A Hopeless Case

by K. K. Beck

  Jane introduced herself briskly, and plunged right into the pitch. “I wonder if I could talk to you about your daughter, Linda. I’m a friend of Leonora’s.”

  “Leonora?” Mrs. Donnelly said blankly. “Who’s Leonora?”

  “Linda’s daughter. Your granddaughter,” said Jane, trying not to sound astonished.

  “Oh. You mean Lullaby.”

  “Lullaby?”

  Mrs. Donnelly wrinkled up her nose. “That’s what they named her. Has she changed it?”

  “Yes,” said Jane, trying to sound in full possession of the facts. “May I come in?”

  “Well, my granddaughter is coming over pretty soon,” the woman answered doubtfully.

  “Leonora’s your granddaughter too, Mrs. Donnelly.”

  “We haven’t seen so much of her lately,” she replied with incredible understatement. “But I guess I could talk to you.” She stepped aside and motioned for Jane to come in.

  They went through a slate-tiled entry hall into the living room. Jane took in the decor. Beige walls and carpets. Chocolate brown furniture sitting like islands. A bookshelf dominated by the Encyclopædia Britannica. A landscape over the sofa—autumn foliage and a barn—just a little better than the kind advertised as “sofa paintings” on TV. Some octagonal side tables with oversized lamps and icy-looking glass objects. The yellowish brick fireplace looked unused because of the immaculate brass fan-shaped screen in front of it.

  Mrs. Donnelly sat down on the edge of the chair, touching her unyielding coiffure with her orange-tipped nails in a tense little gesture.

  “You see,” began Jane, sitting opposite her, “Leonora is a young woman now, and she is curious about her mother.”

  “Well, we can’t see her. My husband wouldn’t like it,” she said. “It would be awkward. We never cared for Linda’s husband, Kenny,” she said by way of explanation. And then she smiled.

  “I see,” said Jane. “Actually, Leonora has never expressed an interest in meeting you,” she said. Mrs. Donnelly smiled again. “But she is interested in recovering her mother’s money. Money that went to a cult, as I understand it.”

  “My husband tried to do something about it at the time,” she said. “I don’t remember much about it.”

  “But weren’t you concerned?” said Jane, rather exasperated. “This was your family’s money.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Donnelly. “It was Linda’s real father’s family. It had nothing to do with us.”

  “Linda’s father?”

  “Well, my husband legally adopted her. Gave her a good home. He married me when she was two. My first husband, Linda’s father, left me. He was irresponsible, and I’m afraid Linda was, too. Such a shame. I never had any trouble with my other children” She smiled again. “My only satisfaction is that we did everything we could. Even when we’d given up on her, we still kept paying for a psychiatrist, hoping she’d come around, but Linda was always a problem child.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the cult?” said Jane. “The people who got her money?”

  Mrs. Donnelly sighed. “She gave it to some people who had something to do with fire. Keepers of the Flame or something.”

  Jane just nodded and stopped speaking for a while, looking at Linda’s mother expectantly. The silence finally got to Mrs. Donnelly. She spoke up. “Maybe if we’d had any religious faith of our own. Linda never went to Sunday school or anything. We were never church people.” She looked doubtful. “I just don’t know what happened.”

  “It was a difficult time to raise children,” said Jane.

  “My younger ones turned out just fine,” said Mrs. Donnelly, an edge of defensiveness creeping into her voice. “My daughter’s bringing her baby over in just a few minutes, while she does some shopping. Maybe you’d better go.”

  “Well, thank you for your time,” said Jane, rising.

  Mrs. Donnelly’s eyes widened, and her head jerked back just a fraction. “The other kids don’t know much about their sister. I don’t want them upset. It’s better to forget about it. I know my husband feels that way. There’s no point dwelling on it.”

  Jane thanked Mrs. Donnelly, who saw her to the door. Once Jane was on the porch, Mrs. Donnelly locked the screen door. “You understand, don’t you,” she said through the mesh. “My husband would be upset if Lullaby wanted to see us or anything.”

  Then she closed the other door. Jane found herself wanting to shake Mrs. Donnelly, or maybe even slap her to get some kind of honest emotion out of the woman. Her genteel, high-pitched voice sounded restrained and under control. Her husband sounded even more grim. If Uncle Harold’s work meant hanging out with more Mrs. Donnellys, Jane was ready to pack it in.

  A psychedelic van, some old paisley bedspreads and lovebeads, and the scent of patchouli oil would have had quite an attraction for anyone who grew up here, thought Jane, sighing.

  In the driveway, a brown-haired young woman was bending over the backseat of a blue Toyota, unbuckling a baby from its car seat. “Yes, you’re a darling girl,” she was saying.

  Over her mother’s shoulder, the baby tracked Jane with big brown eyes and sucked on her fingers thoughtfully. She was mostly bald with soft fuzz on her head.

  The young woman picked up the baby and turned around, coming face-to-face with Jane. “Oh,” she said, obviously startled. Jane smiled at her and said hello, then admired the baby, who regarded her with solemn curiosity, her plump arms resting serenely on her mother’s shoulders.

  Jane walked down the driveway. When the woman and her baby went into the house, Jane copied down the license plate number of their car.

  • • •

  Calvin Mason had a nasty abrasion on one side of his face, and the flesh around his eye appeared purplish with yellow highlights. He sat behind his desk, trying unsuccessfully to look dignified, when Jane came into his office.

  “My god,” she said. “What happened to you?”

  He waved a hand in the air and looked nonchalant. “Ran into a little trouble serving a summons,” he said. He tilted his head back cockily. “Goes with the territory.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “What can I do for you?” he said, fidgeting with some papers in front of him.

  “Well,” she said. “I found what might turn out to be a hopeless case, and I’m pursuing it. I hope I’m not spinning my wheels.”

  “Oh, really?” He frowned, then winced as the gesture seemed to hurt his face.

  “Yes. And while I’m handling the bulk of it, I thought maybe you could help me out on some of the details. As an investigator.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I see. Don’t you think you should put me in the big picture?”

  Jane bit her lip. “For now, I just need a name and address to go with a license plate.” She would have liked to confide in him, but the thought occurred to her that he’d think Leonora’s problems weren’t sufficiently hopeless, and that he’d try to talk her out of it. Or that he’d think she was an idiot who didn’t know what she was doing, which had occurred to Jane herself.

  “No problem. Fifty bucks.”

  “Fine.” She handed him the paper with the license number.

  “And I’d also like some background on a cult. They’re called the Fellowship of the Flame.”

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I had some dealings with them once. A custody thing.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “In the sixties they went around in flame-colored robes, and devoted themselves to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But by the seventies they’d cleaned up their act and looked like those Mormons that go door to door, you know? Neat haircuts, dark suits, black plastic glasses. But the word was if they thought you were crossing them, they could come on heavy. Anyway, I was followed for a while afterward. No big deal, but I’ve heard of worse stories. Scary phone calls. And my client was threatened by a couple of goons when he was trying to get his minor child out of the
re. There’ve been other allegations too. I can’t remember all of it. I’m not sure they still exist.”

  “I’d like to find out.”

  “All right. I’ve got a little time right now,” he said. “Have you got a budget on this thing?”

  “Tell me when you hit a thousand dollars,” she said.

  Behind his wounds, Calvin Mason’s face took on a sort of radiance. “Right!” he said.

  “And, um, make sure I get an itemized billing,” she added.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, Jane drifted in twilight sleep, conscious that she was waking. But before she opened her eyes, she began to feel a familiar and not unpleasant panic. She didn’t know where she was.

  When she did open her eyes, the feeling became more intense. She was in an old-fashioned bedroom with a coved ceiling and some dark furniture. She felt physically comfortable under a light, cozy, down comforter, but she was conscious of the floating feeling of being nowhere familiar.

  A phone rang and she turned to the bedside table and stared at it—a black phone sitting on a piece of ivory-colored lace beneath a brass lamp. She didn’t want to answer it until she knew where she was. On the second ring it suddenly came to her that she was in Uncle Harold’s house, and the tightness in her chest vanished, leaving her instead with a vaguely disoriented feeling. As she picked up the phone, she realized she rather enjoyed the disorientation, the sense of newness, of the unexpected.

  It was Calvin Mason, sounding very cheery and normal.

  “I got that name and address on the Toyota you wanted,” he said.

  “Terrific,” she said, reaching for a pen.

  He gave her the name and address. It was in Issaquah, a suburb farther east from Bellevue, but still close to the Donnellys’ house. The car was registered to a Susan and Brian Gilman. The brown-haired woman with the baby. Linda’s half sister, Jane was sure.

  “Call me back this afternoon,” he said, “and I might have something on your friends at the Fellowship of the Flame. My source,” he added dramatically, “didn’t want to talk, at first. But I’m meeting him later. It may cost you.”

  “Tell him to stop the meter at a hundred dollars,” she said, throwing back the covers. If Calvin Mason was chiseling her, she meant to keep it within limits.

  • • •

  Susan Gilman’s house on a cul-de-sac in Issaquah was painted powder blue and constructed in a New England style, with wood siding and a peaked roof. Its recent vintage was revealed by its tiny aluminum-framed windows.

  The yard was a bright green oval of new lawn, surrounded by huge garden beds full of orange bark mulch and dotted sparsely with small evergreen shrubs. The developer had left in a few native Douglas firs—tall, dark, and rather sinister looking in the tidy setting.

  It was quite a bit different from the Donnellys’ house in Bellevue. This suburb was farther away from Seattle, and, in this less affluent era, the house was more cheaply built. The architecture had a cautious eye on the past, unlike the defiant fifties rambler sprawling happily into the future.

  But in another sense, this house was the generational equivalent of the house in Bellevue where Linda and

  Susan had grown up. It was safe, neat, quiet. There were no sidewalks, for none were needed.

  Susan Gilman came to the door holding her baby on her hip.

  “Oh!” she said, with a look of recognition.

  “My name is Jane da Silva. I talked to your mother this week.”

  “Yes, I know. I saw you in the driveway, and then she told me who you were. You asked about Linda. Come in.”

  Jane sat in a sparsely decorated living room, while Susan Gilman arranged her baby in a yellow plastic playpen, setting some small toys in front of her.

  The baby looked at Jane through the white mesh, her faint eyebrows raised in curiosity.

  “She’s lovely,” said Jane.

  Susan stepped back and gazed at her child. “I know.” She turned to Jane and smiled nervously. “It’s since Camille was born that I began to think more and more about Linda.”

  “I suppose that’s natural,” said Jane. “Family.”

  “Our family has just kind of blotted Linda out. Like she never existed.” Susan sat down, smoothed out her jeans, picked at the fabric on the arm of the sofa. “I can’t imagine doing that to Camille. No matter what happened.”

  “Do you know why I’m asking about Linda?” said Jane.

  “You’re trying to help Lullaby. But I’m not sure how.”

  “Linda’s money. The money she should have passed on to her daughter. Lullaby calls herself Leonora now, by the way.”

  “Money? Linda had some money?”

  “From her real father’s family. You didn’t know about that?”

  “My parents are very private people. It wasn’t the kind of family where we talked about anything negative, you know?”

  “I know.” Jane paused. “Apparently, there was an inheritance from her father’s family. She came into the money when she was twenty-one, and had it very briefly. Then she turned it over to a cult called the Fellowship of the Flame. Then she died.”

  “The Fellowship of the Flame. That sounds familiar. I’m sure I remember my parents talking about it. Linda was into all kinds of occult stuff. And you’re trying to get that money back for Lullaby?”

  “I was hoping you could help me.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I mean, it’s always been so painful for my parents. I don’t know whether I want to stir things up. It was all a long time ago.”

  “Your niece is a very talented classical pianist. She needs that money to study music.” Jane leaned forward, and looked Susan right in the eye. “I’ve heard her play. She’s a very good musician, and no one seems interested in helping her. Her mother’s dead, her grandparents don’t care, and her father is incapable of helping her, as far as I can judge. She’s young and gifted and I think she deserves a break.”

  “Really?” Susan looked a little defensive. “I haven’t seen her since she was a baby. About Camille’s age. I don’t know how I can help.”

  “I’m not sure either. Just tell me about Linda and the time she died.”

  “I was fourteen. We weren’t very close. She was a lot older. She was a hippie, and she lived with that guy Ken.” Susan frowned in concentration, as if she were trying hard to remember. “I’m afraid I didn’t like Linda.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. My parents did a remodel that seemed to last forever, and we shared a room for a while. She had all this junk around when I was ten or so and she was in high school. Black light posters and stuff. I wanted a frilly little girl’s room with a canopy bed, you know?”

  She paused. “I remember our fights. I’d just scream. I used to tell her she wasn’t really in our family. Just half-in, and if it weren’t for her, I’d have my own room. Pretty awful, huh?”

  The baby gurgled.

  “Sometimes she’d lock me out of the room. I’d sit in the hall and do my homework. She’d be in there sulking. Maybe she was smoking dope with a towel under the door. Who knows. I suppose I irritated her. I’d jump up and down on the bed and stuff and have my Barbie doll clothes all over everything. It was a real disaster.”

  “What did your mother do?”

  “Nothing. Whenever anything unpleasant happens, my mother does nothing.”

  “She smiles,” said Jane. “I noticed that. Whenever anything unpleasant comes up, she smiles.”

  “That’s right, that’s right.” Susan became a little agitated, as if pleased that someone else had noticed this about her mother. “Well, she smiled a lot around Linda. Linda would want to fight with her the way teenage girls fight with their mothers, and Mom would just smile.”

  “When you think back, do you think Linda really meant for that cult to get all her money?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. If Linda gave it to them, it was because they gave her a lot of attention. That’s all she e
ver wanted, and she could never get enough. I resented her so much when I was younger because she was always causing trouble and getting that attention.

  “I remember the time I had a violin solo in assembly and I wanted my parents to be there, but Linda had got into some trouble or other, and my parents had to go down to the high school and have a conference about her. She was cutting classes, I think.”

  Camille, who had been sucking on a plastic duck, flung it away and began to whimper. Susan went over, picked her up, sighed, and sat down with the baby in her lap. Camille put her head against her mother, looked curiously over at Jane, and began sucking her thumb in a business-like way.

  “She used to stomp around the house and say ‘Nobody loves me.’ I just hated her for it, because she had made herself so unlovable. She was always difficult.”

  Susan stroked her baby’s soft brown hair. “But maybe she was right. Well, Mom loved her, I guess. But Mom was always trying to be a cushion between Linda and Dad. He got aggravated so easily, and Mom always tries to protect him.”

  “How did they feel when Lullaby was born?” said Jane.

  “Well, first of all, Linda had the baby at home. With some hippie midwife. Mom was horrified. Dad wanted to call the police and put a stop to it. Mom was sure the baby would die or Linda would die or they both would die.

  “But they didn’t. And my parents were so embarrassed because they didn’t believe Linda and Ken were really married. That was a big deal back then.” Susan sighed. “She brought the baby over one time, and I held her. I loved holding her. I hadn’t really held any babies. It was when I first held Lullaby—Leonora—that I realized I wanted babies, too.”

  “Did anyone think there was anything strange about Linda’s death?” asked Jane.