Mourning Dove (35 page)

“Her name is Annette and
it’s too warm for snow.”

“What?”

“Her name is Annette,”
she said, “Allen’s fiancée.”

He nodded and turned off
the ignition to the black Jetta. They crossed the gravel parking lot on foot.
“Where to?” He stared at the spot beyond three large granite boulders where
Carl’s body was found. She recognized the spot, too. “Come on,” he reached out
his hand to hers.

She took the lead and
within minutes they’d crossed the footbridge and were deep into the brush on a
narrow trail walking away from the bay. A half hour later she stopped and
turned in a circle.

“Tell me we’re not lost.”

“We’re not. I know where
we are.”

“Right. Well, lead on.”

“It was different in the
summertime. There were leaves, and insects; we came from the other end of the
park.”

“I thought you weren’t
lost.”

“I’m not. We’re in Odiorne State Park.”

“Let’s go this way.” He
pointed to the gravel path.

“No, we’ll take the left
path toward the bay.”

“That one leads back to
where we came.”

“No, it branches up
ahead. I just need to find the path.”

“Sara, we’re losing
daylight.” He watched her stare through the darkening shadows. “Maybe we should
try this again in the morning.”

“What if it snows?” she
asked.

“You said it was too warm
to snow.”

“What do I know?  I’m not
a meteorologist.” He shook his head. “This reminds me of Chicago.”

“It doesn’t look anything
like Chicago,” she said as she disappeared beyond a gnarly old maple.

“I’m getting that same gut
feeling I had when I let you come to the pool the night I made the drug bust.”

“Shush.”

They climbed an almost
non-existent trail covered in dropped leaves. She stepped over a downed pine
and then another.

“I believe we’ve lost the
trail.” He leaped over the first pine and fell over the second. “Sara, wait.”

“Where are you?”

“Between the last downed
pine and you. How much further?”

“Not far, are you all
right?”

“My pride’s dented,
nothing else seems amiss.” He looked up; she was a silhouette in the gray dusk
extending a hand. He reached for her and pushed himself off the ground with his
other hand.

“Come on,” she said.
“It’s just up ahead.”

And it was. In the fading
light it was damn near invisible – two shafts – one closed, the other open. He
climbed through the brush to the closed vent and dug into his pocket for an
adjustable wrench. “Bloody hell, I left it in my car.” He looked up and she’d
disappeared.

“Sara?”

“Over here. That shaft is
rusted shut, has been for decades, probably since VE day.”

He followed the glow of a
flashlight he didn’t know she had and trudged through the brier between the
shafts, snagging his pants in the process. She moved the light around a
corrugated pipe. Eight inches above it, a round metal plate was held aloft on a
threaded shaft. “Hold this,” she gave him the light.

“Let me, Sara. I don’t
know how caustic this stuff is.”

“I’ll put on gloves. You
hold the light; you’ll never get your hands inside this.”

He watched the woman, who
earlier today was near to being a basket case, pull black leather gloves from a
purse that looked more like a knapsack. She lifted out a hooded sweatshirt and
spread it on the ground beside the concrete foundation. He angled the light to
shine inside the pipe; then she reached inside and pulled out a handful of
leaves. Soon, she had a rat’s nest and stash of rodent food laid out on the
ground. She scooped out another pile of dried leaves. “What do you feel in
there?” He was impatient to be the one reaching inside this World War II relic.

“I’ve got something.” She
pulled out a stiff piece of canvas and laid it on the sweatshirt. He kept the
light on the bundle but looked up to her face. “Open it,” she said.

He handed her the light
and unfolded the old piece of canvas. Inside was a small collection: an arrowhead,
a small nugget, and a marble. “Wrong prize,” she said. “Be careful with the
arrowhead; it’s sharp.”

“I'm sorry,” he whispered
and looked up to see her disappointment. She was smiling!

“Sara?” he was afraid
she’d lost the thin thread of composure that had carried them through their
search. “Why are you smiling?”

“This is the pirate booty
the boys often hid inside the shaft and other hiding places along the trails
here. Shine the light back into the air shaft. The real treasure was always
below it.” She reached in again and pulled out a thin cord. “Hold onto the
cord; don’t let go. Something’s lodged in here.” She wedged her forearm down
into the shaft and he wondered if she’d get it stuck.

“Need help?”

“I almost have it. Wait.”
After a bit she smiled again in the glow from the flashlight.

***

Matthew and Sara switched
cars again at the Stafford office and drove back to Ocean Park.

“Cass is back at her
house,” she said.  “Her lights are all lit up in the front and Jordie’s truck
is gone.”

A low light shone from
inside Sara’s place. Matthew parked her car inside the garage and pushed the
button to lower the door. She reached into the back seat for the sack.

“Sara, wait.  Where is
the obelisk you mentioned?”

“Inside, come on. Let’s
bring in the groceries first and I’ll show you.”

Inside the house, the
place smelled like a florist shop. A cellophane wrapped dish garden sat on the
coffee table, a canoe-shaped log with puffy white mums filled the center of the
kitchen table, and a cobalt blue vase full of white roses stood sentinel on the
island in the kitchen. The only light glowing was from the range hood. He
watched her stunned face as she took it all in. She opened a note on the
counter.

“Cass?” he asked.

“She says, stifado is
warming in the oven, Syrian bread is on the counter, and phone messages are on
the coffee table. We’re to call when we’re ready for company.”

“We?”

“Cass just said call, I
added the pronoun.”

“Where is?”

Sara smiled at him when
he picked up the cat that had been rubbing against his leg since they entered
the house. “The poor thing doesn’t know where home is: from Stacy’s, to
Jordie’s, to my house, to Ron’s, back to Jordie’s, and now back to mine.”

“Leonardo,” he whispered
into its calico fur. “You’re a lucky cat.”

She reached over and
lifted the cat into her arms. His purr amplified at her touch.

“Where, Sara?”

“Let me show you the cat
jungle I got for Leonardo before I left for Chicago. He hasn’t had much time to
play with it, yet.” She handed him the cat and knelt down at the base of the
carpeted cat house tucked in the corner of the dining area. In a few minutes,
she’d pulled the towering feline playground out from the wall and lifted a blue
plaid stadium blanket from inside. She unwrapped a three feet tall stone
obelisk, six inches of it a mahogany platform.

She pushed the mum boat
to the side and placed the obelisk on top of the table. “Watch this,” She said
and pushed in a corner of the base. A hidden drawer swung open exposing a black
bi-fold wallet. He opened it in the palm of his hand and stared at his friend’s
government ID.

“I believe you have one
just like it. But you don’t have to hide yours,” she said with a bit of sting
in her voice.

“Let’s put this somewhere
safe.”

“It
was
somewhere
safe. We never knew.” Leonardo leaped to the table and rubbed up against the
granite stone.

“We could put the wallet
in the Brillo box under the sink,” she said. “When Carl was young, he used to
hide things there he didn’t want me to see.  I never let on I knew his hiding
place.”

She slid a CD of Carl’s
into the base. “It’s a copy of some music Carl and Jordie put together when
they were teenagers with hair halfway down their backs. I told him he should
have labeled it, he never did.”

“Sara, do you have
another copy of this?”

She shook her head.
“Jordie does. I can get copies made if I lose this one.”

He lifted an aluminum
cigar tube from the plastic shopping bag, removed the label, and slid it into
the base. It rocked when they slid the base back into place and he shook his
head, “Wait, that won’t do.”

She walked back to the
bedroom and brought out a small white cardboard box. From inside she lifted a
rectangular piece of cotton batting and in minutes the cigar tube was nestled
inside the obelisk base, the disk below it.

He rolled the obelisk into
the stadium blanket, and took it out to the garage. When he came back she was
kneeling in front of the cat jungle pushing it back into place.

“What about something to
eat?” he rubbed his stomach.

“Let’s ask Cass to join
us. For the first time in a week, my stomach is finally not…” She stopped in
midsentence and stared at him. Tears refilled her eyes.

“Grief is…”

“Don’t.” She held her
hand up like a traffic cop at rush hour.

“I'm glad we got the
obelisk back into the trunk of your car.  I don’t like you leaving it in the
house.” She nodded and he winked just as the doorbell rang. He whispered in her
ear, “The bait is set.”

***

Cass walked in the front
door with her ever present flutter. “I’m not intruding, am I?”

“Of course not, we were
just about to give you a buzz.  You’re going to help us polish off the
stifado.”

“Sara, I made that for
you and Matthew.”

“And we are inviting you
to dine,” he said.

Sara watched Cass turn a
lovely shade of rose, freckles enhanced.  “I’ll feed Leonardo while you dish up
the goodies,” her friend said.

Pulling the Syrian bread
from the wrapper to warm it in the oven, Sara heard cellophane crinkling behind
her and turned toward the sound.

“I don’t imagine
chrysanthemums are on his diet, Cass.” Sara could hear the anger in her voice
and she was sorry, but she couldn’t seem to say it.

“Aw honey, just let it
out. Scream if you have to. I know you don’t mean it. It’s not your fault.”

Matthew took one step
toward Sara and she shook her head.

“God damn it, Cass! Yes
it is! It has been my fault from the beginning! I couldn’t keep either one of
them safe! I left him, Cass! I left him because I was selfish and now he’s
dead! It
is
my fault! I should have been a better mother! I should have
been a better wife! I should have been there,” she ended in a whisper.

Sniffing through her
tears, Sara slid to the floor in front of the stove. She sat there with eyes
closed feeling the warmth of the oven behind her. The only sound beyond her
sniffling was Leonardo’s purr. She’d probably chased them both away. Who could
blame them? She’d run away, too. “Oh God, what have I done?”  The sound of her
crying scared Leonardo out from his nest on top of her feet. She had no energy
to get back up so she stayed there until her bottom was numb. The sniffling was
louder. When she opened her eyes, she realized Matthew and Cass hadn’t left.
They were on the floor too, sitting guard on her left and right, sniffing back
tears of their own. Sara opened a hand, palm up, to each of them and found
strength in their clasped hands.

They sat for a long time
after that. Just sniffling and holding on to one another. A deep rumble finally
came from Matthew’s stomach.

“Sara,” he asked, “what
is
stifado?”

***

White lines bracketed
Sara’s mouth at the reception after her husband’s funeral. The strain of
putting a passive face on the closure had pushed her to the limit. Matthew
watched from across the function room as one curious person after another tried
to get close to her. The scandal had reached the national press. Headlines in
all the papers read like major crime reports in a big city instead of the
sleepy port town of Portsmouth:
Prominent Business Man Dies Defending Home;
Three Dead in Explosion; Authorities Evasive – Fed’s Involved.
The major
networks had the funeral home, Sara’s house, and the church staked out. Portsmouth police lined the route to the cemetery and kept the rabble to a minimum.

Sara held up well, a few
tears at the church and the grave site, regal as only she could be, Cass never
far from her side. Pierce and Robert Starr stood like centurions behind her, an
illusion of a unified front. Elaina buzzed like a hummingbird throughout the
reception.

Oddly enough, the big
problem had been the frosty attitude radiating from Ron Stafford’s parents.
From the moment they got off the plane, Sara had been beaten up by their
accusations.  According to Cass, they’d laid the blame for their son’s, and by
extension their only grandchild’s, death at Sara’s feet. They’d been impossibly
rude taking the moral high ground over her desertion. They were horrified she
survived the explosion merely by living apart from her husband, which was why
Matthew kept his distance since Monday afternoon when their plane landed.  Sara
pleaded with him not to go with her to the airport. When he was finally
introduced to them on Tuesday at the funeral home he could read their
condemnation at first glance. From their reaction a federal agent was on equal
footing with a serial killer.

Matthew pulled away from
the wall and placed his empty ginger ale glass on the tray of a passing
waiter.  He threaded his way through the throng toward Elaina and asked if she
could fuss over Ron’s parents for a bit. Elaina glanced across the room from
where Cass has just gotten Sara to finally sit down then to the table where
Ron’s parents were holding court. Elaina actually winced at the request.
“You’re going to owe me for this one, dear boy.”