I didn’t say anything. I turned and marched down the hall toward the arrow that said rest rooms, looked for the door with the skirt picture on it, and burst through. In a white heat, muttering obscenities, I threw my bag on the counter and reached for a handful of paper towels. That’s when I saw her reflection in the chrome towel holder: Leslie Metrano huddled on the floor with her back against the blue tile wall. Her face was mottled with patches of flaming red and dead white.
I wetted the towels and dropped down beside her on the cold tile floor.
“What are you doing in here, Leslie?”
“I have no place else to go,” she said, raising her cheek from her knee. “The ladies’ room downstairs is full of bag ladies.”
“You waiting to see George?”
She shook her head.
“You can go home.”
“Never. Thanks to you, I know how George got the money to buy that house.”
I handed her the cool, wet towels, and she wiped her face with them, making it a uniform flame color. She wore her official Bingo slacks and a white shirt with a hand-knit sweater over it. She looked very young, and very frightened. And there was something else, some emotion that purred below the surface like a tiger stalking prey.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked. “Get you some coffee?”
“No.” She dried her face on the sleeve of her pink sweater, smearing what was left of her blush and mascara. “I’m okay. They asked George if he wanted a public defender, but he told me to go hire him some big hotshot. I called our business lawyer, and he only reminded me we haven’t paid our bill. I thought I would sit in here for a while and think things over.”
“Do you mind if I’m here?” I asked.
She shook her head again.
“I know some attorneys. Maybe I could give one a call.” She looked up at me with clear eyes set in puffy flesh. “You told me you have a daughter.”
“Yes.”
“If she was taken from you, would you help the thief?”
“I would castrate him first.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
“How can I help you, Leslie?”
She leaned her head back against the wall and smiled up toward the ceiling. “Got a knife?”
This encounter was so surreal, two angry women sitting on the bathroom floor of the police station, with the source of their anger in an interrogation room down the hall. I opened my bag and took out a pack of gum that had been there for God knows how long, and offered it to Leslie.
“Maybe we can help each other here,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I think I know. If it gets to be too much, you say so. Okay?”
“One thing first. Did you hit George last night?”
“In self-defense.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“Okay,” I said. “It begins. Ten years ago, you were destitute. Five kids, no prospects. George was unhappy and desperate. Am I close?”
“Close enough.”
“After Amy disappeared, things began to look up. Friends helped. The community was generous. You and I know now what happened, but back then didn’t you wonder where all the money came from?”
“What if I didn’t want to question it too much? I just thought George was skimming the donations that came in. Is that so bad?”
“I’m not big on moral judgment calls,” I said. “Skip forward, now. After ten good years, you were looking destitution in the eye again. George felt that old desperation again. He went back to his earlier source, Randy Ramsdale. Maybe he asked for a loan.”
She shook her head. “George tried to blackmail him.”
“He told you that?”
“Round about daybreak this morning he did. He came home with blood pouring out of his nose, a big old black eye. Looked like a licked puppy. Tail between his legs, that’s for sure. He needed help and I made him talk to me to get it.”
“Are you going to tell me what he said?”
“Every word of it. From one mother to another.” She shifted to get comfortable, then she began.
“George told me he went to this Ramsdale guy and asked him to help out, maybe take a second mortgage on our restaurant. But Ramsdale said no, and he was real upset George had come by his house. He was arguing with George, telling him to leave, when she came home from school. When Amy came home, George said it broke his heart to see her, so pretty and grown up.
“Then he lied to me and told me he couldn’t stand for me to be apart from my little girl anymore. He was going to get her back. I know it was the money he wanted. But he said that he decided right then and there to tell Ramsdale to pay up, or he would go to the police and charge him with kidnapping, and he was taking Amy back. I’m not sure that last part wasn’t a lie, too. According to George, there was a big fight.”
“Amy was there? She heard them fight?”
“Part of it. Her daddy, Ramsdale that is, had sent her upstairs. He was trying to hush up George when Amy came back into the room where they were. She was crying this time, real upset. She went up to Ramsdale and asked him who George was, because she recognized him as the man she always saw in her nightmares. The man who chased her and called her Amy. She was real scared.”
“I bet she was,” I said, fighting back tears. Hillary had also told John Smith about her nightmares. How do you handle it when you’re a kid and your nightmare walks in and picks a fight with your father and you can’t wake up and make him go away? And then your daddy disappears?
I reached up to the towel dispenser for a dry towel and dabbed at my own face. “When did George kill Randy Ramsdale?”
“We never got to that,” she said. Then she started to laugh, self-consciously covering her face with her hands.
“What’s funny?”
“I have to apologize to you, Maggie.” She peered at me over her fingertips, tears running from her eyes again. “I let him blame you. George was sitting there on the kitchen chair telling me all about seeing my little girl, and I was holding this ice pack on his eye, wiping his bloody nose, taking care of him as usual. Well, I’d stayed up all night waiting for him, keeping busy fixing a few little things he never seemed to get around to. The toolbox was right there on the table beside me. I guess I was pretty mad before he even came home. When he said he made Amy cry, well, I just picked up that great big old hammer…”
I laughed. I could see what happened next. “It was you! You broke George’s nose.”
“Yes, ma’am, I did. Just picked up that great big old hammer and let him have it. Mashed his nose flat. He was so scared he didn’t even holler. Then I told him to get in the car, I’d take him to the hospital. But I drove him straight here, instead. His eyes were so swollen up he couldn’t see a thing.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “You going to tell on me?”
“I’m going to shake your hand.”
She gave me her hand, and we sat there with our backs against the wall, holding hands and laughing. That’s when Mike burst in.
“What the hell is going on?” he said, seeming alarmed.
I wiped my streaming eyes. “You can’t come in here, Detective Flint. Real women only.”
“Hello, Mrs. Metrano,” he said, sitting down beside me anyway. “We wondered where you had gone.”
“Where else could I go?” she said. “Except the little girls’ room. How’s George?”
“I think he’s felt better,” Mike said. “They’ve booked him and now they’re going to transport him over to St. Mary’s Hospital to get his injuries tended to.”
“What charge did you book him on?” I asked.
Mike smiled. “Avarice, with intent.”
“Did he talk?”
“Not a peep.”
I smiled at Leslie. “Well, lah dee dah. They should have beat it out of him.”
Leslie squeezed my hand. Her expression grew serious. “Maggie, I guess I’m ready now. I kept thinking how much it was going to hurt my kids, and my little grandbaby, to have George put in jail. But I know he never gave us one thought when he did all those things. A wife doesn’t have to testify against her husband. I know that. But I have a few things I want to say.”