“No, it isn’t that.” He looked up and tried a smile. “You see, Audrey is as free as any other citizen. The court granted her freedom, having been adjudged mentally capable of fully functioning out of a hospital setting. And I’m afraid she’s exercised that freedom. Audrey left the facility a few weeks ago.”
“Where is she now?” I asked before Dolly could make a sound.
He shook his head. “That seems to be the problem. Nobody at the house knows where she went.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The next shock was in the letters from Cate to Audrey. Happy letters at first. Cate had found a good home up in northwest Michigan, I read to Dolly. And—joy of all joys—she was with a family member. Pretty little place called Leetsville. Nice people. Cate just knew Audrey would love it there, if she could ever visit. And more happy news to come, one letter said. But that was for later letters, Cate wrote. Something Audrey would be so pleased to hear.
At first there was no mention of Dolly. I opened two succeeding letters but the person who had to be Dolly was only mentioned as “family.” As in: “So nice to have family,” “I never thought I’d have family around me again,” “You’d be so pleased to be with family like I am.”
I opened another letter, written just that past January. How happy Audrey would be to know the “family member” Cate was staying with was about to have a baby. She went on to say how thrilled they all were, preparing, talking about painting the nursery. She described the nursery, and the changing table they found at a resale shop and painted white, and the darling little crib, and the pretty curtains.
When I opened the next envelope and drew out the letter a small, wallet-sized picture fell into my lap. Dolly reached over and picked up the photo. There was a slight intake of breath, then she held the picture out to me. It was one I knew well. Baby Jane’s hospital picture: a little girl with a scrunched-up face and a striped knit hat on her head. Maybe not Jane’s best photo to date, but precious since it was her first.
“Why’d she send this to Audrey?” Dolly demanded, nodding fiercely for me to read on.
“Er . . . uh . . .” I read but my brain wanted to censor what was on the page. There seemed to be something of treachery in Cate’s words; or maybe these were the naïve words of a mother imagining a whole different future than the one that would be. “She says . . . uh . . . ‘You’ll be so happy to know the child in the picture is your granddaughter. What I haven’t told you the truth about yet is that I’m living with Dolly, your own little girl. This is Dolly’s baby. If you could only see her. A lot like you, I think. Everybody says she’s a beautiful baby. Just like you were, my sweet little Delores, my own little Dolly. To celebrate her birth, I’ve sent you a present. You should get it in a couple of days . . .’”
She went on to describe going to the post office and taking the baby with her and how the ladies there made over Jane. And then she closed with a caution to please write her just one letter, let her know, this time, that she’d received the gift. “I know you’ll like it. Same as always, only a lot more. And, baby girl, maybe I could bring our Jane to see you, if you let me. If you’d only answer one of my letters. I need that before you could ever come here. You know, I said you’d love it here. But first I need a sign from you, Audrey. Something. Just a sign.”
The next letter implored Audrey to let her know if she’d received the jellybeans and to maybe let her know if it was okay to visit.
Dolly said nothing in the man’s office, only thanked him for his help and hoped she could call with more questions, if she had any. He agreed and waved us out, saying he hoped we’d find Audrey and that she was still doing well.
I drove while Dolly sat like a knot beside me. At one point she covered her face with her hands. Another time she hit the dashboard with her fist. I jumped a good foot and worried about the trip home, after stopping at that halfway house, with this wound-up, angry Dolly Wakowski. Three hours of misery ahead and who knew what I’d be pressed into next—hunting for Audrey Thomas somewhere in Michigan, or maybe another state by now.
I practiced answers about work I had to get done, about stories for Bill, about turning the whole thing over to the Michigan State Police because I was already thinking that what was going on was beyond Dolly’s capabilities, or maybe even beyond her emotional courage—looking for her mother.
“Maybe I’m just like her,” Dolly said after a while. Her small face was morose. “Maybe I’m my mother all over again. I bring this stuff on myself and the people I love.”
“Dolly.” It was hard to see my odd little friend going through something so terrible. “Your mother is the tragedy. Not you,” I said.
She was quiet awhile, thinking that over. “So, is she my enemy?” Dolly finally asked as I turned down a narrow Kalamazoo side street and parked in front of the address the director had given us. “What else can I think, Emily? Even the jellybeans. What else can it mean?”
I shrugged. Who knew if Audrey had any part in all of this? Jellybeans. Almost silly—to think they defined a murderer. Who knew if the poor woman wasn’t simply gone again? This time not to France, and not into mental illness, but into the big wilderness that was the United States of America.
“Cate was proud of Jane. Didn’t you get that from the letter?” she asked after a long while.
I agreed wholeheartedly and happily. Cate was certainly proud of Jane.
“Me, too,” she said. “Proud of my baby. But you know what else, Emily? I’m proud of me. I’m a good mother, don’t you think? I mean, look what I came from.”
I smiled as wide as I could smile. “You are the very best, Dolly. The absolute best in the world.”
“I didn’t have a man either. Like my mother. Not then. Did it all myself and held it together.”
“You certainly have held it all together.”
Her voice dropped when she spoke again. “Audrey didn’t have nobody. Audrey didn’t have hope. I can see how that could break a woman. I can see . . .”
“Me, too,” I agreed gratefully. There was something new in Dolly’s voice. Something I’d never heard there before. Pity. And in Dolly Wakowski’s mouth pity sounded like a benediction, like a blessing in a church: forgiving, accepting, and . . . when I thought about it . . . knowing.
“Trying to drown me,” she went on. “That could have been an act of love, you look at it one way.”
I nodded, afraid to speak.
“Trying to save me from what was happening to her.”
“And she paid with her life—all those years locked away in . . . that place.”
Dolly sniffed hard a time or two. “Come on. Let’s go on in here.” She nodded to the house where we’d stopped. “Let’s see if we can find out where she went to and then . . .”
“Yes?”
“Then we’ll go get her.”
“What happens after that, Dolly?”
She thought awhile. “When I see her I’m gonna tell her it’s okay, what happened. It’s okay and I’m glad she’s my mother.”
“But Dolly,” I couldn’t stop myself. “She still could be the one who killed Cate.”
Dolly thought then shook her head. “She wouldn’t have done that. Not her own mother. That black jellybean in the house had to be from some Cate kept for herself. Maybe stuck a handful in her pocket.”
“And the car at the cemetery?”
She thought again and turned a terrible face to me. “I don’t know, Emily. Stop asking questions. All I know is that my mother’s out there somewhere and she needs me.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
An overweight young woman answered the door of the ordinary house.
“Audrey?” she said when Dolly told her what we’d come about. “She wasn’t here that long. Maybe a week. I think she left with Maisie Flanders from Grand Rapids. The two of them got to be friends pretty fast and Audrey was gone without a word right after Maisie left.”
“Did Audrey have a car of her own?” I asked.
The young woman made a face at me, the kind of face that usually says “Duh.” She didn’t say it but still made it clear I had to be dense. “After as long as Audrey was in that hospital? I’d guess not.”
“Did you help her relearn how to drive?”
“That’s one thing they do here, among other things. But she didn’t have a license yet. I mean, geez, she’s old. Who wants her out on the streets?”
All I could think was fifty-three’s not old but I didn’t say anything. I just held it against the girl.
“Could I have the address in Grand Rapids?” Dolly asked, keeping her words nice and evenly spaced.
The young woman left us on the doorstep while she went back into the house. She came back with a torn sheet of paper in her hand. She gave the paper to Dolly. “To tell the truth, none of us here thought Audrey was ready to go off on her own like that. I mean, all those years kept away from people. Just trying to show her how to use a computer was like taking her into a whole different world. We went to one site where you have to put your information in before they’ll let you on and she looked stunned, didn’t want to do it. Like somebody was stealing something from her. Maisie was more patient than the rest of us with Audrey. They knew each other from the hospital. Maisie was good to her. Patient, you know. She was going through the same thing. Only not as bad. Sometimes the two of them would be there, in the living room, talking away about this and that and laughing their heads off. More like teenagers than grown women but that’s how it goes sometimes. We all need to go back to who we were when we were well last. That’s what my doctor says. Then we kind of catch up with the world we missed out on.”
We thanked her and left, Dolly holding tight to the next piece of her puzzle.
I checked my watch. Three o’clock. “A shame to drive right through Grand Rapids and not stop at this Maisie Flanders’s house.” I hesitated. “I wouldn’t blame you if you’d had about all you can take for one day. We could come back tomorrow. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep . . .”
She looked over at me as if I was nuts.
“Yeah, we’re going to go on by and Audrey could be at this woman’s house right now.”
“You want to meet her, don’t you?”
She nodded. “She’s . . . kind of real to me for the first time in my life. I understand a lot of things.”
I pulled over to bring up directions on my iPhone then turned toward Rose Street as Dolly called Eugenia.
Maisie Flanders answered the door to a blue house on Rose Street. She was young. Maybe my age, thirty-four, and dressed in neatly ironed blue cotton blouse and slacks. She looked from me to Dolly, large-eyed and wary.
“Yes?” she said through the screen door.
Dolly explained that we were looking for Audrey Thomas. “We were told she left a facility in Kalamazoo with you.”
The young woman frowned at Dolly then thought hard. “Well . . .” she began. “Actually she did come home with me but she was only here for a few days. She took off without a word. She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Dolly asked, her voice impatient. “Gone where?”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought she’d stay. You know, get on her feet. She was in Oakwood a long, long time. I was only there for a couple of months.”
“She didn’t tell you where she might be headed?”
“Nothing.”
“Anybody pick her up?”
“Not that I know of. I just got up that morning—you know, and she wasn’t anywhere.”
“Did she ever mention other places in Michigan she’d like to get to?”
She shook her head again. “Not that I can remember. All she kept saying was that she had family somewhere up north. I never listened where exactly.”
“Did she have access to a car? Did you lend her one?”
“I don’t have a car to lend to anybody.” She made an impatient gesture toward Dolly.
“What about money? Did you give her any?”
The woman lowered her head to look hard at her hands. “No. I don’t have money just like I don’t have a car.”
“Did anyone in your house give her money at any time?” I asked, hoping to catch her in a lie or whatever it was that was bothering her.
She shook her head fast then stopped and put an index finger to her bottom lip. “I don’t like to say anything bad. Audrey was like a real friend to me at Oakwood. I mean, we shared a room.”
“And?” Dolly prodded.
“Well, after she left, my mother said she was missing sixty dollars from her purse. Neither one of us liked to think Audrey would do us that way, but Mom just can’t figure where the money got to. So, maybe she did steal from us. Maybe not. I just wish her good luck out there. If you find her, tell her that. Maisie sends her best.”
On the long drive back to Leetsville all I could suggest was calling Audrey’s doctor back at the hospital. Maybe the doctor knew more than we did. Something from therapy—but maybe there was a doctor-patient privilege that covered it. How did a woman disappear after being confined for thirty-three years?
I thought hard. If I were Audrey Thomas where would I go? Who would I want to see?
The only thing that came to me was a line from Cate’s letter . . .
You’ll be so happy to know the child in the picture is your granddaughter.
THIRTY-NINE
We were barely north of Cadillac when Lucky called my cell.
“Emily?” he demanded in that deep “cop” voice he used when he was on official business. “Don’t let Dolly know it’s me, okay? You two have got to get back up here as fast as you can.”
I cleared my throat and glanced over at Dolly, who had her head against the seat. Her eyes were closed.
“What’s up?” I asked, keeping my voice light.
“There’s been an . . . incident at Eugenia’s house.”
“Really?”
“A woman Eugenia’d never seen before came by a while ago.”
“Okay.” I drew out the word.
“She said Dolly called her and asked her to come help Eugenia with the baby.” He hesitated. “Eugenia let her in but then she said things didn’t smell right to her.”
“So?”
“The woman played with the baby for a while then picked her up and headed for the door. The only thing that stopped her getting outside was Flora Coy coming in. Flora saw something was wrong and grabbed the baby right outta the woman’s arms. Said she just pretended to make over Jane, hugging her and cooing at her. Well, you know how Cora can get. Flighty as those birds of hers. Eugenia started asking the woman how she knew Dolly and the woman stopped saying a single word. Eugenia said the woman stood there big-eyed for a little while then turned and ran out of the house. I came right over when she called, but I figure Dolly’d better get up here as soon as she can.”
“Maybe an hour and a half yet,” I said then looked over as Dolly stirred, opened her eyes, and turned toward me.
“What’s going on?” she asked sleepily at first then snapped awake, sat up straight, chin out, demanding an answer.
“Tell her,” Lucky said. “She’s got to know what’s happened here.”
“You tell her,” I said and thrust the phone at Dolly’s face. News like this had to come directly from him.
Dolly listened, muttered a curse under her breath, hung up and said only, “Get us home, Emily. I’ll handle any cops that stop us for speeding.”
• • •
Eugenia’s house, a ranch house on fifteen acres not far out of town, was buzzing with most of the waitresses from EATS as well as a lot of people from town, those with police scanners who’d heard the call come in and headed right over to protect Baby Jane.
Dolly grabbed a surprised and happy Jane into her arms and held on tight as Jane leaned back to take her mother’s face in, then smiled a wid
e, gummy smile and wiggled from one end to the other. Dolly buried her face in Jane’s shoulder. She made her way through the exclaiming women to where Lucky stood against one wall talking with Officer Omar Winston, whose face was as stricken as Dolly’s.
Omar turned to Dolly and put a hand out. “Don’t worry. We’re gonna get her. Thank God for that woman,” he said as he nodded to where Flora Coy stood among the others. “She stopped her.”
Dolly nodded. I was behind them, hoping to get information for a story I promised Bill I’d get to him as soon as we hit town.
“Anybody give you a description? Or see the car she left in?” Dolly asked everyone in general.
“Seems the women were too shocked,” Omar put in. “Eugenia said she had straight hair, blue eyes, a red shirt. And one of the waitresses—Gloria, is that her name? She said she ran out on the porch and thought she saw the woman run off into the trees. She didn’t hear a car.”
Dolly nodded. “People patrolling the streets?” she asked Lucky.
“Everybody in town who’s not here. Walking. Driving around. Using those lights they say they never use to shine deer.”
“APB on that car stolen out in Norwood?”
He nodded. “Still in effect. Got the whole state covered. If she’s on the road in that vehicle, we’ll have her quick enough.”
Omar reached out to take Dolly’s hand. She brushed him aside.
“Dolly,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t leave Jane with my mother. Just wanted you to know that. If this woman’s following you, my mother would have been there alone with Jane. A lot safer here.”
“Not safe enough. I’ve got to—”
“You and Jane come home with me tonight,” I said quickly. “We can take turns staying up and keeping watch. This is all about Jane. We’ve got to protect her.”
“She called your house once. Wouldn’t trust your place.”
“I’m not listed. All she got was a phone number—could have gotten that from the paper. But they never give out addresses. Honestly, Dolly, I think the best bet is for us to stick together from here on in.”
Omar turned his unbendable body toward me and gave a curt nod. “I know Dolly won’t go anywhere until we find this person, but it might be best if she and Jane came to Gaylord and stayed with us for a day or two. Nobody would find her there . . .”
Dolly reared back. “You two talk like I’m out of this. Like I’m supposed to lay low and sit in a corner shivering. Not on your life. I appreciate that you care about Jane, and even me, Omar. But nobody knows this country the way I do. I’m gonna be at the middle of everything until she’s caught.”
Omar sputtered but calmed down quickly as Dolly fixed him with one long, steady look.
She turned to me. “So it’s your house and that big vicious dog of yours. I got my gun . . .” She patted her holster.
“I’ve got my computer. I can always throw it.”
“Yeah. How about your neighbor, Harry? Think he’d bring over those hounds of his? They’d scare anybody away.”
“What about asking Harry, himself, to come over?”
“That old codger? Geez.” She cracked a smile. “I guess so. We could set him up in the window with a shotgun. You think Delia would mind? Him spending the night with two women?”
“Bet she’d bake us a cake. Harry off her hands for a little while!”
She had a short conference with Lucky, who promised to call her all night long, if necessary, with anything that came in. I reached Bill at home, warning him I was sending the story from my iPhone and that there were photographs along with it. One picture of the heroine, Flora Coy, and one of Eugenia, who’d taken fifteen minutes brushing her hair into a remarkable up-do before she let me take it.
We packed Jane’s stuff—yet one more time—thanked everybody for their support, and headed home to man the barricades and face whatever Sorrow had thought to present me with in the way of retribution for hours of confinement. I couldn’t help but think maybe I should potty train my dog. I’d seen a TV show once that claimed it was easy to do.