Maggie sat down cross-legged now. “Is that so? I didn’t know he was a little Mozart.”
Holly paused for a moment in consideration, then started to sing. “When you’re sliding into first, and your pants begin to burst—”
Sarah cut her off. “Holly! That’s not appropriate.”
Holly’s eyes went wide in defiance. “Well, I didn’t make it up.”
Maggie couldn’t help but chuckle. “Oh, gosh, Holly. That sounds like my Andy.” She turned to Sarah and smiled. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Garmin,” she said. “I’ll have to have a talk with Andy.” Then, Maggie leaned in closer toward Holly and spoke in the quiet tones of a confidante. “Holly, I’m sure you didn’t make that one up. Neither did Andy, sweetheart. I’m pretty sure he learned that one from his Uncle Pete this summer.”
Holly seemed to ponder the whole thing momentarily, then she nodded sagely. “Boys can be kind of gross.”
“Yeah. They usually get that from their uncles.” Maggie leaned back on her hands, trying to look relaxed. She wanted to put Holly at ease, so she did her best impression of Andy’s mom, hoping to play down the fact that she was a police officer questioning a little girl in her bedroom. “So, Holly,” Maggie began, “your mom called because she says you saw somebody kind of scary down at the playground last night.”
The little girl nodded. “Real scary,” she concurred, then pursed her mouth tight again.
“Well, I’m really glad you told your parents, sweetheart, so they could tell me. Now, your mom explained what you saw, and if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay, but it would really help me if you could tell me in your own words. The more we know, the more we can help… well, you, sweetheart. And maybe other people.”
For a long moment, Holly stayed quiet, her mouth pinched into a dramatic frown, and Maggie had a feeling the girl had frozen up. But finally, Holly opened her mouth to speak. “Like the lady?” she asked.
Maggie nodded. “Maybe, honey. So, was it a lady you saw?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell me more?”
Holly frowned pensively. “Well, I was playing at Anna Hodgson’s house last night. Mama called and told me to come home for dinner.”
“There are streetlights,” Sarah added defensively. “It was just past sundown.”
Maggie nodded just enough to appease Sarah. “Okay, Holly, so you came back through the playground, right?” The little girl nodded timidly. “Then what happened?
“I was heading to the gate,” she said.
“The gate on the corner of Oak and Main,” Sarah added. Again, Maggie just nodded, waiting for Holly.
“When I got to the trees there, I started to hear someone. Someone crying.”
“Crying?” Maggie asked. “Who was it, Holly? Could you see someone?”
Holly stared hard at the floor, deep in thought. “Not at first. I could tell it was a lady crying. She sounded far off. Like out in the woods. Real far. But when I got to the gate, she was… she was right there.”
”The lady?”
Holly nodded.
“And this lady, Holly, did you recognize her? Was it a lady you knew?”
“No.”
“Can you describe her? Was she an older lady? Was she a white lady, or—”
“Gray,” Holly said without a beat. She didn’t even have to think about it. “She was gray.”
“Gray, huh?” Maggie paused for a moment. She didn’t want to put words in the girl’s mouth, but she needed more detail. “So, was she gray like an old lady has gray hair, or—”
“No,” Holly said. Frustration rose in her voice. “She wasn’t white or black. She was gray. Her hair was gray, like an old lady’s hair, but she wasn’t an old lady.” There was a sound of disbelief in Holly’s voice, as though she could barely believe what she herself was saying. But once the details started, they came in a rush. “She was a grown-up, but she was young, like you. Like Mommy. I think she was a white lady, but she looked all gray, like… like in an old-time movie. Her clothes were gray. Her face was gray. And she saw me. She was looking down at first. She was too sad to look up, and she was crying, but when I came through the gate, she saw me. She looked right at me and her eyes—”
Here, the young girl’s voice hitched. Maggie wasn’t sure she could continue.
Finally, Holly spoke. “Her eyes weren’t there.”
At this, Sarah gave a loud, dramatic sigh. “Honey, I told you, that couldn’t be.”
Holly’s brow furrowed in exasperation, and for a moment, Maggie felt almost like she was looking into the future. Though this was a seven-year-old child sitting before her, the frustration on Holly’s face read as that of an adult. This was not a human being who was unclear about the details she was relating. Holly didn’t speak. Her lip quivered slightly. Maggie didn’t want to lose her to tears now. “You know what, Holly,” Maggie said matter-of-factly, “I’ve seen a lot of black-and-white movies, too. I think I know what you mean. You go ahead and tell me the way you saw it. In your words.”
Her lip still quivering, Holly nodded. “She looked at me,” Holly repeated. “I know she saw me. She started coming at me. Slow.” Holly winced at the memory. “Real slow, Mrs. Dell. Like… her feet weren’t even moving. She was just coming. Then… then she started talking.”
“What did she say, honey?” Maggie asked. She didn’t need to. The gray woman had been described to Maggie twice already by other children. She always said the same thing.
Again, Maggie saw the glimpse of something older than a seven-year-old in Holly’s face. “My baby,” Holly said flatly. “She said it over and over. My baby.”
Sarah spoke up, “Deputy, I already told you all this.”
“I know, Mrs. Garmin,” Maggie replied firmly, “but it helps to hear it from Holly.” She turned her attention back to the girl. “So, Holly, that’s all she said?” Holly nodded. “What then, honey?”
“I ran away.” Holly held up a finger, pointed it at the window. “Back to Anna’s house.”
“That’s a good girl,” Maggie said. “You know to stay away from strangers.” Holly nodded dully at the affirmation, but Maggie was fairly certain the young girl wasn’t hearing her. Holly’s attention had followed her gaze out the window, and though there was nothing to be seen but the edges of some overgrown shrubbery and her empty front yard, Maggie had the impression that she was staring into her memory. This was not a child who had any doubts about what she had seen. She could see it still: a weeping woman with no eyes coming at her. Maggie reached out, took Holly’s hand softly. “Was there anything else?”
Holly just shook her head, keeping her gaze locked on the window.
Sarah spoke up. “Everything after that is just like we told you, Deputy. Abbie Hodgson called me up, told me what happened. I went by and picked her up, brought her home.” Sarah shrugged. “Frank worked late last night, so he wasn’t home until past nine, but when he got back, he told me how Jack Dunnie’s boy saw the same woman. Frank was all het up. I had to stop him from stomping over to the playground with a baseball bat looking for her.”
“Oh, I think you had the right idea, Sarah,” Maggie replied evenly. “We’d rather you all give us a call than do anything, you know, rash.”
“I know,” Sarah said with a sigh. “Rash comes natural to Frank sometimes.”
“Well, boys, right?” Maggie said. She squeezed Holly’s hand lightly, drew her gaze back from the window. “You never know what kind of song and dance those boys are going to cook up, do you?” Holly cracked a tiny, grateful smile. “So, after Mommy brought you home, was there anything else, sweetheart?”
“No,” Holly replied. “I saw the gray lady in the playground. That was all.”
Maggie nodded thoughtfully. “You guys had dinner.” Holly nodded. “Your mom says you had a hard time eating, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Nervous stomach. I get those, too. Know what helps me sometimes?”
“What?”
“Double dessert,” Maggie said with a smile. “I don’t know how you guys do it around here, but it sounds to me like you earned it tonight.”
A bright smile broke across the little girl’s face. “Yeah!”
Sarah laughed. “Oh, boy, Deputy Dell,” she said. “Aren’t you just full of good ideas today?”
Maggie gave Holly’s hand another squeeze, then let it go. “You did a really good job, honey, and you were very brave to tell me all that. Is there anything else on your mind?” Holly shook her head. “Okay, then,” Maggie said. She pushed herself up from the ground. “Thank you for talking with me, Holly. I’m going to go now, but I’ll see you when school gets back in… oh! But that’s not before you-know-who comes by, is it?”
“Who?” Holly asked, a puzzled look on her face. If she had even a thought of her encounter from the night before left in her head, she wasn’t showing it. Man, Maggie thought, to shake fear off like a kid again.
“Oh,” Maggie said, “I think you know.” She pointed to the ceiling.
Holly’s face brightened entirely. “Santa!”
“You ready for him?”
“Yeah!”
Maggie tousled Holly’s hair. “Three more days, right?” She tapped the radio on her belt. “The sheriff has us on reindeer patrol starting tonight. If you have any sightings to report, have your momma contact me, okay?”
With that, Maggie started to the door, Sarah following behind her. As she was about to step into the hall, Holly spoke up again. “Mrs. Dell?”
Maggie stopped and turned. For an instant, the word rang in her ears. Missus. Even after seven years, it hit her in the gut. “Yes, Holly?” Maggie replied brightly.
Holly’s voice was slow and ponderous, as if she were measuring every word. “The lady,” Holly said slowly, “is she going to be okay?”
For too long a moment, Maggie didn’t have a reply. “Well,” she said finally, “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure of it, honey, that’s for sure.”
Holly thought that over. “Mrs. Dell, if you can, you should help her find her baby.”
Maggie opened her mouth, but no reasonable reply presented itself. As she looked at Holly, Maggie again had the strange sensation of seeing through time to some adult version of her. When Maggie finally spoke, she found herself speaking not to a child, but to that adult. “I sure am going to try, honey.”
After the Garmin call, Maggie headed to Sally’s Pancakes for a meeting with Neal Graham. Sally’s was a battered old diner off Route 16. The place had been opened after WWII by Sally Allman and her husband, Leroy, an ex-Navy man. For a decade or so, Sally’s had been the premier breakfast joint in Burgettsville. The years had not been kind to the establishment, however, and though Sally’s daughter Estelle ran the place, it was a shadow of its former self, and business was always thin.
However, Sally’s still served a good cup of coffee, and there was precious little more important than that to Sheriff Neal Graham. When Maggie walked in, the only customers other than Neal were Ike Armstrong and Benji Jamison. The pair sat at the counter nursing cups of coffee and shouting back and forth at each other. A stranger would think they were arguing, but Maggie knew Ike and Benji had been best friends for fifty years, and that they were just too deaf to hear each other and too stubborn to get hearing aids. Estelle stood before the two old men, refreshing their cups of coffee and shouting along with them. The bell ringing over the door as Maggie entered drew Estelle’s attention. “Deputy,” she called out, her voice still pitched at a level for Ike and Benji to hear, “the sheriff’s waiting for you!” She gestured to the only other occupied seat—a booth in the far corner of the room from which Neal could keep an eye on things. Maggie nodded, gave Estelle a silent thumbs-up. The gesture made its intended impression, because Estelle turned her voice down a few notches when she asked, “Need a menu?”
Maggie shook her head. “Just coffee.”
Estelle nodded, then went for a cup.
After taking the seat across from Neal and sharing a pleasantry or two as Estelle poured her coffee, Maggie sat in silence for a few moments while Neal finished his work. He was on one of the pages of a notebook that Maggie was certain would be almost completely filled on each page with his fastidious script. Neal was fifty-seven, and his script was a throwback to a generation drilled on penmanship. Neal always took abundant notes, even on cases he didn’t find that interesting.
Lucinda Kindler’s was no such case.
When he finished, he dropped his ballpoint and took a sip of coffee. “Maggie,” he said, nodding in greeting.
Maggie gestured at his notes. “So, what’s the word?”
Neal laughed as he fished around in his shirt pocket, plucked out a pack of cigarettes and a scuffed Zippo lighter with a Marine Corps logo. “Small talk be damned, eh?” he said with a grin. “Well,” Neal said, “Ronald, Henry and I went by Jake Harriman’s again this morning. They did another search of the surrounding area while I interviewed Jake to see if he might have anything else for us to go on.”
“How’s Jake holding up?”
Neal shook his head. “By the skin of his teeth. Hell, Maggie, I’ve been knowing Jake a long time now. He grew up down the block from me. You know, I was twelve when he and the other young guys came back from the war. Some of those guys up and married pretty soon, started families, but that first summer after they got back, there was a bunch of young vets who hung out at this place called City Billiards that used to be on First, just down the block from First Street Baptist. They’d sit out in the parking lot drinking beers and bullshitting until all hours.” Neal laughed quietly. “Bunch of eighteen, nineteen-year-olds tried that these days, we’d have the whole town calling us to roust them in a heartbeat, but those guys—nobody said boo about those guys.”
Maggie smiled. “Well, you smash fascism, you get a beer, that’s what I always say.”
Neal chuckled. “My buddies and I would ride our bikes around downtown, just circling in the church parking lot, popping wheelies up and down the block and wishing we could get close enough to Jake and his boys to get a little of their shine on us. Those days, kids weren’t talking about things being ‘cool’ yet, but Jake Harriman and the other pool hall boys? They had cool to spare.”
Neal took a drag on his cigarette, sighed contemplatively. “Jake stayed single into his twenties. Long time back in those days. It wasn’t until he was 25 or 26 that he and Christine Barker paired off. They were already behind the pack as far as having kids go, and from what I heard, they had a hell of a time. Don’t know the details—hell, ain’t no business of mine. All I know is that Lucinda was a surprise baby. Came along when they were thirty-five, thirty-six, something like that, and had all but given up hope of a family.” Neal paused in thought. “Jake, he was so damned proud of his baby girl. By the time she was in school, Jake was in his forties. He’d been bald for a decade, and by then, whatever was left had gone gray. Hell, strangers all assumed it was Lucy’s grandfather coming in for her parent-teacher conferences. If I recall, Lucy’s high school boyfriend was the grandson of Pat Dorsett, who had fought his way through Anzio right along with Jake.”
Neal took a sip of coffee. “Maggie, all those years, Jake was the old guy among all the young dads, but he never looked like an old man to me, not even when the cancer took Christine ten years back, when her daughter wasn’t even out of high school. Jake just kept on, put everything he had into trying to keep Lucy on track.” Neal frowned darkly. “I still remember the first time she got picked up for a DUI. One of my deputies brought her in one Saturday night. She was just out of high school, and I knew she’d been running with some rough kids, but I wasn’t expecting that. I called Jake myself, waited to talk with him. Lord, Maggie, the embarrassment on his face. The disappointment! But even then, Maggie, I swear, I could still see the young guy he’d been out in front of City Billiards, the young soldier who had whooped the Axis, and when he told her it would be all right, even I b
elieved it. If anybody could make it right, it was Jake Harriman, right?”
Maggie sipped her coffee, let Neal sit in silence for a moment. Across the restaurant, Ike and Benji were still giving each other the business, and Estelle laughed along with them. Your average day at Sally’s. Meanwhile, Neal had drifted miles away and years into the past. “I’m sorry, Neal,” Maggie said. “Doesn’t change anything, but I’m sorry.”
Neal’s gaze came back from wherever it had been, and he nodded. “Yeah. It’s not my tragedy, Maggie. It’s Jake’s. I just… you know, I never liked that damn Shawn Kindler, Maggie. Can’t even really say why—just a gut thing, right from the get-go. I mean, he’s a nurse out at Coalton General, and everybody he works with has good enough things to say about him. But there’s something about him I didn’t trust. Didn’t trust him when they got married. Didn’t trust him when they had Allie. Didn’t trust him when Lucy put him out of the house, and I damn sure don’t trust him knowing what I know now.”
Maggie nodded, sipped her coffee and kept quiet. She didn’t know Shawn Kindler, but over the years, Maggie had learned to trust Neal’s gut instincts. If something smelled rotten to Neal, Maggie paid attention. “So, you’ve run it by Dr. Caldwell. What does she think?”
Briarwood County was lucky. Though Kentucky coroners weren’t required to have medical degrees, Briarwood County had Dr. Alice Caldwell, a retired surgeon with twenty-odd years of experience at one of the big hospitals in Louisville. She’d grown up in Burgettsville, and after putting in her time in the city, she decided to come back home to be closer to family. To your average sixty-something doctor, performing autopsies probably wouldn’t sound like a relaxing retirement job, but Alice Caldwell wasn’t your average doctor.
“Doc Caldwell’s stumped, Maggie. She performed the autopsy herself. Even pulled some strings with the State Police to get some egghead from Frankfort in to assist. They ran tox screens. Checked Lucy from head to toe. Nothing.” Neal shrugged. “Doc Caldwell is as confused as anybody else. Women Lucy’s age don’t just fold up and die.”
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