I STOPPED FOR GAS AT A WIDE PLACE IN THE ROAD called Ashepoo. A while later, I took a left at Gardens Corner and wound my way through downtown Beaufort, across the bridge, and on to St. Helena. The pearly luminescence of approaching twilight glowed in the sky out over the Sound as I pulled up to Presqu’isle and shut off the engine.
“It’s a friendly burglar,” I called from the front of the long hallway, forcing a lightness into my voice that I certainly didn’t feel. I pushed the heavy oak door closed and dropped my bag on the console table, but not before tucking my cell phone into the pocket of my slacks. I hoped Erik would have news before long about Maeline Mitchell Jefferson, onetime wife of the faithless Jonas, lately of Macon, Georgia.
The Judge’s wheelchair was pulled up to the table while Lavinia stirred something on the stove. The whole place smelled like Thanksgiving.
“Are you cooking a turkey?” I asked and sat down in my assigned seat. “Hello, Your Honor,” I added. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a chick in the middle of a bunch of old, meddling hens,” he snapped.
Lavinia turned and smiled at me. “Don’t mind him, honey. Dr. Coffin just left. He read Tally the riot act about taking it easy. And you know how much your father loves folks tellin’ him what to do.”
“I’m sick to death of talkin’ about pills and arteries and all the rest of that folderol. What’s going on out in the world, daughter? Talk to me.”
I hadn’t wanted to burden him with my lack of progress on the Kimmie Eastman situation. It seemed especially inappropriate considering his own close brush with mortality. But I also knew how his mind worked. He’d be picking at the threads, worrying the case like his hounds Hootie and Beulah used to gnaw old soup bones. So while the house filled with the savory aromas of Lavinia’s cooking, I brought him up to date on my efforts, most of them futile. When I finished, I watched him steeple his index fingers and rest his chin on them, his eyes half closed. It was such a familiar pose I had to smile. That towering intellect of his had mostly survived the strokes and arterial blockages and his eighty-plus years of living, and I knew he was formulating and discarding possible avenues of investigation.
I left him to it and rose to stand beside Lavinia as she pulled open the oven door to peek inside.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, eyeing the golden skin of a small turkey whose drippings sizzled and popped in the roasting pan.
Lavinia shut the door and turned her back on the table where the Judge still sat contemplating, his lips working in and out as if he carried on a silent conversation with himself.
“Your father asked for it,” she said, and my breath caught in my throat at the expression on her face. “He said he might not make it to another holiday season, and he wanted to—” She broke off on a muffled sob and shook her head. “It’s a small enough thing to ask. I couldn’t say no.”
I resisted the urge to put an arm around her trembling shoulders. I knew she wouldn’t welcome my sympathy. We’d learned to handle our griefs and sorrows with stoicism, we women of Presqu’isle.
“We’re so lucky to have you,” I said softly. “Both of us.”
That brought a watery smile, and I left her to compose herself. I removed three plates from the cupboard and carried them to the table. I had begun to pull the everyday cutlery from the drawer when the Judge spoke.
“You need to find the father,” he said, nodding once as if agreeing with himself. “He’ll be a much closer match than the sisters. Make her tell you his name. Or track it down yourself.”
I laid the knives and forks on the folded linen napkins and avoided his gaze. “Erik checked out Kimmie’s birth record right up front, but there’s no father listed. I talked to Joline this morning, and she was adamant about it. Although, she did say something kind of odd that’s been nagging at me.”
“What?”
“She started to say he couldn’t help and changed it to wouldn’t in midstream. It made me wonder if he might be dead.”
“That would certainly put him out of the picture. But there’s something not right about this, daughter. If he’s alive, that woman would be moving heaven and earth to find him and have him tested. And if he’s dead, why doesn’t she just say so? Unless there’s something fishy going on.”
“Like what?”
“How the hell should I know? You’re the detective, aren’t you?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that, but my father’s old familiar crustiness made me smile.
“You know, I think she almost said his name this morning. She got out a D before she stopped herself.”
The Judge’s head snapped up. “That’s it? Just the one letter?”
I thought about it for a moment. “That’s all I caught. I was doodling, and the first possibility I wrote down was David.”
“That would be my first choice. Of course there are plenty of other possibilities.” He listed a few of those I’d already considered.
“Or it could be something out of the ordinary, like a family name,” I said. “That would make the choices pretty much infinite.”
Behind me, I heard the whir of the electric mixer as Lavinia whipped potatoes.
“Bay, would you get the gravy boat out of the cupboard for me?” she asked over the noise. “The china one, not the silver.”
“Sure.” I set it on the counter next to the stove. “Anything else I can do?”
“No thanks. Just sit there and keep your father from driving me crazy askin’ when we’re gonna eat.”
“Been fussin’ around in here for the better part of the day,” my father grumbled before turning his attention back to me. “Even if we could figure out the man’s first name, you don’t have a gnat’s worth of information to go on, do you?”
“Nope. A teenager at the time, or so I’m assuming. Maybe white? Kimmie is light-skinned. So a young man, maybe named something that begins with a D, who lived somewhere around Pritchardville fifteen or sixteen years ago, and who might have had a one-night stand with a beautiful black teenager. It’s not like we can put an ad in the personals.”
“Track down this friend, the one who lives out in Bluffton. Girls know things like that about other girls.” He paused to eye me quizzically. “Don’t they?”
“Generally. But remember that the sisters and their friends were a lot older than Joline. They would already have been out on their own or in college when she got into trouble. It’s too bad the mother and grandmother are gone. She’d have been more likely to confide in one of them, I’d think. Or maybe she really didn’t tell anyone. Maybe she’s just kept it to herself all these years.”
“Secrets,” my father mumbled, shaking his head. “No good usually comes of ’em.”
It was a perfect opening. I drew in a breath a second before I felt Lavinia’s hand on my shoulder. I turned to look up into her face.
“I need your help,” she said, and I could plainly read the naked pleading in her deep brown eyes. “Please.”
I exhaled and let my shoulders relax. “Yes, ma’am,” I said and rose from the table.
I thought a lot about that look on the drive back to Hilton Head. Full night had fallen, and traffic was sparse. On many stretches of the road I felt like the last person left alive on the planet, like something out of one of the black-and-white horror movies from the fifties that Rob used to love watching.
At the hospital, a few days before, Lavinia had convinced me that the name Julia meant nothing to her. Over more than forty years, we’d come to read each other pretty well, and I would swear that she’d been telling the truth. But she’d interrupted what she’d rightly interpreted as my intention to call my father on the subject of secrets and had intervened to keep me silent. Was there something else she was trying to conceal? Was there another family secret she did know about? Maybe it had to do with that old newspaper clipping I’d found in her treasure box. Or the sealed letter. Could she somehow have figured out that I’d been snooping?
I worried at the problem all the way home, accomplishing absolutely nothing.
Pulling up to the house, with only the security lights glowing softly and the concrete pad in front of the garage achingly empty, drove everything else temporarily out of my head. It was Saturday. Normally Red picked up the kids from Sarah around noon. We’d gotten into the habit of doing something fun with them—a road trip to the zoo in Columbia or maybe a long walk on the beach—before returning to my house for dinner. Usually by this time the place would have been ablaze with lights and laughter and sometimes the smell of popcorn as we settled in for a G-rated movie on DVD or sat over a board game on the coffee table in the great room.
I trudged up the steps and reset the alarm. The echoing silence that greeted me spoke of my old life, before Red and Scotty and Elinor had become so much a part of . . . I let that thought trail away. During the years since Rob’s murder—and Darnay’s desertion—I’d learned to be alone. I’d get used to it again. I just had to give myself time.
I spared a moment to wonder how Red had explained my absence to the kids.
My heart beat a little faster while I played the messages on the answering machine, but the familiar voice was not among those eager for me to call them back. Nothing that couldn’t wait. I nuked a cup of water in the microwave and dropped in a tea bag to steep while I changed into my flannel pajamas and wrapped my nearly threadbare chenille robe around me.
It was only a little after eight thirty. I fixed my tea and carried the cup into the office. I found my notes from my earlier conversation with Joline Eastman, including the number for Keisha Spencer, the friend of the elder Mitchell girls in high school. She answered on the second ring, taking me by surprise.
“Is this Keisha? Keisha Spencer?”
I could hear a television blaring in the background along with the piercing cry of a baby very unhappy about something.
“Yes?” Her tone was wary.
“My name is Bay Tanner. I’m a private investigator here on Hilton Head.” The wail now sounded as if someone were sticking pins in the poor infant. “I’m calling about Maeline and Tessa Mitchell. Is this a bad time?”
She didn’t bother to cover the receiver with her hand, simply shouted, “Galen! What’s the matter, boy, you gone deaf? Go see what’s wrong with your sister!” A little more quietly she said, “Sorry about that. He’s supposed to be watchin’ her, not playin’ some damn fool video game. Who did you say you were?”
“I’m working for Joline Mitchell. Mrs. Eastman now. I believe she spoke to you about trying to locate her sisters.”
“Oh, sure. Jo-Jo. Yeah, she called me. I told her I didn’t know what happened to Mae and Tessa. You really a private eye? Like on TV?”
“Yes, I am. Mrs. Spencer, did Joline tell you how important it is to find her sisters?”
“She said it had to do with her little girl bein’ sick.”
Since Joline herself had already breached confidentiality, I felt free to abandon all pretense. Most people, especially those with children of their own, could more than relate to the anguish the Eastmans were facing with Kimmie’s illness. All cards on the table seemed the best way to elicit the information we needed. Time was running out.
“Only a bone marrow transplant can save her,” I continued. “Blood relatives are obviously the best candidates. That’s why it’s imperative that we find Joline’s sisters. Can you help us?”
“Like I told Jo-Jo, I got no idea where they could be. Last time I talked to Mae was after her husband ran off. Told her he was a loser. White trash. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said, although I wondered about her assumption.
“Tessa and me was never that close. I heard she got married, but I don’t remember anything about who it was or where she might be living. Like I told Jo-Jo, we just fell outta touch after high school.”
“Is there anyone you can think of who might know how to locate either one of them?”
Keisha Spencer gave it some thought. The cries had quieted, and now only the crashes and blasts of the video game pierced the silence.
“No, I’m sorry. Everybody kinda just drifted away. I don’t see none of them anymore.”
“No old boyfriends?”
“No, ma’am. None that I can think of.”
I could feel the knot tightening in my stomach as another promising lead evaporated. How could two women who had been born and raised not fifteen miles away from where I sat simply vanish? It made no sense, and yet it seemed to be exactly what had happened. It wasn’t the way families were supposed to work. A fleeting image of what my own unacknowledged half sister might look like now floated through my mind, and I forcibly kicked it aside.
“You talked to her cousin about this?” Keisha’s sudden words made me jump.
“Which cousin?”
“I don’t rightly remember his name. Deshawn? Something like that. Or maybe he wasn’t a real cousin. Anyway, he used to hang around the Mitchells a lot back in those days. Funny, I haven’t thought about him in ages, not even when I talked to Jo-Jo. Don’t know what made it pop into my head just now. Maybe it was you askin’ about boyfriends. He used to be kind of sweet on Jo-Jo. He even stayed with them for a while one summer, if I remember rightly.”
“And you don’t remember his last name? Or anything else that might help me find him?”
“Sorry. But Jo-Jo should be able to say. I’m surprised she didn’t already try him.”
I only half heard the words. My brain raced as I thanked Keisha Spencer for her time and hung up the phone. Without conscious thought, I’d picked up a pen and printed Deshawn’s name in capital letters on the desk pad, underlining the first letter so hard I ripped through the paper.
D . . . for Deshawn?