Heart of Ice

33

He decided he needed fresh air more than a drink. Instead of waiting for Rafsky at the bar he took a walk through town. The wind had died, and the air was icy and still. Main Street was deserted, and he kept to the middle of the street where the snowmobile tracks gave him sure footing. Louis didn’t know where he was going, but it felt good to be out, away from the weird masculine energy that seemed to dominate this island now.

Where the hell were all the women, anyway? Even the blond bartender at the Mustang had vanished, replaced by a fat guy with a beard. Louis had a flash of memory-Joe sitting by the fire reading a book. He had been sprawled on the sofa, half-asleep from sex, wine, and lasagna.

What are you reading?

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.

What’s happening in it?

Henry and Maria are just about to cross the ha-ha.

The what?

The ha-ha. It’s a big trench in an English garden that keeps the cows from wandering. But Henry and Maria are having a secret affair and the ha-ha stands for the moral line they are going to cross.

Louis trudged up the hill through the snow. He was thinking of Rafsky. It was clear he had reached the edge of his own trench. What wasn’t clear yet was if he was going to try to jump it.

He didn’t realize he had walked all the way up the road to the Grand Hotel. It stood in the gloom like a big gray ship, moored and silent. The streetlamps on the road below the hotel glowed like beacons in the mist. He followed them all the way to the last house on West Bluff Road.

He drew up short. There were lights on inside.

It couldn’t be Ross. He had left a half hour ago in his chartered plane.

Louis trudged through the drifts and up onto the porch. He tried the front door. It was open. He went in, stopping in the foyer. One lamp was on in the parlor, another deeper in the house, probably in the kitchen. He could also see lights at the top of the dark staircase.

“Hey! Anyone here?” he shouted.

There was a loud bump from above and then the creak of the floorboards over his head. A moment later, Maisey’s face appeared over the banister above.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Maisey. Louis.”

She was clutching something against her chest, maybe a load of books? Louis switched on the hall light. Maisey hesitated, then came down.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Kincaid?” she asked.

“I saw the lights-”

“I mean on the island.” She searched his face. “You found out something, right?”

How much should he tell her? He couldn’t tell her that Ross was now a suspect in Julie’s murder. But didn’t she have a right to know her suspicions about the incest had been correct? And what about the rest? Didn’t he have a right to know if Maisey was really Julie’s mother?

“You were right about Ross and Julie,” Louis said. “He confessed everything to us.”

Maisey’s face sagged, and she carefully put the books on the table, then went into the parlor. Louis followed her. She seemed to be searching for something. Finally she went to the bookcase and picked a picture frame from a group on the top shelf. It was a family portrait of all the Chapmans, taken on the front lawn of the cottage when the kids were very young.

Maisey stared at it for a moment, then put it back on the shelf. “I don’t know what to take,” she said, as if to herself. “The lawyer said it was all mine now, but I don’t know what to take.”

“Yours?” Louis asked.

She looked at him. “Mr. Edward left me this house.” Her eyes wandered around the room. “I don’t want any of this. The real estate lady said I could leave it all and she’d sell it.”

So Edward had taken care of her after all. The cottage would probably bring Maisey about a million dollars. No matter how much Ross protested that the island meant nothing to him, it had to have stung to find out the house that had been in his mother’s family for three generations was now owned by “just a housekeeper.”

Maisey picked up another frame. It held a small photograph of Julie sitting in a wicker chair holding a rag doll. Maisey used her sleeve to wipe the glass, then folded it to her chest.

“Maisey,” Louis said. “I have to ask you something.”

She looked up expectantly.

“I don’t know how-” he began. Then he let out a long sigh. “Is Julie your daughter?”

Her mouth dropped open. It took a few seconds, but then the shock faded and something else replaced it.

“How could you ask me such a thing?” she said.

It wasn’t anger he was seeing in her face. It was indignation that he knew instinctively came not from guilt but from deeply bred modesty. It was one thing for a woman like Maisey to admit that back in the fifties she had loved a man like Edward. It was something else entirely for her to hear a near stranger give words to what had to be a painful secret.

“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “I have to know.”

“Why?” she demanded.

How did he explain this? How did he explain to her that family dynamics-and race-could factor into a murder motive?

“The family is important in a murder investigation,” he said.

“Family,” Maisey said quietly, turning away. She set the frame back on the mantel and started away.

“Maisey-”

She spun around. “Mr. Kincaid, you need to leave.”

“Maisey, you don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “You think you do because you’re black. But you’re too young, and you don’t know.”

She went out into the foyer, and he followed.

“Maisey,” he said. “Please. I need an answer.”

She was halfway up the stairs but turned and came down a few steps. Her eyes glistened, but Louis knew she wouldn’t cry until she was alone.

“I’m not Julie’s mother,” she said.

He almost said it, almost said that a simple test would prove it. But this woman had trusted him with her family’s darkest secrets. He couldn’t push this. He would have to take her word for it.

“I’m sorry, Maisey,” Louis said. “I am just trying to help you take Julie home.”

Her hand went to her chest and she wiped at her eyes. She came down the steps, reached into the box, and pulled out a small red book.

“This is Julie’s journal, the one from that summer, with her poems,” she said, holding it out to Louis. “Take it. Maybe it will help you.”