Cold Tears

by AR Simmons

  “They ain’t really. Her sister is married to his step brother.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  She looked surprised. “Is it important?”

  “It’s just something I should have known.”

  “Katie never mentioned Bobby, and I don’t remember him ever talking about her. I don’t know if they ever even met. She talked about Doris and Jerry all the time though. They live down by Eureka Springs.”

  “But Bobby lives here.”

  “Like I said, Katie never talked about him, and she always talked about the people she knew, especially the ones she liked.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like her sister, Doris. And she was always going on about Lyla even though she didn’t really know her good. She was a fan. She was sure Lyla was going to be a big star some day.”

  “So where exactly did she meet Lyla?”

  Molly frowned. “I’m not sure that she ever did meet her. She probably heard about her from Doris and Jerry. It was kind of a hero worship thing. Lyla was like everything Katie wasn’t: beautiful and tiny and glamorous. That’s how Katie saw her. Lyla’s just showy and kind of mean. Katie had real beauty. She was sweet and good.”

  Richard discounted Molly’s post-interment eulogy. Every half-decent person dying prematurely tends to rise on the sanctification scale.

  “How did you get along with Lyla?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” she answered without hesitation.

  “You had trouble with her?”

  “No. She looks right through people like me. We don’t matter. So I ignored her. I mean, who needs her trouble?”

  “Trouble?”

  “She throws a royal hissy if somebody does something she don’t like—and it don’t have to be something big. Just a little thing like getting her order wrong can set her to screaming. Come to think of it, it was a good thing Katie never actually met her. She would have been sure to say or do something that rubbed Lyla the wrong way.”

  Molly stopped and looked intently at Richard. “Why are you so interested in Lyla?”

  He shrugged. “I’m just trying to get a complete picture of the situation back then,” he said with a grimace. “I’m not very good at this, Molly. I keep finding out stuff that everyone else seems to have known all along.”

  “You’d have a hard time finding it out if somebody didn’t know it already,” observed Molly.

  Despite his disclaimer, Richard’s position as “godsend” was secure.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Did Lyla ever seem … let’s say ‘put out’ with Bobby for … paying attention to you?”

  “Was she jealous of me?” asked Molly with a laugh. “No way. And Bobby didn’t pay no attention to me. He was just my boss.”

  “Did you ever ask him for favors like preferential work hours?”

  “Sure. I had Mancie, and things come up. I usually told him in plenty of time when I couldn’t be in, like if I had to take her to see the doctor.” she stared past him out the window as if it offered a view into the past. “I was going to have to find her a new doctor.”

  “Why?”

  “Doctor Wilson burned up in his house about two weeks before they took Mancie.”

  “Yeah. Mr. Dillard down at the paper mentioned something about that. They thought it might have been arson, but I guess nothing ever came of the investigation.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Molly. “Then again, I was out of it after Mancie disappeared. They’re wrong about the arson though. Doctor Wilson was a nice man. No one would want to hurt him, and he sure didn’t set the fire himself.”

  She looked across at him a long moment. “We’re not doing too good, are we, Mr. Carter?”

  “No, Molly, we’re not,” he said, reaching across the table impulsively to cover her hand with his. “I promise you that I’ll do what I can though.”

  She bobbed her head in small little jerks as she squeezed his hand.

  “I know that, Mr. Carter,” she said in a breaking voice. “I’d apologize for being such a bother, but I cain’t do nothing else. Mancie needs us too bad.”

  •••

  “How was your day, dear,” asked Jill when she came into the house.

  “Enlightening,” said Richard glumly.

  She smiled, but not tightly the way she usually did when he talked about his efforts on behalf of Molly. He didn’t notice.

  “I keep finding out stuff I should have known from the first. No wonder Adams thinks I’m a putz.”

  Jill winced. That he noticed.

  “What?”

  “Do not use words that you don’t know,” she said. “Especially Yiddish.”

  “Oh, you mean ‘putz.’ It means a stupid bungler. That pretty well describes me.”

  “That’s not all it means. It is vulgar.”

  “Okay. I’m a vulgar bungler,” he said, passing it off with a shrug, “Today I find out that Bobby McComb and Jerry Chandler are brothers. He’s the agent for Lyla—you know, that singer who married Rennie Peele, the music show guy. And I find out that Lyla is not only ‘Honeybunch,’ the name she auditioned under down at the music show, but she’s also ‘Charity’ who hangs out at the Honeycomb. By the way, what do you think the chances are that the bar is a combination of her first stage name and Bobby’s last name?”

  “It’s a logical conclusion,” she said. “But what does any of that have to do with a missing child?”

  “I have no idea if it has anything to do with anything,” he admitted. “The point is that a real detective would have known this stuff all along. And that’s not all. Remember the doctor who died in a house fire?”

  “Doctor?”

  “Yeah, the one they thought might be arson. Remember? We read about it. It was such a big deal that the paper sort of stopped reporting on Mancie’s disappearance.”

  “I don’t remember you saying anything about that.”

  “Well, anyway, it turns out that he was Mancie’s pediatrician.”

  “So?”

  “So the fire happened not long before Mancie disappeared.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I have no idea. I keep saying that, don’t I? It’s just that I should have already known all this stuff.”

  “What does Mr. Adams think it means?”

  “He thought it was hilarious that I didn’t know who Charity was. Apparently, her marriage to Peele was a coup for the whole town. Local girl catches big fish! That’s almost as good as a local boy making the big leagues. By the way, that divorce Chandler told us about, evidently it’s getting nasty.”

  “Money,” she observed. “Well, you have a better picture of Molly’s world today than you did yesterday. You have the milieu in which the disappearance took place.”

  “I’m not writing history,” he said slightly irritated. “Colorful details might spice up a report, but they don’t do much for an investigation.”

  “Research is research,” she said. “There are two rules: first, you never have enough information to stop looking, and second, never lose information once you find it. What appears insignificant at first may prove otherwise when you learn more. The more you know, the more you can know. You are closer to discovering what happened now even if it does not appear so.”

  Richard suddenly realized that Jill was willingly discussing his investigation rather than avoiding it.

  “You usually don’t want to talk about this,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “It is important to you,” she said. “And you are important to me.”

  “Jill, am I just fooling myself and setting Molly up for a fall?”

  “Nothing could be worse than what has already happened to her, Richard. If anyone can discover what happened, you can.”

  “I’m not that smart.”

  “Smart enough,” she said, coming forward to give him a hug. “And no one is more persistent.”

  He held her tightly. She squeezed him in return, and then she patted his bac
k as a signal to break the embrace. “Come help me fix dinner.”

  Anyone witnessing the domestic scene would have seen nothing remarkable. But to Richard it was tremendously encouraging. The woman he loved was being supportive.

  •••

  October 31

  In an effort to get a clearer appreciation of the “milieu,” if nothing else, Richard decided to see what he could find out about Molly’s late pediatrician. Had he been a law officer it would have been simple, but without court authority, Richard had to rely on persuasion to get the information. Doubting his ability in that regard, he brought Molly along, hoping that feminine sympathy would open the door. He anticipated doctor-patient confidentiality objections, but had not reckoned on the depth of R. N. Myra Lampkin’s loyalty.

  The middle-aged woman cut him off in mid explanation. “You’ll need a court order for that, sir,” she said coldly.

  Earlier, she had exchanged lukewarm greetings with Molly, but now ignored her, setting her slightly fleshy jaw as she directed a red-eyed gaze challengingly at Richard. He wondered if the woman’s loyalty sprang from something a bit more intense than a strictly professional relationship.

  “We aren’t asking for sensitive information,” he said, “nothing about patient medical histories or Dr. Wilson’s finances. We simply want to know who else might have been a regular client. We need to know who brought their children to him.”

  She began shaking her head as soon as he started talking.

  “Myra, can’t you help us?” added Molly. “Please.”

  “Miss Randolph, I’d like to help you, but what happened to Dr. Wilson was terrible too. I was his nurse ever since he came here. During that time, I always took care of things professionally. He appreciated me, depended on me. He was always concerned about his patients’ privacy. He was an honorable, compassionate man. You know that.”

  “If he was compassionate, then he would want to help Molly find out what happened to her daughter, don’t you think?” asked Richard.

  Myra gazed at him indecisively, her resolve not really weakened by his argument nor by Molly’s plea, but it seemed to wane from a lack of energy. She looked profoundly disillusioned and weary. Wilson’s death had hit her hard.

  Definitely more than a professional relationship, he decided.

  “I can’t do what you want,” she said. “It’s neither professional nor ethical. I’m tired of telling people that.”

  So someone from the police department had asked her for the client list too. No surprise there.

  “Did the police come with a warrant?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “When they investigated the fire? Isn’t that what you’re talking about?”

  “What? No. The police never bothered with that. I meant the woman who came to the clinic about a month ago.”

  “Woman?”

  Myra nodded. “From Family Services,” she said.

  “Child abuse, I imagine,” said Richard.

  “She didn’t say. Come to think of it, that’s odd. She should have given me a specific name to ask about, but she didn’t. She just wanted Doctor Wilson’s office schedule and logs.”

  “Did you let her see it?”

  Nurse Myra gave him a “duh” look. “Of course. She was official.”

  •••

  “What were we trying to find out?” Molly asked when they were back in the truck.

  “Who his other patients were.”

  “I don’t see how he could have had anything to do with my baby being taken. He died before it happened. What are you thinking happened, Mr. Carter?”

  “I don’t know. Molly, right now I’m just trying to understand as much as I can about the people you interacted with. I don’t have any theories. To be honest with you, I don’t really know any more about what happened than I did to begin with.”

  She looked silently out the window all the way back through town.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Carter,” she said at last. “The police run into the same thing, only they quit on me.”

  “I won’t quit on you, Molly.”

  As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t, because in all likelihood he would be forced to do just that.

  “I know you won’t want to, Mr. Carter. But you may lose hope. I won’t ‘cause hope’s all I got.”

  He shook his head, trying to reassure her.

  “I’m going to get me a job again,” she said. “Then I’m going to start paying you. It ain’t right you doing all this for nothing.”

  “You don’t have to pay me, Molly. And you don’t have to call me ‘Mr. Carter.’ Call me ‘Richard.’”

  They arrived at the café.

  “No. You’re wrong,” she said as she opened the door to get out. “I owe you, so I got to pay you something. And I owe both you and your wife respect, so I got to keep this professional and respectable. Okay, Mr. Carter?”

  “Okay, Molly,” he answered with a smile. “Or should I call you ‘Miss Randolph?’”

  “Don’t be doing that. I’d be turning around all the time to see if my momma just walked into the room,” she said, giving him a weak smile.

  •••

  The car parked across the street escaped his notice until he saw the driver get out at the same time he stepped down from the truck.

  “Carter!”The shout almost covered the sound of the slamming car door. A red-faced man stamped toward him.

  “Tinsley?”

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you better put an end to it or I will!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  In no uncertain terms, Tinsley told him. After Molly’s erstwhile suitor had vented and threatened at length, Richard got back into his pickup and drove downtown for some venting of his own.

  “I may have mentioned your name,” replied Adams calmly, the hint of a smile playing at the edges of his flabby jowls.

  “In what context?” demanded Richard.

  “In the context of my investigation into the murder of Miss Nash.”

  “You told him that I accused him of that?”

  “Not exactly. I just gave you due credit for the theory that Nash’s death was related to the kid’s disappearance. That is your theory, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say Tinsley did it.”

  “Cheer up. I’m doing what you wanted, taking another look at what might have happened with Molly Allsop that night. Don’t get all incensed. You put yourself in the middle of all this, not me.”

  Richard didn’t like taking Tinsley’s heat, but he realized that Adams had only employed a tactic investigators had been using forever.

  “So. How did he react?” he asked.

  “Angry, not guilty. Said he didn’t even know Katie Nash.”

  “Are you going to try the same thing with Bobby McComb?”

  “Maybe,” said Adams with a grin. “You’ll know when he shows up at your door.”

  “Very funny. Are you making any headway at all on the case?”

  Adams stared at him a moment before answering.

  “Oh yeah,” he began with his customary sarcasm. “I forgot to keep you informed. We’re supposed to coordinate our efforts, aren’t we? I’m about to make a coordinated raid—you know, to round up all the conspirators.”

  Adams obviously couldn’t take him much less seriously, so Richard figured he had nothing to lose by asking about another mysterious death.

  “What do you make of what happened to Dr. Wilson?”

  “Wilson?”

  “The pediatrician Molly took Mancie to—you know, the guy who died in a fire around the time the baby disappeared.”

  “Wilson? You gotta be kidding. Why don’t you just round up all the traffic deaths in the county and see if there’s a connection there?” Adams shook with laughter. “That’s the thing about conspiracies, Carter. Once they get going everybody wants a piece of the action. People were just dying to get involved. First Katie Nash and then the good doctor.�
��

  “The doctor died first,” Richard reminded him.

  Adams grinned. “This is why I look forward to your little visits, Carter. You come up with things I would never think of. I see it now. Wilson was killed because he was operating a black market baby operation. One of the other conspirators killed him to keep him from spilling the beans, right?”

  The ridicule was the price for maintaining his police contact, but Richard was beginning to wonder if it was worth it.

  “Molly and I went to talk to his nurse today,” he said. “She wouldn’t let us see a list of his other patients, but you could probably get it from her.”

  “And I would do that because I have such a high regard for your investigative instincts?”

  “I wasn’t the first person to ask her about for the client list.”

  Adams smiled. “And now you’re fishing to find out if I already got it. You want me to share it with you.”

  “She said it was a woman. Do you have a female investigator in the department?”

  “No women,” said Adams, turning serious. “You sure about that—about the woman, I mean?”

  “That’s what she said. She said the woman claimed to be from Family Services, but I don’t think she was. She asked for the client list, not a specific medical record.”

  Adams was grinning and shaking his head dismissively, but Richard’s last remark gave him pause.

  He picked up the phone and punched in a number.

  “Marge? This is Lieutenant Adams. I need a favor. One of your caseworkers may have gone to check out something at Dr. Wilson’s office.”

  He listened and nodded. “Yeah, I know, but this would have been after he died.”

  “I see. Then could you tell me if you all ever had an interest in something more general than that, like a list of the patients he might have seen?”

  “Okay. I’d appreciate it if you could try to find out for me. Thanks, Marge.”

  Adams rocked in his squeaky swivel chair. When he spoke, it was as if he was speaking to himself. “I know you’re trying to be helpful, Carter. And getting all the pieces of a puzzle together would help, but you just keep bringing me pieces of a bunch of different puzzles. That doesn’t help.”

  He turned to Richard. “I’m going to be sorry for asking this, but what do you think Wilson’s death had to do with Molly Allsop’s baby?”