Cold Case (38 page)

My car was starting to feel like home. Behind the steering wheel, I relaxed a bit, regaining confidence.
I can handle Boston traffic. I can always drive a hack
. I wasn't keen on listening to the news. I shoved tape after tape into the boom box. Every song sounded mournful, a tale of death and sorrow, death and sorrow, over and over again.

Swampscott is south of Marblehead, too close to crowded Lynn for the wealthy. Oh, I suppose there's some snazzy oceanfront property, some developer's dream acre, but the Foleys lived near the Lynn line—the most crowded section of town—in a clapboard house that gave ramshackle a good name. The streets—Eastern, Maple, Cherry—had generic names, and the town had the look of all sunbleached August New England towns. Nothing to lift it out of the summer doldrums. No ocean view. No breeze.

I spent twenty minutes observing the house. Patches on the roof. Negligible weedy lawn. Overgrown bushes. Two window screens missing, one slashed. No screen at all on the front door, which opened and banged shut with amazing frequency. Lots of people living there, or stopping by. Maybe all those kids had grandkids now, pressed Edie into nonstop child care service.

I hadn't seen the splendor of the Camerons' Marblehead house up close, but I'd practically taken the deluxe tour of their Dover palace. I could no more imagine Tessa Cameron setting foot in this not-quite-slum than I could imagine the Queen of England naked.

So many people coming and going, maybe Edith Foley wouldn't care who I was. Maybe she ran a licensed day-care, in which case I could be practically anybody from the state righteously poking my nose into her business.

I could be one of her neighbors with a complaint about the noise. Hell, poor woman probably got complaints all day.

I decided to drive for a while, search for steeples. I noted two, one Episcopalian, one Catholic: Saint Aidans.

I remembered passing a bakery, homed on the smell. Bought a ring of something gooey, studded with summer fruit. Paid for it with Andrew Manley's money. This time I parked around the block, so she wouldn't see my car.

New neighbor makes friends, part one.

The doormat said, “Howdy, stranger!” I didn't think they sold those east of the Mississippi. Native New Englanders aren't known for their outgoing ways, their friendliness.

I knocked, carefully balancing my string-tied white bakery box.

“Hi, hon, yer a tall one, what yer got there?” Her hair, what was left of it, was white and poked from her scalp at odd angles, like coconut sprinkled from a can. My Edie, according to research, had to be the same age as Tessa Cameron, but this was an old woman, her skin leathery and tough.

“Do you live here? Are you Edith Foley?”

“Sure am.” She focused on the box hungrily. “Did I win a raffle?”

See what I mean about improv skills?

She wore a silver cross around the neck of a much-laundered flowered housedress that buttoned down the front, stretching over ample hips.

“At Saint Aidans,” I said helpfully, hoping she worshiped nearby.

“I don't b'lieve I entered that raffle,” she said.

Oops.

“Somebody must have entered for you,” I said cheerfully, not missing a beat. “One of your kids, maybe an unknown admirer.”

“Joseph,” she said immediately. “My oldest boy has such a sweet tooth. He'll be around anytime, beggin' for a slice. Now, come on in, hon. You'll git sunstruck standin' out there.”

If I decide to turn bad, watch out. It's so easy to gain entry. Why so many crooks get caught baffles me. Or it used to before I became a cop, started meeting actual perps. Imagine all the kids in your high school who couldn't make it past tenth grade, who thought flipping burgers offered a brighter future than frog dissection. Marry them off young, to each other, give them lots of kids they can't afford to raise. There's your basic prison population, with a few add-ons for drug dealing and out-and-out racism.

Edie said, “You marched this down from Saint A's in this heat, hon? Aren't you a sweetie? Take a load off. Don't mind the cats.”

The opening and closing door hadn't signaled the entrances and exits of persons, but of felines. At least seven stretched their necks and regarded me with unblinking eyes. From the stench, seven did not account for half the cats who roomed with Mrs. Edith Foley.

“Live far?” Mrs. Foley said, breezing in with a tray bearing two spotty glasses of something yellowy, and the fruit ring, still in its pristine box. “Have some lemonade?”

“Thanks;” I said, trying not to sneeze. Everything in the living room was floral, ruffled, bowed, and worn, covered with cat hair and dust. Flowered chintz furniture next to flowered mismatched drapes. Jumbles of oversized busy-patterned pillows. Lacy antimacassars. A riot of defiant femininity gone wrong.

Every surface was littered with cat statues, chew toys, family photos in Plexiglas frames, grocery store magazines, stacks of mail.

“Live near here?”

I realized that Mrs. Foley was asking for the second time. Stunned by the decor, I'd failed to answer.

“Over on Cherry,” I said quickly, tuning my voice to her down-home accent. “Just moved in. Renting a room till I get back on my feet. The folks at church have been real nice to me.”

She sat, eyes wide with curiosity. I helped her clear a place for the tray, which wasn't easy, but it let me ask questions about the photos as I moved them.

“You in this one?”

“No, child, that's my boy Harry, second oldest, and his wife. They got two little boys now.”

“Isn't that swell?” I said miserably, starting to work out a back-story about my troubles, one that might lead to a sharing of confidences. If she was going to get me to talk, she was going to have to trade tales of woe.

It was easy to pretend to hold back tears because I was actually swallowing the sneezes provoked by the dust and the cats.

“Oh my dear,” she said. “Have you, urn, suffered a loss?”

“It's silly,” I said. “I really shouldn't—”

“Now, hon, the best thing in the world is a good cry and a talk with a stranger. I know what I say, believe me.”

“It's just that picture, those cute kids. I've had my share of trouble. First, my husband up and left me—” This was true enough. That Cal had departed some years back with my blessing Edie didn't need to know. “But I worked regular and I tried to keep my life straight till my daughter, my little girl, died—”

Every time I say something like that, I'm tempted to spit over my left shoulder, pound a piece of solid wood to avoid the evil eye. If anything happened to Paolina—

The part about the dead child seemed to skip by without leaving a ripple in the water. Edie fastened on the husband who'd departed. People hear what they want to hear, that's for sure.

“Hon, I know just how that is,” she said sympathetically. “My man walked out of this house over twenty years ago, left me with seven boys to raise up on my own.”

“Seven,” I echoed. “My goodness, you just can't tell anything about folks by lookin' at them, can you?”

One thing I learned as a cop is that people tend to confide most readily in people who sound like them or look like them. It was obvious that Edie hadn't been born in Swampscott, or anywhere in New England, not the way she talked, not with the “Howdy, stranger” welcome mat. I couldn't place her accent, except that it was more West than Midwest. I don't do the Professor Higgins bit, but I could parrot her own words back to her, broaden my A's, drop my G's, sound like I'd grown up in her neck of the woods.

It's a music thing. You've got to have the ear.

She sipped lemonade, opened the box, oohed and ahhed over the pastry. Went down the hall in search of a knife and plates. I shooed a cat off the tray while eagerly looking for a picture of a girl, a young woman, an old picture. Most showed Mom and the boys.

Aha! A small table to the left of a dinky fireplace had the look of a shrine. Covered with a paisley shawl. Candlesticks. Statues of various saints. There. A five-by-seven that practically shouted high school yearbook shot.

Heather had done her hair up for the occasion. She'd worn a white Peter Pan collar, a choker of fake pearls. Her smile was her best feature, open, honest, a little bit reckless. Young.

I heard Mrs. Foley shuffling down the hall, but I didn't return to my seat. One of the cats had already usurped my chair, and I wanted Edie's reaction when she saw me studying her daughter's photo.

“We've got something else in common,” she said, a catch in her voice. “I used to have a girl too. I always think my life changed the minute Heather died. Good luck to bad in the wink of an eye.”

“That's just how I felt when my Wendy died,” I said. I wasn't going to use Paolina's name.

“Oh, hon,” she said consolingly. “You're still plenty young. You can have more kids if you want, if you can take it. My family was almost grown when Heather died, but I truly think her dad, Harold, wouldn't have lit out like he did if she hadn't passed. I never saw anything hit a man so hard. Took care of all the arrangements, and then raced out of here like he had a fire in his belly he couldn't put out.”

“Your girl was older than mine,” I said. “Pretty too.”

“Age makes no difference,” she said. “You love them to pieces, that's all.”

“Your girl died, just like mine, and then your husband walked out, and look at you. You survived. I'll bet that's why the folks at Saint A's thought I oughta deliver the cake. Do me some good, make me stop feeling sorry for myself, feeling like I'm the only one gotta cross to bear.”

She didn't see the cats wiggling their tails across the fruit goo. I wasn't planning to eat. I mean, my cat's okay. He's a loner and so am I.

I wished I'd sent Roz to do the interview. But Roz, with her hair, with her earrings and rings and fingernails … I don't think she'd have hit it off with Edie.

“You have any other kids?” Edie asked me.

“Wish I did. Just the one girl. My poor Wendy,” I said, automatically thinking of Paolina, and hoping we could turn the conversation back to Heather before Edith Foley came to her senses. So far the woman hadn't even asked my name.

Such is the power of a white bakery box.

“A girl is such a gift,” Edie said. “My boys, God, I love 'em so, but they never really understand, you know? It's like they'd help out if they could, but they haven't got a clue. I've got granddaughters now, two of 'em named for my Heather.”

“She was real cute. She get sick?”

“Oh no, hon. It was one of them accidents. Boatin' accidents. There's gonna be an article about it in the
Tab
, you watch for it.”

She was still in touch with the police department.

“Won't that make you feel bad?” I asked. “Somebody raking up the past like that?”

“No, hon. You of all people should know that's one thing people never get straight. I talked to the priest about it, got me so riled. The minute you lose a child, people, even friends, figure it's like you never had her, never watched her grow up, never miss her. I know it's just they don't know what to say, but it's hard to credit. They don't mention her in your hearing anymore. Makes you nuts. You feel like you dreamed the whole thing, like maybe you never had a girl. That's why I keep Heather's picture right there. So everybody knows I don't forget.”

“Does it still hurt as much?” I asked. “I know that's real personal, but I guess I'm trying to figure if I'll still miss my Wendy so much after years have past.”

“Oh, hon, forgive me. When did she die?”

“It's been two years and six months. Leukemia, they said, the very worst kind. I put all her stuff in a box and I still haven't opened it.”

“You will,” Edith said imperturbably.

“And, you know, you're right. Nobody ever talks about her with me. Makes me lonely.”

“You can talk about her with me,” Edie said.

“You said you lost your girl twenty years ago?” I switched topics quickly. I didn't think I could conjure a realistic version of made-up Wendy's final days, not in front of Heather's mom.

“More than twenty, and then my husband left three weeks later, right after we thought they'd pulled her body out of the sea. I thought I'd about die myself. And then I was relieved, you know. I could bury her, and know where she was, know she's in the graveyard behind the church, bring her flowers in the springtime.”

“That's a comfort,” I agreed. “I bring Wendy lilies-of-the-valley.”

“But it wasn't her,” Edie continued. “My husband said the body was so swole up, he couldn't rightly tell, and some other folks had the dental records or something like that to prove it was their baby and not mine. Heather never ever came back to me, but I still go to the churchyard. We put a memorial stone, and I pretend she's there. Doesn't do no harm.”

I nodded solemnly.

“It's hard to believe your husband just left like that. He write you a note or anything?”

“Did yours?” she asked.

“Well,” I confided, “I guess he didn't need to. He was messing around with my best friend, and I found out and all.”

“No kidding?”

“He wanted me to take him back,” I lied, “but I got my pride.”

“Good for you, gal.”

I recited something I've never believed, mentally attributing it to one of the faceless, nameless church-women at Saint A's.

“Well, you know what they say, when God closes a door he opens a window.”

She gazed at me with none of the scorn I felt my remark should have earned, but with a questioning look, as if she was trying to remember which window the Lord had opened for her.

“You know, I just about told a lie back when I said all my luck went with my husband and my girl.”