I passed the picture to Gerald. 'Beautiful family.'
'The little gal in the middle is my wife, Lupe. She looks like she could be my daughter, but Lupe and I have been together for over fifty years.'
As he put the picture back in his wallet, he asked, 'Do you all know about the other stuff? About the garden?' he added.
Gerald looked perplexed.
'I think I do,' I said. 'Dorothy and Renata were herbalists. They . . . offered herbal remedies to some of the women in the community.'
William smiled. 'Thank you, Ms. Holliday. They would have appreciated your putting it that way.'
'Abortions?' Gerald asked, putting two and two together quickly.
'They were granny healers. Women's problems and contraceptives, primarily. But I couldn't swear there weren't induced miscarriages. My own mother had eight. I don't think they were intentional, but I suppose I'll never know. In any event, she must have figured out what was causing them, 'cause here I am. That's why there was such an age difference between me and my sisters.'
I liked that he still kept referring to them as his sisters.
'Dorothy and Renata loved children,' he continued. 'That may be the only thing they regretted about choosing each other—not being able to have their own. But they also understood most women at the time couldn't make their own choices. My sisters tried to help.'
'That's what the unlocked door was for?' I asked.
William nodded again. 'Any hour of the night or day, if a gal needed help, Dorothy or Renata would be there for her with teas, oils, or just a shoulder and some good advice.
'I was only here for two days that time I came back. Had to go back to Texas and close on that property. One of those nights, I was in the back, having a smoke, and I hear this little gal whimpering in the garden, crying her eyes out.'
'Can you describe her?' Gerald asked.
William shook his head. 'It was too dark. And she was hiding behind those little shrubs near the path. Made me promise to stay on the terrace. Poor little thing, she sounded like a kid herself. Wouldn't let me help her or take her inside or anything. I didn't know what the heck to do for her, so I just tossed her a little medal Lupe had given me for the trip and suggested she pray.'
CHAPTER 39
We left William Peacock in the hotel lobby. In a few days, he'd be back with Lupe and the grandkids, and Gerald and I would still be knee-deep in more questions than answers.
'So the baby and the mother might not even have been Mexican,' I said.
'It'd be quite a coincidence if they were.'
'I'm happy about that, for Hugo's sake. It's one less motive the cops will think he had to stab Guido. I'm disappointed, too. I thought we were onto something.'
Gerald Fraser checked his watch. 'Do you have some time? If you're not in a hurry, I'd like to go to Halcyon. It might inspire us.'
We drove to the house in silence, each of us trying to fit William's new information into what we already thought we knew. Gerald made his way to the terrace in the back, where William said he'd heard the woman.
'I'll get you a chair from the cottage,' I said.
I brought Gerald a metal bistro chair, and I sat on the brick steps, leaning against one of the stone dogs and looking around at the almost-finished garden.
'What are you thinking?' Gerald asked.
'I'm thinking about what William said. About the roses.'
Dorothy's father had been inordinately proud of his rose garden. There was even a hybrid variety he developed, the Lady Sarah. When Dorothy returned from Italy, she had all the roses ripped out of the garden. Some who bothered to think about it thought it was a hatred of their father that made her do it. Others, like Mrs. Cox at the library, believed Dorothy's story that she was allergic. William had told us the truth.
'After Rose's death, she couldn't bear to see another rose wither and die,' he'd explained. 'The only roses she'd have in the house had to last forever. Her needlepoints, the china, the stained glass window she commissioned.
'That was the real reason for the name change, too,' he continued. 'It would have been easier to just call her friend Rose, but it would have broken Dorothy's heart to have to say Rose's name over and over again, knowing she was gone.'
'Such a beautiful spot to be holding so much sadness,' I said.
'Look,' Gerald said, 'I know you're disappointed about the baby, but there was never any guarantee it was Yoly's, just because of the medal. We may have to rule her out as the mother.'
'All that hunting for her and her mother . . . all of Chappell's work . . . for nothing. And if William was back here and gave the mother the necklace sometime in the fifties, we have to rule out Win Fifield as the father. He was my prime suspect.' I must have looked as deflated as I felt.
'Don't worry. We're not going to forget about Yoly. Not again. We just seem to have two mysteries here instead of one. And they still may tie in to Guido's stabbing.
'All right,' he recapped, 'the attorneys contacted William; that's why he came back. Sometime in 1959, when William says he bought his land—'
'You think he may be lying?' I asked.
'People do. It's easy enough to check, though. In 1959, a woman in this town was pregnant and didn't want to be.' He threw me a crumb. 'The timing fits right in with your candy wrapper research. What do you think happened?' he prompted.
'The woman goes to the Peacock sisters to terminate the pregnancy, but when she gets there, she has a change of heart and coincidentally bumps into William, who gives her the Virgin of Guadalupe medal. Woman has the baby, and unfortunately it dies, probably of natural causes.
'No signs of trauma on the body, and if she went ahead with the pregnancy,' I continued, 'it's not likely she'd commit infanticide.'
'Possible, but not likely. Especially given the careful way it was buried. Let's say the baby predates Yoly; who might the mother be?' Gerald coached.
'Someone who was young, not married . . . or married to a man who wasn't the father . . .'
'Who else . . .'
'Someone involved with an inappropriate or unsuitable . . .' I stopped myself.
Gerald must have seen what I was thinking: he exhaled deeply. 'It can't be Hill. Hillary had something called premature ovarian failure—a freakish condition connected with the mumps she had when she was a kid. She went through three years of tests at the Yale Reproductive Center.'
With Hillary out, I was running out of suspects.
'If only I'd found Dorothy's journal. Neil MacLeod and I looked for it,' I confessed, 'one day when Richard was in Hartford at the Wadsworth Atheneum.'
'What was he doing there?' Gerald asked.
I shook my head. 'Who knows? Something about a painting for an upcoming exhibition.' I'd only been half listening when Inez told me.
'The Prendergast?' he asked. 'That's the only thing SHS owns that I can imagine the Wadsworth being interested in.'
'No idea. I was too busy playing Nancy Drew to listen. I was convinced there was a clue in the damn journal.'
'We may have to forget about the journal for now. Use your head,' Gerald said.
'Someone pregnant in 1959 who didn't want to be. Someone who'd been raped or was the victim of incest?' I suggested.
I tried to think of all the older women in town. After some time, I said, 'How about a grieving war widow?
