Excerpt from Tangled Roots
© 2007 - G.G. Vandagriff
All rights reserved.
Prologue
1936
The single shot sounded a dull thud. Somehow silencers made the whole act of murder a bit anti-climactic.
The murderer looked at what he had done. His victim sat slumped at his precise walnut desk in his Old World library as though he were some sort of an English gentleman granting an interview. Well. No longer. He wouldn’t tyrannize anyone anymore.
The murderer laughed as a whimsical idea occurred to him. He would put the gent to bed. There was no one around but the tyrant’s daughter, who was fast asleep in another wing of this hideous pile of a house.
Letting himself out of the mansion half an hour later, he laughed again. His burst of sound turned into an icy cloud in the freezing air. He was well satisfied. He’d gain his end by other means. No one even knew of his existence, let alone his relationship to the dead man. That was the pure, elegant beauty of it. He would contrive.
Chapter One
Alex Campbell tried to concentrate on her new case as she drove the final leg from Kansas City to Chicago. But the closer she got to her destination, the more the past intruded. Of course, it was winter now, and a quilt of white shrouded the vast lawns in front of the North Shore mansions. Behind them, Lake Michigan foamed like a sullen witch’s brew, dark pewter with roiling white caps. Last August, when everything was green and the lake sparkling, she had been on this same road, bent on confronting her parents after eighteen years. It had been a disastrous event, culminating in a murder.
Her life had changed beyond all recognition in the intervening months. It seemed futile to tell herself she was a new person now, facing new challenges. These surroundings triggered an automatic response not only to the horrors of last summer but to adolescent dramas played out long ago.
The self-assured, thirty-six-year-old widow of a world-renowned photographer wilted away, leaving an insecure, frightened teenager uncertain about what awaited her in that daunting neo-Georgian mansion in Winnetka she had once called home. Would it ever be any different? Her father was dead. She had forgiven her mother and moved on. Hadn’t she?
Her growing anxiety dismayed her. Wasn’t forgiveness enough? She hadn’t expected these childish fears.
What would Dr. Goodwin say? She wouldn’t ask her. Today’s interview at the North Side Treatment Center was not about her problems. It was about Holly Weston, a sixteen-year-old drug addict. She would focus on the job, not the past. This was the first time she had used her genealogical skills for the psychiatric hospital, except when she had done a genogram of her own family while her mother was recovering there. She knew firsthand how valuable these psychological family trees could be. Dr. Goodwin was convinced that there was something amiss in young Holly Weston’s family. A secret.
Though they made her uneasy, massively dysfunctional families also fascinated Alex. She felt compelled to heal them in order to make the world safe. Daniel should understand that.
As she drove up Sheridan Road, the twisting street with its elite dwellings continued to elicit unwanted memories. Was Holly’s life as empty as her own had been with an alcoholic mother and a workaholic father? Were her problems with drugs a cry for help? Or was her acting out due to some other factor that Alex might uncover in the genogram she was about to begin? Ancestors could be a blessing or a curse or sometimes both. The sins of the fathers echoed in unpredictable ways. That’s what genograms helped determine. What was Holly’s sense of reality? Did it bear any relation to the actual facts? Or was her whole world some sort of cover-up, as Alex’s had been?
She kept coming back to herself. Maybe Daniel had been right, and this was going to be painful. In the winter light, the undulations of Sheridan Road were full of shadows, particularly as she drove down into the heavily wooded hollow south of Highland Park. The thick stand of bare black-brown trees gave her the sense of a lifeless prison overhung by circling carrion birds. She shivered. I’m not a child anymore. I’m a grownup. I pay taxes.
She didn’t want to think of the conversation with Daniel last night after the opera. But now every word and nuance replayed itself in her mind.
* * * *
“Alex, I’m sorry, but I have to tell you, I really don’t like the sound of this new job of yours,” Daniel said.
They had come back to her crazy, half run-down apartment building in the artistic community of Westport, Missouri. Necessity had compelled them to use the fire escape, as the elevator of the Baltimore was permanently out of order. The mellow strains of a cello sounded through the wall she shared with her Hispanic neighbor.
“Why not?” Alex demanded, feeling her hackles rise. “It’s a great opportunity to be near my mother.”
“Why do you want to work at a psych hospital of all places?” he inquired, his Kelly green eyes probing hers.
“You work at a psych hospital,” she countered.
“I’m a psychologist. You’re a genealogist. And the way you run your business, that seems to be extremely hazardous to your health. If you go, you should at least take Briggie.”
Restraining more violent gestures, Alex pushed herself away from her cherry parson’s table and stood up. “I knew Madame Butterfly was a mistake,” she said. “Don’t be so melodramatic. There aren’t likely to be any murders in this case. And my mental health is just fine, Dr. Grinnell.”
He took a deep breath of resignation and ran his fingers through his ginger-colored hair. “I hear myself and know I’m blowing it, but when I see these red flags, they’re like triggers . . .”
He stood up, too, and began pacing her small living room with its white Bauhaus couches facing one another. The silver-gray walls were hung with chrome-framed posters—photographs of Florence, Venice, Rome, and Genoa. Stewart’s last commission.
Stopping at the square glass coffee table, Daniel picked up her husband’s book, which invariably exercised some kind of magnetism over him. Paging through the photo essay on Scotland, he looked as though he were seeking something definite that continued to elude him.
His preoccupation with Stewart calmed her. Here was a substantive barrier she could hide behind while the intimacy of the opera cooled. Daniel was always trying to find a way to relate to her loss.
Over the last year, the pain of Stewart’s death had begun to numb. He would always be a presence in her life, but that presence was starting to be accompanied by a gentle nostalgia punctuated like lightning with times of searing horror, anger, and despair. Being a psychologist, Daniel knew that.
As she sat down on the couch, she observed, “Therapists think they are the modern equivalent of the knight errant.”
“Come on, Alex,” he said, sitting down beside her. His look was entreating. “You don’t have to be a psychologist to see that you’ve had more than your share of shocks in the past three years.”
“Look. I’m dealing with it, okay?” Why did she have to feel so powerfully connected to this solid man with the wrestler’s frame who had seen her through the worst period of her life? “You don’t really know me. You always see me as a victim. I’m stronger than you think.”
He took her hands and, looking down at them, smoothed them with his thumbs. Smiling reluctantly, he said, “I know you’re strong. Dang good at karate, too. For a yellow belt.”
Unfortunately, he had a very nice smile. “I haven’t had time for lessons lately,” she said, pulling her hands away. “I’ve been out of town.”
“Yes. I noticed. And now you’re going out of town again.”
“It shouldn’t take long. And I’m really looking forward to helping these people. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Looking at her steadily, he said, “I know I’m an idiot sometimes. Don’t shut me out, Alex.”
He had been so endlessly patient with her uncertainties. Reaching out, she stroked the hair back from his forehead and said with a grin, “You haven’t ambushed me lately. I’m ready. I got one of those super soaker squirt guns.”
“I actually thought the opera was more fitting in this weather,” he said, returning her grin. “I assaulted you with Puccini.”
“You have the most peculiar ideas of courtship, Daniel Grinnell. Hari kari? I like squirt guns better.”
* * * *
The memory of the last exchange made her smile. She would go to the treatment center and begin her job. She was a professional, after all. Half owner of RootSearch, Inc. It was a crazy business, maybe, but it, combined with the nurturing of her colleague, Brighamina Poulson, and the gospel of Jesus Christ, had succeeded in rescuing her. She was no longer dangling all alone in the universe by a single, frayed thread of will.
As Alex pulled into the parking lot of the red brick, black shuttered hospital, she thought how ordinary and reassuring it looked from the outside. Kind of like a bank. No one would ever guess that terrible battles were fought within its walls.
Pulling down her visor mirror, Alex quickly finger-combed her shoulder-length black ringlets and applied a little lip gloss to her full mouth. Her eyes, looking tired again, had purplish smudges beneath them, a common condition due to her Celtic pallor. In Scotland, where she and Stewart had lived, they had accused her of having Irish blood, with blue eyes “put in by a smutty finger.”
Dr. Goodwin was expecting her. The swan-necked Audrey Hepburn look-alike, dressed in a yellow woolen suit with large black buttons, welcomed her warmly. They had fought wars together.
“It’s good to see you again, Alex. I’m glad you decided to take this case. How is your mother?”
“Doing well. She’s using a walker because of her MS. But I don’t think she’s relapsed.”
“Good. If she can keep away from liquor while she’s facing multiple sclerosis and living alone, she’s an incredible woman.”
“I took this case mainly to be near her. I don’t like her living alone, either. But she won’t leave that house and come to Kansas City with me. And that’s where my business is.” She squared her shoulders, feeling anything but professional in her jeans and black turtleneck. Perhaps she should have worn her suit, but she had opted for comfort while traveling. “Tell me about this case.”
The doctor settled behind her desk and toyed with a pencil, bouncing it by its eraser. The room was meant to be soothing with its rose-colored walls and prints of begonias. “I’m not really sure what we’re looking at here. Holly seems to be in a deep state of denial. I can’t get her mother to open up to me at all, so I don’t know anything about the family system. That’s crucial in dealing with a sixteen-year-old.”
Dr. Goodwin stuck the pencil incongruously behind her ear. She was about Alex’s own age and tended to shed her professionalism the longer they were together. “Whenever I try talking about the family, Mrs. Weston goes all pruney. I thought we might have more luck if you spoke with Holly’s grandmother, Mrs. Harrison, who lives in Lake Forest. I just found out about her because Holly likes her dog.” She sighed deeply. “That’s about all I’ve been able to get out of her. She’s extremely hostile.”
Alex’s heart quailed, so she sat straighter. She didn’t like being around angry people, but she would deal with it. “I’d like to visit with Holly first, I think.”
“Yes. That would probably be a good idea. There’s something going on in that family. I can sense it. I think Holly may be out of the loop.”
“That sounds familiar. You think the answer lies in this genogram?”
“Psychological family trees are absolutely vital in a case like this. As you know from your own experience, the facts can be a big surprise. The construction that families choose to put on those facts is what tells us what we really need to work on.”
Oh, yes. Alex had had experience. An uneasy feeling told her that that experience just might prove more of a trial than a help.