Winter's Child

I decided that the laundry could wait and was heading for my laptop when the house phone rang.

“Mrs. Bryant? Judge Knott?” asked the vaguely familiar voice of someone who wasn’t sure if I was still using my maiden name.

“Speaking,” I said.

“This is Deputy Richards, ma’am. We were wondering if you could tell us what’s happening? I mean, we didn’t 12 think we should call Major Bryant directly, but we’re all worried for him and his son.”

“Worried?” I parried, wondering how she had heard about Jonna jerking Dwight’s chain.

“Yes, ma’am. That Code Amber just came across our computer screen, but all it says is that he was taken yesterday afternoon by an unknown white woman in a blue parka and sunglasses and not by his mother as they first thought.”

“What?”

“Oh, gosh,” she groaned, instantly realizing that I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? I’m so, so sorry!”

I knew she was referring to a piece of confidential information that she had blurted out at a dinner the sheriff’s department had given Dwight and me right before Christmas. Dwight had roasted her over the coals for that, but what was this?

Before I could respond, my cell phone rang and I grabbed it. Dwight’s number was there on the screen. I promised Richards that I’d call her right back and pressed the talk button.

“What’s going on up there?” I asked, not quite sure whether I was angry at being left in ignorance while all hell seemed to be breaking loose in Virginia. “I thought you said it was Jonna that took Cal.”

“How do you know about that?” he asked.

“You do an Amber Alert and you don’t expect me to hear about it? I’m your wife, Dwight. Why am I hearing about this from somebody else?”

“It just went out and this is the first real chance I’ve had to call you.”

“Where’s Jonna?” I said, ready to go rip her eyes out.

“Who does she think has Cal?”

There was a long silence.

“Dwight?”

“Jonna’s dead,” he said, and I listened in stunned silence as he told me all that had happened since we talked earlier that morning.

I was aghast and wanted to go over every detail, but that wasn’t going to happen. “Sorry, Deb’rah. I’ve got to be in Paul’s office in about three minutes or the state guys will probably have a warrant out for my arrest.”

“What?”

“Bad joke. But they do want to talk to me.”

The pain in his voice decided me. “I’m coming up,” I said. “I’ll be there before dark.”

He started to protest, but I wasn’t about to listen.

“For better or worse,” I reminded him. “Besides, you probably need fresh underwear and socks.”

“Well . . .”

“Anything special you want me to bring?”

“No, but call my mother, would you? She needs to be told before she hears about it like you did.”

“I’ll tell her,” I said. “You go to your meeting and I’ll see you in a few hours.”

I called Mayleen Richards back and told her the bare minimum, then I called Miss Emily.

As soon as she heard my voice, she said, “Oh, Deborah, I was just fixing to call you and Dwight.” She bubbled with happy anticipation. “Rob called. He and Kate are on their way to the hospital. The baby could be here anytime now!”

I hated to lick the red off her candy, but I couldn’t not tell her. She listened with small murmurs of dismay.

“Poor Jonna,” she said when I’d finished. Cal’s disappearance terrified her, too, but she wasn’t going to think the worst before she had to.

“Dwight will find him,” she said, even though a slight quaver in her voice betrayed her surface calm.

Minnie was shocked when I phoned but instantly volunteered to tell Daddy and the others. “You sure you don’t want someone to ride up with you?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

“Promise you won’t speed,” she said. “I just saw the Weather Channel. It’s snowing up there and I want to be able to truthfully tell Mr. Kezzie you promised not to speed.”

“I promise,” I lied.

Finally, I called Roger Longmire, my chief judge, and explained why I needed to take a week of personal leave.

After that, I packed enough clean clothes to get us through the week, and at the last minute tucked a dark suit for Dwight and a black dress for me into a garment bag even though it was too soon to know when, or even if, there was to be a formal funeral.

I was on the road within an hour after Dwight’s call.

C H A P T E R

14

The wounds and blows inflicted by men . . . render them lessable to bear the afflictions of heat and cold.

—Theophrastus

Saturday afternoon, 22 January

For all the times he had sat in the burn box while defense attorneys nitpicked his testimony—

“How can you possibly say, Major Bryant, that this wrench, sold by the thousands at hardware stores throughout the country, is the exact same wrench pur-portedly owned by my client before his girlfriend’s tragic death?”—and despite the many suspects he had cross-questioned himself, Dwight was not looking forward to this session. Paul might call it a formality, but these men were here to find Jonna’s killer, and as the ex-spouse, he was a ready-made natural suspect. He told himself to just suck it up. Pointless to get their hackles up by a show of impatience or hostility. The sooner this was over, the quicker he could get back to the search for Cal.

Yet, for all that, it began pleasantly enough. When he arrived at the police station a minute or two before one o’clock, the others were settled in Paul Radcliff’s office 13 and they made no move to take it down the hall to the interrogation room, for which he supposed he should be grateful. At the moment, the two state police officers were acting as if this were nothing more than a pro forma meeting of professionals.

Dwight smiled when Paul introduced him to Special Agents Nick Lewes and Ed Clark of Virginia’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation. “I guess y’all’ve heard all the jokes.”

“Jokes?” Lewes asked blankly. He looked at his partner, who shrugged.

“Never mind,” said Dwight. If they were putting him on, then let it ride. He shucked his jacket and hung it on the back of the remaining empty chair.

Lewes was probably his age, mid-forties, and Clark looked to be a couple of years younger. Both were muscular six-footers, although Lewes was somewhat heavier.

Both wore leather shoulder holsters over casual civvies.

Their heavy navy blue utility jackets with insignia and shoulder patches were draped over their chairs. Lewes had a receding hairline and pouches under his eyes like a sleepy bloodhound, while Clark’s pointed face and bright button eyes reminded Dwight of a poodle he had once known.

“Sorry about your boy,” Lewes said. “Hell of a situation you got here.”

“We understand he went with his abductor willingly?”

asked Clark.

“Sounds like it,” said Dwight. “That’s why we thought she was Jonna.”

As they finished with the small talk, Clark set a tiny tape recorder on the desk corner nearest him. “You don’t have a problem with us taping this, do you, Major?”

“Fine,” said Dwight.

Clark recorded the time and place and the names of those present, then asked, “When was the last time you spoke to Mrs. Bryant?”

“The twenty-ninth of December, when I brought our son back from North Carolina.”

“Not since then? Not even on the phone?”

“No.”

The two looked at him expectantly, as if he were a nice fresh bone to gnaw on, but seeing no reason to elaborate, Dwight gazed back, maintaining a relaxed posture.

“How would you characterize your relationship with the victim? Good, bad, antagonistic?”

He hesitated. “I didn’t think of it as a relationship. She was the mother of my son, so we kept it polite. He was the only thing we had in common.”

“Why’d y’all split up?”

“That was almost eight years ago and it’s not relevant to this situation,” he said, willing himself to maintain his composure. If he were sitting in their seats, he would certainly think his questions were hitting home if the suspect suddenly crossed his arms protectively over his chest.

“A little cheating on the side, maybe?”

“No cheating on either side and I didn’t remarry till this past Christmas,” Dwight said, sidestepping the spirit of Clark’s question, because yes, when you got right down to it, wasn’t wanting Deborah the whole time he was married the same as cheating on Jonna? (“Whosoeverlooketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adul-tery with her already in his heart.”) 1 Not that these men would suspect that he’d had to wait seven years after the divorce to do anything about it.

(“And Jacob served seven years for Rachel . . . for the love hehad for her.”)

“She got custody,” said Clark. “Did you resent that?”

Dwight shook his head. “Cal was a baby. It made sense for her to have him.”

“I’m talking about recently, now that he’s older.”

“He’s only eight. He still needs his mother.”

Saying the words drove the truth of it home like the blow of a sledgehammer.

How’s Cal going to deal with this? Or does he alreadyknow that Jonna’s dead? Dear God, was he there? Was heused as a bargaining chip in a game Jonna had alreadylost? Forced to watch while someone put a gun to hismother’s head? And what about Deborah? She loves Cal,but she’s not Jonna. She can’t be for him what Jonna—

“Major Bryant?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Look, could we do this later? My son—”

“Every law agency in a five-state area has your son on their computer screens,” Clark said mildly, “and I believe Chief Radcliff has officers out questioning neighbors and friends?”

Paul Radcliff nodded.

“So unless you know where he’s likely to be, it’ll help him more if you finish bringing us up to speed. Now, we understand you got into town yesterday morning and your wife—sorry, your ex-wife—was already missing?”

Dwight nodded. “Cal said he hadn’t seen her since she dropped him off at school Thursday morning.”

With the tape recorder running, he repeated every- thing Cal had told him, from their breakfast of bacon and pecan waffles and the drive to school, to his coming home to an empty house and how she hadn’t answered her cell phone.

“And you spent yesterday looking for her?”

“I tried.” He told of his visits to Jonna’s mother and to the Morrow House and how he had come up colder than the slushy rain pounding on the skylight above them.

“Her mother said she planned to go in to work that morning, and that jibes with what one of the trustees—”

He glanced at Radcliff, who helpfully supplied the name. “Betty Ramos.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Ramos said she saw Jonna briefly when she stopped by the Morrow House Thursday morning.”

“Anybody else see her there?”

“When I spoke to the director the first time, he said he hadn’t seen her since the weekend before,” Dwight said.

“I didn’t exactly lean on him, though.”

“And when we were there the second time,” said Radcliff, “we were more concerned with the guns.”

They described Mayhew’s discovery of the missing antique guns, as well as the bloody history of the presentation pistol that had killed Jonna.

Lewes lifted his sorrowful bloodhound eyes to Radcliff.

“Who knew about that?”

“We’re not sure. Mayhew thought Mrs. Bryant might not know, but Nathan Benton—he’s chair of the trustees—says someone in the Historical Society told him. On the other hand, Mrs. Ramos says she never heard it before today.”

Lewes started to ask another question but Clark had 13 moved on to a different subject. “How did you feel about your ex-wife’s affair?”

“What affair?” asked Dwight.

“The one she wrote about in that suicide note.”

“There was no affair and she didn’t kill herself.”

“You don’t think it’s her handwriting?”

“Oh, it’s her handwriting, but this whole phony suicide was staged by whoever shot her.”

“Phony?” said Clark.

“You guys are joking, right?”

“Why would we joke?” asked Lewes.

“You saw the setup. No blood spatter where you’d expect it? Besides, if there’s one thing I know about Jonna, it’s that she’d never kill herself over any man and she certainly wouldn’t do it without making sure Cal was taken care of.”

“Maybe she did make sure. Maybe that’s who took your son,” said Clark. “She knew you’d remarried, right?

Could be she resented it. Or did you resent the idea of your boy having a new stepfather?”

His shiny black eyes reminded Dwight even more of that poodle he had once known.

Known and, as he now remembered, hadn’t particularly liked.

He felt his jaws tighten.

“Tell you what,” he said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Why don’t y’all go talk to people who know what her life was like up here? If she really was having an affair with a married man, somebody will know. Shaysville’s not that big.”

“He wants us to explore other routes,” Lewes told his partner.

“Map out a different expedition,” Clark agreed with a slight smirk on his poodle face.

“Jesus H!” said Dwight, slapping his hand down so hard on the desk that Clark had to grab for the tape recorder to keep it from bouncing off. “My son’s missing, his mother’s dead, and you’re playing games with me?”

“Sorry,” said Clark, “but hey, you did ask, and yeah, we’ve heard all the jokes.”

“Fine,” said Dwight. “Glad I could give you some more laughs.” He stood up angrily and reached for his jacket.

Lewes put out a placating hand. “Just a minute, Major.

Chief Radcliff tells us you’re staying at Mrs. Bryant’s house. We’re going to want to take a look.”

“When?” he asked, still frosted.

“Now works for me.”

“It’s been contaminated since Jonna disappeared,”

Dwight warned him grudgingly. “I slept there last night and someone came back for Cal’s sweater.”

“Huh?”

This was clearly something Radcliff had not told them, so Dwight gave a quick recap.

“Anything missing besides the sweater?”

“Maybe something from the medicine cabinet. And that reminds me.” He pulled out the bottle of antihistamine tablets that had been prescribed for Jonna late last summer and turned to Radcliff. “This Dr. Brookfield.

Where can I find him?”

“How about you let us handle that?” said Clark and held out his hand for the bottle. “And how ’bout you re-13 member that you’re a couple of hundred miles out of your jurisdiction?”

“Oh, I don’t think we need to get too official,” said Nick Lewes, playing the ameliorating good guy as he, too, stood and put on his jacket. “We’re all on the same team here. I’ll go on out to the house with him and maybe you could see what’s happening with the wagon.

Oh, and Chief. Didn’t you say your people lifted the abductor’s fingerprints at the house yesterday? Maybe Ed could take what you have back for our lab to process.”

“Sure,” Radcliff said sourly.

Rain mixed with snow continued to fall as they left the station. Special Agent Lewes borrowed one of Radcliff’s squad cars and followed Dwight’s truck over to Jonna’s house. They stood on the porch out of the icy wet and Dwight pointed to the stone that had hid the now missing key. “When Cal and I came back yesterday, whoever was in the house could have watched from behind the blinds as Cal got it and then put it back.”

He unlocked the door and held it open for the other officer. “We didn’t search the house when we came in, so she could have been hiding anywhere downstairs here.”

He went on through the house to the utility room and let Bandit out of his crate. The little dog barked sharply when he first saw Lewes, but then wagged his tail and approached for a friendly pat.

As Dwight opened the outer door to turn Bandit into the snow-covered yard, he glanced across the two driveways and saw Jonna’s neighbor, Leonard Carlton, at the window.

“Any news?” the old man called.

“Nothing,” Dwight called back. “You?”

“Sorry.”

“That the guy saw your son leave?” asked Lewes.

Dwight nodded. Before he could close the door, Bandit scooted back through his legs. Between the wet and the chill, he had finished his business in record time.

“And the dog didn’t bark last night?”

“Not that I heard. He sleeps at the foot of Cal’s bed and that room’s at the top of the stairs. If he came down when he heard the key, I’m pretty sure I’d’ve heard him bark.”

“Yeah, he’s got a shrill voice,” Lewes agreed. “And it’s not like you weren’t on edge about your son. I’m guessing you’d’ve rared up if they’d made any noise.”

“I slept through the door closing,” Dwight said bitterly.

They walked up the carpeted stairs and Lewes swung the door back and forth on its hinges with the tip of a gloved finger. It moved easily with no giveaway squeaks.

“You touch that knob this morning?”

“Not on this side, I didn’t.”

“Good. I’ll have it checked out.”

“I was careful about opening the medicine cabinet, too,” said Dwight.

“They took a chance coming up here. Must’ve been something they really wanted. Only how would they know? Your son on any special medication?”

“Not that I’m aware of. And I think Jonna would’ve said.”

“What about her?”

Dwight shook his head. “Maybe her mother would know.”

“Why don’t you ask her? And we’ll check out her doctor.”

Dwight heard the subtext of what Lewes was saying, and whether or not this was more good-cop tactics to soften him up, he was nevertheless grateful.

“Thanks.”

The other man shrugged. “Hell, I figure you’re gonna keep digging no matter what we say. I know I would. But you gotta share anything you find, okay?”

“Of course.”

Lewes looked at the football posters on Cal’s wall. He touched the small trophy on the bookcase and half-smiled at the old brown plush teddy bear squashed into the bottom shelf of Cal’s bookcase. “My kid’s ten,” he said.

C H A P T E R

15

Good heed must be taken to the local conditions of the region in which one is placed.

—Theophrastus

Saturday afternoon, 22 January

With only a generic description of the woman who had taken Cal—Caucasian, five-six, slender build, wearing a blue quilted parka with black fur trim, and without even a car color much less a make to go on—the Amber Alert had produced no fruitful sightings. There had been one call from a supermarket in Shaysville itself, but when an officer checked it out, he knew both the boy and his mother. Four more calls came from a large shopping mall off the interstate that served the whole valley, and the responding officers sighted a surprising number of blue fur-trimmed parkas.

The women wearing them ranged from skinny teenagers to hefty matrons and the parkas covered the full spec-trum of blue, from pale aqua to dark navy. Two even had small boys in tow, and they were at first indignant at being stopped and asked to prove that the boys were their sons; but their indignation quickly melted into 14 compassion for the missing child when the officers explained.

“Oh, that poor woman,” said the first mother, putting a protective arm around her son’s shoulder.

The second, who moments earlier had scolded her son for losing his gloves and then spilling catsup on his jacket, decided abruptly that maybe she would get him that action figure he wanted after all.

After leaving Nick Lewes to go through Jonna’s papers while he waited for the evidence truck, Dwight was grimly amused to find no parking spaces near Mrs. Shay’s house. It was still small-town South here. Only three hours ago, he had told his former mother-in-law that Jonna was dead, yet word seemed to have spread through her circle so quickly that he suspected a highly efficient telephone tree. As he slid his truck into an empty space on the next block, more friends and neighbors hurried up her walk, umbrellas slanted against the slushy rain, bearing food and words of comfort. Like the U.S. Postal Service used to be, he thought—neither snow nor rain, nor heat of day nor gloom of night would deter them. Even though Jonna’s body was by now headed away from Shaysville for a complete autopsy, a local funeral home had already arranged for a spray of white carnations for the front door, and a register stood in the foyer for callers.

Inside the house, a cone of silence followed behind him as people realized who he was; and when he asked to speak to Mrs. Shay, it was her cousin Eleanor who came down to escort him up to the bedroom where Mrs. Shay lay weeping on a blue velvet chaise longue, attended by three or four of her most intimate friends. On the hearth nearby, gas logs burned in a cast-iron grate. No doubt it was meant to be cheerful, but it made the room feel op-pressively warm to someone who had just come in out of the cold and wet, and the different floral scents worn by some of the women contributed to the hothouse effect.

Yet Mrs. Shay had a fleecy shawl wrapped around her shoulders as if she was chilled to the bone.

“Oh, Dwight!” she moaned. “What’s happening?

Have they found Cal?”

“No, ma’am, not yet. The police here have put out an Amber Alert and they’re questioning the neighbors again.” Mrs. Shay’s bedroom was one of those ultra-feminine rooms full of spindly furniture and breakable knickknacks that always made him feel like the Durham Bull in a tea shop and he tried not to bump anything as he crossed the thick white rug. “I was wondering if I could speak to you privately for a few minutes?”

Chirping and twittering, the elderly, well-mannered women immediately began to leave, but Mrs. Shay put her feet on the floor and sat up to reach for her cousin’s hand. “Whatever you have to say may be said in front of Eleanor.”

Eleanor Prentice tried to disengage her clasping fingers, but Mrs. Shay was insistent. “Please, Eleanor, I can’t do this alone. You know my heart can’t take much more of this.”

“It’s okay with me,” Dwight told her. Today was the second time he had met this cousin, and he was impressed by her calm demeanor and soothing air.

“Of course, I’ll stay if you want me,” she said, and 14 brought Dwight the sturdiest chair in the room. He sat down gingerly and she joined her cousin on the chaise.

Quietly, Dwight told them how someone had entered Jonna’s house during the night. Mrs. Shay murmured and exclaimed, and Dwight was struck anew by how little he had actually known of this woman before today.

She had flown out to Germany for their wedding, the only member of Jonna’s family to come, but there had been no time then to get to know each other. When he and Jonna returned stateside, Jonna had always come back to Shaysville alone and Mrs. Shay had visited them in Arlington only once, an overnight stay necessitated by a relative’s funeral. Indeed, this weekend was the first time they had met since the divorce, and except for Cal, there was no real shared mutuality. At times, in exasperation, Jonna had called her a spoiled hypochondriac, but that had not stopped her from hurrying home whenever Mrs. Shay called. He thought of Jonna’s financial records and the monthly bank draft from Mrs. Shay’s bank. Quid pro quo?

Trying to get information from her was like trying to hold smoke in his hands, yet when he said that the intruder had taken Cal’s sweater, she looked at him with sudden hope in her eyes. “But that’s good, isn’t it? I mean, it shows that Cal’s being tended to, doesn’t it?

Warm clothes? You don’t steal a sweater if you’re going to hurt— Going to— Oh, surely he’s still alive?” Her voice broke and she couldn’t continue.

“Something was also taken from the medicine cabinet.

Was Cal on any medication?”

“Not now. He had a real bad cough last week and the doctor prescribed a cough syrup, but it made him so sleepy that Jonna got scared and stopped it after a couple of days.”

“What about Jonna?”

“Only for her allergies.”

“Nothing more?”

“Certainly not!” Mrs. Shay said. “What are you implying, Dwight?”

He heard something defensive in her tone and his curiosity was pricked.

“I’m not implying anything. I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. Cal’s dog didn’t bark, so it was probably someone familiar with the house, who knew where Jonna kept medication, because those were the only two things taken. Can you think of anyone it could have been?”

“None of Jonna’s friends would do such a thing,”

protested Mrs. Shay. “Sneak around in the dead of night?

Rummage through her medicine cabinet?” A sudden thought struck her. “Oh, Dwight! Could it have been Jonna?”

“We won’t know for several hours, but we’re pretty sure she died sometime before then.”

Yet even as he said it, Dwight found himself wondering if there were any chance in hell that it had been Jonna after all. That was the simplest explanation. Who else could be able to walk in and out of the house without alarming Bandit or crashing into furniture? Who else would have gone straight to the medicine cabinet? Had he been mistaken about the thickness of the ice around the Honda’s doors and windows?

“We’re also trying to locate some of her friends. Maybe you could tell us who she was close to? For instance, there 14 was a message on her machine from someone named Lou with a son named Jason?”

“Lou Cannady,” said Mrs. Shay. “And Jill Edwards.

They’ve been friends since kindergarten.”

He didn’t press for addresses. Surely one of them was bound to be in Jonna’s address book, and as Deborah had reminded him, one friend would probably lead to others.

As he stood to go, he asked again, “Are you sure you don’t know of any medications Jonna was on?”

“Absolutely not.”

“One more thing. There was a message on Jonna’s answering machine from you, too, Mrs. Shay. You asked if Jonna was still mad at you about something. What was that about?”

“I—I don’t remember,” she said, but her blue-violet eyes, so like Jonna’s, fell before his steady gaze and she started to cry again.

Awkwardly, Dwight promised to keep her informed. As he turned to leave the room, Mrs. Prentice opened the door and the faithful intimates who had waited there in the hall streamed back in.

“I’ll just see him out, Laura,” said Mrs. Prentice, but when they reached the landing she touched his sleeve.

“Major Bryant—Dwight?” She looked up into his face and whatever she saw there decided her. “You do know that there have been periods when Jonna took tranquiliz-ers, don’t you?”

“Tranquilizers? When?”

“Since adolescence, I think.”

“What?”

“You really didn’t know?”

With a worried frown, she opened a door down the hall and ushered him into an empty guestroom. It was chilly and appeared not to have been used in some time.

Although there were fragile ornaments here as well, they were fewer and a window seat offered a sturdy place for him to sit. There was a heating vent on one wall but Mrs.

Prentice did not open it. Instead she drew her wool cardigan more tightly around her and pulled a chair close to him so that she could speak in confidential tones.

“Laura doesn’t like to talk about it, not even with me.

She thinks it’s something shameful. Jonna’s depression was never as severe as Pam’s, though, and—”

“Wait a minute,” said Dwight. “Her sister has depression, too?”

“With psychotic episodes. You really didn’t know?”

“We never met. I mean, Jonna used to talk about her crazy sister, but I thought that was just an expression.”

The older woman clicked her tongue in gentle exasperation. “Jonna was as bad as Laura. Pam is fine as long as she takes her meds. Frankly, I never thought Jonna really did have depression, but you can’t blame Laura for worrying. First Stacey and then—” She paused. “If you didn’t know about this, perhaps you don’t know about Stacey?”

“Eustace Shay? Jonna’s dad?”

Mrs. Prentice nodded.

“Jonna told me it was an accident, but from what I’ve heard today, it was suicide, wasn’t it?”

“Again, this is nothing that Laura ever wants to talk about. Officially it was an accident. The story was that the gun was old and unstable and that it went off while he was packing up his office. In truth, that gun was a family 14 heirloom and it was Laura’s pride and joy. She kept it in their library at home until that last day when he took it to the office.”

She sighed. “Stacey was a sweet man, but with no head for business. He should have sold the company the day after he inherited it, but he was too prideful. He couldn’t admit that he didn’t have his father’s business sense and it wore on him. Looking back now, I would guess that this is where the girls inherited their tendency to depression.”

“And not from the Morrows?”

“You heard about that, too?”

“Same gun, they tell me.”

“Did they tell you that he had gambled with Shay money?”

“Stock market losses, right?”

Mrs. Prentice shook her head. “He lost most of his own fortune in the crash of 1929, but he didn’t shoot himself till two years later when it turned out that he’d been embezzling money for his gambling debts. He would have gone to prison. That was the disgrace he could not face. The Shays covered it up and put the best face on it they could because they didn’t want to be-smirch the Morrow name. I’m not sure that Laura knows about her grandfather even to this day.”

“You’re not a Morrow?” asked Dwight.

“Oh, good Lord, no! Laura’s mother and mine were Ansons, not a speck of kin to the Morrows except by marriage.”

“Mrs. Prentice—”

“Call me Eleanor,” she said. “After all, we’re con- nected, you and I, through Cal. I’m sorry we never met before. I can’t get over how much Cal looks like you.”

Before he could reply, the door opened and one of the elderly friends poked her white head into the room.

“So this is where you disappeared,” she scolded.

“Laura needs you. You know how she asked Mr. Thomas to bring pictures of caskets? Well, he’s come and she wants you to help her choose.”

“Oh dear,” said Eleanor Prentice, rising at once. “I thought she agreed to wait till Pam was here. Will you show Major Bryant out for me?”

C H A P T E R

16

Again, if during a storm from the north there is a whitegleam from that quarter, while in the south a solid mass ofcloud has formed, it generally signifies a change to fairweather.

—Theophrastus

Saturday afternoon, 22 January

The woman who escorted Dwight down the wide staircase of Mrs. Shay’s house was a hand-wringer who wanted to pause on almost every step to be-moan Jonna’s death and the unlikelihood of finding “that poor little boy” unharmed “because, oh dear, everyone knows why little children are taken and it’s just wicked!”

Grimly, he saw that more women waited in the foyer so that they could add their own commiserations.

Except that they didn’t. Once again he had made a stereotyped assumption about ineffective, hand-wringing women; and once again, practical women like his mother or Deborah’s Aunt Zell were there to haul him up short.

The blue-haired ladies who met him at the bottom of the steps handed him two large flat boxes. “We know you can’t stay and eat something now,” one of them said briskly, “but we want you to take this back to Paul Radcliff’s office and share it with the officers who are trying to find Cal. It’s way too much food for Laura’s small family and there’s no sense in having it go to waste, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am. And thank you. I know they’ll appreciate it.”

He certainly did, he thought as he carried the boxes back to his truck. He could smell hot biscuits and fried chicken. Despite his anxiety about Cal, his stomach rumbled. The small bowl of soup Mrs. Shay had given him at noon was long gone.

His phone rang just as he put his key in the ignition, and when he answered it, Bo Poole’s voice said,

“Dwight? What the hell’s going on up there, boy?”

As concisely as possible, he told his boss about Cal’s disappearance and the discovery of his ex-wife’s body.

The sheriff listened quietly, asked a couple of questions, then said, “What about those state police agents?

They giving you a hard time? Say the word and I’ll speak to an old buddy of mine in Richmond.”

“That’s okay for now,” Dwight told him. “If things get dicey, I’ll let you know. How’s the Rouse case coming?

Any breaks yet?”

Poole repeated the report that Mayleen Richards had given him a little earlier. “She’s shaping up to be a right good detective, isn’t she? She still hasn’t found much of a loose string to pull on, but they’ll keep on it. She and McLamb left a little while ago to go interview Rouse’s married girlfriend down near Makely. I’ll let ’em know what you’ve told me. They’re all concerned about you and Cal. Gotta run. My pager’s beeping, but you keep in touch, hear?”

Back at the police station, the fried chicken and biscuits soon disappeared as the cold and hungry canvassers came in from the streets. The second box contained two or three pounds of cold cuts and several packages of rolls, and they were going fast, too.

Munching on a ham and cheese sandwich, Paul had to report that there was no word on Cal. “Clark told me that they’ve asked the ME to expedite Jonna’s autopsy in light of Cal’s disappearance. And for what it’s worth, the prints we lifted off the doorknob yesterday don’t match Jonna’s, but they do match the ones on the medicine cabinet. We’ve run them through the system. No hits.”

No hits. He didn’t know whether to be glad or dispirited by that. “A match would’ve given us a name and a description,” he said, stating the obvious.

“On the other hand,” said Paul, striving for something optimistic to give his friend, “no match means it wasn’t a hardened criminal that took Cal. I keep trying to understand why he went with her in the first place. You and Jonna both must have warned him about going off with strangers. And he wouldn’t fall for the old trick about helping to look for a lost pet, would he?”

“No, but he might fall for the line that Jonna was hurt and calling for him. Not ordinarily, but yesterday? When we’d been looking for her and he was already worried and upset? And the woman couldn’t have been a stranger.

Not if she was in the house. She has to be someone he was familiar with and trusted. Mrs. Shay named a couple of her friends—Lou Cannady and Jill Edwards.”

Radcliff was familiar with both names.

“Lou Cannady’s husband owns the local Honda deal-ership and Jill Edwards is president of the PTA.” He handed over the address book that Dwight had given him earlier. “They’re both in here. I had a couple of clerks call every nonbusiness name just in case somebody had any suggestions about Cal. They came up dry.”

He paused as an attractive woman appeared in his doorway. She wore a short red car coat, black slacks, and boots. Her dark blond hair was damp from the rain and the wind had turned her cheeks as red as her coat.

Dwight dropped his sandwich and stood up so quickly that he almost knocked his chair over as he reached for her.

“I was about to call you when I spotted your truck parked out front, so I—”

The rest of her words were muffled against Dwight’s chest.

Paul grinned. “I guess this means the Marines have landed?”

C H A P T E R

17

But if a tree stands sideways to the north with a draughtround it, the north wind by degrees twists and contorts it,so that its core becomes twisted instead of running straight.

—Theophrastus

Saturday afternoon, 22 January

The news about Major Bryant’s missing son and murdered ex-wife had the makings of a seven-day sensation within the department, but as Deputy Mayleen Richards reminded them, “The best way to help him right now is to clear up the shooting down here so he can concentrate on what’s going on up there.”

She contacted Sheriff Poole to advise him of the situation in Virginia. Then, while Raeford McLamb and Jack Jamison batted around possible scenarios and polished off the rest of the catfish and hushpuppies, Richards called the only Overholt in the Makely area listings.

Michael Overholt.

The phone rang so many times that she expected to hear it switch to an answering machine, but after ten rings, she broke the connection.

“Maybe we should ride down to Makely and see what we can dig up.”

Jamison still had people and places to check out along the Rideout Road area, so McLamb volunteered to go along with her.

When they were fifteen minutes from Makely, a male voice finally answered the phone. “Sergeant Mike Overholt here.”

“May I speak to Mrs. Overholt, please?” Richards asked without identifying herself.

“Sorry,” he said. “She can’t come to the phone right now.”

“Is she there?”

“You a friend of hers?”

“No. I’m with the sheriff’s department up in Dobbs,”

she said smoothly. “We wanted to get a statement from her about a traffic accident she might have witnessed.

When would be a convenient time for me to see her?”

There was a long silence. “I’m getting ready to check in at the base now. How ’bout you give me your number and I’ll tell her to call you?”

Richards rattled off her mobile number, but told McLamb to keep driving. “If he’s going out and she’s there, it’ll give us a chance to talk to her without him knowing.”

Makely was in the next county south, on the way to Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, but its calling area included a narrow swath of Colleton County, and according to the county map that lay open in her lap, the Overholt residence fell inside that swath. After several turns from the main highway, they wound up in a sparsely settled neighborhood that was a mixture of small stick-built houses interspersed with older mobile homes, the kind that 15 resembled boxcars with windows rather than the newer ones that mimicked regular houses.

The Overholts’ flat-roofed trailer was set back from the road in a stand of pine trees. It was painted khaki green and someone with more enthusiasm than artistry had painted a screaming eagle on the wall beside the door. A black Subaru sedan sat in the graveled driveway. As they drove past, a white soldier in desert cammies came out of the trailer and got into the sedan.

They continued slowly along the level flat road until they spotted an empty house with a “For Sale” sign near the mailbox. Playing the part of a prospective buyer, McLamb hopped out of their unmarked car and appeared to scrutinize the roof as the Subaru passed them. Before he was fully in the car again, he saw the Subaru turn around and head back past them to the trailer.

“Did he forget something or do you think he made us?” asked Richards, suddenly conscious that their car carried the permanent plate of an official department rather than the usual blue-and-white “First in Flight” design of civilian plates. Looking in her side-view mirror, she saw the soldier emerge from his sedan, unlock the door of the trailer, and disappear inside.

“Get your notebook and pretend you’re taking notes on the house,” said Richards as she reached for her own notebook and got out of the car.

Like the trailer, this shabby little house was also sheltered by tall longleaf pines so prevalent in southeastern North Carolina. Here in January, the grass was a dull auburn brown, almost hidden beneath a thick layer of pine straw. More brown needles had dropped on the steps and shallow porch. A cool wind ruffled her red hair but the air wasn’t quite cold enough to require hat or gloves. Together the two deputies walked up on the porch and peered through the dirty windows while Raeford McLamb made a show of pointing out various ar-chitectural features.

As Richards nodded feigned agreement, the phone clipped to her jacket rang. “Richards here,” she answered automatically.

“Yeah,” said a tight male voice. “I had a feeling you were the same bitch as called before. Take your jungle bunny and get your lying ass the hell off my road.”

Richards turned and faced the trailer. Staring back at her through the large front window was the cammie-clad soldier with a phone to his ear.

“Sir, we’re here on official business. All we want is to interview your wife about an accident that—”

“Cut the crap, bitch!” he snarled. “I know why you’re here. You want to ask her about that bastard she was whoring around with while I was out there putting my life on the line. Well, he got what he deserved and so has she.”

“Shit!” said McLamb, who had heard every word.

They both knew the statistics. The abuse and murder rate for children in military communities was double that of civilian communities elsewhere in the state. For wives, it was even higher. The macho mentality. The deadly training. Add mangled pride and you had a volatile combination that could blow without warning any time, any place.

“Sergeant Overholt,” she began again in her most diplomatic voice. “If we could just talk?”

“I’m through talking!”

The sound of breaking glass was all the split-second warning they got. As they both dived for the ground behind the car, Richards registered the report of the rifle at the same instant that her right side erupted in fiery pain.

From the nearest houses and trailers, doors opened and people yelled.

“Police officers!” McLamb yelled back. “Stay inside!”

Another burst of shots raked the side of their car, and pebble-sized bits of shatterproof glass rained down on them.

From her position flat on the cold ground, Mayleen Richards saw a neighbor farther down the street step out into his yard. He wore Army fatigues and a brown sweatshirt and he yelled, “Mike? What the hell’s going on, buddy?”

The man took one more step, then the rifle barked and he crumpled to the ground. A woman screamed and ran to him but she never got there. Overholt’s next bullet spun her around and she dropped in midstride.

By then, Richards and McLamb were both on their phones calling for backup.

A second later, he realized that she had been hit, too.

“Officer down! Officer down!” he screamed into his phone.

Suddenly gunfire blasted from the house next door to them and diagonally across from the Overholt trailer.

Several automatic rounds sprayed the trailer.

“I’ll hold him down,” yelled the soldier who lived there. “Y’all run around to the back of my house. The door’s open.”

There was no way Mayleen was going to try to run, and McLamb was not going to leave her. “Stop the god-damned shooting!” he cried.

An eerie silence fell over the neighborhood. Long minutes passed and they heard one of the shooting victims groan. Impossible to say which it was. Dogs barked and children were crying. A woman’s hysterical voice called to her friends and they heard her beg someone to let her go help them. It seemed like half a lifetime before the blessed sound of sirens reached them from a distance, coming ever closer until the air was full of raucous wails.

No sooner did the first patrol cars swoop down the street than a chopper appeared overhead and hovered like a protective guardian angel.

The ground troops piled out of their cars and took cover, but nothing moved behind the shattered windows of the Overholt trailer. A SWAT team arrived on the heels of two rescue trucks and one of the team members immediately came over to get briefed by Richards and McLamb. While rescue workers hurried to the other shooting victims, one EMT stanched the blood in Richards’s side.

“Lucky,” he grunted as he finished bandaging it. “You need stitches, but looks like the bullet passed right through the fleshy part without nicking anything major.”

He went back to the truck for a shot of painkiller and wanted to transport her to a hospital in Fayetteville, but she refused.

“What about the other two that got shot?” she asked.

“Through the heart,” said the tech. “The woman’s still breathing, but I doubt she’ll make it. Most soldiers are good with a rifle, but they say this guy’s a Ranger with a really high proficiency rating.”

Someone on a bullhorn called for Overholt to come out with his hands over his head.

There was no answer and no sign of movement inside.

Sheriff Poole arrived about the time they lobbed a tear gas canister into the trailer. A moment later, the SWAT

team stormed it.

“All secure! Two down!” someone called from inside.

Richards had been sitting on the ground while the painkiller took effect, and now, with a hand from McLamb, she stood upright and walked over to join the other law officers who were milling around the front of the ravaged trailer.

A raised ten-by-ten concrete square served as a front patio and was level with the door. A single shallow step led up to it, and when the two deputies approached, they saw that strings of tiny multicolored Christmas lights still dangled from the top edge of the trailer. The front door stood wide, as did a rear door to help disperse the tear gas fumes.

While they waited, Richards stepped to one side of the patio and looked in through what had been the picture window. A single long shard of glass remained, and as she watched, it slid loose from the caulk and crashed to the concrete, making several men jump. Inside, a woman lay face up on the couch. Darla Overholt. Late thirties, thought Richards, automatically cataloging. Bright red lipstick, blue eye shadow on the closed lids. But the blood that caked and stiffened her blue sweater was dry, and Richards heard one of the EMTs say to another,

“What do you think? Twelve hours?”

“At least,” said his colleague.

Overholt’s body lay crumpled between the couch and the window.

Too soon to say whether it was the neighbor across the street who had taken him out or if he died by the M16

rifle they were going to have to pry out of his cold dead hands after they finished taking pictures to document the scene.

The neighbor’s rifle had already been confiscated and would be subjected to a thorough examination by ballistics experts.

Overhead, two TV helicopters, one from Raleigh, the other from Fayetteville, circled overhead like two buz-zards looking for fresh roadkill. On the ground, Richards recognized a familiar face among the SBI agents in the crowd—Terry Wilson, a longtime friend of Major Bryant’s. As soon as he spotted her, he came right over.

But it wasn’t the two bodies inside that concerned him at the moment.

“Hey, Richards,” he called. “What the hell’s this Amber Alert on Cal Bryant?”

C H A P T E R

18

It is always possible to find a [local] observer, and the signslearnt from such persons are the most trustworthy.

—Theophrastus

“You must be Paul,” I said, when I finally untan-

gled myself from Dwight’s welcoming arms.

Chief Radcliff had a grin as big as Virginia on his broad face as he shook my hand. “And I’m guessing you’re Deborah?”

“Any word about Cal?” I asked.

His smile disappeared and a quick glance at Dwight’s face gave me the answer.

“What about Jonna’s killer?”

“Not yet,” the police chief said grimly.

“Driving up, I kept thinking that Cal wouldn’t have gone with just anyone, would he, Dwight? Is it possible that Jonna felt threatened? She didn’t know you were coming up, so did she maybe send someone he trusted—someone she trusted—to take him and keep him safe?”

“Would—could—might—we just don’t know!” he said, worry and frustration in every breath he took.

“That’s what’s driving me nuts. I want to think whoever has him believes they’re doing what Jonna would want, but who the hell would it be? And why wait so long to take him? Jonna disappeared Thursday morning. Cal wasn’t taken till yesterday afternoon around two-thirty.”

As he spoke, he glanced up at the clock over Paul Radcliff’s door. It was a couple of minutes before five, which gave him something less serious to worry about. “I thought you were driving, not flying.”

“Flying’s a waste of time,” I said, happy to distract him, even if it meant getting growled at. “If I’d tried to fly, I’d probably be touching down at the Roanoke air-port about now and it’d be another two hours to rent a car and drive back down here. Don’t fuss, Dwight. The roads were in good shape.”

In truth, the interstates had been just fine. Icy second-ary roads had probably produced enough fender benders to keep the commonwealth’s troopers too busy to worry about free-flowing traffic, so I hadn’t had to lose time wheedling my way out of any tickets. It wasn’t until I took the Shaysville exit that things got a little hairy, and even then I only fishtailed once. Okay, twice if you count sliding in beside Dwight’s truck, but that was because I was almost past before I recognized it and I’d braked too sharply.

“I don’t suppose you stopped for food,” he said, offering me the rest of his sandwich.

“Or anything else,” I admitted. “So point me to a restroom first.”

When I came back, refreshed, I wasn’t hungry but I welcomed the mug of hot coffee Paul had poured for me.

“I called Sandy,” he said, “and she told me that if I didn’t bring both of y’all home with me, I didn’t need to come either.”

They brought me up to speed on everything they’d learned since I’d spoken to Dwight earlier, including the unexpected news that Jonna occasionally took antidepressants, which may have been what last night’s intruder was after.

Shortly before six, as I turned to ask Dwight what our plans were, Paul’s phone rang. He listened intently, but with his hand over the receiver, mouthed, “Nick Lewes.”

I looked at Dwight and he murmured, “Special agent, Virginia state police.”

“What about the boy?” Paul asked.

A moment later, he replaced the phone on the hook and gave us a regretful look. “No word on Cal, but they’ve had a call about the ME’s preliminary findings. Jonna’s body was pretty much frozen solid, so the usual indica-tors don’t help. What did help was that you could tell them when and what she had for breakfast Thursday, because that was her last meal. They’re thinking she was shot no more than four to six hours later and that death would have been instantaneous.”

“While I was at work down home,” Dwight said.

I squeezed his hand. We could tell each other forever that he wasn’t really a suspect, but it was good to have it proved.

“Also, what lividity there is would indicate that she hasn’t been moved.”

“Probably talked her into meeting somewhere close to the junkyard and forced her to drive there, then walked out,” Dwight speculated.

“Lewes said they were questioning the owner again.”

“Good.” Dwight stood and pulled me to my feet.

“We’ll get settled in and be over around seven, okay?”

“You’re staying at the house?” Paul asked with a side-long glance at me.

“You don’t mind, do you, Deb’rah?” Clearly he hadn’t given this much thought and I had assumed we’d go to a motel. “If Cal did get away, that’s where he’d run.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” I lied.

I seemed to be doing a lot of that today.

“Great. Just let me check in with Bo and we’ll be on our way.”

Checking in with Bo proved to be more complicated than he’d expected. No sooner did Dwight identify himself than he fell silent, absorbed by whatever Sheriff Bowman Poole had to tell him.

“Jesus H, Bo!” he exclaimed at last. “Is she okay? . . .

Good. Did they find the forty-five? . . . Tell her to call as soon as they know more . . . Yeah, thanks, Bo.”

“What?” I asked as soon as he hung up.

“They got Rouse’s killer,” he said. “He’s the guy that was shot in his pickup Thursday night that I told you about,” he reminded Paul, who nodded. “Some soldier out of Fort Bragg, just back from Iraq. He found out that his wife and Rouse were getting it on while he was gone.

My people went down to Makely to question her—

Richards and McLamb,” he told me in an aside. “Soon as the guy spotted them, he went ballistic. Literally. Started shooting at them. Killed two neighbors who tried to break it up. They called in reinforcements. A SWAT team.

SBI. The works. By the time the smoke cleared, the soldier was dead, Richards was winged, and they found the wife’s body on the living room couch. Dead at least twelve hours.”

“Damn!” said Paul.

“What about Richards?” I asked.

“Bo says the bullet just nicked her in the side. She’s a gutsy woman. Wasn’t going to go get it stitched till Bo ordered her to.”

“Well, at least that’s one thing off your plate,” Paul said.

The slushy mix of rain and snow had finally quit falling, but the wet streets were starting to freeze when I followed Dwight’s truck through Shaysville, which looked to be somewhere between Cotton Grove and Dobbs in size. In the residential section, streetlights on alternate corners shone through the leafless trees. Jonna’s house was a story-and-a-half bungalow, probably built in the late fifties or early sixties. The evergreen foundation plantings were precisely clipped into green balls and tri-angles. Two dogwoods and a maple stood in the small front yard. The porch was narrow, yet deep enough to shelter three or four people.

We parked on the street out front because a Virginia crime scene van (they call theirs an evidence truck) was parked in the side driveway in front of an unmarked cruiser with permanent Virginia plates, and it looked as if the four agents were about to leave when we arrived.

“Don’t crack wise on their names,” Dwight muttered as two of the men approached us; and yes, Lewes and Clark was an amusing combo, but I was too brain-dead from the drive to think of an original comment when he introduced me, and I was sure they’d probably heard all the dumb ones.

We made polite noises at each other, then Lewes looked at us with small sharp eyes. “You heard about the probable time of death?”

Dwight nodded. “But what about my son? Any sightings? Any calls?”

“Sorry, Bryant. Nothing substantial yet.”

“Turn up any leads in the house?”

“Not really,” they said vaguely. “What about you?”

He told them about Jonna’s bouts of depression and that her cousin suggested that she might have been taking antidepressants. “But that’s probably what her doctor told you, right?”

“Wrong,” Clark said. “He hasn’t prescribed anything like that in over five years.” He moved away toward his car.

“See you tomorrow?” asked Dwight.

“Probably,” said Lewes, following his partner. “Good night, Judge.”

“How does he know I’m a judge?” I asked as we carried our suitcases into the house. Dwight had introduced me merely as “my wife.”

“Probably the same way you figured out how to get to Shaysville,” he said wearily.

“He Googled you?”

“Quicker than going through channels.”

We set our bags in the entryway and I looked around while Dwight switched on lights and turned up the heat.

Jonna’s taste seemed to have run to genteel Old South: drop-leaf side tables, brass candlesticks, an old hand-pieced patchwork quilt used as a wall hanging, lots of polished mahogany. Most were reproductions of antique pieces, though no doubt some of them would turn out to 16 be authentic. Old but still beautiful oriental area rugs lay atop wall-to-wall carpeting.

A framed sampler hung opposite the quilt. The linen was tattered and badly foxed and the embroidery was so faded that I had trouble reading that it had been made in 1856 by “Eliz. Morrow. Age 10 yrs. 7 mos.”

“That’s new since my time,” said Dwight, reading over my shoulder. “I bet she’s the ghost.”

“Ghost?”

“At the Morrow House, where Jonna worked. It’s supposed to have the ghost of one of the Morrow daughters, who died of a broken heart during the Civil War.” He put his arms around me and, in an effort to ease our fear and tension over Cal, said, “Would you die of a broken heart if I got shot?”

I didn’t want to joke about something like that. Instead, I turned in his arms and let my lips meet his. His jacket was unzipped and I slid my arms inside to feel the warmth of his body as we kissed again. Only thirty-six hours since he left yesterday morning, yet it felt as if we’d been apart for weeks.

He kissed me again and said, “I’m glad you came.”

Before we could get into the specifics of just how glad we were to see each other, I heard a sharp bark from deeper in the house.

“Bandit,” Dwight said. “I’d better let him out.”

I tagged along past the dining room (Sheraton table, centerpiece of artificial fruit, lyre-back chairs, glass-fronted china cabinet, two oil portraits), through the kitchen (corner breakfast table, dated oak cabinets, standard appliances), out to the utility room (usual coat hooks, washer, dryer, closed cabinets). The dog was cute—a small terrier with brown eye patches that did look a bit like a bandit’s mask. Dwight told me that he was only a year old and lived in this large wire crate whenever Jonna and Cal were both away. He barked at me a couple of times, then wiggled his little docked tail to show he really didn’t mean it.

Dwight let him out into the fenced backyard and kept the door open for me. “Come meet one of the neighbors.”

We walked across the frozen ground and I saw a white-haired man sitting at the window of the house next door with a dim reading lamp over his shoulder. Dwight gestured for him to open the window. “Mr. Carlton, this is my wife. She came up to help us look for Cal.”

“A pleasure, ma’am,” he said with old-fashioned cour-tesy. “Although a sad occasion.”

“Mr. Carlton’s keeping an eye on the house in case Cal comes back or anything odd happens.”

“That’s very kind,” I said. “Thank you.”

“No bother. This is where I usually sit to read anyhow.”

It was too cold for an extended chat through an open window so we followed Bandit back inside, where Dwight discovered that his hands were black from the fingerprint powder left on the doorknob. He picked up the duffel bag I’d packed for him and announced that he was going to take a shower and change into fresh clothes.

There was a powder room off the entry hall and a full bath that serviced both bedrooms above.

I followed him upstairs to Cal’s room with its single twin bed, and that’s when Dwight finally realized that yes, Houston, we did have a problem.

“I guess you’re not going to want us to sleep in Jonna’s room, are you?”

I shook my head.

“That’s okay. You can have Cal’s bed and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I don’t suppose it opens up?”

He gave me a blank look.

“You take your shower. I’ll check.”

While Bandit sat outside the bathroom door, I went down to lift one of the sofa cushions and discovered that we were in luck. There were sheets and extra blankets in the linen closet upstairs. Only one extra pillow, though, so I grabbed Cal’s as well.

I tried not to let myself dwell on his room—the boyish treasures, the books, the posters, the school papers on his desk, the once loved, outgrown teddy bear on a bottom shelf. My heart turned over, though, when I caught sight of a champagne cork on his nightstand and realized he had kept a souvenir from our wedding last month.

Unlike many children of divorce, Cal had no illusions that his parents would ever get back together. They had separated before he was a year old, so he had no memory of Dwight as part of a threesome. With his base in Virginia secure with Jonna, he had been okay with our marriage and seemed ready to fit me into his North Carolina family. But now that Jonna was gone? Just let us get himback safely and I’ll do whatever has to be done, I promised.

Pushing down my fears, I busied myself with the task at hand. The coffee table and a couple of chairs had to be shifted before I could open up the couch. Oddly enough, it already had sheets and a blanket in place, and I saw a short dark hair where the white sheet had been folded back over the top of the blanket. I knew Jonna had worn her hair long. Had her guest been a man or a woman? I pulled the sheet back and saw another short dark hair.

And pulling back the sheet also revealed that whoever slept here last had used a musky perfume with floral over-tones. Something sweet. Not magnolia or roses. Honeysuckle? Gardenias? It was too faint to be certain.

So, Jonna, I thought. You don’t change the sheets afteran overnight guest? And here I’d been under the impression that she was a neat freak.

I stripped the mattress, stuck the used sheets in the washer, and by the time Dwight came downstairs, had made it up with fresh sheets and blankets, ready for us to crawl into when we got back from Paul’s.

From what I had seen so far, Jonna’s taste in decor was unadventurous and a little too girly, but the overall effect was attractive enough, and certainly in keeping with someone whose ancestors had founded the town.

Nevertheless, the whole house made me uncomfortable as hell. Its owner was dead and I had no right to be here, looking at her things, making judgment calls on her taste and intelligence or level of cleanliness. Dwight is a good detective, but men simply do not look at houses the same way women do. I want our marriage to work and I didn’t want to start comparing what his marriage to her must have been like. And although I believe him when he says he didn’t love her at the end, he must have loved her at the beginning, so what sort of woman had she actually been?

No way would I ever ask Dwight. Not when there were others I could question.

“Have you spoken to any of Jonna’s friends yet?” I asked as we drove over to Paul Radcliff’s house.

“I haven’t, but Paul’s office did a quick-and-dirty call around. Maybe you could talk to some of her closest friends tomorrow? See if they know more than they’ve told?”

“Sure,” I said.

Sometimes it’s too easy.

Like Paul, Sandy Radcliff’s brown hair was going white early and she wore rimless bifocals instead of the usual contact lenses. Dressed in dark blue sweats over a green turtleneck, she was generously built and equally generous in her welcome. Even before we took off our coats that evening, I knew that I was going to like her, especially since she was obviously fond of Dwight. I soon learned that they’d all known one another in Washington.

Their youngest son, Jimmy, was a grade level ahead of Cal although they were only a few months apart in age.

Their daughter, Michelle, was fifteen and son Nick was thirteen.

When we got there, Nick and Jimmy were watching a DVD and Michelle was messaging back and forth to her friends on the computer, which sat in the family room with its screen visible to whoever passed by, a policy sub-scribed to by all my kin with kids in the house. (“Putting an online computer in a child’s room is like giving him a big bowl of candy bars and expecting him to eat only one a day,” says April, my sister-in-law who teaches sixth grade. “No matter how much they promise, they can’t resist going where they shouldn’t, bless their sneaky little hearts.”)

All three responded politely as I was introduced, but before returning to her computer, Michelle said, “We’re really sorry about Cal, Mr. Dwight. All my friends are keeping an eye out for him.”

“Mine, too,” Jimmy chimed in.

“At the mall today,” said Nick, “my friend and me?

There was a kid with this woman in a blue parka. We were sure it was going to be Cal, but it wasn’t.”

“Thanks, guys,” said Dwight. “I hope you’ll keep it up.”

We went on through to the big eat-in kitchen, where we sat down at the round oak table. “I fed the children early so we could hear ourselves talk,” Sandy said.

She took a lasagna out of the oven and let it sit a few minutes to firm up, while Paul poured red wine and she passed bread and olive oil to go with our salads. Although the talk kept circling back to Cal and Jonna, we also compared backgrounds, exchanged anecdotes from earlier years, and engaged in the usual small talk that lets close friends open their circle to a stranger.

Sandy was a good cook but neither of us had much ap-petite and we turned down dessert. So did Michelle, but both boys pulled up chairs as Paul put on the coffee and Sandy brought out the chocolate cream pie she’d baked that afternoon.

“Either of y’all tour the Morrow House with a scout troop last month?” Dwight asked.

“That was me,” said Jimmy.

“Our class did it last year when we were studying the Civil War,” said Nick, who wavered between being too 17 cool to evince interest while still kid enough to want to be included.

“Did you see the guns?”

Both boys nodded. “Swords, too,” said Nick.

“Is there really a ghost?” I asked.

“Nah,” said Nick.

“Is too!” Jimmy said. “Cal showed me.” His face reddened in instant guilt.

“Showed you what?” Nick challenged as he dug into his pie.

“Nothing,” said Jimmy, scrunching down in his chair.

“Is this about you and Cal sneaking off from the rest of the Cubs?” Sandy asked, eyeing him sternly over the top of her glasses.

Paul frowned at his youngest, who looked as if he would gladly slide under the table.

“Cal must know the house really well,” I said, “since his mom worked there.”

Encouraged, Jimmy nodded. “And his grandma used to stay there when she was little, and his mom played there, too, Cal said. She lets him go anywhere he wants to as long as he doesn’t mess with anything, so when Mrs.

Hightower wasn’t looking, we went all the way up to the third floor and he showed me her bedroom.”

“Whose bedroom?” asked Nick scornfully.

“The ghost’s. Elizabeth Morrow’s. That was her name and she was sixteen when she died. Cal said she would’ve been his great-great-great-great-aunt or something like that, only she went and died because her boyfriend got shot and killed. And he told me to smell and I did and it really was gardenias, Mom. Cal said that was her favorite flower and every time she walks, people can smell them, even in the middle of winter, and that was a little before Christmas.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Oh, right.”

The others laughed, but when the boys had returned to their movie, I said, “Did Jonna use gardenia perfume?”

Dwight looked blank and Sandy shrugged.

“You think she pretended to be Cal’s ghost?” asked Paul.

“Or brought the ghost home with her.” I told them about opening up the couch and finding used sheets that smelled faintly of either honeysuckle or gardenia. “Gardenia must be a fairly common scent though. Maybe a docent at the Morrow House? Assuming it has docents?”

“Only in the summertime, I think,” Sandy said doubtfully, looking at Paul for confirmation.

“Something else to check out tomorrow,” Dwight told me.

“Not you, hon?” asked Sandy.

“I’ve been told officially that this case belongs to the state guys,” Paul told her. “But Cal’s his son, so they can’t really shut Dwight down.”

We moved on to other topics, but later, when I helped Sandy clean up the kitchen, I asked about Jonna. Not directly of course. I didn’t have to. Sandy knew what I was angling for and she spoke candidly as she moved back and forth from the table to the refrigerator, putting away the food.

“Dwight and Paul were assigned to the D.C. area about the same time,” she said, “and we all wound up living on the same side of Arlington. We had them over to the house for cookouts and stuff, and we’d go there oc-17 casionally or to the O Club, but Michelle and Nick were little, so it was hard to get out much, and frankly, she made me uncomfortable. She was beautiful, but beautiful in a way that made me feel frumpy, and she was very class conscious, if you know what I mean? Very proper. One of those people who clobber you over the head with their own good manners? I always felt as if she was watching to catch me using the wrong fork or something, so I didn’t try very hard to make her my best friend even though Paul and Dwight clicked. Besides, from the first time we all got together, I could see that their marriage was with-ering on the vine. Especially after Dwight left the Army and joined the D.C. police.”

She began rearranging things in the dishwasher so as to fit in a final bowl, and I added a stray fork and serving spoon to the utensil basket.

“What about when she got pregnant with Cal?” I asked.

“Could’ve knocked me over with a feather,” Sandy said. “Frankly, I was surprised they were even sleeping together. I was still carrying Jimmy, and Dwight asked me to visit her. He was worried because she was having terrible morning sickness and she didn’t seem to have any friends. The day I dropped in, she was feeling so miserable that she was almost human. Her breasts were sore, her skin was blotchy, she felt bloated, she was throwing up every morning, yet she was so happy about being pregnant that for the first time I could understand why Dwight married her. It was a good visit and I felt as if we’d really connected. We went shopping for baby things a time or two and the four of us even got together for dinner about a week before Jimmy was born. Afterwards?

I don’t know. Maybe it was my fault for not trying harder, but with two kids and a new baby, I just didn’t have much time or energy to give to the friendship, and by the time I could put my head up and look around, she was gone. I never saw her again till Paul took this job and we moved to Shaysville. Even though Jimmy and Cal are Cubs together and they play on the same Pop Warner team, she ran in a different circle from mine—the town’s old money and old blood, women she was in playschool with.”

“No male friends?”

“Boyfriends? I wouldn’t know about that. Haven’t heard any gossip.”

She closed the dishwasher door and pushed the on button. “I’ll tell you one thing for sure, though: if there was anything going on in Jonna’s life that led to this, you can bet that Jill Edwards or Lou Cannady knew about it.”

C H A P T E R

19

Dreams are difficult, confusing, and not everything inthem is brought to pass.

—Homer

Although we were tired and emotionally drained, sleep did not come easily. Part of it was sharing the couch with Bandit, who seemed bewildered by Cal’s absence; but an even bigger part was our fear and dread.

The night revived old memories of my eighteenth summer when I would wake from troubled dreams with a heart that was heavy even though my mind had tem-porarily forgotten why. There would be a two- or three-second disconnect between effect and cause and then the cause would come rushing back.

Back then, it was Mother’s dying; tonight, it was Cal’smissing.

Being together helped. We were too distraught to make love, but just holding on to each other was a comfort, and eventually we did drift off. We slept so lightly, though, that each time one of us stirred, the other would wake. Around two a.m., Dwight finally fell into a deeper sleep. At that point, I eased off the couch, thinking that he might continue to sleep for a couple of hours if I wasn’t there tossing and turning beside him. Bandit followed me out to the kitchen, where I switched on a light over the stove and poured myself a glass of orange juice.

Weird to know that Jonna had bought this juice only a few days ago. Had bought the eggs and butter and everything else in this refrigerator.

“Mooning over groceries isn’t going to find her killer orget Cal back,” said the pragmatist who lives in my head.

“You need to find something useful to do,” agreed the preacher who shares the same quarters.

I looked around the kitchen. Except for a bowl and spoon in the sink, it was completely tidy. I opened drawers: utensils neatly compartmentalized. Cupboards, ditto.

She probably ran the dishwasher only once a day because Thursday’s dirty breakfast dishes were still there, but no pots and pans.

Over the phone was a calendar with squares for each day. Today was supposed to have been a playdate with someone named Jason. There had been a PTA meeting earlier in the month. A notation about choir robes last Sunday. A dental appointment next Tuesday. “Lunch w/L&J” was penciled in for the coming Wednesday.

What really stood out on the calendar, though, was a line drawn through this weekend from Thursday to Monday, a line Jonna had labeled “MH.” Saturday and Sunday, yes. Those were the winter opening days for the Morrow House, according to Dwight. And the director had told him they usually worked a third day, either Friday or Monday. So why would Jonna have five days marked off like this?

Out in the utility room, all the laundry products were stored according to their function, with dog care items 18 on their own shelf. No jackets or scarves on the coat pegs, but a pair of little-boy boots stood on a mud tray beside the door, and the sight of them tore at my heart. The temperature was below freezing. Was Cal out there somewhere this bitter winter night, shivering with cold and fear? Surely no woman that he trusted would be so cruel?

I finished drinking my juice and put the glass in the dishwasher. Then, with Bandit at my heels, I crept back through the living room and up the stairs, grateful for the carpeted steps. Between the reflective snow that covered the ground outside and the streetlight down the block, I had no trouble finding my way without switching on extra lights. Dwight and Paul had made a lot out of the fact that someone had entered the house and gone up to the bathroom without stumbling over furniture, but once my eyes adjusted, it was no problem.

I went on down the hall to Jonna’s room and felt along the inner wall till I located a switch. A lamp came on beside the double bed, a perfectly made double bed. Despite the evidence of the couch, my first impression wasn’t wrong. She had been a neat freak. No rumpled coverlet, no gown or pajama top hanging from the bed-post, no slippers kicked off in the corner. And yeah, yeah, I know the theory that tidying up as you go is the secret of an orderly home, but damn! This wasn’t just orderly, it was downright military. I looked around and wondered if maybe this is one area where Dwight actually does compare me to her.

“You work full-time,” the preacher comforted me, making excuses.

“Get real,” said the pragmatist. “Living in a bandbox 182

WINTER’S CHILD

couldn’t be important to Dwight or he wouldn’t have married you. He knew he wasn’t getting Martha Stewart.”

Martha could have decorated this room, though.

There were more frills here than downstairs—ruffles on the floral bedskirt and pillow shams, ruffles on the curtains—and the furniture was of the same style: four-poster mahogany bed and matching chest and dresser.

No computer on the corner desk or, now that I thought about it, anywhere in the house. Luddite or too frugal to buy one?

The desk had clearly been examined by the state police and I wondered what they had taken. One of the desk drawers was for hanging files. The one labeled “Bank”

was empty and I didn’t see a checkbook either. It might have been in her purse, though. Had her purse been in the car with her?

Something else to check on.

A diary would have been helpful, but who keeps one these days? If Jonna had, it was no longer here, and from the things her house was telling me, I doubted she was the type. A quick thumb-through of the hanging files in her desk drawer showed little of the sentimental. Cal’s folder contained his medical records, his school reports, group pictures from kindergarten and first grade, and one funny Mother’s Day card. Unless those two state agents had taken them, she did not seem to have saved personal letters from friends or family either.

On the other hand, there were several photo albums on the long shelf above the desk. No boxes stuffed with unlabeled snapshots for Jonna. Each picture was carefully dated and the people identified. No denying it: she had been a beautiful bride, and the picture of her and Dwight 18 on their wedding day took my breath away. I had forgotten how skinny he’d been back then. And that regulation haircut! Her dark hair had been much longer then, and in their picture, one strand had fallen over the front of her white satin gown almost to her waist. She was looking down at her flowers and presumably at her new wedding band, too. He was looking at her.

With love in his eyes.

“It was their wedding day. Of course he loved her,” said the preacher.

“She left him ,” whispered the pragmatist. “He didn’tleave her. The divorce was her idea.”

Despising myself for the ugly jealous thoughts that coursed through my head, I quickly returned that album to the shelf and took down a later one. Ah! Pictures of Cal shortly after his birth, a tiny infant held by a man’s big hands. Dwight’s hands. But blessedly, no head shots of Dwight in this album. It covered the first five years of Cal’s life even though there were other occasions. Birthdays. Christmases.

I thought of my brothers’ wives. Most of them could produce a foot-high stack of pictures to document their firstborn’s first year. No way would a whole year fit in one album, much less five. Which is not to say Jonna didn’t dote on Cal as much as they doted on my nieces and nephews. He has the sunny good nature of a child who is loved and his room was cheerfully messy, which would indicate that she had not too rigidly imposed her own standards on him. Tidiness might have been instinctive to her and not necessarily a conscious choice.

As I flipped through the pictures, two faces kept reappearing: Lou Cannady and Jill Edwards. At a lake, at a luncheon, at a baby shower. There was a studio picture of Jonna with an older woman—Cal’s other grandmother?

And another of those two with a third woman who had the same family features. Probably Jonna’s sister.

Also on the shelf were four high school yearbooks that had been looked at so often that they were almost falling apart. I took down the last one and flipped to the back.

Guess who had been homecoming queen twenty-five years ago?

And part of her court? Lou Cannady and Jill Edwards.

Only back then, they were Lou Freeman and Jill Booker.

The Three Musketeers.

To my amusement, her junior year annual fell open to a picture of the girls and damned if it wasn’t labeled “The Three Musketeers of Shaysville High.”

A sheet of paper slipped from the yearbook. It was an alphabetized list of over a hundred names and seemed to be the kids who had graduated in Jonna’s class. She had methodically drawn lines through four of the names and written “dead” beside them. For the rest, she had entered married names and current addresses, highlighting those whose addresses included “S’ville.” It would appear that a twenty-fifth reunion was in the offing and that she was chair of the class gift committee.

Soon someone else would be chairing that committee. A line would be drawn through Jonna’s name, and sometime during the reunion evening there would be a moment of silence for the classmates no longer there. Then the laugh-ter and chatter and remember-whens would resume with nothing more than a brief shadow over the gathering.

I sighed and turned back to the file drawer in Jonna’s desk.

A Morrow House file contained a sheaf of faded Xerox copies that had started to cornflake around the edges.

The top sheet identified it as the bicentennial inventory of the Morrow House, and it appeared to list every teacup, law book, or artifact in the historic house. Different hands had added items since 1976 and I recognized Jonna’s writing in a few places. Within the past six months, a Nathan Benton had given a CSA brass belt buckle, circa 1863; a Catherine D. Schmerner had donated a lady’s hand mirror; and a Betty Coates Ramos had given a letter written in April of 1893 to one J.

Coates from P. Morrow. There was a question mark beside the hand mirror, then, in a different-colored ink, but still Jonna’s writing, she had added, “Ebony, inlaid with silver, ca. 1840.” All four items had been entered under the proper room, along with a dated accession number. I seemed to remember some mention that Jonna was taking inventory. Maybe that was why she had scheduled extra days at the Morrow House?

Another folder held the paperwork to her divorce from Dwight. No way was I going to look at those, although clearly the police had, judging from the way the papers were jammed in so crookedly.

It was none of my business. It was old news, over and done with before Dwight came back to Colleton County.

It was—oh, well. What the hell?

She had saved the ED pages, and as I had suspected, they showed that she had royally screwed Dwight. The valuations on her share of their marital possessions were much lower than the ones on his. She got all the furniture and the car; he got his clothes, a lawn mower, some books and tapes, the smaller of their two televisions, and the truck he’d owned back then. That was basically it.

Nevertheless, he somehow wound up having to pay her a few thousand extra to attain what the presiding judge had deemed “equitable.”

Well, I’d known all along that he hadn’t fought the settlement. His reasoning was that anything she got would make life better for Cal, and who can fault a father for that?

Digging deeper in the file, I realized that Dwight was still paying child support based on his D.C. salary, which seven years later was still a little higher than what he currently earns with the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department. Now, that I hadn’t known, and it made me angry to think how he had occasionally taken on extra work so as to afford something Jonna said Cal needed.

But Jonna had known about the salary difference because here was a printout of the base salaries for Colleton County employees. Public records. And damn! Here was the salary range for district court judges with an approxi-mation of my salary circled and added to Dwight’s. More question marks in the margin. Dollars to doughnuts, she was planning to go back to court and ask that Cal’s child support be raised on the strength of Dwight’s increased household earnings. I wasn’t clear on Virginia law, but good luck with that, I thought. Wait’ll Portland hears.

And then, abruptly, it hit me anew that Jonna was dead. This was never going to come to court.

Clipped to the salary sheet was an account of our wedding that had appeared in the Ledger, Dobbs’s biweekly paper. A couple of papers later, I found a printout of the write-up the Raleigh News & Observer had carried.

It occurred to me that Jonna either had someone looking stuff up for her on the Internet or that she used a 18 computer at work and was no babe-in-the-woods Luddite. This would also explain how Agents Lewes and Clark knew I was a judge.

There was a hanging file labeled “Medical Records.”

An empty hanging file. They must have taken those to discuss with her doctor.

By now it was almost three-thirty, so I switched off the light and, rather than disturb Dwight, crawled into Cal’s bed. Bandit curled up at my feet and promptly went to sleep. I lay there with my eyes wide open trying to understand why such a thoroughly normal—even rather dull—small-town mother should have been killed.

Then I fell asleep, too.

Sometime later, I felt Bandit jump off the bed. I had a vague awareness that Dwight was moving around in the doorway—probably checking to see where I was—but I was too far under to do more than mumble sleepily, “I’m fine. Go back to bed.”

I heard him brush against the papers on Cal’s desk, and then I was gone again, dragged down and down, back into a dream in which Dwight and Cal and I were walking through a summer garden full of flowering bushes. . . .

We aren’t running but we do have a destination in mindand we are anxious to get there, yet Cal keeps stopping tosmell the gardenias. “Stay up with us, buddy,” Dwight says,but Cal stops again to break off one of the creamy white blossoms. “Smell, Daddy,” he says. He gives me a big handful.

“Smell, Miss Deborah.” And all around us, the air is heavywith the sweet, sweet fragrance of summer . . .

C H A P T E R

20

Make money, money by fair means if you can, if not, by anymeans money.

—Horace

When next I woke, the sun had not yet risen.

Looking up through the bare limbs outside Cal’s window, I knew it soon would, though, because I could see faint stars in a cloudless sky. I glanced at my watch—6:05—then pushed back the covers, visited the bathroom, and splashed cold water on my face. And yes, there were faint circles under my eyes. Not enough to scare the horses, though.

Downstairs, Dwight was still stretched out on the couch, but he opened his eyes and smiled when I came into the room.

“I was just about to come looking you,” he said.

“Like you didn’t know where I was,” I said, sliding in beside him to feel his scratchy face against mine as we kissed. “Were you able to get back to sleep okay?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“After you checked up on me sometime this morning.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t been upstairs since we got back last night.”

“Sure you did. I heard you . . . didn’t I?”

We looked at each other in dawning comprehension and I suddenly remembered my dream.

“Gardenias! She was here again!”

It took only a moment at the front door to confirm that someone else had indeed been here.

“Unlocked,” said Dwight, “and I know I locked it when we came in.”

“What was she after?” I wondered aloud as we headed upstairs.

I wasn’t familiar enough with the house to spot what, if anything, was missing. Jonna’s room looked the same as I’d left it and so did the bathroom. The sliding mirror doors of the medicine cabinet were completely closed.

“I distinctly heard the papers on Cal’s desk move,” I told him, “and I smelled her perfume, so she must have come into the room. But why? What was worth the risk?”

Dwight looked around the room and shrugged. He started to turn away, then stopped in his tracks, his attention riveted on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. “Carson!”

“Carson?”

“Cal’s old teddy bear. I noticed it yesterday morning, and now it’s gone. You didn’t move it, did you?”

I shook my head. “It was there last night before we went to Paul’s.”

“Cal used to sleep with it when he was little. He’s too old for it now, but Jonna told me that he still wants it when he’s sick or unhappy about things.”

“It has to be the same woman who took Cal!” I said, feeling an unwarranted rush of optimism. “She knows it will comfort him. Wherever he is, he has to be okay or why would she come for it?”

“Because he’s sick?” asked Dwight. “Because he’s hurt?”

He went back down for his phone to call Paul, and it startled us both by ringing in his hand before he could dial.

“Bryant here,” he said. “Oh, hey, Mama . . . No, still no word . . .”

As he listened, a smile softened his grim face. “That’s great! How’s Kate? . . . And how’s Rob holding up?”

By which I knew that his brother’s baby boy had been born.

In the midst of death, we are in life.

With his hand over the mouthpiece, he said, “Seven pounds, two ounces,” then gave me the phone so that Miss Emily could tell me all the details while he used my phone to call Paul and leave a message for Agents Lewes and Clark about our nocturnal visitor.

Despite our overriding concern for Cal, it was impossible not to feel happy for the safe arrival of Robert Wallace Bryant Junior, and I gladly listened as Miss Emily described the long night, how the labor pains completely stopped at one point as if the baby had lost interest in getting himself born, but then, as the doctor was about to send Kate home, around three this morning, he’d changed his mind and popped out at four.

“I waited as long as I could to call you,” she apologized.

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “We were awake. Do they know what they’re going to call him?”

“At the moment, it’s a toss-up between Bobby and R.W.”

I sent our love to them and promised we’d call that night even if there was nothing new to report. As long as I had a phone in my hand, I decided to call the farm.

Daddy hates talking on the phone, so I knew I could give him the facts and get off and that he’d spread the word to the rest of the family.

“I’ll tell ’em,” he said. “And Deb’rah?”

“Sir?”

“You and Dwight, y’all don’t need to take no chances, you hear?”

“We’ll be careful,” I promised.

At the time, I really meant it.

There didn’t seem to be any coffee in Jonna’s kitchen and Dwight confirmed that she was a tea drinker, so we finished dressing and found a pancake house that was open for breakfast.

The waitress offered coffee before she even handed us a menu, then brought it immediately and left the carafe.

My kind of waitress.

Over sausage and scrambled eggs, we planned the day.

I was torn. I wanted to tackle Jonna’s two best friends right away, but we also needed to check out her work-space at the Morrow House.

“Should we split up?”

“Not right away,” said Dwight, slathering grape jelly on his biscuit. “It’s Sunday, remember?”

“So?”

“So where do proper ladies spend their Sunday mornings?”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. And me without a single pair of dress gloves in my suitcase.”

He grinned. “I said proper ladies.”

It was almost like our normal banter, but I heard the worry beneath.

“Sunday’s also one of the days the Morrow House is open during the winter,” he said, pulling out his phone.

“Let me see if I can get the director to open it up early.”

From Dwight’s side of the conversation, I gathered that Mr. Mayhew wasn’t thrilled to have been awakened before eight on a Sunday morning. Nevertheless, he agreed to meet us there at nine.

I gave Dwight my biscuit and half my grits and we lin-gered over a third cup of coffee while the restaurant became busier with the pre-church breakfast crowd. As three women passed our booth on their way to a table at the back, one of them paused.

“Major Bryant?”

She was an attractive woman, late forties or maybe early fifties, with soft brown hair that was beginning to go lightly gray.

Dwight automatically came to his feet even though she kept saying, “No, no, please don’t get up,” as if that would stop a son raised by Emily Bryant.

Her face was concerned and she held out her hand to him. “I don’t want to interrupt your meal, but I heard about Mrs. Bryant and I’m so worried about Cal. Is there any word?”

“Nothing yet,” he said.

Her hazel eyes went to me and Dwight said, “This is 19 my wife, Miss Jackson. Deborah, Miss Jackson is Cal’s teacher.”

The woman’s smile widened in genuine warmth.

“You’re Cal’s Miss Deborah? A judge, right? I’m so pleased to meet you. Cal’s had such nice things to say about you.”

“Really?” I was absurdly pleased to hear her say that because I so want him to like me and you never really know what’s going on in an eight-year-old’s head. Her two friends were already seated in a booth on the far side of the restaurant and had begun taking off their heavy winter coats but I scooted over on the seat. “Won’t you join us for a cup of coffee or something?”

“Oh, no. I’m—” She gestured toward the others, then hesitated. “On the other hand, I did plan to get in touch with you, Major Bryant. It’s probably nothing, but still—”

“Please,” I said, and Dwight signaled to the waitress for another cup.

“Okay. Just let me tell them what to order for me.”

Unbuttoning her gray wool car coat as she went, she left it with her friends and soon rejoined us. Yet once she was there, with a cup of steaming coffee before her, she seemed unsure how to begin. “I hope you won’t think I’m gossiping. But if the children trust you, they’ll sometimes tell you things that I’m sure their parents would be embarrassed about if they knew.”

Again the hesitation.

“Was Cal worried about something?” I asked.

“He’s such a conscientious little guy,” she said. “Caring and kind.” She looked at Dwight. “They say that his mother was killed on Thursday. Before school was out.

That Cal was left alone in the house all night. Is that true?”

Dwight nodded grimly. “That’s why he called me. Why I came up yesterday. Not that I knew she was gone. He just said that he had promised you I would come, nothing about his mother.”

“No,” she said, stirring her coffee thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t. He’s very loyal to her, even when—”

“Even when what, Miss Jackson?” I prompted

“Please. Call me Jean.” Her smile was bittersweet. “It’s not as if we’re going to have much of a parent-teacher relationship, are we? You’ll be taking him back to North Carolina, won’t you?”

Dwight nodded.

“But we’ll need his school records,” I said, determined to keep thinking positively, to assume that in the end our only worries would be mundane things like reading and math levels and whether we had all his transcripts.

She took a deep breath. “When I heard that Mrs.

Bryant had been killed, I couldn’t help wondering if it had anything to do with the fact that she had been worried about money.”

“Money?”

“This past Tuesday, Cal stayed after school to ask me if there was anything a boy like him could do to earn a lot of money. I suggested that maybe his mother might let him do extra chores around the house and he said no, that he needed the money for her. He told me that he heard her talking on the phone with his grandmother one night and she was crying because she really, really needed five thousand dollars and his grandmother wasn’t going 19 to give it to her. He was afraid something bad was going to happen if she didn’t get the money.”

“Something bad?” Dwight asked sharply.

Jean Jackson nodded. “He said that her face was going to get hurt if she couldn’t get five thousand dollars by the end of the month.”

I was shocked. Someone threatened to wreck her beautiful face if she didn’t pay up?

“Did he say who was going to do that to her?”

“He didn’t know, but he was genuinely upset. I told him I thought he ought to talk it over with his mother, make sure he hadn’t misunderstood or something. I mean, Mrs. Bryant and her friends, they’re all very well-to-do, aren’t they? I couldn’t understand how she could be crying over five thousand dollars. It would make a difference to me—I live on a teacher’s salary—but she’s a Shay, for heaven’s sake. And sure enough, Cal was okay on Wednesday. He said his mother told him she had all the money she needed and everything was fine. Only now she’s dead . . .” Her voice trailed off in doubt. “I couldn’t help wondering if maybe the two are connected?”

C H A P T E R

21

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for moneyis the most chilling and havoc-wreaking.

—Gustave Flaubert

Cal’s teacher left us to join her friends and Dwight asked me if I had seen Jonna’s bank records when I was looking through her papers last night.

“No. Those state agents must have taken them.”

“Well, I saw them and I don’t know where Miss Jackson’s coming from, because Jonna certainly wasn’t rich.

In fact, she was living right up to the edge of her re-sources. There was less than seven hundred in her checking account and about five hundred in savings. She was basically working at the Morrow House to pay for medical insurance.”

“You mean she lived on what you sent for child support?”

“Not entirely. I think there’s a small family trust fund that her mother controls, because she was getting a five-hundred-dollar draft from Mrs. Shay’s bank every month.

No credit card debt, though. In fact, no debt at all except for her mortgage. Remember that speech W.C. Fields makes in David Copperfield?”

“Mr. Micawber?”

“Yeah. How the difference between happiness and mis-ery is whether you spent sixpence under your income or sixpence over?”

I nodded. As a boy, Dwight hung out at the farm so much that I grew up thinking of him as just another brother, so when we wound up in Dobbs, both of us single, we used to make popcorn and watch old videos together whenever we were both at loose ends.

“First time you and I watched that movie, I flashed on Jonna. She always knew exactly how much she had to spend and she’d spend to the limit, but she never went a dollar over. She wanted Cal’s support raised, but that was for him, not for herself. When you think about it, it’s pretty amazing how well she managed on practically nothing.”

I was instantly and painfully aware that Dwight and I are still working out our own finances and that he’s not particularly impressed with the way I handle money, but I bit my tongue before I said something bitchy, like, if money was so damn tight, why didn’t she get a real job?

“This is not the time to tell him that Cal’s support payments were based on his old D.C. salary,” whispered the preacher.

“Especially not when he’s in the middle of measuringJonna’s head for a halo,” said the pragmatist with spiteful jealousy.

“If Cal heard what he thought he heard and if Jonna really did need a quick five thousand, I don’t know where she would get it. Especially if Mrs. Shay wouldn’t give it to her. She left a message on Jonna’s machine yesterday morning. Wanted to know if Jonna was still mad at her.”

“Because of the money?”

“Maybe. When I asked her about it, though, she claimed she didn’t remember saying it.”

“So what about her two best friends? Sandy Radcliff says they both have wealthy husbands. If I suddenly needed money, Portland would get it for me in a heart-beat, so wouldn’t they?”

He shrugged. “But five thousand or she’d get her face smashed in? What the hell is that all about and what does it have to do with Cal?”

The heaviness had settled back in his voice, and I was out of suggestions. All I could do was reach across the table and clasp his hand and try to keep the optimism flowing.

“We’ll get him back,” I said briskly. “And at least he has Carson to hang on to for right now, so let’s go do the Morrow House, get that out of the way, and then talk to her friends.”

The Morrow House anchored what Shaysville was pleased to call History on the Square, the square itself consisting of a small town commons complete with massive old oaks and a bandstand of filigreed ironwork painted white. The house and grounds originally took up the whole block across from the commons. After passenger service was discontinued here, the town’s nineteenth-century railroad station had been moved onto the south end of the grounds and turned into a combination senior center and craft workshop. The two structures were separated by a commodious parking lot.

Directly across the street, on the other side of the 19 square, was the old Shaysville High where Jonna must have gone to school. Set back from the street, it boasted a wide flagstone terrace with benches and a rather ugly central fountain that I later learned had been a gift of the last class to graduate from there. The front looked out of balance to my untrained eye, what with its fairly ornate main entrance on one side and a plain blank windowless wall on the other. Built around 1920 from native stone that matched the Morrow House, it still looked like a school on the outside.

Dwight gamely tried to play tour guide. “The old classrooms are subsidized apartments for the elderly,” he said as we circled the square. “And its auditorium is a community theater now.”

This early on a chilly Sunday morning, the sidewalks bordering the square were empty of pedestrians, and only a few cars were about. Despite the bright sun, last night’s ice had only grudgingly begun to melt from the parking lot and walkways, and I was glad for my boots, not to mention Dwight’s strong arm, when I almost lost my footing.

The Morrow House surprised me. For some reason, I’d been expecting one of those antebellum Taras so prevalent in tidewater Virginia and the lower South. Instead, as I soon came to hear from the Morrow House’s unquenchably informative director, the first Shaysville Morrow had erected a stone version of his grandfather’s brick house back in Philadelphia: “a foursquare, three-story Federalist that was gracefully elegant within its chaste constraints,” according to Mr. Mayhew, a thin, stooped-shouldered man with rimless glasses that kept sliding down on his nose.

Dwight went straight to Jonna’s desk, but Mayhew was clearly eager to show the house to new eyes and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get to know the man Jonna had worked with. I also thought it might be helpful to get an overview of the place where she had spent so much time. Unfortunately, Mayhew was one of those single-minded enthusiasts who miss the woods because they’re too busy documenting every leaf on every tree.

He wanted to discuss the finer points of each object his eyes lit upon and he proudly caressed a cut-glass syrup pitcher on the dining room sideboard that he himself had donated to the house. To my eyes, it looked like something you could buy in any flea market or antiques mall, but for Mayhew it was his personal link to this house because it had originally belonged to a female ancestor of his, “the sister of Peter Morrow’s daughter-in-law.” It seemed to be a lifelong regret that he was only collater-ally related to the Morrows and that none of his own people were in the direct line.

As we passed from room to room, I soon realized that he had an ulterior motive for trying to infect me with his own enthusiasm. With Jonna dead, he knew that if Cal was found—not if, I mentally protested, but when!—we would be taking him back to North Carolina and he wanted to make sure I fully understood what Cal would be leaving behind, “because you do see that this is young Cal’s heritage, too?”

“Heritage” was one of the man’s favorite words, and he used it when alluding to the two portraits that Jonna had hanging in her living room. Nothing so crass as “pro-bate” or “trust” passed his thin lips that morning, but I 20 was given the distinct impression that he rather thought Jonna’s will would include a bequest to the house.

A sizable bequest. Not just the portraits but money, too.

Evidently, Mr. Mayhew labored under the same mis-conception as Cal’s teacher. I wasn’t sure if Jonna had actually made a will. I certainly hadn’t seen a copy in her papers, and it suddenly occurred to me that unless there was a legal document saying otherwise, then her house and everything else she possessed would automatically go to Cal, which meant that Dwight—and by extension, I as his wife—would decide what to keep and what to let go, including those portraits and any other Morrow heirlooms. I was repelled by the man’s single-mindedness, because he had surely worked it out that if anything did happen to Cal, then as the boy’s next of kin, Dwight would be in line to inherit whatever estate Jonna had left.

This was such a disturbing thought that when we got to the library, I almost didn’t connect Peter Morrow’s missing presentation gun with the gun Jonna’s killer had used.

“I was rearranging things when you rang the bell.

Chief Radcliff kept this room locked until closing time last night so I wasn’t able to get in here to move this,”

Mayhew said, touching the display case on the center table in the library.

“Must have been an awfully big handgun,” I said, looking at the shape left on the velvet by the gun that had shot Jonna.

“It was an early Colt revolver,” said Mayhew. “One of the first postwar models. Post– Civil War,” he elucidated.

“And yes, it’s big. Weighs over two pounds. The original presentation case seems to have been lost, but the gun itself is a beauty. Silver plate over brass and quite elaborately engraved. Have you seen it yet?”

I shook my head. “A forty-four?”

“Actually, I believe Nathan Benton—he’s the chair of our board of trustees and very knowledgeable about guns—he says it’s a thirty-six caliber.”

“Tell me again why this Peter Morrow was presented with the gun?”

“For all that he did for Shaysville after the war. He was a judge, too, you know.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. A true politician in the best sense of the word. Even though he didn’t own any slaves and thought it was an abomination on the South, he was a Reb through and through. Nevertheless, he had Yankee relatives and he was very careful not to burn all his bridges to the North. He had been a representative in Congress and this part of the state had a lot in common with what became West Virginia, so he had good friends in high places in Washington. That’s how he got appointed to a seat on the western court here. That position enabled him to use his Philadelphia connections to lighten Shaysville’s bur-dens of Reconstruction. As Shelby Foote was fond of saying, there was no Marshall Plan for the South, but Judge Morrow used the law to keep the worst of the carpetbag-gers out, then he used his influence to get the railroads up and running again. He helped Thomas Shay secure contracts to ship furniture-grade oak and maple all over the Northeast. That’s where the Shays first made their fortune. In the lumberyards here. A little later, they went into the furniture business themselves and made even 20 more. That created so many jobs that Shaysville was quite a prosperous place for the time and its citizens were grateful to the man who had made it possible.”

He lifted the case and slid it under the table, where it was hidden by the green felt cloth that hung down almost to the floor.

“Such a shame that all three guns were taken. Our guest speaker was looking forward to examining them. I don’t suppose there’s a chance that Chief Radcliff will let us have the presentation piece back today?”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I said, chilled by such insensitivity. I found it hard to believe he would actually want to display so quickly a gun that had killed his colleague, I don’t care how historical the damn thing is. Was he that cold-bloodedly obsessed with this house?

“It’s just that today was supposed to be so special.”

“Oh?”

“The Shaysville Historical and Genealogical Society usually meets here on the fourth Sunday of each month at five o’clock. But the January meeting is always at four with an opening reception for the public at three. As chairman of the board, Mr. Benton thought perhaps we ought to cancel in consideration of Jonna, but as Mrs.

Ramos pointed out, we’ve already announced it in the paper and on the radio that someone is coming over from the Smithsonian to talk about family treasures, so we’re expecting quite a large crowd. Thirty-five people, maybe even fifty if it stays sunny.”

“How many members in your local group?” I asked.

“Technically, we have forty-five on the rolls, but many are too elderly to participate any longer and some live out of the state. Our core group of actives is around twent.

yJonna was so looking forward to today. She was to take office as president of SHGS and I’m sure she would have wanted us to go ahead as planned. We will have a tribute to her, then the presentations.”

“Presentations?”

“That’s what makes today so special. Mrs. Ramos is donating a set of drapes and a counterpane for Elizabeth Morrow’s bedroom that she had made up in High Point, and Mr. Benton is giving us a perfectly exquisite perfume bottle of cameo glass such as Elizabeth might have used.

He found it in a yard sale down in Winston-Salem, if you can believe it. The man has the most amazing eye! He’s picked up at least a dozen bibelots for us these last few years since he moved to Shaysville. But Mrs. Santos is closing in on him. Not that it’s a contest, but every item helps. Except for two of the bedrooms, the upstairs is rather bare. We’ve acquired enough major pieces from the mid- to late eighteen-hundreds to furnish them sparsely, but very few of the grace notes that finish a house.” He gestured to the period mirror over the man-telpiece and to the ornate matched vases that sat on the mantel. “So much was sold before the house came to us.”

He looked around as Dwight stuck his head in and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but where is Judge Morrow’s office?”

“Through that door. Is there something I can help you with?”

At that moment, the doorbell rang. Mayhew automatically looked at his watch and muttered, “It’s much too early for them,” as he went to answer the door.

“Found something?” I asked, noting the papers in Dwight’s hand.

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “I was skimming through these old inventory sheets and—” He broke off as Agents Lewes and Clark followed Mayhew into the library.

Here in daylight, I was struck anew by what a similar type so many lawmen can be. Like Dwight, these two agents were muscular six-footers, and, like him, they were casually dressed in jeans and leather jackets. Dwight had more hair than both of them put together, though.

Clark’s hair was thinning rapidly across the crown and Lewes’s had retreated well behind the crest of his forehead.

“Major Bryant,” said Clark. He nodded to me.

“Judge. I had a feeling we’d find you here.”

“Any news of my son?” Dwight asked.

“Sorry, Major. You know how it is. A flurry of false alarms that turn out to be nothing, but we’ll still check out every one of them. What about you?”

Dwight handed Lewes the inventory and pointed to an item down near the bottom of the page. “According to this, a box containing five thirty-six-caliber cartridges is stored in the safe in Judge Morrow’s office.”

“Bullets?” Mayhew looked shocked.

“Show us the safe,” said Lewes.

The director obediently opened a door in the far wall.

There were very few books in the library, but Peter Morrow’s office was a grander version of my own and the shelves here were packed with law books of every description.

While we watched, he moved aside a set of Black-stone’s Commentaries to reveal a small wall safe with a combination lock.

“Now let me think.” Mayhew went over to the huge mahogany desk that dominated the room. He hesitated and looked at each of us with a nervous laugh. “I suppose all of you can be trusted not to speak of this?” It was less a question for us than a reassurance to himself. He pulled out a side drawer, turned it over, gave an annoyed click of his tongue, and tried the adjacent drawer. There on the bottom was the combination. “In Judge Morrow’s own writing,” he told us.

Agent Clark took a penlight from his jacket pocket and carefully examined the exterior of the safe before touching it. I heard him mutter, “Hell. Knob and handle both too grooved to hold prints.”

His partner held the drawer up so that he could read off the numbers while he twirled the dial. Clark tugged on the handle and the door of the safe opened smoothly.

The diameter was only about eight inches yet surprisingly deep. He aimed his penlight inside. “Empty.”

“Empty? That’s impossible!” Mayhew exclaimed, almost elbowing the two bigger men aside so that he could look in.

“Don’t touch,” Clark said sharply as Mayhew put out his hand to the safe.

“Peter Morrow’s signet ring,” Mayhew moaned. “Elizabeth’s gold locket. Catherine’s mourning parure.”

“What’s a parure?” asked Clark.

“A matched set of jewelry. In this case, a necklace, bracelet, and earrings of onyx and braided hair.”

Clark frowned. “Hair?”

“It was her daughter Elizabeth’s hair. I know it sounds morbid, but people used to take comfort from wearing the hair of a loved one.”

“Is the set valuable?”

“To the Morrow House, it’s priceless. On the open market? It’s a matched set of known provenance and the glass cases of the bracelet and necklace are set in twenty-four-carat gold with intact hinges, so perhaps two thousand dollars. The hairwork is incredibly fine.”

“And those other pieces? The signet ring? And gold locket?”

“No more than five or six hundred. We kept them in the safe simply because we have no secure way to exhibit jewelry yet.”

“Is this the ring?” asked Clark. He held out a small domed box that had once been red velvet but was rubbed down almost to the cardboard backing. Inside was a heavy gold ring inset with an onyx signet.

“Yes! Where on earth did you find it?”

“In Jonna Bryant’s pocketbook,” said Lewes.

“In her purse? I don’t understand. And what about the locket? The mourning jewelry?”

“Sorry. This was it.”

C H A P T E R

22

Every plant, animal, or inanimate thing that has an odorhas one peculiar to itself.

—Theophrastus

It was only 9:45 when we left the Morrow House that morning, pointedly invited by Lewes and Clark to take ourselves elsewhere while they gave Jonna’s desk and computer a thorough examination. They had also called for their evidence truck to process the wall safe on the off chance that Jonna or someone else had left prints.

Mr. Mayhew had feebly denied that Jonna would have stolen from the safe, yet insisted that only the two of them knew that the combination was written on the underside of that drawer.

“He said the same thing about the keys to the locked key cabinet, too,” Dwight told me, turning his own key in the truck’s ignition, “and he’s only been there eight or ten years, so somebody had to show him. One of the board members or someone in that Historical Society, maybe.”

“Did she take them to sell?” I wondered aloud. “Raise the five thousand that way?”

“Never happened.” He sounded angry at me for even suggesting such a thing. “I don’t care how desperate Jonna was for money. It would never cross her mind to steal. Period.”

I knew better than to argue, but that didn’t stop my re-bellious thoughts. Only last week, he had arrested one of his mother’s most trusted employees. Miss Emily was the principal at Zachary Taylor High School and it turned out that the manager of the school’s cafeteria had embezzled almost thirty thousand over the last two years.

Both of us have put too many pillars of the community behind bars to say for sure who would or wouldn’t break the law, but if Dwight was on his white horse and riding in defense of his lady wife’s reputation, anything I said could and probably would be used against me, so I kept my mouth shut.

“The shooter must have put that ring in her purse to make us think it was a falling-out of thieves in case the suicide note didn’t work,” he said as we drove out of the communal parking lot.

“What about the other pieces? And the guns?”

“Probably kept them to sell somewhere out of the area.

The signet ring and guns would be too easy to identify, but it sounds as if those weird hair things are pretty common and gold lockets must be a dime a dozen. Could be she caught the thief in action and threatened to tell.

Maybe that’s why she was killed.”

And maybe she offered to meet her killer in an out-of-the-way place so she could sell him the things she herself hadstolen, I thought, but did not say. Nor did I say, Or whatif they were the first installment on that five thousand sheneeded so urgently?

What I did say was, “We forgot to tell them about Jonna needing money.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we won’t be seeing them again,” he said grimly.

“So where are we going now?”

Dwight glanced at his watch. “It’s still too early for church to be over. You mind coming with me to talk to her mother so I can ask her about the money again? She’ll always be Cal’s grandmother, so you probably ought to meet her.”

“Sure,” I said gamely, even though I had a feeling that this was going to be really awkward.

Mrs. Shay lived in the older and wealthier part of town, only a block or two from the Morrow House, and close enough that Cal had probably been allowed to walk back and forth if he wanted. Hundred-year-old oaks and maples towered above the rooftops in this neighborhood and there was a lot of elbow room between the houses.

According to Dwight, Jonna said that they had moved to this smaller house after her father’s death. Smaller? It looked plenty big to me, almost as big as the old farmhouse I had grown up in, and our house had held fourteen of us. Mrs. Shay and her two daughters must have rattled around here, and now it was just Mrs. Shay.

Dwight said the house had been full of people yesterday afternoon. Only one woman was there this morning.

She looked to be mid-sixties, with short salt-and-pepper hair that waved softly over her head, and she wore tailored black pants and a black silk turtleneck accented by an unusual silver pin on the upturned collar. I myself 21 seldom use perfume except for dress-up occasions, so I immediately noticed the light, spicy scent she wore. Her strong face was somber when she first opened the door in response to our ring, but then she smiled and said, “Oh, Dwight! Come in. Any news?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I’ve brought my wife to meet y’all.

Deb’rah, this is Mrs. Shay’s cousin, Eleanor Prentice.”

We said the usual things and she led us out to the kitchen. “I was just making tea and toast for Laura.

She insisted on staying alone last night, but I knew she wouldn’t eat a thing this morning if I didn’t come around and fix it for her.”

She put the plates and cups on a large silver serving tray and hesitated when Dwight offered to carry it up for her.

“Well . . . only to the top of the stairs, though,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll want to put on a pretty dressing gown and fix her face before seeing you. If you like, Deborah, do make you and Dwight a cup of tea, too. The cups are in that cupboard and you’ll find tea and sugar in those caddies beside the stove. There’s milk and lemon in the refrigerator. If you don’t see what you need, just root around.”

Left alone, I did exactly that. I opened drawers and doors and looked inside. It was clear where Jonna got her tidiness. Even the gadget drawer was neat. Silverware, both sterling and stainless, occupied their own sections in separate drawers. In the pantry, one shelf held soup, another canned tuna and salmon, another pickles and relish, etc. etc. No mixing of soups with pickles. Yet she was also a doting grandmother if the Christmas picture that Cal had drawn for her meant anything. Here it was almost a month past Christmas and the picture still hung on her refrigerator door. The one he made for Dwight and me still hangs on our refrigerator, too, I thought sadly.

I added more water to the kettle and turned on the flame, then set out porcelain cups and saucers for Dwight and me when it became clear that there were no mugs in this kitchen. No tea bags either and Eleanor Prentice had taken the teapot with her, but a flameproof measuring cup made a serviceable substitute. By the time Dwight came back down, the loose tea leaves had steeped enough to strain into the cups.

He sighed as he retrieved a rubber baseball from the bowl of fruit on the counter and sat down at the table, where he absently tossed the ball from hand to hand. I sensed that he was wondering if he would ever again play catch with Cal. Nothing I might say could change that.

The best I could do was try to distract him.

“Eleanor seems nice,” I said. “How’s she related to Mrs. Shay?”

He frowned. “I think she said their mothers were sisters. So that makes them what? First cousins?”

We talked about degrees of kinship and how Eleanor would be Cal’s first cousin, twice removed—idle mean-ingless talk to fill up the silence that seemed to be growing between us.

He finished his tea and stood up to stretch and flex his arms, then stared out the window into the backyard that was beginning to show patches of brown grass beneath the melting snow. “I just feel so damn helpless,” he said with his back to me. “We’re running around in circles while Cal’s out there somewhere and there’s nothing I can do.”

“We’ll find him,” I murmured.

“You keep saying that!” His voice was harsh with frustration. “Dammit, Deb’rah, what if we don’t?” He turned and the anger drained from his face, leaving it bleak and despairing. “What if we don’t?” he said again.

Before I could answer, the cousin returned to say that Mrs. Shay was ready to see us.

“For some reason, she seems to be doing much better today,” Eleanor said as she led the way upstairs. “She’s still heartsick about Jonna, of course, but she’s decided that Cal’s going to be all right in the end. I think it’s a combination of prayer and the power of positive thinking.”

Mrs. Shay’s corner bedroom was quite spacious and nicely proportioned with high ceilings and classic molding, yet despite tall windows on two sides, it felt almost airless. Too much polished wood furniture, too many ruffles, too many knickknacks. I charitably decided that it probably seemed like a cozy retreat to her.

Two delicate wing chairs upholstered in the same blue velvet as a nearby chaise sat in front of the fireplace, where small gas logs burned in the grate. The silver tray with the remains of Mrs. Shay’s toast and tea sat on a low table between the two chairs.

Mrs. Shay herself sat on the chaise under one of the windows, and after I was introduced she gestured for us to take the wing chairs while Eleanor Prentice sat down beside her.

There was very little family likeness between the cousins, but having compared that family picture in Jonna’s bedroom with recent pictures of Jonna herself, I knew that Mrs. Shay had been equally beautiful in her youth. Even now, with wrinkled face and age-blotched hands, she was still pretty and still as slender as a young woman. Her eyes were widely spaced and so blue that they were nearly violet, and they made her seem innocent and somehow vulnerable. I could well understand why her husband had catered to her and had tried to shield her from the sordid details of his financial failures. Nevertheless, there must have been a lot of money left from the wreckage if she could afford to live like this for so many years. No wonder the Mayhews and Jacksons of the town thought Jonna had money to spare.

Dwight confessed that we were yet no closer to finding Cal, but she gave a serene smile and lightly patted his arm.

“Put your trust in the Lord, Dwight. That’s what I’ve done. There’s nothing He can do now for Jonna, but last night I began to feel absolutely certain that Cal will come back to us safely.”

I had expected to find a mother and grandmother shattered by grief, but this woman seemed oddly removed from it. Yes, tears came to her eyes whenever talk turned to Jonna, but no tears for Cal, even though I’d been told that he was her only grandchild.

As I sat there quietly listening, a strange feeling of déjà

vu began to take over my senses, and when she mentioned last night, I pinpointed the reason.

“Your perfume is very nice,” I said, leaning forward to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. “Is it gardenia?”

“Why, yes, it is,” she said, struggling to play the polite hostess. “All the women in my family are quite fond of it.”

“Not me,” Eleanor said crisply as if alluding to old family rifts. “And not Mama.”

“Nor Jonna,” Mrs. Shay conceded sadly. “It began with Elizabeth Morrow,” she told me. “You know about her ghost?”

I nodded. “I heard that her gardenia perfume can be smelled whenever she walks.”

“I’ve often wondered who the maker was that it could last for over a hundred years,” Eleanor said.

Mrs. Shay gave a mournful smile. “Eleanor doesn’t believe in ghosts, so Elizabeth doesn’t believe in her. She’s never let Eleanor smell her perfume.”

I thought at first she was joking, but her regretful tone was clearly meant as condolence for her cousin’s exclusion from an inner circle. It reminded me of the pitying look my Aunt Zell gave a newcomer to Dobbs who was so clueless as to openly desire to join the town’s oldest book club, a club limited to the female descendants of the original 1898 founders.

Talk turned to funeral arrangements now that Jonna’s body had been released for burial. The day and time were yet to be set, but probably Tuesday or Wednesday.

“Surely Cal will be back with us then,” Mrs. Shay said hopefully.

“When does her sister arrive?” Dwight asked. “She is coming, isn’t she?”

“Of course she will come,” Mrs. Shay said sharply.

“Pam was devoted to Jonna. To Cal, too. It was such a shock. To her, to me.”

“To all of us,” said Dwight. “And I hate to have to bring this up again, Mrs. Shay, but that message you left on her answering machine, when you asked if she was still mad at you. Was it because she had asked you for money and you told her no?”

Tears filled those dark blue eyes. “Oh, Dwight, how can you be so cruel?”

Her glanced bounced off me and then away, and I realized that she was embarrassed that he’d asked something so personal in front of me.

I immediately stood. “Y’all need to talk privately. I’ll wait downstairs.”

Eleanor started to rise herself, but Mrs. Shay begged her to stay.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know the way. Why don’t I just take this tray back to the kitchen and fix myself another cup of tea? It was good meeting you, Mrs. Shay. I’m just sorry it had to be under these conditions.”

I knew I was babbling, so I shut up and grabbed the tray. Dwight opened the door for me and I made my escape.

It was almost a half hour before Dwight and Eleanor came back downstairs.

As they entered the kitchen, I heard her say, “I don’t know the address, but let me find a piece of paper. I can give you directions and draw you a rough map.”

She opened the drawer beneath the wall-hung kitchen phone, took out a notepad, and quickly sketched a simple map, explaining turns and landmarks as she drew.

Dwight asked a couple of questions, then tucked the map in his pocket and turned to me. “Ready to go?”

“Not till Mrs. Shay tells us what the hell she’s done 21 with Cal.” I was so angry that I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking.

“What?”

I stormed across the kitchen and threw open the door to the utility room. There, hanging on one of the pegs amid a collection of scarves and knitted headwear, was a dark blue parka. Its hood was trimmed in black fur and the smell of gardenias permeated the cloth.

C H A P T E R

23

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

—Sophocles

Eleanor Prentice was bewildered as Dwight jerked the parka from its peg, sending hats and jackets flying.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would you say that Laura took Cal?”

“Didn’t you hear the description of the abductor?”

“Only that you thought at first it was Jonna and then someone else.”

“This is the coat the woman was wearing,” Dwight said, almost shaking it in her face.

“But it’s not Laura’s. Her parka’s black, not navy.”

“There’s no black parka,” I said, gesturing toward the pegs beside the outer door of the utility room.

“But I know Laura. She was genuinely upset when Cal disappeared.”

“Then explain the gardenia perfume,” I said. “Oh, Dwight, she must have been the one who took Carson.

That’s definitely something a grandmother would think to do.”

Eleanor threw up her hands. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I slept in Cal’s room last night and somebody sneaked in and took his teddy bear. I thought I was dreaming, but whoever it was wore gardenia perfume. The same perfume as Mrs. Shay. And you said yourself that she was here alone last night. No wonder she’s not worried about Cal. She knows where he is.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” she said, sinking down on the nearest chair. “Pam?”

Now it was our turn to look bewildered.

“Pam? Jonna’s sister?” I asked.

“She uses gardenia perfume,” said Eleanor, “but I thought she was still in Tennessee.”

“Is she here? Is this her coat?”

“I don’t know.”

Dwight was already turning the pockets inside out and found nothing except some loose change and a used tis-sue. He fumbled through his own pockets for the number Agent Lewes had given him last night, grabbed the kitchen phone, and dialed it. As soon as Lewes answered, he immediately described what we had found and where.

“Yes, my ex-wife’s sister . . . Pam . . . wait a sec. What’s Pam’s last name?” he asked Eleanor.

“Morgan. Mrs. Gregory Morgan, but Laura says she may go back to Shay if it does come to a divorce.”

Dwight relayed the information, then turned again to the older woman. “What kind of car’s she driving?”

“The last time she was here, it was white. A white sedan.”

“The make?”

She shook her head helplessl.

y“Would Mrs. Shay know?”

Lewes must have said something about Tennessee’s DMV because Dwight said, “Yeah, of course, I’m not thinking straight . . . It’s Knoxville, right, Eleanor?”

She nodded, then gathered her wits and said, “Laura’s address book is in that drawer. It probably has Pam’s home phone number.”

Dwight pulled the drawer out so hard that it slipped off its rails and crashed to the floor. I began picking up the pencils and pens, rubber bands, and scratch pads that tumbled around his feet and put them back in the drawer while he plucked a leather-bound address book from the pile and soon was reading off all the numbers and street addresses listed for Pamela and Gregory Morgan. There were even two cell phone numbers, one labeled “P” and the other “G.”

“I’ll try the ‘P’ one right now,” said Dwight.

“What? . . . Yeah, we’ll be here. Damn straight we’ll be here.”

He broke the connection and dialed the number for Pam Morgan’s cell phone. A moment later, he said,

“Crap!” and hung up the phone. “That number’s out of service.”

He grabbed up the parka that had fallen to the floor and headed back upstairs with the two of us close behind.

And no, he didn’t bother to knock at Mrs. Shay’s bedroom door. She was standing in her slip in front of her open closet, and as we entered she gave a ladylike gasp and reached for her robe.

“Really, Dwight!”

But Dwight was in no mood for niceties. He thrust the parka toward her and said, “It’s Pam’s, isn’t it? You lied 22 when you said she was still in Tennessee. Where is she?

What’s she done with Cal?”

Every word was like a slap across her face and she was so shocked that she clutched the robe to her chest as if it could protect her. Moaning, she held out a hand to Eleanor, but her cousin said, “No more false pride, Laura. You have to tell us.”

“Is she here in the house?” Dwight asked. “Dammit, where’s my son?”

“I didn’t lie,” she whimpered. “I told you she would be at Jonna’s funeral. You never asked if she was already here.”

Eleanor was dismayed. “Oh, Laura. Why didn’t you tell us?”

“She’s here? In the house?” He started for the door, but Mrs. Shay called him back.

“They’re not in this house, Dwight. I don’t know where they are, honest. She wouldn’t tell me.”

While Dwight paced like a caged tiger that smells blood, Mrs. Shay told us how Pam had blown into town two weeks ago. “She left her husband. She wanted to stay here, but she wasn’t taking her pills, so I couldn’t have that. Not with my friends in and out and she acting so—so—”

“Crazy?” asked Dwight.

“She’s not crazy!” Mrs. Shay cried. “She’s not, she’s not! She’s bright and funny and just as sane as you and I when she’s taking her pills.”

“And when she doesn’t take her pills?” I asked quietly.

“Is she violent?”

“She would never hurt Cal,” Mrs. Shay said, instantly grasping the concern beneath my question. “She adores him.”

“But she hears voices,” said Eleanor, “and sometimes those voices tell her to do”—we watched her search for an alternate term for “crazy” that wouldn’t set her cousin off again—“to do . . . irrational things.”

“The only person she’s ever hurt is herself,” Mrs. Shay said.

I thought back to the used sheets on Jonna’s couch.

“Did she stay with Jonna?”

Mrs. Shay nodded. “When she first got to town she did. Jonna let her stay a whole week, but then, with the voices and all . . . You know what Pam’s like, Eleanor, and this was a busy time for Jonna. Taking inventory out at the Morrow House, working on her class reunion, committee members coming to the house. And Jill and Lou are such gossips. It would have been all over town. We called Gregory, but he wouldn’t come get her this time.

He said he was through trying to keep her on her medication.”

“So where did she go when Jonna kicked her out?”

Dwight asked impatiently.

Mrs. Shay was once again affronted by his choice of words. “You make it sound as if we’re coldhearted and uncaring, but Pam knows she would be more than welcome if she stayed on her pills and—”

Dwight stopped pacing. He’s six-three and solid, and as he towered over his former mother-in-law, there was such thunder in his face that she quit talking in mid-stream. “You know something, Mrs. Shay? I don’t give a flying frick about your problems with your daughters.

This is my son. Now you tell me what the hell’s she done 22 with him or I’m going to take this town apart house by house and you can damn well believe that every one of your snooty friends will be told exactly why.”

“But I don’t know!” she wailed. “Honest. Jonna got one of our Anson cousins to invite her up to their cabin up in the hills and she did go, but she was afraid of getting snowed in up there and left before it started falling Wednesday night. William—that’s our cousin—called the next morning to see if she was okay, but when I talked to Jonna on Thursday morning, she hadn’t seen Pam either.

We thought maybe she’d gone on back to Tennessee.”

Thought? I wondered. Or hoped? Out of sight, out of mind. Whited out like the snow.

Even though she had taken Cal, I nevertheless felt a sudden compassion for Jonna’s poor unstable sister.

Delusional people like her cycle in and out of my court every week, one of the Reagan legacies you seldom hear mentioned. I’m told that we used to have a halfway decent system of community mental health centers, but Reagan ended all the federal funding for them as soon as he took office, which is why so many demented, home-less people roam our streets these days. And they want to carve his face on Mount Rushmore? Jeez!

“So where did this parka come from?” Dwight asked.

Mrs. Shay took a deep breath. “Pam must have taken mine by mistake. She was here around two this morning.

I couldn’t sleep so I came down for cocoa and a few minutes later she came walking through the kitchen door just as if she were a teenager again coming home from school.”

“She still has a key?” Eleanor asked.

“Well, of course she does. Both my daughters . . .” She choked up as the realization hit her anew that now she only had one daughter.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“At two in the morning? I’m sure Kenneth would have liked that.”

“Mrs. Shay,” said Dwight, and from his tone, I knew he was about to lose it again.

“She knew about Jonna, Dwight, and she was heartsick. Said she knew it was going to turn out bad.”

“Knew what was going to turn out bad?”

“She wasn’t making sense. She said that Jonna would be a ghost now, too. She would be a guide to freedom.

That the trains were running and Jonna would be on one, riding to glory and freedom. Her voices had told her so.”

“Did you ask her about Cal?”

“I tried, Dwight. I really tried. She said he was asleep in the arms of Jesus.”

Ice formed around my heart. “Oh God!”

“No, no,” she assured me. “He’s not dead and not hurt, because she wanted me to give her some crackers and soda for him. She took a banana, too, and she said there was one more thing she wanted for him, but she would have to be a ghost to get it. It was all such a muddle. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was her voices.

They had told her that she had to watch out for the bloodhounds. Can you believe that? Bloodhounds! Nobody in this town has a bloodhound and the trains quit running years ago. I tried to tell her that, but she said she had to keep him hidden till it was safe to bring him out.

She promised me that she would bring him back. I told her he must be scared and cold, but she said no, that she and Jesus were keeping him warm.” She looked at 22 Eleanor helplessly. “And you know she was never religious. It’s those voices in her head.”

“She would have to be a ghost?” Dwight asked.

“That’s what she said, but it was just nonsense. It was so distressing. I’m sure this is not good for my heart.”

“Did you come over to Jonna’s house last night and take that teddy bear from Cal’s room?”

“Of course not!”

“So it was Pam. Bandit knew her. And she knew the house because she stayed there last week.”

The doorbell rang and I hurried down to answer it. I expected it to be Agents Lewes and Clark. Instead it was two attractive women, who looked to be a couple of years older than me. They were expensively dressed in an understated way—wool topcoats, cashmere scarves, high-heeled boots. One carried a large dish garden of mixed green plants in a beautiful ceramic bowl. I recognized a prayer plant, a peace lily, and some variegated ivy. It was accented with a huge white silk bow.

“Is Mrs. Shay receiving callers?” one of them asked.

“We’re old friends of Jonna’s. I’m Lou Cannady.”

“And I’m Jill Edwards,” said the other.

It would appear that church was over.

C H A P T E R

24

It is better to be envied than pitied.

—Herodotus

“Come in,” I told the two women. I took the plant and, after making sure the bottom was completely dry, set it on the hall table beside the funeral home’s guest register. “Mrs. Shay hasn’t come down yet, but I’m sure she would want to know you’re here.”

“Are you one of the Anson cousins?” asked Lou Cannady as she signed the register. She automatically peeled off the numbered tab beside her name and stuck it on the dish garden so that next week sometime, Mrs. Shay would know exactly who should be sent a graceful little handwritten note of thanks for it.

“No, I’m Deborah Knott, Cal’s stepmother.”

“Really?” said Jill Edwards. “Is there any news? Everybody’s so worried.”

“Nothing official,” I said.

Her small china blue eyes swept over me, and I knew she was cataloging my clothes, my hair, and my looks, which was okay since I was doing the same with both of them. The Three Musketeers had not been three of a 22 kind. Jonna had been a brunette and easily the prettiest of the three. Jill was a natural blonde with a square face, while Lou Cannady had a long thin face and dark red hair. Both women had the ease and confidence of those born to privilege. And yes, it might be the small-town version, but it was no less real than what I’d seen drifting in and out of chic stores in midtown Manhattan after Mother died and I tried to run away from school, from family, and, most of all, from a world she no longer inhabited.

In a demonstration of long familiarity, these two hung their coats in the hall closet before I could offer to take them and moved into the living room, almost as if they were the hostesses.

“How’s she doing today?” Lou asked.

“Between Jonna’s death and Cal’s disappearance, that poor woman looked as if she was about to collapse yesterday,” said Jill, taking a seat on the couch.

Her straight blond hair was asymmetrically cut and had a tendency to fall over one eye so that she had to keep pushing it back. Would’ve driven me crazy, but it did help disguise the squareness of her face. It wasn’t just her hair that occupied her restless hands, though. She was someone who constantly straightened her collar, rearranged the folds of her skirt, touched her earrings, and fiddled with her rings (obligatory large diamond solitaire and a really nice emerald about half the size of Ireland).

Usually redheads are stereotyped as volatile and flighty, but Lou Cannady was much more composed than her friend. She sat gracefully in one of the period side chairs and she didn’t fidget, but her hazel eyes were watchful as we discussed Mrs. Shay’s losses.

They were both still in shock that Jonna had been shot in what appeared to be a deliberate, cold-blooded murder, and they were dismayed to hear that I had no inside information on why anyone would want her dead.

“I believe Cal’s dad is a sheriff’s deputy?” she asked, moving on to the other aspects of this situation. “Is he involved with the investigation?”

I nodded. “We’re both doing everything we can.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Jill, brushing blond hair from her eyes. “You’re a judge, aren’t you?”

Again I nodded. Well, it was natural that Jonna would have spoken of us to her closest friends. Portland Brewer and I certainly would have.

“I saw the yearbooks in Jonna’s house,” I said. “The Three Musketeers. You three have been tight forever, haven’t you?”

“Since Miss Sophie’s Playschool,” Lou said sadly.

“Grade school, high school, college. It was such a shock when she went off to visit a friend in Germany and wound up marrying an Army officer instead of someone here in town. Of course, he was very good-looking.”

“Still is,” I said, smiling.

“And really, Lou, who was left here?” asked Jill, adjusting the gold loop in her earlobe. “You and I got the best of her leavings and she was too picky for anyone else.”

I like to think I have a poker face but that catty remark must have registered because Lou smiled and said,

“You’ll have to excuse Jill. She never got over the fact that Forrest proposed to Jonna first and Jonna turned him down.”

“Oh, and like Dale wasn’t in love with her first, too.”

“Every boy in our crowd was in love with Jonna first,”

Lou agreed calmly, as she tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear, “but not all of them got down on bended knee with a ring.”

Jill Edwards had a blonde’s fair skin and she flushed in annoyance. “I’m sure Judge Knott isn’t interested in all this ancient history.”

Lou gave a wicked grin. “I bet she is. I certainly would be.”

I laughed outright and Jill gave a grudging smile.

“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t help feeling that the more I know about Jonna’s life here in Shaysville, the better I’ll understand Cal.”

Sudden tears pooled in Jill’s blue eyes. “Poor kid.”

“How can we help?” asked Lou. “What do you want to know?”

I told them to call me Deborah, and at first I just listened to what they had to say about their murdered friend, the shock of it, their sense of loss. It wasn’t that no one had ever been murdered in Shaysville, rather that no one they knew had. They were warm in their praise of Jonna and had funny stories about the mischief they had gotten into as kids. I gathered that she had been their leader since the Miss Sophie days. She was the prettiest, her people had founded the town and had produced its most illustrious sons, so her blood was the bluest. She had the best sense of style and she was acknowledged to be the smartest of the three. Maybe not academically, although her grades had been decent enough in school, but she was savvy about people and situations, which was probably the real reason why she had married so far outside their crowd, Lou said candidly, as if realizing for the first time how claustrophobic “our crowd” could be.

They had not been surprised, though, that the marriage had failed “because after all,” Jill said, “this is where her roots were and what would a lawman like Dwight Bryant do here?”

Not that there was anything wrong with being a lawman, they quickly assured me, but the opportunities here were so limited that they didn’t really blame him for has-tening the end of the marriage by not wanting to come to Shaysville with Jonna.

I didn’t bother to explain that coming to Shaysville had never been an option so far as I knew. Evidently Jonna had given them a slightly different version of the divorce from the one Dwight had told me.

“Who are you going to believe?” asked the preacher. “Theman you’ve known all your life or the secondhand reports ofher partisan friends?”

The pragmatist remained silent, withholding judgment.

“What about her sister?” I asked. “Was she part of your crowd?”

“Oh, sure,” said Jill as she removed a stray thread from her skirt. “She was a year ahead of us in school, but in some ways it was as if Jonna were older. Pam seemed to look up to her instead of the other way around. But she was popular in her own way, very cute and funny. She and Jonna used to be really close.”

“Used to be?”

“You don’t know?”

They exchanged glances, then Lou said, “Maybe she didn’t talk about it with Dwight.”

“Probably not. She didn’t like to talk about it even 23 with us,” Jill said earnestly. “See, Pam always liked to party, but when she went off to UVA, she got into alcohol pretty heavy. Turned into a real lush. Flunked out of school. Maybe even did drugs for a while. Totally freaked Jonna out. She didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She wouldn’t even apply to UVA, which is how we wound up going to Hollins.”

“Which may have been another reason she left Shaysville, now that you think about it,” said Lou.

Evidently neither woman had ever connected the two.

“But it’s true that even though Pam hadn’t lived here since high school, Jonna didn’t come home to stay till Pam was safely married to someone out in Tennessee. We haven’t seen Pam in . . . when was the last time?” Jill asked her friend.

“Three or four years ago?” Lou hazarded. “Poor Jonna was so embarrassed. She thought Pam had totally dried out, but all she had done was switch to vodka so you couldn’t smell it on her breath. Remember how crazy she acted that day?”

Jill nodded. “It was sad. They had to call her husband to come get her.”

Crazy, I thought. Dress it up with all the politically correct terms: “unstable,” “schizophrenic,” “psychotic.”

The world would still call it crazy and people like Jonna would still prefer that people think she had an alcoholic sister rather than one who heard voices in her head.

“Who were Pam’s friends?” I asked. “Who would she turn to here?”

They both looked blank. “I don’t think she has any friends left here. She and Missy Collins were pretty close during high school, but Missy married someone in the State Department and they live in Italy, the last I heard.”

“Why are you asking about Pam?” asked Jill. “Hasn’t she come yet?”

“She’s been in town almost two weeks,” I told them.

They were not as surprised as I’d expected.

“Ah,” said Lou. “That’s why Jonna canceled the meeting. I wondered what the real reason was. She must have been dealing with Pam. Is she drinking again?”

“Meeting?” I asked, sidestepping the question of Pam’s problems.

“Our twenty-fifth high school reunion’s coming up this spring,” said Jill.

I remembered the list of names and addresses in Jonna’s files and that she had chaired the class gift committee.

“It’s not official yet, but we’re pretty sure that Pam’s the one who took Cal,” I said.

Jill’s face lit up in relieved delight. “Oh, thank heavens!

I’ve been so worried about him. Afraid that it was Jonna’s killer or some pervert that had taken him. But if it’s Pam . . . I mean even if she is back on the bottle, she would never hurt him.”

Lou agreed. “But why would Pam take Cal? Unless—?”

“Unless what?”

“I know it sounds irrational, but could she be thinking of trying to get custody? Keep Dwight from taking him back to North Carolina? She can’t have children of her own and she was always sending him books and toys.”

“Have both motels been checked?”

“Chief Radcliff put out the word as soon as they realized Cal really was gone,” I said.

“By now she could already be back in Tennessee with him,” said Jill.

Lou shook her head. “She wouldn’t leave before the funeral.”

The custody theory was something they could easily believe and I didn’t see the point of disabusing them.

“Was Jonna seeing anyone?” I asked.

“Boyfriends? I don’t think she’s gone out with anyone in a couple of years,” said Jill.

“No,” said Lou. “Remember that guy last fall? What was his name? Selby?”

“That’s right. I’d forgotten Jim Selby. But he was so not our crowd that she dropped him after two dates.”

The doorbell rang again, and this time the room did fill up with law. Dwight and Eleanor Prentice came downstairs, but Mrs. Shay refused to leave her room, so Jill and Lou went up to see her while Dwight and I told the two state agents about finding Pam’s parka, how Pam had visited her mother alone last night, and how she must have been the one to sneak back in the house for Cal’s teddy bear.

“Like a ghost,” I said, repeating what she had told Mrs. Shay.

“The car’s a Honda Accord, same model as the victim’s, only white. Tennessee plate.” Agent Clark rattled off the number and Dwight jotted it down on one of the cards in his wallet. (I had given him a proper leather-bound notepad and pencil as a stocking stuffer at Christmas, but does he remember to carry it? File under

“Rhetorical Questions.”)

Dwight told them about Pam’s mental condition, I elaborated on how her friends had been told she was al- coholic, not psychotic, but that they agreed with Mrs.

Shay that Pam was truly fond of Cal. “They think she took him because she hopes to get custody of him.”

Dwight was outraged by that until I reminded him that this was a woman listening to inner voices about bloodhounds and ghosts and trains that no longer ran.

All five of us were at a loss to think of where Pam could be. No friends, Jonna dead. “Are you sure she’s not here in the house?” asked Lewes.

“I checked every room upstairs,” said Dwight.

“And I checked the basement before I found the parka,” I confessed. “Eleanor?”

She shook her head. “I can’t imagine. Unless the Anson cousins are hiding her? I’m her only other relative here and you’re welcome to search my house if you like.”

“You’re just around the corner, right?” asked Clark.

“No offense, ma’am, but if you’re sure you don’t mind, maybe I could just take a quick look?”

Eleanor was understandably offended. “Of course,”

she said frostily. “Let me get my coat.”

As the two of them left, I remembered that the only reason I was downstairs alone long enough to search the place was so that Dwight could question Mrs. Shay about the money.

“Did you tell Agent Lewes about Cal’s teacher?”

“Not yet.”

“Something new?” Lewes asked.

Dwight explained how we had run into Cal’s teacher at breakfast this morning. “On Tuesday, Cal told her that someone was going to smash his mother’s face in if she didn’t come up with five thousand and that she was crying because his grandmother wouldn’t give it to her.”

“Someone threatened her?” asked Lewes. “Who?”

“I don’t know and Mrs. Shay completely denies that it ever happened. She keeps insisting that Cal must have misunderstood.” He threw up his hands in exasperation.

“Who knows? Maybe he did. In any event, his teacher says that on Wednesday Cal was okay again, said that his mother had told him she had plenty of money and for him not to give it any more thought.”

Lewes frowned. “Maybe I’d better have a talk with Mrs. Shay.”

“Good luck,” Dwight said sourly. “She’ll just start crying.”

“How about I try after Jonna’s friends are gone?” I offered. Even as I spoke, I was struck by a sudden thought.

“Is there any chance that Pam could be hiding somewhere in the Morrow House?”

“Huh?” they both said.

“Well, think about it, Dwight. Mrs. Shay says she kept talking about Jonna being a ghost too, and the only other ghost we know about is the one there. Paul Radcliff’s boy says that Cal told him his mother had played in the house as a child, so wouldn’t Pam have played there as well? I gather they don’t show any of the bedrooms on the third floor except for Elizabeth Morrow’s, the one who’s supposed to be the ghost.”

“I don’t know,” Dwight said doubtfully.

“Won’t hurt to turn that place inside out,” Lewes said.

“I get the feeling that Mayhew guy may know more than he’s telling.”

“And while you’re there, see if you can see Mrs. Shay’s bedroom window from there. It’s awfully coincidental that she showed up in the wee hours just when Mrs. Shay was up and about, don’t you think?”

Eleanor returned with Clark, and Dwight offered to leave me his truck keys while he rode over to the Morrow House with the two state agents, but I told him I could certainly walk the block or two.

When Lou Cannady and Jill Edwards came back downstairs, I asked Eleanor if I could make us a cup of tea.

“Of course you may,” she said as she went up to see if Mrs. Shay wanted her.

Lou and Jill made noises about needing to get home, but when I said I had a few more questions, they came along to the kitchen with me. Despite their genuine sense of loss, I also sensed some of the repressed excitement I had seen before when tragedy jolts people out of their commonplace lives.

“Did Jonna talk much about her work?” I asked when we were settled around the table with steaming cups.

“Any conflicts there? Anyone she didn’t get along with?”

Not at all, they told me. Jonna loved being at the Morrow House. After all, it was her family. And wasn’t it fitting that the last Morrow in town married the last Shay?

That made Pam and Jonna the last to bear the Shay name.

“Jonna felt like it was her duty to help out over there as much as she could,” said Lou. “She was very civic-minded.”

“And she treated it like a real job, too,” said Jill.

“A real job?” I was puzzled.

“She was conscientious about keeping regular hours 23 and everything. She never ditched it even when it conflicted with something we wanted her to do.”

“But it was a real job,” I said. “She got paid.”

They both laughed at that. “Honey, she’s a Shay. Even though Mrs. Shay doesn’t own Shay Furniture, whatever Jonna got paid was just pin money for her.”

Still smiling, Jill pushed the swoop of hair back from her face and looped it behind her ear. “Of course, Jonna was something of a tightwad, so I’m sure she cashed every paycheck.”

“Tightwad?” Their bright chatter made me feel thick-tongued as I felt my way toward an unwelcome growing comprehension.

“Not to speak ill of the dead, but she almost never picked up the check if she could help it. She wouldn’t treat herself to shopping trips to New York unless one of us paid for the hotel, and even then, she would limit herself to one or two good pieces instead of buying something trendy just for the fun of it.”

Trying to be fair, Lou said, “I think she was worried about Cal’s future. She never talked about the terms of her trust fund, so we don’t know how it was set up and whether or not it could transfer to the next generation.”

She saw my blank look. “I don’t mean to throw off on Dwight—and you were right: he still is one fine-looking man!—but she didn’t think he’d be able to give Cal all the advantages she could. I mean, his people are just farmers, aren’t they?”

That did it. It was crystal clear that they were unaware that Jonna had no huge funds at her disposal, that she treated her job at the Morrow House like a real job because it was a real job. I didn’t like Jonna Shay Bryant 238

WINTER’S CHILD

very much at that point. Ashamed of her sister, ashamed to tell her oldest friends that she was living on the very edge of her finances? To let them think that Pam was an alcoholic and that she herself was a penny-pinching tightwad rather than tell the truth? Afraid she’d lose face if—

Wait a damn second here. Lose face?

“In her papers,” I said. “There was something about a class gift?”

They both nodded and explained that it had all been Jonna’s idea. Even though the old high school had closed eighteen years ago and was now apartments for the elderly, it still held their memories and their history and it was part of Shaysville’s History on the Square. Jonna had proposed that their class rebuild the old clock tower that used to stand on the front left side of the building.

“Clock tower?”

“It was built from the same local stones, two stories high with four tall slender arches and a clock that faced the commons,” said Lou. “About a year or two after they built the new high school and closed ours, a drunk driver crashed a dump truck into it and knocked it flat. Smashed the clock beyond repair and left the whole front looking unbalanced.”

“So when Jonna suggested that our whole class chip in to replace it,” said Jill, taking up the story, “we got estimates and it was a lot higher than we hoped even though we could get the stones at cost from another old SHS

alumnus. I mean, some of our classmates still work in the furniture factory and Jonna was afraid it would be too much of a hardship.”

“But then Jill and I suggested that the three of us chip 23 in five thousand each for the clock and that would make the tower itself more affordable.”

“Plus,” Jill said candidly, “we’d get to put our names on the brass plaque for donating the clock separately.”

“Jonna was afraid the others might think we were being too pushy, but the rest of the committee said that nobody would object to memorializing the Three Musketeers that way. We put it to a class vote, and they were right.”

“I could have told Jonna that,” said Jill, her huge emerald flashing as she straightened her collar. “If we gave the clock, it would mean fifteen thousand less that they’d have to contribute, so of course they agreed to it.”

C H A P T E R

25

How like a winter hath my absence been.

—Shakespeare

“Jonna wasn’t worried that someone would smash her face,” I told Dwight and the two agents when I caught up with them at the Morrow House. “She cried because she was going to lose face if she didn’t come up with the money. Cal really did misunderstand.”

I repeated what Jonna’s friends had told me about their ambitious plan for a class gift and how it had mush-roomed out of her control.

“All these years and she never let them know that she didn’t have any money of her own.” That was the part that was hardest for me to understand. “When I put it to Mrs. Shay, she broke down and admitted it.”

“Did she cry?” Dwight asked cynically.

“Buckets. She’s on a complete guilt trip right now, wondering if Jonna would still be alive if she had agreed to advance her the money.” I looked up at the three men.

“Would she?”

The other two shrugged and Dwight said, “Be a pretty 24 big coincidence if the money’s not connected somehow or other, but coincidences do happen. That’s why they’re called coincidences.”

“She tried to rationalize it by pleading poverty herself—that the house eats up so much of her income, she had to keep up her own appearances, and of course, all the doctor visits and the different medications they prescribe.

She’s so torn up over it, though, that she’s going to donate the money in Jonna’s name. And speaking of medicines,” I said to Lewes and Clark, “did Jonna’s doctor have a suggestion as to what Pam took from her medicine cabinet?”

Clark started to put me off, but Lewes answered candidly. “Her doctor didn’t, but the boy’s doctor prescribed some codeine-laced cough syrup a couple of weeks ago and that bottle doesn’t seem to be in the house.”

“Jonna probably threw it out,” said Dwight. “Mrs.

Shay said it made Cal so groggy that Jonna quit giving it to him.”

While we stood there talking in the doorway of the office Jonna and Frederick Mayhew had shared, five or six people arrived at the front entrance. I glanced at my watch. One o’clock. Opening time for the house, but these people, mostly women, seemed more like friends than casual tourists. Belatedly, I remembered that Mayhew had said that today was the monthly meeting of the Shaysville Historical and Genealogical Society at four o’clock, with a reception at three. The women headed through to the kitchen with boxes of canapés and the makings of punch.

Frederick Mayhew was everywhere, urging people to sign the register, suggesting that some of the men might begin setting up folding chairs in the double parlors, and giving us anxious looks every time he passed as if fearful we might rain on his parade before he could find the umbrellas.

“Any luck here in the house?”

“Nada,” said Dwight, “and we were from the attic to the basement. Looked under all the furniture, all the closets, in every storage chest. Not that there’s much of that upstairs. Like you thought, it’s just those two bedrooms that are furnished, Peter Morrow’s room on the second floor and Elizabeth’s on the third.”

“Smell any gardenias?”

“Actually, we did, so we turned that room inside out, but there’s no sign of Pam or Cal anywhere.”

“What’s next?” I asked.

“Radcliff’s got his people canvassing the area around the junkyard, but so far, ain’t nobody seen nothing,” said Agent Clark.

“We’re going to drive up into the hills and interview the cousins that the sister stayed with earlier this week,”

said Lewes.

“I guess I’ll stay here and keep going through Jonna’s records, see if I can spot anything out of the ordinary,”

Dwight said.

I saw the strain in his face, heard the frustration in his voice.

“I’m starved,” I said, trying to sound plaintive. “Could we go get something to eat first?”

He wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about finding a restaurant, so once I’d freshened up and we were in the truck, I suggested that we swing by a grocery store, grab some deli stuff, and take it back to the house.

That sounded better to him. “We probably ought to let Bandit out, too.”

Twenty minutes later, as we waited in the checkout lane at the local supermarket with sliced turkey, lettuce, sandwich rolls, and broccoli salad, Dwight reached for his wallet and a slip of paper fell out of his pocket. It was the little map Eleanor Prentice had drawn for him just before I showed them the parka I’d found.

“Damn!” said Dwight. “Dix Lunsford. I forgot all about him.”

“Who’s he?”

“Cleaning man for the Morrow House. He and his wife used to be the live-in help when the Shays had that bigger house before Jonna’s father killed himself. I think he still does some yard work for her once in a while, and his wife comes in once a week. According to Mayhew and Mrs. Shay both, they’re devoted to the family.”

Yeah, right. White employers always want to think that their black employees are devoted.

As soon as Dwight had paid for our food, he hurried me out to the truck. “If he’s known Jonna since she was a baby, then he knows Pam, too. Maybe he can tell us where she’d go to earth.”

Because Eleanor had combined the drawn map with oral instructions, I drove while he navigated.

Every little town in the South has its black section on the so-called wrong side of the railroad tracks or main highway, and Shaysville was no exception. A block of trashy unpainted shacks will butt up against blocks of modest but well-maintained bungalows. Most middle-class, white-collar blacks live in integrated neighborhoods these days, but the poor and working class still cling to the old familiar haunts.

“Take the next right,” Dwight said as I drove slowly down a street wreathed in the quiet of a cold Sunday afternoon. “It’ll be the third house on the right, brick house with green shutters. There it is. Pull in here.”

I waited in the warmth of the truck while he went up to the door and knocked. Then knocked again.

My disappointment almost matched his after it became clear that no one was home.

“Maybe they’re just having Sunday dinner with someone,” I said when he came back to the truck.

“Yeah, and maybe they’ve gone to Florida for the winter,” he said gloomily. “I’ll see if any of the neighbors know.”

I watched him trudge up the walk next door and ring the bell. An older man came to the door, they spoke briefly, then Dwight returned with a happier look on his face.

“They’ve gone to visit one of her sisters and should be back before dark,” he reported.

Back at the house, Dwight let Bandit out and went over to talk to Mr. Carlton while I put together a couple of sandwiches. He returned the little dog to its crate so that we could eat in peace. Although Bandit was too well trained to actually beg, he would sit on his haunches to watch with hope-filled eyes and would instantly pounce on any stray crumb that fell to the floor.

Dwight was still on edge, but there had been a slight easing of tension. We were both frantic to find Cal, but 24 knowing that it was Jonna’s sister who had taken him and not some faceless child molester helped a little.

As we ate, Dwight glanced at his watch, then did a double take. “Today’s the twenty-third,” he said, as if both surprised and chagrined.

I looked at him inquiringly, my mind a blank.

“As of yesterday, we’ve been married a whole month.”

“Awww, and I didn’t get you a present.”

“Yes, you did.” He reached for my hand. “You came.”

The instant our hands touched, it was as if every hormone that had been quiescent those last three days flared into action.

As of one mind, we left our half-eaten sandwiches on our plates and pushed back from the table. When we kissed, it took all the willpower we could muster not to start undressing each other then and there. Somehow we made it from the kitchen to the couch, but just barely. He unzipped my sweater while I struggled with his belt buckle. It seemed to take forever. We were like two lost and half-frozen hikers who suddenly stumble upon a steaming hot spring in the middle of an ice field. We dived in, sinking down, down, down into the liquid warmth, then coming up for air just long enough to take a breath before the waters closed over us again.

Afterwards, we lay entwined and the most relaxed since Cal disappeared. Dwight pulled the blanket up over my bare shoulder and murmured, “Happy anniversary.”

I yawned and snuggled closer. “Wake me in an hour, okay?”

“Ummm,” he said with a yawn of his own.

It was closer to two hours before we awoke, and the sun was heading for the horizon in a blaze of red and gold against the western sky.

We took a quick shower and decided to split up for a while. Dwight would check in with Mayleen Richards or Bo Poole, see what was happening back home, then go question the Lunsfords. I would drive my car back to the Morrow House and try to catch Betty Ramos before the end of the HSGS’s monthly meeting. If she was helping with the inventory, maybe Jonna had let something slip.

As I headed out, Dwight took pity on Bandit. “Poor little guy’s not getting the attention he’s used to. I think I’ll let him ride along with me this evening.”

He snagged Bandit’s retractable leash from a nearby hook and the terrier ricocheted off the sides of his wire crate in excited anticipation.

“You’re a kind man, Dwight Bryant,” I told him. “Y’all have fun. I’ve got my phone turned on, so call me if you hear anything.”

C H A P T E R

26

The lion on your old stone gatesIs not more cold to you than I.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sunday afternoon, 23 January

Down in Colleton County, Detectives Jack Jami-

son and Raeford McLamb once again found themselves going door-to-door. Television might sensationalize police standoffs and car chases, but a lawman’s day-to-day routine was much less exciting, and that was perfectly fine with McLamb. After yesterday, he was more than happy to be back in the mundane world of knocking on doors, ringing doorbells, and questioning residents in the Rideout Road area as to whether they had noticed Sergeant Overholt or his black Subaru sedan around sunset on Thursday. As far as he was concerned, the less sensational the better. Getting shot at was for TV

actors and nothing he wanted to make a habit of.

The two deputies began their inquiries at the Diaz y Garcia compound, where they pulled out pictures they had taken from the Overholt trailer. “When y’all were working in that new development that backs up against Rideout Road, anybody see this man?”

The two brothers-in-law recognized Overholt’s pictures from last night’s newscasts; and the name of the dead woman, Darla Overholt, had not gone unnoticed by J. D. Rouse’s wife. Nita Rouse was now blaming herself for her husband’s death. No, she had not told Overholt about the affair. Not really. But she had friends, friends who were hotly indignant on her behalf. Maybe one of them? No, she could not, would not, name names. Naming names had left three people dead.

“On the news, they say someone else was shot,” said Miguel Diaz. “The woman who came with you before—

Mrs. Richards?”

“Detective Richards,” said McLamb. “She’s not married.”

“Is she hurt bad?”

“Bad enough,” Jamison said with a stern look toward the weeping Nita Rouse.

“It was only a flesh wound,” McLamb told him, touching his side to indicate the place where the bullet had grazed Richards.

“She is in the hospital?”

“No, she’s able to come in to work as long as she takes it easy. Now, about Overholt. Did y’all see him hanging around the Orchard Range area Thursday? Maybe he parked his Subaru back there?”

Diaz translated for his brother-in-law, who shook his head.

“But I will ask our men,” said Diaz, “and I will tell you if they saw him.”

From the Diaz y Garcia compound, they looked in on Mrs. Harper and her dog, Dixie, in the Holly Ridge development off Rideout Road. She, too, shook her head when shown Overholt’s picture.

“Like I told you and Detective Richards yesterday, I don’t remember any cars other than that pickup truck.

And now she gets shot? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the news last night. Here she was sitting in my living room one minute and the next minute she’s down there in Makely getting shot at. That man was a disgrace to his uniform. Good riddance to bad cess!”

She saw the deputies exchange glances and gave a sheepish smile. “The Colonel used to say that my temper rides my tongue. All the same, I’m really sorry to hear she got shot. Please give her my best.”

There were fifteen houses in the Holly Ridge development, which was not on a ridge nor possessed of any holly trees. On this cool Sunday afternoon, most people seemed to be home. All had heard about the shooting even though none of them admitted to knowing Rouse.

They were familiar with Mrs. Harper’s dedication to keeping the road free of litter; and at one house, two pre-teen black sisters said they occasionally went along to help. “Dixie’s cute and Mrs. Harper always gives us hot chocolate with marshmallows afterwards.”

To their extreme disappointment, they had not been outside on Thursday afternoon when the shooting actually occurred. They had heard about it almost immedi- ately afterwards and, although forbidden to leave their street, they were watching at the intersection when Mrs.

Harper came back.

“She was so shook, that we pulled the wagon the rest of the way for her,” one girl said virtuously, “even though she didn’t want to let us do it.”

“I didn’t know white folks could turn that green,” said her sister.

Near the end of Rideout Road itself, they came across a homeowner who had known Rouse casually for years.

“His mama might’ve loved him and maybe his little girls, but he’s not much loss to the rest of the world.”

“Why, Thomas Conners!” his scandalized wife scolded.

“What a thing to say. And on the Lord’s day, too.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” he retorted. “Besides, if you can’t tell the truth on Sunday, when can you?

He never cared for anything or anybody ’cepting hisself, far as I ever saw. Too bad that poor woman had to be the one to see it happen.”

“You know her?” his wife asked. “You never told me you knew her.”

“Not to say know,” her husband protested. “But you see somebody enough, you get to thinking you do, you hear what I’m saying? She’s out at least once a week when I’m coming home.”

But when Conners walked out to the drive with the deputies, he grinned and described how Mrs. Harper had read him the riot act once.

“See, the wife, she’s real religious. Doesn’t hold with alcohol of any kind. Me, I like a beer once in a while. Espe-25 cially in the summer, you hear what I’m saying? I’ll stop off after work once in a while, get me a cold one and nurse it all the way home. Sometimes, I’d be almost home, so I’d stop along Rideout Road, finish it off and toss the can, then use a mouth spray so the wife wouldn’t know. Well!

I hadn’t paid much mind to her before then. I mean, yeah, I knew she was out picking up stuff, but it didn’t really sink in what a slob I was being till she came up outta that ditch and lit into me. I thought for a minute there she was going to sic her little dog on me! Well, I apologized for my beer can and she cooled off, but you better believe I’ve never so much as tossed a peanut shell since. In fact, it makes me right mad myself now when I see somebody dumping their ashtrays or cleaning out their cars by trashing up our roads, you hear what I’m saying?”

Detective Mayleen Richards was not a happy camper.

Part of it was coming down off of yesterday’s adrenaline high, part of it was the painful throb in her side whenever she forgot and lifted her arm too quickly, but mostly it was having to sit here and cool her heels while waiting for a lab report on the guns they had taken from Sergeant Michael Overholt’s shattered trailer.

She had given Special Agent Terry Wilson all her contact numbers and he had promised to pass them on to the lab techs. He had also promised to move this matter to the front of the line back at SBI headquarters so that Major Bryant could stay focused on events in Virginia.

Sheriff Bo Poole had told her to take the day off, give her gunshot wound time to start healing, but she knew she would only be calling in every five minutes to ask the guys if they had heard anything. Better to be here catching up on paperwork than to stay home pacing the floor like an anxious teenager waiting for some boy to call and ask her for a date.

Of the two handguns in Overholt’s trailer, one was a

.45, so how long could it take to match the slug from Rouse’s head? Unless they were also waiting till they could tell her whether the soldier had killed himself or been taken out by his neighbor across the street?

Richards sighed and entered another report in her computer.

There were footsteps in the hall and she looked up through the glass wall to see a uniformed officer followed by what seemed like a large hanging basket covered in pink flowers.

“Someone to see you, Detective,” said the officer. He stepped aside and the plant entered the squad room.

The man carrying it set it on the floor and there was a faint jingle as he stood up. It was Miguel Diaz.

“Okay?” asked the officer.

“Fine,” she said faintly, and he returned to the front desk.

“Señorita Richards,” said Diaz. “They said you were hurt.

The man that shot my cuñado’s cuñado shot you, too.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you are here, not at home?”

“Yes.” She gave herself a mental shake. Who was the interrogator here anyhow? “Why are you here, Mr. Diaz?”

“Your friends came to ask if we had seen the soldier who shot you and J.D. I said I would speak to my men, and I did. Now I am here to say that none of them saw him.”

She looked at the plant, an extremely exuberant pink geranium. “And that?”

“When people are hurt or sick, it’s the custom to bring flowers, sí?”

His tone was innocent, but there was mischief in his dark eyes.

“That’s very kind of you,” she said formally. “But I cannot accept it.”

“It’s only a flower.” Diaz pulled a decorative hook and chain from his pocket. “Where should I hang it?”

“Don’t be silly. You can’t hang it here.”

He glanced around the room. “You’re right. No window. No sunlight.”

“I appreciate the thought, but I’m afraid you’ll have to take it back with you.”

“No problem. It’ll be better at your house anyhow, sí?

What time do you get off work?”

“Mr. Diaz—”

“Miguel. Or Mike, if you prefer. And you are Mayleen.”

“No!” she said firmly. “I mean, I’m Detective Richards.”

“Why so formal? Unless . . . perhaps there is already someone special for you, Detective Richards?”

“This is crazy. Are you propositioning me? I’m a law officer.”

“Is it against the law to give you flowers?”

“Look, you’re part of a murder investigation. I can’t take your flowers.”

“But your killer is dead. The investigation’s over.”

“Not until we get the ballistics report.”

He shrugged. “A formality, surely?”

“All the same.”

Diaz picked up the plant by its hanger and swung it onto a bare spot on her desk so that she had to look over the huge pink blossoms. “I was right,” he said, looking from the geraniums to her face. “With your beautiful hair, you should always wear pink.”

Pink? She felt herself going brick red.

She stood abruptly, but before she could order him to leave, her phone rang and she grabbed it up eagerly.

“Richards here.”

It was Terry Wilson and he delivered the bad news quickly, like ripping a piece of adhesive tape from a tender wound. “The bullets that killed Overholt and his wife came from his rifle, but the forty-five isn’t the same forty-five that killed Rouse. Sorry, Richards. We searched that trailer pretty thoroughly.”

“Maybe he ditched it. Or what about a locker at the base?”

“We’ll check, but it’s not likely he’d have two forty-fives, is it?”

“Guys like Overholt, the bigger the better.”

Wilson gave a sour laugh. “You got a point there.”

“This Overholt. He didn’t shoot J.D.?” asked Diaz as Richards closed her phone.

She glared at him. “Would you please take those stupid flowers and get the hell out?”

He looked at her a long moment. Then, with a half-smile at whatever he saw in her face, he picked up the plant and left.

Flustered and angry, she called Jamison and McLamb and gave them the bad news.

Pink geraniums indeed!

C H A P T E R

27

When the winds change, the clouds also change and take acontrary direction.

—Theophrastus

I was almost too late getting to the Morrow House. The only ones left were Frederick Mayhew and three of the trustees: Nathan Benton, Betty Coates Ramos, and Suzanne D. Angelo.

Mrs. Ramos I had met earlier that day when we both wound up in the restroom together before Dwight and I left for lunch. She was late fifties, early sixties, with short curly blond hair and wore a bright red wool suit that lit up the late afternoon.

Suzanne D. Angelo looked to be my age, dark-haired and vivacious in a white tweed pantsuit and heavy gold jewelry. When we were introduced, I nodded and said,

“Mrs. D’Angelo,” and she corrected me with a smile.

“I’m afraid it’s D. for Dupree. No, don’t apologize.

Everyone makes that mistake. I married a Yankee and brought him home with me.”

“And we’re so lucky she came back.” Mayhew stopped just short of abject fawning. “The Duprees are one of our oldest families and Mrs. Angelo has given us some wonderful family treasures.”

Dwight had described Nathan Benton in such detail that it kept me from blurting out, “You look so familiar.

Have we met before?” because he really did look like a British commander in some old World War Two movie, right down to his neat little mustache. He even wore an old battered tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbow and a striped regimental tie.

“We’re all so sorry about Jonna’s son,” he said.

“Jonna, too, of course. Bad show.”

The others murmured in agreement and I thanked them for their concern, but couldn’t resist asking Mr.

Benton, “Are you English?”

He beamed. “My mother. My roots are here in Shaysville, but she was a war bride and I’m afraid she infected the whole family with her accent. I keep thinking I’ve lost every trace and then someone like you will come along and remind me that I haven’t.”

Behind his back, I saw Mrs. Angelo roll her eyes at Mrs. Ramos and knew that Mr. Benton probably cultivated that accent.

The four of them were sitting around a tea table in the front parlor when I arrived, and Mayhew immediately pulled up another chair in his most courtly manner while Mrs. Angelo brought me a cup of punch and gestured to the plate of canapés on the tea table. Evidently they were enjoying that pleasant afterglow when something tricky has gone off well.

“You were right about Erdman,” Benton told Mrs.

Ramos. “He seems quite sound on small arms and I rather regret that he didn’t get to see the derringer.”

Mayhew sniffed. “He may know guns but he was off by eighty years on my cut-glass syrup pitcher. Pressed glass, indeed!”

Now it was Benton and Ramos who exchanged amused glances.

“I take it your meeting was a success?” I asked.

“Almost sixty people came!” Mayhew exulted, pushing his rimless glasses up on his nose. “We enrolled four new members for the Historical and Genealogical Society.”

“And one new Friend of the Morrow House,” Betty Ramos added complacently.

“Are you the new president now?”

She shook her head and Suzanne Angelo said with a sigh, “No, that would be me. I was elected first vice president last month and thought I’ve have a year to learn the job. Poor Jonna.”

“Rest assured, we’ll do everything to help you,”

Nathan Benton promised.

With a few casual questions, I soon learned that while Mayhew, Suzanne Angelo, and Betty Ramos were born and bred in Shaysville, Nathan Benton had been here less than four years. He had taken early retirement from a successful business in Norfolk in order to return to the town his ancestors had helped found nearly two hundred years earlier. A Benton Street just off the square and Benton Baptist Church at the edge of town were both named for his people, Mayhew told me.

Benton and Ramos were Civil War buffs, while Angelo, as befitted someone whose husband was the current CEO of Shay Furniture, was more interested in the historical changes wrought by industrialization in the years following Reconstruction. She was lobbying to return the bathrooms that had last been updated in the 1940s to something more appropriate for 1900.

Benton, on the other hand, cared little about architec-ture. His goal was to successfully outfit the mannequin that stood on the upper landing in the clothes that Peter Morrow’s son George would have worn as a first lieu-tenant in a company drawn from this part of western Virginia. Not replicas, I was given to understand, but the actual period pieces. He had already given a sword and the outer uniform, but had not yet located a proper pair of boots. “Most of the things are out there in antiques stores for a price,” he said, “but for me, it’s the thrill of the hunt. Can you guess what’s the hardest to locate?”

“A Virginia canteen?” I had seen the rarity of such an object discussed on Antiques Roadshow, one of my favorite programs even though I’m no collector of antiques.

“Very good,” he said. “But I meant in the line of clothing.”

I shook my head.

“Period underpants. I fear young George’s nether regions are presently covered only by his breeches.”

Betty Ramos had begun to transcribe the extensive collection of letters archived here, a task made more difficult by Peter Morrow’s almost unreadable handwriting and by the way letters had to be written to conserve both paper and ink when both were difficult to come by near the war’s end. She pulled from her capacious purse a pho-tocopy of the letter she was currently trying to decipher.

Even enlarged I could barely follow it. First it was written in the usual manner. Then the paper had been given a half-turn so that the original lines were now vertical and new horizontal lines crossed them. Finally, a third set of 25 lines ran diagonally across the page. Despite the fine nib of the pen, when newly dipped it had often formed fatter letters that obscured the letters beneath.

“And I thought briefs were hard to read,” I said as I handed the copy back to her.

Amusingly, although Mayhew and Benton were both keenly interested in reading the letters as she transcribed them, both disapproved of her reasons for doing it, because she was hoping to prove that Peter Morrow had been a secret Union sympathizer.

“A traitor,” said Mayhew.

“A turncoat,” said Benton.

“A pragmatist,” Ramos said cheerfully. “Anyone with half a brain could see that the South was bound to lose in the end. You said yourself, Frederick, that he never burned his bridges to the North.”

“ ‘Pragmatist,’ I’ll give you,” Mayhew conceded, “but I prefer ‘politician.’ ”

“Too bad the North’s ‘copperhead’ doesn’t have a Southern equivalent,” said Ramos.

Evidently this was an old jibe, because he merely frowned at her over the top of his rimless glasses, but Benton took her words literally and said, “That’s because there were too few here as to need such an equivalent.”

“We’ll see,” Ramos said with a serene smile as she tugged at the hem of her red skirt that tried to ride up over her knees.

“What did Jonna think?” I asked.

“I’m afraid Jonna wasn’t a scholar,” said Mayhew.

“No, but he was her ancestor. Surely family stories must have come down?”

Betty Ramos tilted her blond head toward me. “Inter- esting that you should say that. She said she thought I might find something in the letters that would prove my point, and that if I did, she would show me something that might substantiate it.”