Dead Little Dolly (12 page)

TWENTY

I called Dolly.

“He’s gone?” she demanded, then made a clucking sound deep in her throat.

I assured her he was and hurried on to news, any news, she had for me.

“Blood type from the broken glass is O negative. Kind of rare, I guess, but same as mine.”

“Mine, too. Not too rare.”

“DNA won’t be done unless we get us a suspect. Oh, and the tread on the SUV matched the casts from the cemetery—not that I had any doubt.”

“So? What’s next?”

“You taking me and Jane tomorrow?”

“Where?”

“You forgot already.” Disgust lay between us. “Must’ve been some weekend. Remember, I asked you to take us into Traverse? Jane’s got an appointment with her pediatrician. Just a checkup. See how she’s doing.”

“Sure, I remember,” I lied—yet one more time. “When you want me to pick you up?”

She said by ten.

“I think I’m going to stop by the cemetery first.” The thought had just hit me.

“What for?”

“Take a look at that gate. Maybe figure the angle the car was coming from. You ask people along that road if they saw anything?”

“First thing Lucky did. He got nothing. Oh, and Emily, say hi to Grace for me, will you? I’ve just got this feeling the woman’s looking down and trying to send me some kind of message.”

“Sure, Dolly,” I said. “I’ll do that. If she throws me a thunderbolt or two, I’ll pass it on.”

I spent the rest of Sunday cleaning again, kind of like “washing that man right out of my hair,” though I had no bitter feelings toward Jackson this time. It was as if we were equal. He had no pedestal to look down from and had been almost gentle when he left. Except for his penurious squirreling away of all the items I’d coveted, which I considered a hostile act on his part since I’d been the one to pick them out.

By late afternoon I got over my huff at losing books I really wanted to read and took Sorrow for a long walk, then came back to the house to warm leftovers and take them down to the lake, where I chewed and yawned and laughed at the angry beaver and was surprised by one of the usually leery loons swimming up to the dock to get a good look at me.

Sorrow and I were exhausted and in bed by ten o’clock.

• • •

Monday morning I went to the Leetsville Cemetery first though I had no idea why I was drawn there. A quiet, old-fashioned place. One of so many small cemeteries found along our country roads. The crooked gate had been only partially straightened and supported, hanging at an odd angle off to the side from where it once stood. I photographed the gate again and photographed the deep tire gouges in the grass. Nothing else to see.

Except Grace.

I found her grave easily and felt a kind of tug at the name and plain little tombstone. So like Dolly to have replaced a woman she hated with a bearded circus lady few people remembered. The grave was weedy and unattended except for some dead daisies strewn through the grass. Something brought the words “Thou Shalt Not Steal”
to mind.

Maybe Dolly’d stolen somebody’s reputation.

What do you think, Grace?
I bent over the depressed grave.

Maybe Dolly busted some pillar of the community for selling porn out the back door of their candy shop.

Or maybe she stole somebody’s Publishers Clearing House entry.

Or beat somebody out to be next in line at the Save-A-Lot.

I got nothing back from Grace.

Who knew what people valued enough to seek revenge? I thought. And that’s what this was shaping up to be: somebody mad about something. Somebody spending the long winter months simmering over an imagined slight or a score to settle.

Or maybe it had nothing to do with Dolly after all and that had been only a blown-around note at the towing service. Two and two didn’t always make four, at least in this new world where I lived.

Yes, they do, I scolded myself and frowned down at Grace. Immutable addition. Two and two always made four and that’s what we had: a car deliberately coming after Dolly, a warning note, a lady from Grand Rapids—or was she a red herring? Still there was that car parked back exactly where it had been parked.

And black jellybeans, I reminded myself.

I looked down at Grace’s weedy grave. Something about standing there, being with the woman who’d withstood stares and laughs and made herself into a circus star, cleared my mind. Maybe that was the power Dolly’d found here, talking to Grace Humbert. An ability to see clearly.

I gave up thinking inane thoughts, said good-bye to Grace, and went to EATS for breakfast, where I avoided Eugenia and Gloria for as long as I could and ordered French toast with thimbleberry syrup and sat alone, enjoying every minute of the feast I shouldn’t have ordered. Not after putting away half of Jackson’s fudge the night before.

Eugenia slid in across from me. At first it was all about Dolly and Jane and what was going on with them.

“I’m getting back into doing genealogies for people. Thinking of giving Harry a family tree for a wedding present.”

I said that was a creative gift and asked Gloria for another pot of tea water when she came by, pad and pencil in her hand.

“Lots of old families up here, you know,” Gloria said, hair bouncing so she pushed at it to keep locks from falling into her eyes. She nodded in Eugenia’s direction. “Bet you Harry goes right back to the
Mayflower
or something. Hope I can come up with a gift like that.”

I agreed, that would be some wedding gift. A stellar family tree to hang on the wall of his odd little house. Then I was struck with the idea of coming up with a gift of my own for the happy couple. If Eugenia wasn’t going to bake the cakes, maybe that could be my gift. Except that I’d never made a cake in my life and was afraid to try such a feat for such a momentous occasion. Maybe my garden would be far enough along and I could do all the flowers for the wedding. My climbing roses should be out, which led me to think:
“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.”

On that happy note Gloria was back with my hot tea.

Eugenia lifted an eyebrow at me. “So funny, about Cate. I mean, all Dolly’s got . . . well, beside Baby Jane. And won’t lift a hand to help. After all, Dolly gave her a home. You’d think . . . Well, just can’t figure her.”

I shook my head and sipped my tea.

“We’ve been talking about it, in here.” she nodded toward Gloria and some others. “Gloria thinks it’s some kind of phobia. Can’t take care of a sick person, something like that. She said she had an aunt had that problem, didn’t you, Gloria? It doesn’t seem quite right, you know. Baby Jane here so much of the time. Germs in a place like this. Babies need to be where it’s quiet, not so stirred up. We’re glad to do it. Don’t get me wrong. Just that . . .” She sighed. “I liked Cate before this. Maybe a little funny—the way she dressed—but still we were all happy when I traced her and had her come to Leetsville as a surprise for Dolly. No knowing, is there? I mean, you think you’re doing good and look at now. She’s living off Dolly and refuses do to a simple thing like watch poor little Jane.”

Gloria added a few tongue clucks from where she scrubbed a table down behind us. “You never know about people, do you, Emily?”

I agreed, getting ready to leave. “You just never know.”

I got out of EATS and was over to Dolly’s house at twenty to ten.

Jane was in her swing when I walked in, dressed in a pretty pink dress with matching bonnet. Dolly had her quirks, dressing Jane in little cop uniforms, but today Jane was pure little girl.

Her face lit up when she saw me, which was good for my ego. I knelt down in front of the swing then picked her up when she stretched her arms out and gurgled at me.

“I didn’t hear you come in.” Cate stood in the kitchen doorway wiping her hands on a dish towel. There was no smile. Her frown was dark. I figured maybe she was feeling guilty for letting Dolly down the way she was. Usually the two of them would take Jane to the doctor. But whatever it was bothering Cate, she was sticking to her hands-off policy.

“How are you doing, Cate?” I held Jane, who smelled of baby lotion and a yard-dried dress, though when she saw Cate she put her arms out to her.

Cate shook her head slightly at the baby. Jane snapped back to me, examining my face intently, ending with my eyes, which she reached out to poke except I was too fast for her, having been poked before.

“I’m fine, thank you, Emily.” Her voice was chilly.

I looked at the woman, dressed in a long flowered skirt and green peasant blouse, and tried to say nothing.

“I suppose you’re as mad at me as the rest of ’em.”

There was nothing to say to that. Mad wasn’t the word I’d have chosen. More confused. More wondering at her motive—almost punishing Dolly for Baby Jane’s accident.

“I don’t blame Dolly for being upset with you, Cate. Nobody gets it, the way you’re acting. You’re Dolly’s only family, except for Jane.”

“Guess it’s everything coming at me all at once. And the way Dolly talks about my Audrey Delores. She’s her mother, Emily. Audrey deserves to know she’s got a granddaughter. I mean, everybody should get a second chance. Who knows but this would be the best news for her? Might even straighten her out. Be the happiest day of my life, I tell you. If Audrey came here for a visit. It’s been such a long time.”

“You said you didn’t even know she was pregnant. Not until it was too late.”

Cate’s wrinkled face colored up. “Just between us, that wasn’t strictly the truth. I knew she was pregnant. Then she just disappeared. Wasn’t until later, when it was too late, that I learned about Dolly. Maybe I could’ve tried harder to get Dolly back. I don’t know. With Audrey . . . er . . . gone, the way she was. And me not in the best financial situation. Sometimes life is just what it is. But look, I got a second chance, here with Dolly. What about a second chance for Audrey?”

I couldn’t think of much to say to that. This world of women who were mothers and daughters and granddaughters was way beyond me. Thinking back to Grace Humbert’s clarity, I told myself that “A spade was a spade,” “What was done was done,” “You can’t go home again,” “As ye sow so shall ye reap,” “The sins of the father” . . . and on and on, bouncing clichés through my head until I felt better.

Dolly, fresh from a shower, hair wet and slicked back, came into the living room dressed in a short-sleeved uniform shirt and lightweight pants; same shoes she wore all year long: shining black brogues. She pinned her badge to her chest, grabbed her hat and a diaper bag, and we were off for Traverse City with Jane tucked into her seat in the back of the Jeep.

We didn’t talk much. Dolly was deep in thought. From time to time she unbuttoned her shirt pocket and took a small notebook out to jot down a note or two.

As we passed the Indian casino on M72, she asked me how my weekend had gone.

“Not bad. I told him about selling a book.”

“He happy for you?”

I said, “Yes.”

She snorted. “I’ll bet.”

“He was very supportive.”

“Yeah.” She turned to look out the side window at the shore of Lake Michigan as we drove through Acme. She made a comment on how low the water was.

“You sleep with him?” she asked after a while.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, really? Guess that means you were as dumb as you always are.”

I burned for a few minutes before telling her it was a good thing Jane was with us or I’d pull over and put her out at the Speedway station.

“Yeah, sure you would.”

At that silly impasse we started laughing and laughed all the way to the other side of town to the doctor’s office.

We got taken in right on time and Jane enjoyed the attention of a stethoscope to her heart and fingers feeling gently over her head as the young doctor asked questions about her appetite, sleep, and general mood.

With everything checking out fine, we had Jane dressed and out of there in twenty minutes. We stopped at the newspaper to show Bill the baby, since we were in town. Being the kind of man who was always a little rumpled, like an old-fashioned editor, Bill’s office wasn’t the tidiest but he pushed files from a couple of chairs and asked us to sit.

Dolly wanted to call Cate to tell her everything was fine with Baby Jane. She stepped into the hall but was back in under a minute.

“She’s not home,” Dolly said, sticking her cell into her pants pocket. “Probably went to EATS.”

“Wanted to talk to you, Bill.” Dolly leaned forward now.

“I’ve got a little money put by,” she said, sitting on the edge of her chair, Jane bouncing on her lap. “You think maybe some kind of reward would help here?”

Bill pushed his glasses up his nose and thought awhile. “Couldn’t hurt, Dolly. But what kind of information are you looking for? You’ve got the car. From what Emily says you’ve got fingerprints, blood. You asking the public for names? That it?”

“Yeah, sure. Names. Proof. An eyewitness. It’s this whole thing. Like something poisoning my life. My grandmother’s all upset; probably just thinking about what happened to Jane. She really loves her, I know that much. And I can’t sleep for wondering if it was me, directly, he was after, or some kind of mistake. Whatever it was, I need to know.”