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Faith walked down the hallway toward the back rooms, picking her way through broken blenders and toasters and telephones. She wondered if the old woman had scavenged for these things or if she had accumulated them over a lifetime. The framed photographs on the walls looked ancient, some of them in sepia and black-and-white. Faith scanned them as she made her way back, wondering when people had started smiling for photographs, and why. She had some older photos of her mother's grandparents that were particularly treasured. They had lived on a farm during the Depression, and a traveling photographer had taken a shot of their small family as well as a mule that was called Big Pete. Only the mule had been smiling.
There was no Big Pete on Gwendolyn Zabel's wall, but some of the color photographs showed not one but two different young girls, both with dark brown hair hanging down past their pencil-thin waists. They were a few years apart in age, but definitely sisters. None of the more recent photographs showed the two posing together. Jacquelyn's sister seemed to prefer desert settings for the shots she sent her mother, while Jacquelyn's photos tended to show her posing on the beach, a bikini low across her boyishly thin hips. Faith could not help but think if she looked that great at thirty-eight years old, she'd be taking pictures of herself wearing a bikini, too. There were very few recent pictures of the sister, who appeared to have grown plumper with age. Faith hoped she had kept in touch with her mother. They could do a reverse trace on the telephone and find her that way.
The first bedroom did not have a door. Stacks of debris filled the room—more newspapers and magazines. There were some boxes, but for the most part, the small bedroom was filled with so much trash it was impossible to go more than few feet in. A musty odor filled the air, and Faith remembered a story she'd seen on the news many years ago about a woman who'd gotten a paper cut from an old magazine and ended up dying from some strange disease. She backed down out of the room and glanced into the bathroom. More junk, but someone had cleared a path to the toilet and scrubbed it clean. A toothbrush and some other toiletries were lined up neatly on the sink. There were piles of garbage bags in the bathtub. The shower curtain was almost black with mold.
Faith had to turn sideways to get past the door to the master bedroom. She saw the reason as soon as she was inside. There was an old rocking chair near the door, so piled with clothes that it was ready to topple over except for the door propping it up. More clothes were scattered around the room, the sort of stuff that would be called vintage and sold for hundreds of dollars down the street in the funky clothing stores of Little Five Points.
The house was warm, which made it more difficult for Faith to get her sweaty hands into the latex gloves. She ignored the pinprick of dried blood on the tip of her finger, not wanting to think about anything else that would turn her into a sobbing mess.
She started on the chest of drawers first. All of the drawers were open, so it was just a matter of pushing around clothes, looking for stashed letters or an address book that might list family relations. The bed was neatly made, the only item in the house about which "neat" could be said to describe it. There was no telling if Jacquelyn Zabel had slept in her mother's bedroom or if she had opted for a hotel downtown.
Or maybe not. Faith saw an open duffel bag sitting beside a laptop case on the floor. She should have spotted the items immediately, because they were both obviously out of place, with their distinctive designer logos and soft leather shells. Faith checked the laptop case, finding a MacBook Air that her son would've killed for. She booted it up, but the welcome screen asked for a username and password. Charlie would have to send it through the proper channels to try to crack it, but in Faith's experience, Macs that had been password-protected were impossible to decode, even by the manufacturer.
Next, Faith looked through the duffel. The clothes inside were designer—Donna Karan, Jones of New York. The Jimmy Choos were particularly impressive, especially to Faith, who was wearing a skirt that was the equivalent of a camping tent, since she couldn't find any pants in her closet that would button anymore. Jacquelyn Zabel apparently suffered no such sartorial quandaries, and Faith wondered why someone who could obviously afford otherwise chose to stay in this awful house.
So, Jacquelyn had apparently been sleeping in the room. The neatly made bed, a glass of water and a pair of reading glasses on the table beside it, all pointed to a recent inhabitant. There was also a giant, hospital-size bottle of aspirin. Faith opened the container and found it half empty. She would probably need some aspirin herself if she were packing up her mother's home. Faith had seen the heartbreak her father suffered when he'd had to put his mother in an assisted-living facility. The man had passed away years ago, but Faith knew that he had never gotten over having to put his mother in a home.
Unbidden, Faith felt her eyes fill with tears. She let out a groan, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Since she'd seen a plus sign on the pregnancy test, a day hadn't gone by without Faith's brain conjuring some story to make her burst into tears.
She returned to the duffel. She was feeling around for pieces of paper—a notebook, a journal, a plane ticket—when she heard yelling coming from the other side of the house. Faith found Will in the kitchen. A very large and very angry woman was screaming in his face.
"You pigs have no right to be here!"
Faith thought the woman looked just like the type of aging hippie who would use the word "pigs." Her hair was braided down her back and she was wearing a horse-blanket shawl around her body in lieu of a shirt. Faith guessed that the woman was officially the last hold-out in the neighborhood, soon to be the crappiest house on the street. She didn't look like the yoga-loving mommies who probably lived in the renovated mansions.
Will remained remarkably cool, leaning against the refrigerator with a hand in his pocket. "Ma'am, I need you to calm down."
"Fuck you," she shot back. "Fuck you, too," she added, seeing Faith in the doorway. Close up, Faith thought the woman was in her late forties. It was hard to tell, though, since her face was bawled into an angry red knot. She had the sort of features that seemed built for fury.
Will asked, "Did you know Gwendolyn Zabel?"
"You have no right to question me without a lawyer."
Faith rolled her eyes, reveling in the sheer childish joy of the gesture.
Will was more mature in his approach. "Can you tell me your name?"
She turned instantly reticent. "Why?"
"I'd like to know what to call you."
She seemed to scroll through her options. "Candy."
"All right, Candy. I'm Special Agent Trent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, this is Special Agent Mitchell. I'm sorry to tell you that Mrs. Zabel's daughter has been in an accident."
Candy pulled the blanket closer. "Was she drinking?"
Will asked, "Did you know Jacquelyn?"
"Jackie." Candy shrugged her shoulders. "She was here for a few weeks to get her mother's house sold. We talked."
"Did she use a real estate agent or sell it herself ?"
"She used a local agent." The woman shifted her stance, blocking Faith from her view. "Is Jackie okay?"
"I'm afraid she's not. She was killed in the accident."
