by Lea Wait
“That was the night before Mother’s Day. Maybe Jackson was thinking of his birth mother.”
“I guess. Whatever was in his mind, Mom yelled, and he yelled, and then he just took off.” Eric hesitated. “The last thing he said was, ‘You’ll be sorry you ever adopted me!’ Then he slammed the door.”
“What do you think he meant by that?”
“At the time I didn’t think anything of it. We all get aggravated once in a while. It isn’t the first time someone’s said that to Mom or Dad. But when Mom was shot the next morning, at first I thought maybe Jacks really did it. Although he wasn’t ever violent. He just talked a big story. But maybe at least he knew something about Mom’s shooting.” Eric shook his head. “None of it made sense. I kept waiting for him to come home. To apologize to Mom and put everything back the way it had been.” Eric slumped against the window.
Maggie nodded at him. “It must have been very hard.”
“Hard doesn’t begin to say it. Since Saturday night nothing’s been the way it was. Even Mom and Dad had a big fight that night, after Jacks left. They never do that. Well, maybe they argue in their room, but never in front of us all. I once heard Dad tell a group of prospective parents that one advantage single parents have”—Eric looked sideways at Maggie—“is their decisions are final. Their kids don’t have a ‘court of last resort’ to go to. Couples won’t always agree, but they shouldn’t disagree in front of their kids, because then the kids try to divide them. Start taking sides and all.” Eric shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of that for a long time until this week. It was awful to hear Mom and Dad yelling at each other.” He looked at Maggie.
“What were they arguing about Saturday night?”
“Whether Jackson was old enough to do things without telling anyone. Mom said as long as he was living at home, under their roof, they had a right to know what he was doing, and with whom. Dad said no, he needed to have his own friends and make his own decisions to prove he was ready to move into his own place someday.” Eric looked up at Maggie. “I forgot to tell you. Jackson was saving up. He wanted to have his own apartment. He even looked at some in Somerville, but they cost too much, with having to put two months’ security down and all. He didn’t have a regular job, like me. He did stuff like raking leaves in the fall and shoveling snow and mowing grass. A lot of people call our house if they need help. They figure there’s always ‘one of those poor orphans’ who’d like to earn a few bucks. Jackson’s been spending a lot of time cleaning people’s yards this spring ’cause he was saving for an apartment.”
“How much had he saved?”
Eric looked down at the floor with embarrassment. “I knew where he kept it, and I looked after he hadn’t come home. I wanted to know if he’d taken the money with him.”
“That wasn’t bad, Eric. That was smart. To try to figure out what Jackson was planning.”
“The money’s all still there, Professor Summer. Eight hundred and fifty-three dollars. It’s in a peanut butter jar in the back of our closet. If he’d been running away, like some people say, then he would’ve taken that money.” Eric looked back at her. “I told the police that.”
“What do you want me to do, Eric?”
“Find whoever Jacks was going to meet that night. Whoever it was might know what happened to him.”
Maggie could see fear in Eric’s eyes before he moved his head and stared out the window again.
“I can’t understand why anyone would’ve hurt him. He was a little mixed-up, but he was a good kid. A good brother. He was going to be fine. He just needed a little more time to figure his life out. We all need time. Why would anyone kill him?”
Chapter 24
Danger Ahead! April 1870 Winslow Homer wood engraving printed on the cover of Appleton’s Journal of Literature, Science and Art, headed by their distinctive logo. Two men lean over the railing of a caboose as they watch the steam engine ahead of them in the night, curving over the bridge they are crossing. Page size: 7.5 x 11 inches. Engraving size: 6.25 x 6.5 inches. Price: $165.
Maggie drove slowly back through the damp, quiet towns of midcentral New Jersey toward Park Glen, where she lived. The storm was over for the moment, but supermarket parking lots were full of puddles as well as cars. Several young teens on bicycles rode erratically along a slippery road without sidewalks. A jogger crossed in front of her. Three mares and their foals grazed in a field to her right. The hills were covered with blooming dogwoods that looked bedraggled after the downpour.
Not so many years ago this area had all been farmland. Now many of the farms had been turned into executive-home developments, but every mile or so you could still see cows in a pasture, or a stable with a riding ring.
She slowed down in front of Enoch’s Antiques. Enoch Spengler went to a lot of auctions in eastern Pennsylvania and often found wonderful folk art there. But a Closed sign was in the window. No bargains today. Maybe he was out scouting for more treasures. And she needed to get home. Gussie and Ben might already be there. Everyone was out in the world, doing what they needed to do. Living their lives.
Except Jackson, whose life had ended. Ended after he had found a home, but, from what Eric had said, before he had totally accepted his new family. His short life had been painful; now his death was painful to those who’d cared about him.
Maggie suddenly thought of her brother, Joe. She hadn’t heard from him since a postcard arrived several years ago, postmarked Arizona. If Joe had died, she might not even have heard. He might never have mentioned having a younger sister. As far as she knew, he had no wife, no children. He’d never had anyone, not since he’d left home, when he was eighteen and Maggie was six. Some people seemed suited to live alone. To value solitude over relationships. Did they find peace in solitude? Or were they, as Jackson seemed to be, condemned to live with their own thoughts, to relive the challenges of their lives over and over?
Maggie shivered. It wasn’t cold. She was getting too philosophical. Many of her colleagues thought she was a loner; a woman who was too independent; who kept to herself; who didn’t need other people. But they were wrong. She couldn’t live, at least live comfortably, without people.
She just didn’t surround herself with large groups of acquaintances who spent several evenings a month together in various configurations, drinking, socializing, discussing predetermined subjects, or playing golf.
She’d liked being married. Liked having someone to come home to, to share a bottle of wine with and discuss crabgrass or painting the house or who was going to feed the goldfish. Mundane, ordinary, day-to-day sharing.
Maybe she’d been too complacent in her marriage. Maybe she’d ignored behavior she should have challenged. Maybe she’d been more comfortable in the role of wife than in the reality of the relationship. Certainly Michael’s philandering proved he hadn’t valued the marriage as she had.
She needed to know more about herself before she could open her heart and her life to a child. Ann had said she wanted to adopt so she wouldn’t be alone. Maggie suspected that being a parent, especially a single parent, could be very lonely.
There were no guarantees beyond your own commitment to a person. But you couldn’t lose yourself in that commitment. The word mother encompassed a lifetime of intertwined expectations and roles. Was she ready to play those roles? Or was she just experimenting with the idea of parenthood?
Thank goodness Gussie was coming. Gussie had decided not to have children. But she listened to Maggie, and cared. She would understand some of Maggie’s dilemmas. Will had also decided, for different reasons, not to have children. He tried to be supportive, but she knew if she adopted a child, her relationship with Will would not go deeper. It might end.
He, too, would be here tonight.
Did she love him? She loved being with him and missed him when they weren’t together. But she hadn’t closed her eyes to other men. Her heart, maybe. But a part of her was keeping options open. Life could change in so many ways. By choice, or
by chance.
She hated walking into her house and knowing nothing had been moved since she’d left it. Unless, of course, Winslow had decided to play wildcat in the jungle and pounced on a pile of papers left on her desk. Winslow was company. But coming home to him wasn’t the same as returning to a husband. Or lover. Or even a friend.
At least tonight she wouldn’t be alone.
I could get myself really depressed, thinking this way, Maggie thought. She mentally rapped herself on her head and drove home.
Her house was still empty. She dropped the mail on the kitchen table and picked Winslow up. He declined the hug, but deigned to accept a few bites of dry food.
Maggie took some filet mignon out of her freezer, covered it with a heavy cat-proof pan, and left it on the counter to defrost. She should have planned for dinner earlier. But steak could be broiled quickly. Even if she was having a fast dinner with Al, she could cook quickly for Gussie and Ben when they got here, and then for Will, later.
She pulled out some mushrooms and onions and started slicing them. There was Italian bread in the freezer, too, and French vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert.
Claudia had insisted that chocolate was good, Diet Pepsi was evil. Well, she’d have chocolate later. And maybe she’d even be good and sip something other than Diet Pepsi now.
She poured herself a little Dry Sack, added ice and a twist of lemon, and started cooking the vegetables. The burnished copper pots she’d hung on the wall and the brilliantly colored Cassell rooster lithographs made this room her room. She’d fix the mushrooms and onions, savor her sherry, then sort through the mail.
She flipped through the catalogs and envelopes she’d dropped on the table. An oil company bill. Thank goodness the temperature was warm enough now so her furnace was no longer going full blast.
Telephone company bill. Maggie winced. All those calls to dealers, enticing them to do the OWOC show, and calls to Gussie and Will for encouragement, had inflated the usual monthly total. Maybe the calls about the antiques show could be a charitable tax deduction. She made a note to check with her accountant.
Sears bill. Nothing deductible there. She owed a payment on the small upright freezer she’d bought in March.
A flier for used trucks. A reminder she’d probably have to start looking at used vans soon. Hers was ten years old, and she’d driven it over 150,000 miles. She babied it, made sure she changed the oil without fail every three thousand miles and made any replacements or adjustments her mechanic suggested. But the van wouldn’t last forever, and she didn’t want it to die while she was somewhere like Maine. Or Buffalo. With a full load of prints.
Three catalogs for summer “togs.” I guess I’m not really in a “tog” mood, Maggie thought to herself as she put the catalogs in the recycle pile along with the truck-dealership ad. Who wore “togs” anyway? The word was pretty much obsolete except for catalog appearances.
A plain white envelope, with her name and address hand-printed in red on the front. Postmarked in Somerville. Maggie looked at it for a moment. Sometimes ads and pleas for you to open a new credit card account were sent in plain envelopes, so you didn’t know they were junk until you opened them. But even those weren’t printed by hand. In red. Just looking at the envelope sent a chill up her back. Carefully she opened it and removed the note, printed in large letters.
STOP THE ANTIQUES SHOW OR YOU WILL BE SORRY. ASK JACKSON.
Maggie dropped the paper onto the table.
Drained her glass of sherry.
And called the police.
Chapter 25
“Billy boy blue, come blow me your horn, The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn: Is that the way you mind your sheep? Under the haycock fast asleep!” Small, lithographed illustration by Kate Greenaway (1846–1901) for Mother Goose (1881). Daughter of an engraver, Greenaway’s depictions of an elegant, graceful, and quaint childhood in which children wore clothing of the late eighteenth century captured the hearts of Victorian England. Reprints of the books she illustrated and reproductions of her drawings are common today. 4 x 6.25 inches. Price: $30.
“I assume you touched this?” Detective Luciani stood over Maggie as she sat at the kitchen table in the room she had thought so peaceful an hour ago. “You opened it?”
“I didn’t think about fingerprints. It all happened so fast. I didn’t expect . . .”
“You’ll have to come down to the station and be fingerprinted, so we can isolate your prints from any others.” He carefully lifted the envelope, with the letter inside, and put it in a plastic bag. “If this is like the ones the agencies got, then there were no prints. Whoever sent it wrote with gloves on. But maybe we’ll get lucky.” He hesitated. “We’ll have handwriting experts compare it to the other notes, but we may not be able to tell for sure if it’s from the same person. There could be two people, or more, working together. Or someone who’s heard about the letters and sent a copycat one.”
“Whoever sent it had my home address,” Maggie pointed out. But, today there was the Internet. And she was listed in the faculty directory. All that really proved was that someone wanted to scare her.
“This is the first time someone has threatened you personally. The phone message you got was a threat to the show. At this point I’d advise you to lock your windows and doors. Leave lights on if you’re away. The usual. And call us if anything suspicious happens.”
Winslow chose that moment to tear through the kitchen, leap onto the top of the refrigerator, and dislodge the electric wok Maggie had stored there, theoretically out of harm’s way. The wok crashed onto the floor.
She and Detective Luciani both jumped, as Winslow raced past them into a quieter part of the house. Thank goodness that hadn’t happened at three in the morning, Maggie thought. She would have summoned the entire Somerset County police force.
“Is OWOC thinking of canceling the antiques show?” asked the detective.
Maggie hesitated, still feeling silly for the way her heart had raced when the wok fell. “They’ve called a board meeting for tonight to decide.”
“Assuming they go ahead with the show, we’ve already agreed to drive by every hour or two during the show and check out the gymnasium. Maybe we should also check the inside of the building, before you start setting up, and then again before the show opens.”
“That would be reassuring,” agreed Maggie. “I alerted the security people at Somerset College. And Al Stivali, the head of security there, is going to sleep at the gym Friday and Saturday nights.”
“Stivali’s a good guy. I worked with him once when he was still on the Newark force, and a couple of times out at the college,” agreed Detective Luciani. “He doesn’t have any official authority now, but he’s got good sense and knows when to call for backup. Getting him on board was a good idea.”
After the detective left, Maggie covered the sautéed onions and mushrooms and put them in the refrigerator. Where were Gussie and Ben? It was almost five. They were going to hit all the rush-hour traffic coming south on route 287, and then west on 78, just when Gussie would be most tired.
But thank goodness they hadn’t been at her house when she’d opened that letter. Or when Detective Luciani was here.
Gussie would have been able to cope. Gussie was a lot tougher than people assumed she was. Having to use an electric wheelchair didn’t mean you were weak. In fact, it meant the opposite. It meant you hadn’t given up. Gussie wouldn’t be thrilled about the letter, of course. But she’d keep calm and discuss options.
And that’s exactly what Maggie needed to do. Was Carole right in thinking they should cancel the show? If they did, time was disappearing. They’d need to start making telephone calls now.
If they didn’t cancel the show, would it be the rational choice, or just bravado?
No matter what the decision was, Gussie was coming. Will was coming. Ben would be here, too. She wouldn’t be alone.
Thank goodness Ben hadn’t been here
this afternoon. He was twenty-one, but he still lived in a world where right was right, and wrong was wrong. And he’d watched enough TV to have a vivid imagination. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted Ben to know about the letter. Or any of the threats.
If only Gussie and Ben would arrive! Maggie glanced at her watch. She’d agreed to meet Al at six. And Gussie had said they’d be arriving between two and four. Something must have happened.
Major road construction? Could they have been in an accident?
Maggie realized she was pacing. And then she remembered she hadn’t checked her answering machine. She hadn’t been in her study since she’d talked with Eric.
Eric.
That was a whole separate issue. Who was this older, more experienced friend of Jackson’s? And if the police hadn’t been able to find him, then how could she?
Two messages waited.
“Maggie? This is Gussie. I’m sorry; Ben and I won’t be making it to Jersey today. Traffic coming off the Cape was heavy, and I guess I just don’t have as much energy as I’d like to think. We’ve stopped at a motel near Hartford. We should be at your place by noon tomorrow. Just leave the key with your neighbor, as you’d planned. I know you’ll be at the gym setting up. Sorry. But I’ll see you tomorrow!”
Maggie felt her shoulders relax. There hadn’t been an accident. Gussie and Ben were all right. Thank goodness. But she’d miss not seeing Gussie tonight.
She pressed the button for the second message. Will’s voice filled the room.
“Maggie, honey, it’s me. I got a late start yesterday, and I’m still on the road, up around Syracuse. It’s about three thirty. Even with a lot of coffee stops I’m not going to make it to your place until really late tonight. Or early tomorrow morning. So don’t worry about me. I may even pull over into a rest stop and take a nap somewhere. I’ll be there by morning, though, so make sure you’ve got plenty of sausage and eggs for breakfast, and I’ll be ready to go to the gym with you. Wish I were there now.”
