Saturday, October 17

10 days still to go

Kingsley was a typical small Michigan village. Neat little houses. Short streets going nowhere. A block of businesses that had seen better days. You drove through Kingsley to get to Traverse City, going north, or down to southern Michigan. There wasn’t much reason to stop as you made the turn at the blinker, except that life there went on just fine without tourists or the flourishes of arugula salads and cappuccino shops.

Jimmy Little’s house was a mile out of town, set back under tall blue spruce that had almost overgrown the gravel driveway. The house was yellow, with white trim. A yellow breezeway connected the main part of the small house with a yellow garage. In the front flowerbed, now filled with dying roses, was a bend-over—one of those board rear ends of a female gardener showing off frilly underpants. I hadn’t seen a bend-over in years. There was a heart-shaped WELCOME sign next to the front door and a pinecone wreath around the welcome sign. Somebody in the house was either into crafts, or was a devotee of summer craft shows.

I’d left Sorrow scrambling back and forth on the back seat, expecting a walk, not a long sit. I rang the bell. The door was answered almost immediately by a tall, nice-looking older man in a dark blue turtleneck shirt and dark blue pants. He had graying blond hair and the wide, open face that goes with a Nordic type. He nodded, smiled, and pushed the metal storm door open, inviting me in.

The house was comfortable. Two upholstered La-Z-Boy chairs stood before a yellow brick fireplace. There were many little tables around the room with lamps and framed photos. The walls were covered with wedding, baby, graduation, skiing, picnic, and swimming pictures—every kind of family photo you could imagine. A woman sat in one of the rocking La-Z-Boys. I looked at her, wondering if I was seeing Marjory’s mother.

“Welcome,” Jimmy Little said, a hand on my back, his other hand gesturing me into the living room. “So, you’re Emily Kincaid. I think I’ve seen your byline on stories in the paper.”

I laughed, nervous for no reason.

“Cover a lot of murders, do you?” Jimmy asked.

I laughed again, not knowing what the best response to that question might be.

“I’d like you to meet my wife.” He guided me farther into the room and up to the tiny woman. I felt my heart skip a couple of beats. It could be her. Age seemed about right. Maybe this was the woman who began all Marjory’s misery—by the selfish act of running away.

The woman looked at me with confusion written across her face. Her eyes went to Jimmy’s, begging for help.

“I told you, Mother. The woman from the newspaper. Remember? She’s got questions for me? I told you this morning.” He gave me a knowing smile as if expecting me to catch on and say nothing. It was obvious the woman had Alzheimer’s or some form of memory loss. I was an anomaly in her very small world and confusing the heck out of her.

“Winnie …” I bent down close to get a look at her face.

She stared back, blue eyes filling with tears. I thought I must be onto something. The name had moved her for some reason.

“No, no,” Jimmy said. “Her name is Hilda. She wasn’t the one you came to see, was she? I got the idea it was me. Anyway, Hilda is Hilda. If you’ve made a mistake … well … I don’t think I said anything to mislead you.”

I stepped away from the poor, confused woman. Not Winnie Otis after all. Not the woman I was learning to detest, for what she had done to her children. This woman had walls of memories. Walls of children. And a good husband taking care of her. I had no right here. That need-to-know thing had driven me to intrude. I wished I could turn and leave without comment; change the thing I’d done out of mistaken hope.

“I’m sorry. I thought you told me your wife’s name was Winnie.” I looked down at the woman. “Hilda.” She looked up, blinking. I said her name again, and got a confident smile in return. The tears were only because I’d rocked her world, taking her own name from her. I felt lousy for even being there.

Jimmy Little asked me to sit, then offered coffee, which I declined, wanting badly to leave and feeling not very good about myself.

“You said this was about a murder.” He settled into a recliner across from me.

“A woman was murdered out in Deward, an old lumbering town between Mancelona and Gaylord.”

He nodded, hands clasped between his knees. “Used to be my territory—that country out there. Sold tractors and all kinds of farm equipment. Hardscrabble life—farming. Had a lot of good friends.”

“This woman—the dead one. She grew up in Leetsville …”

He nodded again, though I thought I saw a hint of suspicion in his eyes.

“A long time ago her mother left her. It seems she ran off with a tractor salesman, thirty-five to thirty-eight years ago. What I’m trying to do is find the woman. There were other children. I’m looking into a connection between the dead woman and the town. Deward. Something that might have brought her back there.”

Jimmy sat forward in his chair and fixed me with a look. He wasn’t a stupid man. “You thought Hilda, here, was that woman’s mother? And I was the tractor salesman she ran off with?” He shook his head.

I opened my mouth, hoping to come up with an easy, comfortable lie. All I had to do was look into his uncomplicated and disgusted face to know no lie was going to work.

“Well, I hate to break it to you,” he said. “But Hilda’s been my wife since right after high school and I never ran off with anybody.”

Jimmy stood and put his shoulders back, rearing away then looking down at me as if smelling something not real good smelling.

I stood too, falling over my own feet. “I didn’t think …” Oh hell, I was already standing in a pile of my own making. “I’m sorry,” I said instead. “But do you remember something like that happening? It would have been about thirty-five years ago.”

Jimmy, his friendly face much less friendly, thought a moment, chewing at the corner of his lower lip. He shook his head. “I’m telling myself you didn’t come here hoping to catch sinners living out an old sin. So, what I’m doing is taking your question serious because, as you say, there’s a dead woman who must need justice or you wouldn’t be going around trying to trick people.”

I shook my head, assuring him I wasn’t without feeling, without concern (though I felt that way).

“To tell you the truth, Emily. If some man in my business, back then, had done something like that … I’d say in the whole state of Michigan. I mean, we were like a small town just ourselves—men who sold heavy equipment to the farmers. I knew if one of my clients bought something from Trace Cornfelt down in Grand Rapids, or Wilfred Dawson over to Ludington. Knew everybody in the business. And never once did I hear anything about one of ’em running off with a woman from Leetsville.”

He shook his head as he put his hand on my back again, guiding me toward the front door.

I was out of there as fast as I could go. Thank-yous and all of the niceties aren’t necessary when you’ve hurt somebody’s feelings.

At a small park on Garfield Road I let Sorrow out of the car to squat and pee then run through the leaves. I trudged along behind him, thinking how I didn’t want to get into any of this to begin with and here I was, by myself, no Dolly Flynn Wakowski in sight. And wasn’t I making a fine mess of everything I touched.

What I didn’t know about investigating a murder would fill a football stadium. I kicked at the leaves, sending a shower of them into the air for Sorrow to chase and bite. The breeze was warm, but with ice at its heart. Kind of like me.

What I did was get so deep into self-pity I forgot what I’d been told by Jimmy Little. There’d been no running off with a tractor salesman. Winnie Otis had disappeared, but not the way everyone was told. What I had to do was find Arnold Otis or Aunt Cecily and clear up the confusion. Maybe the guy hadn’t sold tractors. Maybe he’d sold brushes, or pots and pans. Or maybe he’d never existed and one mystery had just become two.