“Used to be?”
“You don’t know?”
They exchanged glances, then Lou said, “Maybe she didn’t talk about it with Dwight.”
“Probably not. She didn’t like to talk about it even 23 with us,” Jill said earnestly. “See, Pam always liked to party, but when she went off to UVA, she got into alcohol pretty heavy. Turned into a real lush. Flunked out of school. Maybe even did drugs for a while. Totally freaked Jonna out. She didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She wouldn’t even apply to UVA, which is how we wound up going to Hollins.”
“Which may have been another reason she left Shaysville, now that you think about it,” said Lou.
Evidently neither woman had ever connected the two.
“But it’s true that even though Pam hadn’t lived here since high school, Jonna didn’t come home to stay till Pam was safely married to someone out in Tennessee. We haven’t seen Pam in . . . when
“Three or four years ago?” Lou hazarded. “Poor Jonna was so embarrassed. She thought Pam had totally dried out, but all she had done was switch to vodka so you couldn’t smell it on her breath. Remember how crazy she acted that day?”
Jill nodded. “It was sad. They had to call her husband to come get her.”
The world would still call it crazy and people like Jonna would still prefer that people think she had an alcoholic sister rather than one who heard voices in her head.
“Who were Pam’s friends?” I asked. “Who would she turn to here?”
They both looked blank. “I don’t think she has any friends left here. She and Missy Collins were pretty close during high school, but Missy married someone in the State Department and they live in Italy, the last I heard.”
“Why are you asking about Pam?” asked Jill. “Hasn’t she come yet?”
“She’s been in town almost two weeks,” I told them.
They were not as surprised as I’d expected.
“Ah,” said Lou. “That’s why Jonna canceled the meeting. I wondered what the real reason was. She must have been dealing with Pam. Is she drinking again?”
“Meeting?” I asked, sidestepping the question of Pam’s problems.
“Our twenty-fifth high school reunion’s coming up this spring,” said Jill.
I remembered the list of names and addresses in Jonna’s files and that she had chaired the class gift committee.
“It’s not official yet, but we’re pretty sure that Pam’s the one who took Cal,” I said.
Jill’s face lit up in relieved delight. “Oh, thank heavens!
I’ve been so worried about him. Afraid that it was Jonna’s killer or some pervert that had taken him. But if it’s Pam . . . I mean even if she is back on the bottle, she would never hurt him.”
Lou agreed. “But why would Pam take Cal? Unless—?”
“Unless what?”
“I know it sounds irrational, but could she be thinking of trying to get custody? Keep Dwight from taking him back to North Carolina? She can’t have children of her own and she was always sending him books and toys.”
“Have both motels been checked?”
“Chief Radcliff put out the word as soon as they realized Cal really was gone,” I said.
“By now she could already be back in Tennessee with him,” said Jill.
Lou shook her head. “She wouldn’t leave before the funeral.”
The custody theory was something they could easily believe and I didn’t see the point of disabusing them.
“Was Jonna seeing anyone?” I asked.
“Boyfriends? I don’t think she’s gone out with anyone in a couple of years,” said Jill.
“No,” said Lou. “Remember that guy last fall? What was his name? Selby?”
“That’s right. I’d forgotten Jim Selby. But he was so not our crowd that she dropped him after two dates.”
The doorbell rang again, and this time the room did fill up with law. Dwight and Eleanor Prentice came downstairs, but Mrs. Shay refused to leave her room, so Jill and Lou went up to see her while Dwight and I told the two state agents about finding Pam’s parka, how Pam had visited her mother alone last night, and how she must have been the one to sneak back in the house for Cal’s teddy bear.
“Like a ghost,” I said, repeating what she had told Mrs. Shay.
“The car’s a Honda Accord, same model as the victim’s, only white. Tennessee plate.” Agent Clark rattled off the number and Dwight jotted it down on one of the cards in his wallet. (I had given him a proper leather-bound notepad and pencil as a stocking stuffer at Christmas, but does he remember to carry it? File under
