Emmaline noticed my interest. “Those were taken by my late husband, Hank. Many of them before we moved out here to Austin.”
“They’re very good.”
“His work was published in a number of magazines. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”
I said no, but Kayla surprised me by asking for tea, if it wasn’t too much trouble. Emmaline returned a few minutes later, and we sat in the living room on overstuffed furniture that swallowed us whole. I hoped I could get up when the time came to leave. Kayla introduced me as Morrie, of all things, a friend of the Sjorgen family. I was still wearing my wig, feeling as if a cat had parked on my head.
Emmaline nodded and gave me a welcoming smile. “Now, then, what can I tell you?” she asked, pouring two cups of tea.
She knew exactly what. Her comment about Edna at the door told me that. She wanted coaxing. I said, “Anything you remember about Edna moving into the Sjorgen mansion on Virginia Street way back when, Mrs. Dorman.”
“Please, call me Emmaline.” She handed Kayla a cup on a saucer, then looked at her and smiled. “You are the spitting image of Jonnie, dear. He was a terribly handsome man.”
“Thank you.”
“Nineteen seventy-six,” Emmaline said slowly. “I…well, I’m not sure what to say.” She leaned back, balancing her cup, and gazed at Kayla. “What I mean, dear, is that you have the right to know if anyone does, but…the thing that happened back then, it’s not a very nice story.”
“Please,” Kayla said.
“I would get no joy speaking ill of the dead.” She gave Kayla a direct look and her tone grew sharper. “I am referring to your father, Rosalyn.” She awaited a response. I sensed that what she was waiting for was permission to continue, at which time she was indeed going to speak ill of the dead.
“My father and I haven’t been close for a long time,” Kayla said. “Please, tell us.”
Emmaline looked at Kayla a moment longer, then down at the cup in her hands. “There was a scandal. Or might have been, but it was averted by Wendell, your grandfather. And, of course, by others who were involved.”
“A scandal?”
Emmaline nodded. “It was hushed up. There would be no public record of it now. Nothing at all. Are you aware that Edna had a daughter?”
“A daughter?” Kayla gave her a surprised look, then turned her head to me.
“Jacoba,” I said.
Emmaline looked startled. “Why, yes, Jacoba. However did you learn that?”
I shrugged. It didn’t seem my place to point out the obvious, that these two women were in the presence of one of the finest gumshoes in the hemisphere.
“Jacoba Woolley,” Emmaline said slowly. “Edna and Herman’s only child, her first pregnancy. She was forty-six years old. It was a very difficult birth. During labor, the child was damaged.”
“Damaged?” Kayla said.
“Deprived of oxygen for too long. She survived, however, and grew into a remarkably beautiful girl, which wasn’t surprising—Edna was a great beauty in her day. But Jacoba was, well…simple.”
I gave her a questioning look. Edna hadn’t so much as hinted at that about Jacoba.
Emmaline sipped her tea. “There are all sorts of euphemisms for it these days, but, to be blunt, Jacoba was retarded. Genetically she was fine, perfect, but mentally…at fourteen she had the capacity of a child of no more than four.”
“She didn’t go to school?” Kayla said.
“No. She never learned to read. She had a child’s vocabulary. Oh, but Edna doted on her all the same. Even more so after Herman passed away, when Jacoba was still only a child. Outwardly, there was nothing wrong with Jacoba.” Emmaline’s eyes dropped again to her hands. “Far from it, in fact. She developed quite early in the physical sense. At fourteen she could have passed for seventeen. That was the summer of ’76.”
Which was shaping up to be a rather bad year, I thought, but I remained quiet. Emmaline stopped talking. The drone of the swamp cooler filled the room. Half a minute went by.
“College was out,” Emmaline said finally. “Jonnie and David—Mr. Milliken—were home. The summer after their first year. Jonnie was back from Harvard, David from Princeton. They were bright boys, but pampered, spoiled. They didn’t want for much. One day in August, Jacoba turned up missing from the yard in front of her house, three blocks from the Sjorgen place, the house Edna lives in now. It was twilight, almost dark. Edna was frantic. No one had seen Jacoba. A search was quickly mounted, but Jacoba was gone.”
Emmaline paused and looked at Kayla.
“It’s okay,” Kayla said. “We have to know.”
“A patrolman found them in Idlewild Park, a mile from Edna’s house. He heard them—Jonnie and David and Jacoba—in a thicket of bushes by the river.”
Again she stopped, face flushed, then she pressed on: “They were…unclothed. The boys were nineteen. Jacoba was fourteen. They had…they had been with her. You know. The police officer guessed who Jacoba was by a description he’d heard over the radio—others had been searching for her for two hours by that time. He knew her age. He arrested the boys on the spot, took them and Jacoba into custody, the boys in handcuffs. At the police station he spoke only to the chief of police, however, because the boys had told him who they were, trying to convince him to let them go.
“Edna was called to the station, and Jonnie’s father, Wendell, and David’s father, Victor. Charges were made but never filed. The paperwork sat idle for several months. Everything was hushed up while lawyers on both sides made proposals and counterproposals in an effort to keep the incident from going public, perhaps ruining the boys’ lives. I remember it quite well because I typed up all the legal documents on Jonnie’s
