me-'
Ms. Ingram's eyes were watery, unfocused, courteous. I suddenly felt guilty, as if I were forcing something unpleasant into a fragile container.
'It unsettles us,' Maia said. 'The way Clara died, the place. Jimmy dying in the same spot, the same way.'
Faye Ingram laced her fingers together, set them like a little igloo on the mint green patio table. 'The police tell me they are close to an arrest.'
'They are,' I agreed. 'And once they have a convincing possibility, they won't look elsewhere unless they have their arms twisted. The rest of the Doebler family isn't likely to twist, are they?'
'Your brother-he is the one they will arrest. Yes?'
'Yes.'
'And would it surprise you greatly if I refused to help you?'
'No.'
Ms. Ingram read my eyes, then looked toward her garden-the giant, ruined heads of sunflowers. Ms. Ingram nodded, as if she'd made a decision.
'Excuse me a moment,' she murmured.
She rose, almost trancelike, and wandered inside.
Maia and I looked at each other.
I shook my head doubtfully, by no means sure Faye Ingram would be coming back without the police.
Inside the house, a Bob Dylan track played through. Faye Ingram reappeared. She carried a brown leather binder the size of an Oxford English Dictionary volume. Two sweaty glasses of tea sat on top.
'My manners need polishing,' she apologized. 'Except for the herb society, I don't entertain many guests.'
We thanked her for the tea.
Ms. Ingram's smile started to reform as she ran her fingers over the old brown binder, smearing the rings of condensation.
I finally realized why her face seemed familiar. She looked like the picture Jimmy had kept on his mantel-her sister Clara. The resemblance wasn't much-a faraway look in the eyes, frailness in the smile, features too delicate to maintain much emotion.
She opened the binder, carefully extracted a photograph.
'This is Clara and James-Jimmy's father.'
The photograph paper was parchmentthick, the colours hand tinted in late 1950s pastel. Clara Doebler wore a satin bride's dress. Her smile was perfunctory, her hair done in a beehive the same unnatural copper colour as Faye's hair today. At Clara's side was the groom-a roughcut man with unruly Elvis hair and a rakish face that reminded me pleasantly of Jimmy's.
'James died of tuberculosis when Jimmy was only three years old,' Faye Ingram told us. 'More than anything, that event fractured Clara. She'd always been… brittle.
Prone to depression. She'd allowed the family to arrange her marriage with James, and then she blamed them for leaving her a widow. She refused to remarry, took back her maiden name for herself and her son- something you just didn't do in Travis County in 1960. She became extremely possessive of Jimmy, how he would be raised.
She became… contrary. Erratic. The family was concerned enough to bring legal action to gain custody of Jimmy. It was W.B.'s father, William B. Senior, who pulled most of the reins of power back then. It was a horrible mess, but finally, of course, the Doebler money won. Clara couldn't compete.'
From her tone, I couldn't tell if Faye admired her sister, or was simply expressing fascination, the way a child is fascinated by peeling off BandAids.
She pulled out a second photo, handed it across. 'That is the man Clara called her second husband, although they were never actually married. His name was Ewin Lowry.'
Lowry-the name Jimmy had specified as the father's name on his search for birth certificates.
Ewin Lowry was as different from James Doebler, Sr., as two men could be. Lowry was small, slightly potbellied, darkcomplexioned. His hair and moustache were thick and black, his eyes predatory. The gypsy charmer. The man you watched carefully at poker, never introduced to your wife, and certainly never let marry one of your daughters. In the photo, Ewin and Clara stood together in front of a red '65 Mustang.
The two of them looked happy.
'Ewin was charming,' Faye continued. 'Something of a poet. Affectionate when it suited him. Sometimes violent, though never with Clara. The rest of the family-our parents, our grandparents, the aunts and uncles on W.B.'s side of the family-they tolerated Ewin and Clara, but only barely, and only for a while. When Clara became pregnant for a second time-this was in '67-she announced her intentions to marry Lowry.'
'Pregnant,' I repeated.
Faye nodded. 'The family went into war mode. To make a long story short, Clara lost.
William B. Sr. drove Ewin Lowry away by a combination of threats and bribes. Clara was convinced to have an abortion. She never recovered from that. She cut all ties with the family, did a lot of travelling to the West Coast and to Europe, but she couldn't bring herself to leave Austin for good. She and I kept in touch, but I'm ashamed to say-Clara scared me. She was so… intense, so sad and angry. When she killed herself, I wasn't surprised. Reuniting with Jimmy was her only comfort for all she'd lost, and in the end, even that wasn't enough.'
Daylight filtered through the oak tree, the leaves a mesh of green and yellow. Looking up, I felt like I was under the weight of a giant gumball machine.
Maia said, 'I'm sorry for your loss, Ms. Ingram.'
The older woman smiled. 'My loss is nothing, Miss-'
'Call me Maia.'
'I'm used to being alone, Maia. I hope you have many happy years with your soul mate, dear, but that just doesn't happen for some women. I accepted that long ago. My sister never did. Compared to Clara, I lost nothing.'
I concentrated on the heat vapour rising from the flagstones, the reflections of the sun tea jars.
'When Jimmy called,' Faye murmured, 'I told him I couldn't help him. He was so insistent.'
'He didn't believe the abortion happened in '67,' I said. 'He thought Clara had the child.'
Faye Ingram stiffened. 'How did you know?'
I told her about the paperwork at Jimmy's house, the birth certificate search.
She folded her hands in her lap. 'Jimmy was quite irrational about it. His mood reminded me-I hate to say this-he reminded me of Clara. He claimed someone had told him about her pregnancy, told him the child had been given away for adoption.'
'Who told him?' Maia asked. 'How recently?'
'Jimmy wouldn't say. But I was with Clara in 1967, dear. I know the abortion happened.' Ms. Ingram turned a page in her binder. 'It would've been better for Jimmy if he hadn't dug into all that,' she said softly.
She brought out a yellowing document with a rusty paper clip mark at the edge. She studied the paper, then looked up at Maia and me. 'We kept Clara's suicide out of the press, but naturally I was curious. I asked for the police report. Take it. W.B. can hardly crucify me now.'
Maia took the report, thanked her. 'Ms. Ingram, would anyone want to kill Jimmy?'
'I didn't know my nephew very well, I'm afraid. Not since he was a child.'
'Whatever happened to Ewin Lowry?'
She shook her head. 'I don't know. There was a time, back in the mid1980s, when Clara got a scare. She thought he'd resurfaced, but nothing ever came of it.'
'A scare,' I said.
'Ewin called her-1987, this would have been, the twentieth anniversary of the day he left her. It was a horrible call. He caught Clara at a vulnerable moment. Ewin threatened to kill her, demanded money. He said he would be coming to find her. It was the last time Clara ever came to me for help.'
'You went to the police?'
'Clara didn't trust them to help. She said she needed money, wanted to hire a private investigator to find out where Ewin was.
