Lost Innocents

by MacDonald, Patricia

  Maddy smiled warmly at the lovely, timid-looking woman behind him dressed in jeans and a chambray shirt. She was as slim as a girl, though Maddy judged her to be nearly fifty. She was still beautiful, with masses of gray, dusty-looking curls pinned up in a topknot. Ellen greeted Maddy, but her gaze was fixed on Amy. She crouched down and admired George, speaking gently to Amy. Maddy felt an immediate liking for anyone who paid such careful attention to a child.

  “Come in and have a drink,” said Charles. “I don’t think Paulina has dinner ready quite yet.”

  As if in answer to his remark, a round woman in an apron appeared in the hallway. “Half an hour to dinner,” she said in a middle European accent. “Does the child want a frankfurter and mashed potatoes?”

  “Oh yes, that would be fine,” Maddy said gratefully. “She loves hot dogs.”

  They followed Charles into the huge living room filled with expensive leather furniture, thick rugs, and ornately framed artwork. Maddy ‘s eyes were immediately drawn to the painting that hung over the fireplace mantel. It was a portrait in oils of a much younger Ellen with her arm protectively encircling a small boy of perhaps four or five. He must be grown by now, Maddy thought. They probably have grandchildren.

  Charles poured flutes of champagne and handed them around. “Let’s drink to justice being done,” he said.

  Doug stared into the tiny golden bubbles in his glass. “Charles, I don’t know how I can ever thank you. We had some bad moments in these last few months.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll feel less grateful when the bill arrives.”

  Everyone laughed nervously.

  Maddy sighed. “I’m just so relieved to have this nightmare behind us,” she said. “I mean, this girl made these accusations, and suddenly our whole world was in chaos.”

  Charles Henson frowned and nodded. “It’s terrifying. And the fact that she is the daughter of the chief of police didn’t make matters any easier. It’s the new McCarthyism. That’s what I believe. Kids today have a frightening power. They’re sophisticated enough to know just what to say so that their accusations sound believable, but they’re young enough so that they have no concept of how their malicious whims can destroy a person’s life.”

  “But Charles,” his wife interrupted gently, “you know there is a lot of ugliness in this world. Some of them are just innocent children….”

  Ellen Henson’s words struck Maddy in the pit of her stomach. Does she think that Doug is guilty? Maddy wondered. Is that what she’s trying to say?

  Charles was unfazed by his wife’s objection. “Darling,” he went on smoothly, “I am the first one to admit that a lot of children are victimized by adults, and we need to pay more attention to it, but it’s mushroomed out of control. It’s become a witch hunt.”

  “Well, I think Heather Cameron is a very troubled young girl,” said Maddy. “But that’s not my husband’s fault.”

  Charles tipped his champagne flute in her direction. ‘The way you supported your husband was admirable, and helped us immensely in court.”

  Maddy blushed and looked uncomfortable. “I think it was obvious to the judge that Heather was lying,” she said.

  Ellen set her crystal flute on a mahogany end table and spoke softly. “I have something I want to show Amy before dinner. Amy, do you want to come outside with me?”

  Amy looked up eagerly, always ready for a new distraction. Ellen extended a hand to her. Maddy put her flute on the table. She found the transition a little abrupt, but she was glad to change the tone of the evening. “I’ll come along,” she said.

  “Good. Mommy’s coming with us.” The two women and the child walked toward the door as Charles indicated a seat to Doug and he sank gratefully into it.

  Once outside, Amy began to run, and the two women walked along behind her, their hands in their coat pockets, their shoes crunching on dry leaves.

  They walked in awkward silence for a few minutes, and then Maddy said, “We really are very grateful to your husband.”

  “Charles is very good at what he does,” Ellen said evenly.

  Maddy nodded, but she had a distinct impression of disapproval from the older woman that made her feel uneasy. Maddy recognized, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she was going to meet with lots more of this kind of reaction. This victory in court did not mean she could let down her guard. People loved to believe the worst…. Maddy cast about for something else to say. “This is a beautiful place you have here.”

  “Isn’t it,” Ellen agreed. “This was my childhood home. I love it here. I do hate to see the winter coming. I’m a great gardener. It’s my passion.”

  “I’ve got a purple thumb,” Maddy admitted.

  “I hope you don’t mind dining at our home. I don’t enjoy going out in public much. I’m a hermit.”

  “Oh, not at all. It was kind of you to have us,” said Maddy, but she could not help thinking of what Doug had said about the rumors of Ellen’s breakdown. She cast a sidelong glance at the woman’s seemingly untroubled countenance.

  “Amy,” Ellen called out, “it’s back here, in the garage.”

  Maddy wondered which garage she might be talking about. The house obviously dated back to the days of the horse and carriage. The walkways were lined with gas street lamps, which had illuminated as darkness fell. A series of connected outbuildings bordering the extension of the cobbled drive matched the main house in style. One of the doors was open and light spilled out from within. Ellen pointed in that direction. Amy saw where she was going and barreled toward the open door.

  Maddy could hear Amy’s squeals of delight before she caught up with her. She came around the corner into the empty garage, and it took a moment to locate the source of Amy’s excitement. Inside the doorway, in one corner, was a large cardboard box lined with flannel. Inside the box was a mother cat and a bunch of kittens. They were not newborns, for they were actively exploring the straw-strewn floor of the garage, but they were small and fuzzy, and Amy was clapping her hands at the sight of them. She crouched down to try to pick up the nearest one.

  “Don’t squeeze it, honey,” Maddy said with dismay. She grimaced, knowing it would be difficult to tear Amy away from these adorable creatures.

  “Let her play with them,” said Ellen. “She won’t hurt them.” She led the way out of the garage as Maddy looked worriedly at her daughter.

  “I guess it’s all right,” said Maddy. She followed Ellen up a gentle incline to a wrought-iron bench in a coppice of evergreens. They sat together on the bench. A gas lamp beside the bench threw a mantle of yellow light on their shoulders. The air was damp with the threat of rain. In the distance, surrounded by overgrown bushes, was a small, clapboard-sided house, which looked like a tiny one-room cottage with a carriage light on beside the front door. Despite the lantern’s glow, it was impossible to tell what color the building was painted.

  “Isn’t that darling,” Maddy exclaimed. “What is it?”

  “It was my son’s playhouse,” said Ellen. “It’s an actual historical building. I think it was once a tinsmith’s shop. We had it moved here and restored, years ago.”

  “It’s just adorable. Wait till Amy sees it.”

  “I don’t allow anyone to play in it,” Ellen said. Then she added apologetically, “I’m funny about it.”

  As soon as she said it, Maddy looked closer and saw that the door was padlocked, the windows blocked with drawn curtains. Instantly she felt uneasy again, as if there were something ominous about the cheerful-looking little building. “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Maddy said hurriedly, knowing immediately that she had made some sort of faux pas. “I doubt we’ll be able to tear her away from the kittens anyway.”

  Ellen continued as if Maddy had not spoken. Her voice was a dull monotone. “My son’s name was Ken. He died when he was five years old. Meningitis. This is his birthday. He would have been twenty-one years old today.”

  The tragic confidence struck Maddy like a blow. Some
how she felt as if she had known it, before the words were even out of Ellen’s mouth. She had sensed something terrible. She had not even wanted to ask about the boy. But still, it was the worst of all nightmares, and her heart ached for the frail woman seated beside her on the bench. “How awful,” she breathed.

  “He came home from kindergarten complaining of a stiff neck. In three days he was dead.”

  “Oh, I’m so very sorry. This must be a very hard day for you. We shouldn’t have come today.”

  Ellen shook her head. “No harder than any other day,” she said.

  “I can imagine,” Maddy said grimly, although she couldn’t. Not really. She looked back at the garage, where Amy’s blond head was visible.

  Ellen nodded calmly, and they sat in silence, each one thinking of her own child.

  Finally Ellen spoke. “So, life goes back to normal for you now.”

  Maddy sighed, feeling the irony of her observation. “I hope so.”

  “Charles tells me you’re an artist?”

  “I do stained glass. I have a studio behind my house.”

  “Really?” said Ellen.

  “It started out as a hobby, but I got some orders, and I wasn’t really enjoying my job, so…”

  “So you made it your profession.”

  “Well, I put some of my work in a local craft shop. But it wasn’t a living. Then I got a commission to do a window at the new meditation chapel at the Catholic church. And that led to several others.”

  Ellen squinted into the darkness, in the direction of the playhouse. “This is fortuitous that I’ve met you. I’ve been thinking I wanted to do something with the playhouse. Maybe you could help me.”

  Maddy felt uncomfortably jolted by the return to the subject of the padlocked playhouse. She tried to keep her expression impassive.

  “I was thinking about Peter Rabbit.”

  “Peter Rabbit?” Maddy asked cautiously.

  “You know, that little blue coat he wore,” Ellen said. “And Benjamin Bunny. They would make such beautiful windows. I could just imagine it with the light coming through it, making a pattern on the floor. That particular shade of blue in Peter’s jacket. Could those drawings be transferred to windows?”

  Maddy hesitated. It seemed strange, but then again, that playhouse was probably a shrine to her son’s memory. Maddy’s work on the chapel windows were all memorials to one person or another, commissioned by loved ones. “It might be possible. Those old windows are very small. And you wouldn’t want to replace the original glass,” she said carefully. “Maybe something we could hang from a chain. A set of them….”

  Charles Henson appeared at the back door of the house. “Paulina’s ready for us,” he called out.

  “We’re coming,” Ellen called back, getting up abruptly from the bench and brushing off her jeans. “You’ll work on it for me, then?”

  Maddy stood up, feeling a little disoriented by the conversation. “I’d really need to measure them.”

  “I’ll measure them,” Ellen said firmly. “And I’ll call you.”

  Maddy didn’t want to say that she needed to do the measuring herself. She wasn’t sure anything was going to come of this. There was time to see.

  “I want Amy to have one of the kittens,” Ellen said.

  Maddy wanted to protest, but she had a feeling it would be futile. Despite Ellen’s frailty, she was determined. It would not do to argue with her. She and Doug were here to show their gratitude. Still, she felt distinctly uneasy as they headed back to the house. She told herself it was the acquisition of a pet they hadn’t planned for. That was all. She picked up Amy and held her tightly as they walked back toward the house.

  Chapter Two

  Mary Beth Cameron hefted the huge portfolio of available properties from her file drawer to the desktop, opening it to a prospectus on a handsome brick Colonial that was uncomfortably out of the stated price range of the nervous, neatly-dressed couple seated in front of her. She swiveled the book around so that they could examine the photo, lazily caressing the out-of-reach image with a manicured, pale pink fingernail. The two stared down at the grand house like Hansel and Gretel gazing at the candy-covered gingerbread house.

  “This a nice one,” said Mary Beth, pretending not notice to their anxiety.

  Mary Beth knew her clientèle. Taylorsville had lots of couples like this—not affluent enough to afford the suburbs close to Manhattan, but willing to tie themselves to an inhuman commute in order to have an impressive house. So they came farther north to Taylorsville, figuring to get a bargain. Mary was ready Beth was for them.

  “A little bigger than what you had in mind,” Beth Mary admitted, “but the with all amenities a young up-and-coming family could want.”

  “It’s a bit more than we planned to spend,” he said.

  Mary Beth looked up in mild surprise. “Oh,” she said, turning the page with the same pink fingernail. “Well, we have some darling properties in your price range. Let’s take a look.” She could feel him shriveling at her words, as the wife looked wistfully, perhaps a shade irritably, at the dream house that had disappeared from view. “We can always come back to it,” said Mary Beth.

  As the pair frowned at the next picture, Mary Beth glanced at her watch. As usual, she was running late. Darkness was falling, and she did have another obligation. As she was always telling her husband, Frank, real estate was not a nine-to-five kind of job. You had to work when you had the clients at hand. This was one of those times.

  The bell on the front door of Kessler Realty rang, and the door opened. Mary Beth looked up and saw her daughter, Heather, walk through the front door. She hated that Sue, the receptionist, left promptly at five. A lot of times they were busiest after five, and Mary Beth did not like wearing two hats. She was trying to make some money here. She smiled broadly at Heather, although her eyes remained cold.

  “Hello, Heather,” she said.

  “Hello, Mother,” the girl said sullenly.

  Mary Beth looked critically at the teenager in front of her. Heather, she thought, took after Frank’s side of the family. She had a face as round and white as a plate, with small, pale gray eyes and lank, drab hair that fell to her shoulders. Her figure was good, but not because she did anything to maintain it. If any effort were required, she’d be fat as a house, Mary Beth thought. Heather’s clothes did little to enhance her figure; she was wearing baggy overalls with one shoulder unbuttoned over a Henley-style shirt that looked like long underwear. Her unlaced high-top sneakers completed her resemblance to someone who lived in a homeless shelter. No matter how often Mary Beth offered to take her shopping or tried to show her how to use makeup, Heather stubbornly insisted on choosing the most unbecoming outfits. Although she had tried to appear supportive, Mary Beth had not been surprised when the judge dismissed the charges against that teacher. With all the pretty high school girls, why would any man hit on a plain, surly creature like Heather?

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Mary Beth said, trying to maintain a semblance of professionalism. “Why don’t you take a seat over there?”

  Heather regarded her with narrowed eyes. For a fleeting moment, Mary Beth felt a little guilty. She had promised Heather she would be done, but then this couple had come in. Heather just didn’t understand that you had to seize the opportunity when it presented itself. “We have some new magazines,” Mary Beth suggested, and felt irritated at having to sound like a receptionist. That’s how she’d started out in this office, and she had zero interest in going back to it.

  Heather shuffled over to the reception area, dropped into one of the tapestry-covered armchairs, and began flipping through a magazine.

  “This one looks nice,” the young man said hopefully to his disgruntled wife.

  Mary Beth turned her head to look at the picture of a newly painted Cape Cod. “Oh yes, that one is adorable. And there’s really a lot you could do with it.”

  “Maybe we should look at it,” he said. His wife made
a face.

  Mary Beth’s phone rang. “Take a look at some more while I get this,” she said. As she picked up the phone she saw Heather rise from her seat and begin to pace the reception area, glancing up at the clock.

  “Mary Beth Cameron,” she sang into the phone. “How can I help you?”

  “We have to go, Mother,” Heather announced. Mary Beth gestured helplessly for Heather to sit back down, but Heather ignored her.

  “You told me yourself we have to be there by six,” Heather continued in her impassive, foghorn voice. “I’m sick of waiting. We have to go right now.”

  Mary Beth cupped her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “I said I’ll be right with you,” she whispered angrily. She glanced at her clients. Fortunately the young couple was absorbed in the ring binder of properties. They had turned back to the brick Colonial, and the wife was looking much more cheerful. On the phone, Mary Beth’s caller rattled on about rentals. Mary Beth nodded and turned away from her daughter’s cold gray gaze. Heather returned to the reception area and fell back into the chair with a thud. She glared straight ahead as Mary Beth got down to business.

  Frank Cameron, chief of the Taylorsville Police Department, shifted in his chair, looked at his watch, and shook his head in disgust. “I have work to do. I am a busy man. She knows I have a million things to do. She keeps me waiting on purpose.”

  “Heather?”

  “No, her mother,” Frank said scornfully.

  Dr. Larry Foreman poured himself his tenth cup of coffee for the day and offered one to the chief. He had late office hours two nights a week, and sometimes he ended up skipping dinner altogether. Coffee was his substitute for food.

  “Nah, I don’t touch it after the morning jolt,” said Frank. “One cup a day. That’s it for me. That stuff is terrible for your stomach lining. You know that, don’t you?”

  Dr. Foreman nodded and added sugar.

  “Now if you had a beer, I’d take you up on it,” said Frank.

  Dr. Foreman walked back around behind his desk, pausing to look admiringly at his reflection in the glass doors on the bookcase behind his desk. He looked good—the jogging had taken away that layer of fat. He looked especially good compared with the chief, whose white shirt and tie only drew attention to a stomach that protruded over his belt. Larry resumed his seat in his tufted leather swivel chair. After taking a sip, he placed the coffee carefully on a napkin. “Why do you think your wife would do that?”