Died in the Wool (19 page)

I called him back.

“I am not telling you where that man went fishing, because you'll just go out there and interrupt him,” he said.

“Yes, that's the point. I have something very important I want to discuss with him,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“If you don't tell me, I'm just going to keep calling back,” I said.

“You're horrible,” he said. “Just so you know.”

“I know, I know,” I admitted.

“Mort likes to get catfish and bass. Everybody knows Hawk Point is the best place for that. Besides, he owns a little cabin on Hawk Point. About ten miles off the main road. And do not tell him I told you. He'll never trust me again if you do,” he said.

It must be painful to be that cantankerous.

“I won't tell him. And just so you know, there's been a break on one of his cases and Peg needs to talk to him about it. I'm not just hunting him down for my own sake,” I said. Although that was part of it. I'm honest.

I dropped Mary off at the skating rink in Wisteria because all of her girlfriends were going skating and she just
had
to go or she'd just
die.
The real reason was that Tony was going to be there. I could tell because she put an extra coating of lip gloss on, and now her lips looked liked she'd just eaten a side of bacon. I told her I'd pick her up at eleven. Next I went to Target for a super-duper can of bug spray, making sure it said DEET in huge bright letters. I guess I thought the brighter and bigger the letters were, the more DEET would be in the can. Then I headed out to Hawk Point.

Mort's cabin was a good ten miles off of the two-lane road that led into Hawk Point. It felt as though I'd just entered the wilderness. I couldn't even see a telephone or power line anywhere. When I got to the cabin, I doused myself in the bug spray, holding my breath and jumping around in the mist of chemicals. I took my cell phone and my keys but left my purse behind. No point in taking it with me. It's not like I'd need Gummy Bears and a checkbook to find the sheriff. It was almost dark, and there was a single light on in the run-down, grown-over cabin. Mort's gigantic new truck was parked in the front. I swear, I'd need a ladder just to get up in the thing.

I knocked on the door, but he didn't answer. That meant he was still out fishing. I wondered if he took a boat or a canoe like Colin usually did. If he did, all I could do was wait for him, because I wouldn't begin to know where he would be. I headed down to the water and walked along the edge, looking to see if I could find Mort anywhere or evidence of a boat. Like a dock. It occurred to me then that DEET wasn't going to help me with ticks, and my skin suddenly began to crawl. “Mort?” I called out.

I yelled his name a few more times and finally got a response. “Shhh,” he said. “The fish are talking to me.”

I whipped around and found him sitting on the bank about twenty feet away in the opposite direction from where I'd been looking. He was sitting on the ground. Right there smack dab in the middle of all the ticks and spiders and mosquitoes. He didn't even have a blanket.

“The fish are talking to you?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Can't you hear them?”

“No, all I hear is the buzzing of the Amazon-sized mosquitoes that keep flying around my head,” I said. “And whippoorwills. Which are kinda nice. And crickets. Which are really loud.”

There was a
blurp
sound on the water. “See?” Mort said. “They're talking to me.”

“Great,” I said. “What are the fish saying?”

“They're saying, ‘Tell that loudmouth who's come to see you that she's about ready to step on a snake.'”

“What?” I said. Mort looked up at me, and I realized what he'd just said. I started screaming and jumping around. My legs were going in directions they hadn't gone since sixth-grade gymnastics class. I didn't even know I could still bend that way. Mort hopped up, ran over, grabbed me by the collar, and yanked me off to the side as I saw something slither past me and into the water.

“Cottonmouth,” he said. “Damned serious. Good thing it wasn't completely dark yet, or I wouldn't have seen it.”

“Wonderful,” I said, nearly fainting.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Well, Mr. Crocodile Dundee, if you'd answer your cell phone, I wouldn't have had to come out here,” I said.

“What is it?”

“There's been a break on one of your cases, or some vital info of some sort, and Peg needs you to call in. I don't think she needs you to come in or anything. At least she didn't make it sound that way, but she does need to talk to you. And I know you're off for the next few days, but I also wanted to ask a favor of you,” I said.

“What's that?”

“Would you reopen the file on the Kendall suicides?”

“Why?” he asked.

“I'd like it if you would just look over the evidence and see what the investigators at the time had picked up on,” I said. “If you don't have time, if you could give the files to me and let me read them.”

“You?”

“Or Colin. You know you can trust him,” I said. I remembered what Colin had said and decided not to tell Mort the part about how I'd asked Colin where he was.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

Something buzzed by my ear and I swiped at it furiously.

“Could we maybe go in the cabin or up to the cars? Somewhere away from this water?”

“Sure,” he said. He walked me up to my car and stopped. I guessed he wasn't going to invite me in, and I figured he was going to head back down to his fishing as soon as I left. Colin had always said the best times to fish were at sunrise and sunset.

“I've got reason to believe that Glory Kendall may have been murdered,” I said. I repeated what Marty Tarullo had told me. “I had Deputy Oldham take the pins and quilts into the lab for analysis.”

“Good,” he said. “Better safe than sorry.”

“So, if she was actually murdered, the evidence that the investigators collected back in 1922 might suddenly mean something different,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “I'll get on it tomorrow.”

I was speechless. That wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd thought it was going to be. I thought he was going to protest and whine and I'd have to convince him. “Oh,” I said. “That was easy.”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” he said. “Thanks for coming down and giving me the message from Peg.”

“Right,” I said. “I'll be at the Gaheimer House for part of the day tomorrow. Then on to the rose show.”

“Have a safe trip back,” he said. Sure enough, he headed down to the water and his talking fish.

It was all a little anticlimactic.

Sixteen

I stopped by my mother's and stayed until it was time to pick up Mary from the skating rink. She showed me her latest painting, which was a really nice moody piece of an orange sunset and a girl carrying a water pail up to a silhouette of a church. I think it's awesome that she can pull an image from her mind and set it on canvas. Then it's there forever. Mom fed me some peach cobbler and I was on my way. I waited outside the skating rink for about twenty minutes as the kids all filed out of the building, laughing and giggling and talking all the way to their parents' cars.

All the kids except Mary.

After about ten more minutes, I went into the rink to see if I could find Mary maybe hanging around and talking to somebody, completely unaware of what time it was. Because that's Mary. Quite often I get upset with her over something, thinking that she was deliberately being disrespectful or negligent, when in fact she was just oblivious. I have no idea where her mind is most of the time, but it isn't in the here and now. Sounds like me, now that I think about it. Rudy gets upset with Mary a lot more than I do, and I think it's because I find it very difficult to get upset with a child who's behaving like me.

Mary wasn't in the skating rink, at least not that I could see. I checked the girls' restroom and, short of stomping into the boys' restroom, was at a loss as to where to look next. I ran back out to the parking lot to see if she was waiting for me in the car, but she wasn't. I went back into the skating rink and found a familiar face behind one of the skate rental counters. It was Helen's nephew. I couldn't remember his name at the moment, but I knew he knew who I was. “Hey, I dropped my daughter off here—”

“Rachel?”

“No, Mary. Have you seen her?”

“Oh, yeah, earlier in the evening,” he said. “Haven't seen her in a while.”

Okay, that panic that I can usually keep in check swelled right up in my throat, and I ran for the boys' restroom. Not to puke, but to see if she was hiding in there. God knows why she'd be hiding in there, but it was the only spot in the rink that I hadn't checked. She wasn't in the boys' room, however, and I had to apologize all over myself to the poor pimply-faced kid who had been taking a whiz. I think I made him pee on his shoe. I shoved the door to the bathroom open with the palm of my hand and kept on going, storming out of the rink. I flipped the cell phone and called Rudy.

“Is Mary at home?” I asked without saying hello.

“Torie?”

“Yes, it's your wife. Who else would be looking for Mary?”

“I'm confused.”

“Is. Mary. At. Home? Simple enough question.”

“No, she's at the skating rink,” he said. “You don't have to be so hateful.”

“No, she's not.”

“What do you mean she's not?”

“She's not here.”

“Well, where is she?”

“I don't know. That's why I'm calling.”

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Has she called?”

“No,” he said.

“Ask Rachel if she knows where Mary is.”

I waited, scanning the parking lot, while Rudy asked Rachel if she knew the whereabouts of her very-much-in-trouble sister. “No, Rachel hasn't seen her.”

My brain froze. I couldn't think. It didn't compute. She wasn't at home, she wasn't at the skating rink … I didn't know what to think next. Rachel had never done anything like this. How dare she be such a good kid. It had left me completely unprepared for Mary. Not that Mary was a bad kid—in fact, I'd say she was closer to normal and Rachel was the abnormal kid—but still … I'd never had to think this way. Where could she be?

She'd been kidnapped. That had to be it. What the hell else could it be? Hadn't I taught her never to go anywhere with strangers? Yes. Hadn't I taught her never to leave a party or an event with anybody other than her parents or grandparents? Yes. So then she had to have been taken. Right?

Wrong.

Just then a car pulled into the parking lot and out stepped Mary. I didn't recognize the driver of the car, who looked about twenty. Mary's friend Megan was in the backseat.

I flipped open my cell phone and hit redial. Rudy answered on half a ring. “Did you find her?” he asked.

“Yes, I found her.”

“Is she all right?”

“For now,” I said.

“Uh-oh,” he said.

“Talk to you later.”

I was storming across that parking lot without even realizing it.

“What in the hell do you think you're doing?”
I screamed at her.

“Oh, hi, Mom.”

“Don't you oh-hi-Mom me.” I glanced at the driver. “Who the hell are you?”

“Uh … Zack,” he said.

“Mom, this is Megan's brother,” she said.

“Great. That's nice. Get your butt in my car
now,
” I said. I didn't even look back at the car that had dropped off my daughter. I marched behind Mary across the parking lot.

When we got in the car, Mary was silent. She knew she was in trouble. I turned over the engine and headed straight for home.

Finally, after about a mile, Mary said, “Megan needed to change clothes. Some kid spilled his Frosty all over her.”

“Great,” I said. “Megan doesn't need you to change her clothes for her. Besides, if her brother drove her all the way home to New Kassel to change her clothes, why didn't he just drop you off at the house? He had to go right by there. There was no reason for him to bring you all the way back here.”

“Mom,” she said.

“What?” I asked. “You know, you
know
you are not supposed to leave the rink with anybody except me or your father or unless I tell you otherwise!”

“But I woulda been there all by myself,” she said.

“Mary,” I said and skidded to a stop at the light. “There were thirteen—yes,
thirteen
—of your closest friends at that rink tonight. I know because you listed them all off to me as a reason for why you should be there.”

She was quiet.

The light had turned green and I hadn't moved fast enough, so the guy behind me laid on his horn. I put the car in park, got out, and walked back to his car. “Excuse me, I realize you're in a hurry,” I said to the driver, “but I'm in the middle of a crisis here, and if you could find it in your heart to allow me more than two point four seconds to step on the gas pedal, I'd appreciate it.”

The man just gaped at me while I stalked back to my car and gave it gas.

“Oh, my God, Mother,” Mary said. “You are seriously PMS-ing.”

“PMS-ing? I'll show you PMS-ing.”

“Oh, here we go,” she said. “I know, I know, I'm grounded from the phone.”

“The computer,” I said.

“What?” she screeched. Then she pleaded. “No, Mom.”

“You wanna talk to me about PMS-ing? You wanna talk to me about how you just scared the ever-loving bejesus out of me?” I said. That wasn't it, though. It wasn't that she scared me. I'd assumed she'd been abducted because I couldn't bear the thought that my little girl would actually go against one of our house rules. A rule Rudy and I had set up for a reason. As a safety precaution. She'd just blithely ignored it. Either she was stupid, which I doubted, or she'd just done the equivalent of giving me a raspberry to my face. That was it. She'd just told me to kiss off, basically. My sweet little girl.