“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
“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
