Sea Change

tive Cruz. She was pretty but overweight, and she had a cheerful manner.

“You know Corliss and Claudia Plum,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I went to school with them.”

“And did you inform them of their sister’s death?”

“Flo?”

“Florence Horvath.”

“She’s dead?” Kimmy said.

“She is.”

“My God!” Kimmy said.

“I’m guessing that you didn’t inform them of Florence’s death.”

“God, no.”

“So how did they hear of it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them in years.”

“Really?”

“Years. Not since I was, like, fifteen.”

“And you are?”

“I’ll be twenty-one in August.”

“And are you in school?”

“I’m going into my senior year at U. Miami.”

“Your family lives in Sarasota?”

“Yes. That’s the last time I saw the Plums. Before we moved.”

“And that was in?”

2 3 0

S E A C H A N G E

“Ah . . . senior year at Vandersea. I was seventeen.”

“So you haven’t seen them since you were seventeen,”

Kelly Cruz said.

“No.”

“But you said fifteen.”

“Well, I didn’t see much of them for a while before then.”

“I understood that you were pretty good friends.”

“Not really.”

“I heard you used to sleep over sometimes. That seems like friends.”

“I only did it a couple of times.”

“When you were fifteen?”

“Yes.”

The room seemed very quiet. Kimmy didn’t look at Kelly Cruz. There was no longer any hint of cheerfulness. She suddenly seemed almost furtive. Kelly Cruz could feel a click inside, as if something had snapped into place, and a connection had been completed.

“What happened when you were fifteen?” Kelly Cruz said.

Kimmy looked at the floor and shook her head slowly.

“Something happened,” Kelly Cruz said.

Kimmy kept shaking her head. Kelly Cruz paid no atten -

tion. She knew she was right.

“Florence Horvath died under suspicious circumstances,”

Kelly Cruz said. “Up in a town outside of Boston. I’m helping out on this end of the investigation.”

Kimmy neither looked up nor stopped the slow movement of her head.

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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R

“Before I came over here, I talked on the phone with the police chief up there. He said that maybe I should be alert for things involving Mr. Plum.”

Kimmy stopped shaking her head. Her shoulders hunched up as if to protect her neck. Kelly Cruz had seen abused children before. She knew at a level she didn’t understand that what happened had to do with sex.

“Did anything happen involving Mr. Plum?”

Kimmy stood and went to the bathroom and closed the door. Kelly Cruz heard the lock turn. She waited. Nothing happened. After a time she went to the bathroom door.

“Kimmy?” she said.

“Go away.”

“Can’t do that, Kimmy.”

“I won’t come out,” Kimmy said.

“Sooner or later you will,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I won’t talk about it.”

“You have to, Kimmy,” Kelly Cruz said. “You want to spend the rest of your life with the door locked?”

Kelly Cruz waited. Kimmy didn’t speak. The door didn’t open.

“Kimmy?” Kelly Cruz said. “Are you all right?”

Silence.

“Kimmy, I have to know you’re all right, and the only way I can know that is if you open the door and talk to me.”

Silence.

“I’m concerned for your welfare,” Kelly Cruz said. “Either 2 3 2

S E A C H A N G E

you come out now, or I kick the door in. I’m a cop, I know how to do that.”

Silence.

Kelly Cruz backed off two steps and drove her heel into the door next to the handle. She could hear the jam tear. The door slammed open and she went in. She didn’t see Kimmy.

She pulled the shower curtain aside. Kimmy was sitting in the tub with her knees up and her face pressed against them.

“Come on, Kimmy,” Kelly Cruz said. “Get up.”

Kimmy didn’t move. Kelly Cruz bent over and put her hands under Kimmy’s arms and tried to lift her.

“Up you go,” Kelly Cruz said.

Kimmy was dead weight.

Kelly Cruz felt her neck. The pulse was okay. She was breathing. No sign that she had tried to hurt herself. She was just inert. Kelly Cruz tried again to lift her and failed.

“Shit,” Kelly Cruz said.

She went to the living room and picked up the phone and called for help.

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49

K immy Young never told the Plum girls about Florence Horvath’s death,” Kelly

Cruz said on the phone.

“So how’d they know?” Jesse said.

“I don’t know,” Kelly Cruz said. “But there’s more.”

“Okay.”

“Kimmy and the twins used to be pals, and Kimmy would go and spend the night and listen to records and giggle about boys.”

“Un-huh.”

“When I asked her more about that she freaked out. I had to get the paramedics. We took her to the hospital and the S E A C H A N G E

doctors got her tranqued enough to be calm but not asleep and I talked with her.”

Jesse felt hollow.

“Un-huh,” he said.

“With drugs, she could talk about it. One night while she was there the old man molested them, and tried to include her.”

“Shit,” Jesse said.

“My thought exactly.”

“She give you details?” Jesse said.

“Yes.”

Jesse waited. He could hear Kelly Cruz breathing.

“I hate this,” Kelly Cruz said.

“I don’t like it much, either,” Jesse said.