Surely that would be soon.
After the dessert plates had been removed, the convention director presented Tracy Teal, Chase Mason, and Aunt Brigid Mason with the flourish their fame deserved, repeating lavish and obviously memorized accolades for each of them.
Once more Carrie was aware that Henry, not she, should be the one listening to this program. Hoping to remember some detail or musical specialty to tell him about, she turned her full attention to the performance.
For the first time she looked closely at the Masons. Tracy was petite, with delicate features, creamy skin, and what Beth would call a Scarlett O’Hara waist. She had long blond hair, worn in a simple ponytail. Her small waist was enhanced by a full country skirt and ruffled blouse.
Chase and his mother were darker. He was tall and a little too thin to be a real pin-up. Aunt Brigid was sturdier than her son, and the gathered skirt and shawl she wore went well with her full figure, though—Carrie looked back at Tracy—the same type costume showed off a petite figure too.
None of the three seemed conscious of their looks, but they were obviously quite conscious of their music. They’re really accomplished professional musicians, Carrie thought. At least for the moment, the problem of Dulcey seemed not to be affecting them at all.
The audience stood to applaud and cheer after the last song. Then a few people began calling, “Lying to Strangers, Lying to Strangers,” and soon almost everyone in the dining room, including Carrie, was chanting the name of Chase and Tracy’s best-known recording.
Finally Chase held up a hand.
“Thank you, thank you all very much. As you know, no music written after 1940 is performed here at the Ozark Folk Center, and,” he laughed and looked at Tracy, “since Tracy and I wrote the song, we can’t claim it’s that old.”
He paused to allow the audience to laugh too, then continued. “But seein’ as how this is a private party...”
Applause interrupted him. The three musicians exchanged glances, then looked down at their instruments until the noise subsided and the dining room fell into an expectant hush.
In a moment the familiar melody began on Tracy’s guitar, then Aunt Brigid lifted her fiddle and joined in, playing harmony. Chase strummed the rhythm on his banjo and started to sing, very softly:
“When she was only one day old
She stole her daddy’s heart.
And by the time that she was four
They were n’er apart.
“But she’d be lying to strangers,
Lying to strangers.
Never any other man,
He’s the main one in her heart.”
Carrie marveled at the smiling, bland faces that Tracy and Aunt Brigid turned to the audience as they accompanied Chase. These women were incredibly good actresses.
“And after her own momma left,
People saw ’twas true.
She would always stay by him,
He was the only man she knew.
“And she was lying to strangers...”
Carrie looked around the room. Everyone was gripped by the emotion that had now begun to fill Chase’s words.
“A sixteen year old’s beauty
Turned many a young man’s head,
But still the same old story came,
‘I’m Daddy’s, I’ll not wed.’”
Aunt Brigid and Tracy were still cool—mere background figures. Chase wasn’t. What if Dulcey had been here? Would Chase have sung the song to his four-year-old daughter? That would certainly touch every heart in an audience.
“Then, when she was twenty-one
The stranger came to town.
He swore that he would make her his,
She’d wear his wedding gown.”
As the next chorus began, Tracy’s voice, then Aunt Brigid’s, backed up Chase’s strong tenor.
“But she kept lying to strangers,
Lying to strangers.
‘Daddy’s the only man I love,
The main man in my heart.’
“The stranger stayed a single man.
He bought the farm next door.
The years went by, the two would smile.
Folks saw that and nothing more.
“And she kept lying to strangers,
Lying to strangers.
‘Daddy’s still the only man,
The main one in my heart.’
“When the two were fifty-one
Daddy died in his own bed.
Three months later she became a bride.
‘What a shock’ folks ’round there said.
“But they’d been lying to strangers,
Lying to strangers.
The man next door was not strange,
He was the main one in her heart.
The main man in her heart.”
As the last note faded, the entire audience rose to its feet again, stirred, Carrie knew, not only by beautiful music, but by an emotion most would never know the reason for.
Finally, Chase held up his hand for quiet.
“I should tell you that the term ‘lying to strangers’ originally had nothing to do with this love song. It comes from a popular saying among us hill folks...‘We only lie to strangers.’ But,” he continued over the laughter, which his voice quickly silenced, “I’m not lying when I say how much Tracy, Momma, and I enjoyed performing for you. Thanks, and good night.”
Before anyone in the audience had time to ask for another encore or could rush forward to meet the stars, the three of them had cased their instruments and left the room.
Caught by surprise, Carrie leaped to her feet. Whispering to an astonished Beth that she needed to escort the Masons, she picked up her purse and jacket and hurried out of the banquet hall.
The performers had halted at the opposite side of the darkened public dining room. Carrie saw Tracy say something to Chase and hand him her guitar case before she turned to walk down the hallway leading to the public restrooms. Carrie hesitated, watching Chase and his mother go out the front door of the building, then decided to follow Tracy. The ladies’ room would be a good place to talk.
As soon as she reached the hall, Carrie discovered with dismay that Tracy wasn’t headed for the ladies’ room after all, but for a nearby public telephone. She had her back to Carrie and was punching in a number.
Carrie slowed her steps, hoping to overhear what Tracy was saying, but when Tracy looked toward her, she pulled open the door marked “Women.” She could think of no other reason for being behind Tracy.
Carrie had often wondered how soundproof restroom doors were, and now she found that this one was certainly soundproof. She couldn’t hear anything outside, even with her ear against the door.
What should she do? She didn’t want to lose the opportunity to talk with at least one of the Masons.
Gambling that Tracy would come in after finishing her conversation, Carrie went into one of the stalls, shut the door, sat down, and waited.
Eventually it became obvious she had gambled and lost. Too much time had passed. She left the stall and opened the restroom door. The hall was empty. She looked at the pay phone and saw a guitar pick lying on the shelf. Well, it was a small thing, but it did give her a reason to follow, and that was exactly what she was going to do! She stuck the guitar pick in her pocket and headed out the door and across the driveway to the administration building. She assumed the Masons’ vehicle was parked in the employee parking lot on the far side of the auditorium.
But, she discovered, the front door of the administration building was now locked.
Since the Masons were on foot, there must be another opening to the craft area. Carrie walked around one side of the building and saw only a weathered board fence glowing silver in the moonlight. She shivered, wishing she had worn her heavier jacket, and circled back around the front of the building, continuing past the entry doors to the other side.
There, a utility gate! Trying the latch, she found the gate was unlocked.
She hesitated. Even someone as unmusical as she was would probably realize that returning a guitar pick wasn’t worth following Tracy all over the Ozark Folk Center complex. Many in the Masons’ audiences would probably treasure such a souvenir and take it home to show off. She could save it and give it to Henry. Besides, it was dark, it was cold, and this was getting ridiculous.
But...
She felt the thing in her pocket. Would a musical novice assume such a pick was specially made for Tracy? She doubted it, but then, she didn’t really know. And even if she found Tracy, would the woman talk to her, or would she just take the pick and rush off without so much as a thank you?
Well, Carrie thought, I do know this really
isn’t
my business.
Carrie heard a barred owl’s call and the return of the call from a distance. Back home she often sat on her deck or stood in the woods and held two-way, or even three-way, conversations with the owls. For some reason she didn’t understand, they responded to her mimicry of their “who-hoot hoo-hoo,” and usually came closer to continue the conversation. But she wouldn’t break the silence here tonight.
She was just turning away to walk back to the dining room when a soft cry and then a moan came from beyond the gate.
That was enough. Carrie lifted the latch.
The moon was now behind a cloud, but she still hadn’t expected the area inside the fence to be so awfully dark. What had happened to the security lights? Carrie stood by the gate and tried to figure out just where she was and where everything else in the enclosed area was.
The person who had cried out couldn’t be too far away. She waited, listening, afraid to move or make any noise. Then the sound came again. It was definitely a woman, crying, “No, no,” very softly. And—maybe it was her imagination since she’d heard her say it earlier—it sounded like Tracy’s “No.”
But where
was
Tracy? Somewhere ahead. Carrie’s impulse was to run forward, but that was impossible in the blinding darkness. All she could do was wait.
At last her eyes began to detect shades and shapes. There was nothing on her left. The ground there seemed to fall away sharply. She could feel the drop with her left foot—the beginning of the terraced herb gardens. The sound hadn’t come from that direction anyway.
She knew the administration building was on her right. She could see the outline of a large tree next to it, and, concentrating, she decided the walkway through the craft area must begin under that tree.
She began to slide her feet uphill, keeping her hand against the stone wall of the building.
Suddenly her left foot caught on something. She fell, brushing her hand and face against the rough wall and toppling into an area that seemed bare of anything but damp earth.
At least she’d made no noise but a muffled “whump.”
There’s something to be said for well-padded bottoms, Carrie thought as she sat, assessing damage. Her hand and face tingled and were probably scraped, but, other than a sting in the area where her blue dress met the ground, there seemed to be no other damage, except maybe to the dress. Her behind was probably covered with dirt blobs.
Well. She felt the ground around her and discovered she was sitting in a newly turned square of earth outlined by wooden landscaping timbers. It must be some sort of garden bed, and anything planted in it was probably worse off than she was. Too bad.
She heard another “No...” and forgot about the garden and the dirt. She crawled over the timbers on her hands and knees, and, bracing her uninjured hand against the wall, stood and continued uphill until her feet located the edge of the concrete walkway. At the same time, her hand felt the corner of the back door alcove to the administration building. Now she knew where she was, and the building just ahead of her, a dark rectangle against the sky, was the craft area snack shop.
The pale concrete of the walkway was lighter than the ground around it, and she began following its winding trail toward the source of the sounds.
At the front of the snack shop she stopped, moved closer to the wall, and stuck her head around the corner, listening, her eyes sweeping the shades of darkness.
Silence.
Then a glow came from the dressmaker’s shop. Somewhere near the floor of the shop a small flame flared, dimmed, went out. The door must be open. She moved toward the door and heard breathing that sounded like gasps, and, once again, a crooned “No-no-no.”
“Tracy?” Carrie hoped the person inside could hear her cautious whisper.
For a moment the gasping breaths stopped, then Tracy’s voice said, “Momma? Momma Brigid?” There were two or three more gasps before Tracy began to cry—great, rattling sobs that sounded as if they were going to turn her inside out.
Carrie didn’t take time to explain that she wasn’t Brigid Mason. She went quickly around the door and, guided by sound, knelt next to the woman seated on the floor. “Tracy, where’s the light switch? What’s wrong?”
Tracy hiccuped. “L-lights don’t work. Who
are
you?”
“Carrie McCrite. I walked you to the dinner. Is there trouble?”
“Trouble? Trouble?” Now it sounded like Tracy Teal was laughing.
Before Carrie could say more, the racket stopped. Tracy stood and said in a shaky voice, “Wait, all these shops have candlesticks.”
A match flared again, and Carrie gasped before she could stop herself. There was another person in the shop, a large man, lying on the floor. Even in the dim match flame she saw something shiny enough to reflect light. Scissors. It was a pair of scissors, or at least their handles. The rest of the scissors were out of sight because they were in the man’s chest. The dark places...that would be blood.
The light brightened. Tracy had found the candlestick.
The two women stared at each other over the shuddering flame. For a moment, Tracy returned Carrie’s unblinking gaze, then wet streaks dripped down her cheeks as, once more, she began to cry. Carrie got to her feet and reached out to touch the young woman’s shoulder before she turned to inspect the man on the floor.