Winter's Child

by Margaret Maron

  The best I could do was try to distract him.

  “Eleanor seems nice,” I said. “How’s she related to Mrs. Shay?”

  He frowned. “I think she said their mothers were sisters. So that makes them what? First cousins?”

  We talked about degrees of kinship and how Eleanor would be Cal’s first cousin, twice removed—idle mean-ingless talk to fill up the silence that seemed to be growing between us.

  He finished his tea and stood up to stretch and flex his arms, then stared out the window into the backyard that was beginning to show patches of brown grass beneath the melting snow. “I just feel so damn helpless,” he said with his back to me. “We’re running around in circles while Cal’s out there somewhere and there’s nothing I can do.”

  “We’ll find him,” I murmured.

  “You keep saying that!” His voice was harsh with frustration. “Dammit, Deb’rah, what if we don’t?” He turned and the anger drained from his face, leaving it bleak and despairing. “What if we don’t?” he said again.

  Before I could answer, the cousin returned to say that Mrs. Shay was ready to see us.

  “For some reason, she seems to be doing much better today,” Eleanor said as she led the way upstairs. “She’s still heartsick about Jonna, of course, but she’s decided that Cal’s going to be all right in the end. I think it’s a combination of prayer and the power of positive thinking.”

  Mrs. Shay’s corner bedroom was quite spacious and nicely proportioned with high ceilings and classic molding, yet despite tall windows on two sides, it felt almost airless. Too much polished wood furniture, too many ruffles, too many knickknacks. I charitably decided that it probably seemed like a cozy retreat to her.

  Two delicate wing chairs upholstered in the same blue velvet as a nearby chaise sat in front of the fireplace, where small gas logs burned in the grate. The silver tray with the remains of Mrs. Shay’s toast and tea sat on a low table between the two chairs.

  Mrs. Shay herself sat on the chaise under one of the windows, and after I was introduced she gestured for us to take the wing chairs while Eleanor Prentice sat down beside her.

  There was very little family likeness between the cousins, but having compared that family picture in Jonna’s bedroom with recent pictures of Jonna herself, I knew that Mrs. Shay had been equally beautiful in her youth. Even now, with wrinkled face and age-blotched hands, she was still pretty and still as slender as a young woman. Her eyes were widely spaced and so blue that they were nearly violet, and they made her seem innocent and somehow vulnerable. I could well understand why her husband had catered to her and had tried to shield her from the sordid details of his financial failures. Nevertheless, there must have been a lot of money left from the wreckage if she could afford to live like this for so many years. No wonder the Mayhews and Jacksons of the town thought Jonna had money to spare.

  Dwight confessed that we were yet no closer to finding Cal, but she gave a serene smile and lightly patted his arm.

  “Put your trust in the Lord, Dwight. That’s what I’ve done. There’s nothing He can do now for Jonna, but last night I began to feel absolutely certain that Cal will come back to us safely.”

  I had expected to find a mother and grandmother shattered by grief, but this woman seemed oddly removed from it. Yes, tears came to her eyes whenever talk turned to Jonna, but no tears for Cal, even though I’d been told that he was her only grandchild.

  As I sat there quietly listening, a strange feeling of déjà

  vu began to take over my senses, and when she mentioned last night, I pinpointed the reason.

  “Your perfume is very nice,” I said, leaning forward to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. “Is it gardenia?”

  “Why, yes, it is,” she said, struggling to play the polite hostess. “All the women in my family are quite fond of it.”

  “Not me,” Eleanor said crisply as if alluding to old family rifts. “And not Mama.”

  “Nor Jonna,” Mrs. Shay conceded sadly. “It began with Elizabeth Morrow,” she told me. “You know about her ghost?”

  I nodded. “I heard that her gardenia perfume can be smelled whenever she walks.”

  “I’ve often wondered who the maker was that it could last for over a hundred years,” Eleanor said.

  Mrs. Shay gave a mournful smile. “Eleanor doesn’t believe in ghosts, so Elizabeth doesn’t believe in her. She’s never let Eleanor smell her perfume.”

  I thought at first she was joking, but her regretful tone was clearly meant as condolence for her cousin’s exclusion from an inner circle. It reminded me of the pitying look my Aunt Zell gave a newcomer to Dobbs who was so clueless as to openly desire to join the town’s oldest book club, a club limited to the female descendants of the original 1898 founders.

  Talk turned to funeral arrangements now that Jonna’s body had been released for burial. The day and time were yet to be set, but probably Tuesday or Wednesday.

  “Surely Cal will be back with us then,” Mrs. Shay said hopefully.

  “When does her sister arrive?” Dwight asked. “She is coming, isn’t she?”

  “Of course she will come,” Mrs. Shay said sharply.

  “Pam was devoted to Jonna. To Cal, too. It was such a shock. To her, to me.”

  “To all of us,” said Dwight. “And I hate to have to bring this up again, Mrs. Shay, but that message you left on her answering machine, when you asked if she was still mad at you. Was it because she had asked you for money and you told her no?”

  Tears filled those dark blue eyes. “Oh, Dwight, how can you be so cruel?”

  Her glanced bounced off me and then away, and I realized that she was embarrassed that he’d asked something so personal in front of me.

  I immediately stood. “Y’all need to talk privately. I’ll wait downstairs.”

  Eleanor started to rise herself, but Mrs. Shay begged her to stay.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know the way. Why don’t I just take this tray back to the kitchen and fix myself another cup of tea? It was good meeting you, Mrs. Shay. I’m just sorry it had to be under these conditions.”

  I knew I was babbling, so I shut up and grabbed the tray. Dwight opened the door for me and I made my escape.

  It was almost a half hour before Dwight and Eleanor came back downstairs.

  As they entered the kitchen, I heard her say, “I don’t know the address, but let me find a piece of paper. I can give you directions and draw you a rough map.”

  She opened the drawer beneath the wall-hung kitchen phone, took out a notepad, and quickly sketched a simple map, explaining turns and landmarks as she drew.

  Dwight asked a couple of questions, then tucked the map in his pocket and turned to me. “Ready to go?”

  “Not till Mrs. Shay tells us what the hell she’s done 21 with Cal.” I was so angry that I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking.

  “What?”

  I stormed across the kitchen and threw open the door to the utility room. There, hanging on one of the pegs amid a collection of scarves and knitted headwear, was a dark blue parka. Its hood was trimmed in black fur and the smell of gardenias permeated the cloth.

  C H A P T E R

  23

  Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

  —Sophocles

  Eleanor Prentice was bewildered as Dwight jerked the parka from its peg, sending hats and jackets flying.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would you say that Laura took Cal?”

  “Didn’t you hear the description of the abductor?”

  “Only that you thought at first it was Jonna and then someone else.”

  “This is the coat the woman was wearing,” Dwight said, almost shaking it in her face.

  “But it’s not Laura’s. Her parka’s black, not navy.”

  “There’s no black parka,” I said, gesturing toward the pegs beside the outer door of the utility room.

  “But I know Laura. She was genuinely upset when Cal d
isappeared.”

  “Then explain the gardenia perfume,” I said. “Oh, Dwight, she must have been the one who took Carson.

  That’s definitely something a grandmother would think to do.”

  Eleanor threw up her hands. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I slept in Cal’s room last night and somebody sneaked in and took his teddy bear. I thought I was dreaming, but whoever it was wore gardenia perfume. The same perfume as Mrs. Shay. And you said yourself that she was here alone last night. No wonder she’s not worried about Cal. She knows where he is.”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she said, sinking down on the nearest chair. “Pam?”

  Now it was our turn to look bewildered.

  “Pam? Jonna’s sister?” I asked.

  “She uses gardenia perfume,” said Eleanor, “but I thought she was still in Tennessee.”

  “Is she here? Is this her coat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Dwight was already turning the pockets inside out and found nothing except some loose change and a used tis-sue. He fumbled through his own pockets for the number Agent Lewes had given him last night, grabbed the kitchen phone, and dialed it. As soon as Lewes answered, he immediately described what we had found and where.

  “Yes, my ex-wife’s sister . . . Pam . . . wait a sec. What’s Pam’s last name?” he asked Eleanor.

  “Morgan. Mrs. Gregory Morgan, but Laura says she may go back to Shay if it does come to a divorce.”

  Dwight relayed the information, then turned again to the older woman. “What kind of car’s she driving?”

  “The last time she was here, it was white. A white sedan.”

  “The make?”

  She shook her head helplessl.

  y“Would Mrs. Shay know?”

  Lewes must have said something about Tennessee’s DMV because Dwight said, “Yeah, of course, I’m not thinking straight . . . It’s Knoxville, right, Eleanor?”

  She nodded, then gathered her wits and said, “Laura’s address book is in that drawer. It probably has Pam’s home phone number.”

  Dwight pulled the drawer out so hard that it slipped off its rails and crashed to the floor. I began picking up the pencils and pens, rubber bands, and scratch pads that tumbled around his feet and put them back in the drawer while he plucked a leather-bound address book from the pile and soon was reading off all the numbers and street addresses listed for Pamela and Gregory Morgan. There were even two cell phone numbers, one labeled “P” and the other “G.”

  “I’ll try the ‘P’ one right now,” said Dwight.

  “What? . . . Yeah, we’ll be here. Damn straight we’ll be here.”

  He broke the connection and dialed the number for Pam Morgan’s cell phone. A moment later, he said,

  “Crap!” and hung up the phone. “That number’s out of service.”

  He grabbed up the parka that had fallen to the floor and headed back upstairs with the two of us close behind.

  And no, he didn’t bother to knock at Mrs. Shay’s bedroom door. She was standing in her slip in front of her open closet, and as we entered she gave a ladylike gasp and reached for her robe.

  “Really, Dwight!”

  But Dwight was in no mood for niceties. He thrust the parka toward her and said, “It’s Pam’s, isn’t it? You lied 22 when you said she was still in Tennessee. Where is she?

  What’s she done with Cal?”

  Every word was like a slap across her face and she was so shocked that she clutched the robe to her chest as if it could protect her. Moaning, she held out a hand to Eleanor, but her cousin said, “No more false pride, Laura. You have to tell us.”

  “Is she here in the house?” Dwight asked. “Dammit, where’s my son?”

  “I didn’t lie,” she whimpered. “I told you she would be at Jonna’s funeral. You never asked if she was already here.”

  Eleanor was dismayed. “Oh, Laura. Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “She’s here? In the house?” He started for the door, but Mrs. Shay called him back.

  “They’re not in this house, Dwight. I don’t know where they are, honest. She wouldn’t tell me.”

  While Dwight paced like a caged tiger that smells blood, Mrs. Shay told us how Pam had blown into town two weeks ago. “She left her husband. She wanted to stay here, but she wasn’t taking her pills, so I couldn’t have that. Not with my friends in and out and she acting so—so—”

  “Crazy?” asked Dwight.

  “She’s not crazy!” Mrs. Shay cried. “She’s not, she’s not! She’s bright and funny and just as sane as you and I when she’s taking her pills.”

  “And when she doesn’t take her pills?” I asked quietly.

  “Is she violent?”

  “She would never hurt Cal,” Mrs. Shay said, instantly grasping the concern beneath my question. “She adores him.”

  “But she hears voices,” said Eleanor, “and sometimes those voices tell her to do”—we watched her search for an alternate term for “crazy” that wouldn’t set her cousin off again—“to do . . . irrational things.”

  “The only person she’s ever hurt is herself,” Mrs. Shay said.

  I thought back to the used sheets on Jonna’s couch.

  “Did she stay with Jonna?”

  Mrs. Shay nodded. “When she first got to town she did. Jonna let her stay a whole week, but then, with the voices and all . . . You know what Pam’s like, Eleanor, and this was a busy time for Jonna. Taking inventory out at the Morrow House, working on her class reunion, committee members coming to the house. And Jill and Lou are such gossips. It would have been all over town. We called Gregory, but he wouldn’t come get her this time.

  He said he was through trying to keep her on her medication.”

  “So where did she go when Jonna kicked her out?”

  Dwight asked impatiently.

  Mrs. Shay was once again affronted by his choice of words. “You make it sound as if we’re coldhearted and uncaring, but Pam knows she would be more than welcome if she stayed on her pills and—”

  Dwight stopped pacing. He’s six-three and solid, and as he towered over his former mother-in-law, there was such thunder in his face that she quit talking in mid-stream. “You know something, Mrs. Shay? I don’t give a flying frick about your problems with your daughters.

  This is my son. Now you tell me what the hell’s she done 22 with him or I’m going to take this town apart house by house and you can damn well believe that every one of your snooty friends will be told exactly why.”

  “But I don’t know!” she wailed. “Honest. Jonna got one of our Anson cousins to invite her up to their cabin up in the hills and she did go, but she was afraid of getting snowed in up there and left before it started falling Wednesday night. William—that’s our cousin—called the next morning to see if she was okay, but when I talked to Jonna on Thursday morning, she hadn’t seen Pam either.

  We thought maybe she’d gone on back to Tennessee.”

  Thought? I wondered. Or hoped? Out of sight, out of mind. Whited out like the snow.

  Even though she had taken Cal, I nevertheless felt a sudden compassion for Jonna’s poor unstable sister.

  Delusional people like her cycle in and out of my court every week, one of the Reagan legacies you seldom hear mentioned. I’m told that we used to have a halfway decent system of community mental health centers, but Reagan ended all the federal funding for them as soon as he took office, which is why so many demented, home-less people roam our streets these days. And they want to carve his face on Mount Rushmore? Jeez!

  “So where did this parka come from?” Dwight asked.

  Mrs. Shay took a deep breath. “Pam must have taken mine by mistake. She was here around two this morning.

  I couldn’t sleep so I came down for cocoa and a few minutes later she came walking through the kitchen door just as if she were a teenager again coming home from school.”

  “She still has a key?” Eleanor asked.


  “Well, of course she does. Both my daughters . . .” She choked up as the realization hit her anew that now she only had one daughter.

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “At two in the morning? I’m sure Kenneth would have liked that.”

  “Mrs. Shay,” said Dwight, and from his tone, I knew he was about to lose it again.

  “She knew about Jonna, Dwight, and she was heartsick. Said she knew it was going to turn out bad.”

  “Knew what was going to turn out bad?”

  “She wasn’t making sense. She said that Jonna would be a ghost now, too. She would be a guide to freedom.

  That the trains were running and Jonna would be on one, riding to glory and freedom. Her voices had told her so.”

  “Did you ask her about Cal?”

  “I tried, Dwight. I really tried. She said he was asleep in the arms of Jesus.”

  Ice formed around my heart. “Oh God!”

  “No, no,” she assured me. “He’s not dead and not hurt, because she wanted me to give her some crackers and soda for him. She took a banana, too, and she said there was one more thing she wanted for him, but she would have to be a ghost to get it. It was all such a muddle. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was her voices.

  They had told her that she had to watch out for the bloodhounds. Can you believe that? Bloodhounds! Nobody in this town has a bloodhound and the trains quit running years ago. I tried to tell her that, but she said she had to keep him hidden till it was safe to bring him out.

  She promised me that she would bring him back. I told her he must be scared and cold, but she said no, that she and Jesus were keeping him warm.” She looked at 22 Eleanor helplessly. “And you know she was never religious. It’s those voices in her head.”

  “She would have to be a ghost?” Dwight asked.

  “That’s what she said, but it was just nonsense. It was so distressing. I’m sure this is not good for my heart.”

  “Did you come over to Jonna’s house last night and take that teddy bear from Cal’s room?”

  “Of course not!”

  “So it was Pam. Bandit knew her. And she knew the house because she stayed there last week.”

  The doorbell rang and I hurried down to answer it. I expected it to be Agents Lewes and Clark. Instead it was two attractive women, who looked to be a couple of years older than me. They were expensively dressed in an understated way—wool topcoats, cashmere scarves, high-heeled boots. One carried a large dish garden of mixed green plants in a beautiful ceramic bowl. I recognized a prayer plant, a peace lily, and some variegated ivy. It was accented with a huge white silk bow.