A Wicked Snow

Chapter Thirty

The ladies of the First Methodist Church of Kodiak knew how to put on a wildly successful bake sale, no matter if the cause was directly related to the church or not. One time, the group of thirteen women raised almost a thousand dollars for Kodiak High’s choral ensemble’s trip to compete against school choir groups from Canada and the United States. (The Singing Grizzlies placed in the top ten and were greeted with a modest parade upon their return to the island, again courtesy of the ladies of First Methodist.) All but four were widows with grown children and scads of free time to devote to the cause—whatever it was at any given time.

Harriet Wilcox was in her late eighties, the oldest of the group. The oldest always admits her age as a badge of honor for living longest and still being able to keep up with the younger gals, in their sixties and seventies. Marge Morrison, sixty-two, was the youngest and most active. Morrison was still working part-time at the local public utility as the secretary to the consumer services manager. She was an attractive woman with silvering hair that she wore in a low-slung ponytail held in place by a tortoiseshell barrette. Her only flaw was the fact that gum disease had taken her teeth and she wore a full set of dentures of which she was extremely self-conscious. Others of the group included a retired school-teacher, Beth Tyson; Annie Potter, a crabber’s widow, and Louise Wallace, the owner of a fishing resort.

In early September the ladies of First Methodist met at the church for their fall planning session. A Thanksgiving coat and blanket effort, a food drive for Christmas, and the annual cookie exchange were on the agenda for the next three months, and preparations were necessary. Marge Morrison arrived first. She was chairwoman for the fall events. Beth Tyson followed her inside. Beth took the minutes for the newsletter, Divine Inspirations. Beth propped open the doors, letting the breeze blow in from the Aleutians. September was Kodiak’s second warmest month. Hitting a pleasant seventy degrees was possible, even with the summer wind blowing in from the north.

“Anyone hear from Sandy?” Morrison asked as she settled her considerable frame into a molded plastic chair. “Sandy called me last night. Her son’s wife is ill. She flew to Anchorage this morning. Said she’d be gone for a week.”

“Hope it isn’t too serious,” one said.

“No. Got the flu, a dreaded summer flu.”

“That’s just awful. Summer’s short enough ’round here. Hate to be sick.”

“You got that right.”

“Anyone hear from Louise?”

When no one had, Morrison volunteered to make the call from the pastor’s office phone.

“Be back in a jiff,” she said cheerfully. “Go ahead and sample those peanut butter squares. Just out of the oven this morning.”

Five minutes later, Morrison returned to the table.

“I couldn’t reach her,” she said. “She must be on her way. Let’s get started.”

Two hours later the women, full of lime Jell-O cake, peanut butter squares, and decaf coffee, adjourned their meeting. Still no Louise Wallace.

“It’s not like her at all,” Morrison said as she made her way to her car.

The voice was shaky, but it was familiar even under splintering layers of worry and fear. The words “accused” and “Federal Bureau of Investigation” floated above the others. Marge Morrison grabbed the remote control and turned down the volume of her soap opera, General Hospital.

“Louise, what did you say?”

Morrison heard her friend Louise Wallace speak, but nothing computed.

“I think I might need a lawyer,” she repeated. “Something terrible has happened. A terrible mix-up.”

“They think you are who?”

“I know it is ridiculous. But he—this FBI agent from Oregon—says he thinks I’m that horrible Claire what’s her-name. Claire Logan.”

Morrison knew the name instantly. Most Americans over thirty did.

“That woman from Seattle who killed those men? What in the world?”

“Oregon or somewhere,” Wallace corrected, her voice cracking. She was crying now. And Morrison had never heard her friend weep before—not even during the black days of her husband Hank’s ordeal with inoperable colon cancer several summers before. “I think she lived down in Portland somewhere. I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve never even been to Oregon.”

“Of course not,” Morrison said as she tried to process everything. “You’ve never been there.”

Louise Wallace pulled herself together and gulped some air. “They don’t care. He wouldn’t listen. This could be bad. It has happened to others, you know. It doesn’t matter what the truth is anymore. Remember that guy they blamed for planting a bomb at the Olympics in Atlanta just because he found it?”

“Dear Lord,” Morrison muttered, “if our FBI can screw up so badly, no one is safe.”

Morrison remained clear headed in any catastrophe, which was why she made such an excellent chairwoman for the First Methodist fund-raisers. If Louise Wallace needed support and counsel, she’d dialed the right number.

“Get your lawyer on the phone, dear,” Morrison said. “Would you like me to come over?”

Louise said she didn’t want to be a bother. But before she hung up, she stated the obvious. “I could use some company, a little moral support. I have to admit I’m a little scared.”

“Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be?” Morrison said, grabbing a blue-and-white down-filled jacket from the back of a kitchen chair. “I’m on my way.”

Marge Morrison drove her two-year-old Dodge pickup like the proverbial bat out of hell. She didn’t even slow down to wave to neighbors out washing their car or stop to tell them that a running hose was a waste of water. Morrison had known Louise Wallace for years. As she spun around the corner to the highway, she tried to calculate the number. Was it a dozen years? More than that? Fifteen or twenty? After a while, she knew, numbers no longer mattered. At some point, friends become family. In her heart, she’d known Louise forever. A half hour after she spoke to a rattled Louise on the phone, Morrison was driving up the long gravel driveway that led to the Wallace place. As it always did, the sight of the grand yellow house took her breath away. There was no place lovelier in all of Kodiak Island.

Wallace ran over to the pickup. It was obvious that she had been gardening because there were smudges of soil on her chambray blouse. A basket of baseball-size tomatoes and another of rhubarb sat on the steps of the gazebo.

“Oh, Marge!” she called out. “Thank you for coming. This is just terrible. Terrible.”

Morrison got out of the cab and hugged Louise. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “Tell me what happened? What is this balderdash they are saying?”

“This agent from the FBI came today. Right here. Came here. And he asked me about those murders down in Oregon years ago. He said he thought I could be… no, he said he thought I was… that Claire Logan. I thought he was joking. But he wasn’t, he kept saying it. Said he knew. Knew it. Can you believe it?”

Morrison was dumbfounded. While words of any real substance eluded her, she kept assuring her friend that things would be sorted out. When she noticed Louise shaking, she suggested they go inside.

“Chamomile,” she said. “Let’s figure out what to do over some tea. Chamomile will relax you. Dear, you must relax. You know this is no good for your heart.”

Louise picked up the tomatoes and rhubarb, and the two went inside. Neither woman took off her shoes. Keeping Louise’s prized wooden floors free from garden grit just didn’t come to mind.

“I called my lawyer, like you said.” Louise turned up the flame under the kettle. “He’s not in. Out fishing until tomorrow.”

“I’m sure you won’t need him,” Morrison said, though she didn’t know why she offered such false assurance. The words just came out. “Now, tell me everything.”

The tea kettle whistled to signal the water was hot, and Wallace loaded a tray with a teapot, cups, and lemon cookies. They retreated to a powder-blue settee that overlooked the waters of the Pacific through ten-foot-high windows. Wallace was upset—more upset than Morrison had ever seen her. She kept a tissue crumbled in a ball and when tears came, she dabbed at them.

“There is something about me that you don’t know.”

“Of course,” Morrison said, “there are things we all keep private.”

“Well, this is certainly that kind of thing. I’ve never talked about it. I don’t particularly want all of Kodiak Island to know about it.” She hedged, carefully considering her words. “But it might be necessary, you know, for it to come out.”

Morrison was on the edge of her seat. She set her cup on a side table. She didn’t think that her friend could possibly be Claire Logan. Certainly not! Up to an hour ago, Morrison didn’t think Louise could have a dark secret of any kind whatsoever.

“Better than twenty years ago,” she began, “some-thing terrible happened.” Louise stood and looked out across the water. Her cup rattled in its saucer, and she turned to set it down. “I don’t like talking about this, but you are my friend.”

“Yes,” Morrison said. “Of course. Always.”

Wallace took another deep breath and steadied herself.

“All right,” she said. “Twenty years ago, I had some problems—some terrible problems that the doctors couldn’t help.” She stopped again, took another breath, and searched the horizon.

“What kind of problems?”

“Depression caused by a tragic loss,” Wallace answered. “There, I said it.” She turned to face Marge. “I lost my boys in a car accident. A terrible, terrible crash. I never got over it.”

Morrison felt tears come instantly to her eyes. “Oh, dear God, I had no idea,” she said. The First Methodist ladies had always assumed Louise had never been blessed with children at all. She had no inkling there had once been two boys who had died in some automobile accident. Morrison reached out to Wallace and felt her trembling hands. Her eyes had flooded by then.

Tears now rolled down her cheeks and collected under her chin. “I needed help. I just couldn’t do anything after the boys died. My husband couldn’t help me. He tried. I know he did. But I wanted no part of anyone. Not after the accident. I pulled the curtains and stayed in bed for months. Sometimes, even now, when I look back I can barely remember that time. I feel as though I lost a whole year.”

“Dear Lou, oh, my dear.” Morrison felt her throat tighten over the thought of her friend’s cruel ordeal. “I can’t imagine.”

“As much as I keep this inside—because I have to— there is something more that I haven’t told you. Something very important. And even though I know that it is nothing to be ashamed about, I am. I know in my heart that I’m all right, now. Best as I can be…”

“You are wonderful,” Morrison consoled. “You are very dear to all of us.”

Wallace smiled a little and gripped the ball of tissue even tighter and ran it under her chin. “Marge, I was hospitalized after my little boys died in the crash. It was a mental hospital called Evergreen State just south of Seattle. I was there for six months, and it helped me. I did many, many strange things as I coped with my grief. Lithium was good, and though I hate to admit it, shock treatments probably helped me, too. I was able to come to terms with what happened when my sons died. I grew stronger. Stronger than ever.”

While Morrison sat anguished and rapt, Louise Wallace sipped tea and told her friend that her husband left her during the hospitalization at Evergreen State. Few men could survive the loss of their sons. She could no longer face the world as she was.

“My doctor told me the best way to go out into the world—which I really didn’t want to do—was to start over. All over. He said I was reborn. I took it literally. I changed my name and moved as far away from Seattle as I could.”

“You came here to Kodiak,” Morrison interjected.

“Not at first, but eventually. I worked in the canneries for a short while, met Hank Wallace, and we fell in love. In a way, I was reborn,” she said.

“A beautiful butterfly,” Morrison said. “You are. And we love you.”

Wallace walked around the settee to the tea cart and poured herself another cup. “So you see, there is a bit of a problem. Or there could be. There is no Louise Wallace, not really. I mean I am here with you, of course. But there are no records of any Louise Wallace.”

Morrison refused to have any part of that kind of thinking. “You are our Louise—doesn’t matter when you became her. That’s who you are. Besides, you know what we’ve always said of Alaska.”

She smiled and said, “A good place to hide.”

“A good place to start over.”

“Marge?” Louise asked as she turned to the window. “There is one more thing.” Her voice started to crack on the last word.

Morrison stood. “Yes? What is it?”

“Marge, I was driving the car when I lost control…. I was the one driving. I was thrown from the car, but the boys were strapped in the car. There was an explosion and fire.”

“I’m sorry,” Morrison said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Look, Marge, I don’t think I can say this any more plainly. I think my past might be catching up with me. I won’t allow it. I’ve been through too much already.”