As soon as she was alone in the comforting tangle of the forest, she slowed her pace, looking to see what spring wildflowers were visible. Sarvis had bloomed at home, as well as rue anemone, bluet, and spring beauty. It was almost the season for redbud and dogwood, and maybe there would be creamy spikes of bloodroot, which she rarely saw in her own woods.
She lost track of time as she strolled along, soaking up the peace that nature’s quiet acceptance of life always brought to her. She watched a tortoise making its way through a tiny forest of beginning May apples and smiled at a pair of chickadees flirting among green buds.
At the edge of a deep hollow she stopped, looking down at wisps of ground fog that were beginning to float among the ghostly cedar trees below her. She left the path to sit on a large rock, shutting her eyes, listening to bird chatter. She heard no human sounds from either the town or Folk Center. The rest of the world could be a million miles away.
But it wasn’t. Behind the crisp bird notes, the sliding, sad music came again, floating like the ground fog. Yes, something strummed, and now she recognized the melody, since she’d heard it dozens of times on Henry’s car radio. It was “Lying to Strangers,” a folk song that had become a theme for Chase and Tracy. Someone was playing the tune on what sounded like a mountain dulcimer, creating music both eerie and beautiful. It seemed a part of the breeze that was beginning to shush above her in the treetops. Carrie opened her eyes and looked around. The notes came from no direction. It was impossible to decide their source.
Then, just like before, the music stopped as suddenly as it had begun. She continued to sit, this time enjoying the melody’s memory on the slow breeze.
Movement caught her eye, and she looked down in the hollow. The form of a woman was just visible through wisps of fog. The musician?
The ghostly shape began climbing the hill without effort or noise. Carrie stood, ready to hurry back toward the lodge. No. How silly to be afraid. This must be one of the Folk Center workers, someone else enjoying the afternoon.
So Carrie stayed where she was and watched the woman climb. She was wrapped in black from bonnet and shawl to long skirt and boots. When she was about ten yards away, Carrie called out “Hello” and was surprised that her voice shook.
The woman looked up, stared for a moment, and then turned away to head back down the hill. After taking two steps, she hesitated, swung around, glanced back toward Carrie, and began climbing again without speaking.
She halted when she reached the path, and Carrie saw a face that was tiny and wrinkled, with a pointed chin. It looked like the woman had few teeth, and she wore no make up, but her black eyes were lively and sharp. This apparition might be a hundred years old, but she walked as quietly as a ghost.
Carrie felt a chill, wiggled her shoulders to dispel it, and told herself again that it was silly to be afraid.
“Isn’t it a lovely afternoon?” she said.
The stranger scowled, and the sparkle faded from eyes that now looked storm dark.
“Beware,” she said in a whisper that was almost a hiss, “beware the gowerow. The gowerow has stolen the child.”
Carrie stared. “What? What did you say?”
“The gowerow has stolen the child,” hissed the woman.
“What child? What’s a gowerow? What on earth do you mean? Tell me...”
There was a noise behind Carrie, and the woman looked toward it. Then, silently as she had come, she rushed off, following the path deeper into the woods and ignoring Carrie’s cry of “Wait!”
As the long dress swirled out of sight, Carrie imagined she heard a whisper floating back to her, light as the breeze that had brought the music: “Beware, beware the gowerow...”
Carrie stood in stunned silence for a moment before she heard other, more normal, voices. She turned to see two Chamber of Commerce speakers she recognized from the morning session coming toward her along the path.
“Did you see that woman?” she asked.
Their quick look around and blank “no” answers left Carrie quite alone in her memory of the woman in black and her words, so she changed the subject and, after making a few polite comments about their presentations that morning, headed back toward her cabin. It was time to shower and change for dinner.
Well! When she got home she’d ask her neighbors, Roger and Shirley Booth, what on earth a gowerow was. Must be some folk tale character. This was, after all, deep in the Ozarks where such tales were born.
Roger and Shirley would know. Their families had been in the Ozarks for more than a hundred and fifty years.
But... a child? Why had this total stranger mentioned a child? It hadn’t sounded like a joke. Carrie shook her head to dislodge the eerie memory. The woman must be what Shirley called “tetched in the head.”
When Carrie reached the clearing, she saw that people were beginning to come out of the cabins, and they were dressed for dinner. She’d better hurry if she was going to catch up.
Only a few stragglers were still finding seats when Carrie arrived at the convention dining area, and she was glad she’d worn her blue dress instead of the stand-out red.
She slid between tables and was dropping into a single vacant chair near the back when she heard her name.
Oh, bother! There was Beth at a front table, waving an arm and pointing to the empty seat next to her.
Nothing to do but smile and walk past the seated diners to the front of the room. Maybe the ones who didn’t know her would think she was some late-arriving dignitary, though she knew quite well she didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a dignitary.
Beth was whispering frantically before Carrie’s behind hit the chair bottom.
“Carrie, Chase and Tracy haven’t shown up yet! We’ve called his mother’s number and no one answered, and that was
ages
ago! They were supposed to be here early to rehearse.”
She pointed to four vacant chairs at the head table. “And,” she finished, stating the obvious, “they weren’t. The director asked if I could find out what happened and says if they aren’t here soon we’ll have to begin without them. I hate sitting here doing nothing but worrying, but I’m supposed to stay with the men from the auto club.”
Carrie looked at the two empty chairs across the table and turned back to Beth, who whispered, “Well, I can’t exactly go with them to the men’s room, now can I? Come on, think of something! They’ll be back any minute.”
“Where does the mother live?” Carrie asked. “Is it very far from here?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Beth said, shaking her bottle-blond curls, “but I remember hearing that the Masons lived out in the country. Do you suppose you could notify someone, Folk Center officials, or...”
She paused and glowered toward the man seated at the center of the head table.
“Darn it—excuse me, Carrie—but I’m getting stuck with this. The director came over, said he had the convention dinner to manage, and would I please find someone to check on the Masons since, of course, he didn’t want me to go off and leave the auto club men without their host.”
“It is an honor to be selected as a host,” Carrie said, feeling a twinge of jealousy, even though she knew she’d have hated the assignment.
“Well, maybe, but I feel more like their chaperone if you want to know. Last night they listened to musicians on the square downtown until all hours. They kept singing along like they knew what they were doing, and neither of them can carry a tune in a basket. I could have died of embarrassment. Oh, look, there they come, talking their way across the room as usual. Quick, Carrie, what can we do?”
A tingle of excitement was already beginning to bounce along Carrie’s backbone. Here was a challenge, a mystery. She thought back to JoAnne and Amos’ deaths and how she...well, she and Henry...had discovered who killed them. There had been danger and some really awful moments, though to be honest, she’d brought those on by just being stupid. It would never happen again.
The mystery that delayed the Masons would probably turn out to be nothing more than a flat tire, but at least she might have a chance to meet them and tell Henry what they were really like.
Oh, phooey, Henry should be here. She pictured her large, comfortable room and its two beds.
“Carrie, why on earth are you smiling
now
?” Beth asked, looking grumpy. “This is serious, aren’t you paying attention?”
“Of course I am.” Carrie thought for a moment longer, then whispered, “I’ll go see what I can find out, but be sure they leave food for me. I don’t want to miss dinner. Are there speeches?”
“The director, and you know he’s good for at least twenty minutes. There’ll be an invocation and comments by the head of the Folk Center. You have about forty minutes.”
Carrie had already spotted baskets of cornbread and plates of butter along the center of the table, as well as bowls of Peach and Apple Chunky. She reached for a piece of corn bread, buttered it, plopped on a generous amount of Peach Chunky, and, realizing it was going to drip, wrapped the sticky mass in her napkin. Pushing the napkin in her purse, she smiled sweetly at a woman who was staring at her, then got up and left the room.
She stopped at the cash register in the public dining room and asked the hostess if anyone there knew Aunt Brigid Mason, Chase, or Tracy.
“Goodness, I don’t,” said the hostess, who looked about sixteen in her long calico dress and ruffled pinafore, “except I’ve seen them perform. Haven’t they come yet? Some other lady was looking for them a bit ago.”
“No, they haven’t,” Carrie said, “and I wondered if anyone around here knew them well enough, friends or something, who might help us locate them.”
“Well,” the girl said, “Farel Teal, Tracy’s cousin, works over at the auditorium sometimes. He’s in charge of organizing the evening performances, and they’re rehearsing tonight. Try there.”
Carrie thanked the girl and hurried out, hoping she could find her way to the back of the auditorium through the administration-classroom building and the fenced craft village behind it. If everything there was locked, there would be no access to the auditorium from the top of the ridge. She’d have to walk all the way down the hill and back up on the other side—in her dressy blue shoes.
She did the best she could when she bought dress shoes, and these heels were only an inch high, but her toes still felt pinched. More than once she’d wanted to ask a shoe manufacturer why anyone might think normal toes would fit comfortably in what they were offering. And—also more than once—she’d wondered what would happen if she wore lace-up walking shoes to a fancy occasion.
As Carrie hurried across the loop driveway, she wished she’d started her shoe revolution tonight.
But thank goodness, the door of the administration building was unlocked. Someone must be working late, maybe a cleaning crew getting ready for the spring opening.
A few dim lights were on, but she didn’t see anyone as she hurried down the hallway past the open doors of the small auditorium, classrooms, and offices. The click of her heels echoed in the dark building, and, in spite of squished toes, she began to tiptoe. The furtive action brought back an image of the woman who had moved so silently through the forest.
“The gowerow has taken the child.”
Surely the strange woman was only a harmless local character, but her message was so weird.
At last Carrie reached the back door of the building. It wasn’t locked either. She shoved the heavy door open and peered out. The craft village looked deserted, and the buildings were just one-dimensional humps against glaring security lights on the back of the main auditorium, but there was enough light to see the concrete walkway.
Now, before she left the building... She took the napkin out of her purse and was chewing sticky, peach-soaked cornbread as she slipped through the heavy door and let it click shut.
The hexagonal craft huts huddled close to the walk on either side of her, but their blank fronts made them all anonymous. They offered no hint of the rich displays of the potter, ironworker, weaver, and other inheritors of the Ozarks’ traditional self-sufficiency that would be showing their skills when the area opened to the public.
The dark patches of the Heritage Herb Garden spread down the hill in raised beds on her left, and Carrie spent a moment wondering what mysteries might be unveiled there during the coming weekend. She looked forward to learning more about the preparation and use of traditional herbs grown here.
She came to a final turn in the walk just as she was finishing the last bite of cornbread and wiping peach syrup off her fingers. She could see the stage door at the back of the auditorium and the dark shape of the outdoor stage next to it.
The glow of a cigarette came and went. Someone was standing in the shadows at the edge of the outdoor stage, smoking. Probably one of the performers. Smoking wasn’t allowed inside. At least that meant the back door would be unlocked.
Ignoring the person with the cigarette, she walked up the ramp and pulled on the stage door. It didn’t open. She tugged again, rattling the door, then knocked on the metal with her fist.
“Kin I he’p you?” a male voice said from behind her.
She jumped at the sound. She’d been concentrating on the closed door. “Well, yes, I’m looking for Farel Teal.”
“Ain’t here. Who’s askin’?”
“I am,” Carrie said stiffly. “And who are you?”
The cigarette was pinched out, and a man walked toward her out of the shadows.
As he came into the light over the stage door, she saw that he was probably about her age, in his sixties, and his face had the weathered look of a man who spends most of his time outdoors.
“Name’s Ben. I work here, backstage. T’aint nothin’ around here I don’t know about, and I kin tell you Farel Teal won’t come rushin’ through the door ’til the last minute. He’s not one fer doin’ anythin’ extra, and comin’ in early is too much extra fer him.”
Ben stopped and glared into her face, which was easy, since his stooped form was only a few inches taller than her own five feet two, and he now stood less than three feet in front of her. She could smell the stale tobacco on his breath.