“Lola would’ve been eight years old,” Phil said. “A young girl. Why would she drink an entire bottle of whiskey?”
“I was told the mother was an alcoholic. A kid grows up seeing that . . . Monkey see, monkey do.”
“What happened afterward?” D.D. asked.
That shrug again. “DCF trolled around. The CASA lady paid a visit. No one could find fault with anything. Girls settled back in. That was that.”
“No more falls down the stairs?” D.D. asked.
“Nope.”
“Running into doorknobs?”
“Nope. Lola was acting in some community play, Oliver Twist. Roxanna worked set design. Mike, too. Roberto and Anya started joining them. Guess they got tired of fighting, brokered a peace deal instead. Except for Mike. He quit. Can’t make everyone happy.”
D.D. frowned, churning this around in her head. She couldn’t see an eight-year-old girl suddenly chugging a fifth of whiskey in the middle of the night. It already sounded forced to her. Say, something the infamous Roberto and Anya might have pulled off, if Mike Davis’s account was to be believed. Maybe Roxanna arrived too late to intervene.
So Lola drank the booze, Lola ended up in the hospital.
Then they decided to live happily ever after?
D.D. didn’t buy it for a moment. Her cynical cop’s mind had an entirely different spin on things: Lola went to the hospital, and then Roxanna caved. Did whatever it was Roberto wanted just so long as they never bothered her sister again. At which point Roberto and Anya joined her and Lola at their new hobby, the community theater, in order to keep an eye on her.
Sex? Could it be that awful, that simple? Roxanna submitted to abuse in order to keep her little sister safe? Except why was Lola the one suddenly acting out?
God only knew what went on in a place like this. D.D. already wanted to leave, and she wasn’t a helpless kid. Everything about Mother Del, the house, smacked of hopelessness. No wonder the older kids did their best to stay away as long as possible.
“You ever talk to Juanita Baez?” Phil was asking now.
“Girls’ mom? She showed up. Different. I don’t normally see the parents much. Then again, not too many of my kids get reunited.”
“What did she want to know?”
“Same questions you’re asking now. Except she was a little more hostile on the matter. Convinced Lola was abused by some perv under my roof.”
D.D. watched the woman with fresh interest.
“Look,” Mother Del rumbled. “This house ain’t no castle. And I’m no fairy godmother. But I run a clean operation. House rules, strictly enforced. No drinking, no drugs, no hanky-panky. And that’s that.”
“Where do you sleep?” D.D. had a thought. “This number of kids, an area for babies. There can’t be that many bedrooms upstairs and they must all be taken.”
“Got a room downstairs.”
D.D. looked around. “Where? I see a family room, dining room, kitchen. That’s it.” Then she got it: the front room and its debris field of empty soda cans and chip packages. “You sleep on the sofa, don’t you? Front of the house, farthest room from the stairs. Hell, they could be tap-dancing on the second floor and you’d be none the wiser.”
“I’m a light sleeper,” the woman growled, but her eyes were darting back and forth now, trapped.
“Truth is, you don’t know what’s going on in your house.” D.D. pressed her advantage. “Nor do you care. You just want the money, plain and simple.”
“Simple? You think there’s anything simple about this? I got six kids and three babies to keep clothed and fed. I don’t need any lectures from some skinny blond cop. This work is hard. These kids are hard. But I do my best. And the rules are the rules. If there was anything happening to that little girl, it wasn’t on my watch.”
“Where then?”
“School. Bus. Park. Take your pick. Kids spent a lot of time together, you know, and not just in this house.”
D.D. frowned. Yes, a bunch of kids from the same home would’ve attended the same school. And yet . . .
“What about this community theater?” she’d just started to say when she heard the sound of a door opening behind them.
She and Phil turned.
A teenage girl stood just inside the doorway. D.D. didn’t even have to think.
“Anya Seton?” she asked.
The girl turned and fled.
Chapter 24
AFTER PARTING WAYS WITH THE CASA volunteer, Mrs. Howe, I took a walk. A breeze had kicked up, the temperatures moving to the biting side of fall as the sun faded from the horizon. I hunched inside my thin windbreaker, wishing I’d thought to wear more layers, even a scarf.
The area was still busy this time of night. Brighton was one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Boston and looked it. Narrow streets jammed with hulking apartment buildings or anemic town houses. Wider streets buzzing with coffee shops, corner marts, laundromats. Something for everyone and everyone with something to do.
I wondered if Roxanna Baez had liked living there. Had it scared her when her mother announced they were moving in with her new boyfriend at his place in Brighton? Had it occurred to Roxy that they were returning to their past? Or, three years later, had she and Lola considered their time at Mother Del’s behind them? They were no longer vulnerable foster kids but a reunited family, living in a real house—with two dogs, no less.
Had they felt good in the beginning? Or by sixteen was Roxanna Baez already one of those kids who lived most of her life in fear? Of what she’d come home to after school? Of the latest loser her mother had found in a bar? Of all the ways she’d need to protect her younger siblings?
Maybe Roxy’s advanced skills had nothing to do with me and my group. Maybe this was how good you got during a lifetime spent preparing. I wouldn’t know. At sixteen, I’d still been an innocent girl growing up on my mother’s farm. Which made me feel lucky in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I wished Roxy would make contact. Not that I expected her to magically call me; I barely knew her. But Sarah had spent time with her. Coaxed her into joining our internet support group, vouched for Roxy’s character. Surely if there was anyone Roxy thought she could trust in this madness, it would be our little band of misfits.
Except we were still new to her. While, by all accounts, Roxanna Baez was used to taking care of things on her own.
I hadn’t heard anything more from Sarah. I assumed that meant she was still following Mike Davis. Making my next project Anya Seton.
Standing on a street corner, I started by Googling her name on my phone. First thing that came up was a page on the high school website promoting last spring’s theatrical production of Beauty and the Beast, starring Anya Seton as Belle. Interesting. So Roxy and Lola’s former nemesis was now an actress.
No Twitter handle that I could find. It was possible she did Snapchat or Instagram, but if she did, it was not under a user name I could figure out.
I kept scrolling down. This time I discovered a community theater website. A fall production of Wicked. With Anya listed as playing the role of Glinda. I clicked on the schedule and learned that practice had just wrapped up. Then I mapped the location of the theater on my phone and headed over.
Brighton was small. One of those places with too many streets and too many buildings so nothing was ever in a straight line. More like toggle over two blocks here, then backtrack a block there before heading out on a leftward spoke at a rightward angle. But modern technology kept me on track.
By the time I arrived at the theater, which appeared to be an old New England church, light flooded through the thin front-facing windows, though the grounds appeared quiet. I peered in the window closest to the door, which was covered in at least an inch of grime. Next, I tried the door, which allowed me to enter a small vestibule. I discovered a second door, in an even heavier wooden frame. This one, however, was locked.
I knocked.