All That Remains (A Missing and Exploited Suspense Novel Book 1) Read online

  Whatever has upset Pam is an adult problem and Harvey doesn’t ask Effie to elaborate. Instead, he pours himself a coffee, and then slices a banana into Effie’s cereal bowl. “If you want your turtle to be invincible like me one day, kid,” he says, “he has to eat a hearty breakfast.” This earns Harvey a smile, so he keeps the banter going by asking about Effie’s plans for the day.

  “My class gets to practice for the Winter Extravaganza,” Effie says. “I’m bringing my ballet shoes to school.” Effie shoves her toy into Harvey’s arms. “Mr. Turddy’s going to sleep with you,” she says.

  “Sounds good.” Harvey takes a drink of the coffee that will put his ass-backwards body to sleep as Pam enters the kitchen. Her blond hair is up-swept and shiny with product. The new navy suit and ivory silk blouse she wears is expensive and the expression on her face is ice-queen cold. She instructs Effie to clean up her mess, including her dad, then get her backpack and coat.

  “That was uncalled for,” Harvey says, after Effie leaves the kitchen.

  Pam crosses her arms across her chest in a power stance, though not tight enough to wrinkle the fabric of her blouse. “So was locking away $20,000 of our money in an education fund without consulting me first.”

  Protecting his dwindling savings was a desperate move on Harvey’s part. In the five years they’ve been together, Pam burnt through most of Harvey’s inheritance from his deceased parents and all of his bi-weekly paychecks. “The money will be there when Effie’s ready for college,” he says. “That should be what matters.”

  Pam packs her usual lunch of a meal replacement bar and carrot sticks. “Obviously you don’t trust me, Harvey. And, after this, I can’t trust you. So where does that leave us?”

  Harvey has a dozen answers on his lips, none of them kind, but he’s silent as Effie rejoins them in the kitchen with her backpack hung from one slight ballerina shoulder and downcast eyes. Pam isn’t screaming or hitting, even so Harvey feels as though he and Effie are trapped in a scene of domestic violence. To keep Effie, he’ll have to stay with Pam, but it’s already too late for any of them to survive their dysfunctional family unharmed.

  “Don’t bother answering,” Pam says as she grabs her designer purse from a counter, then heads towards the door. “Because honestly, I don’t care enough to bother listening.”

  «4»

  Celine wakes early, at 9:15 a.m., too uncomfortable on Gabriel’s small cot to stay in bed with the kid, despite his warmth. She’s at the tail-end of her cold, with a stuffed-up nose and aching joints, but she’ll have to work the streets tonight regardless. Her wallet needs filling. Even though she’s not an addict, she still wants something good to get her through the day, and good costs money.

  The cupboards and fridge are nearly bare and she curses Elvis, who was too fucking lazy to go grocery shopping while Celine’s been out of commission. There’s just enough rice crisps in a box to feed Gabriel, but only if he wakes up before Elvis. Last night the man proved he’s incapable of thinking of other people first. Celine takes an orange juice container out of the fridge. There’s enough to make herself a liquid meal with what’s left of the gin.

  After pouring the drink, she relaxes at the kitchen table, considering the gap between the stove and counter where the pig dumped her kitchen knives. She doesn’t cook much, so hauling out the stove to get the knives is a job she can put off for another day. Other things, however, can’t wait. After he wakes up, she’ll convince Elvis to make himself scarce for a while. She’ll clean the apartment and move Gabriel’s cot back into the bedroom. It’ll take a day or two, but the pig will follow through on his threat to alert Social Services. Sooner or later, some bitch with a briefcase will come snooping around. She’ll pry into things that aren’t her business, determined to prove Celine’s a crap mother.

  Celine has drained her glass and is refilling it with straight gin when Gabriel pads into the kitchen wearing Celine’s pink socks. He has a red welt on his face from the edge of the mattress. He stares at the Budweiser clock on the wall, until tears sprout up in his eyes.

  “So you’re late for school. Boo-hoo,” Celine says. It’s the kid’s job, not hers, to wake up on time and get himself off to the school he loves so much. She waves her cigarette at the cereal box she left on the counter. “Eat.” Gabriel never passes up food, but now he acts like the cereal is poison as he changes out of his pajamas and into a sweater and jeans. “Skip school today,” Celine says. “I’m in the mood for some family time.” Gabriel looks towards the closed bedroom door before sitting down to change into a pair of his own socks. “And don’t worry about Elvis. That prick will sleep all fucking day if we let him.”

  “Miss Granger will miss me,” Gabriel says.

  “Yeah, well, you’d better like me more than your haggy old teacher.”

  Gabriel looks down at the floor. In revenge, Celine picks up her cell phone, then hits the number of Gabriel’s school. When the secretary answers, Celine smirks at Gabriel as she reports him sick with the flu.

  ¤

  Celine’s out of practice, and family time is not going as well as she anticipated. Gabriel has spent most of the morning sitting on his cot reading his boring books about dogs, while she watches equally boring daytime TV. Now, however, he’s snuggled beside her on the couch. He slides a piece of paper onto her lap. It’s an invitation to attend the elementary school’s Winter Extravaganza. Celine hates such events. She hates Gabriel’s busy-body teacher, hates the soccer moms who think they’re so fucking great, and hates how she feels when she’s stuck inside the suffocating school walls. That feeling is the reason she dropped out of school in grade eight. “Christ,” she says, “is it that time again, already? You know this shit’s not my style, baby.”

  Gabriel slips his hand into Celine’s. “Please.”

  “God, you ask a lot of me.”

  “You have to come. I’m the head angel.”

  Celine flips a ringlet dangling over Gabriel’s cheek. “Of course you are. You have my curls.”

  Gabriel crooks his baby finger. “Pinky-swear you’ll come.”

  “What? You don’t trust me.” Gabriel shakes his head, but he also smiles when she holds out one crooked finger. “Alright, already,” Celine says. “I pinky-swear. But you’d better not flub your lines, mister. You do have lines, don’t you? ‘Cause I’m not coming if you don’t.”

  Gabriel smiles a second time as they link fingers. “Nope. I only have one line. But the other angels don’t have any.” He takes his hand back, then sits quiet for a moment.

  “Spit it out,” Celine says.

  Gabriel can’t meet her eye when he says, “Miss Granger says the parents have to make our costumes.”

  “Miss Granger is damned bossy,” Celine says. She doesn’t do crafts, but she owes the kid something for keeping him home from school. She gets up to add the last bit of gin to her glass, then rummages through the hall closet for a white sheet. The one she finds was used by Gabriel before he stopped wetting the bed at night. It’s dingy, rather than white, but the pee stains are mostly where the head-hole will be. She retrieves a pair of scissors the pig didn’t dispose of from the bathroom cupboard, then drapes the sheet over the kitchen table. Her hand won’t hold still as she cuts a hole for Gabriel’s head, and the edges turn out ragged. “Put it on,” she says, “let’s see how angelic you look.”

  After Gabriel wrangles the sheet over his head, Celine steps back on unsteady legs to survey the effect. The worst of the pee stains are gone, but there are still a few suspicious marks. “It’s not too bad, but it needs a belt,” she says. She unties the red silk belt from her wrapper, then ties it around his waist, cinching in the folds of the sheet to hide the stains. When she steps back to see how it looks, her wrapper falls open. In the moment before Celine gathers the edges to cover up, Gabriel catches sight of a three-day-old bruise that rises out of her bra cup and doesn’t stop until it reaches the top of her collarbone.

  Gabriel’s expression i
s one Celine can’t, and doesn’t want, to read. It’s enough to know her eight-year-old is judging her choices. Celine tugs at the belt, taking it back. “If we’re not good enough for your royal highness,” she says, “feel free to go live with your god-damned psycho father. I won’t even notice you’re gone.”

  «5»

  Willard is woken by the sound of his grandfather pissing into the night-soil bucket. The snowstorm has let up, and in the morning light Willard can see his grandfather’s bum sagging out of the fireman’s flap of his red long johns. The old man’s body is shrunken and twisted. Even so, Willard knows his grandfather is still the tougher man of the two.

  The pissing comes in angry spurts until his grandfather finally shakes off his penis and tucks it back inside the long johns. Leaving the fireman’s flap hanging open, he heads towards the sink where he’ll find evidence of Willard’s crime instead of the morning’s frozen washing-up water waiting to be heated. Willard shuts his eyes in fear of what’s coming. It’s a mistake he regrets when the bucket, flung at him by the old man, slices the skin above his left eye.

  Blood trickles down his face as Willard backs against the wall. “Sluggard,” his grandfather snarls, “laggard, shirker. Up on your feet.” Willard is frozen in place. When he doesn’t obey, his grandfather kicks the bucket of piss towards him, spilling the contents. “Get a cloth,” he says. “Clean up that mess.”

  ¤

  Still smelling piss, Willard gets up off the floor with the dented bucket of filthy water and equally filthy rag. His grandfather hunches over the table, sopping up the last of the breakfast beans with a piece of bread. Willard’s empty stomach gurgles. Leaving the dirty bowl on the table, his grandfather rises from the table. He changes out of the long johns and into a shirt and pants so dirty they’re stiff. From the chain around his neck, he removes the toolshed key, which he tosses onto the floor. “I’m going to town,” he says. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll have that bucket as smooth as glass before I return.”

  Willard stays put, his head bowed. His grandfather puts on a coat and gloves, then sits to shove his feet into ancient winter boots. There are no goodbyes. Willard knows what his grandfather sees when he steps onto the porch: a slick area of ice where the spilled water froze.

  “Boy,” his grandfather shouts. “Get your lazy ass out here.”

  Willard catches sight of Terrance from the corner of his eyes. His brother shakes his head for Willard not to go. When their grandfather shouts again, Terrance returns to the afterlife, leaving Willard alone to face his punishment. Willard doesn’t dare take time to put on his coat or boots. He steps outside in socked feet and the bitter cold makes his arms and belly shiver. Spit shoots from his grandfather’s mouth as he calls Willard a “witless sluggard” and “the bane of my existence.”

  Willard promises to have the ice chipped off and the bucket fixed before his grandfather returns. He promises to do better from now on. He promises to be good.

  “Teaches me to raise a baby killer,” his grandfather sneers.

  Willard’s hands must belong to someone else because they push the old man hard on the chest. “Don’t say that.”

  “No good baby killer,” his grandfather repeats.

  This time when Willard pushes, the old man slips on the ice and goes down, cracking his head against the blade of a shovel Willard left on the porch. Fear replaces the hatred in his eyes. Then the fear dims, the eyes gloss over, and the jerking of his limbs slows until he is still.

  Willard stares in disbelief at what he’s done. Terrance appears beside him and together they watch their grandfather’s blood creep along the porch. It drips through the cracks between the slats to the ground below. When Willard cries, Terrance reaches up to hold his brother’s hand.

  ¤

  Terrance is gone again and Willard has to do the hard part alone. He gags on the stink of blood and poop as he drags his grandfather’s body by the boots along the trail to the toolshed. Even though he’s cold, sweat drips from Willard’s forehead from the effort. His arm and back muscles ache as he drags the body up and over the sill, then past an armless Mother Mary statue looking down on them with pity. He leaves the body wedged between piles of rusted tools.

  Willard turns from the sight of his grandfather; afraid he’ll see the old man rise. He secures the door with the padlock and hurls the key into the forest. After stumbling back towards the cabin beside the slick red trail, he pauses in the yard to scour his bloody hands with snow. Back inside the cabin, he rips off his clothes and dresses in his spares. Despite feeling nauseous, he’s hungry enough to wolf down a can of cold beans and a loaf of bread.

  When he’s full, Willard yanks a dusty leather suitcase from beneath his grandfather’s bunk. Sometimes when his grandfather went to town, Willard passed the time by looking through the things kept inside. Two certificates prove the births of Willard and his grandfather. Baby Terrance cries in the arms of their mother in a black and white photo. It makes him angry to see the wooden train he longed to play with when he was a boy, a toy his cruel grandfather withheld. Willard adds some clothing to the suitcase, then digs out the sack of paper money his grandfather stuffed in his mattress through a slit.

  Willard can drive, although he always went too slowly to please his grandfather. He was taught the basics in case his grandfather ever needed a doctor’s help. He takes the car keys from their hook by the door, and locks up the cabin. The car’s cold engine requires a few tries of the ignition before it catches. Willard’s hands and feet are numb by the time the windows clear. In his rush to leave, Willard backs over a cement cherub, breaking off its wings.

  As Willard steers onto the road, he comforts himself with plans. He’ll take Terrance on a vacation, maybe drive as far as Disneyland. They’ll eat whenever and whatever they want. They’ll buy warm clothes and stay in motels with comfy beds and television sets. It will be fun and games for the Crawley boys. But, when Willard reaches over to pat his little brother’s shoulder, all he finds is air.

  «6»

  With ten minutes left on the clock after a mind-numbing shift, Detective Harvey Sam knocks off early. He stomps snow from his boots before entering The Stalk Market, chased by glass-rattling gusts from Fenny’s most homicidal blizzard in twenty years.

  During the optimistic first years of romance with Pam, Harvey was a regular at the flower shop. He let the habit die when he realized affordable gifts had a cooling effect on her unless they were accompanied by diamonds or designer perfumes. Now, after a week of catching his Zs on the couch, and strained communication with Pam, Harvey’s suffering from chronic fear that his family life is disintegrating beyond repair. What he needs is a juicy felony to solve, a tough challenge to keep his mind off of his domestic troubles, at least during work hours.

  Whoever commits the felony had better wait until tomorrow, however. Tonight Harvey intends to put his troubles, and those of the world, on hold while he revels in the job of being a proud daddy.

  The frizzy-haired owner beams when she sees him. “Well, look what the storm dragged in,” she says. “What can I do you for, Detective? Something for date night at lock-up?”

  Harvey’s grin is as automatic as it is wide. “Na,” he says, “the druggies can find their own damned daisies. But you can load me up for my little girl. Effie’s performing a ballet solo tonight. Her first.” Although his words aren’t likely to conjure images of Swan Lake, he clarifies, “It’s just for a minute or so at the McFarland Elementary Winter Extravaganza. But still, hey?”

  “Absolutely, flowers are called for. I know just the thing.” The woman sashays her skirt past a glass case, showcasing spectacular bouquets with equally spectacular price tags. She bends over a pot of minuscule long-stemmed roses. When she’s done sorting and tugging, the offering she holds up for Harvey’s approval has six or seven underwhelming pink blooms concealed rather than accented by sprays of baby’s-breath. “Perfect for a budding ballerina,” she says.

  Harv
ey nods, too cowed by his own ignorance of such things to insist on the best he believes his daughter deserves. While the roses are wrapped in sparkling paper, Harvey’s eyes stray to an exotic bird-of-paradise bouquet behind glass. On impulse he says, “You know what? Wrap that beauty up too.”

  “Someone’s getting lucky tonight!”

  “A guy can hope,” Harvey says. But the woman’s teasing doesn’t summon a vision of ice-queen Pamela as it should. The naked image that flashes through his mind is that of Romy Kiknicky, wife of a decent man, mother of Effie’s best friend. Romy, a good woman, whose beautiful eyes would burn him with shame if she knew he dared to place her into a sexual fantasy.

  Harvey gives his head a shake as he leaves the store, bouquets in hand. “Get a grip,” he says.

  «7»

  “Light me, baby,” Celine says from her bed.

  After whispering his mother’s name, Gabriel kept the door open, leaving enough light for him to see the party rings sparkle on her hand. Her shaky gesture means “Come closer.”

  He finds a pink lighter on her nightstand beside her kit and “medicine.” The flame burns his finger before he manages to keep it going.

  Elvis the Pelvis grunts beside Celine. He stayed away until the lady from Social Services came, but now Elvis says he’s back for good.

  Gabriel knows not to pull away when Celine grabs his hand. “You’re really going to insist I skip work for a lousy school play?” she says, not even trying to be quiet. Her voice makes Elvis jerk in his sleep.