FIVE
Because it was ten thirty, halfway between breakfast and lunch, EATS was almost empty. The early farmers and men and women on their way to work at the Dollar Store or the hospital were gone. Even the old guys group—with their own reserved tables—were out of there. Eugenia saw me, wiped her hands on the towel she had draped around her waist, and came away from the menu bulletin board she’d been working on. She sat down across from me in the booth, and asked first about Baby Jane and then about Deputy Dolly.
“You know, Emily”—Eugenia dipped that head of towering and sliding blond hair—“we all grouse about Dolly. And to tell the truth, she deserves it a lot of the time. But we don’t wish her bad luck. None of us do. Not even those guys who come in cussin’ her out ’cause she gave them a ticket for five miles over. That’s why I just don’t think it’s anybody from around here.”
I shrugged. “Lucky’s out talking to people . . .”
“He’s not going to find ’im in Leetsville. We’re not that kind. Nobody’s that bad—I don’t care how many fights some of us get into or how much somebody steals at the market. There’s nothing really bad in anybody around here. Just people tryin’ to make it in a tough, tough world. Sure nobody who’d hurt a baby.”
“You’ve had your share of murders . . .”
Eugenia waved a hand, blowing off the suggestion. “Not by us. They’re outsiders—one way or the other. Not us.”
I brought up the wedding, which seemed to be no surprise to Eugenia.
“’Bout time,” she sniffed. “Those two rutting around out there.”
I told her what Harry had in mind and that he didn’t have a lot of money.
“Can’t be on June second. My niece, down in Cadillac, is getting married. I’m going to that. Tell him the third’s better. That’ll be a Sunday.”
She thought awhile. “He want it catered someplace, or have it here?” Eugenia frowned. I could see she was running party menus through her head.
“Maybe at Delia’s house.”
“He wants me to bring the food out there?”
I nodded.
“What’s he got in mind?”
“Well, he says he’s got a freezer full of meat you could use . . .”
Eugenia threw back her head, tendrils of wild hair shivering around her face. She snorted. “You expect me to cook up meat with tire tread on it?”
“No, no . . .”
Eugenia slapped her hands on the table, bouncing my teacup. “Let me think about this. I’ll come up with something. How many, would you say?”
I shrugged.
“Probably the whole town,” she said. “Let’s make it a picnic. Got lots of hot dogs left over from yesterday. Froze ’em. So, that’s what we’ll do. A big blowout picnic. And soon. You tell him not to wait around the way he’s been doin’. . .”
Eugenia got up and went back to the bulletin board she’d been working on—striking off Sloppy Joes and inserting meat loaf. Gloria hurried over with another pot of hot water and dipped her head close to me to whisper, “Check out Donald Throes and his brother, Ralph. I heard them say they were going to fix that deputy, oh, maybe a couple of months ago. Sitting in here. Breakfast: fried eggs and white toast. You tell Dolly, okay?”
SIX
I nosed my Jeep in among the other cars parked in front of Dolly’s plain white house. I hurried up the front steps to stand outside the screened door and knock. A large terra-cotta pot on the top step still held a single washed-out plastic Poinsettia. Dolly’s stab at Christmas decorating back in December.
“Dolly!” I gave up knocking and called, hoping to be heard over the rumble of voices coming from the house.
Dolly came to the inside door and waved me in. “Come on. Ya gotta see Jane. She looks great. Everybody’s making over her. Kid’s gonna be spoiled.” Dolly smiled as broad a smile as I had ever seen on that little face. I followed in behind her, into a living room filled with talking and laughing townspeople.
Flora Coy, with her thick glasses and frizzed white hair, sat on Dolly’s shabby plaid couch holding a wide-eyed Baby Jane in her arms, the baby’s head snapped back and forth, watching and listening like a wise little owl. The thing with Baby Jane was that it wasn’t just that she was a pretty baby—with one of those pursed pink mouths and plump cheeks and bright little brown eyes—but she looked at you as if she knew you in a way you’d never know yourself, straight through to where nobody ever looked anymore. You couldn’t help but fall in love with Baby Jane. Maybe part of it was the aura of love Dolly cast around her. Hard not to see Jane through Dolly’s eyes. And hard not to wish the both of them the happiest lives people could ever have.
Cate Thomas sat beside Gloria, reaching over to straighten the large bow stuck on Jane’s almost bald head, then pushing back the epaulets on Jane’s tiny cop suit, a present from the men at the Michigan State Police Post in Gaylord. Cate’s lined face was drawn and pale. I imagined this was as tough on her as it had been on Dolly. I bent to beam down at Baby Jane, who looked up hard, thrashed her arms and legs, and made a cooing noise toward me. I would have picked her up but there was still something that scared me about holding a baby—any baby. It was like they had hooks attached that could grab on to a woman’s skin and then you couldn’t get loose afterward.
I nodded to Julie, the pretty blond from the post office, then the women from the beauty shop and the Dollar Store, all standing at one end of the living room. Chet, from the garage, stood under the high windows at the far side of the room along with men from the Feed and Seed and a couple of farmers. Churchwomen passed trays of homemade cookies and pieces of pie to the people standing around in little conversational knots.
I couldn’t help but wonder if any of the town’s businesses were open that Monday morning.
“Omar called. He’s comin’ over,” Dolly, standing beside me, leaned close to whisper.
I shot her a look and whispered back, “He has a right to . . .”
“Don’t tell me about ‘right.’” She poked me hard in the ribs, frowned one of her particularly fierce frowns, and directed me into the kitchen, where I dropped the stack of files I carried down to the edge of the white painted wooden table covered with plates of cookies I was soon forced, by the smiling bakers, to sample.
“I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you.” I leaned in close to Dolly when I could.
Dolly’s head snapped up. “They get ’im? The guy who hit my car?”
“No. But Lucky told me something . . .” I looked around the room. Two women near the sink were filling plates with fudge. “He thought maybe I should be the one . . .”
Dolly moved her shoulders back and forth, uncomfortable, then took a chair beside me so we could huddle.
“Over at Jack’s towing . . . sometime during the night.” I glanced at the women but they were talking and paying no attention to us. “Somebody put a note on your patrol car.”
Dolly sniffed. “What? It really was an accident? Insurance information? That it? Doesn’t seem right. I don’t care what they’re sayin’ now.”
I shook my head at her. “All the note said was: ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal.’”
Dolly reared back and looked hard at me. “What’s that supposed to mean: ‘steal’?”
I shrugged.
“Who’d I steal from? You think that was meant for me? Me—steal?”
I shrugged again then shook my head at a piece of coconut cake stuck under my nose.
“What kinda thing is that?” She sat back, perplexed. “‘Thou Shalt Not Steal.’ Sounds like some religious nut. Or maybe they got the wrong car . . .”
I made a face at her. “You think they were after some other Leetsville patrol car?”
She shrugged. “Could’ve been the chief. Maybe they thought I was him.”
“‘Thou Shalt Not Steal.’ You ever know the chief to be anything but on the up and up?”
She made a face, thought awhile, then shook her head. “Okay. So it’s me and somebody’s mad about something I did. Let’s get at the files and then get the hell out there and find this creep.”
I told her Lucky went out to see the Harpy boys, over toward Gaylord.
“Yeah, those Harpys. They said it right to my face—that I’d be sorry. They have a tendency to drink and smoke weed and then go out looking for trouble. They found it, coming into Leetsville, over to the Skunk. Tried to wreck the place. Swore they were going to get me—but that was the liquor talking. Everybody says that. We’ll see what Lucky finds out. Now, let’s get going. I’d say the Throes first. Out 131 toward Boyne Falls.”
SEVEN
The divided stack of files lay in Dolly’s lap. She went through them one by one as I drove because she didn’t have a car until Lucky Barnard made some arrangements to get her one.
She read each file carefully and then tried to put them into some kind of order, though they slipped, one by one, to the Jeep’s floor and she had to struggle to pick them up and by that time was spitting mad at me, the car, and anything else she could think of to be mad at.
“Don’t know what’s wrong with Cate. All of a sudden it’s such a big deal for her to watch Jane. Like she’s afraid something’s going to happen to her. Doesn’t make sense. Just for today, is what I told her. After this I’ll get somebody or take her to EATS. And on top of that, now she’s pushing that woman in France at me, like I’d ever want to hear from her.” She shook her head. “I don’t get it. So determined to write to her. Like she’s got this right to know I’ve got a baby. Like that would turn her around and she’d be the perfect grandmother and fly right back from that commune, or whatever she’s connected up with over there, and we’d all be so very happy together.”
She grunted. “Never going to happen. I told her, you want to go over there and see her, that’s fine with me. She’s your daughter, after all, and I understand now about having a daughter. But that person in France is no mother to me. She gave me away and nothing’s going to change that.”
“You ever think maybe she had a reason for giving you away?”
She gave me a dark look. “Like I was too ugly?”
“Don’t be a jerk. Like she couldn’t take care of you. Maybe she didn’t have any money. Maybe she didn’t have a place to live. What’s Cate ever said about her?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I asked her questions and she said all she knew was that Audrey Delores—middle name same as mine—signed papers giving up her rights to me and took off for France.”
“And where was Cate? Why didn’t your grandmother take you?”
“Says she didn’t even know Audrey was pregnant. She ran away from home when she was nineteen. Cate didn’t know anything about me until Eugenia started that genealogy business of hers and was looking for my relatives. She’s the one who found Cate and brought her up here as a surprise.” She made a sour face but changed it pretty quick. “Not that I’m not grateful. First person I ever belonged to—Cate. I’m glad to have her in my life, but I wished she’d stop this stuff about being afraid to watch Baby Jane.”
“She’ll get over it. Probably the accident scared her. You know, she realized what a responsibility a baby is.”
“Yeah, I hope so. ’Til she gets over it I’ll take Jane to EATS when I got to work. Eugenia don’t mind. Lots of women there to keep an eye on her. And women coming in all the time. Like one great big family. I don’t think Jane’s gonna be any the worse for being out with friends and neighbors all day long.”
I headed north on 131, through Mancelona. My cell rang a few times. Jackson Rinaldi. I ignored the calls and then shut off my phone. Whatever Jackson wanted badly enough to call me three times in a row was certain to be something I didn’t want to hear. I had enough with one difficult person on my hands.
After a while, Dolly grumbled, “My baby,” and shook her head. “Jane ever do anything to anybody? She’s four months old, for crap’s sake. Four months old! Even I didn’t get people going after me ’til I was almost seven.”
She bent over the top file, thumbing through a long rap sheet. “So these Throes guys said they were gonna ‘fix’ me, eh? That puts them at the top of my list. Ralph was blazing mad when I caught on to his acre of marijuana out beyond their place near Dead Man’s Hill. Donald got himself in the middle when I arrested Ralph and he served a little time, too. I did what I could for him but those guys don’t look at it that way. I don’t know what they’re complaining about. Both out of jail. I’m telling you, Emily, if these idiots are the ones who thought it was funny to wreck my patrol car, they’ll be doing the max this time. I swear it. Attempted murder. No easy prison camp. Up to Marquette.”
I knew the Throes brothers. More than once they’d figured into stories of local break-ins and a couple for bar fights. There was only one thing that made me think maybe the Throes couldn’t have possibly been involved. These two men, in their early forties, would never take the chance of wrecking a perfectly good 2006 Ford Escape. As far as I knew, neither one ever had a car younger than a 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis so, even stolen, that 2006 Ford was worth a lot to them. But not with a smashed-up front and everybody looking for just that kind of vehicle. The Throes brothers were maybe short in the morals department, but they weren’t stupid and, if I remembered right, they weren’t that bad as criminals went.
I turned left at Whiskey Road, just past Dead Man’s Hill. We bounced along a two-track into the woods and then down a worse two-track with high weeds already growing down the middle. The clearing around their small trailer bloomed with the rusted bodies of old Fords, a few tires melting into the earth but planted with pansies, and a square plot of earth freshly turned to plant a garden. At one end of the garden a row of daffodils bloomed.
Odd. Somehow daffodils and pansies didn’t sit in my mouth with the Throes name.
The trailer sat back behind a chicken coop, a couple of unpainted barns, and one bulging shed with two-by-fours nailed across the front to hold the doors shut.
Donald and Ralph Throes. When they were sober, I liked them. Backwoods born and bred. The kind of guys who weren’t comfortable around women, unless it was a woman they met in a bar who was twice as drunk as they were. When I talked to them, the time the
Statesman
asked me to follow a story on a woman missing from the Pot Licker Tavern in Alba, they called me “ma’am” and nodded at almost everything I asked, except knowing where the woman got to and then “Swearing to God, me and Ralph, here, don’t know nothing about it.”
It turned out they were right. The woman woke up down in Detroit, in the front seat of a traveling salesman’s car, and called her husband to tell him she was sorry and wanted to come back home.
So I had nothing against the Throes and decided I’d stay neutral until we had more evidence: like a black SUV with a ruined front peeking out from that nailed shut shed, which I was determined to take a look at while Dolly talked to the men.