The cookies and cold milk hit the spot after our exercise, and we sat on the lower porch, which I had started calling the terrace, eating them and licking chocolate off our fingers.
“Would you like to go to Youth Group tomorrow or maybe next week?” I asked. “If your grandfather says it’s OK, I’ll be glad to pick you up and take you home.”
“I’d rather come here again,” said Sunny without any hesitation.
“Me too,” said Star. She sort of ducked her head and then took a deep breath. “I saw you have a sewing machine.”
“I do.” It was set up in my bedroom, although I had plans to make a nice sewing area in my new room.
“Grandma was teaching me to sew. We had just started a skirt and vest that wasn’t too hard. But then she died...”
“Would you like me to help you finish it?” I asked, realizing that my opportunity to do something meaningful had just been handed to me.
“I think it’s too small for me now. But maybe I could get a new pattern and material. I have a little money saved up from picking berries for the farm market.”
“I like that material,” Sunny asserted. “Do you think I could learn how too? Could I have the one that’s too small for you?”
“We can do that. How about if we go to the fabric store next Saturday?” I asked them.
Star agreed to let Sunny have her previous fabric, and we made plans to shop the following weekend. I didn’t press them about Youth Group.
It was after four o’clock when I returned home from dropping them off at their trailer. I had insisted they take most of the cookies with them, and some of the salad too. It had been a wonderful day, and I was definitely becoming fond of both girls. They were already more than just an assignment to me, but I was exhausted.
The next day, Sunday, the predicted rains came in great white sheets of water making it difficult to see the trees beyond my yard. I skipped church. The old part of the roof, over my bedroom, hadn’t been re-shingled yet, and I climbed to the attic every few hours to empty the pan I kept placed under a leak. Paddy and I huddled in the house. We worked on reinforcing the “shake” command and began on “heel” and “stay.” In between lessons I read the puppy training book and dozed. Paddy just dozed.
Monday, Robert Gorlowski called to say that he wouldn’t be working until things dried out a bit. I told him the old leak was worse than ever, and he said they’d take on that section of roof next, and start the siding on the new upstairs. I wandered around my new room, making plans for a sewing area and maybe a library corner. The area was one large room, and I intended to keep it that way. I did the laundry, including the muddy Sponge Bob blanket.
In the afternoon the sun came out, so Paddy and I took a long walk down the extension of South River Road, farther than I’d gone before.
When the road emerged from the trees of the swamp and ran along the river I began to pay closer attention. Pretty soon we reached what I now knew was the confluence of the Thorpe and the Petite Sauble Rivers. The Thorpe and the road curved around to the southwest, almost ninety degrees different from the southeast direction the road had been going. Just a little farther along, the dirt widened, and I could see where the road used to branch and cross the Thorpe. I was now on the west side of the guardrail I’d spotted from the other bank just a few days previous. The defunct railroad bridge was about a half-mile upstream to the south.
After a day inside, Paddy and I were both ready for some exercise, and we continued down the narrow dirt road toward the bridge. It appeared safe and solid with stout, black and smelly wood timbers. The ties were placed close together, so it wouldn’t even be too scary to walk across. I tugged on Paddy’s leash and although he whined, he came along. My size sevens easily bridged the gaps between the ties, but he placed his paws carefully. Near midstream, just as he was getting confident, his right front foot slipped through a gap, and Paddy stumbled, his shoulder roughly bumping the edge of the tie. He woofed and scrabbled at the splintery wood, pulling the dangling leg from the space. He looked up at me with raised eyebrows, then down at the swirling water a dozen feet below. Nevertheless, he continued across the bridge without balking. Once we reached the far bank, I could see the trail along the shore that must lead to this end of the road.
“We’ve found an interesting route,” I told Paddy. “But it would be a bit too long to walk to the recreation area. We’d be too tired to recreate!”
Paddy wasn’t too eager to re-cross the bridge, but we walked slowly, and he watched his footing. When we returned home, I checked the map. According to the scale, we had hiked about five miles, and that was plenty for both of us.
Chapter 11
Since meeting Cora Baker in May, I’d been spending some time with her each week, usually on Tuesdays. Cora lives in the southwest corner of the county at the end of Brown Trout Lane. Although her house is a cozy cabin on the Pottawatomi River, the most intriguing thing about Cora’s place is that she is privately assembling a Forest County museum in a pole barn on her property. When I met her she had already been working hard to inventory the entire collection in a computer database, but it was way too big a job for one person. I like Cora a lot, and I’d been helping with the project ever since we figured out who murdered Cliff Sorensen, by using information from her newspaper archive. I hoped to find out a lot more about Angelica Leonard from Cora.
So, on Tuesday morning Paddy and I pulled into Cora’s yard just as she was stepping out of her kitchen door. She wore clean but faded overalls over a crisp blouse, her signature style. Today the blouse was green, and she had her gray braids pinned around her head, which indicated a get-down-to-business mood. I’d called to warn her that I was bringing the dog. She thought it would be all right for him to stay in the office with us, and in fact, Paddy lay down placidly beside the computer desk when I positioned myself at the keyboard. So far, so good.
We were still working on taking inventory of the boxes we’d brought down from the upstairs storage area over a month before. It took a long time to enter all the information about each item, decide if it would be displayed or stored and then actually take care of it. Cora pulled open the flaps on a cardboard box and lifted a stack of delicate white baby clothes trimmed with handmade lace onto the table beside the computer. As always, there was also a page of lined paper in the box covered with Cora’s cramped handwriting. She made careful notes about every item at the time it was collected.
“How’s it going with your red friend?” she asked, nodding at Paddy.
“He’s certainly brought more activity to my life. He needs to have a decent walk several times a day or he can’t lie still.”
“I guess that means we won’t get much done today,” Cora said, but she chuckled, so I knew she wasn’t upset.
“We’ll see how it goes. But I want to talk to you about something, anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve gotten my first assignment with Family Friends, and they sent me to meet Corliss Leonard and his granddaughters.”
“I think I know where this is going.”
“Corliss... Len... told me about Angelica’s disappearance, and I thought I should at least read the news articles about it. It looks like I’ll be spending some time with Star and Sunny. I’d like to understand as much as I can about what happened.”
“You’re welcome to read the papers, of course, but they won’t enlighten you much more than what you probably heard from Len. The whole thing came to a dead end really quickly. There wasn’t much of an investigation, to tell you the truth.”
“You remember when it happened, then?”
“Sure. The Sheriff questioned that boyfriend of hers...”
“DuWayne.”
“Yes, I’d forgotten his name. But, anyway, his whole day was accounted for, and most everyone believed that she just hitched a ride and got away from him.”
“Len seemed to think they got along really well.” I didn’t mention talking with Paula.
&
nbsp; “I guess DuWayne was OK. I talked with him a few times in town and he was polite—not arrogant or disrespectful, but he ran around with some pretty rough friends. Mostly, he spent time with Marko Louama’s boy, Larry. Larry’s been in trouble with the law since he was in junior high. There were a couple of others in that group, too. Some girl from Emily City and another young tough whose name I don’t know. But the girl was Mexican, I think. I saw them a lot because I lived in town then.” Cora hesitated.
“I know you used to be married to Jerry Caulfield,” I admitted.
“Hmmm, I suppose that nosy Adele told you.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d already learned that Cora’s relationship with Jerry, the owner and editor of the Cherry Hill Herald, was a very sore topic.
Cora continued, “Well, we lived right there, two blocks from Main Street, behind the newspaper office. I couldn’t help but see them. There’s an empty lot beside the office, and the building next to that was vacant then, too. That whole group of kids—I guess most of them were done with high school, but they were kids to me—thought that was an out-of-the-way place to hang out. They’d laugh and smoke and push each other around. Sometimes other kids came by.”
“Why were they in Cherry Hill if DuWayne and Angelica lived in Hammer Bridge Town, and the other girl was from Emily City?”
“That’s a good question, isn’t it?” Cora said sarcastically. “I think they were all dealing drugs. There was a lot of reaching into pockets and passing things back and forth while trying to stay in the shadows.”
“How could Angelica spend time there? She had two little girls.”
“I have to be honest and say that after the younger one was born Angelica hardly ever came around with the gang. Before that, though, she’d just leave the other girl with her parents. They were clueless as to what their daughter was up to.”
“Did you ever see DuWayne hit Angelica?”
“One night he slapped her pretty hard, but she slapped him right back. That Larry Louama was the one I didn’t trust, though. He had a mean streak a mile wide. Assaulted John Aho at the gas station when he was only sixteen, because the pop machine was out of order. Went after him with a tire iron, but no one was seriously hurt and John didn’t press charges. A foolish decision, if you ask me.”
“Wow, this doesn’t sound like the Angelica I’ve heard about.”
“Parents are always a little blind, don’t you think? I’ll see if I can remember anything else, but maybe we could work on these baby clothes now.” She picked up the sheet of notes from the stack of small garments, and I turned to the database and pulled up a screen for a new item.
Cora and I concentrated on inventory for a couple of hours, after which we walked Paddy the length of Brown Trout Lane. I had remembered to bring some training treats, and we each practiced his new commands with him. The only other fact I learned about Angelica’s friends was that Larry Louama had finally been sent to prison for assault about four years previously.
I left Cora’s mid-afternoon, and spent the evening raking my yard and admiring my “new” house from all sides. Robert had managed to match the old clapboards with some salvaged siding from a demolition. As soon as it was all painted, the house would almost look as if it had always had two stories throughout. I liked it a lot. Between raking, hauling tubs of debris, and bending to pick up Paddy’s tennis ball after each retrieval, I knew I was going to be sore the next day. But Paddy was catching on that he had to drop the ball when I told him “give,” if he wanted it to be thrown again.
There was supposed to be a meeting of the Family Friends committee on Thursday. I was looking forward to that, not only so I could report on my progress with the Leonards, but also because John Aho was a committee member. I wanted to hear more about Larry Louama. However, on Wednesday evening Adele called and cancelled the whole thing, saying she had a sore throat. She’d contacted the literacy tutor, and Corliss Leonard would begin meeting with her at the library.
My new upstairs was a mess with plaster dust hanging in the air, but by the end of the week the taping and sanding were done, and Gorlowski’s crew was moving on to some other job. I tried to clear the chalky residue from enough surfaces to make a clean work space and to clear my mind from prejudicial thoughts about Angelica’s friends.
Chapter 12
Saturday came, and I had arranged to swing by the trailer in Hammer Bridge Town to get Star and Sunny. They planned to show me the material and pattern that Star already had, and then we’d go into Emily City and visit the fabric store.
Paddy came along for the ride, and I planned to leave him at Fur and Fins for an hour of dog-sitting. I knew the staff would also work on some training with him; I figured a little more schooling couldn’t hurt.
When I reached the Leonard trailer, the girls were not waiting outside, so I parked in their sandy yard, told Paddy to be good, and climbed the crooked steps. As soon as I knocked on the door, Star opened it and invited me inside. I was a little surprised at her casual attitude, thinking she might be embarrassed about their low-income living arrangements.
Len was seated on the couch folding a basket of laundry, and Sunny was eating toast with red jelly at the counter which served to divide the kitchen from the living room. It was a typical set-up for a single-wide trailer, made with cheap materials. The dark finish of the cupboard doors was damaged at many corners, revealing inexpensive press board, and the Formica countertop was worn. I remembered to look at the appliances. The stove had chipped enamel, and the refrigerator was rusting. The handle was broken. The refrigerator probably had been purchased used when the settlement had sprung up. Everything looked beat-up and dingy, but the rooms were clean. There were no sagging curtain rods, or gaping holes in the paneling with erupting insulation, so typical of old mobile homes which have been subjected to years of family life. Actually, I was impressed.
“Good morning,” Len greeted me.
“Good morning, yourself,” I countered. “I hear you’re going to let me steal these girls for another day.”
He made a noise something between a laugh and a snort. “I don’t think I had much to say about it. They’ve made it pretty clear they intend to annoy you as much as you’ll let them.”
Sunny licked jelly from her fingers. “We aren’t annoying, Grandpa,” she said. “Miss Ana likes us, and besides, we already did our chores, so we can go. You said so.”
I smiled and shrugged as if to say, “I can’t argue with that.”
Len said, “I was only teasing, Sunshine. Wash up and show Miss Ana that project your sister was working on with the clothes.”
While this exchange was happening I had been looking around the room, thinking I could learn a bit more about the family from their possessions. The thing which immediately caught my eye was a tall set of shelves across the inside wall of the living room. It was filled with hardback books, and I thought it was an amazing thing to find in the small home of a poor man who couldn’t read.
“Tell me about your books,” I said to Len as I crossed to look at some of the titles.
“Oh, you know, my Becky was a great one for reading. She bought used books at yard sales and would read to all of us in the evenings. We kept the best books, and traded the others for more. When the girls got old enough they would take a turn with the reading, too. It’s one of the things I miss the most.”
“I still read to us, Grandpa,” Star said from the kitchen where she was rinsing off Sunny’s plate. She sounded hurt.
“You do, you do,” he said. “And I love you for it. I just miss your Grandma. I can’t help it.”
Star came and put her arms around Len. I didn’t want to stare, so I turned to the bookcase. It was filled with classics of all kinds. I saw To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women, Jane Eyre, and Red Badge of Courage, just for starters. One shelf was filled with Nancy Drew mysteries, the Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter books, and other volumes for younger readers. Below that was a row of history and philosophy bo
oks. I certainly had found the reason Len didn’t sound uneducated.
Len’s voice brought me back from my thoughts. “That’s Angie’s senior picture.” At the end of one row of books was an eight-by-ten photo of a rather plain girl with the same long face as Len, but she had a nice smile. It looked as if she’d had her hair done professionally for the picture as it curled in soft, even waves around her face. Beside that was a framed snapshot of the same young woman with a dark man who was holding the hand of a child. Angie cradled a baby. She looked much older than she had when the school picture was taken, but the difference couldn’t have been more than five years. It wasn’t a great photo, and it was difficult to discern the features of the man who must be DuWayne.
“See our school pictures!” said Sunny, returning to the living room and pointing to the other wall. Two frames, the kind designed to hold a small print from each school year in an oval around the edge, with the current large photo in the middle, displayed the growth of the two girls. I went over to study them. Every one of Star’s pictures showed a serious expression. I tried to figure out which one corresponded to the year Angelica had disappeared. Sunny, on the other hand, seemed to have a disposition to match her name, and she was smiling widely in all her photos, even the one with no front teeth.
“Let’s look at the pattern and not waste any more time,” Star said.
She had wiped down the counter, and she laid out the garment she had begun a year ago. It was to be a simple straight skirt, paired with a lined vest. She had chosen an African print in turquoise and yellows, overlaid with black geometric designs. Fortunately the pattern was only pinned on the fabric, not yet cut out, so we’d be able to make adjustments for Sunny.
Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp Page 5
