Chosen for Death (29 page)

"Any luck?" the woman asked.

"No," I said. "Dozens of Norwoods, and not a single Elizabeth."

"Well, that's too bad," she said, pulling the book toward her. Then she stopped and pushed it back. "Did you look at middle names?" she said. "Because a lot of the Norwood girls are named after their mothers, and go by their middle names to avoid confusion." She pushed a wayward strand of hair away from her face. "I don't know why," she said, "but I feel like I've had this conversation before." She shrugged her shoulders. "I guess that happens when you serve the public. You have the same conversations over and over. You want to take this back and try again?" she asked, thumping the book. An older woman behind the counter gave her a dirty look.

"I do," I said, hefting the book again. "Wish me luck." I carried the book back to the table and began again in 1968. In December, 1969, a woman named Anne Elizabeth Norwood had married Jonah Isaac Davis at the Calvary Baptist Church in Hallowell. I wrote down the names and dates, marked the page, and checked the rest of the Norwoods. Anne Elizabeth was the only possibility. Once again I carried the book back to the counter. The friendly woman was gone, and this time the elderly woman who had scowled at her came to the counter.

"I'd like to get a copy of a license application, please," I said. I opened the book and pointed to the entry for Anne Elizabeth and Jonah. "For this couple." She turned the book around, squinted at the page and back at me and then at the page again.

"Cost you five dollars," she said, holding out a plump, chapped hand. I took a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and handed it to her. She stared at it like I'd given her Hungarian forints. "You got correct change?" she said. I dug through my purse, found four ones and four quarters, handed them to her, and took back the ten. She studied the money carefully to be sure it wasn't counterfeit, then put it slowly in a drawer and consulted her watch. "I'm going to lunch now," she said. "Come back at one and I'll have that application for you." She scribbled the names on a piece of paper, stowed the book under the counter, and sauntered away, her tent-like garment flowing behind her. A typical public servant. I wanted to argue with her, to say something mature and persuasive like, "If you don't give it to me right now, I'll stand here and scream," but I restrained myself, sublimating my rage in a quest for food.

Luckily, I didn't have to search long. In my weakened and enraged state, I might have collapsed on the sidewalk, but there was a restaurant directly across the street. I had a lobster salad sandwich, a chocolate milkshake, and a mound of french fries. Then I further sublimated my rage by having raspberry pie à la mode. By the time I retraced my steps and reentered Town Hall, I'd let my belt out a notch and was in a much better mood. The friendly woman was waiting for me with a copy of the license application.

She handed it over with a flourish. "There you are," she said. "Hope it's what you want."

I scanned the page. Anne Elizabeth Norwood was nineteen years old at the time of her marriage. Had never been married before. She listed her occupation as student. Her birth date was the same as the one on Elizabeth Alden's hospital records. Jonah Isaac Davis was twenty-nine, also previously unmarried. He listed his occupation as minister. I wondered if he was Carrie's father, and decided probably not. Had he been, the two of them would probably just have gotten married when the pregnancy occurred. A transfer to another congregation would have taken care of any problem with scandal.

Carrie's presence was almost tangible now. She'd stood here in this same room, with a copy of this same paper, another step closer to her mother. I followed Carrie's trail out of the building, back to the car, and back up the road to the state library.

I settled myself on the floor by the telephone books and began again, this time searching for Jonah Davis. My streak of luck continued. I found Reverend Jonah Davis in the first phone book I checked. Intuition, which had been my primary source of inspiration so far, told me to look in the Camden area book. And my intuition was right. A very modern listing—Davis, Rev. Jonah and Elizabeth—it even acknowledged that Jonah had a wife. I stifled the impulse to disturb the dozy afternoon peace of the library by leaping to my feet and shouting "Eureka!" Instead I carefully copied down the number and address, and returned the book to the shelf.

I didn't expect Andre to be there when I got back. It was only midafternoon, and he had more important things to do than wait around for me. The morning had gone more slowly than a crippled snail, but the afternoon had flown. I was looking forward to telling him what I'd discovered. Until now, he hadn't shown much interest in my theory that the key to Carrie's murder was to duplicate her search, but to be fair, I hadn't tried very hard to explain it to him.

Since Sunday, when he'd appeared on my doorstep, we'd been busy with other things, and I'd done my reading and learning since I'd first told him about Carrie's search. I'd left him asleep this morning. He needed it. The novelty hadn't worn off—once again we hadn't gotten much sleep—and I'd left him only the briefest of notes. Over dinner I'd tell him the whole story. I wondered if he liked sauerkraut. He'd better. That was what he was going to be eating.

I stopped at a roadside stand on the way back and got a bag of apples and some last-of-the-season tomatoes. This morning the drive had seemed endless; but now I flew, not to Camden, but to nearby Rockport, to visit Carrie's mother.

Chapter 23

In Rockport, I stopped at a gas station to get directions to Shore Drive. Shore Drive turned out to be a road looping off Route 1, running along a peninsula separating Rockport and Rockland, along a broad inlet called Glen Cove. The road separated the houses from the shore, but the view was nice. Number 124 was a neat Victorian cottage with gingerbread trim and wide porches. There was a car in the driveway. I parked behind it, climbed the steps, and rang the doorbell. In my mind I saw Carrie parking her battered little Chevette and climbing these same steps.

The door was opened by a small woman smiling the rigid smile of Christian charity. "Yes?" she said. I could only stand and stare at her, speechless. Unquestionably, this was Carrie's mother. The resemblance was uncanny. She looked more like a sister than a mother, but she'd only been eighteen when Carrie was born. Her face was still young and attractive, but it wasn't happy. Marriage to a minister, it seemed, had brought her neither peace nor joy. Her small body drooped in the same dejected way Carrie's sometimes had, but here the dejection seemed chronic. "Can I help you, miss?" she asked in Carrie's voice.

I pulled myself together. "Are you Elizabeth Davis?"

She nodded. "Betsy," she said, waiting for me to state my business. Still smiling, but wary now, uncertain.

"My name is Thea Kozak," I said. "Carrie McKusick was my sister."

She jumped like a startled deer, looked back over her shoulder, then grabbed my arm. "We can't talk here," she said. "My husband's home. You wait. I'll get my coat. We'll go down to the beach."

She shut the door in my face. Down to the beach, she'd said. I looked at my shoes. Expensive Italian leather, with small heels. Very grown-up and elegant, but useless for scrambling over rocks or striding along the sand. This was where men had a real advantage. They might not want to expose their expensive wing tips to the elements, but at least they could walk in them if they had to. The door opened again, and Elizabeth Davis came out, wearing a puffy blue ski jacket. She shut the door carefully behind her, then hurried past me and down the steps. "This way," she said.

I followed her across the road and down a grassy slope to the shore, hitching up my narrow skirt to climb over the roadside barrier. She walked rapidly across the sand and rocks to the point where the beach ended and a rock ledge sloped sharply up the left, climbed without hesitation up the ledge and sat down in a spot halfway up, where a broken shelf of rock made a natural seat. "Come on up," she called.

I slipped off my shoes and followed. The sand was cold and the barnacle-covered rocks shredded my stockings. Away from the shire, the sea was a cold grayish blue. Closer in, it was dark gray, and the wind was driving waves up onto the beach, the dark tendrils of foam-flecked water hissing up over the rock-strewn sand toward the base of the ledge. At a distance, the sea had looked inviting, but close up, it seemed cold and unfriendly. Across the cove, late afternoon sun glinted off the cars on Route 1. The temperature was dropping as the sun sank. I clambered up the ledge and sat down cautiously a few feet away.

"How did you find me?" she demanded.

"The same way Carrie did," I said.

Elizabeth Davis nodded slowly. I almost couldn't bear to look at her, she was so like Carrie, the same delicate bones, even the same soft curls. Her head was bent over her clenched hands, hiding her face. When she raised it, she looked at me with Carrie's challenging stare. "Why did you come here?" she said. "Why can't you people leave me alone?" I started to speak, but she held up a hand. "Wait. There's something I need to say first." I waited, wondering if she was going to confess.

"When I was eighteen," she said, "I became pregnant. My family sent me away to Massachusetts, to a home for unwed mothers. I had the baby. I gave her up. I came home and tried to put all of that behind me. Soon afterward, I met Jonah Davis and we were married. We have a family—two sons. My husband is a minister. He is also a community leader. People look up to him. I'm proud of Jonah, and I love him very much. He doesn't know about Carrie. You probably think that's odd." Her angry eyes dared me to say so.

"I've never told him about the pregnancy or the baby. He could never have accepted that about me. My husband is a good man, loving in his own way, but he is also a strict man. A religious man. A moral example for others. It's been hard, but I've learned to live with my secret, with my guilt, and I've gone on to make a good life. This may be hard for you to understand. Your sister couldn't seem to understand it, but people here have a certain image of us—of me. It would destroy both of us, and our family, if it were ever known that I had had an illegitimate child. That's why we couldn't talk at the house." She brushed back some curls that had blown into her face. Carrie's hair. Carrie's hand. How odd it must have been for Carrie. Seeing this woman, so like her, I almost couldn't concentrate on what she was saying, despite the desperation in her voice.

"Since your sister called my life has been a nightmare. Her call and her visit have completely destroyed my peace of mind. If the fact that she was my daughter became known, my life would be ruined. Perhaps I could handle my own disgrace, I've lived with it a long time, but I couldn't face the pain of my husband's disgrace, or my children's scorn. I have two teenage sons, one in high school and one in college. We've raised them in a strict, moral home." She hesitated. "I don't know if you can appreciate how serious I am. I don't know whether finding me was important to you for some reason, or it was just a lark. I'm not sure I even care. I'm telling you so you'll know the whole story. Then I want you to go away and leave me alone. I have a right to be left alone! It was bad enough that she came. I don't see why you had to come."

"I can explain that, if you'll let me," I said.

"When I'm finished," she said quickly. "I thought when I gave up the baby that I could leave all of that behind me. They told me I could close the door on that chapter of my life. That my secret would be protected. They told me to go home and put it out of my mind. And that's what I did, as best I could, until your sister showed up." She shook her head angrily. The slanting sun lit her face. Now I could see the lines around her eyes and mouth. She looked bone-tired.

"Lies," she said. "All lies." She stared out over the cove, choosing her words carefully. "I believed that I was safe. Those people who think that they have a right to know who they are, who insist on their right to find their birth parents, don't realize how much they may be hurting someone else." Her voice sank to a whisper. "Ever since she died, I've lived in dread, waiting for the doorbell to ring. I don't sleep. My appetite is gone. I wait like a hunted animal. Waiting for the police to appear on my doorstep. Waiting for this life, these good people that I love, to be destroyed. All because your sister wasn't content with her own fine parents, but had to come find me and ruin my life again."

I stared at her. "How did you know that Carrie was dead?"

Elizabeth shuddered, either from the cold or fear. "The newspapers, of course." She paused. "I guess your dad didn't get his money's worth after all, did he?"