Although I was now splitting my time between painting the great cats, and working on the front parlor, I did not give up my intention to pay some serious attention to my search for my mother.
Domingo’s father had not known anything about the women who had worked in Phineas House in my mother’s day. Like me, he had recalled them as always being there. No, they had not lived in the carriage house, nor had there been another building on the grounds. I began to think that at least one of the rooms I had dismissed as an unused guest room must have been servant’s quarters, and that any sign of its former inhabitants had been tidied away with the same meticulous attention that had left the kitchen free of grease and dirt.
Although this seemed to be a dead end, I still had several names. I was disappointed to learn that the chief of police who had put himself in charge of the investigation into my mother’s death, had himself died since.
“Forty years, Mira,” I said to my reflection one evening as I was scrubbing off the day’s accumulated grime. “See if you can find out who else was on the force then. See if any of them were close to the chief and would have assisted him.”
I bit into my thumbnail, uncertain how to do this. Then it occurred to me that the newspaper morgues might help. In a small town like this—like the one I’d grown up in—it was more usual for assisting officers to get some sort of credit. Thinking about the newspaper gave me insight into another avenue I might explore—the newspaper’s own reporters. As with the police chief, the older ones might be dead, but the younger ones could still be around.
There was another reason I liked the idea of talking to a reporter. It seemed much less likely that a reporter would have been feeding information to the mysterious trustees. After all, a reporter made his living and reputation by publicly sharing information. Sitting on the details of a hot story would be a lot less attractive.
With these resolutions in mind—and with the need to purchase more furniture polish, soap, glass cleaner, and half-a-dozen other items as good reason for leaving Phineas House, I told Domingo I was going shopping, and would probably be gone for a bit. The map Mrs. Morales had given me showed the location of the Carnegie Library. There I figured I could fill in the rest.
The library did have the
Las Vegas Optic
on file, and I picked a corner and delved into facsimiles of old newspapers. Intent as I was on my quest, I had to keep dragging myself back on course. There were so many fascinating bits of trivia, windows into a time and place about which I was coming to realize just how little I knew.
On the other hand, I had only been nine when my mother had vanished. How much would I have known—or if known—cared about local events? I’d barely cared when J.F.K. had been assassinated a couple years later. I knew it was a big deal, but mostly I enjoyed the holiday from school as a chance to play with friends and indulge in an orgy of painting.
My research paid off by giving me several names, both of police officers whose names seemed to show up on a regular basis in association with the police chief, and of a reporter who, after the first hue and cry of my mother’s disappearance had ended, seemed to be doing the majority of the follow-up reporting.
I had vague memories of the reporter at least. He’d been youngish, slim and wiry, with brushed-back brown hair. His left jacket pocket had always contained a small tin stocked with brightly colored hard candy. When I remembered him I again tasted a particular raspberry flavor and felt the lumpy texture of the candy in my mouth, the slight ooze of the soft center when I broke through the outer shell.
Unlike many of those who had asked me questions over those troubling days, Mr. O’Reilly seemed genuinely to listen to my answers. He’d also been the one who had interviewed Mrs. Ramsbottom, my former tutor, and recorded her scathing assessments of Colette for posterity.
My heart beat rather erratically when I cross-referenced his name the local telephone directory and found it listed: Chilton O’Reilly. I wrote down the number and stared at it. Unlike Domingo, I didn’t have a cell phone, so I couldn’t follow my immediate impulse to make the call. By the time I got home and unloaded my supplies, I was so nervous that my hand shook when I picked up the phone and punched in the numbers.
“Hello?”
The voice was young and strong, and my heart sank within me. A son. The name probably belonged to a son.
“May I speak with Chilton O’Reilly?”
“Speaking.”
“I was actually hoping to speak with Chilton O’Reilly, who reported for the
Optic,
” I said, hearing myself sound very tentative. I added for clarification, “Could you help me locate him?”
Please
,
please, please, don’t let him be dead,
I prayed silently to who knows who.
“That would be my grandfather,” Chilton the Younger said. “One moment.”
My heart rose back to its normal place within me, but I remained nervous. After what seemed like an eternity, a voice very like that of the younger man, but with a more polished diction, said, “Yes. This is Chilton O’Reilly.”
“Mr. O’Reilly,” I said. “This is Mira Fenn, that is, when you knew me I was Mira Bogatyr.”
There was deep sigh from the other end of the line, as if breath that had been held these forty years had finally been released.
“Good to hear from you again, Ms. Fenn.” He spoke the modern neutral abbreviation as if it came hard to his lips. “What may I do for you?”
“I was wondering if we might meet. I’m trying to learn what I can about when my mother disappeared.”
“She never returned, then?”
“No.”
I felt that blunt monosyllable had given away far more than I had intended, and heard that knowledge in Mr. O’Reilly’s reply.
“Why don’t you come over to my house? I have some files here, I think, and it would be more private than a restaurant. I assume your return isn’t widely known?”
I knew my voice must sound puzzled when I replied, “I haven’t exactly hidden it.”
“But no one from the paper has come by to interview you?”
“No, no one.”
“Well, it’s a very old story, and I don’t suppose anyone there even remembers it now. Where are you residing?”
“Phineas House.”
“I see.”
“When would be convenient for you, Mr. O’Reilly?”
“Can you come by tomorrow midmorning? I would like time to pull the files and refresh my memory.”
Somehow, I didn’t believe he needed to refresh his memory at all, but I couldn’t disagree that it might take time to locate files from a story forty years gone.
“That sounds great,” I said. “Can you give me directions?”
He did, and we rang off with mutual assertions that it would be interesting to see each other again after so long.
The next morning, I spent a couple hours working on the tigers around the window. Their stripes were intricately carved, and I found they took even more attention than had the rosettes on the leopards’ coats. As requested, young Enrico stirred me from my painter’s trance in time for me to shower and dress for my appointment.
New Mexico throve on informality, but I decided that this visit merited dressing up. Mr. O’Reilly had sounded just a bit old-fashioned. I chose a watered-silk skirt in blues and purples that swept my ankles and made stockings unnecessary, a pale blue blouse, and a contrasting rope of glass beads that I had strung from various scrounging finds. I finished the ensemble with comfortable sandals, and a pair of fused glass earrings. It was an outfit I liked a great deal, and in which I was psychologically as well as physically comfortable.
So girded and armed for battle, I mounted my red pickup, waved to my painting crew, and drove to Chilton O’Reilly’s house.
His neighborhood was not as old as mine, but it showed signs of long occupancy. The tile numbers for his house were hung on an adobe curtain wall spilling over with silverlace, a vine in which clusters of minute white flowers mingled with dark green leaves. The gate in the wall curved gracefully, and the flagstone walkway echoed that curve. The house itself was Territorial style, a blending of the Spanish adobe with the columned porches brought in by later settlers. It was an attractive house, but not in the least ostentatious.
In the lines of the man who opened the door when I rang the bell I could just recognize the young reporter of my memory. He was still wiry, but thin rather than lean. His posture was slightly stooped. His hair was a duller brown touched with grey, but he wore it in a similar fashion. The eyes behind glasses that I did not remember remained lively, but the color had paled from a medium brown to something closer to grey.
We stood for a moment while our memories adjusted themselves to reality. Then Mr. O’Reilly stepped back and opened the door wider to admit me.
“Ms. Fenn,” he said, and without the distortion of the telephone I was paradoxically more aware of the changes in its timber, even as I heard its similarities to the voice I remembered.
“Please,” I said, stepping over the threshold and into a cool, shadowed entry hall. “Call me Mira.”
“Then you must call me Chilton,” he said.
“It’s an interesting name,” I said.
“I have always thought so,” he agreed, leading me back through the house. “I liked how it looked on bylines. My son seems to agree. He passed it on to his son. That was who you spoke with, by the way. My grandson, Chiltie.”
“Chiltie?”
Mr. O’Reilly was leading me into the kitchen.
“He goes by Chilton, just as I do. His father is Chilt. It gets confusing, especially since my grandson came to live here, so my wife and I have permission to call him Chiltie—just as long as we don’t do it in front of any of his friends. Chiltie’s going to Highlands University. The arrangement works for everyone. My wife and I have been rattling around in this sprawling place. Chiltie has a section pretty much to himself, and having him here adds some liveliness. Meanwhile, his family is spared paying for a dorm room, and Chiltie doesn’t have to commute from Albuquerque.”
He took a deep breath, then continued right on talking, “Can I offer you anything? I just made coffee, but there’s tea, lemonade, sodas …”
“Coffee would be great,” I said. As always after a painting session I felt unaccountably drowsy.
“Two coffees, then.” Chilton poured. After we’d done the usual routine of “Milk? Sugar? Sweetener?” he said, “I thought we’d go into my office. It’s reasonably tidy.”
“Are you still working as a reporter?” I asked.
“On and off,” he said. “Not full time. Maggie—that’s my wife—asked me to retire to part time so we could travel. We’re comfortable enough. This house is bought and paid for, bought it when real estate was bottomed out. After I retired, we rapidly found we got along a whole lot better if we had some outside interests. She teaches a few courses up at the university, and I cover a few stories. We’re just back from Greece. That’s why I didn’t know if your return had been covered.”
“I see.”
Chilton’s office was a pleasant, cluttered, book-lined room, in which I could detect the evidence of some hasty housekeeping—probably in my honor. His desk sported both a very modern desktop computer, and a typewriter. From the faint film of dust on the typewriter keys, I could tell which got more use.
I was offered a seat in a chair I was willing to bet had been buried under one of the stacks of books now resting on the floor. Chilton moved automatically for the chair behind his desk, then stopped.
“Go ahead,” I said. “You won’t make me feel like I’m being grilled by the principal.”
“Principal?” he said, settling into his chair. “So you’re a teacher?”
“Art teacher,” I said. “Grammar school, in Ohio.” I heard my own words with a certain amount of surprise. Not long ago I would have said “back home in Ohio.” “I’ve taken a leave of absence to deal with things here.”
“Things? You mean finding your mother?”
“That and Phineas House. You see, until about three months ago, I didn’t even know I still owned it.”
Chilton’s eyebrows rose in eloquent inquiry, and I hastened to explain. When I finished giving him all the details, up to and including Aunt May and Uncle Stan’s deaths, and how I’d learned then I still owned the house, I nearly went on to tell him about Aunt May’s journals. I didn’t though. Those were between her and me.
“So,” I concluded, “I decided that if I was going to be in town anyhow, I might as well see if I could learn anything more about my mother.”
“Even if you find her,” Chilton said, “she won’t replace the mother you just lost. You know that, don’t you?”
I nodded, and heard myself talking. There was something about this man that encouraged confidences. I bet he’d been a great reporter.
“I certainly don’t think my mother—Colette—could replace Aunt May. I’m not even sure why I want to find her. Maybe I just want a chance to ask her why she left me. Maybe I want to give her a chance to justify herself. Maybe I want a chance to yell at her for what she did. I don’t know.”