Heart of Ice

41

Louis stood down the slope from the Chapman cottage, watching the two women on the porch. One of them was Maisey, who he knew was still readying the place for sale. He didn’t know the other woman, but from the way she was gesturing toward the house he suspected she was a real estate agent. He was waiting for her to leave so he could talk to Maisey alone.

Bring me some proof.

Rafsky’s words had brought him back here, to the woman who was figuratively-if not literally-Julie’s mother.

The agent and Maisey shook hands, and as the agent came down the walk and passed Louis, Maisey’s eyes found his.

He knew she was still angry that he had asked her to take a DNA test, so he just stood there hoping she would relent. Finally, with a small shake of her head, she motioned him toward the house.

The foyer was stacked with cardboard boxes. Maisey stood in front of him, arms crossed, waiting for him to speak.

“I’m sorry, Maisey,” Louis said. “My questions about you and Julie last time I was here were intrusive and rude.”

Maisey’s lips drew into a straight line.

“But it’s my job to speak for the victim,” he said. “Sometimes that takes me places that are uncomfortable for everyone.”

Maisey uncrossed her arms. “I’m still not going to take that test,” she said.

“I’m not going to ask you to again.”

She gave a small nod. “Okay, then. Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Kincaid?”

“Love one.”

“I’ve closed the heat vents in most of the rooms already. But the parlor’s warm. Go have a seat,” she said. “I’ll bring you a cup.”

Louis wound his way through the boxes to the parlor. Maisey had mentioned before that she wasn’t sure what to take from the house but apparently had found enough keepsakes to fill at least two horse carts with boxes.

He took a seat next to a table with a carafe on it, rubbing his hands to warm them. Maisey appeared a moment later with a cup and poured him some coffee. She had left some picture frames on her chair, and she picked them up before sitting down. She kept them on her lap.

“What do you need this time, Mr. Kincaid?” Maisey asked.

“First, I need to ask that you not share what we talk about today with anyone,” Louis said.

She hesitated, then nodded. “You were fair with me about Mr. Ross, so you have my word.”

Louis decided to just start laying things out and watch her for a reaction.

“The remains we found in the lodge do not belong to Julie,” he said.

Maisey kept her eyes on his, but there was no shock in her expression. Finally she looked away, focusing on the picture frames in her lap. She was frozen, not a muscle moving. He wasn’t even sure she was breathing.

“Maisey, are you okay?”

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “How could. . how could you, how could the police let everyone think. . let Mr. Edwards die believing you had found his little girl?”

Louis set his cup down. It was a deft recovery, Maisey turning her inability to find an appropriate response back onto the police in the form of blame. It was also interesting that she didn’t name herself as a wounded party in the police’s screwup.

“On behalf of the police all I can do is apologize,” he said.

Maisey’s fingers tightened on the frames. She had just been told that her family’s twenty-one-year search for closure ended with a case of mistaken identity, yet her face was a mask.

“Do you want to know whose remains they are?” Louis asked.

Maisey’s voice was soft and far away. “If it’s not Julie, why would it matter to me?”

“Because it was Julie’s friend,” Louis said. “The girl you picked out of the sketchbook. Her name was Rhonda Grasso.”

Maisey shook her head. “God Bless her soul, but I barely remember her. I didn’t even get her name right.”

Louis was quiet, and so was Maisey. If she knew nothing of Julie’s whereabouts, why wasn’t she asking questions? Why wasn’t she asking why Julie’s ring had been found in the lodge? Why wasn’t she asking about Ross being the father of Rhonda’s baby?

Maisey started to get up from her chair, but Louis put a gentle hand on her forearm. She sat back down.

“Julie had a boyfriend named Cooper Lange,” Louis said. “She was going to run off to Canada with him so he could avoid the draft. Did you know that?”

“No. I told you, I didn’t know anything.”

“Back then you didn’t know anything,” Louis said. “What about now?”

“What do you mean?”

He had gone too far to turn back. He had to put the question out there and see what it got him.

“I believe Julie is alive,” Louis said.

He could feel Maisey’s arm trembling under his hand. He could see something in her face, the same thing that had been in Cooper’s face that day in the interrogation room when he talked about Julie. It was the need to not be alone any longer with a secret.

“Maisey,” Louis said gently, “do you know where she is?”

Maisey opened her mouth to say something but then clamped it shut. She started to pull away, but Louis tightened his hand on her arm as a subtle pressure, hoping that if he waited long enough the weight of what she knew would become unbearable.

But Maisey drew her arm away and rose. She was gathering herself together, and he knew he had lost the moment of her vulnerability.

“I can be of no help to you, Mr. Kincaid,” she said.

“I know you want to protect Julie but-”

Maisey interrupted him. “I have things to do upstairs. Please see yourself out.”

He stood up quickly, pissed at himself for not being more aggressive with her.

“Maisey.”

She was almost to the stairs and she stopped. There was one open cardboard box, stuffed with newspapers. She set the frames she was carrying on top of the newspapers, reached into the pocket of her sweater, and pulled something out. Louis saw it was the little ceramic horse he had seen up in Julie’s room.

She set the horse on top of the picture frames and looked up at him. Her eyes were brimming.

“I’ve given you all I can, Mr. Kincaid,” she said. “In the only way I can.”

She turned and went up the stairs.

There was no reason to call to her because he knew she would just ignore him. And he wasn’t going to drag her down to the station and rip the truth from her by tag-teaming her with Rafsky as if she were a common criminal. There had to be another way.

I’ve given you all I can. In the only way I can.

What had she given him besides Julie’s journal?

Louis moved to the open cardboard box and picked up the ceramic horse. Underneath was the framed photograph of Julie sitting in a white wicker chair holding a rag doll, the same picture he had seen before. Except. .

Louis pulled out his glasses. It wasn’t a rag doll, he could see that now. It was a sock monkey.

Edna Coffee had seen a teenage girl carry a monkey onto the ferry that winter day twenty-one years ago. If Julie treasured the stuffed animal that much, surely Maisey would have noticed it was missing after Julie disappeared. But that day up in Julie’s room, when he had asked Maisey if Julie had a stuffed monkey, she had said no.

He knew now Maisey hadn’t lied to protect Julie. She had lied to protect herself. She knew Julie had not been abducted. She knew Julie had left voluntarily.

Why had she kept the secret from Edward? Maybe because she knew Julie was running away from something and didn’t want to be found?

He looked up the staircase. Maisey had wanted him to find the photograph. She wanted him to find Julie now.

But one photograph was not enough proof. He looked back at the open cardboard box. The only other things sitting atop the newspapers were some books. They were so thin he was able to grab all four with one hand.

They seemed to be a set of some kind, the dust jackets all featuring landscapes-snowcapped mountains, a deserted beach, a shadowed forest, jagged ocean rocks, a log cabin on a lake. The author’s name, Emma Charicol, meant nothing to him. The titles held no clues-The Path to Acheron, Elysian Echoes, From Pelion, Island of the Sun.

His heart gave a kick.

Pelion.

The place in Julie’s poem where the centaur Chiron lived. The name she gave to the lodge.

The drawing on the jacket of From Pelion was of a log cabin high on a bluff overlooking a lake. He turned the book over. There was no author photo, just a brief biography.

Emma Charicol is the author of four books of poems. She is an adjunct professor of creative writing at Berkeley City College, where she is a founder of the Lyrics and Odes Reading Series.

Louis flipped through the poems, scanning them for something that would resonate with Julie’s journal. Finally, he found it. The last poem in the book, titled “Seventeen.”

From a chrysalis of ice

Into the August sun I glide

A flight too brief

On wings of grief

Now my heart beats a dirge

For the girl who died

There had been a poem in Julie’s journal called “Twelve.” It had clearly been about the incest. Was this one-also titled with what could be an age-about the death of Rhonda Grasso?

Louis closed the book, looking again at the author bio on the back. There was a small rush of adrenaline moving inside him, but there was also something else. Something more sobering-the knowledge that if Emma Charicol was Julie Chapman, then his next step would be exposing a woman who had spent her entire adult life trying to escape her childhood.

But she was also a murder suspect.

He gathered up the four poetry books, the ceramic horse, and the photograph of Julie and started toward the door.

Masiey’s voice came soft and weary from the quiet shadows of the second floor.

“Good-bye, Mr. Kincaid.”

He paused, his hand on the doorknob. “Good-bye, Maisey,” he said. “Thank you.”