Off You Go Read online

  “Let’s back up now,” Dewey said. “Tell me about your daughter.” He’d found it best not to get too specific at first. Let her tell the story.

  Her words came out in sadness, the length of some of the syllables pushing the story toward melodrama, though it most certainly was not. “Gina was twenty-eight, God rest her soul. She graduated from the College of Charleston five years ago, which was the extended program, as Hammond calls it. She took her sweet time graduating. I’m terrified that our spoiling her finally got the best of her. I have to blame myself. We never taught her how to fight. She didn’t bother looking for a job after school, and the way Hammond continued to throw money at her, I don’t think she had any intentions of ever worrying about it.” Faye raised her hands and made a push motion. “But I don’t mean to take anything away from her. She was a good girl, deep down. And she did have some drive. She loved working out…running, going to the gym and the rock-climbing wall. She took really good care of herself. But we just made it too easy for her. Her skin wasn’t thick enough.”

  Faye reached into her purse and handed Dewey a photo. He studied it. Gina was sitting at a picnic table waving back at the camera with a smile that couldn’t have been brighter. She had long red hair pulled into a ponytail, and tiny freckles dotted her cheeks. She was a stunning young woman—not exactly the “girl” that Faye kept referring to. Dewey figured a twenty-eight-year-old was as woman as you could get.

  “I took this last week. Two days before. The red hair is her father’s. Now, does this look like a girl who would jump off a bridge two days later?”

  Dewey shook his head, but he was thinking how wrong she could be. People who kill themselves aren’t always holding up signs that say Suicidal.

  A woodpecker started going at one of the pine trees. Faye seemed not to notice.

  Faye continued. “Now, she had seen her fair share of psychiatrists, and she’d been on and off every medicine behind the counter. I think that’s one of the main reasons the police ruled it a suicide so quickly. But she was doing better.”

  “Hold on…now you’re starting to sound like you don’t think she committed suicide. With all due respect, you don’t think I’m going to find your daughter alive, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “And you don’t think I’m going to find that she was murdered, do you?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

  “Fair enough. Long as you aren’t thinking I’m a miracle worker. I am definitely not.”

  “No, I’m not expecting miracles. I’m simply saying that they ruled it a suicide within twenty-four hours, and it’s because she had tendencies.”

  “Depression?”

  “Sure. When she felt good, she was on top of the world. When she was down, though, she could be the devil. These mood swings could last months. Not bi-polar. She just had waves of good and bad. Needless to say, she wasn’t the easiest child to raise. Like my daddy used to say, ‘the fattest cow was hardest to corral.’ I know we’ve always spoiled her, and we probably trained her to be who she was, but if she didn’t get what she wanted, she would do her best to make us absolutely miserable.” Faye sighed, exhausted by even thinking about it. “She’d been pretty stable for the past six months or so. It was one of those good streaks. I think she’d finally found a good combination of medicine, and our relationship was getting better and better.”

  “What medicine was she taking?”

  “Zoloft.”

  Dewey was not a pharmacist but was familiar with Zoloft. He’d thought about taking it in the past year.

  “Can you tell me about the night it happened? I know it’s probably tough to think about.”

  She waved him off. “It’s all I think about. A policeman woke us about 3 a.m. with the news. The person who first called 911 was passing over the bridge and saw Gina park her Land Rover at the top in the far right-hand lane heading downtown. They saw her get out and climb over the rail to the walking lane. Several witnesses have corroborated. The second call to 911 was a resident of the Renaissance, those condos on the Mt. Pleasant side of the bridge. They’d seen a person jump. This was all around 2 a.m. The police found the keys in the ignition and a suicide note on the dashboard.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “I’m sorry. That’s all it said. I’m sorry. Love, Gina.” The woodpecker was still pecking away.

  “It was her handwriting?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  “How did the police respond? Was there an investigation?”

  “Of course. They did their due diligence. They talked to people. They figured out she had a history of mental illness. They put all the facts together and decided there was no foul play. Simple as that.”

  “I don’t see how there could have been. Unless someone pushed her over, which sounds highly improbable.”

  “I know. I know.” She put her hands on her lap. “Tell me why, then. There was a reason she was smiling in that picture. I told the detective in charge, but he dismissed it pretty quickly. Of course, he doesn’t care why she killed herself, as long as no one else was involved.”

  “What reason?”

  “She was in love. A week before, while we were trying on clothes at Hampden on King Street, I noticed a little sparkle. It was in her eyes and the way she walked and the way she talked, and I convinced her to admit it. You know how we all are when we find love. We can’t help but bubble with life. I don’t remember her looking that giddy since she was seven years old. Lord knows, before that, she was a serial dater and a heartbreaker. So she admitted it to me, but wouldn’t tell me who it was, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She was always one to keep things to herself. It was the first time in her life she’d felt that way. She probably didn’t want to jinx it. She said she’d spill the beans soon. Anyway, I’m telling you this because I know she wasn’t in one of her bad stages.” Faye’s smile faded. “So why would she do it? Why would my baby do it?”

  Dewey stated the most obvious. “Maybe this person she had fallen in love with didn’t feel the same way. Or maybe he or she broke up with her.”

  “Gina’s not a lesbian, I can promise you that.”

  “I never rule anything out.” Humoring her, he continued, “So maybe he broke up with her.”

  “Of course I’ve thought of that.”

  They talked for a while longer, and Dewey asked for the keys to Gina’s apartment, her cell phone, and a list of her family, friends, ex-boyfriends, and co-workers. He understood Faye’s need to understand why. Over the past year, he’d spent many lonely nights wondering why himself. Why was he an alcoholic? Why had he done such terrible things to his family? Why did he have to drink? Why was he such a miserable person? Those answers might never come, but perhaps he could at least give this kind woman an answer to her why?

  Faye Callahan drove off in her convertible BMW well after dark. Dewey decided he’d start first thing in the morning. He grabbed his mandolin from inside and went back out to the rocking chair. He tuned the instrument to the chirp of the crickets and picked around for a while, making up a few melodies and getting lost in the sounds of the night. He missed his band. He missed performing. He wished he had never let those guys down, but that was done. They’d never take him back. It was all too painful, those last few months when he was falling off stage and singing the wrong words or mumbling because even the wrong words wouldn’t come out. At the peak of his collapse, he’d tried to stage dive. Not something bluegrass fans were accustomed to.

  But he hadn’t given up on playing. He was determined to get back to entertaining people. It was a major part of who he was, a part of his identity, and that was yet another hole in his life that needed plugging.

  He fell asleep on the couch with the Big Book on his chest, the one he’d been introduced to at his first AA meeting. The thing now looked like it had been through hell, with it’s folded down pages and water spots and cigarette bu
rns. In fact, it had been through hell, and he’d been the one carrying it through.

  Despite all the shitty stuff hovering around his life, Dewey was feeling good as he pulled into downtown Charleston onto Bull Street the next morning. Damn good, in fact. Especially compared to the college kid with frizzy hair and unnecessary sunglasses making his way along the sidewalk, surely returning from an all-nighter of typical college debauchery.

  Dewey remembered those days. He didn’t miss hangovers one bit. Despite what he did to himself, his brain had come back to full service, and that was a darn miracle. He had been at the top of his class back in his high school and close to it at the College of Charleston, but all that drinking had worked away at his brain like a wrecking ball. He was thankful that he was able to recover. He liked his brain.

  Bull Street was good living if you could get it. It ran all the way to the water on one end and right up to the College of Charleston campus on the other. Gina’s place was in the middle, not too far from MUSC, the medical university. She had lived in one of the enormous century-old mansions that—because of escalating property taxes and dwindling trust funds—had been turned into funky apartment buildings that were perfect for the more well-to-do MUSC and C of C students.

  Dewey walked down the long porch, passing two other apartment doors and some wicker furniture. He unlocked the door to 1-C and entered, closing the door and leaving behind the sounds of construction at the neighbor’s house. He stood in the entryway for a moment. How strange and sad to be in the home of someone recently deceased. The family hadn’t started packing up, which made sense considering they didn’t even have a body to bury yet. Dewey had asked Faye to keep things as they were until he had found her answer, so hopefully any intentions they had were now on hold.

  The apartment looked like Gina had gone to class and would be back any minute. There were dishes in the sink and cold coffee in the pot. But it wasn’t dirty at all, especially not for someone her age. It actually looked like she had a housekeeper. The wood floors had that extra sheen to them.

  Two impressive watercolors of flowers hung on the wall. He was no expert, but both looked like originals and looked expensive. Dewey noticed a laptop on the desk and made a mental note to take that with him. A copy of US Weekly and People were on the coffee table. Trashy magazine reading was certainly a much better vice than the ones Dewey had chosen in the past.

  The bedroom was also quite tidy, save the unmade bed. “Who slept in this bed with you, Gina?” he said out loud. “Just give me a little clue.” Dewey had been rightfully accused of talking to himself over the years.

  There was another flower painting above the bed. “Southern women love things to be pretty as a picture, don’t they?” he said. He stared at a framed photograph of the Callahans on top of the dresser. Hammond was the father’s name. He had a thinning head of gray hair that, according to Faye, had once been red. Dewey planned on looking more into him later. Dewey loved playing the Bird’s Bay golf course, so he wasn’t exactly a fan of the guy.

  Dewey rummaged around for a while, searching drawers, cabinets, and closets, looking for anything that might shed some light. He was hoping he’d find a love letter or a pair of boxers or even a picture, but he had no such luck. Nothing that even suggested she was in a relationship—which made no sense.

  Dewey decided he better go through the trash. Not his favorite part of finding answers, but certainly one that had helped him in the past. Many of those old apartments didn’t have disposals, so it was a nasty business. Dewey got through what was in the kitchen without heaving, though. Then he went outside to go find the building’s main trash. The trash cans were lined up near the side of the house. He looked inside. They were totally empty. The garbage men must have been by lately.

  He lit up the first smoke of the day and looked around. Some students were headed to class. One of them was pushing along on one of those long skateboards that were becoming so popular. He figured he should talk to the neighbors and climbed back up the steps to the wrap-around porch. Just as he was about to knock, an idea came to him. It was a reach, but worth the effort. The dumpster for the construction site next door was only thirty feet or so from Gina’s front door. Closer than her own building’s trash cans.

  “If you have something you want to hide,” he said, “you don’t throw it in your own trash. You find somewhere else to put it. Maybe…just maybe,” he asked Gina, “you had the same thought. Did you?” He crossed over into the neighbor’s yard. The dumpster was in the driveway. A couple workers were on the other side of the house and couldn’t see him. He put his hands on the edge of the dumpster and hoisted himself up so he could see inside. He started looking closely, scanning for something out of place. It was full of scraps of wood and nail boxes and rebar and PVC pipe and everything else you could imagine, but he didn’t see any domestic trash bags or anything else that appeared unusual. “Well, it was worth a shot,” he whispered to himself.

  Right as he started to turn away, he noticed a pink box. He looked closer. It was packaging he knew all too well. And it was certainly something that didn’t have any business being in a construction site dumpster. He made sure the workers hadn’t noticed him, then lifted himself up and climbed inside. Moving carefully, he snatched the box and climbed back out.

  He might have just figured it all out.

  4

  Back in Gina’s apartment, Dewey Moses put the box that read First Response on the counter. He and Erica had used the same kind for both of their girls. Two of the happiest moments of his life had been seeing the double lines that meant “positive.” Dewey opened the box and dumped the contents onto the counter. There it was, a used pregnancy test. Guess what…the lucky girl was pregnant.

  The chances that the test was Gina’s were obviously quite slim. He guessed there were plenty of women who had to be discreet with pregnancy tests after they used them, so just about anyone with a vagina could have thrown that box into the dumpster. Maybe a friend of his could grab some fingerprints or DNA from the plastic. He put the test, a hairbrush for fingerprint/DNA comparison, and Gina’s laptop in his attaché and left the apartment. The idea of Gina being pregnant made the whole deal much sadder.

  An Asian woman was now sitting in one of the wicker chairs on the porch, her bare feet kicked up on a small table and her eyes focused on a book.

  “What you reading?” Dewey asked.

  She pulled away from the book and looked at him with gorgeous cinnamon eyes. Her looks derailed him for a moment, but Dewey kept his cool and waited for an answer. She showed him the cover and said, “A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan.”

  “I know it well.”

  She grinned. “No, you don’t.”

  “I’ve read them all. Fantasy is my thing. You know he lived not too far down the road, right?”

  “I heard that. On Tradd Street.”

  “That’s right.” Dewey was impressed. She was on the seventh book of the Wheel of Time series, a feat in and of itself. At around one thousand pages each, you really had to put your heart into it. “The next one comes out soon,” he said.

  “Are they still as good?”

  “Every bit. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you different.” Dewey smiled, keeping his eyes from wandering. There were some fine legs in his lower peripheral vision, but he wasn’t going to let them come into focus. He was married, period.

  She set her book down on the table and asked, “Were you a friend of Gina’s?”

  “No. I never met her. I’m helping the family clean up her affairs.” The lies came out so easily these days. “Did you know her?”

  “As neighbors do. We didn’t spend any time together other than bumping into each other and having a quick chitchat. I’m a little older. Why do you ask?”

  “She was dating someone, and he left a few things in her apartment.” And the lies keep coming! “No one seems to know anything about him.”

  “I saw a few guys come and go over the year I’ve lived
here but never met anyone.”

  “Were any of them older?”

  She grinned. “What is ‘older’ these days?”

  “Not you, rest assured. I just mean…anyone ten-plus years older than her.”

  “Not one that I saw. Except for her dad. He came over once a week or so.”

  Dewey stuck out his hand and introduced himself. She said her name was Candice, and they shook. She held onto his hand a little too long, and Dewey had to stifle a blush. Sometimes you meet people that you’re automatically comfortable with. Like you were good friends in a past life, and in this one, you can bypass all the formalities. Candice was a case in point.

  “What’s on your bedside table?” she asked, finally letting go of his hand.

  Dewey felt a moment of invasion before he realized what she was asking. “Oh, I’m halfway through The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson.”

  “Sure. I’ve heard about them. Are they good?”

  Dewey lit up. “Are they good? There’s ten books and I’m reading them for the second time, so yeah, they’re good. He reinvented the genre. You need to finish the Wheel of Time series, and then run, don’t walk, to the store to get started with Gardens of the Moon. It will change you.”

  “Okay, you are as much of a geek as me.” She named several other epic fantasy series, and Dewey had read them all. She’d read her fair share, too. He could count on one hand the women he’d met in his life—including his wife—who were fantasy buffs.

  Dewey knew their connection was starting to lead to trouble, so he thought he’d wrap it up. “Anyway, I could talk all day about this stuff, but I have to run. Can I ask a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “If you see anyone come by, would you please give me a ring?”

  “I can do that.”

  Dewey pulled out a pen and wrote down his name and number in the small composition book he always kept in his pocket. He ripped out the page and handed it to her.