“I’m sorry. I don’t know where he is. Would you like to leave a message?”
“Oh, gosh, I dunno.”
“Just give me a second to get something to write with.” I rummaged around in the drawer of the bedside table and unearthed a pencil stub and scrap of paper. “Fleur? Go ahead.”
I saw Gil smile at me and reach for his book, so I took the telephone into the other room.
“Look, Miss—Mrs.—um . . . ”
“Call me Amelia, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, Amelia, listen, if Vern’s not gonna get there soon, I’ll just have to think of something else.”
“Can I be of help?”
“I don’t know. You remember my kid, Yvonne? I was speaking of her the other day?”
“Yes?”
“Well, the mister and me, as I said, we don’t hold with the living together thing, y’know, especially the mister, and we’re not supposed to have anything to do with her as long as she—well, anyway, I just can’t leave my girl alone up here, so every now and again, when he’s out, I bring her something. Sometimes it’s a casserole or something I knit or something, y’know?”
“Yes?” I pictured Fleur knitting with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, a remarkably incongruous image.
“Well, I don’t let on to him, you understand, or he’d have a fit. He don’t like the guy. Matt, he calls himself, Matthew Ramsey.”
From that hodgepodge, I managed to decipher that she was referring to Yvonne’s Significant Other. Matthew Ramsey. The name sounded vaguely familiar.
“I see. And how can I help you, Fleur?”
“Well, I was thinking Vern could come out here and give me a hand. He’s good in a crisis.”
“A hand with what, Fleur?” I was again losing the thread.
“I’m here, up at her place in Champlain, but she’s gone! Nobody’s here, not that Matt guy and not Yvonne, and lots of her stuff is gone.”
“Oh, I see.” Apparently, my deduction of the other night was correct. The abandoned girl had indeed been the hapless Yvonne. But if she hadn’t yet informed her parents of her whereabouts, was it my place to fill Fleur in?
“I wouldn’t worry, Fleur,” I began and immediately realized what a stupid statement that was. I tried again. “Look, maybe she went out of town. Maybe she’s with friends somewhere. Do you know her friends?”
“Not any more! She dropped all her old ones after she got involved with that . . . guy. Where did he take her? I could kill him! Where is she? If he did something to hurt her, I’ll—”
I couldn’t stand it. Her anguish was getting to me.
“Listen, Fleur, I heard something the other night about a girl living up in Champlain whose boyfriend left her. It might be Yvonne. She was staying here in town with a friend named Melody Branch at a sorority house.”
“Which sorority?”
“All I know is that it’s called the Gamma house.”
“Melody Branch, Gamma house . . . oh yeah, Vern’s girl,” Fleur said, all at once briskly practical. “I know the place. Thanks, Amelia.”
She rang off quickly, leaving me with a vague feeling of guilt. Should I have told her that? Did I betray a confidence? Would there be unhappy repercussions?
The lesson at church Sunday had been on the Prodigal Son. If ever there was a prodigal situation, it was this one, I thought, and whispered a prayer for the LaBombard family.
Please be in this situation. Bring harmony to their hearts.
I felt a curious kinship with Fleur. Maybe there was something to the cliché, after all. Apparently, I was about to become a new member of a universal club: mothers.
It was a strangely moving thought. Now was the time to tell Gil. Now, before I lost this strange and elusive sense of joy.
I moved to our bedroom door and stepped inside, calling softly, “Gil, darling?”
His response was a gentle snore.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Rousseaus’ street was lined with cars, and on the sidewalk was a knot of people, most of whom held a microphone or camera. Several large vans, stenciled with names and logos of television stations from all over the state, lined the curb in front of the house and down the street.
“Excuse me,” I began, shouldering my way through the knot of reporters.
Suddenly, all eyes and cameras turned my way.
“Who are you?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Are you a relative?”
“Did they do it?”
“Give us a statement, will ya?”
As the wife of a newspaperman, I knew better than to say a single word, least of all the perennial “No comment,” so I clutched my black leather book satchel to my chest, continued to stare at my objective, the front porch, and kept moving. It was slow going, but eventually I made it to the front door.
I rang the doorbell. No response.
This was not surprising.
I rang again and pressed my ear against the door, trying to ignore the snapping cameras. There seemed to be movement behind the door, so I cupped my hand against it and called into the door. “Martin, it’s Amelia Dickensen.”
“I got a name!” I heard a reporter announce behind me. “Take it down: Mimi Dawson.”
“Mimi! Mimi!” someone in the throng called. I continued to ignore them. “How do you know Martin? Or the boys? Do you know the boys?”
“Martin? You asked me to come, remember?” I said into the door.
“Are you dating the father?” somebody asked behind me.
I tried to direct a withering glance over my shoulder, but it didn’t have the same effect it did in the classroom.
A few metallic thumps and the door opened a crack. A hand reached out, grabbed my elbow and pulled me painfully through the narrow aperture before slamming the door.
“Thanks for coming, Miss Prentice,” Martin Rousseau said, re-locking the door. “Sorry about all that out there. It’s got so I have to keep the blinds down all the time.”
I rearranged my disheveled clothes. “How long has this harassment been going on?”
Martin scratched his head. “Ever since the guys got arrested. It seems like always, now. I don’t mind telling you, it’s beginning to get to me.”
That last was obvious. He looked terrible. There were dark smudges under his eyes and his shoulders drooped. He had on mismatched bedroom slippers and what appeared to be cracker crumbs scattered over the front of his sweatshirt. He followed my gaze, shrugged again and brushed himself half-heartedly.
“I’m trying to eat something. Keep my strength up and all. Come on in.”
We progressed from the enclosed front porch into the entry hall.
I glanced at the large photo of Martin’s late wife on the wall and quickly turned my eyes away. “This must be such an ordeal for you.”
He waved his hand. “Aw, it’s going to be all right,” he said bravely. “They’re innocent, and it’ll all come out in the wash. He glanced at the books in my arms. “Oh yeah, you brought the boys’ work, didn’t you? That’s great!” He turned and called up the stairs, “Guys—get down here! Miss Prentice brought your homework.”
Dustin’s head appeared at the top of the stairs. “That’s Mrs. Dickensen, Dad. She’s married now.”
“Keep your voice down, son, if you don’t want what you say to get in the papers.” He turned to me. “Sorry, Mrs. Dickensen.”
“It’s Amelia, Martin, remember?” I gestured to the boys to come down. “Maybe we could settle in the kitchen?”
The boys ambled hesitantly down the stairs and greeted me in a hangdog manner, glancing uneasily at the front door. They were both as disheveled as their father, with Dustin in sweatshirt and pajama pants and J.T. in cutoff shorts and a ragged T-shirt bearing the single strange word, “Bazinga!”
Martin herded them into the kitchen. “Come on, come on, get a move on.”
“We can work at the table,” I began and stopped at the sight of a pile of soda ca
ns, paper plates, a pizza box, and a varied collection of TV dinner trays.
Martin sighed. “We’ve been a little sloppy lately. Come on, guys, let’s clean this up.”
“D’you think we did it?” J.T. asked baldly as he wadded up a paper bag and shot it, basketball style, into a nearby trash can.
“Shut up, J.T!” said Dustin, tearing up the pizza box with alarming ferocity. He discarded the box, wiped his hands on his rumpled jeans and stepped up to me. “It’s like this: We’ve done a couple of stupid things before, sure.” He shrugged. “Okay, a lot of stupid things. But we didn’t do anything to that guy they found.”
J.T. piped up. “Yeah, we just took a look in the tent and—“
“Shut up, J.T!” It seemed to be Dustin’s favorite way of addressing his brother. “You gotta believe us. We’re not killers, you know?” He paused and searched my face. “You know?” he said again and bit his lip anxiously.
“I know, Dustin,” I said.
That wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t know for sure. On more than one occasion, I had been lied to by experts and sometimes believed them. Certainly these two sturdy boys were physically capable of overpowering a man and drowning him. I was reserving judgment, but it didn’t seem the appropriate time to express it.
As their father watched, looking exhausted and distracted, the brothers helped me unload my book bag. They seemed almost eager to get started on the workbooks, moving rapidly around the house and quickly locating the necessary tools: paper, pencils, pens, and erasers.
“Your math assignment begins on page 79,” I told J.T. “And yours, Dustin, is here, in the blue workbook, page 99.”
“I remember now,” J.T. said, almost cheerfully. “We learned most of this stuff last week.”
“It’s not as bad as I thought,” Dustin agreed, wielding a pencil with enthusiasm. He looked over at me. “Thanks for bringing this. I mean, I guess we gotta do it so we don’t fall behind. And I want to graduate on time. I’m gonna graduate on time,” he amended firmly.
Martin went to the door. “Well, I’ll let you folks get to work,” he said, and left. I heard him trudging wearily up the stairs.
“Before you get started, let me explain the other assignments,” I said, and for a few minutes, had their undivided attention. At last I said, “Well, that’s about all. Got it?”
“Yeah.” They both nodded.
“I’ll be going.” I rose and pulled on my coat. “Call me if you have any questions.” I paused, remembering. “Oh, by the way, a friend of yours said to say hello: Courtney. She wishes you well.”
The boys exchanged glances.
“Good,” Dustin said, staring down at his shoes, “that’s nice of her.”
I finished buttoning my coat. “I thought so too. Well, goodbye.”
“I’ll tell Dad you’re going.” Dustin went out of the kitchen.
“Mrs. Dickensen?”
“Yes, J.T.?” I assumed he had another question about his assignments.
“Was it that mad guy they think we killed? ’Cause he was fine when we left.”
“I don’t know, but tell me about the mad guy, J.T. Did you recognize him?”
He frowned down at the kitchen floor and bit his bottom lip reflectively. “No, I mean, we didn’t stick around to see who it was.” He shifted in his chair. “He was far away, and he had on a white parka thing with the hood up. I didn’t see him long. Dus and me just heard him hollering and figured we better get out of that place quick.”
“What about the fishing tent? What do you remember about it?”
“Well, it was a nice one, not the homemade junk you see some guys got. It was one of those kind you can fold up, y’know? A blue tent kind of thing. They got a lot of them where Dus used to work.”
“So you looked inside. What did you see?”
“Just the tip-up; that’s what you call the thing that holds the line. It was halfway out of the hole and the hole was freezing over. I started to break up the ice to get it out when the guy started hollering.”
“You didn’t see anything else?”
J. T. rolled his eyes. “Nope, but it was funny, because Dus said those things usually have lots of stuff inside, like buckets for the fish and stools and coolers and radios and stuff, even TVs sometimes, but this place didn’t have any of that. Just the tip-up with the line connected to it and a lunchbox. Sometimes people just go out on the lake and poke a hole in the ice, but if you already blow that much money on expensive stuff like that tent and that tip-up, you usually want to get comfortable too.”
“How expensive do you think all that equipment was?”
“I don’t know. Dus is the one that notices things like that, ’cause he used to work at Shea’s. Like that tip-up. It was just kind of round, like a big red plastic hockey puck with a flag stickin’ out of it, but Dus recognized the name. It was top of the line equipment, he said.” His voice trailed off as we heard his father and brother descending the stairs.
“So they’re all set, huh?” Martin gave his boys a wan smile.
“All set,” I agreed. “I’ll be back in a few days with more.”
“Tell Vern I said to keep the thing that we—”
His brother shoved him. “Shut up!”
“That’s enough, guys,” Martin barked. “Get to work.”
He accompanied me to the door. “What’re people saying about all this, Amelia? At school and stuff?”
“Well, there’s a lot of curiosity about the case,” I said, trying to be tactful.
“What does Dennis O’Brien say?”
“I’m afraid he doesn’t confide in me, Martin,” I said. At least, not any more, I added mentally, remembering a time when Dennis’ friendship with me actually threatened his career.
He stared off into space and reassured himself, “But everything will be all right. It will, I know it.”
He opened the door and I slid quickly back into the mob. The reporters followed me down the steps and along the sidewalk.
“Mimi! Mimi Dawson! What did you do in there?”
“How are the boys? Aren’t you scared to be with them?”
“Did they tell you what happened?”
“Mimi, look this way!”
I stopped at a crosswalk. A persistent portion of the gaggle had followed me the length of the block. I waited for the light to change and fumed. Were these jackals going to tail me all the way back to Chez Prentice? Would they besiege the place as they had the Rousseau residence? What would that do to our B&B business?
The light changed and as I stepped off the curb, followed by a half dozen of the more ravenous denizens of the journalism profession, a miracle occurred.
I heard a short, sharp beep from a car stopped at my right and turned to see Vern gesturing to me from the driver’s seat of a LaBombard taxi. He reached his long arm and opened the passenger door.
“Get in!” he yelled, and I complied before the crowd behind me knew what had happened.
Vern locked the doors and pressed the heel of his hand, hard, on the horn. The blare caused one man to start in surprise and hurl curses at the taxi, but Vern forged slowly ahead through the throng, honking in short beeps as a warning to the imprudent few who remained in his way.
At last, the way was clear and Vern stepped on the accelerator. We were back on a main street in thirty seconds, leaving the melee far behind.
“My hero,” I said, patting Vern’s elbow. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along. And Vern, one of the boys told me to tell you—”
“Let’s talk about it later, Amelia, okay?” He jerked his head in the direction of the back seat and at that moment I realized he had another passenger.
I shifted in my seat and found a hand thrust directly before my face. “Cobb, James Cobb,” said a handsome man in his late twenties wearing a loosened tie and white shirt under his heavy, unzipped parka, “I just moved here from Syracuse. I’m in the public defender’s office. Defense counsel for the
Rousseau brothers.”
I shook his hand, but didn’t offer my own name.
He leaned his forearms on the back of my seat and continued, “Quite a mess out there. Good thing this guy came to your rescue, I’d say.” He patted Vern on the shoulder and instructed, “Just continue around the block, okay, buddy? And stop at the end of the street. I’ll leg it from there.” He looked back at me with unblinking gray eyes. “Who are you, by the way, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Before I could come up with a quip that would indicate that I did mind, Vern put in, “She’s just a family friend of the Rousseaus.”
“Oh.” James Cobb sat back in his seat. “Well, those boys can sure use all the friends they can get right now.”
“A person always needs friends,” I observed rather pompously. “But surely you don’t think they’ll be convicted.”
“Not allowed to say,” he said, “but if you’re a betting woman, well . . . ” he trailed off significantly.
An hour ago, I’d been unsure of the boys’ innocence, but this man’s attitude got under my skin. “I can tell you, these are good youngsters. I’ve known them for years. An injustice is being perpetrated—”
“Keep on saying that, lady,” Cobb interrupted, “keeps up the pressure on the local Barneys. That’s the tack to take: The cops are prejudiced against them because of their record of mischief.” He seemed to warm to his topic. “Just look at the way they were arrested: brutally manhandled at school, right in front of their classmates, their teachers! If that’s not prejudicial, I don’t know what is!”
“They weren’t manhandled,” I pointed out sharply. “I saw the arrest. The police did everything by the book.” I was thinking of Dennis and his scrupulous decency.
“Not where I come from,” said James Cobb lightly. “The way I see it, this town is like all small towns—a hotbed of corruption, from the mayor on down, especially the DA, and the boys are just convenient scapegoats.”
“For what? What corruption?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? There’s bound to be something if we turn over enough local rocks.” He leaned forward again. “For instance, I know for a fact that last year a girl was murdered right in the public library!”
Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) Page 12
