Strawgirl

by Abigail Padgett

  Bo was already pulling on the slightly rumpled navy designer slacks she'd worn the day before. They'd cost as much as a place setting of sterling, but their attractive cut made her feel thin. With the fresh cream-colored turtleneck in her carry-on bag she'd look like a Campfire Girl on her way to earning a badge in sailboat maintenance. Bo wished she had a little silk teddy or at least something more lascivious than a turtleneck in which to open the motel room door. The thought spun out lazily, even sneakily, but Bo caught it before it drifted into unconsciousness. A silk teddy? She didn't even own a silk teddy!

  "I'll be dressed in a minute," she mentioned tersely.

  "Of course." LaMarche's tone suggested that he had nothing else in mind.

  In the bathroom Bo grimaced at herself through toothpaste foam. Seductiveness at 5:00 A.M. wasn't her métier. The pea green eyes looking back from an ill-lit mirror didn't seem manicky. They merely looked asleep. But who knew? An inappropriate sexuality could creep up unnoticed at any time. And the lithium would just about have worn off completely by now. A friendly Edwardian doctor might be transformed, if only briefly, into an object of epic desire.

  Deftly outlining her eyes in a color identified by its manufacturer as "Persian Smoke," Bo forced herself to address the issue of why she'd called Andrew LaMarche in the first place. Pulled him away from his conference in New York with a plea for help to which she knew perfectly well he'd respond. She didn't really need his help. One call to the local authorities would bring all the backup she needed to retrieve Hannah Franer from a nest of French-speaking weirdos. Except she hadn't wanted to do it that way. She'd wanted to break through the barrier surrounding the cult, find out something about it. She'd wanted to test whether her own grasp of the situation might be useful in determining the fate of Hannah Franer, rather than subjecting the child without thought to a set of rules already in place. Madge Aldenhoven would not approve of such pointless curiosity. But Andrew LaMarche would. He was a colleague on the case, conveniently in the neighborhood. Since he spoke French it made sense to enlist his involvement. Perfect sense.

  The ghost of a silk teddy, Bo decided, was just a mental remnant. Maybe something she'd been dreaming. Quite likely some best-forgotten vignette from a past in which every manic episode involved at least one fascinating and quickly discarded new lover. It could have nothing to do with Andrew LaMarche. Bo was almost certain she wasn't getting manic again, and besides, she actually liked the man. And a cardinal rule of survival involved separating the likable ones from the merely desirable ones. A comfortable, tidy boundary.

  "I'm glad you called, Bo," he said when she stepped outside. "I do have an unusual interest in this case, and the conference was really quite boring. Now, tell me what's going on."

  In khakis and a thickly handknit Aran sweater over a dress shirt, Andrew LaMarche looked somewhat out of place in the chilly Adirondack dawn. A little beamish, like a city kid on a camp-out. Bo couldn't help laughing when he helped her into a Lincoln town car with plush seats and tinted glass.

  "The only thing the rental agency had left," he sighed.

  "I want you to see this place, this cult hideout as Madge put it," Bo began. "Everybody speaks French, or at least pretends not to speak English. It's not far, and did you mention coffee?"

  She knew she'd be incoherent until molecules of caffeine joined the sluggish red soup in her veins. Conversation prior to 10:00 A.M. without that chemical boost had traditionally proven futile.

  In minutes LaMarche had guided the enormous car out of town and over the dirt road to a spot at the edge of Night Heron Lake. The lodge boathouses hugged the shore ten yards from the car.

  "Look," LaMarche urged, pointing.

  Bo saw nothing but a red eft salamander strolling thoughtfully over a licheny log. The creature seemed almost human in an orange, lizardy sort of way. Bo had been introduced to the diaries of Samuel Pepys by an English professor with the same neckless body and pencil-thin arms.

  "I'm going to lecture you on Charles the Second if you don't produce that coffee," she threatened. "Look at what?"

  LaMarche pointed to a row of canoes nuzzling the shore. Bo could not remember seeing the man smile this broadly. He must, she realized with a sinking certainty of what would come next, be remembering those childhood summers with Uncle Gus in Louisiana's bayous.

  "An English king not known for his love of nature?How about breakfast on the water?" He fulfilled her premonition, already out of the car. "Your Quebecers won't be up for another hour, anyway."

  Bo could not bring herself to explain the extent to which the idea of coffee in a canoe at dawn sounded like hell on earth. "Sure," she muttered as the salamander vanished behind a budding silver maple. It was the least she could do, after dragging him away from New York City.

  Settled backward in the canoe's forward seat, Bo breathed coffee-scented steam from the thermos top handed her by Andrew LaMarche. The coffee was excellent. She might actually live.

  "I have no idea yet what this cult does, what it's about," she began as LaMarche expertly paddled the aluminum craft over glassine water. In the weak light, drifting mists turned briefly gold and then disappeared. Bo noticed that she was whispering. "But they all speak French, or pretend to," she continued. "I got nowhere."

  LaMarche, making no sound as he arced the dripping paddle back and forth across the canoe, watched her with an attitude at once ambivalent and bemused. The look had nothing to do with cults. "You're cold," he observed.

  Allowing the canoe to drift near the shore of a small island still shrouded in mist, he placed the paddle on the floorboards and pulled off his sweater. Leaning forward on his knees he handed the sweater to Bo, and then leaned back. The sun gilding the eastern shoreline revealed a thoughtful smile beneath his trim mustache. He appeared to have made a decision. Bo was ninety-seven percent certain she knew what that decision was.

  "Thanks," she responded, holding the coffee between her feet while struggling into the sweater. Oh well, why not? Their friendship would, of course, be lost. But so what? He was quite attractive in a starchy sort of way. He was going to make a pass at her. She was going to respond as any healthy, experienced woman who hadn't had a lover in two years would respond. Bo eyed the rough floorboards of the canoe and considered logistics. From a paper bag beneath his seat Andrew LaMarche extracted a sesame bagel.

  "This probably isn't an appropriate moment, Bo," he began, "but there's something I want to say."

  He was, she realized, going to hand her the bagel. She remembered his kindness last year when she'd been really manic, before the lithium kicked in. He'd been there for her as no one else had ever been. It wasn't good to think about that. It would be lost, that memory, after their relationship became merely sexual. It occurred to Bo that she might want to keep that memory more than she wanted a sexual fling.

  "This isn't how I imagined it would be," he said, extending the bagel to her, "but, Bo, I want to marry you."

  The words were spoken softly, with a hint of self-conscious laughter visible in the gray eyes.

  "You what?" Bo made a grab for the bagel as if the crusty circle of dough would explain everything. The movement threw her off center and he instinctively reached to help. In the half second as the canoe tipped irredeemably to its port side, Bo looked straight into his eyes and saw that he wasn't really joking. After that it was hard to see at all. She was swimming in ice water wearing a drenched Aran sweater that seemed to weigh three hundred pounds. Fortunately they were only about fifteen feet from the island.

  "I've got the canoe," LaMarche yelled. "Just wade to shore and I'll pull it in."

  Bo let her feet fall numbly through the water and discovered the lake's bottom. Her eyes and teeth flamed with cold as a dripping and slightly blue Andrew LaMarche jerked the inverted vessel onto land and turned it over.

  "You're crazy," Bo panted, jumping up and down on the rocky shore to maintain what remained of her circulation, "and I don't use that term lightly."


  "No, I've just found the woman I love madly and want to marry." Andrew LaMarche grinned with lavender lips. "But right now I want to avoid death from exposure." Stripping off his shirt and pants he put his wet shoes back on and did a series of jumping jacks on the rocks. Bo was amazed to see lowcut jockey shorts in revealing black silk. The garment seemed completely out of character and suggested a side to Andrew LaMarche for which the sacrifice of their friendship might fade by comparison.

  "Quit staring and wring out that sweater," he laughed. "Then put it back on and keep jumping. The wool will insulate your body heat even when it's wet. As soon as I dry out we'll head back to the lodge. It's not far."

  Bo wrung out his clothes and then the sweater, put it back on and kept jumping. In a few moments her torso beneath the wool actually felt warm, and she buried her aching knuckles against her stomach. An immense confusion seemed to convulse there, making her heart lurch uncomfortably.

  "I did have something just short of marriage in mind," Bo said through chattering teeth as LaMarche, clothed again, paddled strenuously back to shore.

  "You can see how impossible that would be in a canoe," he replied with a straight face. "Life-threatening. Comparatively, marriage is a most attractive option."

  "Not an option for me. I've already done that." The words were leaden, weighted with too much history and the surprising eruption of desire. She felt as though she were suddenly in a drama for which the script had not been written. Andrew LaMarche was not playing by the rules.

  "We'll see," he mused, aiming the canoe for its berth beside the others. "I intend to court you relentlessly."

  Bo wondered if the term "court" had been used in this context since the Spanish-American War. "Just get me out of this damn lake before my feet have to be amputated," she suggested. The abrasive tone, she hoped, would mask the welter of confusion disturbing her composure.

  In minutes the canoe scraped shore.

  Napoleon Pigeon was filling a bird feeder on the lawn as they parked the car and damply got out.

  "Monsieur Pigeon," Bo introduced the men, "this is Dr. LaMarche."

  After what seemed to be an uproarious conversation in French, the berobed giant led them to the lodge, threw new logs on a smoldering fire, and then left them there as he hurried up the staircase. Astonishingly light on his feet, he held his homespun robe like a girl. In minutes he returned accompanied by a lean Indian woman with cropped white hair and black eyes that could, Bo thought, hypnotize snakes. Ever the gentleman, LaMarche rose to meet her, leaving a damp spot on the hearth where he'd been warming himself next to Bo. The Indian woman stifled a smile with visible effort.

  After fifteen minutes of animated French conversation in which Bo heard Hannah Franer's name mentioned several times, LaMarche turned and pulled her to her feet.

  "I'd like to introduce Ms. Bradley of San Diego's Child Protective Services," he intoned. "Bo, this is Dr. Eva Blindhawk Broussard, founder and director of the Shadow Mountain Seekers, a group whose members either have seen or expect to see visitors from another dimension."

  Bo extended her hand to a firm, welcoming grip, and waited.

  "Will you help us?" the woman asked directly, and in English. Her eyes bored into Bo's as if searching for something.

  Bo knew exactly what the look meant, and returned it. A look of baseline assessment that would miss nothing. A searching out of the little twitches that hide lies, mask deception. Bo could do it naturally. Eva Broussard had learned. The two women stared, blue eyes to black, as a log tumbled in the fire and sent up a spray of sparks. Bo had expected the leader of this odd assemblage to be a marginal character, a little innocent, a little delusional. Instead she found fierce intelligence and a surprising openness.

  "I don't know if I can help you; my job is to help Hannah Franer. But I'd like to know about her life, her world"—she glanced briefly at LaMarche—"before I make decisions that will affect her. Will you take me to her?"

  The answer was an affirmation of their mutual assessment. "Yes," Eva Broussard replied. "Come with me."

  A second unusual happening in one day, Bo mused. The woman had trusted her immediately. Now if Andrew LaMarche would just come to terms with a dawning twenty-first century . . .

  "I'm going to phone my service," LaMarche said. "You go on and check on Hannah."

  Following Eva Broussard up the maple stairs, Bo was not surprised at the woman's next remark.

  "You thought I'd be insane, didn't you?"

  "Yes," Bo answered, "but you're not."

  "And you'd know, wouldn't you?"

  "Yes. I have a bipolar disorder, and—"

  "And so you don't miss much." Eva Broussard turned and smiled. "A remarkable quality, enviable in many ways. Unusual in a social worker. How did you fall into this job, Bo Bradley?"

  "It's a long story," Bo said as they entered a large bedroom in which the little girl still slept on a cot beside a twig bed.

  Eva Broussard's black eyes twinkled. "I'd love to hear it later." She laughed softly. "And here's your quarry."

  Bo felt as if she'd known the woman for a lifetime, as if she'd found a friend.

  For a while both of them gazed at the sleeping child whose straight blonde hair fanned across the pillow. A dusting of freckles punctuated her cheeks flushed with sleep, and her perfectly arched eyebrows were the color of dust. A huge nightgown fell off one shoulder, revealing a bony frame like the mother's. Pinned to the gown's bodice were three odd strips of woven straw with purple beads attached. Bo made a note to ask about them as Eva grabbed some dry clothes for Bo from a bureau.

  "Just change in there," she gestured to a hall bathroom. "Then come downstairs and we'll fill you with hot coffee while we talk."

  Minutes later Bo descended the stairs in a warm caftan and wool slipper socks, only to confront LaMarche and the Indian woman looking somberly upward, waiting for her.

  "What is it?" she asked from the landing.

  LaMarche held out his hand. "Bonnie Franer committed suicide last night, Bo. The bastard has killed two people now."

  From above a small voice rose, panicky and shrill. "Eva! Where are you, Eva? I'm scaaared!"

  "These people have come from California," Eva explained to Hannah Franer, who was huddled cross-legged on the twig bed. "This is Dr. LaMarche, who tried to help Samantha, and this is Ms. Bradley, who wants to help you."

  The child's wide-set hazel eyes watched as if from a great distance. The burden of pain lay in them, and a defeated disinterest.

  "Oh, Hannah," Bo sighed, joining the child on the bed, "it won't stay this way! Things will get better, they really will ..."

  Eva Broussard shot Bo a look. "This is a terrible time for you, Hannah," she began, "and I'm afraid another terrible thing has happened."

  Hannah traced patterns with her knuckles on the sheet. "Where's Paul?" she asked softly. "I want Paul and mama. I want to go home." The round, pale eyes glared at Bo accusingly. "Where's Paul and my mom?"

  The pleasant, old-fashioned room seemed suddenly cut off from the rest of the lodge, the rest of the world. Bo could almost smell the child's rage and despair. A musty, metallic odor warning of danger. Bo glanced at Eva Broussard for confirmation, and saw the grim nod. Hannah Franer had inherited her mother's fragility. Merely quiet and somber under normal stress loads, the child might break completely now. Bo felt a desperate sense of time running out.

  "Paul is okay, but he's been taken back to California," she told the child very slowly. "The police think he's the one who hurt Samantha ..."

  "Nooo!" Hannah breathed, trembling. "Paul didn't hurt Sammi. It was Goody. Goody hurt her. She said Goody hurt her," she pointed toward her crotch beneath the baggy nightgown, "down there."

  Bo felt her own pulse quickening. "Hannah, who is Goody?"

  "Sammi said mama would die if she told. That Goody would kill mama." The hazel eyes were dry and widening in fear. "Where's mama? Sammi told me! He got Sammi dead because she told! Did he get mama? Is mama de
ad, too? Where's my mama?" The child sat upright among the bedcovers, a tense, narrow sculpture.

  "Your mother is in California," Eva Broussard hedged, her bronze eyelids lowered as if she were deep in thought.

  "She'd dead, isn't she?" Hannah addressed the question to Eva with a directness that made Bo wince. "She's in California, but she's dead. Goody got her and he killed her!"

  "Goody didn't kill your mother," Eva said slowly and clearly. And then, because everything that might happen later would hinge on Hannah's trust of her, Eva Broussard did not lie. "But yes, your mother, too, has died."

  Bo, sitting on the bed only inches from Hannah, felt the girl's spirit turn away. Turn inward toward some flat, cool landscape where nothing moved, where there was no sound, where nothing hurt. Like a puppet slack on its strings the child curled upon herself and toppled sideways on the bed. A dark stain spread beneath her hips as she lost control of her bladder. The hazel eyes fell vacant even as Bo watched, as if the person inside simply slid down, and away.

  "Mon Dieu," Andrew LaMarche uttered raggedly from the doorway. "She's gone into shock!"

  "Something like that," the Indian woman replied, gathering the girl in her arms and striding toward the hall bathroom. "Bo, I'll need your help."

  Deftly placing Hannah in the deep old bathtub, Eva turned on the water and adjusted its temperature to a tepid level that would cool the child's skin and gently induce a faster heart rate.

  "Hold her up while I get the gown off," Broussard directed.

  Bo could feel muscle tone over the small bones. Hannah was still with them.

  "Bo and I are going to massage you with these washcloths," Eva Broussard explained. "It will help you get some of the hurt out. Let some of the hurt out, Hannah. The water is here to take it away."

  Bo watched as Eva kneaded Hannah's pale flesh with a rough cloth, and did the same. Gradually the child's skin turned pink, but the hazel eyes remained empty.