Winter's Child

by Margaret Maron

  Two blocks off of Main Street and I heard no cars. Of course, that might be because the house was so well built.

  I hadn’t heard Betty’s car leave the parking lot either.

  Not that I sat in complete and utter silence. Following an afternoon with sixty extra people walking around here, the old house snapped and clicked as the floorboards readjusted themselves. All the same, it was so quiet that I jumped when the grandfather clock out in the hall struck the quarter hour.

  Deciding that I might as well print out Cal’s records as long as they were on the hard drive, I pulled up the document again, set the printer for fast draft, pressed print, and sat back to wait for the pages.

  The printer coughed into life and quickly began to turn out sheets. It was set so that the last sheet printed first.

  To my surprise, instead of printing the last page of Cal’s records, it printed a picture and the page was numbered twenty-six.

  Huh?

  I quickly scrolled down the computer’s screen. Pages five to twenty-two were blank. The second picture was emerging from the printer when I hit page twenty-three.

  Why, Jonna, I thought. You sneaky little devil.

  I instantly flashed on the testimony of a woman in a divorce action that had come before me. She and her husband shared a home computer and she had discovered the whole e-mail correspondence between him and his mistress. He had tucked it away at the bottom of their tax records, figuring she would never bother to look there.

  Unfortunately for him, printing out a copy of one’s joint tax return is one of the first things a wife is advised to do when her marriage is coming apart. Divorce attorneys know that cheating husbands may lie to their wives, but that they seldom tell significant lies to the IRS.

  The pictures puzzled me. From what was said earlier, I didn’t think any of the Morrow House treasures had been photographed, yet here were the digital prints for four of them. I looked closer and realized that these had been saved from the Internet. One bore the name of an unfamiliar town in Tennessee and read “ca. 1853. Missing since 2003.” Another was labeled “Faison House, Roanoke, Virginia. Disappeared May 1999.”

  The printer finished with Cal’s records and went silent.

  I closed the file on Jonna’s computer, lifted the sheets from the printer tray, and after discarding the superfluous blank pages, leaned back in her chair to contemplate the significance of what I was seeing. Unless I was very mistaken, this was why Jonna had been so willing to work overtime on the inventory when the house was usually closed and she could search the Internet unobserved.

  This must also be why she was killed.

  Was it blackmail? Did she say, “Give me five thousand and I’ll let you steal back the things you gave, so that you can return them to their rightful owners?”

  Dwight was so sure of her honesty, but if this wasn’t evidence of blackmail, why hadn’t she taken these pictures straight to the board?

  Or was I misreading the situation? Had she kept quiet out of compassion? Because she recognized someone whose needy pride was so similar to her own? Another case of—

  My eyes were focused on the pictures, yet I was abruptly aware of a faint sound in the hall and my pe-ripheral vision registered a movement that had been so fleeting, I could almost think I’d imagined it.

  “Betty?” I called. “Dwight?”

  Cold air swirled through the room and sent chill bumps down my spine. I slid the pictures under Cal’s records and laid them down beside the computer, then walked over to the doorway. “Hello? Somebody there?

  “Hello?” I called again.

  No answer.

  An outside light was on, but Betty had turned off the main lights before she left and I didn’t know where that switch was either. I moved cautiously out into the shadowy hall and found the source of my chill bumps. She hadn’t closed the front door properly, and it was the icy air blowing in around the crack that had creeped me out.

  I shut it firmly and started back to the office, jeering at myself for letting the house unnerve me.

  That’s when I noticed that the end closet door was also slightly ajar. It suddenly dawned on me that maybe it wasn’t Betty who had left the door unlatched. Had someone been hiding in the closet, thinking that everyone had left and that it was now safe to sneak out and escape? The thief that had stolen the guns and the jewelry from the safe? Jonna’s killer?

  Holding my breath, I opened the door wider and peered in. All was dark, and yet, despite the darkness, there was something odd here. For a moment, I couldn’t think what it was until it hit me that the closet was now deeper than it had seemed when Betty first showed it to me. I needed better light, though. Where were the damn switches? I re-27 membered moving a flashlight in one of the drawers of Jonna’s desk and I quickly retrieved it, then played the light over the interior of the closet, past the stacked chairs, and into an empty space behind them that had definitely not been there before. There was just enough room between the stacks for me to slide through. The whole back panel had been pushed aside, and when I stuck the flashlight inside, I was dumbfounded to see that steep, narrow steps had been sandwiched between the back-to-back closets, steps that were only wide enough for one person.

  One short person. If I went up, I’d have to stoop.

  Not that I had any intention of going up. Not without someone to watch my back. I’m no gothic heroine to go flitting around a castle’s ominous dark turrets in a wispy nightgown.

  Besides, I’d left all my wispy nightgowns at home.

  As I turned to go find my phone and call Dwight, I heard the one thing that could make me forget common sense—somewhere a child began to cry.

  Cal?

  I flashed the light up the steps that seemed to dead-end at a blank wall.

  “Cal? Is that you?”

  Crouching, I hurried up the steps, which were nothing more than sloped boards with horizontal strips of wood to offer a foothold. When I got to the top, there was a turn and a proper set of narrow steps. The ceiling here was tall enough to walk upright and I realized that they paralleled the staircase I’d walked up earlier with Betty.

  Indeed, these steps seemed to be part of the original treads with only a thin wall between them. Part of my mind was having an Aha! moment of realization as to 280

  WINTER’S CHILD

  why those other stairs had struck me as less spacious than expected. The rest was focused on the heartbroken sobs of the child up above me.

  At the top of this flight, a shallow landing made a sharp turn to the left and ended about four feet away. There, the flashlight revealed a simple latch, and when I lifted it and pushed, the panel slid smoothly to one side with no squeaks or scrapes and I was in a space that measured roughly five by fifteen feet. A battery-powered lantern cast a dim glow over the secret room. Painted on the walls in lurid colors was a vision of the peaceable king-dom, where black lions lay down with snow-white lambs in green pastures and a black Jesus shepherded them all.

  I saw empty soft drink cans and some cups from the kitchen downstairs. I smelled urine and an overly ripe banana, but what tore at my heart was the soft, hopeless crying that came from the small form curled up on a rough pallet in the corner with a teddy bear beside him.

  “Oh, Cal!”

  I rushed over, set my flashlight on the floor, and knelt down to gather him up in my arms. He seemed groggy and only half-alert, but he began to wail louder as he recognized me and put his arms around my neck. “Miss Deborah! Is Daddy with you? I want my daddy! Please?”

  “He’s coming, sweetheart,” I promised, stroking his small head and making automatic soothing noises.

  I no sooner registered the smell of gardenias than he stiffened and tried to jerk back. I heard him cry, “No!”

  then someone dropped a piano on my head.

  C H A P T E R

  30

  A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.

  —Aristotle

  Sunday evening, 23 Janu
ary

  Dwight knocked on the door and the black man who opened it was just under six feet, with short curly hair that was more salt than pepper. If he and his wife had been working for Mrs. Shay at the time of Eustace Shay’s death, then Lunsford had to be at least sixty, yet his erect frame showed no signs of coming frailty. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt that was open at the neck, no tie, and black dress pants; and he had answered the door in his stocking feet. Ordinary Sunday night comfort.

  “Mr. Lunsford? Dix Lunsford?”

  “Yes?”

  The wary caution in the man’s face was familiar to Dwight. He knew he had cop stamped all over him.

  There was nothing he could do about his looks. All the same, at times like this, he could wish that strangers did not see flashing blue lights the moment they met him.

  “I’m Dwight Bryant.”

  “Yes?”

  “Jonna’s ex-husband.”

  Nothing in his expression changed. “Yes?”

  “May I come in and ask you a few questions about Jonna and Pam?”

  That did get a reaction. “Pam? What you asking about Pam for?”

  A querulous voice from inside said, “If you’d let the poor man in, Dix, maybe he’d tell you.”

  Lunsford stepped back and gestured for Dwight to enter.

  The house was warm and cozy after the biting wind outside. Two recliners faced a flat-screen television set.

  Golfers walked across perfect greens under golden sunshine. A sturdily built woman, Mrs. Lunsford had her coarse gray hair pulled back in a neat bun. She wore gold-rimmed glasses and a wine red pantsuit; and as Dwight entered the room, she brought her recliner to its upright position and muted the sound on the television.

  “You find your boy yet?”

  “No, ma’am. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping y’all could help me. Mrs. Prentice—you know her?”

  Mrs. Lunsford nodded.

  “She says you two have known Jonna and Pam since they were babies.”

  Again the affirmative nod.

  “We think Pam’s the one that took Cal Friday afternoon.”

  She shot an inquiring look at her husband, who shook his head. “Every time I’ve seen her, she was by herself.”

  “But you’ve seen her?” asked Dwight. “Where?

  When?”

  “At the Morrow House. She showed up Monday while I was working.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” said his wife.

  “ ’Cause you always take Jonna’s part and Jonna didn’t want her there, but where was she gonna go? Her husband didn’t want her, Miss Laura didn’t want her, Jonna didn’t want her. It was coming on for cold weather and that big house all empty upstairs? What did it hurt?”

  “Is that what you and Jonna fought about on Monday?” Dwight asked.

  A mulish look came into the older man’s face, one that must have been familiar to his wife, for she said sharply,

  “Dixon Lunsford, Jonna’s laying dead in her coffin, her little boy’s missing, and his daddy’s a policeman. You don’t tell him where Pam is, he’s gonna think you got something to do with it.”

  “All I did was bring her some of our old blankets so she could make a pallet and sleep up in one of them empty rooms for a couple of nights. Poor little thing’s not herself right now.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Still at the house, I reckon. Leastways that’s where she was Thursday morning.”

  “You were at the house that day?”

  “Didn’t think it’d hurt to stop by on my way to the schoolhouse, maybe take her a sandwich.”

  Mrs. Lunsford rolled her eyes in exasperation and explained that one of her husband’s odd jobs was to buff and polish the floor tiles of the main lobby of the high school once a week.

  “The old school across from the Morrow House?”

  They both nodded. “Only now it’s a retirement home.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dwight said. “Let me get this straight. You were in the Morrow House with Pam Thursday morning?”

  “Jonna, too.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Well, I usually do the floors about ten-thirty, so it was before that. I didn’t stay but long enough to give Pam the food because she and Jonna were getting into it pretty heavy. Jonna wanted to take her to the hospital and Pam didn’t want to go, so she ran off upstairs.”

  “You didn’t follow her?”

  “Wasn’t any use to. Ever since they were two smarty-pants little girls, they knew how to hide so nobody could find them. You’d swear they were on the third floor, and next time you turned around, they were all the way downstairs. They used to say Elizabeth Morrow’s ghost taught them how to disappear. Anyhow, Jonna told me to go on. That she’d take care of Pam and—”

  Dwight’s phone began to ring. “Excuse me a minute.”

  It was Paul Radcliff. “Hey, bo, where are you?”

  “I’m here talking to Mr. and Mrs. Lunsford, why?”

  “Well, get your ass over to the old high school. One of my men just found Pam Shay’s car parked around back with the residents’ cars. I called Lewes. He and Clark are going to meet us there.”

  The white Honda Accord with Tennessee plates was surrounded by several prowl cars and officers. Residents of the converted school peered down from their win-28 dows, curious and alarmed by the flashing blue lights.

  Radcliff already had officers going door-to-door inside, questioning them as to what they had seen and to ask if any were harboring Pamela Shay Morgan and her nephew.

  The state agents had sent for their evidence truck to come and process the car, and while they waited Dwight told them of his fruitless trip out to the lake and of his interview with the Lunsfords. They were interested to hear that Pam and Jonna knew of places to hide in the Morrow House, and when he drove around to it, Paul Radcliff and Nick Lewes followed.

  “We never checked the attic,” Dwight said. “Are there stairs?”

  Radcliff shrugged. “Bound to be, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Usually are,” Lewes agreed.

  As they came up the front walk, they saw someone peering out at them with anxiety evident in every syllable of her body language.

  “Oh, Chief Radcliff, Major Bryant!” said Betty Ramos.

  “Is Judge Knott with you?”

  “No,” said Dwight. “Isn’t she here?”

  Mrs. Ramos shook her head. “I was wondering if she had to leave for some reason.”

  “Her car’s still here. Why?”

  “Well, I’m sure I don’t know. She was going through the files on Jonna’s computer when I left. I was only away a few minutes, and when I came back she was gone. Her purse is still there on the desk and so is her phone, but—”

  She shook her blond head in bewilderment. “I’ve looked all over the house and there’s no sign of her, so I thought maybe she had to leave in a hurry, but then why would she leave her things?”

  “She wouldn’t,” Dwight said decisively. The sight of Deborah’s red car coat on the back of the office chair chilled him with its implications.

  “Are there steps to the attic?” Lewes asked. “We didn’t see any this afternoon.”

  “That’s because they’re concealed up on the third floor,” said Mrs. Ramos. “I’ll show you.”

  As she led the way upstairs, she described how she and Judge Knott had come up earlier to put the new coverlet on the bed in the Rose Room. “And when we went back downstairs, I cleared away the rest of the food and tidied up the kitchen while she got started with the computer.”

  At the top of the second flight of stairs, she paused to catch her breath and explained how she had gone home to fetch some notes she had forgotten. “I wasn’t gone more than fifteen minutes.”

  Dwight glanced at his watch. “And I talked to her myself about twenty-five minutes ago.”

  Mrs. Ramos continued down the hall. Halfway to the end, she paused in front of a blank wall. Like the rest of the walls
of this house, it was embellished with elegant carved garlands and swags and other details of the Federalist period. She pushed one of the rosettes and a flush door swung open to reveal a staircase.

  “Does Dix Lunsford know about this door?” Dwight asked.

  “I should think so,” she said, “but I really don’t know.

  We haven’t needed to store things up there yet with so many empty rooms available down here.”

  Cold dead air met them as they climbed, and soon they 28 were up in a cavernous space that appeared to be completely empty. There were no electric lights up here but their pocket flashes showed nothing of interest. Nothing to hide behind, no dormer alcoves to crouch in, only a low hip roof that almost touched their heads when they stood.

  They spread out over the house then, from the basement back to the third floor and down again, opening every door into every room, closet, or cupboard.

  When Lewes tried to suggest that Deborah might have left for a perfectly logical reason, Dwight cut him off in midsentence. “Without her coat? Without her phone and purse? If she’s not here, then someone took her. There’s no sign of a struggle, no—oh shit! Where’s my god-damned head?”

  “What?” said Radcliff.

  “Bandit!”

  “Huh?”

  “Cal’s dog. Maybe he can find her.”

  He hurried out to the truck and returned moments later with the little terrier trotting along in front of him.

  Once inside, Dwight turned toward the office to let Bandit sniff Deborah’s coat, but the dog immediately strained for the stairs, whining with excitement. Dwight let the leash out to its full sixteen feet and ran to keep up with him, the others following.

  With absolutely no hesitation, Bandit rounded the landing and headed up to the third floor. He scratched at the door of the Rose Room and Dwight felt a moment of despair. He himself had already searched this room thoroughly. Nevertheless, he opened the door before Bandit could take all the paint off the bottom, and the dog bounded through and over to the closet where he repeated his anxious scratching, the stub of his small tail wagging like a flag on the Fourth of July.