Blood Hunt

13

Driving east from Hays on I-70 then north through Bellamy to Baumen, Garreth focused of being positive. Baumen had Biebers. Lane was going to be one of them, or at least whoever wrote to her was. Entering the town trying to feel vibes of her past presence, his thought became an astonished observation that their main street, Kansas Avenue, was wider than the Embarcadero. Almost as wide as their shopping district was long. Railroad tracks stretched north up the middle, flanked by two traffic lanes and diagonal parking on each side.

He crossed the tracks onto Pine Street, noting automatically that City Hall occupied the next block west of Kansas, surrounded by the fire station behind it to the south and police department on the west. But when the high school appeared on down the street, his focus snapped back to Lane. Would he find her here or not.

As in Pfeifer, a secretary in the principal’s office led him to the library and handed him over to the librarian, Miss Mary Schumacher, a lean, brisk woman in her sixties. When he gave her his story, she showed him the yearbook shelf at the rear of the stacks, brought in a chair for him, and left him to his reading.

He started with 1930, when Lane would have been fourteen and a freshman, assuming she gave her correct birth date when arrested. Mental fingers crossed, he turned to the freshmen. His pulse jumped at the name Bieber under three pictures…only to slow in disappointment when neither of the two girls were named Madelaine and despite the small size of the pictures, clearly bore no resemblance to Lane. The sophomores and juniors also had small pictures…with only a male Bieber in the sophomore class and none in the junior class, or among the eleven seniors, who each had nice large pictures.

Well, detective work always meant plowing doggedly on.

He reached for the 1931 yearbook and stopped. No, he might as well go for broke, and the big senior pictures. He pulled out the ‘33 year book. Still, to be thorough, he checked each class, in case she were younger than she claimed, or had been held back. Fifteen freshmen, no Lane. Not among the thirteen sophomores or thirteen juniors, either.

Garreth turned the page to the senior class.

Lane stared up at him from the first picture…unsmiling, eyes boring into the camera with such challenge it felt like a physical blow. Cold and anger rushed through him. The maiden is powerful.

Did he say it aloud? Behind her desk, Miss Schumacher turned to look at him. He bent his head over the yearbook with Grandma Doyle’s photograph, as though comparing it to those in the book, and presently went on to the ‘34 yearbook, and the rest up to 1937 before sitting back with a sigh.

Miss Schumacher came into the stacks. “I take it you didn’t find Mary?”

He shook his head. “The trouble is, while I always thought Mary Pfeifer might not be her real name — if I were pregnant out of wedlock in those days, I wouldn’t use my real name — now it occurs to me there’s no way to know if she’s really in this picture.” He held it up. “We assumed she is because of her name on the back, but we didn’t have Grandma to tell us if this Mary is Mary Pfeifer. After all, how many girls were named Mary back then, including you.”

“Have you checked in Bellamy yet?”

“No, but I will.” He toyed with the photograph. “I’m thinking now that the person I really need to find is a girl who according to my grandmother’s diary, visited Mary once. She told my grandmother her name was Maggie Bieber, and since she knew where Mary was, and maybe was the one who wrote to her, I’m thinking they must have been friends and gone to school together.”

Miss Schumacher frowned. “I don’t know any Maggie Bieber. I was in school with a Madelaine Bieber, but we called her Mada. She graduated a year ahead of me in ‘33 and I don’t think she had any friends.”

Someone who knew Lane! Garreth gave her all his attention to encourage her to talk. “Why no friends?”

“She had a temper as fiery as her hair. Say one word she didn’t like and she’d be at the person with tooth and claw…boys as well as girls.”

That sounded like the Lane who tried biting Claudia’s ear off. Could any of those teachers still be alive to appreciate how well Lane had learned to control her temper?

“Looking back, we didn’t help.” Miss Schumacher sighed. “She was big and gawky, easy to provoke…and teenagers can be so cruel.”

“You can’t think of a single friends she had?”

“Not in high school. Maybe in college. I don’t know how or why, maybe because she was smart as a whip, even though it was the Depression her father scraped together tuition for Fort Hays. But she was only there one semester before running off with some professor. To Europe, the story was. It was quite a scandal. He abandoned a wife and children.”

Europe. Where someone brought her over? Europe seemed like vampire country. Maybe her story about escaping ahead of Hitler’s storm troopers was the truth. “What happened to her after that?”

“I don’t know. She never came back here. But you might ask her mother.”

Electricity shot through him. “Her mother is living? Here in Baumen?” Maybe the letter writer?

“Oh, yes, Anna Bieber. Just a minute.” She left for her desk.

Garreth watched her open a phone book..even as he checked his notes. He had an Anna Bieber at 513 Pine…just down the street from here.

Miss Schumacher came back with a slip of paper and the same address. “I hope this helps you.”

So do I, ma’am; so do I.

The hope that carried him to Anna Bieber’s house lightened even the pressure of daylight.

The fire leaping out as he neared the door burned just as hot, however. He knocked and retreated a step to ease it.

A middle-aged woman answered the door. Not Lane’s mother, obviously. Maybe a sister, though he saw no resemblance.

“I’m looking for Mrs. Anna Bieber,” he said.

The woman opened the door. “Come in. I’ll get Mother.”

The fire vanished. He followed her inside.

Mrs. Bieber turned out to be a petite woman with white hair pulled back in a neat bun, nothing like the strapping woman Garreth expected to spawn an amazon like Lane. Though she moved slowly, she still walked straight, and her eyes met Garreth’s directly, undimmed.

For a moment, the similarity to his own grandmother seemed so strong, panic fluttered in him, wondering if she, too, possibly recognized him for what he was. But her hand never touched the crucifix around her neck or glanced toward the one hanging on the livingroom wall. She cordially invited him to sit down.

At the end of listening to his story, she looked him over with searching eyes. “You think my daughter Mada was friends with the mother of your father? May I see the photograph?”

Garreth handed it over.

After studying it for several minutes, she returned it, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize any of those girls. I don’t know when Mada would have visited your grandmother’s house. She ran away to Europe in 1934.”

He gave her a shrug. “I needed to ask. Did your daughter ever come home again?”

“Not really, but Mada calls every week, no matter where she is.” The old woman beamed. “She’s a singer and travels all over, even to Mexico and Canada and Japan. I’d be satisfied with a letter — calling must be terribly expensive — but she says she enjoys hearing my voice.”

His breath caught. Jackpot! Now if he could learn where she called from most recently. “She calls every week? How lucky you are. Do you have a number for her? I’d like to call and ask her if she knows Mary and where she is or what happened to her.”

“I’m sorry. She never leaves a number…but I can ask her myself the next time she calls.”

The last thing he wanted! He made himself smile. “No, that’s fine. Don’t bother.”

“Then why don’t I give you my number and you call at Thanksgiving and ask her yourself.”

He caught his breath. “She’ll be here at Thanksgiving?”

“Or at Christmas. She always comes home for one of the holidays,” she said with satisfaction.

Garreth mentally pumped a fist. Yes! Lane came home. Lady Luck was a darling. Instead of running around the world looking for her, all he had to do was wait…let the fugitive come to him.