guess is the mother had pretty much worn out on sex, and she was just then old enough to really start having it.
“Sex isn’t just an act. It’s an emotional investment, though kids these days try to tell you different. They call it hooking up. At least they’re making the choice to hook up. Caroline, she wasn’t making the choice. Least not at first. But by the time she was fourteen she knew something about manipulation herself. Two men came to live with Caroline and her mother, and they both were there for Caroline. And somehow, Caroline worked them. Or that’s my guess. And one of them killed the other, and the survivor ended up in jail. Caroline, she never went to see him or had anything else to do with him. She had played them. She was a hollow shell. All of her goodness, or any potential for goodness, had been sucked out and blown away dry. She took to hurting animals and setting fires, and finally she was taken away from her mother.”
“And that’s how you ended up with her?” Belinda said.
“That’s right, sugar. That’s how I ended up with her. Her mother swore she was going to clean up her act, but what she did was put a needle in her arm that was full of something that killed her. Caroline, when I told her about it, she said, ‘Huh.’ Just like that. Nothing else. She didn’t go to the funeral. She didn’t have any real connection to anyone, except maybe me a little, and Ronnie.
“But I don’t know how to explain their relationship. I think Ronnie was someone she had feelings for, but I just don’t think Caroline could have deep feelings. Wasn’t in her. Ronnie was a way for her to travel with the normals, though Ronnie was a mess herself. She had had a bad family, but nothing like Caroline. Mostly just neglectful. She was damaged goods, but she wasn’t ruined goods. More tea?”
“No thank you,” I said. “So did they stay with you a long time, Ronnie and Caroline?”
“They stayed until they graduated. And here’s the funny thing. Suddenly Caroline quit acting out. She did her homework, did well in school. She spent the rest of her time here in the back room playing games and writing stories.”
“Do you still have the stories?” I asked.
Mrs. Soledad shook her head. “She took them with her.”
“Did you ever read any of them?” Belinda asked.
“Once. They were mystery stories. They were stories where puzzle crimes were invented and the cops tried to figure it out, and the criminals got away with it.”
“Not too unusual,” I said.
“No. It wouldn’t have been unusual, except that it was coming from Caroline. I lay down here at night, I locked my door. I didn’t trust her, and finally I wasn’t sure I could trust her with Ronnie. That was just instinct, nothing to validate it. Anyway, she graduated with high grades, and Ronnie got through on a hair and a prayer, and they got in the university, though Ronnie just barely managed it. I remember asking Caroline, trying to be mother- like, what she was going to major in. You know what she answered? ‘Cleverness.’”
“What did you make of that?” I asked.
“I took her at her word. I think her life was about manipulation. She’s returning the favor of what was done to her, by her mother and by a horde of men and lovers. I think she sees the world as just one big game to survive. She’s just going through the motions, and she’s going to try and make other people go through the motions she wants them to go through. Not because they have done something to her, but because they haven’t. Because they are just innocents that she can hurt and make miserable. The way she was made miserable. Worst part is, she had her own child.”
“A child?” I said.
Ms. Soledad nodded. “She had a child when she was thirteen, right before she came to be with me, by one of the men who raped her, or misled her…all the same. It’s rape no matter how they had sex with her. I think this man was someone she really cared about, someone who had really done a number on her. From some things she said I got the feeling if there was anyone she might have trusted, it was this man.”
“I assume that trust evaporated after she had the child and the man left?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Ms. Soledad said. “I think she always had something for this guy. Maybe she gave him all the love she had left and could never quite take it back. In a way, I hope not. That shows a side of her that’s more truly human than most of what I saw. But her getting knocked up like that, it was just like her mother. History repeating itself.”
“What happened to the child?” Belinda asked.
“A relative or a family friend ended up with the child. I don’t really know any more than that. Maybe she put it up for adoption, but the story I heard was the one about the relative or family friend. I also heard they died. But it could have just been a story. I don’t even know if the child is alive. I just know that she and Ronnie went to the university in Camp Rapture, and that I told Ronnie to watch herself, to make new friends. Ronnie began to write me, and she told me that she thought she was gay, and that she had fallen in love with Caroline. Thing is, I don’t care who loves who, as long as it’s healthy, and there wasn’t anything healthy about Caroline.”
“More gamesmanship?” I asked.
“Exactly. It’s like Caroline was petting and grooming Ronnie for something mean. I think Caroline was always about something mean. And she was patient. She could wait a long time to do what she wanted to do, and the closer you were to her, the more likely you were to be a victim. My dog here, George, he had a companion, Albert. The day Caroline left I found Albert floating in a bucket of water out back of the house. It was a bucket I used to catch runoff from the roof. I put it on my flower beds. I had a hard time believing he climbed up there to get a drink and fell in. I think Caroline, as a kind of going-away present, dunked him in there and held him under until he drowned.”
Outside thunder rumbled, like God falling down stairs.
“How did Ronnie take Caroline going missing?” I asked.
“Last letter I got from Ronnie she said she felt both sad and relieved. I think she had started to listen to me, or perhaps due to events there she had come to believe that Caroline was a real troubled little girl. I hate Caroline for what I think she became, but I feel awfully sorry for her too, but I’m glad she’s gone and I’m glad she’s dead.”
“We don’t know she is for a fact,” I said.
“But that’s how it usually is in these cases, isn’t it?” Mrs. Soledad said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s how it is.”
“You know what I think?” Mrs. Soledad said. “I think she tried to manipulate someone as bad as she was, maybe someone worse. And, like she did with my little dog, they killed her for the sport of it. It’s sad and wrong of me, but I hope so. It’s bad enough her killer is loose in the world, but it’s a better place with her gone. And you want to know my guess? Whoever killed Caroline killed Ronnie, otherwise I would have heard from her by now. We were too close. That’s why I agreed to talk with you. I want you to find whoever killed her and make them pay, even if they did kill that monster Caroline.”
“We’ll do our best to find out what happened,” I said.
“One more thing. I have something of Caroline’s, though I doubt it’s of any importance.”
Mrs. Soledad got up and went into a back room and came back with a little red book done up in leather. “I think this is something that one of her many daddies had. I think she kept it. Maybe she had some connection with the owner, or maybe she just liked the book. I read a little but couldn’t get much out of it. It was behind the bed, hung up on the headboard at the back. Way it was back there, it was hard to see. I found it when I took the bed apart. I don’t think she meant to leave it.”
Mrs. Soledad gave me the book. The cover, like the rest of the book, was solid red, but in gold letters was written:
“She read that book all the time, and Edgar Allan Poe. She loved a story called ‘The Premature Burial.’ That was her favorite. She found an old movie of the story. She said it was different than the short story, but she liked it anyway. She watched it a lot.”
“You think that was odd?” Belinda asked.
“I like Poe and I liked the movie. Lots of people do. But she was drawn to it for different reasons than you and I. She saw things with a different eye. Now, unless you want another cup of tea, that’s about all I have.”
“No, ma’am, we’re good. We’ll use your restroom if we may, and then move on.”
She pointed to its location.
