“I thought for sure somebody died,” F.L. said, and then he slammed the receiver down like an exclamation point.
It was eleven-thirty-five when Olivia dialed the number for F. M Jones; by then she’d already decided this was to be her last call of the evening. The rest of F could wait until tomorrow morning. A woman answered with a hello somewhat like the croaking of a frog.
“Is this F. M. Jones?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“My name is Olivia Westerly Doyle, and I’m trying to find—”
“Olivia Westerly? You used to work for Southern Atlantic Telephone?”
“Why, yes, I did, but that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Well, I’ll be,” F.M. said. “Frances Margaret here. Accounting, remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” Olivia replied, even though she really didn’t. She simply thought it would help to move the conversation along. “What I’m actually looking for—”
“You still live in Richmond?” Frances Margaret asked.
“No, when I married Charlie, I moved here to Wyattsville—”
“So you got married, huh? I never would’ve thought it. I figured for sure—”
“I’m calling because I’m trying to locate a woman named Anita Jones,” Olivia interrupted. “Do you know anyone by that name?”
“Is this for a company reunion?”
“No, it’s not,” Olivia replied impatiently. “I’m trying to help a little girl who’s looking for her aunt, a woman named Anita Jones or maybe Anita Walker.”
“I can’t recall anybody named Anita working for Southern Atlantic.”
“Not just at the company,” Olivia said, “anywhere. Do you know an Anita Jones?”
“Can’t say as I do. I used to know a Bartholomew, but he didn’t work at Southern Atlantic. Him and his wife rented the upstairs flat in my sister’s house.”
Growing desperate for even the smallest clue, Olivia asked, “Did Bartholomew or his wife have a sister named Anita?”
“I don’t think he did, but his missus might’ve. There was a bossy sort who visited every so often. That one was nothing like Bartholomew’s missus. She was a sweet little thing.”
“What was Bartholomew’s wife’s name?”
“Can’t say that I recall,” Frances Margaret said. “Shoot, that was nearly twenty years ago, when I lived in Norfolk.”
“Did Bartholomew and his wife come from Norfolk?”
“Hmm, not to my recollection. He was a Navy man, but I think she came from someplace a ways off. I recall her talking about how, as a kid, she loved swimming in the bay.”
Olivia’s heart jumped. “Do you know what bay?”
“Surely you’re kidding me!” Frances Margaret cackled. “What makes you think I’d know a thing like that?’
“Well, I just thought maybe…” Olivia’s hope fell as rapidly as it had soared.
“You sure there ain’t no Southern Atlantic reunion?” Frances Margaret asked again.
Olivia assured her there wasn’t. “If you think of anything else, can you give me a call back?” She rattled off her telephone number.
“Yeah, okay,” Frances Margaret said and hung up, obviously disappointed about the fact that there was no reunion.
Once it was too late to continue calling, Olivia sat in the silk chair and began thinking back through the conversations of the evening. Of all the calls she’d made, only Frances Margaret Jones offered even the slightest bit of information, and even that was pitiful little. Anita was not going to be as easy to find as she’d originally thought. Wyattsville was not a sprawling metropolis and given enough time a person could find something as small as a lost earring, but now there was not only the chance that Anita’s last name was neither Jones or Walker there was also a chance that she didn’t come from or live in Wyattsville.
Frances Margaret said Bartholomew’s wife had swam in the bay, but there were dozens of bays dotting the east coast shoreline and hundreds of towns—maybe even thousands—along the way. Then there was also the possibility that the bay she swam in wasn’t on the east coast. When Olivia began to consider the number of bays in California alone, the count soared to unimaginable heights.
Without glancing at the grandfather clock that had hours earlier chimed twelve, Olivia picked up the telephone and dialed Clara’s number.
The telephone rang seven times before a sleepy voice asked, “What now?”
“I think Anita may not be from around here!”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning! Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
“It’s two o’clock?” Olivia echoed.
“Yeah,” Clara replied grumpily, “and I’m trying to get some sleep.”
“Oh. Well, this seemed important, so I figured you’d want to know right away.”
“It can wait until tomorrow,” Clara repeated. Then she hung up.
But once you’re awake and thinking about a problem, sleep is not easy to come by. After almost twenty minutes of tossing and turning, Clara called back.
“We’re gonna need a new plan,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. I’ll get Fred and Barbara to meet us at your place; we’ll figure out what to do.” She then suggested Olivia get some sleep and stop bothering people in the middle of the night.
After Clara hung up Olivia tried to sleep. She slipped into her coziest nightgown, plumped a pillow beneath her head, and stretched out on the sofa. Sleep was impossible. First she tossed and turned, thinking about the number of bays stretched across the country. Then she came to the conclusion that even if Anita had lived near a bay as a child, she could be living anywhere now. It was a transient world. People grew dissatisfied with one spot and moved on to the next place. All she really knew was that Anita mailed five letters from Wyattsville almost seven years ago. Although Olivia couldn’t imagine someone being unhappy in Wyattsville, the truth was Anita could have moved on. She could be anywhere now. Texas, Arizona, even Paris.
Olivia was trying to imagine the look of Anita when she heard the soft sobbing. At first it was so faint, she imagined it to be coming from someplace else—blocks away, perhaps even miles. She stilled her thoughts and listened carefully. The sound became more distinct. It was a child crying. Olivia followed the sound, and when she snapped on the bedroom light Jubilee was sitting there with a stream of tears rolling down her face. In four long strides Olivia crossed the room and took the girl in her arms.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” she said softly.
Jubilee slumped into the embrace. “I had a scary dream.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry. But it was just a dream. That’s all.”
Jubilee continued to sob, her tiny shoulders quivering and breath coming in short gasps. For several minutes Olivia held her and whispered comforting words of how a dream was nothing to be afraid of, it was just scary things picking at your imagination. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing here that can hurt you.”
When the sobbing slowed, Jubilee spoke in a small thin voice, “He’s not coming back, is he?”
“No, sweetheart, the monster isn’t coming back.”
Jubie pulled back and looked up quizzically. “What monster?”
“The monster in your dream.”
“There wasn’t no monster.”
Now it was Olivia’s turn to look baffled. “If there was no monster, what was so scary?”
“The bad place.”
“What bad place?”
“The keep-out place with yellow ribbon.”
“Oh.” Olivia’s voice was weighted with apprehension. “You mean the store where your brother was working?”
Jubilee nodded. “People who go in keep-out places get dead.”
Fumbling for words, Olivia said, “Why would you think such a thing?”
“Daddy told me so. He showed me a mine with the keep-out ribbon and said stay away from there because the roof fell down and killed a whole bunch of people.”
“
But that happened at a mine. It didn’t happen at Klaussner’s Grocery Store.”
“Daddy said it would happen to anybody what goes past the keep-out ribbon!”
“That’s nonsense.”
“No, it ain’t!” Jubilee replied indignantly. “Daddy don’t tell me nonsense!”
“I didn’t mean what your daddy said about the mine was nonsense,” Olivia clarified. “I meant it’s nonsense to think the roof of the store would fall down and kill somebody.”
“If Paul ain’t dead, then why didn’t he come back?”
“That’s something I don’t know,” Olivia answered sadly. Then she hugged the girl tighter.
After a considerable amount of time, Jubilee slipped back into sleep. Olivia never did. By morning she was bone tired and bleary-eyed. With more than a half-hour before she had to get Ethan up for school, Olivia snapped on the television and leaned back into the sofa. Her intention was to watch the news for some information on a missing girl or the unidentified holdup man, but her eyelids slowly drifted down and closed.
At ten-ten the doorbell rang and woke Olivia from a dead sleep. She stumbled to the door, still in her nightgown.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” Clara asked, but without waiting for an answer she tromped into the living room followed by seven of their neighbors.
With her flannel nightgown fluttering in the breeze as they passed by, Olivia made a feeble attempt at an apology. “I didn’t sleep well,” she mumbled, but before she could say anything more the clock chimed for the quarter hour.
“Ethan!” she shouted and darted toward his bedroom. The bed was partially made, and he was gone.
For a moment Olivia breathed a sigh of relief thinking he’d gone off to school, but then she realized Jubilee was also missing. She turned and walked back to the living room still wearing her nightgown, but now she’d added a look of puzzlement.
“I thought you were gonna get dressed,” Clara said somewhat impatiently.
“I was,” Olivia mumbled, “but I just discovered Ethan and Jubilee are both gone.” The expression on her face was a map of confusion.
“Ethan probably took the girl to school with him,” Jeanne Elizalde suggested.
“Oh, I don’t think he’d—”
Seth Porter interrupted. “See,” he said, jabbing a finger through the air, “I told you this was gonna mean trouble! Now he’s taken the kid to school, and everybody in town—”
Looking at a sheet of notebook paper he’d lifted from the end table, George Walther said, “Simmer down, Seth, Ethan Allen ain’t in school. This note says—”
“What note?” several voices replied in unison.
“This note.” George waved the sheet of paper in the air. “It was right here on the end table, and it says—”
Before he could read the note aloud, Olivia snatched it from his hands. For a few moments she stood there reading to herself and mumbling, “Oh, dear.”
When Clara insisted they’d come to help and couldn’t be of much help unless they knew what was happening, Olivia read the note aloud.
“Dear Grandma. I saw you was real tired so I figured I’d skip school and take care of Jubie so you could catch up on some sleep.”
Olivia didn’t bother to read the P.S. at the bottom saying he was gonna need an absence excuse for school.
Two to Go
They left the apartment together, Ethan Allen peddling his bicycle, Jubilee perched on the cross bar. He took the route he’d taken to school two days earlier, and just as he’d done that day he turned left onto Main Street. Halfway down the block Ethan came to a stop. They climbed off and he leaned his bicycle against the tree in back of Jubilee’s bench—the bench with a large yellow note taped to the back slats.
“Okay,” he said. “You know what to do, right?”
She nodded.
They crossed the street together, then walked five doors down to Klaussner’s Grocery. The front windows and glass door were covered with plywood boards. The only visible opening was the glass transom above the door. Bright yellow strips of crime scene tape still zigzagged across the entrance.
For a few moments Ethan stood there looking up and down the street, trying to appear nonchalant. When it seemed the coast was clear with no one coming or going along the street, he looked down at Jubilee. “Now,” he said and lifted the bottom stretch of yellow tape, motioning for her to duck under. She moved without saying a word because he’d warned against making noise.
Once they were as close as a person could be to the boarded-up door, Ethan hunched down and whispered, “Climb on.”
Jubilee threw her left leg over Ethan’s back and scooted up until she was sitting square on his shoulders. He braced himself against the rim of tile alongside the door and stood. He took a single step to the left then leaned in.
“Can you reach it?”
“I’m too far away.”
He edged half a step closer. “Now can you?”
“Almost.”
“Push on the glass.”
“I can’t reach.”
“You gotta lean forward.”
Jubilee loosened her grip on Ethan’s head and moved ever so slightly.
“You gotta let go and lean way in.”
“I’m afraid.”
“You’re not gonna fall,” Ethan assured her. “I’ve got hold of you.”
A terrified Jubilee lifted her left hand and reached toward the glass transom. Her legs were locked around Ethan’s neck and her right hand still glued to his head. “I almost got it,” she whispered.
“Use both hands, and you can push it open.”
One by one the fingers of her right hand loosened their grip; then for a moment there was no further movement.
“Go ahead, I’ve got you.”
With her knobby little knees pressed hard against the side of Ethan’s head, Jubilee thrust herself toward the transom and pushed hard. “I see it,” she said gleefully. One glance was all she needed to see the ceiling still intact. She grabbed hold of Ethan again.
“Okay to get down now?” he asked.
“Okay.”
When Ethan squatted, she let go of his head and shimmied down his back. He stood, looked down, and said, “Now you believe me?”
She nodded, then reached up and slid her hand into his. He didn’t pull away as you might expect a boy of his age to do. Although it was not Ethan’s way to be soft about such feelings, the truth was he had a certain pride in taking care of the girl. Maybe it was because she was so small, but more likely it was because she was afraid and alone.
Ethan crept toward the taped entranceway and again looked up and down the street. Several doors down a woman pushing a baby carriage walked in their direction. “Get back,” he whispered and shoved Jubilee to the darkness of the far corner. He squeezed in beside her.
The woman passed by without so much as a sideways glance. Ethan breathed a sigh of relief and waited. As soon as the street was clear of passersby, he again pulled the tape up and motioned Jubilee through. They crossed the street and sat on Jubilee’s bench. She looked back at the store with lines of sadness pulling at her face.
“Jeez, I figured you’d be happier.”
Without any change of expression, Jubilee said, “I’m happy enough.”
Ethan knew how it felt to hang on to the thoughts inside your head. You let go of the words to answer a question, but there was always more. There was the ugly stuff, the stuff that’s too painful to say.
“You got something else bothering you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I suppose.”
He waited and said nothing.
Minutes passed before she spoke again. “If Paul ain’t dead, how come he don’t come back?”
Ethan had hoped she wouldn’t ask this question. He’d hoped she was young enough and gullible enough to simply accept that if the roof of the store was intact her brother would sooner or later reappear. She wasn’t.
“Maybe Paul had to run off, so he wo
uldn’t get caught,” he finally said.
Jubilee’s expression was one of bewilderment. “Get caught for what?”
Ethan turned to her. “Look, Jubie, I know you didn’t have nothing to do with it, but you gotta know there was a robbery in that store.”
She gave a reluctant nod.
“I’m betting your brother was in on it.”
“He was not!”
“Look, you said he went into Klaussner’s, and you ain’t seen him since. Well, two men went in there and robbed the store. They shot poor Mister Klaussner, and he shot one of them. The other one got away.”
“Paul ain’t no robber!”
“I ain’t saying for sure he is. But two men was in the store, and two men came out. One ran away; the other one got took to the hospital.”
“Paul ain’t no robber,” she repeated. This time her voice quivered, and tears had begun to well in her eyes.
Ethan scooted closer and put his arm around the girl. “It ain’t easy knowing your own kin did something bad. My daddy did way worse than Paul, but Grandma Olivia said that ain’t no reflection on me. So Paul being a robber ain’t no reflection on you.”
“He ain’t no robber!”
Moving on Ethan said, “You still got Aunt Anita, just like I got Grandma Olivia. Not knowing a person beforehand don’t matter, they love you ‘cause you’re kin.” Ethan remembered Grandma Olivia was not actually blood kin and added, “Sometimes they love you even if you’re just kin to their kin.”
Jubilee listened but kept her eyes to the ground as Ethan spoke. When he finished, she turned to him. “I don’t want to find Aunt Anita. Paul’s gonna take care of me, and I gotta find him.”
“Jeez, Jubie, if Paul ran off I got no idea where he’d go.”
“What if he got shot?”
“He’d be in the hospital.”
“Let’s go see in the hospital.” There was a steely-eyed look of determination in Jubilee’s eyes, one Ethan Allen recognized right off.
He rolled his eyes. “The hospital’s way on the other side of town, and I ain’t supposed to cross Mercer Street.”
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