They didn’t stop until every woman found her people and her husband’s people and cleared graves well enough to identify who was buried there—most with no names left on the worn stones; some, maybe newer graves, with names clearly incised, and with a woman beaming and pointing to where Aunt Enya lay in peace, Uncle Eero next to her. Then she’d turn away to help someone else.
Finally, with Leena’s approval, Lisa and Janne stood with each woman, talking, asking questions, filming. Not to capture long stories, but to get what they’d come for—the strength of women self-exiled in an inhospitable land, and what they’d become, cut off from their own, creating their culture from trees and stones and lakes and rivers and the deep, deep snows of the long, hard winters.
For the last hour of filming, when her stomach was already groaning at her, Jenny went to sit on a fallen log, up a small rise, and watch. As she sat there, she wound her long black hair up into a pod on top of her head. She fixed it there with pins that were already in her hair and sat, chin resting on her knees, as she watched the constant movement of the women.
She was out of place, anchorless here in her sister’s life. How did Lisa do it? she asked herself. Live in a trailer, for craps sake. And only thinking of the next story she could tell. Nothing of her “self” at all. That’s what bothered Jenny most. A woman had to have a cause, a platform to stand on, in order to live.
Something to believe in.
That wasn’t her. There wasn’t anything specific she believed in. Her job. Maybe a different way of living. Not home with Dora. But what was there of a future? She didn’t know.
She’d lost her sense of what was ahead. Somehow, because her marriage had failed so miserably, she’d forgotten who was at fault; or she didn’t care or didn’t have the nerve to look at what part of all that might have been hers.
She squeezed her eyes shut. All this anger … it wasn’t about Mom; it wasn’t about Tony. It was about …
The sky clouded over. She was tired of rain. And mud. And gloom. She wanted to go home, back to Bear Falls. She was tired of having to think things she was supposed to think about—an order coming from somewhere outside her. She’d put Tony in a box and closed it. But Tony being Tony, he wouldn’t stay there. In his own way, he kept popping up, asking questions he had every right to ask. And soon she’d be standing someplace or other—it didn’t matter where—with her mouth hanging open, trying to tell him about her need to try a new life without him, try this new job at the law firm in Traverse City, this new freedom, and he’d get that look—as if what he was hearing was a gunshot to his chest.
“Wish I’d known that at the beginning …” he’d say, maybe.
And she’d answer.
What she was doing to him now felt like revenge, but on the wrong person. If he would listen, let her tell her truth.
Marya, with her baby looking around and smiling, came up the hill to settle beside her. She sat down heavily and pulled her baby, his mouth still dampened by milk on his lips, into her lap; and bounced him a few times until he burped.
“I never imagined what it was like to be a mother.” She looked at her child, dark hair standing up like a brown flower around his tiny head, blue-veined eyelids half-closed as he tried to go to sleep.
“I don’t have any children,” Jenny said.
She shrugged. “You’re not too old ta have some o’ yer own.”
Jenny smiled. “I don’t think I want—”
Marya almost moaned. “Don’t say dat. You have plenty o’ chance yet. I didn’t want babies. I never thought it would be this way. Really somethin’. I always saw women holdin’ their babies and thought, ‘Oh no. I don’t want some little thing suckin’ off my tit.’ But here I am, and I would die fer this child. My little man. I would kill fer ’im, without givin’ it a thought, ya know. If anybody tried to hurt him, I would kill and turn away and never think about it again.”
Her eyes sparkled. She pushed her chin out.
“I’d hate fer ya ta miss a thing like this, Jenny. I’d hate fer any woman ta miss it.”
They watched as the others worked, lifting and moving trees they shouldn’t be lifting and moving.
“You take those people who lost their girl. The one I was talking about before … Oh, maybe you don’t know ’em. Anyway, I’m telling you I’d do anything. Don’t you agree?”
Jenny said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean I’d lay down an’ die if somethin’ happened to Johnny here. I wouldn’t stop until I found the person.”
“Johnny!” Jenny couldn’t help herself. “Where’d that name come from? Why not an Elias or a … Hennik or …” She tried to think of other male Finnish names she’d heard.
Marya leaned back and laughed. “He’s an oddball but my husband, Aimo, wanted it like this. In case Johnny wants to go out into the world, away from here, Aimo doesn’t want him to be different.”
“And where is Aimo? I haven’t met him, have I?”
“No, ya haven’t. He’s down with his aunt in Grand Rapids. He should be home soon. You’ll meet ’im one day. Maybe.”
“What were you saying about somebody who lost their girl? How? You mean up here with all of you? Was she sick?”
Marya shook her head. “She didn’t live with us. Down to Houghton is where. She was gettin’ on in the world too. Goin’ ta college. Ann Arbor, if ya know where that is.”
“University of Michigan? Pretty good.”
“Pretty smart, our girl. Everybody chipped in to pay her tuition. We all wanted bragging rights, ya know. Ah, but den somethin’ happened to ’er. Disappeared. The police kept sayin’ you jist wait, she’ll be back—they all come back. But she didn’t. Hell on da mother and father, and on ’er friends and then all the relatives. We mourned. Den a hunter found ’er dead body in da deep woods, down below the bridge is where it was. I guess you could say nothin’ but bones. Murdered. Front of her throat broken. Then other things nobody wants to talk about. Poor mother and poor father. To this day, they suffer like no human beings should have to suffer. Joo!” She nodded to herself. “If I coulda done somethin’ … That’s how we all felt. If there was only somethin’ ta be done.”
“Did they ever find who killed her?”
Her face changed. Something in the eyes—hidden there—stared back at Jenny. Something cold.
Then a slow time for her to catch herself.
“Police figured the man moved away from dere.”
She watched Jenny with a different kind of look.
Jenny was thrown off by the challenge.
“Well named, dat girl. I loved her. I did. Like a sister. Strange, I think ta myself, fer her to be named in the way of the Lord. Fittin’, don’t ya think?”
“What do you mean?” Jenny felt a change in the space between them.
“Angela Lamb. The Lamb of the Good Lord, don’t ya see?”
Jenny stared at Marya’s stiff face. The prettiness was gone. Softness gone. Motherliness gone. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say. It was all so—planned.
“I get it, Marya.” She got up from the ground. “A drip of secret information only some of you seem to know. Is any of this really about Agatha Christie—this thing at the lodge? Or this, Lisa’s documentary? Or has it been some sort of game all along? Are people going to die?”
Marya tipped her head, looking puzzled. “I wouldn’t think so. No game! I would certainly hope not. This is all much too serious to be a game, Jenny. And too far into it. We are almost at the end.” She smiled and kissed her baby’s head. “It’ll be okay. Just your friend, that Zoe Zola. I hear she’s a fine person. Don’t let her get hurt. You just never know. For me, I’d rather see some other way.”
“You don’t seem so Finnish all of a sudden.”
“Really? Well, we are when we need to be. All of us. Aimo is. And now my baby. His name ain’t really Johnny, ya know. “It’s Jounni. Still, Johnny works just as well.”
Jenny’s throat tightened.
“Is Zoe in real danger?”
“That depends on the choices she makes, doesn’t it?”
“What’s Zoe got to do with any of you?”
Marya widened her eyes, then clicked her tongue as Johnny began to complain. “Witness,” she mumbled just loud enough for Jenny to hear. “Let her know that.”
“To what? Witness to what?”
Marya didn’t answer.
“And these others?” Jenny gestured to the women tending the graves. “Are they fakes too?”
Marya shook her head. “Nobody but me. I live down in Detroit. But mostly they’re all the real thing. Finnish women who stayed behind. Fierce Finnish women. Yah, sure. And don’t worry, yer sister will have herself a fine film to take to market.”
She got up from the ground, brushed off the back of her skirt, cooed to her baby boy, and turned to leave, but not quite.
“By the way, Jenny. My name is Lamb too. Just like Angela. Marya Lamb. A whole gaggle of little sheep. She was my cousin. Now isn’t that a funny thing fer ya ta think about?” She walked off to where a few of the others stood, brushing leaves from their family graves.
Chapter 32
Monday morning offered a dull gray sky. Gray like the other days so far. It was almost impossible to imagine this countryside in sunshine.
Zoe had missed Jenny and Lisa as soon as they’d left the night before.
She was alone—and felt it, especially when she walked into the breakfast room and nodded to everyone, and no one greeted her back.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard, if you just got up,” Mary Reid said from across the table.
Zoe shook her head. “Nothing. Is the van going this afternoon? I really want to get to the library.”
Mary shook her head. “We have another deserter.”
“Deserter?”
“Louise Joiner. Her child’s in the hospital. Somehow her husband got across the bridge to get her. I can’t imagine what those poor people who paid to hear all of you are thinking.”
“Not as if they’re waiting for Lady Gaga,” Anthony said, putting his spoon down in his oatmeal bowl and grinning to everyone around the table.
Zoe watched Mary’s face. Nothing there except a little boredom. She didn’t bother turning Anthony’s way.
“She’s given her talk. That’s a good thing,” Mary said.
“But the audience wants everybody’s input,” Anna complained.
“Ah, but this afternoon I get to give Leon’s talk,” Anthony smiled to himself. “I will have them wrapped around my little finger. No one will miss Louise.”
* * *
The two women Zoe’d feared seeing most this morning were across from her, drinking their coffee but barely speaking to each other. It wasn’t as hard to look at them as she’d feared—or not to look at them, keeping her eyes turned down.
She started a conversation with Aaron Kennedy, despite their last encounter, asking how his webinar, scheduled for Wednesday, was coming along. He leaned back in his chair, half-closed his eyes and began to expound on “The Aging of Agatha.”
He went off on how Agatha’s sales were sagging, while Zoe watched the faces around the table, no one else talking, all staring into their bowl of oatmeal or setting their spoon down, hands into their lap, and waiting for something to happen.
Aaron gave a long sigh and bemoaned again the fact that Agatha’s fiction was falling out of favor.
She knew better but said nothing, planning to keep her statistics secret until Wednesday, when they were live, on the internet, and she could contradict him in public, or in her summation on Thursday. He wouldn’t get a say after that.
She stopped listening to Aaron as he droned on; she nodded from time to time but was thinking about the woman across the table. She was related to her by blood. Susan’s genes ran through her body but she meant nothing to Zoe.
This was the Susan that Evelyn had thought, of all her family, loved her. Maybe, at the end, the cruelest of them all.
Different from what she’d expected: eyes, body type, hair—but the hair could be dyed. Especially if she was an actor.
As Zoe watched, Gewel’s eye strayed to the platter of flowers and figurines. Zoe knew before she looked what would be there.
Another playful child was gone.
Chapter 33
The upstairs hall was empty.
The air smelled of wet sweaters and dirty socks. Zoe couldn’t remember ever feeling as alone as she did right then. Most of all, she missed Fida and hoped Dora was taking good care of her. Something to be said for mute animal love.
She heard voices coming from Anthony Gliese’s room and fervently hoped Gewel Sharp wasn’t in there with him. The thought made her a little sick. He’d promise her publication and fame—of course, none of that would ever come true. She’d seen it before.
She wanted so badly to knock and see for herself who was in there. But then what? None of her business anyway. Since when had she turned into a snoop?
She stood in the middle of the hall, head down, listening as hard as she could, but unable to identify the woman’s voice—and it was a woman. After a few minutes, when the room went quiet, she gave up, and rather than heading downstairs, she tiptoed along the corridor, down to Leon Armstrong’s room. It was worth a look. Tony’s letter still hadn’t come. Two people were gone. What else could she do as she waited for the afternoon and, with luck, to get away in the lodge van, and finally into Calumet.
From there, maybe she’d find a bus up to Copper Harbor. Then a car to where Lisa stayed. Or not.
At Leon’s door, she knocked to be certain no one was in there. She turned the old-fashioned knob and went in.
An exact duplicate of her room, with the same bedspread, furniture, and even the same pictures on the walls. The view out of his window was the same as hers—trees and that brown roof.
She opened the closet. Empty except for a few hangers. Every drawer of the chest was empty, not a scrap of paper to say that the man had been here, if only for that brief time—less than twenty-four hours.
Alive she presumed.
Standing at the center of the familiar room, she put her hands on her hips and looked around. Nightstand. Bed. Small chair. Desk.
Nothing in the desk.
Nothing in the nightstand.
She sank to her knees, lifted the edge of the bedspread, and tipped over to see beneath the bed. A few dust balls where someone hadn’t bothered to clean, a crinkled piece of paper at the very center of the uncleaned space. Zoe fell to her stomach and pushed under the bed, getting stopped as her bottom—higher than the space allowed—couldn’t go any farther. She suddenly realized she might get stuck—with what excuse for being there?
She reached out as far as she could, her short fingers barely touching the paper. With one finger planted on it, she pulled until the paper was under her chin and then drew the folded paper and herself from under the bed.
Nothing but a worn business card.
Something from a past guest, maybe even another time, except the card belonged to Harley Lamb, Attorney at Law, with a half-obliterated address in Calumet and a phone number she couldn’t make out.
Harley Lamb. He haunted her like a crazy ghost. Why weren’t any of these names familiar?
Maybe the Lambs had nothing to do with her directly. She looked at the worn card in her hands. Maybe it went deeper than a name. Something cataclysmic—like doing away with every Agatha Christie expert in the world. And what about the Jokelas? When would those people crawl out from their swamp?
Beyond the closed door she heard another door open, whispered voices in the hall, and then a door close.
Anthony and Gewel.
If ever she wanted to scream at somebody, this was that moment.
Zoe put her ear to the door, opened it a bit, then listened. The hall was empty.
She walked down toward the end, trying doors as she went.
The first door opened onto nothing. No furniture. The window was d
irty, cobwebs dimmed the glass. Not used in years.
The next—the same. Unused. Empty.
The next …
The next …
And then a room with furniture, the bed stripped and left as it was. Probably Louise’s room.
Again a search, but not even a crumpled card here. Nothing to say Louise Trainer had ever been.
Nothing to say Louise Trainer was real.
She hurried back toward her own room, counting on her fingers the rooms she knew to be inhabited. Eight. The number of guests left.
Two little soldiers gone.
Chapter 34
She should have had her head up, been more on guard, instead of counting her fingers and wondering what it could mean—that they had been ten, as in And Then There Were None, and now they were eight.
The whole thing could be for real or not for real at all.
Turning too quickly into the doorway of her room, she ran directly into Emily, blocking the way and frowning hard down at Zoe.
“I wondered where you’d gotten to,” she said, the frown staying firmly in place. “I hope you’re not barging into the rooms of others.”
Zoe said nothing.
“Well, anyway, I took a phone call for you.” She held out a slip of paper with numbers sketched on it. “Your friend,” she said. “The one from yesterday.”
“How did you get a call?”
She flushed. “Phone worked for a minute.”
Zoe thanked her and took the paper. Jenny’s number.
The woman, still blocking her way, clasped her hands over her stomach. “I hope you don’t try to make arrangements for your friends to come here because two people have left. We don’t have room. Poor Bella Webb’s overworked as it is. And with all the flooding problems, well …”
Zoe tipped her best smile, one that almost always shamed people into shutting up, to Emily.
No such luck with Emily. “Really, it would be much safer if they didn’t come.”
“Safer for whom? Why the devil aren’t we being evacuated if it’s so dangerous? I am beginning to think this whole thing, this whole webinar thing, is for a reason having nothing much to do with Agatha Christie.”
And Then They Were Doomed Page 14