Dead Little Dolly (3 page)

“And you want it in this house that holds about four people—max.”

He gave me a thinking look. “Maybe have the whole shebang outside then.”

“What about the dogs? Your kennels don’t exactly smell terrific sometimes. And they’ll be barking right through everything . . .”

Harry slapped a hand on the table. “Then you tell me. How can we do this and make it nice for Delia? This is her first marriage, you know. Well, mine, too, for that matter.”

“I do know. Delia is a sweet woman and just maybe she deserves a little more than what you’re planning so far.”

“Okay, like what?”

I thought awhile. “Let me look into it. How about the Church of the Contented Flock in town? Bet Pastor Runcival will marry you two. And after that—a reception at EATS. Eugenia will come up with something nice.”

He shook his head. “You’re not lookin’ at a millionaire here, Emily. An’ I got a freezer full of meat out in the shed I was gonna use.”

“I know . . .” I thought awhile longer. “Let me see what I can do, okay? You go ahead and propose. We’ll have something . . . well, nice. But not in this house.”

“Could do it down to Delia’s. The place is hers now, with her mother gone.”

“That’s an idea. You moving down there? It’s a bigger house.”

He shook his head. “I don’t have to move, I figure. She can stay there and I can stay here and we’ll visit when the mood grabs us . . .”

“You have a date in mind?”

He puffed his old lips out. “I was thinkin’ the second of June. That’s a Saturday. Week after Memorial weekend. Think that’s okay?”

“Sounds good.”

He nodded. “No sense waiting.”

I had to agree with him there. Neither one of them was getting any younger. I said I’d do what I could do and he was to get to that proposal as fast as possible.

• • •

I trotted down my long, sloping drive, whistling back Sorrow, who’d spied one of the crows nesting in an old oak by the lake and chased him even as the canny bird taunted and teased. Then he found one more tree to mark, one more hole to snuffle, and one more squirrel trail to follow while I waited at my side door.

Inside the house, the phone rang. I heard it through the screen door but there was no rush to answer. I wasn’t expecting a call so it couldn’t be anybody I really wanted to talk to. Sunday—so not my new agent about a huge sale and eternal fame and fortune.

Not—I certainly hoped—Jackson Rinaldi.

Couldn’t be Bill Corcoran with a story for me. He wouldn’t be at the newspaper on Sunday unless there was some emergency.

Maybe Dolly. Some new scheme to land me a full-time job on Bill’s newspaper and solve all my financial woes. Or some new problem in Leetsville requiring coverage in the
Northern Statesman.
Maybe another murder.

Nobody I really wanted to talk to.

I could just let it ring . . .

I didn’t.

It was Lucky Barnard. Calling for the third time, he said, his voice rumbling deeper than usual. “Terrible news, Emily. Dolly’s been in a hit-and-run. We took Baby Jane to Kalkaska Emergency. You better get over there.”

TWO

The hospital smelled of nothing when I ran in through the ER doors. Nothing. Not antiseptic, not cleaning compounds . . . maybe dead air. That’s all I could think, though I didn’t want to. Dead air. God help me—why words like that when all I wanted was to know that Jane, the little brown-eyed baby who’d just learned to smile, was okay?

Dolly paced the brown carpeting, her uniform rumpled and stained at the knees. She looked up with the kind of eyes you don’t ever want to see on a friend. Something burning her up inside, a terrible fire that could consume her entirely if all of this went wrong. Her small face was blotched, her lank, almost colorless hair lifeless. Her hands were pushed down into the pockets of her cop pants, formed into fists, little knots at either hip.

I didn’t notice all the others from town: neighbors and friends; Cate Thomas, Dolly’s grandmother. Not right then. I watched Dolly. She stopped still and pulled one of her small hands from a pocket and held it out to me the way I’ve never seen Dolly do before.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

She nodded then took a deep breath. “She’s upstairs with the doctor. They’re taking X-rays.”

“Of what?” I asked then wished I hadn’t.

“Her head, the doctor said. Because she passed out the way she did. Probably hit it on the car seat or . . .”

“Anything broken?”

She shook her head hard. “They don’t think so. Still . . .” She lifted her slumping shoulders then dropped them. She stiffened because a doctor came through the double doors, looked around, but walked to an elderly couple seated in a corner by themselves. The news wasn’t good. The old man glared at the doctor. The old woman put a hand over her mouth and cried soundlessly.

“How’d they all hear so fast?” I said quietly and nodded toward where the women from Leetsville sat, along with Cate in one of her more colorful Gypsy outfits. Cate had come to town close to a year ago and claimed Dolly as her long-lost granddaughter after Eugenia, owner of EATS, did Dolly’s genealogical chart and brought Dolly news of a grandmother she’d never known.

Cate, a talker, was talking now, nervously bending toward the townswomen, head down, face flushed, her monologue seeming to fall on closed ears. Eugenia didn’t look happy and kept her head turned away from Cate and toward the other women. Gloria, a waitress at EATS, stared across the room, at nothing. Flora Coy, an elderly woman with a happy house filled with canaries, sat straight in her hard chair ignoring Cate, head going one way and then the other, then dead ahead. I could say she was a little canary-like, but I won’t.

Dolly, watching Cate closely, shrugged as she answered my question. “Like they always do. Police scanners. Called each other. Eugenia and Gloria picked up Cate on the way.”

I nodded to Cate and everyone else as Cate reached out and tugged at Dolly’s holster. “You know, Dolly.” Her voice was low and shaky. “I’ve been telling everyone here how I found your mother’s address, over there in France—in that commune. And they think I’m right, that Audrey Delores needs to know about Jane.”

Eugenia swiveled her sturdy body in her chair and shook her head. Gloria blinked. Flora Coy, Deidre Holmes, Sally Chance, and the others frowned at Cate then up at Dolly. Angela Williams smacked her lips a few times but said nothing.

“And you think this is the right time to tell me that? Here?” Dolly asked. “About a woman I don’t care the first thing about?”

“You just stop and think,” Cate went on, her voice low but straining to be heard, her made-up face frowning into wrinkles. “Might make a difference. Might bring her back to this country from France. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? If my own sweet little Dolly comes home? And you’ll be needing help with Jane. I mean, look now, you can’t take her with you anymore . . .”

“Why not?”

“Why? What just happened here? Hurt, and in the line of duty. You keep taking her out in that patrol car of yours and the state will step in. You just wait and see. I don’t mind watching her once in a while but I told you when I first came here . . . can’t go back to watching babies . . .”

“And I’d leave her with
my
mother
? With a woman who walked out on her own child thirty-three years ago? Last person in the world
I
want to see. Never made a single move to find me, or help me.”

“You don’t know that for sure. And how much better, a mother of your own, than going over to that cemetery on Mother’s Day, taking flowers to that . . . that bearded lady.”

“My baby don’t need anybody but me.” Dolly dug the toe of her shoe at the floor. “Way too late for that.”

Cate clucked. “You’re just being mean, Dolly. It’s not good for your soul, you know.” She dabbed at her eyes with a very used tissue, lifted a shoulder in her flowered top, and leaned closer toward Dolly, her eyes going from one to the other of us. “I told you before, my little girl couldn’t help what—”

“Cate, stop it,” Dolly demanded through clenched lips. “I never had a mother. I don’t need one now. Far as I’m concerned I’m not named after anybody on this whole wide earth and if I was I would’ve gone to court to get rid of that name of a person who treated me like a piece of garbage just fit for throwing away.” Dolly waved the thought of a mother, any mother, away and, with the clank of her dangling handcuffs and the squeak of her damp boots, stomped off, leaving Cate behind her, shaking her head and clucking her tongue just as Jake Anderson and the guys from the Skunk Saloon ambled in and took seats among the women, asking after the baby.

“Awful,” Eugenia leaned around Gloria, whispering toward me, her tall pile of too-blond hair stuck through with four teetering tortoiseshell combs. “I’m prayin’ as hard as I can pray for little Jane.”

Flora Coy seconded the praying while Cate kept talking to the backs of women who ignored her.

Every time the doors to the ER opened, Dolly turned expectant eyes on the nurse who came through, then whispered numbers to herself:
Seven KXU
.

Too nervous to sit, I got up and joined Dolly’s pacing. “I’ll get the story in the paper . . .” I promised.

“Yeah.” Dolly turned red eyes on me. “Gotta get that bastard. It’s already out to all departments in Michigan: Seven KXU—that’s all I got of the license plate. Can’t believe I didn’t catch it. I’m trained . . .”

“Where were you?” I pulled a reporter’s notebook and pen from my shoulder bag.

“At the cemetery. Left her in the car—what was going to happen?” Dolly sniffed and rubbed hard at her nose.

“What were you doing at the cemetery?”

Dolly reared back and made a face at me. “It’s Mother’s Day. Where else would I be?”

“Oh, Grace Humbert. But that’s a quiet road. Not like 131 or M72. How could somebody hit you? You leave the car sticking out too far?”

Dolly seemed to welcome getting pissed off at me. Being mad was normal for Dolly and our friendship shouldered a lot of that—on both sides. Being scared to death and feeling useless as we were feeling now wasn’t normal to either one of us.

“What kind of driver do you think I am?” she growled. “Of course not. Had it pulled right up under the gate. SUV swerved deliberately, hit the patrol car, then backed up and took off.”

“Somebody spooked by a deer or something?”

“Yeah, that was it.” Sarcasm dripped. “Spooked by a deer, hit me right in the side then backed up and took off because of that deer.”

Dolly stopped talking as another nurse came into the room, looked around, turned, and went back through the double doors.

“Who’d want to hit your car?” I asked.

“I can think of a lot of ’em. You know, like those Trombley boys. Jack’s still in jail and that other one’s mad ’cause I broke up all their fun, shooting windows out at the school.”

I looked up from my notes. “Did you see the guy behind the wheel?”

Dolly rolled her eyes at me. “You think, if I saw him, if I knew who he was, that Lucky wouldn’t be after him right now? I didn’t see nothin’. Not a shadow. Not a person. Just the ass end of that car peeling off toward 131, then north, and that was the last of him.”

“What kind of car?”

“Black SUV. Ford Escape. 2006.” She shook her head again and again. “I’ll find it. Don’t you worry. I’m gonna . . .”

“How was Jane when you found her?”

Dolly frowned, then clipped her words when she answered. “Not makin’ a sound. Had to get her here right away. Chief brought us in.”

I nodded, stomach sinking. I already loved that little round-eyed kid who stared at everybody as if we were from Mars. A little kid who shot her eyes left and right when you talked to her, like she was checking out the territory, see what you were bringing with you.

“Concussion?” I asked.

Dolly shrugged. “We’ll know when they get through. I just . . . I’m just . . .”

I put my arm around Dolly and hugged, though Dolly, unused to being touched, hunched her back. One thing Dolly couldn’t take was people being too nice, but I hugged again anyway.

I left Dolly and the group of sorrowing women to go find a quiet corner where I could call Bill Corcoran, at home. Of course he wanted the story, Bill told me, and took down the information over the phone since I wasn’t anywhere near a computer and my iPhone was having trouble getting a signal. He said he wanted to focus on that partial license number and the car. “2006 Black Ford Escape,” he repeated. “Be in the morning paper. And give Dolly my best, Emily. I’d hate to think—you know—if anything happened to that baby. I never saw a new mother as happy as Dolly. Awful thought . . .” He stopped for a minute. “You think I should come out there, to the hospital? I’ll bet you’re as upset as Dolly is. Maybe I could help . . .”

“Nobody can do anything right now, Bill. All we can think about is Jane . . .”

“You stick with your friend until they catch whoever did this. You’ll be paid to cover the story. It’s going to be a big one. And, Emily, if there’s anything . . . well . . . call me when you know how the baby’s doing.”

I hung up and went back to pacing beside Dolly.

When Deputy Omar Winston, of the Gaylord State Police, walked into the waiting room, Dolly caught her breath.

“Darn,” was all she said and shoved her hands deep into her pants pockets.

The stiff little man—buzzed head covered with blond fuzz, pale eyebrows, pale eyes, pale skin, his uniform as pristine as Dolly’s was a mess—wasn’t who Dolly wanted to see right then.

Deputy Winston stopped just inside the door. He looked around, found Dolly and me, and then, with robotic movement—arms stiff at his side, hat tucked, military-style, under his arm—made his way across the room and stopped in front of us, asking formally if he could speak to her in private.

Dolly opened her mouth to answer just as a doctor came through the doors and called out, “Delores Wakowski.”