On top of the pile was a postcard. Julie had left it facedown, so that the picture on the back was showing. It was the Golden Gate Bridge, with its orange towers poking up through a cottony layer of fog.
I flipped the postcard over and recognized the handwriting instantly.
Evie.
It had been two and a half weeks since I’d returned from Cortland. In that time, I had not heard from her. I had not reconciled myself to the fact that she was gone for good. But I had begun to believe it.
She didn’t even sign the postcard. It held no message of love or regret or wish-you-were-here. All she had written were a name and a phone number.
The number had a 404 area code.
If I remembered correctly, 404 was in Georgia.
The name Evie had written was Shirley St. Croix Flagg.
St. Croix. Hmm.
I held the postcard in my hand, flipping it over and back, hoping, maybe, that some secret message would rub off on my fingers.
The only message, I concluded, was that Evie wanted me to call Shirley Flagg.
So I dialed the number on the postcard.
After two rings, a woman’s voice said, “Yes?”
“Is this Mrs. Flagg?”
“Yes it is. Who’s this?”
“My name is Brady Coyne. You don’t know me. I’m a lawyer here in Boston.”
“Oh,” she said. “A lawyer.”
“This isn’t about any legal matter,” I said. “It concerns Dr. Winston St. Croix.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then she said, “Why all the sudden interest in him?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You, sir, are the third person in the past couple of months to call me out of the clear blue sky asking about Dr. Winston St. Croix. After all these years, I’d stopped even thinking about that man. I’ve got my husband and my children and my home and my … my life, and suddenly everybody wants to know about what happened back in Gorham, Minnesota, over twenty years ago.”
“What do you mean, ‘everybody wants to know’?”
“Well,” she said, “first there was that young man.”
“What young man was that?”
“His name was Mr. Scott. He was very polite. Working on a newspaper article, he said. He called, oh, back in May or June, I believe.”
“Who else called?”
“A young woman. I don’t recall her name, I’m afraid.”
“Was that about two weeks ago?”
“Why, yes. Yes, it was.”
“Was her name Evelyn Banyon?”
“I don’t think she actually told me her name.”
“And both of these people were asking you the same questions?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About what happened in Gorham, Minnesota, twenty years ago?”
“That’s right.”
“And did you answer their questions?”
“I certainly did. As far as I’m concerned, the more people who know, the better this world will be.”
“Mrs. Flagg,” I said, “would you tell me what you told those others?”
“Of course I would.” She cleared her throat. “I told them that Winston St. Clair was a dirty child molester. He was a pervert and a predator, sir, and if there was any justice in this world he would have spent these past twenty years rotting in prison.”
Shirley Flagg didn’t need any encouragement to tell her story. She’d been a young nurse when she married the handsome resident. After his residency, the couple moved to the little town of Gorham, where the doctor established a thriving pediatric practice.
She never had a clue, she said, that his fondness for children went beyond caring about their health and well-being.
But then a young boy said something to his third-grade teacher, and the teacher spoke to the principal, and the principal passed along the boy’s story to the local police chief—who happened to be one of Dr. St. Croix’s golfing partners.
The police chief interviewed the boy and his parents. Then one evening he came knocking at the door of Shirley and Winston St. Croix. The chief and the doctor spent over two hours holed up in the doctor’s study, and when they emerged, they shook hands at the door.
That same night, the doctor told his wife that he’d decided to shut down his practice in Gorham. They were heading east, where there were better opportunities to advance in the profession.
She didn’t understand it. He’d never talked about advancing in the profession or moving before.
She asked him what the police chief had wanted. He said it was nothing, just man talk.
The next day, she went to the police chief’s office and demanded to know what he and her husband had been talking about, that he would all of a sudden decide to close down his practice and head east.
The chief didn’t want to talk about it, but she told him she wouldn’t leave until he did.
Finally he told her to go talk to the parents of the young boy who had spoken to his teacher.
The parents were more than eager to tell her what their boy had told them.
That very day, while Dr. Winston St. Croix was still at his office, Shirley St. Croix went home, packed up a few clothes, took the Greyhound to St. Paul, and made an appointment with a lawyer.
“Mrs. Flagg,” I said, “do you remember the name of that boy?”
“I certainly do,” she said. “It was Edgar Ransom. He was a sweet little boy. He had a younger brother. Owen was his name. I guess those boys would be in their twenties or early thirties now.”
“And nothing happened to the doctor? He just left town?”
“That’s right,” she said. “He gave Mr. and Mrs. Ransom a lot of money so they wouldn’t press charges against him, and he left. That was the deal the police chief arranged. Nobody in that town wanted any scandal.”
“Have you been in touch with any of your friends in Gorham since then?” I said.
“Lord, no. I was too embarrassed.”
“So you don’t know what happened to the Ransom family.”
“No, sir, I don’t. But I have thought about them. I imagine those parents have been struggling with their guilt ever since, knowing that Winston St. Croix has probably been preying on young boys all this time because they allowed themselves to be bought off.”
“The doctor died a few weeks ago,” I told her.
“Well, thank the Lord,” she said. “I hope it was slow and painful, and I hope the faces of those innocent children flashed before his eyes as he contemplated eternal damnation.”
“He knew he had a terminal disease,” I said. “I expect he had plenty of time to think about everything he did.”
“Thank the Lord,” she said again.
“Did you ever talk to the doctor after you left him?” I said.
“No,” she said. “He tried to call several times, but I refused to talk to him.” She hesitated. “He did send me a letter a couple of years later. He apologized to me, told me that he’d made just that one mistake with the Ransom boy, that he’d learned his lesson, and that he’d vowed to devote his life to taking care of children.” She paused. “I didn’t quite believe him, but I’ve often wondered if he was telling me the truth. What do you think?”
“Perhaps he was,” I said.
I did not tell her that soon after Dr. St. Croix left Gorham, the Ransoms moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, or that the distance wasn’t great enough to allow Edgar to forget what had happened to him, or that he’d finally hanged himself.
Nor did I tell her that a few years later Edgar Ransom’s parents had died in a boating accident—which, now that I thought about it, might have also been suicide. They had, after all, accepted money in exchange for their silence. I couldn’t imagine the guilt they would have felt for allowing themselves to be bought off, especially after their son took his own life. What was it that the newspaper editor in Carlisle had told me? Ransom’s father said his wealth had cost him his soul’s blood.
That was a heavy price to pay.
I didn’t tell Shirley St. Croix Flagg about the recent events in Cortland, Massachusetts, where all of Winston St. Croix’s sins finally came home to roost, either.
I saw no point in upsetting her further.
After I hung up with Mrs. Flagg, I lit a cigarette, swiveled my chair around, and gazed out my office window. It was one of those crystal-clear late-summer lunch hours in Boston. Autumn was in the air, and the secretaries and coeds who were striding across the plaza in Copley Square were wearing jackets or light sweaters over their blouses and short skirts.
After a few minutes, I turned back to my desk and called state police Detective Neil Vanderweigh.
When I told him what Shirley Flagg had told me, he said, “So there’s our motive. That’s what Scott and Ransom had on him. I figured it had to be something like that.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “He seemed like an okay guy to me.”
“You don’t see the evil that I see every day.”
“Thank God for that,” I said.
A little while later, Julie came into my office. “Did you look at the mail?” she said.
I nodded.
“Well?”
“I called that number. It cleared up a lot of things.”
She frowned. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“The postcard,” she said. “It was from Evie, right?”
“Yes.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think she had information she wanted to share with me.”
“God, Brady!” Julie shook her head. “Did you look at the postmark?”
I picked up the postcard. It was postmarked San Francisco. “Okay,” I said, “so it’s got a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge and it’s postmarked San Francisco. So Evie’s out there somewhere. About as far from me as she can get. What about it?”
“Did it ever occur to you that she could’ve conveyed this information to you in some other way that would not reveal where she was?”
I shrugged.
“Or,” she continued, “that maybe she was using this information as an excuse to get in touch with you?”
“If Evie wanted to get in touch with me—”
“You can be so dense sometimes,” said Julie. “She doesn’t want to make it easy for you.”
“Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t know how much you love her.”
“I’ve told her a million times.”
“She’s a woman,” said Julie. “She needs reassurance.”
“I’d be thrilled to tell her again. But I don’t know how to reach her.”
“Exactly!”
“Huh?”
“That postcard,” she said. “It’s a clue. She may not even realize it consciously, but she wants you to track her down. She needs to know that you’re willing to make an extraordinary effort, that you care as much about her as you do, say, about one of your cases, or about trout fishing. She wants to know that you’re willing to climb tall mountains, brave stormy seas, confront a den of angry lions for her.”
“That’s what this postcard is all about?”
“Of course it is.”
“Why are women so devious?” I said. “If they want something, why don’t they just ask?”
“They shouldn’t have to ask. They expect you to love them so much that you’ll make the effort to figure it out for yourself.”
“Julie,” I said, “what the hell are you getting at?”
“San Francisco, dummy. Go. Find her.”
I laughed. “Right. Just go and wander around a city of what, about a million people, hoping to bump into her?”
“If necessary.”
I stared up at the ceiling for a minute. Then I looked at Julie. “She’s not in San Francisco.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Evie hates cities,” I said. “She wouldn’t even stay overnight in San Francisco if she could help it.”
“But that postcard …”
“If you’re right,” I said, “if this postcard is some kind of clue, then she’s near there. If you’re right about Evie, she would not expect me to wander aimlessly around the city. She’d expect me to know she hates cities. She’d expect me to figure out where she is.” I poked my finger at the picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. “You and Edward were out there last winter. When you take this bridge out of San Francisco, what’s on the other side?”
“The first exit is Sausalito. Then you come to Mill Valley, and then San Rafael, and—”
“Sausalito,” I said. “What’s in Sausalito?”
“Houseboats,” said Julie.
Julie booked me for an early Saturday flight. I landed at the San Francisco airport around eleven in the morning, picked up my rental car, and I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge a little after noontime.
It seemed like a quest that would make Don Quixote roar with laughter. But here I was in California, looking for Evie.
I took the first exit after the bridge and found the houseboat colony in Sausalito. There were many long wooden docks reaching out into the quiet bay, and scores of houseboats were moored there—houseboats of every conceivable design, size, shape, and color.
I cruised the parking areas, and finally I saw what I was looking for—a black Volkswagen Jetta with Massachusetts plates.
I found an empty slot in an area marked Guest Parking, retrieved my old L.L. Bean backpack from the backseat, and started prowling the docks.
Those houseboat dwellers were no seafaring roamers. Maybe they hadn’t put down stakes, but they had dropped heavy anchors. They grew flowers and vegetables in big container gardens. They dressed their windows with lace curtains and parked supermarket carriages at the ends their gangplanks. Some of the boats sprouted television antennas.
The village seemed deserted on this Saturday afternoon, and I walked up and down three or four docks before I came upon a woman who was being tugged around by a pair of Jack Russell terriers on leashes.
When I said hello to her, she looked me up and down and said, “Are you lost?”
I took out the picture of Evie I’d brought for the purpose and showed it to her. “I’m looking for her,” I said.
The woman glanced at the picture, then said, “Does she want to be found?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“We’re quite protective of each other here,” she said. “We don’t like strangers wandering around, peering in the windows.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Her name is Evelyn Banyon. I’ve come from Massachusetts to see her.”
“But you don’t know where she is.”
“I know she’s here somewhere.”
The woman smiled. “You came all the way from Massachusetts to find her?”
I nodded.
“And I suppose you won’t leave until you do.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t.”
“Because you love her?”
“Yes.”
She smiled and nodded. The terriers were tugging in opposite directions on their leashes. The woman said, “Sit, both of you,” and they both sat.
Then she pointed across the row of houseboats to the next dock. “It’s on the left about halfway down. White with red trim and a stained-glass window. You can’t miss it.”
I thanked her, bent down and scratched each terrier on the muzzle, and went over to the next wharf.
I found the red-and-white houseboat with the stained glass window and called, “Evie?”
No reply came. From where I stood on the dock, I could see no sign of life in the houseboat.
I called Evie’s name again.
No reply.
So she was out, but she couldn’t be far. Her car was in the parking lot.
I’d wait. I’d come this far. I’d wait forever if I had to.
I leaned against a piling and lit a cigarette, and a couple of minutes later a door on the houseboat opened and Evie came o
ut. She smiled at me and said, “Hi.”
I lifted my hand. “Hi yourself.”
She was wearing cut-off jeans and a man’s shirt knotted across her flat belly and sneakers without socks. She’d picked up a tan the color of honey, and her silky auburn hair hung in a long, loose ponytail down the middle of her back.
My belly did a flip-flop, she looked so good.
She leaned her forearms on the boat’s railing and looked up at me. “So you found me,” she said.
“It looks like I did.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to make sure you knew I loved you.”
She dropped her gaze to the water and mumbled something I didn’t understand.
“What did you say?” I said.
She looked up at me. “I said, it would be easier for all of us if you didn’t.”
“Didn’t love you?”
She nodded.
I spread out my hands, palms up. “Can’t help it,” I said.
At that moment, the houseboat door opened and a man stepped out. He was tall and skinny, with a deeply tanned, sun-creased face and long, gray hair. He wore khaki shorts and an unbuttoned blue shirt and a necklace of little seashells around his neck.
He stood beside Evie at the railing and put an arm around her shoulders. “What’s up, honey?” he said to her.
She pointed her chin at me. “That’s Brady.”
He squinted up at me and nodded.
I nodded back to him. About then, I figured I had the picture.
“Look,” I said to Evie, “I have something that belongs to you. Let me return it to you and I’ll be on my way.” I reached into my backpack, found the carved wooden bobwhite quail I’d bought for her on the Cape, and showed it to her.
She said something to the man, who nodded, patted her shoulder, and went back into the houseboat. Then she came up the walkway onto the dock where I was standing.
I handed the quail to her. She took it and ran the tip of her forefinger over it. “Thank you,” she said.
“Sure,” I said. “No problem. I’ll leave you alone now.”
I turned and started to go.
“Brady, wait,” she said.
I stopped.
“So what are your plans?”
I shrugged. “Mission accomplished. You got your bird. Guess I’ll mosey on back to Boston.”
Past Tense Page 25
