generally, what was it about? Why was she so upset you heard her?”
“The first person or the second?”
“Both, I guess.”
“Because she wasn’t mad at the first person. She was mad at the second person.”
“The second caller? She was mad at that person?”
A nod.
“Do you know who it was?”
A head shake.
“So what was she saying?”
“I can’t talk about it,” Kelly said. “Mrs. Slocum said I wasn’t supposed to.”
I weighed that. Kelly had eavesdropped on a conversation she wasn’t supposed to hear. What Ann Slocum had to say on the phone wasn’t my business, either. But at the same time, I needed to get to the bottom of this. I needed to know whether Ann’s response was within reason, or if she’d crossed a line.
“Okay, let’s not worry about what exactly she said on the phone, but what did she say to you after?”
“She asked me how long I’d been hiding there, and then she asked me if I heard what she was saying on the phone and I said no, not really, which wasn’t exactly true, and then she said I shouldn’t have done that and she said I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what she was talking about.”
“Like me,” I said.
“Not, like, anybody. She said I wasn’t supposed to tell Emily and I wasn’t supposed to tell Mr. Slocum, either.”
That was interesting. It was one thing, Kelly overhearing something that was Slocum family business, that shouldn’t be discussed outside their home. But now it seemed what my daughter had heard was a little more specific than that. “Did she say why?”
Kelly fingered her backpack. “Nope. She just said not to tell. She said if I ever told anyone, she wouldn’t let me and Emily be friends anymore.” Her voice wobbled. “I don’t have very many friends and I don’t want Emily not to be my friend.”
“Of course you don’t,” I said, trying very hard to hide my anger at Ann Slocum’s insensitivity. Kelly had just lost her mother, for crying out loud. “What happened then?”
“She left.”
“The bedroom? She left the bedroom?” A nod. “Didn’t you both leave?” A shake. “Wait a minute. She got mad because you were hiding in her bedroom, and then you stayed there? Why would you do such a thing?”
“She made me. She told me to stay right there, because she had to think about what to do with me. She said it was like a time-out. And she took the talking part of the phone with her.”
I was feeling prickly all over. What the hell was the woman thinking?
“That’s when I called you,” Kelly said. “I’d put my phone back into my pocket just before she opened the door and she didn’t know I had it.”
“Why did you have your phone out?”
“When Emily opened the door to look for me I was going to shout ‘Surprise!’ and wanted to see her scream on video.”
I gave my head a small shake. “Okay, so when she left the room and told you to stay there, that’s when you called me.” She nodded. “That was smart. When she left the room, did she lock the door?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it has a lock on it. But Mrs. Slocum told me not to move and I didn’t want to get in trouble so I stayed there. But she didn’t tell me I couldn’t phone you, so I did. But I thought she might get mad, so that’s why I was whispering. When you got there, Mr. Slocum started yelling for me and that’s when I came out.”
“Honey, what she did, that was wrong. You shouldn’t have been there, in her closet, but she shouldn’t have done that. I’m gonna have a word with her tomorrow.”
“Then she’ll know I told you, and Emily won’t be my friend anymore.”
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t do that.”
Kelly shook her head forcefully. “She might get mad.”
“Honey, Emily’s mom’s not going to hurt you or anything.”
“Maybe she’ll hurt you. ”
“What? What’s she going to do to me?”
“She might put a bullet in your brain,” Kelly said. “That’s what she said she was going to do to the person she was talking to.”
NINE
Once Glen Garber had left with his daughter, Darren Slocum said to Ann, “What the hell was that all about?”
“I don’t know. She felt sick, she went home. She’s a kid. She probably ate too much junk. Or maybe she misses her mom, I don’t know.” When she turned to walk away from him, he grabbed hold of her elbow.
“Let go of me,” Ann said.
“What was she doing in our bedroom? That’s where I found her, you know. When I asked her what she was doing there, she said you told her to stay there. I don’t want some kid nosing around our bedroom.”
“The girls were playing hide-and-seek,” Ann explained. “I told her it was okay for her to hide in there.”
“The kids should not be playing in our room. That’s off limits as far as-”
“Okay, fine! Jesus, do we have to make a federal case out of this? You don’t think I’ve got enough to worry about?”
“ You? You think you’re the only one with things to worry about? You think they think you’re in this on your own? Let me tell you something. If they take you down, they’re taking me with them.”
“I know, okay, you’re right. All I’m saying is, there’s enough shit going on around here that I don’t have time to have some stupid fight about where the girls are playing in the house.”
“Letting Emily even have a sleepover was a stupid idea,” Darren said accusingly.
Ann gave him a look of exasperation. “What are we supposed to do? Just stop having lives while we try to sort this out? What do you want me to do? Ship Emily off to live with my sister or something until everything is back to normal?”
“And how the hell much did you spend on pizza?” he asked. Waving his arms in the air, he said, “You think we’ve got money to just throw around?”
“Right, Darren. That twenty bucks I spent on pizza, that’d make all the difference right now. We tell them, hey, look, here’s twenty bucks, cut us some slack.”
He turned away angrily, then just as quickly turned back.
“Were you on the phone a while ago?”
“What?”
“The light on the extension in the kitchen. It came on. Was that you?”
Ann rolled her eyes. “What’s going on with you?”
“I’m asking, were you on the phone?”
“The kid called her dad, remember? He just left?”
That shut him up for a moment. The whole time he’d been talking, Ann had been thinking, I have to get out of here. But she needed a reason. Something believable.
The phone rang.
There was a cordless extension in the living room. Ann was closer. She snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”
A voice shrieked, “He came to see me!”
“Jesus, Belinda?”
“He said I was running out of time! I was in the basement, I was getting some prescriptions ready and-”
