Pawns

by Willo Davis Roberts

  To be ready for anything, she put on a pair of dark jeans and a black shirt—it was missing a couple of buttons, but she didn’t expect anyone to see it, anyway—and dark tennis shoes.

  She was as prepared as she could get.

  The minutes on her digital clock changed with maddening slowness. Her inability to relax made her chest ache, and she drew a deep breath, and then another, trying to calm down.

  Her conviction that Ricky and Dora had not been married to each other was stronger than ever. Surely Ricky would never have married a girl like Dora. It hadn’t been a lapse of memory when he designated Mamie as his beneficiary, and Dora was no more than an opportunist who had seen a chance to insinuate herself into Mamie’s household for her own gain.

  And if that was the case, then what? To lose Danny, so soon after Ricky had vanished from her life, would desolate Mamie. She was already making such plans for the baby. She was planning a trust fund for his education, and she was forever spotting something that would be appropriate for a little boy: a red wagon, a tricycle, a swing set for the backyard.

  There was no way this story could have a happy ending, Teddi thought wistfully. Unless by some miracle Dora had been Ricky’s wife, and Danny really was Mamie’s grandson. In which case, Teddi herself would probably be eliminated from the household before long, of her own volition if they didn’t ask her to leave.

  She didn’t think she could spent the next few years in the same house with Dora. Even if she had put the money back in the jar, if she had simply borrowed and returned it, Dora had not asked to take it. Teddi was sure of that. Which meant that Dora would never be someone you could trust. Nor would Dora be likely to tolerate the presence of someone else in the household for long.

  A surreptitious sound brought her into a sitting position.

  From below there was canned laughter on Dora’s new TV. But this had been a different kind of sound.

  After a moment it came again, from outside. Through the open window at the front of the house.

  Teddi reached out and turned off the reading light, throwing the room into near-darkness. Silently, she slid off the bed and crossed to the other window. Jason’s room was completely black; was he sleeping in preparation for his own watch? They hadn’t figured on anything happening this early, but might not Dora have used the TV for cover and slipped out of the house now through a window?

  Teddi leaned as close to the screen as she could get and lifted the whistle to her mouth to give the signal: two short blasts.

  There was no visible response from next door, but of course Teddi hadn’t expected there would be. She hurried back to the street-side window to listen carefully again.

  That first sound, whatever it was, was not repeated. She had almost given up and retreated when she heard the rapping.

  Not on the front door below; she was pretty sure of that. On a window, maybe?

  Teddi wished there were no screen, or that it were easily removed, for she wanted to lean out, to listen. She wished Dora would turn off the TV, for though it wasn’t loud from up here, it was enough to cover small noises outside.

  And then there was another sound that allowed the TV to get louder, but Teddi recognized it. The window in Dora’s room slid up, sticking enough so that Teddi heard her curse, then screeching as it moved upward.

  She couldn’t see what was directly beneath her own window. The house was in the light from the street except right up against the building, and there was no way to twist her head to see into those shadows.

  Someone was out there. Dora had opened the window to him. And Teddi heard the hissed reaction.

  “You idiot! You’ll blow everything!” Dora was furious.

  Teddi couldn’t make out the whispered response, only that it was a male voice. When Dora spoke again, she, too, had lowered her voice, so that the words were frustratingly unintelligible.

  What should she do? Teddi wondered frantically. Blow the whistle again for Jason, in case he hadn’t heard her first alarm? That seemed like a good idea, but then what? Go downstairs?

  She put both plans into action, glad her rubber soles made her progress silent.

  Dora’s door was closed, so it was safe to go past it. Mamie was in the living room, listening to music and reading, her back to the doorway.

  Through the house, then, to the back door, twisting the lock, sliding out into the darkness of the back porch.

  A glance toward Jason’s house revealed no sign of movement outside. Was he already watching the unknown visitor, or was she out here by herself?

  Her heart was hammering, so that all she could hear was the blood in her own ears. Teddi paused, trying to adjust to the dimness, willing her own breathing to calm down.

  Around the back of the house, then the far corner, then . . . she stopped, one hand unconsciously pressed against her chest.

  There was a bulky figure beside the house and, from this close, though she still couldn’t make out all the words, Teddi was sure they were quarreling in low, angry voices.

  She strained to hear, catching an occasional emphatic word, mostly profanity on the part of the man. Then she thought he said, “Be there!” and Dora retorted with another burst of profanity.

  The window slammed shut, and after a few seconds, the man turned and moved rapidly toward the street.

  He was leaving, Teddi thought in a panic. What was she supposed to do? Where was Jason?

  Wildly her gaze searched the shrubbery, the shadows under the trees, but there was no sign of Jason.

  Where was he?

  Already the man was striding toward the corner half a block away.

  It wasn’t enough to learn what they could about Dora. This man, whoever he was, was mixed up in this whole thing. It was essential to find out who he was, and what he was up to.

  Teddi drew a deep, painful breath, and decided: There was only one thing to do. She’d have to try to follow him.

  Chapter 14

  Teddi had taken only a few steps when an arm reached out of the shrubbery and grabbed her.

  She hardly had time to gasp when Jason said urgently in her ear, “Where are you going?”

  “He was here, Dora’s accomplice. He headed off that way on foot. I thought I’d better follow him. Where were you? I thought you were going to come as soon as I blew the whistle!”

  “I’ll explain later. I’ll follow the guy. That’s him at the corner, isn’t it? You stay here and keep an eye on Dora.”

  He let go of her arm and was gone before she could protest.

  Teddi stared after him, her pulse still racing. What could Jason do if the man realized he was being followed? Was Dora’s accomplice likely to be violent?

  There wasn’t much she could do about it now. Though if Jason didn’t come back soon with an explanation, would she have to call the police? She didn’t know what she’d tell them, or what information she had that would enable them to rescue him if he’d gotten into trouble.

  She was trembling as she let herself back into the darkened kitchen. What a mess it all was, and now she’d dragged Jason into it, too. His folks would kill her if anything happened to him.

  Dora’s TV was still playing, and so was Mamie’s music. This was too small a house to hold two simultaneous sources of sound, Teddi thought wearily. Well, maybe it would soon be over, this farce of Dora being Ricky’s widow. But would things ever get back to normal, as she and Mamie had known it before Dora came? She didn’t really see how they could.

  Her eyes were stinging as she moved toward the lighted part of the house.

  Mamie wasn’t reading. She was sitting with a big photograph album on her lap, looking at the pictures. She looked up and saw Teddi and smiled.

  She held a loose snapshot in her hand. “Isn’t it funny? You think you’ll remember some things forever, but you don’t. After a while you forget. Ricky and Ned looked so much alike at the same ages that if I hadn’t written on the backs of their pictures to identify them, I wouldn’t be sure now which of
them it is.”

  And suddenly the idea was there, fully formed, in Teddi’s mind. It startled her so much that for a moment she was unable to speak.

  Beside her, Dora’s door opened and she emerged and headed for the bathroom.

  Obviously she hadn’t expected Teddi to be standing there, for she jumped and swerved to keep from walking into her. But she didn’t pass before Teddi saw that she’d been crying.

  Somehow she hadn’t expected tears. It made Teddi feel funny in a way she couldn’t have explained.

  Mamie got up from her chair, setting the album aside, retaining only the single snapshot. She came into the hallway to join Teddi, saying, “Sometimes I can figure it out from the background, something else in the picture. I think this one is of Ricky, because he was three the year I grew the dahlias that took first place at the county fair. See how big they were?”

  Water flushed in the bathroom, and after a moment Dora came out. She murmured, “Excuse me,” and would have walked past them to return to her own room if Teddi hadn’t spoken.

  “Mamie’s found another picture of Ricky when he was little. Don’t you think Danny looks a bit like him?” Her mouth was dry as she told the lie, but it had the desired effect. Dora stopped, automatically looking at the snapshot in Mamie’s extended hand.

  Teddi swallowed hard and tried to sound natural. “He was so cute, wasn’t he? He was such a good-looking guy, I always thought. It was a shame he got so badly scarred in that accident last year.”

  She caught Mamie’s startled expression, but Mamie didn’t say anything. Dora’s mouth sagged open. “Scarred . . .” she echoed faintly.

  “He was lucky to find a girl like you,” Teddi persisted, “who didn’t care about the scars on his face.”

  Dora licked her lips uncertainly. “Uh . . . yeah, I guess.”

  “They didn’t matter to you, did they?” Teddi said insistently.

  Dora drew in a shallow breath, and her head moved slowly from side to side. “No. No, they didn’t.”

  There was a perceptible silence. Relief, welcome yet strangely painful, swept through Teddi’s body. She shifted her gaze to Mamie, to see how she was taking this.

  As she’d more or less expected, there were tears forming in Mamie’s eyes. But she wasn’t shocked enough to be falling apart, only deeply saddened. She looked directly into Dora’s face, and her voice was oddly compassionate.

  “You never even met my son Ricky, did you, Dora?”

  Consternation swept over Dora’s countenance. She put one hand to her throat and made a choking sound.

  “I think,” Mamie said, with more control than Teddi felt, “that we’d all better sit down. We have some talking to do. Maybe it would help to have some cocoa. Let’s go out in the kitchen. Teddi, will you get down the mugs, and I’ll do the hot chocolate.”

  Dora sank onto a chair, her face chalky. “How did I give myself away?”

  Teddi set out the thick mugs, overcome by thankfulness that Mamie hadn’t fallen apart. She didn’t know what she would have done in that circumstance. She herself was feeling incredibly weak in the knees.

  “You accepted the idea of the scarring,” Teddi said.

  “Was Ricky’s face badly scarred?” Dora was bewildered, taken off balance.

  “No,” Teddi told her. “Ned was the one in the accident. He went through a windshield. He’s been having plastic surgery for it. But when Mamie said how much the boys looked alike, it occurred to me that if you were an imposter, you wouldn’t know whether Ricky was scarred or not. Unless you were the one who sold him the insurance policy, so you saw him then.”

  Dora reminded Teddi of a balloon with a slow leak. She was perceptibly deflating before their eyes. “No. You’re right, I never met Ricky. It was Roger who sold him the insurance policy.”

  “Who’s Roger?” Mamie asked, adjusting the heat under the milk she’d poured into a saucepan. “Danny’s father?”

  “My husband,” Dora admitted in a small voice. “He worked in the insurance booth. He wasn’t very busy right then, and he and Ricky talked. The plane went down so soon afterward, and Roger said wouldn’t it be funny if any of the people who were killed were ones who’d bought insurance from him. Someone like Ricky, who hadn’t seen his family for quite a while, someone single. And then when he checked on the list of survivors, and Ricky wasn’t on it. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she swallowed.

  “Roger saw an opportunity for fraud,” Mamie said. Mamie didn’t sound angry, exactly, though there was now an edge to her voice. “He thought maybe if you could convince Ricky’s mother that you’d been married to him, you could get your hands on that insurance money. And maybe more, if I had anything else. He knew I’d be excited . . . any mother would be . . . to think I had a grandchild coming. So you showed up and claimed to be Ricky’s wife.”

  “I didn’t really want to do it,” Dora said forlornly. “But it was true, we needed money, and Roger said it would be easy.” She gave a bitter laugh that held no humor. “Easy! Having the baby all by myself because I didn’t dare go into a hospital with no identification and no insurance except under the wrong name! He said I couldn’t take a chance on talking too much if they gave me anything for pain and I didn’t keep my head clear, so I had to have the baby at home.”

  Mamie spooned cocoa mix into each of the mugs, then poured the milk into them. When Dora made no move to touch hers, Mamie put the pan back on the stove and stirred the hot chocolate for her, pushing it toward her.

  “Drink it. It will do you good.”

  Mamie was astounding, Teddi thought. Imagine, talking this way after what Dora had done! As if she still cared about this young woman who had tried to cheat her.

  There was pain in Mamie’s face, yes. Teddi could see it. But not the kind of complete disheartenment she had imagined. “How long have you known she wasn’t really Ricky’s wife?” Teddi demanded abruptly.

  “Oh, dear. I was a little bit suspicious at the beginning, until I saw that marriage certificate. I haven’t seen anyone’s proof of marriage for years. I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like. Where did you get it?”

  Dora was visibly shrinking in her chair. “Roger made it. On his brother’s computer.”

  “I guess I was still a bit uncertain,” Mamie said. “Which is, I suppose, why I never even called Ned about her, not even after the baby came.” She’d brought a bag of marshmallows to the table and dropped them into each of the cups, then slumped into her own chair. “There were so many things. She was nearly ready to give birth to a child, yet Ricky hadn’t written to me about a marriage. He never did write much, but surely he would have called me? That really bothered me, but it was possible, I supposed. A lot of men don’t stay in touch with their families, even when there’s been no estrangement. They mean to, but they just don’t get around to doing it. Look how seldom we hear from Ned. The trouble was, too, that I wanted so badly to believe this was Ricky’s child. I let myself overlook some of the indications that there was little proof.”

  “I told Roger it wouldn’t work.” Dora sounded sullen now, again near tears. “There would be too many things I wouldn’t know. He said I’d be able to get you to talk enough to find them out. He said once the baby was born, we’d be able to twist you around our little fingers. You’d be besotted with him. I never heard that word before, but that’s what he said. Besotted.”

  “And what was supposed to happen then?” Mamie asked, sipping at her cocoa. “When I became besotted with the baby? Were you going to stay here indefinitely? Let me help raise him and support both of you?”

  “We were going to figure out a way to get the insurance money. I’m not sure how, but Roger’s smart. He’d have worked out something.”

  “Forge a will leaving everything to my grandson?” Mamie asked with a wry twist of her mouth. “Maybe even arrange an accident for me, to make sure you didn’t have to wait too long to inherit?”

  Alarm brought Dora’s head up. “No! We’
d never have done anything like that!”

  Wouldn’t they? Teddi wondered. She didn’t like Roger much. She suspected that he would have been capable of almost any action to get what he wanted. A moment later Dora confirmed this.

  “I wasn’t supposed to have to stay here very long,” Dora said. “I told him I couldn’t, and he said I wouldn’t have to. He didn’t like the job at the airport, and he said if we had the insurance money he could quit and we’d go somewhere else. I hoped he’d decide it would be okay to keep the baby with us if there was enough money—”

  Mamie’s voice cut sharply through her words. “Did you consider not having the baby?”

  “I didn’t. Roger was annoyed when I told him I was pregnant. He said babies are expensive, and messy, and fussy. First he suggested I get rid of it, before it was born, but I refused to do that. He still didn’t want it, so when he came up with this idea, I let him talk me into it. I thought this would solve everything until I got up here, and the baby was born, and then he started talking about . . .”

  She broke off, her eyes filling once more with tears.

  Mamie was gentle now. “What did he talk about, Dora? That you couldn’t bear to think of?”

  “He said you’d maybe want to take Danny and raise him. So we wouldn’t have to. He said if we couldn’t get the insurance money any other way, you’d probably hand it over in order to keep him. If you thought he was your grandchild, I mean.”

  “And how did you feel about giving away your child?”

  Dora didn’t seem to notice anything odd about Mamie’s voice, but Teddi did. There was an icy edge to it that Teddi had never heard before.

  “I told him I wouldn’t do it. I refused to talk about giving the baby away. I hung up on him the last time, and then he came up here to talk to me in person. He thinks he can sweet-talk me into anything.”

  “And can he?” It was still there, velvet over a hint of ice, or steel. Maybe steel, Teddi thought.