by Pam Lewis
Love,
Dad
P.S. Your mother wanted you to have the ancestor prints that once hung in the foyer of our apartment. I’m sure you remember them. They were very special to her.
Carole sat, dazed. A detective. She pictured her elegant father slitting open the detective’s envelopes with his silver letter opener. All this time he had known where she was and not stepped up. Not that she would have wanted it, but he hadn’t. That was the part she didn’t understand. The worst part. She remembered that evening, after her mother’s service, heading out of New York City on the bus, positive that everything was behind her, that nobody would ever find her, how she’d felt real hope for the first time since the night in Stowe. Only she’d been so wrong. All this time, somebody had been watching. She felt weak at the thought. A spy. His eyes on her all the time. Sitting in a parked car watching through binoculars, coming into Chacha’s. Everything.
“What’s that?” Will’s voice startled her and she jumped.
Out of habit, she curled a hand around the paper and crushed it.
“Why don’t you stuff it in your mouth and swallow it?” he said. “One more secret from me.”
“I’m sorry.” She smoothed it out and handed it to him.
Will pulled out a chair and sat down opposite. He put on his reading glasses and read slowly, casting his eyes back up the page from time to time, turning the letter to read the notes in the margins, rereading before going on. “Carole,” he said in a whisper, shaking his head as though this time she’d gone too far. “You told me he was dead.”
“He is to me.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Will said, smacking the table with his hand. “No way. I don’t want to hear it. Dead to you. You’re not going to keep lying to me like this. The man’s alive. He lives in Albany.” He scanned the letter. “With Gloria and a mess of kids. That ain’t dead, baby.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea he knew where I was.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it. Jesus Christ, what else don’t I know? Eddie gave Pepper his scar. Your father’s alive. Christ, Carole. What else? Rachel and Morgan. They’re probably in on it too. I feel like a fool to tell you the truth. Am I the only one in the dark around here?”
“Rachel and Morgan don’t know everything.”
“What exactly do they not know?”
“It’s ancient history, Will.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s right now. I’m talking about right now. You and me. We are not ancient history. That’s the point I’m trying to make.” He banged the table again, then leaned toward her. “We’re right now.”
“I knew them in high school. Naomi was a friend. The three of us went up to Stowe one year to go skiing.” She looked away.
“And?” he said.
“I got drunk one night,” she said. “I might have … I slept with him. He slept with both of us. It was the sixties.”
“And now?”
“Now nothing.”
He covered his eyes with his hand and rubbed hard, as though he had a headache. He smoothed out the letter on the table. “Write him back.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You’d better. He’s your only family now, Carole.” Will stood up from the table and went upstairs. It was over. She knew it. She sat staring at the letter from her father. Gloria. She reread the letter several times and then got out a note card to write him back.
I got your letter. I think we should all get used to the idea for a while before we talk about seeing each other. I work six days a week at Chacha’s on Main Street, so there isn’t a lot of time. Carole.
Chapter Eighteen
MARCH 1976
Gloria. Carole’s life was disintegrating, and that was the word she couldn’t get out of her head. It was an annoying name, a blowsy name. As she shaved carrots for lunch, throwing herself into work with everything she had, running behind today, she pictured a woman with fake blond hair and lots of jewelry, thick in the middle with thin legs, the kind of woman her mother would say had had too much gin in her life. Carole had never known a Gloria. Only film stars had names like that. And the song, of course. The Doors had done it, and Van Morrison. Gloria.
Her father had another family. He wrote about them with the familiarity that came only from permanence. She was the outsider now, the one he told stories about, his long-lost daughter. Just like she was the outsider to Will and to Rachel. She hadn’t seen Rachel in four days, not since the night ski. Rachel hadn’t been in Chacha’s once. And Will was moving about the house in silence. He was waiting for her to say something, but she hadn’t been able to. Every day she expected him to announce that he was moving out.
She’d assumed her father would have remarried. Men like him did. But the new wife had always been a cipher, without a face, without a name. Nobody important. She pictured a new Gloria, impatiently nagging Conrad about his earlier life. The time for privacy is over. Gloria the tough. Gloria the shot caller. Carole would bet she had a charm bracelet with the silhouettes of all those grandchildren dangling from it. She imagined her fancy old hands, the hands of rich New York women. Brown and spotted, with thickly lacquered nails.
A pounding sound started out on the floor, and Carole went to see what was happening through the glass in the door. The customers were banging the tables with their fists, led by an old farmer with pure white hair in a ponytail. “We want Hector. We want Hector.”
“Where is he?” Carole asked Rudy, tying on an apron. “Don’t tell me he’s not here yet. I don’t know how to run this. I don’t know the frigging answers.”
“Over here.” Hector was at the back of the kitchen in his usual white suit, grinning from ear to ear. “They want me,” he said. “But I like to make them wait. It heightens the moment.” He sauntered through the kitchen and out the swinging doors, and the noise subsided.
Sandy swung back in through the door with a tray. “Everybody wants club sandwiches today. Every other Thursday it’s been the dinner specials, and today they want clubs. Must be the phase of the moon or something.”
Carole rolled up her sleeves and took a station to help. “One of these days we’ll get it right,” she said.
They put together sixteen plates with turkey clubs, and Sandy took them out. People were ordering all sorts of things they normally didn’t. The pickled herring salad, the vegetarian lasagna. Carole picked up a menu to make sure they had everything in stock and looked at the games. A winter acrostic. A word jumble. A little crossword puzzle and a photograph of a circle of men staring at the ground. “You know this one?” she asked Sandy.
Sandy shrugged. “I never know any of them,” she said.
They pushed out dozens of lunches and were just taking a breather before the dessert orders came through when Hector came into the kitchen, out of breath. “Victor Champine from Aubuchon’s downstairs thinks he knows. He just ran like a bat out of hell for the library.”
“Full house today?” Carole asked.
“Everybody’s here, dearie. Including that fabulous friend of yours and her husband. The ones from New York. She was telling me all about your wicked girlhood. Your exploits at Lamston’s. And here I always thought you were so sweet.”
“Where are they?”
“Over with that Weaver woman. Lear. You know what I mean. A very odd-looking threesome, if you ask me, but they do seem to be getting on.”
Together? Impossible. Carole went out on the floor to see. From over near the windows, Naomi lifted her glass and gave Carole a big glittery smile. She’d invited her to drop by the restaurant. Her concession to Eddie after the night ski. What difference did it make now, anyway? Rachel looked at Carole and then away, without a sign of recognition. She was sitting on one side of Naomi, and Eddie was on the other, his back to her.
The crowd had settled down, and people were talking to one another. Once in a while some
body would raise a hand and suggest an answer, but Hector would tell them with glee that they were off by a mile. Rachel and Naomi were huddled together now, talking about something. It gave Carole a terrible ominous feeling. They must be talking abut her. About what happened in the cabin after the night ski. But where had Eddie gone?
When dessert was being served, Victor Champine returned, dragging a chunky, giggling young woman along by the hand and waving some sheets of paper in the air. He went over to the bar and started to show Hector what he had, but Hector made him stand beside him. He quieted the people. “Attention, everyone,” he called. All over the place people looked up and dropped forks and spoons onto their plates. “Go ahead,” he said to Victor.
Victor read from some notes. “June 14 or 15, 1965,” he said. Hector’s eyebrows jumped a mile. Victor seemed nervous all of a sudden. His hands started to shake, and he had to go behind the bar and lay the menu down with his notes beside it so that nobody would notice. “This photo from the menu was taken on June 14, 1965, but it ran in the Times Argus on June 15, so you can take your pick of the date.” He held up a Xerox that had the photo as well as a newspaper cutline beneath it. “Left to right,” he said, reading from the cutline. He gave people a couple of seconds to fish glasses out of their pockets and purses and put them on. “Brad Wendel on the left is the guy who found her. He was up there surveying. Next to him is Russ Reed, the sheriff, then George Brown, the deputy sheriff, and then Alden Coburn, the medical examiner. On the far right, that’s Pete Cambio, who owned the motel next door. And that thing they’re looking at? That was a woman, five-five, brown hair, a hundred fifty pounds.”
“What was her name?” Hector asked Victor.
“They never found out,” Victor said. “It was an unsolved mystery.”
“Not really,” the woman with him said but didn’t press it.
“So do I win or what?” Victor said.
“Where?” Hector said. “You need location. Without that, you don’t win.”
“Stowe,” Victor said immediately. “Mountain Road. Woods back of the old Snowtown Motel.”
“And the event?” Hector seemed very put out that someone had gotten the answer so quickly.
“They didn’t know. They thought she was strangled,” Victor said, flicking the article with a snap of his fingers to show the source of his facts. He made a choking sound in his throat and let his head fall to the side, then grinned. “According to this, anyway, and this is the only article about it. I checked the index. End of story.”
Carole lowered herself onto a barstool. Her legs were suddenly loose and weak under her. The voices around her became a low roar in her ears, distorted by the sound of her own breathing, the pounding of her heart. She furtively sought out Rachel and Naomi in case they’d seen, but they were still so deep in conversation. She watched the article in Victor’s hand as he flicked it again, the snap of his finger against the paper sudden and painful. He put it down on the bar, raised his hands, as if in victory, and turned toward the crowd, who erupted in applause. Carole reached over and slid the paper toward herself. In the picture, the men were standing in a small clearing of thick brush and long grass. You couldn’t make out what they were looking at at all. She followed through the account without being able to read the words. She felt the panic slide up her throat.
“Carole?” Hector said. “Are you okay?”
If she tried to stand, she might fall over. “Where did you get this?” she asked Hector, pointing to the photograph on the menu.
“Archives,” Hector said. “I showed it to you last month. Remember?”
“No. I mean, yes, maybe. But I didn’t—”
Naomi and Rachel had stopped talking, their attention drawn to something at the adjacent table. Eddie had come back and was sitting beside Naomi again.
“So?” Victor said. “We get two free lunches. Fair and square.”
“After the last one,” Hector said to Carole. “Don’t you remember? Over at the bar.” He pouted. “I went through them all. You said to pick one.”
Carole pointed to an empty table for Victor and the woman.
“Is she going to wait on us?” the woman with Victor asked.
Carole got to her feet but felt so nauseated that she had to run from the room. In the ladies’ room she bent over the toilet and vomited. Someone came in while she was there and then left right away. Carole walked out of the stall and splashed cold water on her face. She was afraid to look in the mirror, to see what other people could see.
Just outside the door she hesitated to see if Eddie and Naomi had picked up on what was happening, but they weren’t paying attention. Eddie had a hand over Naomi’s mouth, kidding around. Rachel was standing, looking around for something. For her. As soon as she spotted Carole, she signaled for her to come to the table.
Carole held up a finger to say in a minute. No way was she going over there. She had to go along with things, do what Victor wanted, but she could barely move. When she was back out on the floor, she asked Victor and the woman, whose name was Mindy, what they wanted. Maybe she could save herself the way she always did, with work. They wanted a lot, and Carole tried to keep it in her memory but brought over a 7-Up instead of a Coke and onion rings instead of French fries and had to go back and change the orders. Then she cleared off the silverware before they had dessert and they had to ask her for more. They ordered a couple of pieces of pie, a lemon square, and some ice cream. Hector ordered raspberry sherbet. Carole brought it all over on a big tray without making a mistake. Then she sat down between Mindy and Hector.
“What did you mean when you said ‘not really’?”
Mindy’s eyes brightened as she looked over the desserts.
Carole had to press her. “Mindy? When Hector said they never found out the name, that it wasn’t solved, you said ‘not really.’”
Mindy looked up at her, frowning. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah.” She had the kind of voice that attracted attention. “My uncle is from up there, from Morris Center. People up there knew who the woman was.” She said it partly to Carole but more to the people around her now that she was the center of attention. She took a large bite of pie. “Her name was Rita. She was a nurse or maybe going to school to be a nurse. Whoever did it just dumped her. They didn’t even bury her or anything.”
Oh, but they did, Carole thought.
“They left her in the woods to rot,” Mindy continued, looking pleased with herself. “But she must have stayed frozen a long time. I heard she wasn’t in that bad shape when they found her except for her face. Ugh.”
From the corner of her eye, Carole could see Eddie struggling with Naomi, as if he were trying to hold her back. Hector nudged her. “I’ve got the rest,” he said. “If you’re interested.”
“The rest of what?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
He led her behind the bar and knelt down. She got down on her knees beside him. “The others,” he whispered. “The one on the menu was part of a series.” He was so proud of himself. “I did a little freelance police work I never told you about.” He laid the photographs on the floor, side by side in front of Carole. She leaned over to look. Her stomach heaved at the sight of Rita’s calf and ankle, the small ankle bracelet still intact over flesh that appeared mottled and waxy. She sought out the only benign photo on the floor, the one that showed the larger scene. In it, Rita’s body was barely visible in deep grass, surrounded by shrubs and trees newly in leaf. In all the times she’d pictured this scene, she’d never imagined it would be so serene and lush.
“There you are, Hector.” The voice made her jump. She looked up and saw two grinning faces staring down at them. A man and a woman, both strangers to Carole. She gathered up the pictures so they could not be seen. Hector rose and spoke to the two people. There was laughter. He tapped her on the shoulder and said he would be right back. She used the moment to slip the photos into a wrinkled manila envelope from the box and stood to see what Eddie and Naom
i were doing. They were still at their table, arguing now. Naomi was drunk and becoming belligerent. Eddie seemed to be grabbing for her, trying to keep her from getting up. Rachel was no longer at the table. The Times Argus article still sat where Victor had left it on the bar. Carole swept it up and headed for the door.
Chapter Nineteen
But they did. Had she said it aloud? Had Victor and Mindy heard her say it? Please, no. She tried to remember if there’d been any indication on Mindy’s face that she’d heard the words. And then the vomiting. That was Mindy in the ladies’ room, Mindy who stood there listening and then bolted, probably blabbing to Victor, how the proprietor was ralphing in the head.
As she drove, Carole rolled down the window and got just a whiff of the thaw. It was still snowing a bit, big, soft spring snowflakes, lifting and hovering, exploding wetly on the windshield. The flakes plopped and dribbled down until the whole glass was awash in rivulets.
Oh, they did. They had buried her, or at least tried. They hadn’t just gone off and left her like Mindy said. Halfway up East Hill, after the Doyle farm, where there were no more houses, she pulled to the side of the road. The manila envelope lay on the seat beside her. She reached into it and drew out the article. Victor had only read from the cutline and paraphrased the content. Her hands trembled as she read.
STOWE—The remains of an unidentified woman were found in a wooded area off Mountain Road in this wealthy tourist community on Wednesday.
Lamoille County Sheriff Russell Reed made the grim announcement about 6 P.M. “The investigation into the manner and cause of death indicates that the woman was approximately thirty years of age and died of strangulation,” he said. “Efforts are being made to establish her identity and the date of death.”
The remains were found by Brad Wendel, a surveyor for Hiram Corporation in Stowe, owners of the land on which the remains were found. He was alerted to the remains by his dog.