Christmas Mourning

by Margaret Maron

  Dwight covered his mug with his hand. Any more and he’d never get to sleep tonight. “So Matt ditched school on Wednesday?”

  She shrugged. “I know, I know. But he said they never really did anything the last few days before Christmas and he promised to go on Thursday and Friday, so I didn’t fuss. You have to pick your battles.”

  “Do you know where he was Tuesday night?”

  “I told you. He would’ve worked till nine, then spent the night at Jason’s.”

  “He didn’t go to a party with Mallory Johnson?”

  She looked uncertain. “I don’t know. No, probably not, because she was alone in her own car, right? If they were together that night, they would have been in his car. Unless they were trying to keep her family from knowing?”

  “Mrs. Wentworth, are you absolutely sure they really were seeing each other?”

  She looked at him indignantly. “Why? Because she was a rich Johnson and he was a Wentworth? Matt was a nice-looking kid, Major Bryant, and he could be real sweet when he wasn’t trying to out-tough his brothers.”

  “He was sixteen. A freshman. She was eighteen and a senior. She was an honor-roll student headed for Carolina. He wasn’t.”

  “We didn’t talk a lot,” she said slowly. “Heck, we didn’t even see each other a lot. I get home from work around five-thirty. He worked from five to eight or nine, depending on how busy they were, and he didn’t always come straight home. Weekends, he’d be out with her or Jason. I did ask him last Saturday if he was still seeing her and he said yes. It was her birthday and he’d given her a necklace and took her to see the new Tom Cruise movie.”

  “Which night was that?”

  “Friday. Friday, a week ago.”

  Dwight wrote down the date, the name of his friend, and the location of the grocery store where Matt Wentworth worked as a bagger several nights a week.

  “When did you last see him, ma’am?”

  “Friday morning when I left for work. He was getting dressed for school.”

  “What about Jason?”

  She frowned and knitted her brows in an effort to remember. “Sorry. I know he came by one evening since Thanksgiving, but I can’t think exactly when.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember who it was that Jason worked for?”

  Her answer surprised him. “Barefoot Roofing here in Cotton Grove.”

  A few further questions added nothing to his picture of either boy. Dwight stood up to go, but Mrs. Wentworth sat there numbly as the ramifications of the murders sank in. “I guess it’ll be up to me to bury them,” she said.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was a clear morning with the sun not yet high over the horizon… everywhere around was an unbroken carpet of thick snow. The world looked very pure and white and beautiful.

  —“The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding,” Agatha Christie

  I had been asleep almost three hours when I awoke to realize that Dwight was trying to ease himself into bed without disturbing me.

  I turned over and reached for his hand. “It’s okay, love, I’m awake.”

  “Sorry,” he said, and put out his arm to draw me nearer.

  “What happened tonight?” I asked.

  “Remember the kid at school the other day? The one with the snake tattooed on his hand? Matt Wentworth. He and his brother were the victims.”

  “Jason Wentworth,” I murmured.

  “That’s right. I forgot you said you had him up on a hunting violation this fall. You confiscated his gun, didn’t you? That’s why we didn’t find one tonight.”

  “You expected one?”

  “His stepmother said he went hunting Wednesday.”

  “Without a license?” I could remember the case, I could remember that the young man was angry at losing his gun and his license. What I couldn’t remember was his face, and that made me sad.

  He described the deaths of the Wentworth boys, their stepmother’s reaction to their thrown-away lives, and Matt’s claim that he had been hooked up with Mallory Johnson. When he finished, he was silent for a moment, then said, “On the way home, I got to thinking about what I was doing at that precise time last year.”

  “At one-thirty in the morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Weren’t you asleep?”

  “No. Cal and I were bunking at Mama’s. In the room Rob and I used to share. He was asleep, but I was wide awake, thinking about you. Us. Wondering what our life was going to be like. Wondering if Jonna would let me have Cal more and if that really was going to be okay with you.”

  I started to protest, but he tightened his arm around me.

  “You don’t have to say it, Deb’rah. I know you love him. It isn’t how we wanted to get him, but this hasn’t been a bad year, has it?”

  “Bad? Oh, Dwight, do you really have to ask?” I hugged him hard. “It’s been the best year of my life.”

  “And we’ve been on the same page with Cal, haven’t we? I mean, he doesn’t sass you, does he? Or disrespect you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “And you do know I’ll always back you up?”

  I pulled away from him and propped myself up on one elbow so that I could look him in the eye. “Listen to me, Dwight Bryant. Cal is no Matt or Jason Wentworth and you are certainly no Victor Wentworth, okay? He may answer me back once in a while, but it’s no more disrespectful than when he answers you back. It’s totally normal and I don’t take it any more personally than you take it when I bitch at you.”

  He smiled. “You don’t bitch at me.”

  “Yes I do,” I told him. “You just don’t notice.”

  Next morning, I awoke at dawn to blue skies and a rising temperature. As we feared, some of the new little trees were bent double and pine limbs at the edge of the woods were touching the ground. But the icicles hanging from the eaves of the house were melting fast, and according to the radio, our forecast was for temperatures in the high fifties by Christmas Day.

  I put the coffee on, then drove Dwight’s truck down to the mailbox for the newspaper. I should have worn sunglasses. Once the sun hit all that ice, it was eye-dazzling. A warm west wind was blowing and every gust that hit the trees sent a shower of ice tinkling down like slivers of broken crystal. I found myself trying to remember a Navaho chant I once read in a Tony Hillerman book:

  Beauty before me.

  Beauty behind me.

  With beauty all around me, I walk.

  Yes!

  * * *

  Dwight was dressed for work and pouring himself a mug of coffee when I got back, and he poured one for me. “Happy anniversary,” he said. “What’s it like out there?”

  “Glorious! Put your jacket on and grab your sunglasses and let’s go for a quick walk.”

  “I really need to get moving,” he said, but he followed me outside anyhow.

  We keep a selection of hiking sticks propped in a corner between the porch and the house outside, and we each took one to help us keep our footing on the ice. The coffee was strong and hot and steam rose from our mugs as we walked down the drive, following the ruts I’d broken in the ice with the truck. As I might have predicted, Dwight wanted to tap his stick against the young crepe myrtles and dogwoods, and with each gentle blow, so much ice fell that the trees slowly began to right themselves.

  Before we’d gone very far, we heard Cal call, “Hey, wait for me!”

  He had put boots and a jacket on over his pajamas. With Bandit racing back and forth between us, he grabbed a hiking stick and soon caught up with us. Whacking the trees and watching the ice shower down delighted him.

  When we circled back around the house toward the pond, Cal ran along the side of the garage and used his stick to knock down a long line of icicles. At one point, he slipped, fell into a spirea bush, and spooked a rabbit none of us realized was there. Bandit let out an excited yelp and immediately streaked after it. The rabbit beat him to the woods and both animals disappeared into the underbrush.

 
The pond was frozen all around the edges, but the pier had begun to absorb the sun’s heat and a flip of a stick was enough to send long sheets of ice off the boards and into the water.

  Eventually, Dwight looked at his watch and reluctantly turned back to the house.

  “Yeah, me, too,” I said.

  “Awwww.” Cal looked at us wistfully. “I wish y’all didn’t have to go to work.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” Dwight said and whistled for Bandit.

  The dog came, but he was dragging his heels, too. I knew how he felt. I wasn’t ready to go get in my crate either.

  An hour later, car keys in hand, I was taking my lunch salad out of the refrigerator when the phone rang.

  “Deborah?”

  “Barbara?” We talk on the phone so seldom, I almost didn’t recognize her voice.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “I was afraid you’d already gone, too.”

  “Cal and I were just about to walk out the door,” I told her. “What’s up?”

  “Has Dwight left for work yet?”

  “About forty minutes ago.”

  I heard a disappointed sigh. “Is there something I can do?”

  “I hate to ask you,” she began, and from the tone of her voice I knew she really did hate having to ask me whatever it was, “but Zach’s already at work and Emma and Lee have gone Christmas shopping in Raleigh. I went out to start my car just now and it won’t turn over, so I’m wondering if I could ride with you to Dobbs this morning.”

  “Certainly, but don’t you want to let’s see if we can jump-start it?”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “Sure,” I said, amused by the surprise in her voice. I mean, what’s so complicated about attaching battery cables?

  “That’s all right. I’ll let Zach do it when he comes home. The thing is, I have a meeting with some of the county commissioners in less than an hour and I just can’t take the time to worry with this car.”

  “No problem,” I told her. “I’ll pick you up, we’ll drop Cal at Kate’s, and be at the library in plenty of time.”

  Cal had already put Bandit in his crate with a new strip of rawhide and he slung his duffel bag into the backseat of my car and crawled in after it. The children were off from school until after New Year’s, but this morning was a final work day for the teachers, so Miss Emily was going to pick him up this afternoon and keep him overnight.

  Barbara was looking at her watch and pacing back and forth when we got there, and she had the door open almost before I brought the car to a full stop.

  “I really appreciate this,” she said, fastening her seat belt. “Today’s my last chance to try and talk the commissioners out of cutting county funds to the library.”

  She greeted Cal, who responded shyly. Of my five sisters-in-law who live out here on the farm, she’s probably the one he knows least, but she made an effort and by the time we reached Kate’s, he was chatting normally. In response to one of her questions, he even confided that while he had enjoyed the Harry Potters, he really liked the Ender books better.

  Because Barbara was in a fidget, I didn’t linger at Kate’s; just dropped a kiss on Cal’s head when Kate came to the door and told him I’d see him tomorrow morning, “but call if you need us, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said cheerfully.

  “You and Dwight have something on for tonight?” Barbara asked, as we headed for Dobbs.

  I knew she was only making polite conversation, but it beat riding in silence.

  “Just dinner,” I said. “It’s our anniversary.”

  For some reason, that surprised her. “Has it really been a whole year?”

  “Time flies when you’re having fun,” I said lightly.

  She let that pass. “Cal seems like a bright little boy. A real reader, too.”

  I told myself that she didn’t mean to sound insulting. “He takes after his grandmother,” I said. “Miss Emily loves books.”

  “I know. Every time the bookmobile goes out to the school, it always takes a stack that she’s requested. She probably goes through three or four a week.”

  “Guess I won’t try to give her books for Christmas, then. But maybe you can help me about Cal. I bought him Old Yeller. What else do you think he’d like?”

  “Old Yeller’s good. Has he read To Kill a Mockingbird yet?”

  “Isn’t that too old for him?”

  “Not really. Sounds as if he’s reading well above grade level.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean, won’t the issues of race and lynching go over his head?”

  “You’d be surprised. He’s ten, right?”

  “Nine and a half.”

  “Third grade?”

  I nodded.

  “He rides a school bus, Deborah. He has to have heard the N-word and probably a lot of worse racist language besides. Mockingbird could be a great springboard for you and Dwight to talk to him about it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll add it to my shopping list. Thanks.”

  The weather and the dazzling ice carried us for another mile or two, making me ever more conscious that this was about the longest one-on-one conversation Barbara and I had ever had. Lacking anything else, I said, “How’s Emma doing after yesterday?”

  She sighed. “That was really hard for her. Hard for all the girls. To put on their uniforms and walk in together, and then out at the grave—? You didn’t go to the interment, did you?”

  “No.”

  “It was dreadful. Her parents had arranged for each girl to have a red and a yellow rosebud. They had to sing the West Colleton fight song and then lay their roses on her coffin. It was ghastly. Those girls can never again sing that song without thinking of Mallory. It really wasn’t fair of her dad to make them do that.”

  “Not her mother?”

  “She’s hurting, but it’s the dad who’s absolutely shattered and seems determined to wallow in his grief. I know that sounds callous, but really! To force everyone else to wallow, too? No. Maybe if they’d kept a tighter rein on her…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way she teased boys. It made me so angry.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lee. Didn’t he tell you?” Her surprised tone turned spiteful. “I thought the kids told you everything.”

  “Oh, wait a minute. Didn’t he take her out once last spring?”

  “Yes. Once.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. At least I assume it was nothing. He’s never really talked about it. He acted like it was a big joke that he was playing along with, but I think it hurt him at the time. Certainly hurt his pride anyhow.”

  “What happened?” I asked again.

  “It was right after Lee began seeing a perfectly darling little girl. Holly Fletcher. Then Mallory Johnson started flirting with him and texting him a couple of times a day till he finally asked her out. He took her to one of the ball games, and I guess she made sure that Holly saw them together, because Emma was furious with Lee. I gather that Holly spent the whole game crying in the ladies’ room. He told Emma it didn’t mean a thing, but I overheard him call Mallory and try to get her to go out with him again. From his end of the conversation, I think she just laughed at him. In fact, he wound up laughing back and pretending that yes, he knew all along she wasn’t into relationships, but that it was only polite to make sure. I knew it wasn’t a real laugh. He was very quiet for the next few days. And of course, he was too embarrassed to ask Holly out again.”

  This was almost word for word the same scenario Miss Emily had described Saturday night. I found myself wondering how many Hollys had been at that party last week.

  As if listening in on my thoughts, Barbara said, “I’ve heard that she was high on something when she crashed and that some Vicodin went missing at the party. Surely Dwight’s heard that, too?”

  Because it seemed to be common knowledge, I nodded. “But he doesn’t know if Vicodin was in her system. The hospital only tests for alcohol. H
e’s heard from several sources that she didn’t drink, so someone may have spiked her drink at a party.”

  “A party that she should have left as soon as it became clear that the parents weren’t at home. Thank goodness Lee and Emma didn’t stay a minute longer than they had to.”

  “They’re nice kids,” I said as we reached the outskirts of Dobbs and turned onto the main street. “You and Zach have done a good job with them.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said, sounding slightly startled by the compliment. “It’s a fine line we parents have to walk these days, isn’t it? Too easy and they have no standards. Too hard and you either crush their spirits or turn them into liars and sneaks.”

  “Seems to me y’all’ve found the right balance,” I said and realized that I meant it. She might come down a little stricter than I would, but it didn’t seem to have hurt Lee or Emma. “I just hope Dwight and I can find that balance with Cal.”

  “You will. You’re good with kids. The way you do things with them. The cookies. Letting them come over and swim and fish and tramp through your house to use the shower. No wonder they’re—”

  She broke off abruptly.

  “No wonder they’re what?”

  “Fond of you,” she said quickly. “All the kids are.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t what she had intended to say, but it still made me smile. “I’m sorta fond of them, too.”

  “The nice thing is that you can show it.”

  There was such a wistful note in her voice that it drew me up short. Before I could respond, she gave a rueful laugh. “I guess I’ve always been a little jealous of that.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Jealous of me? When all this time I thought she was being judgmental and disapproving?

  We passed the courthouse and I pulled into the narrow alley that led to the library’s parking lot. As I stopped the car at the rear entrance, she started to thank me and I put out my hand. “Good luck with your meeting.”