“Maybe they would have if they knew what I know.”
“Angie, if you have information that would help the police find out who murdered Katie, you shouldn’t be keeping it to yourself.”
Her face was red now, bloated and unattractive. Between her plump cheeks and swollen eyelids the tiny eyes she turned in my direction had nearly disappeared. “Even if it would hurt Katie?”
“There’s nothing anybody can do anymore to hurt Katie.”
Angie seemed to have reached a decision. She untwisted the paper towel and used it to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. “You’re right, Hannah. I was mad at Chip. I was absolutely furious with him. You see, it’s all his fault that Katie’s dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“A couple of nights before the prom Katie came over to my house all excited. She dragged me into my bedroom and shut the door. Then she told me that she was pregnant. It blew my mind! She said that Chip was the father!” Angie threw both her hands into the air. “How can he deny it, Hannah? Yesterday he looked me straight in the face and denied ever having sex with Katie.” She leaned her head back against the chair and blew a slow stream of air out through her lips. “And I certainly know that wasn’t true! Katie told me everything!”
“So she was having sex with Chip?”
“Like rabbits. In his car, in the locker room after school. He was crazy about her.”
“But wouldn’t she have used some sort of birth control?”
“Katie told me that Chip used a condom, but it broke.”
I sat in silence, digesting this bit of news. I thought about what Chip had told Dennis. It made me wonder if Katie had made up the story about the baby. Somebody was lying, that was for sure.
“She wanted the baby, you know. You should have seen her at the dance, Hannah. Her feet were so far off the ground… she was so happy!” Angie pressed her hands together and giggled. “Katie told me in the rest room that she was sure that when she told Chip about the baby, he would be happy about it, too. She knew he would marry her. But then she disappeared and-”
“And you thought something had gone wrong with her plans?”
“I thought Chip had refused to marry her and that she’d decided to run away and have the baby on her own. Put it up for adoption, maybe. I thought she’d come back after that. I always thought she’d come back.”
“And now? What do you think now, Angie?”
“I don’t know! I think Chip’s lying through his teeth! He claims he didn’t have anything to do with any baby. He says Katie never said one word to him about being pregnant, and if she was pregnant, it certainly wasn’t with his child!” Angie’s balled-up fists pounded on the arms of her chair. “All that religion! All that ‘Thou shalt not’ crap. What a crock! So I hit him and kept hitting him until David Wilson made me stop. He grabbed my hands… oh, they all thought that was so funny. They just laughed and laughed. Jerks!”
“Angie, you need to tell Lieutenant Rutherford what you just told me.” Angie’s head drooped, and she whispered something into her lap. “Angie…”
She looked up at me sideways through dark lashes glistening with tears. “But then he’ll know that I lied to him when he interviewed me the other day.”
“If you don’t tell, he’s going to find out anyway.”
She played with her ring, a star sapphire set in gold, twisting it around and around her finger with her thumb.
“Angie?”
“Okay. I’ll call him.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced. It was like reasoning with a child. “Call him right now, Angie.”
“I’ll need to tell Mom first. Then I’ll tell the police.” She stood up and extended a hand. “I promise. And thanks, Hannah. You can’t imagine what a relief it is to get this off my chest. You’re so much easier to talk to than my mom. I’d give you a hug, but-” She nodded toward my injured arm.
“Oh, that!” I shrugged. “I’m heading over to Dr. Chase’s in a few minutes. I’m sure he’ll fix me up as good as new.” The Motrin had kicked in and was taking the edge off, but I found myself very much looking forward to my visit with the doctor. I could kill two birds with one stone; maybe Dr. Chase could ease the discomfort in my body as well as in my mind. After my conversation with Angie, I had something very important I needed to ask him.
10
Because I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going, Bill joined me on Ellie’s front porch and pointed out the back of the old Chase house on Princess Anne Street. He told me that Frank Chase’s office was on the ground floor of the house he had inherited from his parents, but that the doctor actually lived in a luxury condo catering to young professionals on Ferry Point Road, not far from Hal’s marina.
“What’s on the second floor then?” I asked.
“I haven’t the foggiest. Files, I imagine. Boxes of paper gowns.”
I thanked Bill, waved good-bye, and backed my trusty Toyota out onto High. At the light at Church Street I turned left. As I prepared to turn left again onto Princess Anne, preoccupied with the questions I planned to ask Dr. Chase, I had to slam on my brakes to avoid an old man who was proceeding through the middle of the intersection, hunched over a walker.
“Damn fool!” I shouted before it came to me. I know that face. Old Mr. Schneider.
Oblivious of the traffic that was screeching to a halt all around him, Dennis’s father-in-law crept across the road, pushing the walker in front of him. An attendant shot out the back door of the nursing home and caught up with him. Mr. Schneider paused, glanced up, and studied my car as if wondering where he’d seen it before. I tooted my horn, and he lifted a shaky hand from his walker to wave, but he couldn’t have had any idea who I was. He probably waved at everyone. The attendant pointed Mr. Schneider in the opposite direction, signaling an apology to me and the three other cars waiting at the intersection. I smiled, and waved back, thinking he looked familiar, too. He might have been the same guy I’d seen on the porch the day of Katie’s funeral, but all the attendants looked the same to me in those ugly green uniforms.
Before Princess Anne dead-ends at the water next to Hamilton’s Seafood Restaurant, it winds through a handsome residential neighborhood and is lined with trees whose leaves were already beginning to form a canopy that by midsummer would shade the street so completely that you’d need a flash to take a photograph there. As I pulled up to number 37, the fleet of cars parked in front of the office surprised me. Maybe I’d arrived in the middle of a flu epidemic. Not wanting to catch anything from some sneezing, sniveling child, I considered not going in, after all, but was reminded by the pain that shot up my arm when I set the parking brake that that might not be such a good idea.
“Come on, Julie Lynn!” I held the door open for a young woman in her twenties dragging a reluctant toddler by the arm. Julie Lynn’s face was flushed, and she clutched a bright orange Elmo doll to her chest. Julie Lynn’s mother swiped with the back of her hand at a strand of hair that curled damply down over an eyebrow. “Thanks. It’s really packed today. We were here for two hours… but everything seems like hours when you’ve got a sick three-year-old on your hands.”
Inside, in what must have been the former living room of the house, I saw she was right. The doctor’s waiting room was full; at least all ten chairs were occupied. Several patients looked up as I entered, then returning to reading, knitting, or just sitting there listlessly, staring at the walls. In a corner near the reception desk a freckled blond-headed kid sat at a small table on one of two wooden chairs, an assortment of crayons and several coloring books spread out before him. Bits of discarded crayon wrapper littered the floor at his feet. As he colored, he experimented with a variety of humming noises combined with wetly buzzing his lips as if he’d just learned the trick and was trying to impress (or annoy) as many of us as possible. As I watched him work, I remembered, with a pang, that Emily had never liked to color within the lines, either.