silence.

“You’re confirming that the person in these photographs is your daughter, Eden Angela Perry?”

“Yes.”

There was movement behind her. The chief. He put something on the table next to her. A pen. A very nice pen.

“We’re just going to need you to initial the back of each photo.”

She did as told. Gates collected the two photos and put them back in the envelope.

“Can I see her?”

“Not quite yet.”

“I’m going to need to do that.”

“We understand.” The detective shifted in her chair. “Now, when you spoke to your daughter last night, what did you talk about?”

“Nothing, really. I was mainly after her to, well you probably know this, she has a court date coming up.”

“The shoplifting thing.”

“Which is a crock. Anyway, she needed to touch base with the lawyer.”

Gates gestured dismissively. Nobody cared about shoplifting now.

“Did she mention if she was seeing anyone last night?”

“No.”

“What exactly was she doing at the Bondurants’? On the phone they said something about them being relations.”

“Distant cousins. Betsy can tell you the exact number. We were connected through my aunt Nancy. We met at her funeral…”

Her voice caught for a second on that word.

“Take your time.”

“The Bondurants had taken Eden under their wing. She’s … a handful. She’s not bad. She’s just, sometimes she does dumb stuff because the dumb stuff is easy. She trusts people who should have never been trusted. But she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“I’m sure,” Gates said.

“She drives you crazy about ten times a day, but she’s also kind of an angel. It’s hard to explain. You have to know her.”

Danielle started to cry. She never cried, but there it was. The tears were like hard little stabs to her eyes. A box of tissues materialized—the chief again. Okay, she told herself after twenty or thirty seconds. That’s that. You’ve cried, and it did all the good it usually does. She dabbed at her eyes, turning the snowy-white tissue coal black.

“How long had she been there?” Gates asked.

“Almost three months.”

“And she seemed happy?”

“She did.”

“And what did she do, exactly?”

“Well, Betsy just needed a companion. Somebody to help her get around. I think mostly she was just lonely for her own kids. I guess you know about their eldest.”

“Yes. Very sad.”

“And the others grown and gone. She just wanted someone to fuss over. I was skeptical at first. Eden isn’t exactly a seasoned caregiver. But they really hit it off. Oh, and there was the dog, too. She looked after that. Was it…?”

“The dog’s fine. What did you know about Eden’s social life?”

“Not a lot. She didn’t like to tell me things. We were often at odds on that particular subject.”

“Why was that?”

“She’d made some poor choices in the past and so I guess I could be kind of hard on her about the company she kept.”

“So no friends that you knew of? I mean out here in Emerson.”

“Not that I knew of. Though I’m sure there were, knowing her.”

“So she didn’t have a job? I mean, outside of the Bondurant house?”

“Beyond walking the dog and keeping Betsy company, no. They paid her. A lot. And gave her a room. It had its own bathroom and a king bed and a big TV. I mean, you saw the place. Maybe that’s what it was? A robbery or something?”

“We’re certainly looking into every possibility. Back to something you said, about poor choices. Is there anyone from Eden’s past who you think might have wanted to harm her in any way? Like an ex-boyfriend?”

“They’re pretty much a bunch of losers, but none of them seemed violent.”

“Do you have names?”

“There’s Matt and Rayshard … you know, I’d have to think.”

“If you could come up with a list, that would be helpful.”

“I can do that.”

“Now, did your daughter do drugs?”

“Not to the point of it being a problem. No needles or anything like that.”

“And so, this midnight call, you don’t know what that was all about?”

“No.”

“Was it like her, to call that late?”

“Not recently.”

Gates looked at her for a bit.

“So how would you characterize your own relationship with your daughter.”