Winter's Child

Both of us have put too many pillars of the community behind bars to say for sure who would or wouldn’t break the law, but if Dwight was on his white horse and riding in defense of his lady wife’s reputation, anything I said could and probably would be used against me, so I kept my mouth shut.

“The shooter must have put that ring in her purse to make us think it was a falling-out of thieves in case the suicide note didn’t work,” he said as we drove out of the communal parking lot.

“What about the other pieces? And the guns?”

“Probably kept them to sell somewhere out of the area.

The signet ring and guns would be too easy to identify, but it sounds as if those weird hair things are pretty common and gold lockets must be a dime a dozen. Could be she caught the thief in action and threatened to tell.

Maybe that’s why she was killed.”

And maybe she offered to meet her killer in an out-of-the-way place so she could sell him the things she herself hadstolen, I thought, but did not say. Nor did I say, Or whatif they were the first installment on that five thousand sheneeded so urgently?

What I did say was, “We forgot to tell them about Jonna needing money.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like we won’t be seeing them again,” he said grimly.

“So where are we going now?”

Dwight glanced at his watch. “It’s still too early for church to be over. You mind coming with me to talk to her mother so I can ask her about the money again? She’ll always be Cal’s grandmother, so you probably ought to meet her.”

“Sure,” I said gamely, even though I had a feeling that this was going to be really awkward.

Mrs. Shay lived in the older and wealthier part of town, only a block or two from the Morrow House, and close enough that Cal had probably been allowed to walk back and forth if he wanted. Hundred-year-old oaks and maples towered above the rooftops in this neighborhood and there was a lot of elbow room between the houses.

According to Dwight, Jonna said that they had moved to this smaller house after her father’s death. Smaller? It looked plenty big to me, almost as big as the old farmhouse I had grown up in, and our house had held fourteen of us. Mrs. Shay and her two daughters must have rattled around here, and now it was just Mrs. Shay.

Dwight said the house had been full of people yesterday afternoon. Only one woman was there this morning.

She looked to be mid-sixties, with short salt-and-pepper hair that waved softly over her head, and she wore tailored black pants and a black silk turtleneck accented by an unusual silver pin on the upturned collar. I myself 21 seldom use perfume except for dress-up occasions, so I immediately noticed the light, spicy scent she wore. Her strong face was somber when she first opened the door in response to our ring, but then she smiled and said, “Oh, Dwight! Come in. Any news?”

“Not yet,” he said. “I’ve brought my wife to meet y’all.

Deb’rah, this is Mrs. Shay’s cousin, Eleanor Prentice.”

We said the usual things and she led us out to the kitchen. “I was just making tea and toast for Laura.

She insisted on staying alone last night, but I knew she wouldn’t eat a thing this morning if I didn’t come around and fix it for her.”

She put the plates and cups on a large silver serving tray and hesitated when Dwight offered to carry it up for her.

“Well . . . only to the top of the stairs, though,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll want to put on a pretty dressing gown and fix her face before seeing you. If you like, Deborah, do make you and Dwight a cup of tea, too. The cups are in that cupboard and you’ll find tea and sugar in those caddies beside the stove. There’s milk and lemon in the refrigerator. If you don’t see what you need, just root around.”

Left alone, I did exactly that. I opened drawers and doors and looked inside. It was clear where Jonna got her tidiness. Even the gadget drawer was neat. Silverware, both sterling and stainless, occupied their own sections in separate drawers. In the pantry, one shelf held soup, another canned tuna and salmon, another pickles and relish, etc. etc. No mixing of soups with pickles. Yet she was also a doting grandmother if the Christmas picture that Cal had drawn for her meant anything. Here it was almost a month past Christmas and the picture still hung on her refrigerator door. The one he made for Dwight and me still hangs on our refrigerator, too, I thought sadly.

I added more water to the kettle and turned on the flame, then set out porcelain cups and saucers for Dwight and me when it became clear that there were no mugs in this kitchen. No tea bags either and Eleanor Prentice had taken the teapot with her, but a flameproof measuring cup made a serviceable substitute. By the time Dwight came back down, the loose tea leaves had steeped enough to strain into the cups.

He sighed as he retrieved a rubber baseball from the bowl of fruit on the counter and sat down at the table, where he absently tossed the ball from hand to hand. I sensed that he was wondering if he would ever again play catch with Cal. Nothing I might say could change that.

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.