Silent Victim - C. E. Lawrence [76]
“He’s a great dad,” Lee said.
“Yes, he is,” she replied.
A silence hung heavy in the air between them. What neither of them were saying, but Lee was sure they were both thinking, was how much they missed Laura and how they wished she were here now to see her daughter turn seven.
George reemerged from the house just as Kylie and her friends came up from the bottom of the hill. Kylie and Meredith walked side by side, carrying an enormous watermelon between them, as Angelica skipped along behind.
“Look what we found in the springhouse!” Kylie exclaimed.
“That’s for after dinner,” Fiona said sternly. “For dessert.”
“But we have birthday cake for dessert,” Kylie pointed out. “Why can’t we have the watermelon now?”
Fiona started to answer, but George Callahan stepped in. “It’s your birthday, right?” he said to his daughter.
“Right!” she said, grinning.
Angelica wiped some grass from her forehead and looked at them all wide-eyed. Meredith crossed her arms and did her best to regard the adults with an ironic gaze, but she just looked as though she had indigestion.
“Then I think you should have the watermelon whenever you want it,” he said, with a challenging look at Fiona, who shook her head.
“George Callahan, you’re going to spoil her,” she said.
“Then she’ll be spoiled. But it’s her birthday and I say she should have the watermelon when she wants it.”
“Yea!” the girls cried. They hopped up and down, chanting, “Wa-ter-me-lon! Wa-ter-me-lon!”
The three adults couldn’t help laughing at the sight, though Fiona still shook her head, clicking her tongue in disapproval. Such things as watermelon on demand didn’t exist in her world—but then, in her world, her only daughter was alive somewhere, not an undiscovered corpse slowly rotting in some lonely and abandoned corner of the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Bad boy! You’re a bad, bad boy, and you deserve to be punished for it. Did you really think you could humiliate me and get away with it? Well, you’re about to learn your lesson. All bad boys learn their lesson sooner or later.
Caleb turned the dial on his police scanner until he picked up the call from Patrol Unit 85. He smiled as he heard the officer’s voice—the familiar, flat intonation of a cop reporting a routine stop.
“Suspect in drunk driving apprehended, white male, being taken to Tombs for booking. His companion is also inebriated, so car is being impounded following suspect’s release.”
He leaned back in his seat, letting his head fall back onto the headrest. They would take Joe to spend the night at the Tombs, then release him in the morning. He would emerge into the bright daylight, hungover, disgusted with himself and the world, and Caleb would be waiting.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It was a wonderful summer meal, the kind Laura would have loved. George outdid himself on the grill, the salad was mixed greens and juicy tomatoes from local farms, and the sweet corn was tender and perfectly cooked. Lee’s mother had something of a corn fetish. She would set the timer for precisely one minute once the water came to a boil, standing over the pot to pluck out the ears with her tongs, her face red and sweating as the rising steam slowly enveloped her.
They sat at the oblong oak table in the tiny dining room with the burnished maple-wood paneling. They had planned to eat outside at the picnic table, but a plague of mosquitoes plummeted down like tiny dive bombers when dusk fell. They grabbed their plates and scurried inside, abandoning the bucolic splendor of the front lawn for the comfort of the small but elegant eighteenth-century dining room, with its smell of apples and ancient wood.
As a great concession to her granddaughter, Fiona had agreed to serve—horrors—hamburgers and French fries along with the corn and salad. In the Campbell family the birthday child always chose the menu for the birthday dinner. Fiona favored fish and chicken and vegetables. Born in
Scotland and forced to endure Scottish cuisine as