Shadow Notes

by Laurel S. Peterson

  “Why don’t I take her off your hands?” I suggested. No matter what I said, it couldn’t get worse, right?

  “You mean let her out of jail? I can only imagine what kind of trouble she could get into if she weren’t in protective custody. Someone might kill her—maybe even me.”

  I laughed and sat back. “Give her to me; maybe I can arrange an assassination—” I made my voice gravelly like the Godfather—“in the family.”

  He stared at me as if I were the far wall, then sighed. “I had one of our computer techs take a look at the memory card. There’s some deleted material on it that he’s been able to resurrect.”

  “Material?” After all his grousing, it had been useful?

  “I can’t tell you what it is, but we can’t hold your mother any longer. In fact, they seem more interested in you than her. No photographs of Constance,” he mused, seeming to slip up. So what were the photographs of? And who were they? “However…” He paused for emphasis. “…your intruder has been careful to cover his tracks. You’re still being vigilant, right?”

  I nodded, thinking guiltily that I’d forgotten again to set the alarm.

  “If he thinks we’ve given up, maybe he’ll get sloppy and we’ll catch him.”

  “Sounds like I’m bait. Do you know it’s a he?”

  “It could be a woman, although I’m having a hard time seeing Hetty as primary on this.” He sat back in his chair, swung it to the side and put his feet on the desk. “Maybe having Constance around will keep you from dating unsuitable men like my officers and that Winters punk, and asking questions of innocent townspeople.”

  My eyebrows rode the escalator to my hairline along with my blush. “Winters ‘punk’?”

  He shrugged.

  I pulled my purse off my shoulder and set it on the floor, sat back in my chair to mimic his relaxed pose. “Andrew Winters, Junior, is a funny, charming young man who knows how to treat a woman as if she is the only woman in the room.”

  “That family is dangerous.”

  “Are you and my mother conspiring?”

  His feet hit the floor. “What did she say?”

  “Avoid the Winters clan.”

  “She’s right.”

  “Because? Maybe you can offer me something more substantive than my mother’s airy-fairy warnings. Maybe someone around here could give me some facts about how wicked the Winters family is—for real, in this life, on the record.”

  I saw him trying to make up his mind, but before he could, an officer yelled across the room, and I heard footsteps behind me. “Chief! There’s a fire on Adams Mill road. It’s a barn on the Winters property. Mr. W. wants us out there, in case it’s arson.”

  The chief stood, pulling his jacket off the back of his chair. “Officer Munson, Mrs. Montague is going home with her daughter. Can you see to her release?” I turned to find Joe standing in the doorway. The chief gave Joe a look that seemed to convey something other than his verbal instructions. Joe nodded, and I sent up a silent cheer that competed with the dread in my gut. Having Mother home meant I might be able to corner her and get some answers, since she could no longer use listening jailhouse ears as excuses. It also meant dealing with her disapproval every day. Despite all that, the pains seemed to recede, slightly.

  The chief said, “I’ll handle the arson investigation, if we need to do one.”

  Joe motioned for me to follow him, and within an hour, my mother and I were on our way home. She’d donated the reading lamp, cushy red pillows and duvet to the police department and had charmed a receipt out of them for tax purposes.

  I looked over at her in the passenger seat of the Land Rover. She was staring out the window at the Christmas finery on the passing homes, her fine-boned hands resting in her lap.

  They say that girls marry their fathers. I thought about Junior’s casual assumption of my acquiescence to his plans. I thought about Pete’s carefully controlled physical charisma. I thought about my cyclist ex, and his knack for choosing the best. I thought about Mother.

  It wasn’t my father that I found in my relationships.

  Chapter 15

  Mother getting out of jail and the fire at the Winters’s barn were the the hot gossip the next morning. Everyone wanted to know if this meant she had been cleared of the charges. I fudged the truth and said yes: I didn’t have the time or inclination to go into the details. Mary Ellen gave me a startled look and sailed into Andrew’s office. Five minutes later, as we were all sharing horse stories, she came out and insisted I ride with her the next morning. The horses, she said, had been moved to Loretta Gardner’s stables, and, anyway, we had never had that talk I wanted.

  So much for avoiding the Winters clan. The slug had stuck around and wasn’t happy, but my questions burned holes in my gut. Did Mary Ellen know about Hetty’s peeping habit? Did Mary Ellen kill Hugh so Mother couldn’t have him, as Mother had implied? What did Andrew think Mother had stolen from him? And why did Mary Ellen and Mother hate each other?

  The morning broke with a twenty-degree temperature and spitting snow. Mary Ellen phoned a reminder before I’d even persuaded myself that getting out of bed was a good idea. “See you at eight o’clock,” she said, and hung up before I could reply.

  My mother, cloaked in a thick red robe, poked her head in to see who had called. When I told her, she cautioned me again. I pulled the covers over my head. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said. “I’ll make coffee.” The door shut gently.

  She still refused to tell me anything, although I’d tried in the car on the way home from jail. “We have to talk at some point.”

  “I need more time, Clara.”

  “For what?”

  “I’ll tell you when we talk.” Mother was talented at circles.

  Half an hour after Mary Ellen’s call, I parked at Loretta and Ernie’s stables, and stepped from the car. Mary Ellen stood by the gate with the reins of two horses in her hands. She handed me a helmet with her other hand and cocked her head toward the horse nearest her. “This one is yours. His name is Horace.” She handed me his reins, turned and glided up onto her horse, to whom I had not been introduced. She pointed him (let’s name him Juvenal) toward the trail that ran off to the side of the paddock, and called over her shoulder, “C’mon, Clara, or we’ll be late for work.”

  I thought this was my work for the day.

  I clambered up on Horace, apologizing to him for my clumsiness, and whispering thanks to whatever gods might exist that I managed to get on him at all. The last time I’d been on horseback was in my teens. He didn’t seem to care and amiably followed his buddy into the woods, where I immediately got nailed by a branch slapping back from Mary Ellen’s passage.

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t you see that coming?”

  And wasn’t that the theme song for my whole life at the moment.

  “Isn’t it beautiful out here?” she trilled, as if nothing had happened. I patted my cheek to locate the welt.

  “Lovely,” I ducked another branch. If it hadn’t been twenty degrees, snowing, and Mary Ellen, the morning would have been enchanted. Snow frosted the evergreens, and the air had that silence it gets when cold tamps down all the sound. The trail wound along a little brook, and, when the horses paused, I could hear water tinkling under the ice and around the rocks in its path. We tapped our way along for almost ten minutes, and I remembered what I enjoyed about being out in the morning on a horse. A kind of solace grew between horse and rider, a total focus on the sensations of each other and the trail. Then Mary Ellen broke the quiet.

  “So, Clara.” I couldn’t tell if I was supposed to answer or if she was thinking of what to say next. I didn’t respond, engrossed as I was in my momentary sense of peace. She let me alone for two more swinging branches and a little ravine where I thought I would slide off the horse right down his neck and over his head, and then said agai
n, “So, Clara.”

  “Do you have a point?” I asked, too annoyed that she’d interrupted my serenity to be politic.

  “Tetchy, tetchy. Morning isn’t your season, is it? Did you know your mother and I used to ride together—on this very trail?”

  “Really? This very trail?” I didn’t even try to avoid sarcasm.

  She ignored me. Best practice, really. “She was a fine horsewoman, your mother.” An original statement—right out of an English novel.

  “Was a fine horsewoman?” I asked, but Mary Ellen didn’t respond.

  “We raced each other across the meadow, not too far ahead.”

  “What for?”

  “No competitive spirit?”

  I sighed again. I should have had a second cup of coffee and some food. “If there’s something worth competing for.”

  “Like, say, your mother’s life?”

  Her statement jolted me to attention with all the wired-up electricity of an adrenalin surge. Prickling flashed around my heart. “What?”

  “We all have our price.”

  “What’s yours?” I snapped.

  Mary Ellen laughed, a peal that rang out like the Tower of London’s bells before a beheading. “None of your business. Now, do tell me all about that little cottage of your mother’s that’s hidden out there behind Loretta and Ernie’s house. There must be a good story behind it.”

  How could she know about the cottage? Mrs. Gardner said no one knew except her, Ernie and my mother. But if she knew, then who else knew? “I only know about Hetty’s cottage with all the photographs of you on the wall.”

  Her back stiffened, but she wasn’t deterred. “Of course you know about your mother’s cottage. You’ve even seen the inside. I’m not supposed to know, but I do, because I know how get people to do what I want.” I thought about all the stable hands in Loretta’s yard and the power of curiosity and money. “You haven’t learned that yet, Clara, but I could help if you’d let me. It’s almost like we’re family, you know.”

  My laugh was a harsh, startled sound in the cold air. “Why? Because you and Mother were friends years ago?”

  “I also know that your mother has had a key for years and years and that she never let anyone else in there. Your father didn’t even know about it, but I’ve peered in the windows.”

  A squirrel scrabbled across the snow in front of us as if running for its life.

  “It’s very pretty inside, all that turquoise and white, like a Caribbean island. I’ll tell you what she used it for—her trysts. You may think that Hugh was her only lover, but she had others before and after your father. Some lost their marriages. You know, she was the first girl to…have a boyfriend in high school. She has quite a reputation, our girl. This police investigation could be quite humiliating. You should watch yourself, too. Sounds like you’re on your way to that sort of reputation also.” She said it all as if she were giving a freshman lecture on the basics of geology.

  “Did something specific happen, Mary Ellen? Or are you telling tales to see what I’ll do?”

  She looked back at me briefly, a mistake, since when she looked forward again, a branch slapped her face. Glee welled up in me and I nearly laughed.

  She didn’t acknowledge the pain. “Your mother and I double-dated to the junior prom. We weren’t juniors, but we were dating junior boys. I mean, your mother was, and she got me a date with his best friend. Roy and Ray.”

  “Make up better names, at least.”

  She snorted…or was it Horace?

  “After the dance, Roy and Ray took us to a hotel where six of them had rented a suite and pirated in a bunch of alcohol. I don’t remember what we drank, some combination of every liquor they could get their hands on, I imagine, with a little pineapple juice thrown in.

  “Anyway, about three in the morning, I noticed Constance kept disappearing from the room, and each time she left, she left with a different girl’s date. At the moment, my date was missing. About fifteen minutes later, she came back from the bedroom all disheveled and flushed, plopped herself down, and commanded another drink. Every boy there, even her own date, rushed to fill her cup. She was shameless, Clara. She is not a good woman or a moral one—but then, you already knew that.”

  If Mary Ellen had a grudge to play out, this ugly story would certainly be a good way to do it. I marveled a bit that I could remain so cool-headed, but Mother’s statement about Mary Ellen’s rumor-mongering stuck with me. I thought about my mother charming the entire police station to do her bidding, and I thought of the friends at her Christmas fête kissing the air around her cheeks in greeting. I thought about Nat and my mother’s first kiss, and his gentle stories of her, about the chief’s statement that the investigation hadn’t really yielded anything.

  Then, I remembered Mother’s telling me at the lawyer’s office after my father’s funeral that everything was not as it seemed, which strangely echoed her warning about the Winters. I ducked another branch, and, when I looked up, the woods were ending and a snow-covered meadow opened before us, a few dried summer stalks of grass poking through the snow cover.

  “And you, Mary Ellen? Are you a good woman? Or did you kill Hugh so Mother couldn’t have him all to herself?”

  Without warning, Mary Ellen let out a loud “HA!” provoking both her horse and mine into a gallop. Juvenal and Horace took off across the meadow at a rate of speed well beyond my capabilities. Snowflakes stung my face, even as I clung, low across Horace’s neck, not only to the reins but to his mane, clamping my thighs to his sides, and occasionally peering between his ears to be sure he wasn’t headed for something to jump, like a stone wall. Horace didn’t seem to care that I was grabbing him as hard as I could, nor did he slow at my command; he was having too much fun running with his buddy, and Mary Ellen didn’t intend to stop Juvenal.

  We were approaching the edge of the meadow, and I could see that the ground dropped sharply away and back into woods. I hauled as hard as I could on the reins, feeling the muscles in my arms vibrate with the effort. Horace slowed an iota, but then Mary Ellen hauled on Juvenal’s reins, bringing him to a shuddering halt. That stopped Horace in his tracks at the top of the trail.

  “I won.” She looked at me, sardonic and composed.

  “Fuck you,” I was breathing hard. I nudged Horace around her toward the path. Every limb was jelly, and I hoped I could affect an exit without falling off the horse.

  She called after me. “Clara. I told you for your own good. I like you, and I don’t want you to follow your mother’s path. I wanted you to understand the rumors around town about your mother’s affairs and the affair with Hugh. I wanted you to understand where the rumors came from.”

  I looked back at her. “Oh, I know where they come from,” I said. “And I know that people don’t forget when they are regularly reminded. I don’t need to know every detail of my mother’s history, real or imagined by you.” I stopped, startled that what I had said was true, and that I’d said it before I knew it was true. Then the anger returned. “And what the hell do you mean by ‘follow my mother’s path’? Are you warning me off? I’m not good enough to date a Winters? For god’s sake, Mary Ellen, it was dinner. I’m not engaged to Andrew, although, if you must know, he did ask me to marry him.” I threw it at her, unthinking, fueled by the rage and fear she had provoked.

  Her face went white as the steam from the horses’ nostrils. “He what?”

  I studied her, calming down now that I had regained some control, however fabricated. I clucked to Horace and started down the trail, ignoring her question. I heard her move in behind me.

  We rode in silence. I would have to explain that Junior was only flirting, or I could imagine the conversation that would take place around the dinner table that evening. I had his cell number; I would call and warn him after Mary Ellen clapped herself into her Beemer. I hoped I wasn’t causing him a lot o
f grief; even if I didn’t think I could trust him, I did like him. It wasn’t his fault he was a Winters.

  While she was on the defensive, I decided to spring my own questions on her about the photographs, but before I could get one formulated past the thickness in my brain, Mary Ellen started talking again, this time about her brother’s campaign—or rather about his opponent. “It’s a woman, you know. Leave it to the Democrats to find one. She’s got decent credentials, if you don’t count the fifteen years of raising her kids when she wasn’t working at all, except in volunteer organizations, like the PTA or Big Sisters. She spouts all these liberal ideas about how to spend money—our money—that’s your money, too, Clara, and you’ve got to protect it—if you want that business your father left you to grow.”

  I had a few ideas about that, ideas I would eventually need to talk to Ernie about, but I stayed silent, wondering where she was going with this lecture. She sounded as if she were reading off a campaign brochure.

  “It’s critically important we get Andrew elected. New business development, new outside investment, we need that capital if we’re going to stay a premier community and continue to attract the right kind of people. Andrew believes in this community’s values, its sense of itself, its view of the world, and he wants to maintain that.”

  And that view would be what’s ours is ours and keep the dirty rabble away from it? Maybe I was too hard on him, but the speeches I’d heard Andrew Senior give had more to do with preserving Andrew’s way of life than preserving anyone else’s. Perhaps I was jaded. Perhaps I’d lived behind the high fences too long myself.

  Mary Ellen didn’t speak again until we had both dismounted and were walking our horses to the barn, and then she addressed my comment about marrying into the family. “Clara, I—It’s not that you’re not good enough to marry Andrew Junior, it’s just—”