Out of Tune

by Norah McClintock

  “Did you see her the day that she died, Brendan?”

  “I saw her. But I didn’t really talk to her. She said she had a million things to do and that she’d tell me about it later that night.” His face said what his words left unsaid—she never did tell him, because by the time night rolled around, she was dead.

  “Did she give you any details or say where she was going?”

  He shook his head.

  “She said she would explain later.”

  I glanced over at Ashleigh, who was lying on the ground, being covered with a crazy quilt of leaves. Zak shrieked as he piled them higher and higher.

  “Hey, buddy,” Brendan called. “You’ve got to dig Ashleigh out of there. I have to finish this job and get my homework done.”

  Zak groaned, but then seemed to have as much fun shoveling the leaves off Ashleigh with his hands as he’d had heaping them onto her.

  “Now what?” Ashleigh asked after we had waved our goodbyes.

  “The library, like we said.” Brendan’s information had not gotten me a lot closer to the reason for Alicia being in the woods when she was killed. It did, however, point yet another finger at Tina. It was Tina who had told Brendan that Alicia and Simon were a couple when, in fact, they weren’t. It looked as though she had done it to keep Brendan and Alicia apart and, just maybe, give herself a chance at being with Brendan.

  We trudged up Brendan’s street, one of a half dozen or so in an older subdivision carved from the woods, until we came to the road that ran along the south side of the woods. The few houses that stood on the far side of that road had grassy backyards that ended in scrub and brush, then forest. Once the houses stopped, there were just trees. Another few minutes and we would make a turn to take us into town and to the library. We were about to make that turn when I saw her.

  TEN

  She was tall and slender and wearing the same floppy hat I had seen her in at the library, but this time the breeze blew back the brim and I saw her face clearly as she stepped off the road and crossed the deep, wide ditch. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t place her. She quickly raised a hand to pull the hat brim down again and continued on with her head bowed, one shoulder weighed down by an enormous tote.

  “That’s the woman from the library,” I said. “The one who dropped off the drawing her little boy made, remember?”

  Ashleigh stumbled to a stop by my side and did not look up from her phone, which she was busy checking messages. “What? What happened?”

  “That woman.” I pointed.

  She was making fast progress, striding forward in grasses up to her knees. At the rate she was going, she would soon be deep among the trees. I sprinted to catch up with her before she disappeared.

  “Hey!” Ashleigh shouted.

  The woman had vanished by the time I reached the tree line. I stopped, bent over, gasping for breath and searching for some sign of a trail.

  Crack!

  The sound came from my left somewhere up ahead. I searched the ground in that direction. It took a minute or two, because the terrain was both rocky and littered with layers of fallen leaves, but I spotted it. A path. I was sure of it. I hurried down it, glancing at my footing and then at the terrain up ahead, scanning for any sign of the woman. Her clothes had all been in earth tones—tan pants, a knee-length brown overcoat, a muddy-brown hat. Nothing that would be easy to spot in the middle of a dense forest, made dark and shadowy by the sun’s near-total failure to penetrate the thick canopy overhead. All I could do was stay on the path and keep moving as fast as possible in the hope of overtaking her.

  The trees ended all of a sudden, and I stopped in the middle of a large meadow with plants and grasses rising as high as my thigh. There was no sign of the woman. My confidence in my ability to find her started to waver. It took me longer than I would have liked to find the path on the other side of the clearing. By the time I did, Ashleigh, much to my astonishment, had managed to catch up to me.

  “What’s going on?” She sounded annoyed and not the least bit winded. “What are you doing?”

  “I saw that woman, the one from the library, the one in the floppy hat.”

  Ashleigh stood, one hand on her hip, regarding me with barely contained exasperation.

  “What woman? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t want to lose her,” I said, even though, in all likelihood, I’d already lost her. “Come on.”

  Ashleigh didn’t budge. “What woman?”

  “I saw a woman at the library. She was wearing a floppy hat, so I couldn’t see her face. She had just dropped off a picture her son had drawn for Alicia. Her son used to go to Alicia’s reading group at the library, and he adored her.”

  Ashleigh rolled her eyes. “I swear, if I hear about one more person who adored the ever-perfect Alicia Allen, I am going to—”

  “I just saw her again, Ashleigh. Going into the woods.”

  “Uh-huh.” She was not impressed. “And?”

  “What if that’s where Alicia was going the day she died? To see that woman and her son?”

  A frown appeared and deepened as Ashleigh considered this possibility. “That’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think? Just because a woman happens to walk through the woods—”

  “A woman who knew Alicia. A woman who had a small boy who was in Alicia’s reading group. A woman who cared enough to drop off a drawing at the library for Alicia. Maybe she knows something, Ashleigh.”

  “If she knew anything, she would have told the police by now.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I want to find out.”

  Ashleigh rolled her eyes again but didn’t argue with me. We followed the path the woman had taken—at least, I hoped we were on the right path—for another ten minutes, then another five more.

  “I don’t suppose you know where we’re going?” I asked Ashleigh. After all, she had grown up around here.

  “I told you, I don’t like woods.” She was glancing around obsessively, like a nervous burglar afraid he was being watched by police. “There are too many creepy, not to mention scary, things in here.”

  I thought about Rafe and his hunting rifle, and the rabbit with its left leg caught in that snare. She wasn’t far wrong.

  We walked for another ten minutes, by which time Ashleigh was saying over and over, “We should go back. We have to go back. It’s going to get dark. We have to get back before it gets dark.”

  “It’s just after four. We have plenty of time. Sunset isn’t until quarter past six.” How do I know these things? I hear them from Aunt Ginny every day. Her rule when I’m out on my bike, which is pretty much my main way of getting around since we live a mile and a half out of town, is that I have to be home before sunset, whenever that is.

  We kept going, with Ashleigh grumbling the whole way, until the woods finally ended at a road.

  “Broom’s Corners,” I said, taking in the hamlet I had visited exactly once before. The woman, of course, was nowhere in sight.

  “I hate to ask, but now what?” Ashleigh asked.

  “She has to be here somewhere.” It only stood to reason.

  “What are we going to do? Go door to door, asking to speak to the woman in the floppy hat?”

  It wasn’t a terrible idea. It’s not as if there were hundreds of doors to knock on.

  We crossed the road and made our way to the antiques store, where a woman in late middle age appeared to be locking up for the day. Ashleigh stared pointedly at her before looking at the sun, which was already beginning its descent toward the horizon.

  “Excuse me, but did you see a lady with a floppy hat go by here?” I asked.

  The woman finished locking up the store before she turned to fix me with icy eyes behind powerful bifocals.

  “No, I did not,” she said sharply. “And even if I had, why on earth would I tell you? Really, a person used to be able to enjoy her privacy around here. Now it’s people coming right to your door, asking for work, or appr
oaching you in the street like this. Complete strangers, asking you questions about people.” She shook her head in disgust. “A person used to be able to live a quiet, undisturbed life, unbothered by invasive questions.”

  “She could have just said no,” Ashleigh grumbled as we walked away. “That’s the first time we ever talked to her.”

  We wandered around the Corners, looking for the woman. I even knocked on the doors of a few of the hamlet’s houses to ask about her. My cover story was that she had dropped something and I was trying to return it to her. I showed an envelope from my backpack that I had stuffed with a couple of sheets of blank paper.

  “People around here are really unfriendly,” Ashleigh said after we had been sent on our way by yet another annoyed resident of Broom’s Corners.

  “They sure don’t seem to like people asking about their business,” I said. “I guess that’s why they live here. They value their privacy.”

  “Yeah? Well, they’re welcome to it. What a bunch of sourpusses.” She looked up at the darkening sky and asked her inevitable question. “Now what? How are we supposed to get home?”

  It was too dark to navigate the woods again, and it was too far via the long way along the road that ringed the forest. I did the only thing I could think of—I called Aunt Ginny.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing in Broom’s Corners?” she asked.

  I dodged the question and hoped she wouldn’t notice. “Can you come and get us? Please?”

  I heard a long sigh at the other end of our connection. “Give me thirty minutes.”

  “Thirty minutes?” Ashleigh groaned. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

  I had the perfect idea.

  The bakery was small but warm and brightly lit, and it smelled alluringly of freshly baked bread. Its display case was filled with cookies and pastries—bear claws, éclairs, custard tarts, cookies, four different types of squares and some apple-crumble pies.

  “Treats are on me,” I announced. It seemed the least I could do.

  Ashleigh trailed a hand along the display case as she contemplated her choice before finally settling on a white-chocolate-and-macadamia-nut cookie the size of a tea saucer and a mug of hot chocolate. She settled herself at one of three small tables and lost herself in the contents of her phone as she sipped and nibbled.

  I examined the display case to make my choice. While I was trying to decide between a lemon tart and an empire cookie, I heard a small voice, slightly cartoonish—the voice of a young child. What really caught my attention was what it said. I was pretty sure I’d heard the name Alicia.

  I ducked behind the counter and peeked through the door into the kitchen. A little boy not much older than Brendan’s brother Zak stood in the large, spotless kitchen. A woman knelt on the floor in front of him. It was the woman I had followed. I was sure of it. And no wonder she had looked vaguely familiar. I had seen her before, right here in this bakery, when Charlie and Ashleigh and I had come here on our bikes to hand out Have You Seen This Girl? flyers. The woman was trying to comfort the boy.

  “Your son knew Alicia,” I said quietly.

  The woman jumped to her feet and pulled the boy protectively to her.

  “Go downstairs, Teddy. Mommy will be there in a minute.”

  Teddy didn’t go. He clung to his mother, presenting her with the chore of disentangling herself and shooing him down the stairs with a promise that she would be there in a minute.

  “I saw you at the library,” I said. “You were dropping off a drawing your son made. He liked Alicia, didn’t he?” The woman stared mutely at me. “Did Alicia ever come here?” I asked.

  The woman didn’t answer.

  “Did she come through the woods to get here?”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Was Alicia here last Wednesday?”

  The woman stared at me. “Please leave.”

  “You remember me, don’t you?” I asked. “I was here before she was found. I was distributing flyers.”

  The woman looked blankly at me. She clearly didn’t remember me.

  “The police have been trying to find out what Alicia was doing before she disappeared,” I said. “Did she come here?”

  “Please.” The woman glanced around nervously, as if she was afraid of being overheard. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Did you talk to the police? Did you tell them you knew her?”

  The woman fidgeted nervously with her apron. “Please, I don’t know anything. You have to go.”

  “If Alicia was here that day, the police will want to talk to you. And to your son.”

  The woman’s eyes turned steely. “I’ll deny anything you say.”

  “Mrs. Burns can confirm that you and your son knew Alicia. And my aunt is a police detective. She’ll believe me. It’s a murder investigation. She’ll take you in for questioning if you don’t cooperate.”

  The woman’s face turned as white as the flour that covered the wooden countertop at her elbow. She stared at me until the silence between us was broken by the jingle of the bell over the bakery door, announcing a customer. But she didn’t go out to the front of the store. Instead, she pressed a button on the wall. A moment later an older woman appeared from somewhere behind the kitchen. She bustled through to the front to greet the newcomer.

  “Please,” the woman said. “Don’t make me talk to the police.”

  It never sounds good when someone wants to avoid the police. It usually means they have something to hide.

  “If Alicia was here the day she died, you have to talk to the police,” I said.

  The woman cast a worried glance at the bakery’s front door. She crossed the kitchen quickly and held open the screen door to the back porch. I took the hint and stepped outside. She led me far enough away that we wouldn’t be overheard.

  “You can’t tell anyone what I tell you, not even the police.” When I started to protest, the woman cut me off. “Either you promise not to say anything to the police or I tell you nothing.”

  I studied her face. She was young, not more than thirty, but her face was thin and lined. If I had to name the dominant emotion in her face, I would say it was fear.

  “Okay. I promise,” I said.

  She was still for a moment, except for her hands, which she kept wringing.

  “Alicia was supposed to come here after school on Wednesday,” she said at last. “She’d been coming twice a week for a couple of weeks. Teddy adored her.” She glanced at me. “Maybe I should back up a little. We met Alicia at the library. I took Teddy there one day. I don’t know what I was thinking. There’s no way I could get a library card. But Teddy was so lonely for kids his own age. And there was a bunch of kids there with Alicia. She was reading with them, and the children all seemed to be having fun, so I let Teddy join the group. Afterward Alicia came to talk to me. She said she would help me pick some books for him. She even tried to sign me up for a library card.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Library cards are easy to get. And they’re free for kids under twelve.”

  She knotted and unknotted the edges of her apron. She glanced nervously at the rear door to the bakery.

  “It’s my husband,” she said. “I can’t let him find us. Ever. If he finds me, he’ll kill me. I don’t know what he’ll do to Teddy. I thought we could just take off and start over and he’d leave us alone. I should have known better.”

  “He’s looking for you?”

  She nodded, and her face turned hard and bitter.

  “He found us once already. He almost killed me. The cops arrested him. He was charged with assault. Got a month, which they allowed him to serve on weekends because he’s such an upstanding citizen. I know he’s looking for us. He won’t give up until he finds us.”

  “Can’t you get a restraining order?” I asked.

  “They won’t work with him. He’s smart. He’s a lawyer. Crown attorney. He’s like this with cops.” She held out a hand
with its index and middle fingers tightly crossed. “Alicia figured it out. That’s when she offered to tutor Teddy. I tried to say no. The fewer people who know us, the better.”

  “Everything okay, Jennifer?” a voice called. The other woman from the bakery was standing on the back porch, regarding us with some concern.

  “Everything’s fine, Marjorie,” Jennifer replied. I doubted very much that Jennifer was her real name, not if she was hiding out in fear for her life.

  The woman watched us for another few seconds. “I’m going to need you inside in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Marjorie went back inside.

  “She’s amazing. All the people here are. They’re protecting me.”

  “Tell me about Alicia,” I prompted.

  “She started coming here after school. Teddy and I would meet her at the edge of the woods. She was wonderful with him. And she enjoyed herself. She told me she had no idea that teaching children could be so rewarding. Apparently she spent most of her time on music. Violin, I think. Anyway, she didn’t show up last Wednesday. I figured something must have come up. It never occurred to me that she had been murdered. I was shocked.”

  “But not shocked enough to call the police,” I said gently.

  “What good would it have done? She was killed before she got here. It has nothing to do with me.” Her face flushed. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I thought the world of Alicia. I’m sorry she died. Believe me, if I knew anything that would help, I’d tell you. But I don’t. Please don’t tell anyone about Teddy and me. Please?” She glanced nervously at the bakery. “I really have to get back to work.”

  I followed her inside, where I found Aunt Ginny at the display counter, watching with greedy eyes as Marjorie filled a cardboard pastry box with Aunt Ginny’s delicious choices. She ate a custard tart on the way back to town.

  ELEVEN

  It was a bright, crisp day, the kind of fall day where you smell the tang of the decaying leaves carpeting the ground, and, for the first time since the winter before, your breath plumes out in front of you when you breathe or speak. Or when you huff and puff as you ride your bike into town, which is what I did late Saturday morning. Ashleigh had only a half shift at the supermarket where she worked, and I was meeting her back at her house.