by Sofie Kelly
She smiled. It just didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “I do, Dad.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything else but I could see the pain this was causing him in the tight line of his jaw and the rigid set of his shoulders.
Pearl took a sip from her coffee and set it down again. Roma had picked up her own cup. She toyed with it, shot me a sideways glance and then, finally, looked at her mother again. “Do you have any idea why Tom might have ended up buried out at Wisteria Hill?” she asked.
Pearl rubbed the back of her narrow, gold wedding ring with her thumb. “I’ve been thinking about that since you called,” she said. “The only thing I can tell you is that Tom was a day laborer at Ingstrom’s for a little while. I don’t think they were working at Wisteria Hill. I think they were out at the old boat club, but I don’t remember for sure. And then Tom did something, or got in an argument with someone and they let him go. So he wasn’t working when he disappeared.”
She looked away for a moment. “I mean, when he died,” she added softly.
Roma stared at the floor, her lips pressed tightly together. Finally she lifted her head. “Why…why did you accept that he’d just run off so easily? Weren’t you suspicious, even a little bit?”
Pearl took a breath and let it out. She was still fingering her wedding ring. “I probably should have been,” she said. “But Tom was the kind of person who didn’t deal with things head on. He passed the blame or he did something sneaky, underhanded.” Roma was about to say something but Pearl lifted a hand to stop her. “It wasn’t all his fault, either. I want you to know that.”
Neil still had his hand over hers. She gave it a squeeze. “I told you that Tom played baseball,” she said.
Roma nodded. “They were state champions his senior year.”
“That’s right,” Pearl said. “Your…Tom was good. Very, very good. And in those days baseball and hockey were a big deal around here. He’d started playing when he was about six. By the time he was twelve he was a summer league star. There’s no doubt it went to his head.”
“The high school team had never even been to the regional championships,” Neil said. “Let alone state. Tom could belt a pitch into the parking lot.”
“As long as he was hitting, no one cared about how he was behaving or whether he passed algebra,” Pearl added.
“So if he was that good, why wasn’t he playing professional baseball?” Roma asked. She took another drink of her coffee.
“He was invited to spring training by the Milwaukee Braves,” Pearl said. She looked at Neil beside her on the sofa. He smiled, but like Roma’s smile it didn’t go all the way to his eyes. “He only lasted a week and a half.”
“He had the ability,” Neil said with a shrug. “There’s no doubt about that. He just didn’t have the discipline to play pro ball.”
Roma propped an elbow on the arm of the leather chair and leaned the side of her head against her hand. “Why did you marry him?” she asked. “Was it because of me?”
Pearl looked at me. “Kathleen, Neil and I are in the spare bedroom. There’s a small box on the bed, tied with silver ribbon. Would you get it for me please?”
“Of course,” I said. I stood up, gave Roma what I hoped was an encouraging smile, and went down the hall to the room she used as a guest bedroom.
The box looked like an old stationery box, the kind that a set of pretty sheets of writing paper and matching envelopes had come in. It was tied with a wide silver ribbon, more to keep the lid on and the battered box together, than for decoration. I took it back to Pearl.
“Thank you Kathleen,” she said. I sat back down and she untied the satin bow and lifted the top of the box. She took out two documents and handed them to Roma. One was Roma’s birth certificate. The other was Tom and Pearl’s marriage license.
“I know my birthday,” Roma said.
“I know you do,” Pearl said. She sat back a bit and moved just a bit closer to Neil.
Roma studied the marriage license. Then she held it out to me. I did the math in my head. “Nine months and two days,” I said.
Pearl nodded. “There was no shotgun at our wedding, Roma. And you weren’t there either, my dear.”
I handed the document back to Roma. Her gaze went from it to her mother and back again. “I thought that…” She let the end of the sentence trail away.
Pearl reached across the space between them and patted her daughter’s knee. “I’m sorry, sweetie. If I’d realized, I would have shown you that years ago.”
“So why did you marry him if you didn’t have to?” Roma asked. She seemed more relaxed now.
Pearl leaned all the way back against the sofa cushions. “I was the good girl. Tom was the bad boy.” She and Neil exchanged warm smiles and their obvious connection seemed to somehow chase away a lot of the tension in the room.
“I got straight A’s and sang in the church choir,” Pearl said. “He was handsome, charming and just a little reckless. It was exciting at first.” Her smile faded. “Then it got old.”
Roma leaned forward, both elbows on her knees, chin propped on her laced fingers. “Why did you stay?”
“I didn’t,” Pearl said. “The night before Tom disappeared, I left him.”
20
“You left him? Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Roma asked. There was no anger in her voice, just curiosity.
Pearl folded her hands in her lap. “Because he was your father. I didn’t want you to ever believe his mistakes were somehow part of who you were.”
“But where did you—where did we go? I don’t remember being somewhere else and then coming back to Mayville.”
Something changed in Pearl’s expression. Her eyes were suddenly wary. “We didn’t really go…far,” she said.
I knew what she wasn’t saying. “The Ladies Knitting Circle,” I said.
Pearl turned her gaze to me and her cheeks were tinged with pink. “I’m not sure what you mean, Kathleen,” she said slowly. Roma was looking at me as well.
“I know that The Ladies Knitting Circle didn’t actually knit very much. I know that Anna Henderson and a few of her friends were helping women in”—I hesitated, looking for just the right word—“difficult circumstances.”
“You mean like some kind of underground railroad?” Roma said.
I nodded. “Yes.”
She looked at her mother for confirmation and after a moment’s hesitation Pearl nodded as well. “I was going to take you and disappear, with some help from Anna and the others.”
“Pearl, who told you about The Ladies Knitting Circle?” I asked.
She frowned. “You know, I don’t remember. I’m sorry, Kathleen. That’s a long time ago.”
“Why then?” Roma asked. “What happened? What changed for you?”
Pearl shrugged. “I don’t have an answer for that, either. So much happened in such a short amount of time, there are some blank spots in my memory. I can tell you that we were about to be kicked out of the little house we were renting. We were behind in the rent and Tom hadn’t kept up the place. He was in a dark, ugly mood that night. He decided he was going to drive over to Red Wing to buy beer. I knew he’d be gone for a couple of hours. I knew Anna would take us in. I grabbed some things and walked over there with you.”
She twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “We hid out at Wisteria Hill for close to a week. I thought Tom would look for us—you for certain—but he’d disappeared. They found his car abandoned out by the highway and it looked like he’d decided to hitchhike.”
“You didn’t wonder why he didn’t come back?” Roma asked.
“No,” Pearl said with a shake of her head. “It sounds silly, doesn’t it? I didn’t want…I didn’t want to run away, change our names, and always be looking over my shoulder. With Tom gone, I felt I could stay. Every day that went by, life got better. Eventually I saved enough money to divorce him and start again.” She smiled once more at Neil.
“Someone found Tom’s c
ar abandoned out on the highway?” I asked.
Pearl nodded. “Sam Ingstrom and another man on their way to a landscaping job found it early the next morning. You know where the road turns off to Wild Rose Bluff? It looked like Tom had run out of gas.”
All roads may have led back to Wisteria Hill, but Sam Ingstrom seemed to be doing the driving, so to speak.
Pearl’s expression turned thoughtful. “I’ve been thinking about those days since Tom’s body was found and I think now that he had to have died that night after I left. And before you ask, there’s no way Anna or any of those women had anything to do with it.”
I had to agree with her. I’d seen pictures of Anna Henderson and of Rebecca’s mother, Ellen. They’d both been tiny women. How could they have killed Tom out behind the house? Based on what I’d heard about Wisteria Hill in those days, there was always someone around and it wasn’t like he would have obligingly bent down so they could hit him over the head.
Even if he’d been killed elsewhere, there was no way Anna and Ellen could have carried Thomas Karlsson’s body across the field behind the carriage house, up onto the ridge, then dug a hole and buried it. Why would they? And even if they could have come up with a way to move the body of a man twice their size, someone would have seen something or heard something.
Pearl and Roma had been hiding at Wisteria Hill. Carson was coming and going. Everett was there. Rebecca was at the house a lot with her brothers. It wasn’t like the women could have killed Tom—for whatever reason—rolled him up in a rug and carried it on their shoulders across the yard without anyone noticing.
“Do you have any idea what might have happened?” I asked.
“I truly don’t know,” she said. “I mentioned that Tom worked for Idris Blackthorne for a while and I can tell you that those woods behind Wisteria Hill were a short cut to a hunting camp Idris had. And there was another camp nearby, more of a shack really, where some of the men in town used to go to play poker and get drunk. The fact that it was so close to Idris’s place made it very convenient. Tom was pretty much a regular at those games for a time, until he got caught cheating.”
“So…so he could have gone to see Idris Blackthorne or gone to the poker game, ended up in some kind of…altercation with someone and…” Roma didn’t finish the sentence.
“I think there’s a good chance the remains being found where they were has more to do with the people Tom was associating with and probably nothing to do with Wisteria Hill, other than it was a convenient spot for someone to dispose of a body,” Neil said.
Pearl nodded in agreement. “I’m sorry all of this happened, Roma. And I’m sorry that I lied to you about Tom. I didn’t think there was any harm in letting you think well of him. And for what it’s worth, I never saw him as happy as he was the day you were born. Not before. Not after. Not even when they won the state championship.”
Roma swallowed and nodded. “Thank you,” she said, her voice a little raspy with emotion.
Pearl smiled at her daughter. Then she looked at me. “How did you know about The Ladies Knitting Circle, Kathleen?” she asked.
“You know that we’re celebrating the centennial of the library this June?” I said. Neil had gotten up for the coffeepot and I held up my cup for a refill, smiling my thanks at him.
“Roma told me.”
“As part of the celebrations we’re planning some displays about the history of the town as it ties in to the history of the library. I found a reference to The Ladies Knitting Circle in an old journal and one of my staff—Mary Lowe—told me more about the women.”
“How is Mary?” Pearl asked. “I haven’t seen her in such a long time.”
“Still kickboxing, still making the best pie I’ve ever eaten,” I said.
“I’d love to see her,” she said.
“She’s working tomorrow at the library.”
“I’ll try to make it in to say hello.” Pearl took the fresh cup of coffee Neil handed her as I put cream and sugar in my own.
“There are so many people I want to see while I’m here,” she said.
Roma smiled. “You can stay as long as you want to.”
“Maybe an extra day or two?” Pearl said, looking at her husband.
“Fine with me. I’m sure there are people who would like to see you too.” Then he gave Pearl a sly sideways glance and arched an eyebrow at her. “His worship, the mayor, for example. You know, if you hadn’t married me, you could be the first lady of Mayville Heights now.”
Roma and I exchanged confused looks and Pearl blushed.
“First lady of Mayville Heights?” Roma said. “Do you mean Mom and…and Sam Ingstrom?”
“He’s just being silly,” Pearl said, giving him a poke with her elbow.
“No I’m not,” Neil retorted. “Sam Ingstrom had a crush on you.” He looked over at Roma and me. “From what I heard, whenever Pearl was around Sam pretty much lost his senses.”
Pearl made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Sammy and I were just friends. He was younger and he wasn’t carrying any torch for me, no matter what Mr. Romance Novel here says.”
I laughed along with everyone else, but I was remembering that photo of Sam looking at Pearl and her friends. Looking at Pearl with longing written all over his face.
Pearl gestured at me then. “Kathleen, there is one thing I remember from the night I left Tom. Oddly enough, Sam was there, at Wisteria Hill.”
I frowned at her. “He was?”
She nodded. “He’d driven out with a load of old railway ties they’d salvaged from some job for Carson, and Sam stepped on a nail while he was taking them off the truck. It went right through his boot into his foot. Ellen was bandaging it when Roma and I got there. The doctor’s office was closed and well, she was as good as any doctor.”
I’d noticed that Sam had an almost imperceptible limp when he’d been on his feet a lot. Maybe it was because of that old injury.
I wondered if Maggie was right. Had Sam lied about knowing Pearl because he was embarrassed about a teenage crush? Or could he have had something to do with Thomas Karlsson’s death?
No. That didn’t make any more sense than thinking Anna had killed Tom and buried him at the edge of the tree line. Working for his father’s landscaping company would have given Sam lots of good places to hide the body if he’d had anything to do with Tom’s death. It made no sense for him to take a body to Wisteria Hill. What would he have done? Hidden it in among the old railway ties? It wasn’t as though he would have been able to walk through the yard unnoticed carrying a dead body.
It seemed lame, but Maggie’s explanation was probably the right one. And given the amount of time that had passed, maybe no one would ever figure out how Thomas Karlsson had ended up buried at Wisteria Hill.
The doorbell rang. Roma got up to answer it and I leaned sideways in my chair to see who it was. When she opened the door Marcus Gordon was standing on the stoop.
21
“Hello, Roma,” I heard him say. “I’m sorry for stopping by at this time of night, but I was hoping to talk to your mother. She’s here?”
I knew the tone of voice and the body language well. Marcus was in cop mode. I stood up and walked over to the door before Roma could invite him in.
“Hi Marcus,” I said. “It’s kind of late. Do you have to talk to Pearl tonight? She only got here a little while ago.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Roma was frowning at me.
“Kathleen,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I was invited,” I said, stressing the word invited just a little. “For dinner.”
We stood there for a long moment doing the same kind of stare-down thing I sometimes did with the cats. Of course with them I was always the first to look away. This time, here, it was Marcus. I felt a tiny surge of very childish satisfaction when he did.
“So could you wait until the morning to talk to Pearl?” I asked.
He exhaled slowly a
nd for a second I almost thought I saw a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “I guess I could.” He pulled one of his cards out of his pocket and gave it to Roma. “Would you call me first thing and we’ll set up a time”—his eyes darted to me for a moment—“that works for everyone.”
“I will,” Roma said.
“I really should get going myself,” I said. I glanced at Marcus still in the doorway. “Could you wait and walk me to my truck?” I asked. “It’s dark.”
The truck was parked in Roma’s driveway only a few steps away from the door, but Marcus didn’t so much as turn his head in that direction. “It is dark,” he agreed. “I’ll just wait out here for you. Take your time.” To Roma he said, “I’ll speak to you in the morning.” He moved down the steps to the bottom and leaned against the newel post, crossing his arms over his chest and one incredibly long, strong leg over the other.
Roma closed the door and turned to me. “What was all that between you two?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just that it’s late and your mom must be tired. Why not let her get some sleep? This has to be hard on her.” Pearl was still on the sofa, turned toward Neil, talking to him in a low voice.
“You’re right,” Roma said, tipping her head back to stretch her neck. “I should have thought of that.”
I reached over and gave her arm a pat. “It’s been hard on you too.”
She looked at the little cardboard rectangle in her hand and then put it in her pocket. “I’ll call Marcus in the morning and we’ll take care of it first thing.”
“I think you should…uh…take a lawyer with you.”
“A lawyer?” She made a face and shook her head. “Why would we need a lawyer? Marcus is my friend. I thought you thought of him as a friend too.”
“This is still a police investigation and Marcus has to do his job. Call Peter Lundgren. Call somebody. Please, Roma.” I waited.
“All right,” she finally said.
I walked back to Pearl and Neil. “It was so good to see you,” I said.