Shakespeare's Christmas Part 10

"And that's all?"

"That's all."

Brainerd looked thoughtful, as well he might.

What had Meredith Osborn meant? Had the last thoughts of the dying woman simply been dwelling on the children she was leaving behind? Or did those words mean more? Were her two children in danger? Or was she thinking of the three girls in the picture?

Whoever had sent the picture to Jack's friend Roy had started a deadly train of events.

After the ambulance removed Meredith's body, I stared out the side window of Varena's cottage, watching the police search the backyard where she had lain bleeding and freezing.

I was full of anger.

The death of Meredith Osborn had not even had the mercy of being fast. Dave LeMay and Binnie Armstrong had had only moments to fear death-and those were dreadful moments, I fully appreciated that, believe me. But lying in your own backyard, unable to summon help, feeling your own end creeping through you ... I closed my eyes, felt myself shudder. I knew something about hours of fear, about being certain your death was imminent and unavoidable. I had been spared, finally. Meredith Osborn had not.

Jack put an arm around my shoulder.

"I want to go away," I whispered.

I couldn't, and we both knew it.

"Excuse me," I said at a more conversational volume, hearing my voice's coldness. "I'm being silly."

Jack sighed. "I wish I could go away, too."

"What killed her?"

"Not a gun. Knife wounds, I think."

I s.h.i.+vered. I hated knives.

"Did we bring this here with us, Jack?" I whispered.

"No," he said. "This was here before we came. But it won't be here when I leave." When Jack got his teeth into something, he didn't let go, even when he was biting the wrong part.

"Tomorrow," I told him, quietly. "Tomorrow we'll talk."

"Yes."

I was taking Varena home to spend the night. She couldn't sleep in this cottage. She was ready, standing staring out the side window at the lit backyard, the figures moving around it. So I tried to walk out the door. But after I'd stepped away from Jack I reached back to grip his wrist. I couldn't seem to let go. I looked down at my feet, struggling with myself.

"Lily?" Under the questioning tone, his voice was hoa.r.s.e.

I bit my lip, hard.

"I'm gone," I said, letting go of him. "I'll see you in the morning, at eight. At the motel." I glanced at his face.

He nodded.

"Lock her cottage when the police let you go, OK?"

Varena didn't seem to hear us. She stood like a statue at that window, her overnight bag on the floor beside her.

"Sure," he said, still looking intently at me.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow," I said and turned my back on him and walked out, beckoning to my sister to follow.

I have done so many hard things, but that was one of the hardest.

It was only nine by the time we got to my parents' house, but it felt like midnight. I didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone, and yet somehow my parents had to be told, had to be talked to. Luckily for me, Varena had regained her balance by the time she saw my mother, and though she cried a little, she managed to relate the horrible death of Meredith Osborn.

"Should I just cancel the wedding?" she asked tearfully.

I knew my mother would talk her out of it. I really couldn't bear to be with people right now. I went to my room and shut the door firmly. My father came to stand outside in the hall; I knew his footsteps.

"Are you okay, pumpkin?" he called.

"Yes."

"Do you want to be alone?"

I clenched my fists until even my short fingernails bit into my palms. "Yes, please."

"OK." Off he went, G.o.d bless him.

I lay on the hard bed, hands clasped across my stomach, and thought.

I could not imagine how I could find out any more information about the three girls who might be Summer Dawn. But I was convinced that Meredith Osborn's death had come about because she knew which girl was not who she seemed to be. I tried to picture Lou O'Shea or the Reverend O'Shea attacking Meredith in the freezing cold of her backyard, but I just could not. Still less could I imagine mild Dill Kingery stabbing Meredith into silence. Dill's mother was certainly off-base, but I'd never seen any tendency to violence. Mrs. Kingery just seemed daffy.

I thought of Meredith Osborn taking care of Krista O'Shea and Anna Kingery. What could she have seen-or heard-that would lead her to think she knew that one of the girls had been born with a different ident.i.ty?

I'd never had a baby, so I didn't know what happened bureaucratically when you gave birth. Some hospitals, I knew, took little footprints-I'd seen them framed on the walls of the Althaus family when I cleaned for them. And of course there was the birth certificate. And pictures. A lot of hospitals took pictures, for the parents. To me, all babies pretty much looked the same, red and scrunch-faced, or brown and scrunch-faced. That some had hair and some didn't was the only obvious distinction I could see.

I had learned, also from the much-birthed Carol Althaus, that the fingerprints police or volunteers sometimes took at mall booths were not helpful because often they were of poor quality. I didn't know if that was true, but it sounded reasonable. I was willing to bet the same reasons would render any existing baby footprints of Summer Dawn unusable.

So fingerprints and footprints were a no go. DNA testing could prove Summer Dawn's ident.i.ty, I was sure, but of course you had to know whom to test. I couldn't see Jack demanding that the three girls undergo DNA testing. Well, I could see him demanding it, but I could also see all three sets of parents turning him down cold.

I stared at the ceiling until I realized my mind was going through the same cycle of thought, over and over, and it was no more productive than it had been the first time I'd gone through it.

I remembered, as I was undressing and pulling on a nightgown, that when Jack had first come to my bed, the next morning I'd made myself a promise: never to ask Jack for anything.

I was having a hard time keeping that promise.

As I lay once again on the bed I'd slept in as a virgin, I had to remind myself over and over that there was a corollary to that promise: not to offer what was not asked for.

I heard my sister next door in her old room, going through the same motions I'd gone through. I was sure she was hurting, sure she was suffering doubly since this blood and gore was happening at the time that was supposed to be the happiest in her life.

I felt helpless.

It was the most galling feeling in the world.

I was up and out of the house the next morning before my parents were stirring. I couldn't wait for eight o'clock. I rose, took a hasty shower, and yanked on ordinary clothes, not much caring what they were as long as they were warm.

I started my car with a little difficulty and drove through the frosty streets. There were a few more cars at the motel, so my knock at Jack's door was quiet.

He opened it after just a second, and I stepped inside. Jack closed the door quickly behind me, s.h.i.+rtless and s.h.i.+vering in the gust of cold air that entered with me.

What I had been going to do, planning to do, was sit in one of the two uncomfortable vinyl-covered chairs while Jack sat in the other and discuss his plans and how I could help.

What happened was, the minute the door was closed we were on each other like hungry wolves. When I touched him, my hands were pleased with everything they encountered. When I kissed him, I wanted him instantly. I was shaking so hard with wanting him that I couldn't get my clothes off, and he pulled my sweats.h.i.+rt over my head and yanked down my jeans and underwear, helping me step out of them, pulling me to the bed into his nest of residual warmth.

Afterward, we lay with our arms around each other. I didn't care that my left arm was going to sleep, he didn't seem to mind that there wasn't an altogether comfortable place for his right leg.

He whispered my name in my ear. I smoothed his hair, tangled and loose, back from his face. I ran my fingers over the stubble on his chin. There were words in my mouth that I would not say. I clamped my teeth over them and continued to touch him. That stupid, fragile, ludicrous swelling in my chest had to remain contained.

His hands were occupied, too, and after a few minutes we made love again, not as frantically. There was nothing I wanted so much as to stay in that sorry motel bed, as long as Jack was in it.

I was dressing (again) after another quick shower. "What are you going to do next?" I asked, hearing the reluctance in my voice.

"Find out which of the little girls had seen Dr. LeMay recently."

"I figured that had something to do with it. After all, the homeless man was in jail when Meredith Osborn was killed."

"She wasn't beaten like the doctor and his nurse." Jack had been brus.h.i.+ng his hair back into its ponytail. Now he gave me a curious look. He was wearing a long-sleeved polo s.h.i.+rt striped rust and brown, and the scar that ran down his cheek to his jaw seemed whiter in contrast. He ran a belt through the loops on his khakis. "Might have been a different killer."

"Umhum," I said skeptically. "All of a sudden, Bartley is full of brutal murders. And you're trying to find a missing child. This is just coincidence."

He gave me the look that I'd learned meant he was up to something: It was a sideways look, a quick flash of the eyes, to gauge my mood.

"The homeless man's name is Christopher Darby Sims."

"OK, I'll bite. How'd you know that?"

"I have a connection here at the police department."

I wondered uneasily if this was one of those good ole boy things, or if Jack meant he'd bribed a cop. Or perhaps both.

"So, can this connection look through the doctor's records?"

"I can't ask that much. I'm feeling my way. Are you still squeamish about frogs?" Jack asked, a little smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

"Chandler McAdoo."

Jack lifted a corner of the curtain, peered out at the bleak day and the depressing motel court. "I stopped by the police station yesterday. Once I mentioned your name and hinted pretty strongly that we were tight, Chandler began to talk to me. He's given me some fascinating stories about your teen years." He tried not to grin too broadly.

As long as Chandler hadn't told him about the later years. "I can't even remember what I was like then," I said. And I was speaking the literal truth. "I can remember some of the things we got up to," I said, smiling a little, tentatively. "But I can't for the life of me recall what I felt. Too much water under the bridge, I guess." It was like I could see a silent movie of my life without hearing sound or feeling emotion. I shrugged. What was gone, was gone.

"I'm memorizing some stories," Jack warned me. "And when you least expect it..."

I tightened my shoelaces, still smiling, and kissed Jack good-bye. "Call me when you know something or want me to do something," I told him. I felt the smile slide right off my mouth. "I want this over."

Jack nodded. "I do, too," he said, his voice even. "And then I never want to see Teresa and Simon Macklesby again."

I looked up at him, reading his face. I touched his cheek with my fingers. "You can do this," I said.

"Yeah, I should be able to," he told me, his voice bleak and empty.

"What's your program for the morning?" I asked.

"I'm helping Dill put a floor in his attic."

"What?"

"I just happened to be in the pharmacy yesterday afternoon and we were talking, and he told me that was what he was going to be doing this morning, no matter how cold it was. He wanted to get the job finished before the wedding. So I said I didn't have anything to do since you were wrapped up in wedding plans, and I'd be glad to lend him a hand."

"And ask him a few questions while you're at it?"

"Possibly." Jack smiled at me, that charming smile that coaxed so much information out of citizens.

I drove home, trying to think my way through a maze.

My family was up, Varena shaky but much better. They'd had a conference while I was gone and made up their minds to go through with the wedding no matter what. I was glad I'd missed that one, glad the decision had been made without me. If Varena had postponed her wedding, it would have made the time frame easier, but I had a concern I hadn't shared with Jack.

I was afraid-if the murderer of Dr. LeMay, Mrs. Armstrong, and Meredith Osborn was the same person-that this criminal was getting frantic. And a person frantically trying to conceal a crime was likely to kill the strongest link between him and the crime.

In this case, that would be Summer Dawn Macklesby.

On one level, it didn't seem likely that whoever'd gone to such extreme lengths to conceal the original crime-the abduction-would even consider killing the girl. But on another level, it seemed obvious, even likely.

I knew nothing that could help solve this crime. What did I know how to do? I knew how to clean and how to fight.

I also knew where people were most likely to hide things. Cleaning had certainly taught me that. Objects could be mislaid anywhere (though I had a mental list of places I checked first, when employers asked me to keep my eyes open for some missing item) but hidden . . . that was a different matter.

So? I asked myself sarcastically. How was that going to help?

"Could you, sweetheart?" my mother was saying.

"What?" I asked, my voice sharp and quick. She'd startled me.

"I'm sorry," my mother said, her voice making it clear I should be saying that to her. "I asked if you would mind going over to Varena's place and finis.h.i.+ng her packing?"

I wasn't sure why I was being asked to do this. Was Varena too scared to be there by herself? And it wasn't supposed to bother me? But maybe I'd been woolgathering while they'd spelled it out.

Varena certainly looked as if she needed sleep and a holiday. And this, right before the happiest time of her life.

"Of course," I said. "What about the wedding dress?"

"Oh, my heavens!" Mother exclaimed. "We've got to get that out right away!" Mother's pale face flushed. Somehow, the wedding dress was at risk in that apartment. Galvanized by this sudden urgency, Mother shooed me into my car and bundled herself up in record time.