“Killed?” he said. “How do you know that?”
“People just don’t bury themselves.”
“It could be any number of things. Could be, for instance, somebody died from an overdose. Not anyone’s fault, necessarily, but a lot of people don’t like to get involved with that.”
“All right,” she conceded, “but it’s the same thing. A death that someone tried to hide. And right here.”
“Why the hell,” he exploded, “didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Because I—after I called them, I decided it couldn’t be anything.”
“You should have told me.”
He thought he was protecting her. They could have faced it together.
“But what if it turned out to be nothing?” she said.
Another outburst. “Are you crazy, letting your kid play there?”
“In the woods? That’s what we came to the country for.”
“Don’t ever let her go there again.”
The woods that Gail loved. Her fairy palace, with the beautiful garden.
But Gail wouldn’t want to. “No,” she said, “not after this.”
And thought, Whoever did it was out there. He could have been watching her.
5
Carl left at seven-thirty as usual the next morning. After another cup of coffee, Joyce set about her chores, clearing away the breakfast dishes and tidying the living room, which always seemed to get untidied by itself. Later, as a welcoming gesture, she and Gail made up Mary Ellen’s bed.
Gail worked slowly, mooning out of the window at the driveway. A flash of something caught her eye. “Here they come.”
Joyce had debated letting it all slip out, but at the last minute said, “Honey, you won’t mention anything about yesterday. You know, in the woods, will you?”
“I wasn’t going to,” Gail answered in a tone that implied she wasn’t going to talk to them at all if she could help it.
Joyce went out alone to meet them.
“Hello, hello,” Barbara called, swinging her long legs from the car. “How do you like this weather? I thought we were going to have a nice cool summer, the way it started.”
Mary Ellen groaned, “Oh, Mom, you’re always complaining.”
“Which is something you never do,” retorted Barbara.
“It’s nice to see you, Mary Ellen,” Joyce lied. “We missed you last month.” Because of Adam’s being so new, Barbara had suggested that Mary Ellen skip her June visit.
The trunk was unlocked and out came two suitcases, a shopping bag filled with shoes, a grocery carton of books, records, tapes, and miscellany, including a small red radio.
“Do I get my same room?” asked Mary Ellen.
“Yes, it hasn’t changed a bit.” Joyce picked up what she could carry. “We’re keeping Adam in our room for now anyway. It makes it easier, getting up at night.”
“Am I glad I’m finished with that part of it,” Barbara gloated.
When all the luggage had been taken upstairs, Mary Ellen asked, “Can I see the baby?”
Joyce led them, tiptoeing, into the room where Adam slept. Barbara stood some distance from the crib and gazed at its occupant with a wry half-smile. Mary Ellen leaned into it, her face almost touching the baby’s. He stirred in his sleep.
“When he wakes up,” she whispered, “can I hold him?”
Joyce nodded, and watched her reach out a finger to stroke his soft hair.
She was actually a very attractive girl, petite and delicate, unlike her long, rangy mother and her large, tall father. She had none of the awkwardness of most twelve-year-olds, but instead was a little pearl with creamy skin, fine dark hair, and an enchanting aura of young girl mixed with sly, teasing womanhood.
Something like Anita. Yet for all their surface charm, Anita was bratty and Mary Ellen self-centered and rude. Except when she chose not to be.
They tiptoed out of the room and Mary Ellen began unpacking. Barbara stood watching her for a moment, ignored. Joyce said, “How about a cup of coffee for the road?” She had to offer, but still felt awkward in Barbara’s presence. They had met only briefly at other times.
“I’d really like something cold,” Barbara ventured.
Mary Ellen said loudly, “No alcohol.”
Barbara rolled her eyes. Joyce suggested, “Iced tea okay?”
She settled Barbara in the sunporch and served a tray of iced tea and vanilla wafers.
“You’ve really got a nice place here,” Barbara said, looking out at the green lawn, the strip of woodland next to it where daffodils bloomed in the springtime, and the meadow beyond the stone wall. “It’s so private. Except I think I’d get a little nervous. I like to hear the neighbors crashing around. It lets you know that people are there.”
“I guess I had enough of that before,” Joyce said, and scurried to find an ashtray as Barbara took out a pack of cigarettes. Her face must have changed color, she thought, and Barbara could read on it a history of recent events.
“Before what? Before Carl?” Barbara’s voice was muffled as she gripped a cigarette between her lips.
“Mmm. Too many neighbors.”
“You make it sound like a real tenement.”
Joyce flinched, and answered solidly, “It was.”
“That was after you were widowed.”
If only she could agree. But either way, it would sound as though she had grasped at Carl.
“No, before. You see, my husband was an actor. A hopeful actor. He was still hoping when he died. I don’t mean,” she went on hastily, “that all actors have to live that way, especially when they have a family, but Larry was very idealistic.”
“Idealistic? And he kept you in a place like that?” Barbara blew smoke across the room.
“Idealistic about his career,” Joyce explained. “He didn’t want to dilute himself by working at something else, just to make a little money. Most actors live, you know, by working at something else. Until they really make it, but that’s pretty rare. It’s just too competitive.”
“Then, uh—who brought in the bacon?” Barbara seemed flustered by her own nosiness, but had to ask.
“I did. Actually, it made sense. I didn’t have this other thing, the way he did. And he kept hoping … He was so sure … ‘Just give it a little more time,’ he kept saying. And then he died, and it was all over. He never did live to see it get better.”
“But it might have,” Barbara said. “It might have gotten better.”
“Maybe.” Joyce stared into her glass at the melting ice cubes and the fresh mint from her garden. “But there was Gail growing up in poverty while he chased rainbows.”
“Where is Gail? I haven’t seen her. Isn’t she here?”
“I have no idea.” Joyce realized that she had not seen Gail, either. Not since the car came up the driveway.
Barbara said, “Excuse me for asking, but—what happened? About your husband. Was it an accident?”
“It certainly was not an accident. He was mugged.”
“Mugged?”
“He was coming home late at night.” Very late at night, the way he always did. Much later than you have to for the theater. “And he was robbed and stabbed in a subway station. And now you can see why I was so glad to get out of the city, and why I love—” She choked back the rest of what she was going to say, for violence had come here, too.
“Anyway,” she concluded, “this time, my life seems normal. The way it should be.”
Barbara’s mouth twisted in a humorless smile. “Good for you.”
Still bitter? Joyce sat back and watched her grind out her cigarette.
“However,” Barbara added, “I think that’s something we’d better not discuss. Although I’d love to.”
“I’m sure.”
“Oh, well. How do he and Gail get along?”
“Just fine.” If you could call it that. Most of the time they seemed to exist on parallel planes. “Why? How should they get along?”
&n
bsp; “I just wondered.” Barbara took out her cigarette pack, shook one loose, and stared at it.
She said, “You seem like a nice, level-headed young woman.”
“I suppose I am. Are you trying to tell me something, Barbara?”
“Yes and no. After all, you’ve been married, what, a year now? Long enough to get acquainted. Maybe things are different for you.”
It was almost funny, Barbara trying to spill out her resentment about him. Naturally an ex-wife would feel that way. She might even try to poison the second wife’s attitude.
“I think,” said Joyce, “that’s a rather loaded subject for us to be talking about.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought.” Barbara sounded relieved. “I did try to stop myself.”
Not very hard, it had seemed.
“Well, I’d better be going. You make excellent iced tea, I love the mint.” She rose from her chair. Joyce rose, too, and Barbara still loomed over her. She could have been quite formidable, in her tall, worldly way, but she was softened by a streak of warmth.
“I am sorry, Joyce. I suppose when a marriage breaks up, there are bound to be reasons. Except I thought they were a little more—integral. I don’t know what I’m saying. Anyway, it was just a feeling I had.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying, either.” Joyce followed her to the foot of the stairs as she went up to say good-bye to Mary Ellen.
A few minutes later Barbara returned, ready to leave. “I hate to tell you this, but that lovely room is now a shambles.”
“Again?” Joyce managed a smile.
“Don’t tell me it’s a habit here, too. Oh, good heavens, and you keep such a neat house. I know Carl likes things neat.
Well, I told her to pick it all up. Just keep after her, will you?”
“I’ll try.”
“It’s adolescence. I was terrible at twelve. Have a wonderful summer, all of you.”
Joyce went outside to see her off. Mary Ellen did not appear, but when the engine started, she waved from an upstairs window.
As soon as the car had gone, a shower of pebbles fell from the bank above the driveway and Gail came scrambling down through the rock garden.
“Where on earth were you?” Joyce asked. “It would have been polite if you’d said hello to Barbara. She asked about you.”
Gail mumbled something and started into the house. At the door she turned, holding her nose. The whole house smelled of cigarettes. Joyce emptied the ashtray, and washed and dried it. Carl disliked dirty ashtrays. He said they looked obscene. And if it was worth noting that Joyce “kept such a neat house,” probably that meant Barbara did not. It must have been one hell of a marriage.
She was putting the tea glasses into the dishwasher when Anita appeared at the kitchen door.
“Hi, Mrs. Gilwood. Can I play with Gail?”
“You didn’t come through the woods, did you?” Joyce asked.
“No, I came by the road. Hi, Gail, I’m not mad at you anymore.”
Gail did not look pleased, but led the visitor up to her room, where no doubt the dolls and their paraphernalia would be out all over the place.
Better here than in the woods, Joyce thought as she went upstairs to take care of Adam. How close it might have been, the two of them there alone. What would she do if something happened to Gail? What did people do? There had been Larry,
and that was bad enough, but to lose a child …
She was in her bedroom, nursing the baby, when Mary Ellen knocked at the door.
“Joyce, there’s a policeman downstairs. He wants to talk to you.”
“Oh—” Joyce removed the baby from her breast. He let out a thin cry of protest.
“Shall I tell him to come back later?” Mary Ellen asked.
“No, we might as well get it over with. What does he want?”
“Just to ask some questions. Anita said somebody got murdered, is that true?”
“Yes. I should have told your mother. I didn’t want to alarm her.”
She slipped a pacifier into the baby’s mouth and carried him downstairs. Mary Ellen had installed the policeman on the living room sofa. He was a powerful-looking man, perhaps in his late thirties or early forties. His eyes were dark, his black hair flecked with gray, and his nose seemed slightly flattened, as though it might have been broken once.
He stood up as she entered the room. “Mrs. Gilwood? Police Chief D’Amico.” He held out an identification. She studied it carefully. It could have been a trick.
“You’re the one I talked to on the phone last night,” she said.
“That’s right. I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Gilwood. Just a few questions.” He edged back toward the sofa, but did not sit down until she did.
“This won’t take long,” he explained. “We only want to get some idea of who’s been in the area. Do you recall seeing anybody, any strangers around here, anybody who doesn’t live in the neighborhood or have business here?”
“No, I don’t.” She tried to think. “I don’t see too many people at all. It’s a kind of secluded house.”
She glanced at the picture window. A secluded house, and at the same time, a fishbowl, with all those windows.
“And a long driveway,” she added. “We can’t even see the road.”
“That’s why I thought you might have been aware of somebody passing through here. We can’t tell which way they came, but they’d have had to be on foot, going into the woods.”
Had someone walked right past this house—to his doom? Or someone, perhaps, at gunpoint. Or—
“No,” she repeated, “I haven’t seen anybody.”
“You said your daughter goes there quite often.”
“I guess so. But not now. She wouldn’t—Do you mean it was there—how long?”
“Not too long, probably. We think it was kept somewhere else, and we’d like to know where. Someplace cool, it looks like. A cave, or something. We think it was only recently dumped in those rocks. Somebody might have reconnoitered there first, or gone back to look. They’ll do that sometimes.”
“How could anybody look at it? How could they carry it—like that?”
“It’s hard to tell about people,” he said.
“It would have to be someone who’s a little bit crazy, wouldn’t it?”
He only smiled. “If you see anybody, or remember seeing anybody, would you let us know? Anyone who seems to be hanging around, or walking in the woods, or doing anything different than usual.”
“I will.” But there had been no one. She would have noticed somebody near her house.
“Do you mind if I talk to your daughter?” he asked, “since she was out there? The same kind of question.”
“I’d rather she didn’t—” But there was no way to protect her. Anita already knew, and undoubtedly had talked about it.
She called the girls downstairs, and hovered without seeming to listen, so Gail would be reassured but not inhibited.
“We never saw anybody,” Gail declared. “Only Mr. Lattimer, but he lives there. Sometimes he walks around in the woods.”
“Who was the dead person?” asked Anita.
“Can’t tell yet,” D’Amico replied. “We’re checking that out.”
Anita bounced on the sofa. “Was it one of those people who disappeared?” Her eyes glinted. “I hope it’s one of those people. And I found him. Her.”
Gail asked, “Is it gone now?”
“Since last night,” he said, “but I’d stay away from there till we find out more about this.”
He thanked them for their help. Gail protested that they had not been very helpful.
“You gave me information,” he said. “You told me you didn’t see anybody. That’s part of it.” He turned to Joyce. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Gilwood. We’ll be around. That won’t surprise you, will it?”
“It will be very reassuring.” She stood at the kitchen door, with Adam fidgeting in her arms, and watched him leave.
Gail came up bes
ide her. Joyce said, “It’s too bad about the woods. But you still have the lawn and the garden. At least we have an outdoors, not like in the city.”
“I liked the city,” Gail replied, her face becoming closed and stubborn.
Because she identified it with her father, while Cedarville meant Carl. And now death.
6
After lunch, while Gail and Anita cleared the table, Mary Ellen remained in her chair, gazing through the picture window. Only at a sound from Adam, upstairs, did she stir.
“Can I help you take care of the baby?”
“Of course,” said Joyce, “but I breast-feed him, so there’s not much you can do about that.”
Inadvertently her eyes dropped to Mary Ellen’s bosom, and noticed the swelling. So she was there already. No wonder Barbara had worried about her.
Mary Ellen received a lesson in diaper-changing, then retired to her room. Through its nearly closed door came the tinny strains of the small red radio. Adam was fed and had just been put back in his crib when the doorbell rang.
Joyce wondered, as she went to answer it, whether a killer would bother to ring.
Sheila Farand stood on the doorstep, her black hair straggling loose from its summer bun, her body lean and tan in khaki shorts and a red halter. Beside her was Pamela Cheskill, the exact opposite, a cool blonde in a stylish pale green pantsuit.
Sheila burst out, “My God, Joyce, remember that thing you were telling me about last night? I didn’t even think about it, but you know what—”
“Yes, I know,” said Joyce as she held open the door. “I went over and looked. And the police were here.”
“You what?” Pam exclaimed.
“I went over and looked. That’s a beautiful outfit, Pam. Would anybody care for some iced tea?”
Sheila gasped. “I couldn’t swallow right now. I keep hoping I’ll wake up from this. You went over and looked?”
“Not at—it.” Joyce steered them toward the sunporch. “I just went over and saw what the girls saw. Gail wanted me to. And then I called the police.”
“Oh, you were the one.” Sheila sank into a cushioned rattan chair. “They said some woman called. I have a cousin on the force, Herb Mackey, he came over and asked if we’d seen anybody hanging around. I tried to keep it from Anita, but she heard the older girls talking, and then she started bragging that she was the one who saw it first and showed it to Gail.”
(2001) The Girls Are Missing Page 3