Winter's Child

by Margaret Maron

  “What did you talk about?” I asked.

  “The weather mostly. It had snowed the night before and I was a little worried about the roads. And we talked about today.” She gave a self-conscious smile. “She and Dix had already hung the drapes in the Rose Bedroom but she wanted me to wait about putting the coverlet on the bed until we’d shown it to our members. Some of them can’t climb steps anymore.”

  “You really must go up and see the room,” Mayhew told me, “only I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Closing time was at five.”

  “I was hoping to stay and check out Jonna’s papers and her computer,” I said. “I can’t help feeling there must be something that the men have overlooked. Besides, my husband’s meeting me here after he interviews Dix Lunsford.”

  Mayhew’s eyes narrowed behind his polished glasses.

  “Major Bryant’s interviewing Lunsford? Whatever for?”

  “Didn’t you tell him that Lunsford was devoted to Jonna?”

  “Was, Judge. They had quite an argument on Monday and he huffed around the rest of the day.”

  “Argument? What about?”

  “I’m sure I can’t say. They were on the third floor hanging Betty’s drapes. I could hear their voices all the way down here, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. When Jonna came down and I asked her what all that was about, she said that Dix was being stubborn about following her orders and that maybe it was time we looked for someone else to clean here.”

  He paused as if struck by what he was saying. “Heavens! You don’t suppose that Dix—? I mean, he does know his way around this house. He knows where the keys are and I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows how to disarm the alarm and where the safe combination is written.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Betty Ramos. “Dix has known Jonna since she was a baby. He may take advantage of his status as an old family retainer, but he would never hurt a Shay.”

  Nathan Benton looked skeptical and Suzanne D. Angelo looked at her watch. “I’m sorry to rush you, Frederick, but the Schmerners expect us for cocktails at six.”

  Benton glanced at his own watch and stood. “I have a dinner engagement as well.”

  “Well, I don’t,” said Betty Ramos, “so why don’t I stay a while, put away the rest of the food and punch, copy off some more letters, and keep Judge Knott company while she looks at the computer? I have my key and I’ll lock up when we leave.”

  Mayhew wasn’t thrilled by her suggestion, but who was he to argue with a wealthy trustee who had just given the house a gift worth several hundreds? “You do remember how to set the alarm, don’t you?”

  They went off together for a refresher course on the proper setting of the system while Benton and Angelo gathered up their coats to follow and said that they hoped we would have word of Cal by morning.

  When Betty Ramos returned to the parlor alone, she said, “Before you get started, want to come upstairs? I’m dying to see how the coverlet looks on the bed.”

  I hadn’t yet seen the Rose Bedroom myself, so I quickly agreed.

  We climbed the curved stairs to the second floor, passed the mannequin that represented Elizabeth Morrow’s brother, then took the surprisingly narrow flight of stairs to the third floor. There were discreet light switches and concealed lights along the way. “The house was actually wired around 1920,” she explained, “but when my husband and I donated the new heating and cooling system, we upgraded the wiring as well. The electrician told us that we were probably just one power surge away from a major fire.”

  “Sounds like a very generous gesture.”

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s not as showy as swords and guns, perhaps . . .”

  “Not that it’s a contest or anything,” I said wickedly.

  “Oh dear, is that what it sounded like?” She saw my smile and gave a sheepish smile of her own. “I’m afraid Nathan Benton brings out the worst in me. He’s always finding these perfect little treasures at yard sales and flea markets and makes a big show of how clever he’s been to pay so little. As if ”—her voice slipped into a clipped British accent that perfectly mimicked Benton’s—“ ‘I say, chappies, anyone can slosh money around, but spotting authentic pieces dead on takes a discriminating eye, what?’ I mean, he’s just so bloody proud of everything he finds. And poor Frederick. It humiliates him to death that he can’t match Nathan’s generosity. He’s found a couple of nice things over in Tennessee himself, but I’m afraid his pockets aren’t as deep as he’d like.

  “Now, Catherine Schmerner—did you meet her?

  Short, white-haired woman? I think she was wearing a purple coat?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, she and Suzanne have given the house quite a few items, too. In fact Catherine gave us an ebony-and-silver hand mirror just last month that could easily have belonged to Peter Morrow’s wife, but she would never brag about it. I was so pleased when Suzanne held it up this afternoon and Catherine got to take a bow, too.

  Jonna found a picture of one just like it on an English antiques site. They were asking a hundred pounds for theirs.”

  Up on the third floor, the Rose Bedroom was the one nearest the landing and it was quite charming. So named for the rose silk that lined the walls, its only furniture was a bed, a chest of drawers, a couple of chairs, and a bed table that held a hobnail milkglass lamp. I was surprised to realize that the reason the bedroom doors were re-cessed so deeply in from the hallway was because they all contained proper closets. The one in this room was at least five feet deep and of course there was no light inside.

  Even with the door open, it must have been hard for Elizabeth Morrow to find her favorite dress, but it certainly beat the old freestanding wardrobes so prevalent when the house was built.

  “Peter Morrow was a very practical man,” Mrs. Ramos agreed. “There’s an amazing amount of storage space in this house. Did you notice that he added closets under the main staircase? It was originally freestanding, but he 26 decided it could be more useful to close it in and use it for storage.”

  I sniffed when I turned back from the empty closet to the room itself. Dwight said they had smelled the ghost’s faint gardenia perfume earlier today, but all I smelled was the sizing on the new fabric. The drapes picked up the pink of the walls for a background that was overlaid with greenery and deeper shades of pink roses. The same ma-terial was used for the coverlet, and I helped Mrs. Ramos fit it on the bed.

  “It’s so pretty,” I said. “Really warms up the room.”

  She seemed pleased by my praise. “I do love giving things to this house and watching it come back to life. It’s almost like a dollhouse for adults, isn’t it?”

  By the time we returned to the main hall, we were on a first-name basis. As we circled the staircase to get back to the office, she pointed out how Peter Morrow had put the wasted space beneath the stairs to practical use. I had walked past this area several times without noticing because the wainscoting and decorative molding matched the rest of the house so perfectly that even when you knew the doors were there, it was hard to see them. Betty pressed on one of the rosettes and a door swung open to reveal a space crammed with cardboard boxes marked

  “C’mas decorations.” Another held the folding chairs and yet another the usual odds and ends. Although the staircase was quite wide, the closets seemed comparatively shallow.

  “That’s because there’s a matching set on the other side,” said Betty. “My husband thought we should’ve run the new ductwork through the cupboards under the stairs here, but Jonna pitched a fit. Said it would be criminal to put vents in this molding. It cost a little more to run it between the floor joists and up the outside walls, but she was probably right.”

  We walked around and she opened a couple of the closets to show me spaces lined with shelves that held boxes of stemware and the punch bowl set.

  “I hope Morrow’s wife appreciated him,” I said.

  Betty closed the doors. “I’m afraid there w
ere times when she didn’t. One of his letters to his Philadelphia cousins said she was most ‘grievously unhappy’ at the changes he had made to her grand hall, but that he hoped she would come to agree with his decision.”

  While Betty tidied away the food and dishes from the reception, I fired up Jonna’s computer and went looking.

  I’m no expert, but it’s like driving a car. I don’t care about what’s under the hood, I just want to turn the key and drive to Dobbs. I know how to do what I need to do—to look up case law and precedents, I can navigate around the Internet for the things that interest me, and for everything else, there’s Google. I was happy to see that Jonna had used the same word-processing program as mine, and soon I was flashing through her files and directories. Nothing jumped out at me, but then I didn’t expect it to since Agents Lewes and Clark had already checked it.

  Everything seemed open to view and none of the files were password protected, which wasn’t surprising since there didn’t seem to be much of the personal or confidential. One folder was marked “Miscellaneous/House-keeping/Personal,” but the only halfway personal thing I saw was a file containing Cal’s school reports and comments from his teachers that she had scanned in, along 26 with a record of his immunizations and the dates of his physicals. There were recipes for making enough party food to serve fifty people. Recipes for summer punches and winter mulled cider. Addresses of various rental places in town from tents to folding chairs. I looked at the spreadsheets for the budget, skimmed through the monthly minutes of the board and the director’s reports that Mayhew had delivered, etc. etc.

  She had methodically entered about half of the inventory that was detailed in a thick sheaf of paper, including

  “Bullets—.36 caliber. Original box of 12. Seven missing.

  Judge M’s safe.” She seemed to have assigned it a number that corresponded to items kept in the judge’s office so that the list could be sorted alphabetically, by code numbers or by actual rooms.

  Nevertheless, if there was anything in this computer to explain why Jonna had been killed, I wasn’t seeing it.

  In the meantime, Betty Ramos kept passing back and forth as she tidied the parlor and kitchen. It was after six before she switched off most of the lights and came into the office. “Any luck?”

  “Not yet.”

  She went over to the files that held the Morrow family papers, pulled open a file drawer, and immediately gave a small tch of annoyance.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I just realized that I left my notes on my desk at home and now I can’t remember where I left off. I think I’ll just run home and get them. I’m only a few blocks away. You don’t mind if I leave you alone for a few minutes, do you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Anyhow, Dwight’ll probably be here anytime now. I’m surprised he hasn’t called yet.”

  “I won’t bother to lock the door, then,” she said, “so he can come right on in.”

  “Fine.” The desk was against the side of the front wall, and from where I sat, I could watch as she passed down the dimly lit hall and disappeared beyond the staircase. I heard the front door close and then turned back to the desk. Again, there was nothing of a personal nature in any of the drawers that I could see and I even lifted them out one by one and checked for false bottoms or something taped to the undersides.

  Nothing.

  C H A P T E R

  28

  The blackest month in all the yearIs the month of Janiveer.

  —Anonymous

  Sunday afternoon, 23 January

  As Dwight was snapping the leash onto Bandit’s collar, his phone rang. Agent Lewes.

  “Was she there? Do her cousins know where she is?” he asked eagerly.

  “Sorry, Bryant. They think she left here early Monday morning. And I hate to load any more on your plate, but they’re saying she really does need to be institutionalized this time, that she’s getting more and more detached from reality. They blame her sister and her mother for not stepping in and doing what needs to be done before now.

  They don’t think she’d intentionally hurt your son, but if she’s the one who did your ex-wife—”

  Dwight did not let Lewes finish that thought. “Did they have any suggestions about where she’d go? What she’d do?”

  “They said the Shays own a place on a nearby lake?”

  “Yeah. Cal and I go fishing out there with Radcliff and his kids, but the house burned down at least fifty years ago. Nothing there but trees and bushes now.”

  “What about a boathouse? Anson says that’s where they found Pam a couple of summers ago.”

  “Boathouse? It’s nothing but a caved-in roof and some old siding.”

  “All the same, they say that’s where she was.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Dwight and realized that, well, yes, this was exactly how everyone characterized Pam’s mental state. So what else was new? “Thanks, Lewes. It’s only about six or eight miles out of town. I’ll swing over there right now while it’s still light.”

  He started to leave Bandit at the house, then decided that the little dog might prove useful if Pam had taken Cal there. He had half convinced himself that if Bandit got anywhere within sniffing distance of Cal, he would home in on him like one of those bloodhounds that had entrenched themselves in Pam’s delusional mind.

  The lake was less than fifteen minutes away, but it took another ten minutes to hike in from the rutted lane where he had parked the truck. Patches of snow still dotted the landscape on the north side of the bushes. Today’s sun had helped melt the worst, but the sun was rapidly setting and the wind bit at his face and stung his eyes. Bandit was on a retractable leash and Dwight kept it fairly short so as not to get tangled in the scrub. There had been no sign of tire tracks in the lane, and so far they hadn’t crossed any trail marks either. Eventually, they came to the rotting pile of lumber that had once been a boathouse for the rustic lakeside lodge. Part of the roof had come down in one section and had landed on a couple of uprights, so that it now resembled a rough lean-to. He supposed that 27 in the summer, Pam could have sheltered under it from the sun and rain. Here in dead winter, though? With the sides open to chilling winds and icy sleet? He saw some faded fast-food cartons and an empty plastic water bottle but nothing recent.

  Even though he was now almost positive Pam and Cal could not be here, he called several times, then let Bandit off the lead. “Where’s Cal?” he said. “Find Cal!”

  The dog raced around the area from the shoreline to the collapsed boathouse and back again without notice-able interest in any one spot until he suddenly lunged toward a bush that overhung the water, barking excitedly.

  Dwight hurried over just in time to watch a pair of startled wood ducks take flight across the lake in the darkening twilight. The bleak landscape mirrored the bleakness he felt as yet another possibility came to nothing.

  “That’s it,” he told the dog. “Let’s go.”

  On his way back to town, Dwight phoned the Colleton County Sheriff ’s Department and got Detective Richards, who gave him a negative update. The discouraged note he heard in her voice sounded like an echo of his own feelings. They had both been chasing down dead-end roads all weekend and she had even taken a bullet for her troubles. Nevertheless, she was probably closer to winding up the Rouse shooting than he was to finding Cal. And at least she’d found a solid motive for that murder, while Jonna’s was still a mystery.

  “Just because no one’s come forward to say they saw Overholt doesn’t mean he wasn’t the shooter,” he told Richards. “The Army that taught him how to use a hand- gun with that much accuracy also trained him how to am-bush an enemy, so don’t worry about the gun. If it’s there, Wilson will find it. There’s bound to be a buddy or someone who’ll know what guns he had. Give the investigation time to play itself out.”

  “Yessir. But what about your son? Any news? Agent Wilson was asking.”

  “Nothing concrete, but we still have a few
people to interview. I’ll call if anything breaks. And for right now, go home, Richards. You’ve got nothing to prove to me or Sheriff Poole, okay?”

  He called Deborah to tell her that he might be a little longer getting there than he’d intended.

  “Have you talked to Dix Lunsford yet?” she asked.

  “Just turning down their street,” he said. “Why?”

  “Mayhew said he heard Jonna quarreling with him on Monday. He doesn’t know what it was about, but she was angry enough to tell Mayhew they ought to think about firing him.”

  “I’ll ask him,” Dwight said. “See you in a half hour or so.”

  With that, he parked his truck in front of the Lunsford house. Bandit begged to come in with him, but Dwight figured he would be back out before the cab of the truck became too cold for the little dog.

  C H A P T E R

  29

  When a wolf approaches or enters cultivated ground in theseason of winter, it indicates that a storm will come immediately.

  —Theophrastus

  Dwight called to say he was running late. I told him about the fight Mayhew said Jonna and Lunsford had on Monday and returned to my fruitless search.

  I had forgotten to ask if Mrs. Shay’s house could be seen from the third floor of this one, and yes, I could have run upstairs to see for myself, but the house was dark and I didn’t know where the light switches were. I told myself that it certainly wasn’t because I was nervous here alone.

  Besides, all old houses creaked and groaned.

  Nevertheless, I found myself tensing at every tiny sound.

  To distract myself while waiting for Betty Ramos to return, I contemplated the six four-drawer filing cabinets that lined one wall of this office that Jonna and Mayhew had shared. Twenty-four drawers packed tightly with hanging files. If one of them held the reason Jonna had been killed or a clue as to where Pam had taken Cal, find- ing that specific piece of paper would be sheer luck. As I thumbed aimlessly through the inventory, it struck me how very peaceful Shaysville was on a Sunday evening.