Tuesday didn’t work out? That was one way to put it.
I trudged unwillingly into the building that night. It was still light, of course, but the day was lying on my shoulders like a heavy coat. I craved sleep, and the aching of my back and breasts reminded me that my cycle was coming full circle.
I saw Janet getting out of her car when I entered the parking lot.
“How are you?” I called.
“Lots better,” she said, trying to smile normally and failing. “I still have a headache, but there wasn’t any fracture and everything looks normal in the X rays.”
“What does the doctor think happened to you?” I fell into step beside her and tried to slow my steps to match hers.
Janet heaved a deep sigh. “He thinks that someone hit me with something hard on the back of the head, that my head bounced forward and hit another hard surface, and that was all she wrote. I was completely out for maybe five minutes, total. I could kind of hear you and Firella when you were waiting with me. So I wasn’t really out of it that long.”
“It felt like a long time to us,” I told her. “We were pretty worried about you.”
“I’m glad you all came in. The detective told me what happened. I don’t remember seeing the dead woman, so I guess I should thank the person who bopped me. That’s not a memory I want.”
“So you don’t remember seeing anyone in the building?”
“Nope. I just barely remember getting here Tuesday evening. It seems to me I sort of recall walking down the hall, but even that’s not exactly clear.”
The rest of the group trickled into the therapy room in near silence. Janet and I were sitting on the left side of the table, Melanie and Carla on the other. Firella came in and pulled out a chair on my other side, and Sandy scooted in the room with her gaze cast on the floor. She worked her way down to the end of the table without meeting anyone’s gaze. Tamsin came in last and sat at the end closest to the door.
“We needed to meet tonight to find out how everyone’s handling what happened. As you all know by now, the woman you found dead was Melanie’s sister-in-law, Saralynn. She used to be married to the man who raped Melanie. They’d just gotten divorced.”
Firella shook her head. “Sunday dinners must be hell in that family.”
Melanie nodded. Her plump, doughy face looked pinched and her eyes were definitely red. Her hair was frizzy as though she’d tried a home permanent that didn’t work. But the same determination that had led her to prosecute her attacker when no one else in the world wanted to seemed to be getting her through this latest crisis.
“How are you getting along with your husband after all this?”
“We’re fine,” Melanie said. “He loves me and I love him, more than anything in the world, and he’s not going to let me down. His brother is a no good piece of trash and Deke’s always known it. Ain’t Deke’s fault his mom and dad turned out a bad ‘un.”
“That’s wonderful, Melanie,” Tamsin said. She didn’t sound convinced, though. I leaned forward a little to get a good look at our counselor. “Do you think your brother-in-law could be responsible for the death of his wife?”
“No, seeing as how he’s in jail,” Melanie responded tartly.
I noticed that the ones who hadn’t known this looked disappointed. Everyone, it seemed, would have been glad to have Tom Kleinhoff to blame for this murder.
“Why aren’t you telling us how you feel about this?” Firella asked. She leaned forward so she could look right into Tamsin’s face. “Why aren’t you telling us what happened in here Tuesday night?”
This sudden aggression surprised almost everyone except me.
Tamsin flushed a deep plum color. “I’ve admitted I was hiding in the therapy room when Saralynn Kleinhoff was killed,” she said in a low voice. I saw Sandy lean across the table to hear. “I’ve admitted to being scared when I knew there was a killer in the building. I don’t think that’s too surprising.”
“But…” I began before I thought. I had leaned forward to focus on her myself. I stopped before I voiced my doubts.
“What, Lily?” Tamsin asked. But only because she had to; you could tell she was scared about what I was going to say. We were supposed to bare all to Tamsin; what about her being honest with us?
“Tell us exactly what happened,” I said, with careful emphasis. “As far as we can tell, it could have been any one of us pinned to that wall in your office. How come Melanie’s sister-in-law and Janet got attacked, and you didn’t?”
“Are you blaming Tamsin for not getting hurt, Lily?” Firella asked. “Are you blaming the victim for the crime, so to speak?”
“Yeah, where are you going with this, Lily?” Carla croaked.
Good question.
“I just want to know exactly what happened. We come here every week.” I simmered for a minute. “We’re supposed to feel safe here. How did this person who killed Saralynn get in? How’d he get out without us seeing him?”
Everyone around the table looked thoughtful after hearing my questions. I wasn’t sure why I was maneuvering our therapist into telling us something that would surely upset her, but I was determined to do just that.
“As I told you the night of the incident, Lily,” Tamsin said with reluctance, “Saralynn was supposed to come early so I could give her the little talk I give everyone before she joins the group. I’d asked her to come in at seven fifteen, a little earlier than I’d asked you to come. You were the last one to get the lecture the first night you all came, and I remembered I’d had to rush through.
“I was a little worried about Saralynn having such a close relationship with Melanie, how that would impact the group, and we talked about that a little bit.”
“You didn’t hear anyone else in the building?” Firella asked.
“I may have. Now, I think I did. But it could have been someone staying late, or coming back in after something he’d left… anything.”
“The end door was locked?” Sandy wanted to be sure.
“No, the end door wasn’t locked.” Tamsin flushed red. “I knew you guys would be coming in. So I didn’t lock it behind her.”
“Did you hear the door while you talked?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
When I looked skeptical, she said, “That’s the most normal noise in the world, to me. I’m not sure I would have noticed!” She was getting angry.
“So there was a reason you had to leave Saralynn in your office?…” Melanie said, to get Tamsin back on the track.
“Yes, I’d left the group list on the table in here, and I had to get it to enter Saralynn’s name-just her first name-and phone number. You remember, I took that information from all of you in case we had to cancel sometime.”
“So while you were in the therapy room…?” Melanie prompted.
“Okay, while I was in there I dropped everything. I spilled all my papers from my notebook and knocked my pop over.”
After a brief vision of Tamsin pushing down an old man with white hair, I realized she meant she’d spilled a soft drink. Maybe it was a northern or midwestern thing? We all waited, watching her. Janet’s mouth was pulled tight against her teeth. Anger? Skepticism?
“I started picking everything up, and while I was doing that I heard someone going into my office.”
“Did you hear this person pass the door of the therapy room, or come from the direction of the end door?”
“I don’t remember either way,” she admitted. “I’ve tried and tried, but I don’t remember.”
Sandy interrupted. “What difference would that make, Lily?”
I shrugged. “The difference between someone hiding in this building until he was able to catch a woman alone, and someone coming in from the parking lot-maybe after Saralynn-on purpose.”
An interesting difference, their faces said, and they turned to Tamsin again. She shook her head. “No use, I just can’t recall it. After I heard someone go into my office, I heard Saralynn say something, but I couldn’t make it out. She sounded surprised but not scared. But after that, she said, ”What?“ and she made an awful sound. Then there
