Shakespeare’s Christmas

Chapter Five

I held on to Jack. He held on to me. We’d seen people die- bad people, violent people, people who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This young woman, newly a mother, beaten and left in the freezing air, was something else again.

It was Varena who ran over to the Osborn house to see if the children were there, Varena who discovered that the house was empty and silent. And, twenty minutes later, it was Varena who saw the car with Emory Osborn, Eve, and the baby Jane pull into the driveway, to be met with the news that would change their lives forever.

Lanky Detective Brainerd was on duty again, or still on duty, and he eyed me dubiously, even after we explained what had happened.

“What were you doing here?” he asked Jack directly. “I don’t believe you’re from here, sir.”

“No, sir, I’m not. I’m here to visit Lily, and I’m staying at the Delta Motel.” Jack let go of me and stepped closer to Brainerd.

I kept my gaze on the floor. I didn’t know if Jack was making a mistake or not, keeping his business in Bartley a secret.

“How’d you know Miss Bard was here?”

“Her car is here,” Jack said.

It was true, we’d come in my car. Mother had taken Varena to the wedding shower, so I’d given her a ride from their place over to the cottage.

After her burst of energy, Varena was slumped in an armchair, staring into space.

“So you stopped here to see Miss Bard…?”

“And when I got out of the car, I thought I heard a noise from behind the big house,” Jack said calmly. “So I thought I’d check it out before I alarmed Lily and Varena.”

“You found Mrs. Osborn.”

“Yes. She was lying between the back of the house and their garage.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“No.”

“She said nothing?”

“No. She didn’t seem to know I’d picked her up.”

“But she spoke when she was lying on the couch?”

“Yes,” I said.

Jack and Detective Brainerd turned simultaneously.

“And what did she say?” the policeman asked.

“She said, ‘The children.’ ”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Brainerd looked thoughtful, as well he might.

What had Meredith Osborn meant? Had the last thoughts of the dying woman simply been dwelling on the children she was leaving behind? Or did those words mean more? Were her two children in danger? Or was she thinking of the three girls in the picture?

Whoever had sent the picture to Jack’s friend Roy had started a deadly train of events.

After the ambulance removed Meredith’s body, I stared out the side window of Varena’s cottage, watching the police search the backyard where she had lain bleeding and freezing.

I was full of anger.

The death of Meredith Osborn had not even had the mercy of being fast. Dave LeMay and Binnie Armstrong had had only moments to fear death-and those were dreadful moments, I fully appreciated that, believe me. But lying in your own backyard, unable to summon help, feeling your own end creeping through you… I closed my eyes, felt myself shudder. I knew something about hours of fear, about being certain your death was imminent and unavoidable. I had been spared, finally. Meredith Osborn had not.

Jack put an arm around my shoulder.

“I want to go away,” I whispered.

I couldn’t, and we both knew it.

“Excuse me,” I said at a more conversational volume, hearing my voice’s coldness. “I’m being silly.”

Jack sighed. “I wish I could go away, too.”

“What killed her?”

“Not a gun. Knife wounds, I think.”

I shivered. I hated knives.

“Did we bring this here with us, Jack?” I whispered.

“No,” he said. “This was here before we came. But it won’t be here when I leave.” When Jack got his teeth into something, he didn’t let go, even when he was biting the wrong part.

“Tomorrow,” I told him, quietly. “Tomorrow we’ll talk.”

“Yes.”

I was taking Varena home to spend the night. She couldn’t sleep in this cottage. She was ready, standing staring out the side window at the lit backyard, the figures moving around it. So I tried to walk out the door. But after I’d stepped away from Jack I reached back to grip his wrist. I couldn’t seem to let go. I looked down at my feet, struggling with myself.

“Lily?” Under the questioning tone, his voice was hoarse.

I bit my lip, hard.

“I’m gone,” I said, letting go of him. “I’ll see you in the morning, at eight. At the motel.” I glanced at his face.

He nodded.

“Lock her cottage when the police let you go, OK?”

Varena didn’t seem to hear us. She stood like a statue at that window, her overnight bag on the floor beside her.

“Sure,” he said, still looking intently at me.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said and turned my back on him and walked out, beckoning to my sister to follow.

I have done so many hard things, but that was one of the hardest.

It was only nine by the time we got to my parents’ house, but it felt like midnight. I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone, and yet somehow my parents had to be told, had to be talked to. Luckily for me, Varena had regained her balance by the time she saw my mother, and though she cried a little, she managed to relate the horrible death of Meredith Osborn.

“Should I just cancel the wedding?” she asked tearfully.

I knew my mother would talk her out of it. I really couldn’t bear to be with people right now. I went to my room and shut the door firmly. My father came to stand outside in the hall; I knew his footsteps.

“Are you okay, pumpkin?” he called.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to be alone?”

I clenched my fists until even my short fingernails bit into my palms. “Yes, please.”

“OK.” Off he went, God bless him.

I lay on the hard bed, hands clasped across my stomach, and thought.

I could not imagine how I could find out any more information about the three girls who might be Summer Dawn. But I was convinced that Meredith Osborn’s death had come about because she knew which girl was not who she seemed to be. I tried to picture Lou O’Shea or the Reverend O’Shea attacking Meredith in the freezing cold of her backyard, but I just could not. Still less could I imagine mild Dill Kingery stabbing Meredith into silence. Dill’s mother was certainly off-base, but I’d never seen any tendency to violence. Mrs. Kingery just seemed daffy.

I thought of Meredith Osborn taking care of Krista O’Shea and Anna Kingery. What could she have seen-or heard-that would lead her to think she knew that one of the girls had been born with a different identity?

I’d never had a baby, so I didn’t know what happened bureaucratically when you gave birth. Some hospitals, I knew, took little footprints-I’d seen them framed on the walls of the Althaus family when I cleaned for them. And of course there was the birth certificate. And pictures. A lot of hospitals took pictures, for the parents. To me, all babies pretty much looked the same, red and scrunch-faced, or brown and scrunch-faced. That some had hair and some didn’t was the only obvious distinction I could see.

I had learned, also from the much-birthed Carol Althaus, that the fingerprints police or volunteers sometimes took at mall booths were not helpful because often they were of poor quality. I didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded reasonable. I was willing to bet the same reasons would render any existing baby footprints of Summer Dawn unusable.

So fingerprints and footprints were a no go. DNA testing could prove Summer Dawn’s identity, I was sure, but of course you had to know whom to test. I couldn’t see Jack demanding that the three girls undergo DNA testing. Well, I could see him demanding it, but I could also see all three sets of parents turning him down cold.

I stared at the ceiling until I realized my mind was going through the same cycle of thought, over and over, and it was no more productive than it had been the first time I’d gone through it.

I remembered, as I was undressing and pulling on a nightgown, that when Jack had first come to my bed, the next morning I’d made myself a promise: never to ask Jack for anything.

I was having a hard time keeping that promise.

As I lay once again on the bed I’d slept in as a virgin, I had to remind myself over and over that there was a corollary to that promise: not to offer what was not asked for.

I heard my sister next door in her old room, going through the same motions I’d gone through. I was sure she was hurting, sure she was suffering doubly since this blood and gore was happening at the time that was supposed to be the happiest in her life.

I felt helpless.

It was the most galling feeling in the world.

I was up and out of the house the next morning before my parents were stirring. I couldn’t wait for eight o’clock. I rose, took a hasty shower, and yanked on ordinary clothes, not much caring what they were as long as they were warm.

I started my car with a little difficulty and drove through the frosty streets. There were a few more cars at the motel, so my knock at Jack’s door was quiet.

He opened it after just a second, and I stepped inside. Jack closed the door quickly behind me, shirtless and shivering in the gust of cold air that entered with me.

What I had been going to do, planning to do, was sit in one of the two uncomfortable vinyl-covered chairs while Jack sat in the other and discuss his plans and how I could help.

What happened was, the minute the door was closed we were on each other like hungry wolves. When I touched him, my hands were pleased with everything they encountered. When I kissed him, I wanted him instantly. I was shaking so hard with wanting him that I couldn’t get my clothes off, and he pulled my sweatshirt over my head and yanked down my jeans and underwear, helping me step out of them, pulling me to the bed into his nest of residual warmth.

Afterward, we lay with our arms around each other. I didn’t care that my left arm was going to sleep, he didn’t seem to mind that there wasn’t an altogether comfortable place for his right leg.

He whispered my name in my ear. I smoothed his hair, tangled and loose, back from his face. I ran my fingers over the stubble on his chin. There were words in my mouth that I would not say. I clamped my teeth over them and continued to touch him. That stupid, fragile, ludicrous swelling in my chest had to remain contained.

His hands were occupied, too, and after a few minutes we made love again, not as frantically. There was nothing I wanted so much as to stay in that sorry motel bed, as long as Jack was in it.

I was dressing (again) after another quick shower. “What are you going to do next?” I asked, hearing the reluctance in my voice.

“Find out which of the little girls had seen Dr. LeMay recently.”

“I figured that had something to do with it. After all, the homeless man was in jail when Meredith Osborn was killed.”

“She wasn’t beaten like the doctor and his nurse.” Jack had been brushing his hair back into its ponytail. Now he gave me a curious look. He was wearing a long-sleeved polo shirt striped rust and brown, and the scar that ran down his cheek to his jaw seemed whiter in contrast. He ran a belt through the loops on his khakis. “Might have been a different killer.”

“Umhum,” I said skeptically. “All of a sudden, Bartley is full of brutal murders. And you’re trying to find a missing child. This is just coincidence.”

He gave me the look that I’d learned meant he was up to something: It was a sideways look, a quick flash of the eyes, to gauge my mood.

“The homeless man’s name is Christopher Darby Sims.”

“OK, I’ll bite. How’d you know that?”

“I have a connection here at the police department.”

I wondered uneasily if this was one of those good ole boy things, or if Jack meant he’d bribed a cop. Or perhaps both.

“So, can this connection look through the doctor’s records?”

“I can’t ask that much. I’m feeling my way. Are you still squeamish about frogs?” Jack asked, a little smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

“Chandler McAdoo.”

Jack lifted a corner of the curtain, peered out at the bleak day and the depressing motel court. “I stopped by the police station yesterday. Once I mentioned your name and hinted pretty strongly that we were tight, Chandler began to talk to me. He’s given me some fascinating stories about your teen years.” He tried not to grin too broadly.

As long as Chandler hadn’t told him about the later years. “I can’t even remember what I was like then,” I said. And I was speaking the literal truth. “I can remember some of the things we got up to,” I said, smiling a little, tentatively. “But I can’t for the life of me recall what I felt. Too much water under the bridge, I guess.” It was like I could see a silent movie of my life without hearing sound or feeling emotion. I shrugged. What was gone, was gone.

“I’m memorizing some stories,” Jack warned me. “And when you least expect it…”

I tightened my shoelaces, still smiling, and kissed Jack good-bye. “Call me when you know something or want me to do something,” I told him. I felt the smile slide right off my mouth. “I want this over.”

Jack nodded. “I do, too,” he said, his voice even. “And then I never want to see Teresa and Simon Macklesby again.”

I looked up at him, reading his face. I touched his cheek with my fingers. “You can do this,” I said.

“Yeah, I should be able to,” he told me, his voice bleak and empty.

“What’s your program for the morning?” I asked.

“I’m helping Dill put a floor in his attic.”

“What?”

“I just happened to be in the pharmacy yesterday afternoon and we were talking, and he told me that was what he was going to be doing this morning, no matter how cold it was. He wanted to get the job finished before the wedding. So I said I didn’t have anything to do since you were wrapped up in wedding plans, and I’d be glad to lend him a hand.”

“And ask him a few questions while you’re at it?”

“Possibly.” Jack smiled at me, that charming smile that coaxed so much information out of citizens.

I drove home, trying to think my way through a maze.

My family was up, Varena shaky but much better. They’d had a conference while I was gone and made up their minds to go through with the wedding no matter what. I was glad I’d missed that one, glad the decision had been made without me. If Varena had postponed her wedding, it would have made the time frame easier, but I had a concern I hadn’t shared with Jack.

I was afraid-if the murderer of Dr. LeMay, Mrs. Armstrong, and Meredith Osborn was the same person-that this criminal was getting frantic. And a person frantically trying to conceal a crime was likely to kill the strongest link between him and the crime.

In this case, that would be Summer Dawn Macklesby.

On one level, it didn’t seem likely that whoever’d gone to such extreme lengths to conceal the original crime-the abduction-would even consider killing the girl. But on another level, it seemed obvious, even likely.

I knew nothing that could help solve this crime. What did I know how to do? I knew how to clean and how to fight.

I also knew where people were most likely to hide things. Cleaning had certainly taught me that. Objects could be mislaid anywhere (though I had a mental list of places I checked first, when employers asked me to keep my eyes open for some missing item) but hidden… that was a different matter.

So? I asked myself sarcastically. How was that going to help?

“Could you, sweetheart?” my mother was saying.

“What?” I asked, my voice sharp and quick. She’d startled me.

“I’m sorry,” my mother said, her voice making it clear I should be saying that to her. “I asked if you would mind going over to Varena’s place and finishing her packing?”

I wasn’t sure why I was being asked to do this. Was Varena too scared to be there by herself? And it wasn’t supposed to bother me? But maybe I’d been woolgathering while they’d spelled it out.

Varena certainly looked as if she needed sleep and a holiday. And this, right before the happiest time of her life.

“Of course,” I said. “What about the wedding dress?”

“Oh, my heavens!” Mother exclaimed. “We’ve got to get that out right away!” Mother’s pale face flushed. Somehow, the wedding dress was at risk in that apartment. Galvanized by this sudden urgency, Mother shooed me into my car and bundled herself up in record time.

She followed me over to Varena’s and took the dress home personally, carrying it from the cottage to the car as though it were the crown and scepter of royalty.

I was left alone in Varena’s place, an oddly unsettling feeling. It was like surreptitiously going through her drawers. I shrugged. I was here to do a job. That thought was very normal, very steadying, after all we’d seen lately.

I counted boxes, moved the ones already full out to my car trunk after labeling them with Varena’s black marker. “Martha Stewart, that’s me,” I muttered and folded out the flaps on another box, placing it by the nearest closet. This was a little double closet with sliding doors in Varena’s tiny hall. It held only a few linens and towels. I guessed Varena had already moved the others.

Just as I’d picked up the first handful, trying to restrain myself from shaking the sheets out and refolding them, there was a knock on the door. I looked through Varena’s peephole. The knocker was a blond man, small, fair, with red-rimmed blue eyes. He looked mild and sad. I was sure I knew who it was.

“Emory Osborn,” he said, when I opened the door. I shook his hand. His was that soft boneless handshake some men give a woman, as though they’re scared if they squeeze with all their masculine power they’ll break her delicate fingers. It felt like shaking hands with the Pillsbury Dough Boy. This was something Jess O’Shea and Emory Osborn had in common.

“Come in,” I said. After all, he owned the cottage.

Emory Osborn stepped over the threshold. The widower was maybe 5‘ 7“, not much taller than I. He was very fair and blue-eyed, handsome on a small scale, and he had the most flawless skin I’d ever seen on a man. Right at the moment, it was pink from the cold.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I told him.

He looked directly at me then. “You were here in the cottage last night?”

“Yes, I was.”

“You saw her?”

“Yes.”

“She was alive.”

I shifted uneasily. “Yes,” I told him reluctantly.

“Did she speak?”

“She asked after the children.”

“The children?”

“That’s all.”

His eyes closed, and for one awful moment I thought he was going to cry.

“Have a seat,” I said abruptly. I startled him into sitting down in the nearest chair, an armchair that must be Varena’s favorite from the way she’d positioned it.

“Let me get you some hot chocolate.” I went into the kitchen without waiting for an answer. I knew there would be some since Varena’d offered it to me the night before. There it was, on the counter where she’d set it, along with two mugs. Luckily, the microwave was built-in, so I was able to heat the water in it. I stirred in the powder. It wasn’t very good, but it was hot and sweet, and he looked in need of both sugar and warmth.

“Where are the children?” I asked as I put his mug on the small oak table by the chair.

“ They’re with church members,” he said. His voice was rich but not big.

“So, what can I do for you?” It didn’t seem that he would say anything else unless I prompted him.

“I wanted to see where she died.”

This was very nearly intolerable. “There, on the couch,” I said brusquely.

He stared. “There aren’t any stains,” he told me.

“Varena slung a sheet over it.” This was beyond strange. The back of my neck began to prickle. I wasn’t going to sit knee to knee with him-I’d been perched on the ottoman that matched the chair-and point out where Meredith’s head had been, what spot her feet had touched.

“Before your friend put Meredith down?”

“Yes.” I jumped up to pull a fitted sheet from the closet. Giving way to an almost irresistible compulsion, I refolded it, and knew I’d straighten all the rest, too. The hell with Varena’s finer feelings.

“And he is-?”

“My friend.” I could hear my voice get flatter and harder.

“You’re angry with me, I’m afraid,” he said wearily. And sure enough, he was weeping, tears were running down his cheeks. He blotted them automatically with a well-used handkerchief.

“You shouldn’t put yourself through this.” My tone was still not the one a nice woman would use to a widower. I meant he shouldn’t put me through it.

“I feel like God’s abandoned me and the kids. I’m heartbroken,” and I reflected I’d never actually heard anyone use that word out loud, “and my faith has left me,” he finished, without taking a breath. He put his face in his hands.

Oh, man. I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to be here.

Through the uncurtained window, I saw a car pull in behind mine in the cottage’s narrow driveway. Jess O’Shea got out and began his way to the door, his head bowed. A minister-just the person to deal with a lapse of faith and recent bereavement. I opened the door before he had a chance to knock.

“Jess,” I said. Even I could hear the naked relief in my voice. “Emory Osborn is here, and he is really, really…” I stood there, nodding significantly, unable to pin down exactly what Emory Osborn was.

Jess O’Shea seemed to be taking in my drift. He stepped around me and over to the smaller man, claiming my former seat on the ottoman. He took Emory’s hands in his.

I tried to block out the two men’s voices as I continued the job of packing, despite the feeling I should leave while Emory talked with his minister. But Emory had the option of going to his own house if he wanted complete privacy. If I looked at it practically, he’d known I was here and come in the cottage anyway…

Jess and Emory were praying together now, the fervent expression on Emory’s face the only one I could see. Jess’s back was bent and his hands clasped in front of his face. The two fair heads were close together.

Then Dill stepped in, looking at the two men praying, at me folding, trying to keep my eyes to myself. He looked startled and not too happy at this tableau.

All three dads in the same room. Except that one of them was probably not really a father at all but a thief who had stolen his fatherhood.

Dill turned to me, his whole face a question. I shrugged.

“Where’s Varena?” he whispered.

“At our folks‘,” I whispered. “You go over there. You two need to talk about what’s going to happen. And aren’t you supposed to be meeting Jack at your place?” I gave him a little push with my hand, and he took a step back before he recovered his footing. Possibly I’d pushed a little harder than I’d planned.

After Dill obediently got in his car and left, I finished refolding and found I had packed all the remaining items in the linen closet. I checked the bathroom cabinet. It held only a few things, which I also boxed.

When I turned around, Jess O’Shea was right behind me. My arms tensed immediately and my hands fisted.

“Sorry, did I surprise you?” he asked, with apparent innocence. Yes.

“I think Emory is feeling a little better. We’re going over to his house. Thanks for comforting him.”

I couldn’t recall any comforting I’d done; it must have been in the eye of the comfortee. I made a noncommittal sound.

“I’m so glad you’ve returned to reconcile with your family,” Jess said, all in a rush. “I know this has meant so much to them.”

This was his business? I raised my eyebrows.

He reddened when I didn’t speak. “I guess it’s a professional hazard, giving out emotional pats on the back,” he said finally. “I apologize.”

I nodded. “How is Krista?” I asked.

“She’s fine,” he said, surprised. “It’s a little hard to get her to understand that her friend’s mother is gone, she seems not to see it as a reality yet. That can be a blessing, you know. I think we’ll be keeping Eve for a while until Emory can cope a little better. Maybe the baby, too, if Lou thinks she can handle it.”

“Didn’t Lou tell me she’d taken Krista to the doctor last week?” I asked.

If Jess noticed the contrast between my lack of response to his observations about my family and my willingness to chatter about his child, he didn’t comment on it. Parents almost always seem willing to believe other people are as fascinated with their children as they are.

“No,” he said, obviously searching his memory. “Krista hasn’t even had a cold since we started her on her allergy shots last summer.” His face lightened. “Before that, we were in to Dr. LeMay’s every week, it seemed like! My goodness, this is so much better. Lou gives Krista the shots herself.”

I nodded and began opening cabinets in the kitchen. Jess took the hint and left, pulling on his heavy coat as he walked across the yard. Evidently he wasn’t going to stay at Emory’s long.

After he left I wrote a note on a pad I found under Varena’s phone. I hopped in my car and drove to the motel. As I’d expected, Jack’s car wasn’t there. I pulled up in front of his room. I squatted and slid the note under his door.

It said, “Krista O’Shea didn’t go to the doctor recently.” I didn’t sign it. Who else would be leaving Jack a note?

On my way back to Varena’s, I scavenged alleys for more boxes. I was particularly interested in the alley behind the gift store and furniture store.

It was clean, for an alley, and I even scored a couple of very decent boxes before I began my search. There was a Dumpster back there; I was sure the police had been through it, since it was suspiciously empty. The appliance carton Christopher Sims had been using for shelter was gone, too, maybe appropriated by the police.

I looked down the alley in both directions. Main Street was on one end, and anyone driving east would be able to glance down the alley and catch a glimpse of whoever was in it, unless that person was in the niche where Sims’s box had been located.

To the south end of the alley was a quiet street with small businesses in older houses and a few remaining homes still occupied by one family apiece. That street, Macon, saw quite a lot of foot traffic; the square’s parking space was severely limited, so downtown shoppers were always looking for a spot within walking distance.

It sure would be easy to catch a glimpse of Christopher Darby Sims while he squatted in this alley. It sure would be tempting to capitalize on the presence of a homeless black in Bartley. It would be no trouble at all to slip through the alley with, say, a length of bloody pipe. Deposit it behind a handy box.

The back door of the furniture store opened. A woman about my age came out, looking cautiously at me.

“Hi,” she called. She was clearly waiting for me to account for my presence.

“I’m collecting boxes for my sister’s move,” I told her, gesturing toward my car with its open trunk.

“Oh,” she said, relief written on her face in big bold letters. “I hate to seem suspicious, but we had a… Lily?”

“Maude? Mary Maude?” I was looking at her just as incredulously.

She came down the back steps of the building in a rush and threw her arms around me. I staggered back under her weight. Mary Maude was still pretty and always would be, but she was considerably rounder than she had been in high school. I made myself hug her back. “Mary Maude Plummer,” I said tentatively, patting her plump shoulder very gently.

“Well, it was Mary Maude Baumgartner for about five years, and now it’s back to Plummer,” she told me, sniffing a little. Mary Maude had always been emotional. I had a clenched feeling around my heart. I had a lot of memories of this woman.

“You never called me,” she said now, looking up at me. She meant, after the rape. I could never get away from it here.

“I never called anyone,” I said. I had to tell Mary Maude the truth. “I couldn’t face doing it. I had too hard a time.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “But I’ve always loved you.”

Always right to the emotional truth, no matter how uncomfortable. Could this be why I’d never called Mary Maude after my Bad Time? We’d let go of each other, taken a step back.

I remembered another important truth. “I love you too,” I said. “But I couldn’t stand to be around people who were always thinking about what had happened to me. I couldn’t do it.”

She nodded. Her red hair, almost to her shoulders, turned under in a neat curve all the way around, and she had heavy gold earrings in her pierced ears. “I think I can understand that. I’ve been all these years forgiving you for refusing my comfort.”

“Are we all right?”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling up at me. “We’re all right, now.”

We both gave a little laugh, half happy, half embarrassed.

“So, you’re getting boxes for Varena?”

“Yeah. She’s getting her stuff out of the cottage. The wedding’s day after tomorrow. And after the murder last night…”

“Oh, right, that’s the place Varena rented! You know, the husband, Emory, works right here, with me.” And Mary Maude pointed at the door from which she’d issued. “He’s the sweetest guy.”

He would certainly have been aware of Christopher Sims’s presence in the alley in back of the store.

“So, I guess you knew this guy was living back here, the purse snatcher?”

“Well, we’d caught glimpses. Just in the two days before the police got him. Wait… my God, Lily, was that you who kicked him?”

I nodded.

“Wow, girl, what have you done with yourself?” She eyed me up and down.

“Taken karate for a few years, worked out some.”

“I can tell! You were so brave, too!”

“So you knew Sims was back here?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. But we weren’t sure what to do about it. We’ve never had any problem like that, and we were trying to decide what the safe thing to do was, and what the Christian thing to do was. It’s tough when that might not be the same thing! We got Jess O’Shea down here to talk to the man, try to see where he wanted a bus ticket to, you know? Or if he was sick. Or hungry.”

So Jess had actually met the man.

“What did Jess say?”

“He said this Sims guy told him he was just fine right where he was, he had been getting handouts from some people in the, you know, black community, and he was just going to stay in the alley until God guided him somewhere else.”

“Somewhere where they had more purses?”

“Could be.” Mary Maude laughed. “I hear Diane positively identified him. He told Diane at the police station that he was an angel and was trying to point out to Diane the hazards of possessing too many worldly goods.”

“That’s original.”

“Yeah, give him points for a talent for fiction, anyway.”

“He say anything about the murders?” Since Mary Maude apparently had such access to the local gossip pipeline, I thought I might as well tap in.

“No. Isn’t that a little strange? You’d think on one hand he’d be too deranged to understand that the murders are so much more serious, and yet he’s saying that he never saw the pipe until the police found it stuffed behind his box, you know, the one where he was sleeping.”

I noticed that Mary Maude had come to check me out without a coat on, and she was shivering in her expensive white blouse and sweater-vest embroidered in holly and Christmas ornaments. Our reunion had its own background sound track, as the loudspeakers positioned around the square continued to blare out Christmas music.

“How do you stand it?” I asked, nodding my head toward the noise in the square.

“The carols? Oh, after a while you just tune them out,” she said wearily. “They just leach the spirit out of me.”

“Maybe that’s what made the purse snatcher deranged,”

I offered, and she burst into laughter. Mary Maude had always laughed easily, charmingly, making it impossible not at least to smile along with her.

She hugged me again, made me promise to call her when I came back to town after the wedding, and scampered back into the store, her body shaking with the cold. I stood looking after her for a minute. Then I threw a couple more boxes into the car and drove carefully out of the alley.

Within a block of turning out onto the side street, Macon, I passed Dill’s pharmacy.

I had a lot to think about.

I would have given almost anything to have had my punching bag.

I returned to Varena’s place and packed everything I could find. Every half hour or so, I straightened up and looked out the window. There were lots of visitors at the Osborn house: women dropping off food, mostly. Emory appeared in the yard from time to time, walking restlessly, and a couple of times he was crying. Once he drove off in his car, returning in less than an hour. But he didn’t knock on the cottage door again, to my great relief.

I had carefully folded Varena’s remaining clothes and placed them in suitcases, since I didn’t know what she’d planned on taking on the honeymoon. Most of her clothes were already at Dill’s.

Finally, by three o’clock, all Varena’s belongings were packed. I moved all the boxes into my car, except for a short stack by the front door that just couldn’t fit. And of course, there was the remaining furniture, but that wasn’t my problem.

I began cleaning the apartment.

It felt surprisingly good to have something to clean. Varena, while not a slob, was no compulsive housekeeper, and there was plenty to do. I was also actively enjoying the break from my family and the alone time.

As I was running the vacuum, I heard a heavy knock on the door. I jumped. I hadn’t heard a car pull up, but then I wouldn’t have over the drone of the machine.

I opened the door. Jack was there, and he was angry.

“What?” I asked.

He pushed past me. “My room at the motel got broken into.” He was furious. “Someone came in through the bathroom window. It looks out on a field. No one saw.”

“Anything taken?”

“No. Whoever it was rummaged through everything, broke the lock on my briefcase.”

I had an ominous sinking somewhere in the region of my stomach. “Did you find my note?”

“What?” He stared at me, anger giving way to something else.

“I left you a note.” I sat down abruptly on the ottoman. “I left you a note,” I repeated stupidly. “About Krista O’Shea.”

“You signed it?”

“No.”

“What did it say?”

“That she hadn’t been to the doctor in weeks.”

Jack’s eyes flickered from item to item in the clean room, as he thought about what I’d told him.

“Did you call the police?” I asked.

“They were there when I pulled in. Mr. Patel, the manager, had called. He had seen the window was broken when he went to put the garbage out behind the building.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth. That my things had been gone through but nothing had been stolen. I hadn’t left any money in my room. I never do. And I don’t carry valuable things with me.”

Jack felt angry and sick because his space, however temporary, had been invaded, and his things had been riffled. I understand that feeling all too well. But Jack would never talk about it in those terms, because he was a man.

“So now someone knows exactly why I’m here in Bartley.” He’d cover that violated feeling with practical considerations.

“That person also knows I have an accomplice,” he continued.

That was one way to put it.

Suddenly I stood, walked over to the window. I was crackling with restless energy. Trouble was coming, and every nerve in my body was warning me to get in my car and go home to Shakespeare.

But I couldn’t go. My family kept me here.

No, that wasn’t completely true. I could have brought myself to leave my family if I felt threatened enough. Jack kept me here.

Without a thought in my head, I made a fist and would have driven it into the window if Jack hadn’t caught my arm.

I rounded on him, crazy with jolts of feeling that I wouldn’t identify. Instead of striking him, I ran my arm around his neck and drew him ferociously to me. The stresses and strains on me were almost intolerable.

Jack, understandably surprised-, made a questioning noise but then shut up. He let go of the arm he was gripping and tentatively put his own arms around me. We stood silently for what seemed like a long time.

“So,” he said, “you want to talk about whatever this is that’s got you so upset? Have you run out of tolerance for being in your parents’ house? Has your sister made you mad? Or… have you found out something else about her fiancй?”

I pushed away from him and began to pace the room.

“I have some ideas,” I said.

His dark brows flew up. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to have the whole conversation: I’d tell him I would get in the houses, he’d tell me it was his job, blah blah blah. Why not skip the whole thing?

“Lily, I’m going to get mad at you,” Jack said with a sort of fatalistic certainty.

“You can’t do the things I can do. What’s your next step now?” I challenged him. “Is there one more thing you can find out here?”

Sure enough, he was looking angry already. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and glanced around for something handy to kick. Finding nothing, he too began pacing. We shifted around the room as if we were sword fighters waiting for our opponent to give us an opening.

“Ask the chief if I can go in and look at those files at Dr. LeMay’s,” he suggested defiantly.

“It’ll never happen.” I knew Chandler: He would go only so far.

“Find whatever the murderer was wearing when he killed the doctor and the nurse and Meredith Osborn.”

So Jack had decided, as I had, that the killer had worn some covering garment over his clothes.

“It’s not gonna be in the house,” I told him.

“You think not?”

“I know not. When people hide something like that, they want it to be close but not as personally close as their own house.”

“You’re thinking carport, garage?”

I nodded. “Or car. But you know as well as I do that’ll put you in a terrible position legally. Before you do that, isn’t there anything else you can try?”

“I’d hoped to get something from Dill. He’s a nice guy, but he just won’t talk about his first marriage. At least his attic has a good floored section now.” Jack gave a short laugh. “I thought about going back to reinterview the couple that lived next door to Meredith and Emory when they had their first child,” Jack said reluctantly. “I’ve been reviewing what they said, and I think I see a hole in their account.”

“Where do they live?”

“The podunk town north of Little Rock where the Osborns lived before they came here. You know… the one not far from Conway.”

“What was the hole?”

“Not so much a hole, as… something the woman said just didn’t make sense. She said that Meredith told her the baby coming was the saddest day of her life. And Meredith told her that the home birth had been terrible.”

That could be significant or just plain nothing more than what it was, the outpourings of a woman who’d just experienced childbirth for the first time.

“She had the second baby in the hospital,” I observed. “At least, I assume so; I think someone would have mentioned it before now if she’d had Jane J Lilith at home.” But I made a mental note to check.

“Why would Meredith have to die?” Jack said. “Why Meredith?” He wasn’t talking to me, not really. He was staring out the front window, his hands still in his pockets. Seen in profile, he looked stern and frightening. If I mentally lopped off his ponytail, I could see how he’d looked as a cop. I would not have been afraid of being beaten if I’d been arrested by him, I thought, but I would have known I’d be a fool to try to escape.

“She baby-sat the other two girls,” I offered.

Jack nodded. “So she knew them all physically. She’d have an opportunity, sooner or later, to see each girl naked. But the Macklesby baby didn’t have any distinguishing physical marks.”

“So who do you think sent you the picture?”

“I think it was Meredith Osborn.” He turned from the window to look at me directly. “I think she sent it because she wanted to right some great wrong. And I think that’s why she was killed.”

“What were you really doing the night she died?”

“I was on my way to ask her some questions,” he said. “I’d driven past the Bartley Grill, and I saw her husband and the kids inside. The baby was on the table in one of those carriers, and he and Eve were chattering away. So I knew Meredith was home by herself, and I thought she might know more about the picture.”

“Why?”

“Roy had brushed the picture and the envelope for fingerprints. There weren’t any on the picture-it had been wiped-but there was one on the envelope, on the tape used to seal the flap. It was a clear print, very small. You’d told me how little Meredith was. Did you ever notice how tiny her hands were?”

I never had.

“I’d hoped to get some fingerprints of hers to compare. I planned on ringing the doorbell, telling her that I was a detective in town on a job as well as being your boyfriend. I was going to hand her a photo, ask her to identify it. When she said she didn’t know the subject, I would put the photo in a bag and later test it for fingerprints.”

If I were in the Osborn house I could find something I could almost bet would have her fingerprints on it. I could also check to see if Eve’s memory book was missing a page.

“But I don’t want you getting into this. You saw how she died,” Jack said brutally. I looked up sharply. He was standing right in front of me.

“I can tell when you’re going to do something; you get this stubborn clench to your jaw,” he continued. “What’s in your head, Lily?”

“Cleaning,” I said.

“Cleaning what?”

“Cleaning the Osborn house, and the Kingery house.”

He thought that over. “This isn’t your case,” he said.

“I want us out of here by Christmas.”

“Me too,” he said fervently.

“Well, then,” I said, concluding our discussion.

“Did I just say something I didn’t know I said?”

“We agree on getting this done by Christmas.”

Jack gave me a dark look. “So, I’m driving out of here,” he said abruptly. “I’ll call you. Don’t do anything that could put you in danger.”

“Drive careful,” I told him. He gave me an unloving peck on the cheek, another suspicious look, and, without further ado, he left. I watched through the uncurtained window as Jack fastened his seat belt and backed out of. the driveway.

Then I went over to the widower and offered to clean his house.