by Ann Cook
By one o’clock Brandy had modemed more of the Rossi story to the bureau and alerted Betsy Mae Terry to expect her in about an hour. She and MacGill were discussing her historic preservation column on the lobby bulletin board when Cara’s station wagon pulled up before the hotel. An almost jovial MacGill carried Brandy’s suitcase through the front doors, saying, “Mind, I always treat the press with respect. Last night I felt like I’d been pulled through a ditch backwards, but no one’s canceled yet and I’ve gotten a couple of new reservations. Maybe the poor lad’s murder actually helped. Vulgar curiosity, most like.” He set her bag in the back of the wagon. “Girl at the desk tells me you’ll be getting back from New York around noon Wednesday. Your husband to meet you?”
The clerk has a real talent for eavesdropping, Brandy thought, laying her lap top and camera beside the bag. “Couldn’t reach him. Cara can pick me up.”
MacGill nodded. “You’ll want to see her anyway, I shouldn’t wonder. See if she got a snapshot of your man digging Rossi’s grave.” He slammed the hatch and leaned toward her. “Take no notice of Marcia.”
The clerk again, Brandy supposed, reporting her conversation with Marcia Waters. The Cedar Key network didn’t permit much privacy. “Our Cara’s got no business working at what’s really a skivvy’s job. She deserves better.” He stepped back on the curb beside a tourist couple unloading their car and waved Cara away.
Enroute to the cashier interview, they stopped in Bronson where, over a fast food pizza, Brandy explained her plan. “Our first step is to identify the woman Rossi was searching for. He said he knew her name. Once we have that information, the medical examiner can compare that woman’s dental records with the basement skeleton’s teeth. Even the skull size and shape tell a lot. Murder cases stay open, you know. I’m sure the police would like to close this one.”
Cara wrinkled her forehead. “Then I’d still have to prove I was that woman’s child.”
“That would certainly be easier if we knew the woman’s name.”
“What Mother—Marcia—can’t understand is that I need to know if my real mother abandoned me—if she walked off and left me out in a storm. That’s a terrible thought to live with.”
“And it would be better to know she’d been murdered?”
Cara stared at her plate, dark hair half hiding her face. “In a way, for me, yes.”
Outside the town of Williston, they spotted the sign for Green Valley Haven between a gas station and a feed store. Cara threaded the station wagon through a labyrinth of narrow streets, until they found Betsy Mae Terry’s trailer. She parked beside an aluminum carport and a neat square of lawn.
“You might as well come with me,” Brandy said. “Listen for any fact that isn’t in the old newspaper story.”
The door was opened by a stout woman of about seventy with severely bobbed white hair. She wore a polyester pants suit and house slippers. In her arms squirmed a noisy Pomeranian, whose staccato yip-ping drowned out her first remarks. The tiny living room smelled of dog.
Once her guests were settled on the worn couch, Betsy Mae lowered herself into an over-stuffed chair opposite them and stroked her pet’s silky coat until the little animal quieted.
“Cara Waters is with me today,” Brandy began. “She lives in Cedar Key and has a special interest in your story. I’m writing an article about the child who was left in Cedar Key during the 1972 hurricane, alone.” Cara sat forward, her eyes fixed on Betsy Mae Terry as if the elderly woman were her best chance for information. “The child’s parents have never been located,” Brandy went on. “Now there’s another inquiry about a woman who came to town just before Hurricane Agnes. I’ve seen the newspaper account of your testimony in the lost child case.”
Betsy Mae gave a ponderous sigh. “Lands, so long ago. About twenty years, I reckon. My husband and me had a little old café at the corner of Route 19 and Otter Creek. It’s gone now and so is he. I been retired five, six years. In them days I knew most of the folks come by that corner from Cedar Key.”
She set the Pomeranian on the shag carpet. With a sulky twitch of its circular tail, it crept under her chair as she reached for a filtered cigarette. “I told the police everything I could remember then.”
Brandy bent toward her, her tone gentle. “Just give us a run through again, if you would. Your recollection could be important.”
The older woman’s eyes narrowed. She inhaled deeply and expelled the smoke toward the small kitchen, as she made an effort to drag forth the memory. “The woman was a skinny little thing. When she got off the Greyhound bus, it had already started to rain. Lots of folks were milling around in the café, or out by the gas pumps, trying to get away before the storm hit. Some going further inland, and some heading back to Cedar Key, worried about their homes.”
She tapped the glowing cigarette in an ashtray and warmed to her task. “Thing I recollect about that woman the most is the way she stopped outside in the rain and looked all around her, not like she was waiting for someone exactly. More like she was scared. She looked real careful in through those big old plate glass windows before she come in.
“And the child?” Brandy asked. She heard Cara, who had been mute, draw in her breath.
“She was carrying a little girl on one hip, and she had a big old suitcase. I remember it was expensive looking leather and she was well-dressed. Looked rumpled, you know, but she wasn’t wearing cheap clothes.
“I never could remember much about the kid, worse luck. I was as busy as a hunting dog with fleas. I think the little girl was tired and kind of whiny, like kids get. The woman come up to my counter and asked how she could get to Cedar Key. Well, you know, I laughed. Big headlines about the hurricane off the coast. I had the radio on, said the hurricane might turn toward Cedar Key. I told her she didn’t want to go there right then.”
Brandy had taken the memo pad from her purse. “How did she react to that?”
Mrs. Terry looked down and shook her head, sending a tremor through the folds of skin at her neck. “Said she had no place else to go. That when she got to Cedar Key she could get help. Of course, there wasn’t no bus service to Cedar Key anymore, and not any taxis from Chiefland would take anyone there then, in case the one road in got flooded. Wasn’t anything, even then, at Otter Creek except the post office and our place.” Her voice subsided while she finished the cigarette.
“Did you talk to her again?”
“She come back up to pay her bill, you know. She’d gone back to set down and order something. I couldn’t see her from where I was standing because we had a big old dessert case between the tables and the counter. When she come back maybe half an hour later, she told me she had a ride to Cedar Key. ‘Course, I didn’t think nothing about it. It was just odd trying to get there then.”
“The newspaper story said you didn’t see the person with the woman and child when they left the café.”
The older woman mashed the cigarette end into the ashtray, reached down, pulled the Pomeranian out from under her chair, and set it again in her lap, where it settled down with a tiny snort. “I didn’t, worse luck. I heard a door slam and a car pull away. The woman wasn’t still carrying the big old suitcase when she come up to pay, so I reckon whoever was taking her to Cedar Key had picked up the case. I recollect she scribbled a post card, and I let her drop it in the box we kept on the counter for the mailman.”
“You didn’t by any chance see what was on the card?”
Betsy Mae made a shocked clicking noise with her tongue. “I don’t read other folks’ mail.”
“Anything else you can tell us?”
“There was several folks outside, splashing around in the rain. I remember telling the cop that lots of cars was leaving. One pulled out right behind the one she was in, so I couldn’t get a good look at it.”
“Anything else? Especially anything t
hat might help identify the child?”
“I told the cop that the woman had a lot of money. When she opened up her billfold, I saw a wad of bills would choke a horse. I told her to be more careful. She was wearing expensive looking jewelry. I remember a big ring, a big old diamond in the middle and a lot of little ones around the sides. I warned her about flashing that stuff around, even in little old Cedar Key.
“I didn’t get much of a look at the child. Kinda dark hair, kinda skinny, too. I said at the time she wore a pinkish outfit. All I really noticed was the blue teddy bear. The little girl had her face buried in her mother’s shoulder when she come up to the counter, but she was carrying a cloth bear, you know, a kind of terry cloth thing. I told the officer about it, but it didn’t seem important. Wasn’t anything like that found with the child that turned up in Cedar Key. I told the cop I saw a red tail light on the road to Cedar Key right after they left the parking area, but I don’t know for sure it was the car she was in. Wasn’t many going that way. Most folks was heading to Chiefland. I gave the police the names of everyone I could remember, the regulars, you know. I don’t rightly recollect now who they were.”
“The police report will list them.” Brandy thought of Detective Strong. He was thorough enough to check the list, even though he didn’t believe Rossi’s murder was connected.
The older woman glanced at Cara, but Brandy did not explain who she was. There would be time for that if Brandy’s trip to New York bore fruit. She did ask Mrs. Terry to step outside for a photograph, one with Cara beside her. If Cara proved to be the little girl at the Otter Creek café, Brandy could use the picture.
In the station wagon she noted the few new facts in her big notebook. “Didn’t seem like much we didn’t already know,” Cara said in a low voice, plainly disappointed.
“I’m not so sure. The woman at the café had a lot of cash and expensive jewelry, and she acted frightened. No jewelry or cash was ever found. Mrs. Terry verified that the woman mailed a postcard from Otter Creek, like Rossi said. Those facts, and the blue teddy bear, weren’t mentioned in the story, although people in Cedar Key probably heard about them at the time.”
On the drive down country roads to Gainesville, Brandy had a warning for Cara. She turned to her. “I know how much you want to know what happened to your real mother,” Brandy said, watching the scraggly pines flash by, “but don’t do what the waitress suggested last night. Don’t depend on regressive hypnosis.” Brandy turned toward Cara, her voice firm. “I once read an article about it by a Harvard psychologist. He said we don’t actually store everything that happens to us in our brains. He said if a hypnotist questions a subject about an event the subject can’t remember, that person will create a memory and then believe it’s true. Lots of studies have shown the process can’t be relied on. The article claimed it should never be used in courts.”
Brandy looked again out the window at a lonely trail that disappeared into a slash pine forest. “I’m afraid not everyone else at the table understood that fact.” She thought Cara did not realize the danger. What if the killer believed hypnosis could actually make Cara remember the murder? That is, if it was Cara’s mother who had been murdered.
“Maybe I can’t be regressed to two years old,” Cara said, “but I’ve got confidence in what you’ll discover in New York. That’s what I’m relying on, totally.”
Brandy thought of Marcia’s warning, and of John’s. Rossi’s classified ad had said “privacy assured.” What if Brandy rolled over a rock and a monster crawled out. “What happens if we find your biological family? Even your father?” she asked.
Cara swallowed. For a minute she stared ahead at a field of autumn sunflowers. “I wouldn’t neglect Marcia, if that’s what you’re worried about. I owe her more than my life.” She waved one slender hand in the air. “I owe her my ambition, too. I want to be an artist with a camera.” She gripped the wheel again. “But the images I see are more serene than Marcia’s. I don’t want to record storms and predatory birds, but I need to learn how to find and shape my own scenes.”
They drove for a few minutes in companionable silence. “If we can turn up some real facts,” Brandy said, “Detective Strong will listen. He’s smart.”
Cara’s mind returned to her foster mother. “I just hope I don’t learn Marcia’s holding out on me. I couldn’t forgive that.” A cloud passed over her face. Maybe it’s true I’m making things worse for her, Brandy thought. Too late now.
At a motel near the Gainesville airport where Brandy would spend the night, she handed a note to Cara with Thea’s name, address, and phone number. “I won’t see you until Wednesday. Call me Tuesday night and tell me what your photograph at Shell Mound shows.”
“I will, I promise.”
Later Brandy would remember how she waited for several minutes beside the concrete block motel, watching the shabby station wagon start back through the growing shadows toward Cedar Key.
CHAPTER 12
That evening Brandy finally reached John from the motel, but she hung up dissatisfied. She’d tried to keep anxiety out of her voice, but he bridled at her questions. After dinner Saturday, he said, his feelings had been hurt. In his view she had persuaded him to come to Cedar Key and then had no time for him. Now she was off to New York. Also, he was genuinely worried about the bank restoration job.
Later she admitted to herself that she had wanted to make the New York trip, to show she could handle the job. Her father again, no doubt, telling her she was good at it. She wanted to prove him right.
Monday, as the plane lifted into the air, Brandy kicked back to think about the two murders, twenty years apart. She had to sort out the facts she knew. On the flight she had a chance to do it. From a carry-on canvas bag she took out her notebook and began to write slowly on the next blank page:
First murder: Young woman’s skeleton found in hotel cistern, late 1973; only clues—shattered skull, remains of a heavy flashlight, bedspread fibers.
Fact: on the night of the 1972 hurricane, woman at Otter Creek café seemed fearful
Fact: a stranger drove woman to Cedar Key
Locals with connection to Rossi and opportunity for first murder a) MacGill: before the storm hit, said to be helping shore up houses on the gulf; owned real estate in the area; Rossi was looking for the place the woman stayed on the night she disappeared; were MacGill’s Gulf cottages at that address? 1972 newspaper said some ruined by waves and flooding; could MacGill have been at the café and driven the woman to Cedar Key? he came late to the safety of the school; later he bought the Island Hotel. Could be to conceal the body.
Suspicions: Why didn’t MacGill tell Rossi about the skeleton in the basement?
Motive: unknown, unless a sexual assault became fatal
Truck Thompson, then about 18, driving pick-up truck in the area, evacuating people along the Gulf; also came late to the school; could have been at the Otter Creek café and become the driver.
Motive: same as MacGill; had a reputation for wildness and violence with women; family’s prominence might have protected him
Suspicions: Same as MacGill
Brandy hesitated, twirling her pencil. She could place another local name on the scene. At last she wrote reluctantly: Marcia Waters: found the lost child on road near Gulf; could have been at Otter Creek café; may have been deranged and killed the mother when she thought the child was her lost daughter, delusion heightened by similarity of storms and toddlers
Suspicions: Why is she so opposed to Cara finding out about her real mother? Is she hiding something, as Cara thinks?
Motive: fixation on recovering her dead child
Question: Rossi said someone else might be interested in the missing woman search. Who?
Brandy doodled a gravestone engraved with a question mark. She started to write Nathan Hunt’s name, because he said he frequently visit
ed in Cedar Key and was there the night Rossi made his announcement, but she crossed his name out. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten in 1972 when the woman was killed.
She began another page with Rossi murder—locals with opportunity: MacGill: at the hotel Friday night, could have lured Rossi to the cemetery, perhaps with false news of the missing woman, would have known about the spade and could have planted it by Truck’s fish house; his gun is missing; was it the murder weapon?
Motive: to cover up the first murder; why did Rossi disappear from the hotel right after he told MacGill about his search?
Truck Thompson: at the hotel Friday night, later said he was out alone, guarding his oyster beds; could have panicked and discarded spade at his own fish house
Motives: heard Rossi’s statements and knew he might uncover the first murder? also to prevent search for Cara’s real parents and keep her from leaving Cedar Key
Marcia Waters: learned about Rossi from MacGill Friday night; both concealed classified ad from Cara; might have contacted Rossi and arranged to meet him; lives within walking distance of the cemetery; is a strong woman, could do physically what a man could; Cara said she had a gun and could use it
Motive: to keep Cara in Cedar Key with her, and/or conceal the earlier crime
Nathan Hunt: Opportunity: could have left the hotel on some pretext with Rossi; someone came and went in the hallway the night before body found; in lounge said he could uncover news of the missing woman; claimed he went fishing early, might have seen the spade in the yard and later planted it by fish house
Motive: unknown, unless drug connection Strong suspects Brandy thought about the night of Rossi’s murder. The killer had to shoot him in the graveyard, load the body into the rental car, drive it to Shell Mound for a hasty burial, then using the dead man’s key, return to the hotel room for Rossi’s clothes. Finally the killer had to set the cruise control and send the car into the Gulf.
