A Child Lost

by Michelle Cox

  “Can’t we go somewhere else?” Clive asked. “This really is unsuitable.”

  “No. What do you want, anyway?” Davis looked at him. “I’m kind of busy.”

  “I haven’t been the one prevaricating,” Clive said, annoyed. “Look—I need some sort of authority. If I’m acting for the police, I need some sort of badge. I’m getting nowhere saying I’m a private detective. Hired by who? I need some muscle.”

  Davis sighed and scratched his head as he studied the floor. “Well, what do you want me to do? I can’t hire you. Can’t you use your old badge?” he asked quietly. “No one’s going to look that carefully.”

  “I turned it in,” Clive said stiffly, “as was required.”

  “Of course, you did, didn’t you?” Davis replied with a look of exasperation. “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “Make me your deputy. You have the authority.”

  “Do I? I don’t think I do,” he said, squinting one eye at him as he took another drag.

  “You can in an extreme case.”

  “Which this is not,” he said, folding his arms casually in front of him.

  “Listen, Davis, stop fucking around. You either want me to help you or you don’t.”

  “All right, all right,” Davis said, holding up his hands. “There’s a lady present, you know.”

  “Just do it.”

  “All right. Just a minute. Wait here,” he said and left.

  “Clive!” Henrietta said, looking at him with what seemed to be amusement. “I believe you’re jealous.”

  “Jealous?” he scoffed. “Of him? Hardly.”

  Davis returned after a few moments and tossed him what looked like a thin, black wallet. “Here. Don’t ask.”

  Clive opened up the wallet, which held a tarnished badge on the right and an identification on the left. “Joseph Smith?” he read aloud and gave Davis a skeptical look. It was barely a step above “John Doe.” “Whose is this?”

  “I said don’t ask. You want it or not?”

  Clive sighed. He was generally loath to break rules, knowing that once down that path, it was a slippery slope to all manner of sins. He had started his police career determined to uphold every letter of the law, but his own chief had ordered him on a number of occasions to look the other way. He had struggled over those cases, but in the end, his need to follow a direct order outweighed his better moral judgment. But doing so had plunged him into a gray sort of world from that moment on, no longer safe behind the black-and-white rules he had been upholding. The lines were blurred now, and each situation had to be read and interpreted on its own merit. For the most part he stuck to the law—never took bribes or sequestered confiscated material, never looked the other way on dirty cops. Politicians, though, he was ordered to ignore on various occasions. It burned him up to do so, but he felt he had no choice. It was for the greater good, the chief had said. They were out to win the war, and some battles would naturally be lost. It was just a part of it. Unfortunately, Clive was no stranger to speeches such as this; he had heard them all before in the actual war in Europe.

  And as much as he didn’t like the feel of using a fake badge, as this surely was, he saw it as a necessary means to an end. He felt he needed it as a backup, as a way to motivate certain suspects to speak. In the past, he could resort to brute force, but now, as a private citizen, he couldn’t rely on throwing someone up against a wall. Nor did he wish to resort to such tactics in front of Henrietta, though that hesitation was also slipping further into the background as time went on. She had proved on more than one occasion that she was definitely not a fainting violet.

  “I really must insist on speaking with Mrs. Tobin,” Clive said now, his eyes darting toward what he was sure was the kitchen.

  “Fine, fine, but she’ll just repeat what I’ve already told you,” Tobin said disgruntledly. “Louise!” he shouted. “Come in here!”

  “Yes, Burt?” his wife answered immediately, as if she were indeed hovering somewhere nearby, and entered the room untying her apron. She was taller and more thickset than Clive thought she would be, but she had the rounded shoulders and the telltale diminutive air about her. She wore her dull, blonde hair short, in a bob, and her skin was porous and thick. A large brown splotch covered her right cheek, an obvious birthmark.

  “Sit down,” Mr. Tobin instructed her. “These two are working with the police, investigating that freak. They want to talk to you.”

  Louise Tobin looked up at them nervously and twisted her hands in her lap.

  “Just a few questions, Mrs. Tobin,” Henrietta said kindly.

  The woman looked at her and curled one side of her mouth into a momentary smile, and then looked over at her husband, her smile instantly melting into a frown as she did so.

  “Mrs. Tobin, why don’t you tell us about your visit to Madame Pavlovsky,” Clive said gently.

  “What . . . what do you want me to tell you?” she asked.

  “Let’s start with when. When did you first go see her?”

  Mrs. Tobin paused to think. “A few weeks ago. Maybe a month. Yes, it was a month ago, because I went on the anniversary of my mother’s death.”

  “And when was that?”

  “February seventeenth.”

  “And why did you decide to . . . well, to go see her? As I understand it, she’s relatively new to this area. How did you know about her?”

  “I . . .” she began and looked over at her husband. “I . . . some of the women at the Ladies Prayer Auxiliary at church were talking about her. Saying she could tell the future or the past . . . they . . . they had such amazing stories to tell.” She glanced nervously at her husband again. “I . . . I could hardly believe it.”

  “You shouldn’t have believed it, you dumb cow,” Mr. Tobin spit out. “You should have asked me first.”

  Clive shot him a dirty look. “I’m not interested in hearing from you at the moment, Mr. Tobin. Go on, Mrs. Tobin,” he said encouragingly. “What sort of stories?”

  Mrs. Tobin again looked at her husband. “That she could . . . could talk to the dead,” she said in a voice just above a whisper.

  “Jesus Christ!” Mr. Tobin muttered, at which Mrs. Tobin winced, as if expecting a blow from him. When none was forthcoming, she opened her eyes and looked at Clive.

  “And then what did you do?” he asked after glaring at Mr. Tobin again, but she didn’t answer. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

  My God, Clive thought, Tobin must really be a bastard. He decided to switch his interview tactic to help Mrs. Tobin. “So you decided to see for yourself?” Clive asked, leading her.

  Mrs. Tobin nodded gratefully.

  “On the anniversary of your mother’s death . . . perhaps hoping that Madame Pavlovsky might be able to speak with her? Is that right?”

  Mrs. Tobin nodded eagerly. “Yes.”

  Clive debated asking her the details of the conversation, not wanting to further fuel Henrietta’s imagination. And anyway, what did it matter what Madame Pavlovsky had told her? He could pretty much guess. “Did Madame Pavlovsky charge you for her . . . her services?” he asked instead.

  “No, there was no fee involved,” she said, looking hastily at her husband.

  “Just told you to rob me blind,” Mr. Tobin put in snidely.

  “It wasn’t like that, Burt! I told you that,” she said, only glancing at him briefly before looking back at the ground.

  “Why don’t you tell us in your own words, Mrs. Tobin,” Clive entreated.

  “I wasn’t bringing her all my jewelry like . . . like he says,” she said eagerly, as if she were glad for the chance to explain herself. “Madame Pavlovsky said that I should bring a token, something that was my mother’s. Something that would help her to communicate—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Mr. Tobin burst out.

  “One more interruption from you,” Clive said, pointing his finger at him, “and I’m taking her in for private questioning. Unders
tand?”

  “Oh, all right. Don’t get excited,” Mr. Tobin said with an irritated wave of his hand, as he threw himself back into his chair and crossed his arms in front of him.

  “Go on,” Clive said to Mrs. Tobin, again.

  “I . . . I admit I got overly excited,” she began, tentatively. “I’m sure it’s all my fault. But she . . . she told me things about my mother that she couldn’t possibly have known, that I . . .” she paused here, twisting her hands again. “Well, anyway, I . . . I went home to find just the right thing. I got out all my jewelry and laid it out on our bed, trying to sort out which had been my mother’s and trying to choose what I thought was the most special to bring back to Madame Pavlovsky’s. That’s when Burt walked in and he . . . well, you got the wrong idea,” she said, looking at Mr. Tobin again. “I . . . I tried to tell him that.”

  Clive looked over at Mr. Tobin, sitting with his arms still stiffly folded across his chest, his lips pressed tightly together.

  “You don’t buy that, do you?” Mr. Tobin suddenly blurted out. “She was hypnotized by that . . . that witch!” he said, gesturing wildly. “We need to run her out of town! And by God, if the police won’t do anything, we just might have to take the law into our own hands!” Mr. Tobin was almost shouting at this point.

  “What a splendid idea, Mr. Tobin. I’d love a chance to lock you up.”

  “You don’t have that authority!”

  “Try me,” Clive said, staring him down before he finally broke his gaze and looked back to Mrs. Tobin. “Mrs. Tobin,” Clive continued calmly. “Do you feel you were hypnotized, coerced in any way?”

  “No! I didn’t. I don’t. Nothing like that. I swear it.”

  “You felt . . . in your right mind the whole time you were with Madame Pavlovsky? And after as well?” Privately, given what he had seen of Madame Pavlovsky himself, he very much doubted her ability to do any such thing, but he felt he needed to ask.

  “Yes! Of course, I was. I wasn’t hypnotized or . . . or anything like that!”

  “Don’t get uppity, woman,” Mr. Tobin instructed. “He’s just asking a question. First good one he’s asked yet.”

  Clive ground his teeth and sighed. He was getting nowhere with this ass in the room. Suddenly, an idea came to him. “Mrs. Tobin,” he asked brightly, rubbing his chin. “I wonder if I might have some coffee. Could I trouble you for some?”

  “Oh, my! Of course,” Mrs. Tobin said. “I’m sorry I didn’t offer you any before. How silly of me.” She jumped up almost gladly, as if relieved to be back in the role of the servant and out of the spotlight. Clive looked at Henrietta with wide eyes and just slightly inclined his head toward Mrs. Tobin. He hoped she would understand . . . Delightedly, he saw her eyes light up in apparent recognition of what he wanted her to do and felt a flush of love for her.

  “Would you like some help?” Henrietta asked Mrs. Tobin, looking from him to the woman in front of her.

  “Oh, no! I’ve got it. I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Well, perhaps I could just powder my nose, if that’s all right,” Henrietta asked smoothly, Clive thrilling at her prowess.

  “Of course, you can. Burt put the bathroom in just last year,” she said proudly. “I just put a fresh towel out, too. Just this morning. But I should’ve put out the nice guest one,” she said as she led Henrietta out of the room. “Just down the hall, there,” she pointed.

  Henrietta went into the tiny bathroom, which held only a toilet and a sink and was so small, she could barely close the door with herself inside. Silently she waited several minutes, thinking about the situation before them. Clive obviously wanted her to get more information out of Mrs. Tobin, but she wasn’t sure exactly what information. In truth, she was a little afraid to leave him alone with Mr. Tobin; she could tell he was almost at the end of his rope, and it would never do if Clive punched him or did something equally ridiculous.

  She opened the bathroom door and paused to listen. She could hear Clive and Mr. Tobin discussing what sounded like politics, heatedly, on the part of Mr. Tobin, anyway. It was a subject she knew Clive despised, so he must be stalling for time, she speculated—time for her to hopefully get some information out of Mrs. Tobin. She took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door, walking softly back down the hall. She paused at the kitchen doorway, where she could see Mrs. Tobin hurriedly arranging cups on a tray.

  “Need some help?” Henrietta asked again.

  “No, won’t be a minute,” she said, smiling up at Henrietta.

  Henrietta tried to think of something to say. “Sorry if we’re making trouble for you,” she said, nodding toward the front room.

  “You mustn’t mind Burt. He doesn’t mean most of what he says. More bark than bite, really.”

  Henrietta wasn’t so sure that his bark wasn’t hurtful just the same, but she let it go. “I . . . we’ve been out to see Madame Pavlovsky ourselves,” she said.

  Mrs. Tobin looked up sharply. “You have?”

  “Yes,” Henrietta answered, encouraged by Mrs. Tobin’s animated response. “I . . . I know what you mean about her saying things you can’t explain,” she added softly. “She told me things about . . . about my two siblings that died of the flu when they were little. And about my father . . . she couldn’t have known . . .” Henrietta let her words hang there to see if they would be bait enough for Mrs. Tobin to take, and in the end she was rewarded.

  “Yes, that’s just it, isn’t it?” Mrs. Tobin whispered excitedly. “Things she couldn’t have known. Things that not another soul on this earth knows!”

  “What . . . what did she tell you?” Henrietta asked, unable to contain her true curiosity.

  “My mother died when I was young, just fourteen. I was an only child . . . and a lonely one. My mother worked in a factory, so I was alone a lot. One year for my birthday, an aunt gave me a little set of watercolor paints, and I loved them. I spent a lot of time painting and drawing. When my mother died, I was crushed with the grief of it. The night before her funeral, I stayed up painting a picture on an old piece of the Sears catalog because I didn’t have anything else, for her. It was a tree that I painted, full of leaves and flowers and creatures, so that she would have some life, some green and some color where she was going in the ground. I put it in an envelope and wanted to put it in her casket, but Father wouldn’t let me, so when he wasn’t looking, I put it in the pocket of the dress they had laid her out in. No one noticed and no one else knew. But it gave me great comfort. And then, when I went to see Madame Pavlovsky,” she said, bringing her hand shakily to her mouth, “she said that she could see my mother. That she was patting her pocket and saying ‘thanks’,” Mrs. Tobin said in a whisper. “Madame Pavlovsky just looked at me, not knowing what the message meant and waited for me to explain. It was clear as the nose on my face, she wasn’t making it up. For God’s sake, how could she?”

  Henrietta felt her heart begin to race a little faster, and goose bumps shot up her arms again. Mrs. Tobin was right. How could Madame Pavlovsky have known that? She simply couldn’t have. And if she really were some sort of fraud, why pick out such a loving, tiny detail to reveal? It made no difference in the grand scheme of things, and yet it was very meaningful to Mrs. Tobin.

  “And then when I got home, would you believe I saw a cardinal? Right there on the windowsill, plain as day.”

  “A cardinal?” Henrietta asked, clearly not understanding the significance.

  “Don’t you know about cardinals?” she asked. “Cardinals are a sign from the dead. It means they’re okay where they are; the deceased that is. That they’re okay up in heaven.”

  “Oh!” Henrietta said, as she tried to remember if she had seen any cardinals following her father’s death, or even now . . . but that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? A baby couldn’t send a cardinal to her.

  “So that’s even more proof isn’t it?” Mrs. Tobin whispered excitedly. “I don’t care what anyone says,” she said, nodding toward the front room. �
��She’s the real thing.”

  “But why did she want you to bring jewelry to her?” Henrietta decided to ask, determined to act like a detective, knowing that Clive would ask that when she told him later about this conversation.

  “It doesn’t have to be jewelry or anything valuable at all. Just something. A button, a pipe, a handkerchief. I don’t have much left of my mother’s; my father got rid of it all in his grief. There was just a bit of odd jewelry of hers he gave me. It’s not worth anything, which Burt knows, or he would have wanted to sell it,” she said, a trace of bitterness in her voice. “And, anyway, Madame Pavlovsky didn’t necessarily say she was going to keep it. Just said to bring it.”

  “But why?” Henrietta asked.

  Mrs. Tobin’s eyes darted toward the front room. “She does séances,” she whispered. “For those interested. In a séance, she can hear the deceased more clearly, she says, and she can actually speak to them, not just listen. If they choose to come forward, that is. And one way to get them to come forward, Madame Pavlovsky says, is to bring along something that belonged to the deceased. It draws them to the sacred circle.”

  Henrietta felt a chill run down her spine.

  “She’s having one this Friday. It’s always on a Friday. Don’t know why. But why don’t you come? You can see for yourself. Maybe she could tell you more about your father or your brother and sister.”

  Henrietta wondered what Clive would say about attending a séance and was fairly certain she could guess. “Will . . . will you . . . how will you get away?” Henrietta asked her, nodding again toward the front room.

  Mrs. Tobin let out a loud puff of air. “I’ll just have to say that I’m going to visit a friend for the night. He won’t know,” she whispered.

  “Why is he so upset by all of this?” Henrietta asked. “I mean, to go to the police? It seems extreme.”

  Mrs. Tobin shrugged. “That’s just his way. He’s awfully paranoid. Suspicious of everyone. That’s why we’re not close with any of the neighbors. Thinks they’re after something of his all the time. He doesn’t even like me going out to my church meetings at night or my sewing circle, but I have to have something, don’t I?” she asked Henrietta, pitifully.