THREE
“Hairline skull fracture.” The tall, woman doctor—blue beaded necklace on a yellow blouse showing under her white coat—smiled at Dolly and the rest of us as we stumbled over to hear the news. Omar Winston, at Dolly’s side, stood at stiff attention.
Dolly’s hand flew to her mouth. “So what’s that . . .?”
“Not usually a problem in a baby,” the doctor said. “A four-month-old has a very pliable skull. She will heal fine. We see no swelling, at least not so far. She opened her eyes and smiled at us in the X-ray room.”
“Smiled?” Dolly gave the doctor a wide-eyed, uncertain look. “Baby Jane doesn’t smile at just anybody, you know.”
The doctor laughed. “Smiled at me, Mrs. . . . Ms. Wakowski. Bright little girl. With all her troubles, she knew I was helping her.”
“Bright little girl,” Dolly echoed then turned to us. “Jane smiled at the doctor. She’s gonna be okay.”
We murmured and nodded, agreeing—bright little girl—then passed the news back and forth again and again. Omar Winston, behind us now, grinned from ear to ear.
They were going to keep Jane overnight, the doctor told Dolly, then had to reassure her all over again that it was only for observation. “You can stay here at the hospital. Not in the room with her, but in the waiting room upstairs. That’ll be fine. A nurse will get you a blanket.”
Dolly hurried to see Jane while we waited downstairs. None of us seemed to be able to leave just yet, not until we heard the news directly from Dolly.
“No real damage,” Dolly said when she came down. “The hairline thing is all. Babies get them all the time. Fall off beds. Stuff like that. Doctor said it happens. Jane’ll be fine.” She nodded again and again, assuring us and Omar, one after the other, as she reassured herself.
“I’m bringing her home in the morning,” she said. “You can all come to the house tomorrow and see for yourselves. But if you’re gonna bring casseroles, remember it’s just me and Cate eating. So don’t overdo it.”
Satisfied for the moment, we picked up purses and bags and prepared to leave while Cate protested she should stay, too. “I’m her great-grandmother, after all, you know.”
Dolly took her by the arm and steered her toward the outside doors. “I don’t want to stay up all night talking, Cate. That’s what you’d do. You go on home. I’ll call. The chief’ll pick us up in the morning.”
I followed the others, leaving Omar standing alone behind us. Dolly grabbed my arm, pulling me back beside her.
“Wait a minute, okay? I gotta eat and I want to talk but I’m not leavin’ here until he goes.” She bobbed her head toward Omar Winston, standing obdurately nearby.
Taking Dolly’s attention for his moment to speak, Omar stepped up, snapped his heels together, and said, “I’d like to see the baby for myself.”
He tucked his chin down into his blue tie and gave Dolly a stern look that missed being stern because there was so much of the lonely cherub about him.
“So? Go. Nobody’s stopping you. And you can come tomorrow, too. Over to my house. If you want to.”
Omar made for the double doors into the hospital.
Dolly gave him a last look, turned to me, and rolled her eyes. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Trout Town. I gotta eat and I’m gonna need your help. Lucky’s out there already, running a few people down, but I gotta get goin’. This is about me, you know. Somebody don’t like me. I gotta get ’em. They hurt my baby and that means this is personal.”
• • •
We settled, me and Dolly, into a back booth at the Trout Town Cafe, a favorite among Kalkaska locals. The waitress, a thin middle-aged woman in jeans and T-shirt touting the Trout Festival, hurried over. “Heard what happened out there at the cemetery, Deputy. Your baby okay?”
Dolly assured the concerned woman Jane was doing fine. She had it down pat now. “Hairline fracture. Happens to a lot of babies. They get over it . . .” Still with relief in her voice and a kind of sacred belief in her eyes. She said the same thing again, with even more conviction, when an older couple stopped by the table to express their concern. Finally we ordered and I dug into my Cobb salad, Dolly into her plate of ribs.
“You know,” Dolly said without looking up at me. “That Omar can be a real pain in the ass. He told me he’d like to watch Jane every once in a while. Like I’d let him. He said it isn’t good to keep taking her out in the scout car with me.” She blew her lips out. “You think he knows anything about taking care of a baby? Think any of ’em do? Him and Cate . . .”
I said nothing. I picked at a piece of avocado then put it slowly into my mouth and chewed while I wondered if I had the nerve to bring up what was on my mind. Then I chewed some more and decided that Dolly never worried when asking embarrassing questions about Jackson, nor ever stopped herself from giving me gratuitous advice on how to dump the man she called a “cheating creep.” So I got over any reluctance I had about interfering in her life and came out with it.
“Omar is Jane’s father, isn’t he?” I said while fighting the urge to tuck my head down between my shoulders and huddle back in the booth, out of Dolly’s arm shot.
Her pale eyes flared wide at me. She thought hard, searching for a comeback. Finally she shook her head. “Jane don’t need a father. She’s got me and I’ll always be there for her. All a girl needs is one good person to depend on.”
“That’s not fair . . .”
“What do you know about ‘fair’? You had a good family. Mother. Father. Well, at least a father. What’d I have? A bunch of people paid to treat me like crap.”
“But . . .”
“Don’t tell me ‘but.’ I know what I know. A person doesn’t need a mother
and
a father. She don’t need a grandmother. Baby Jane’s got me and I’ll protect her as long as I’m on the face of this earth.”
Her face was red. She pushed her plate away, too mad at me to finish the ribs.
“And I’ll tell you another thing, Emily.” She leaned across the table, pointing a finger hard at me. “I don’t miss never having that Audrey Delores woman around. Not anymore. Since Cate told me she gave me up and went to that religious cult thing, you think I ever want to see her? You think I got any feelings for a mother who could turn her back on her baby for some religion? Ever? Maybe help destroy her own flesh and blood? How did she know I’d turn out so good?” She shook her head hard and signaled the waitress to bring more coffee. “I never want to see that woman. Don’t know what I’d say to her. And here Cate tells me she’s gonna write her, over there in France. ‘Oh, my poor little doll baby,’” Dolly mocked. “I told her do what you want but don’t mention me or Jane ever. Don’t need a person like that in my baby’s life. Nowhere near her. I don’t know what’s wrong with Cate. Going on this rant right now.” She stopped to nod at two women working their way up between tables to the front counter. They waved and asked about Jane.
“She’s okay. Hairline fracture is all,” Dolly called back then turned to me. “What I’m thinking is that she heard from Audrey Delores and she wants to come back to this country and has nowhere else to go. Kind of means they’re both trying to use me and I’m telling you, Emily, it’s not going to happen, no matter what.”
We sat for a while, both thinking our own dark thoughts.
“And not Omar either,” she went on. “He’s not worming his way into my baby’s life. He’s no daddy to Jane. He’s nothin’. I don’t care what the rest of you people make up in your head. Only me. That’s what Baby Jane’s got. And I’m gonna be enough.”
“Fine. Your business. Still, what’ll you do with her now? Who’s going to watch her? You can’t keep taking her with you to work. And Cate’s not up to it. At least not full-time. Or says she isn’t.”
Dolly blew at her hot coffee and thought awhile. “Cate’s gonna have to help out or . . .”
“I’ll do what I can,” I offered, reluctantly, not used to babies unless they were puppies.
Dolly made a face. “You don’t know a damn thing about babies and you got that crazy dog. He lands on Jane and she’ll be flat as a pancake. Nope, Cate’ll do it or I’ll find somebody who can. I’ll just come home more when I’m working. Maybe only a few days anyway and she’ll be back out on patrol with me.”
It hit me, how I’d just been rejected as a possible caretaker for Jane. I was incensed at being dismissed as if I didn’t have brains enough to watch a four-month-old. I sat in the booth, thinking and getting madder: Of course I could take care of a little kid if I really wanted to. What was there to it? Babies slept most of the time. The rest was sticking a bottle and some jarred food into them. What else? Burping. Changing clothes. Wiping spit-up off your shoulder . . . changing shitty diapers . . . washing shitty diapers and stained Onesies and lots of sheets, and walking with them and bouncing them when they didn’t stop crying and rocking them and giving them baths in the sink . . .
Sorrow was easier, I figured, and got over being angry. Let Dolly think whatever she wanted to think of my motherly skills.
“Maybe,” I said, pulling the two sides of my brain back together. “Between everybody. I mean, Eugenia said you could bring her to the restaurant. All those women there—they’d do a great job watching her. Even the guys at the Skunk said she’d be welcomed, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, Jake and the others. I guess they mean well but . . .” She covered her mouth and laughed.
I got it—the idea of Jane sitting atop the bar at the Skunk while the guys told her old dirty jokes.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see when the time comes,” Dolly said.
“Anyway, you can’t ask me because Bill wants me to stay close to you. He’s paying me to keep on the story. Find out what’s going on. You heard anything from Lucky? Got anything on the car?”
Dolly shook her head. “In the first place, I wasn’t going to ask you anyway. In the second place, everybody, all the departments across Michigan, they’re doing what they can about the SUV. They’ll get ’im. Even with a partial number. What I need for you to do is go over to the station tomorrow morning and pick up my files. Lucky’s getting everything together for you. Says he’ll leave the stack on his desk, case he’s not there when you go. You come on over to the house afterward and we’ll go through them—see who might have it in for me. Gotta be somewhere in there. Something I didn’t think of already.”
“What’re we looking for exactly?”
“People with a grudge, I guess. Somebody mad ’cause I put ’em in jail. Somebody’s brother, maybe. I gotta couple of court appearances ahead of me. I want to take a long look at those. Then—if Cate’ll give in and keep Baby Jane just until we’re sure she’s okay—we’ll go talk to as many as we need to. This was no accident but I don’t think they knew Jane was in the car—only a crazy person would try to hurt a baby.”
I agreed.
“Chief said that car had to be coming at top speed, dug deep ditches in the dirt after the guy put on his brakes. He backed up and dug more deep ditches. Ground’s still wet. Laid rubber on the pavement gettin’ outta there. Chief thinks there’s gotta be damage to the front of his SUV. Couldn’t’ve done what he did to my car—bending it almost in half—and not have plenty wrong with his.”
The waitress brought me a pot of hot water with a new tea bag. She filled Dolly’s coffee cup, then cleared our plates as a young girl came over, bent down, and hugged Dolly. “Heard your baby’s all right. I’m so glad.” The kid was off before Dolly answered but Dolly smiled at the retreating back.
“Anyway, they’re pulling everything with the numbers I gave them. With the make and model, they’ll narrow it down fast, see if somebody up here’s got a car like that. Still, he could have hidden that Ford anywhere by now. Could be at the bottom of one of the lakes. Except, it’s not an old car and not too many would be willing to sink something worth a few dollars.”
Dolly wiped barbecue sauce from her chin with her napkin. “You got the story going in tomorrow’s paper, right?”
I crammed in the last of my lettuce. “Bill’s taking care of it. Just got to stop by the cemetery on the way home. Take a couple of photos.”
Dolly waited while I dug my share of the bill from my purse, counted out the change plus two dollars for the tip, and got up.
“Right now, what I really need is those files,” Dolly said. “And you keepin’ newspaper pressure on.”
Back at the hospital, I dropped Dolly off then watched the sad little figure in her wrinkled uniform, with what looked like a toy gun on her hip, make her way back inside. Deputy Dolly Wakowski, Leetsville’s tough guy, upholder of the law, never looked as small and alone as she did then, with the hospital doors sucking shut behind her.
FOUR
When I got home there was a note taped to my door. Harry Mockerman, wanting to know what I’d got planned for him so far.
So far?
Did the man live in a vacuum? Didn’t he know what was going on? Dolly? Jane?
Inside my house, with an overexcited Sorrow dripping pee on the floor as he leaped in the air around me, I noticed the message light blinking. Two messages. The first was a call from Jackson Rinaldi telling me, in his smarmiest voice, that he had a terrible case of spring fever, missed me miserably, and wondered about a visit. “Soon, dear. Very soon. I seem to be in need of your tender ministrations . . . oh hell, Emily. Call me.”
The second call was from Bill. “Calling about Baby Jane, Emily,” his deep and hesitant voice said. “Heard she was going to be fine but I wanted to tell you again—anything you or Dolly need from me. Just ask. And, Emily, keep the stories coming. Every detail. Everybody here in Traverse is up in arms about Jane getting hurt like that.” He took a deep breath. “And anyway, what I figure is that we can do our part to keep the pressure on whoever did this. I’d like something—anything—every day. But you know that . . . I guess you’re not there. No need to call me back tonight but let’s talk tomorrow . . . uh . . . Emily.”
I moved Jackson and Bill to a file cabinet way at the back of my mind and took Sorrow down to the lake
It was one of those evenings—the kind that brought me north in the first place. A mauve and pale orange sunset with dark blue at the edges. I could enjoy it now that Baby Jane was going to be all right and Dolly had her mind turned to catching the hit-and-run driver, and I’d done my part, with my photos sent from my cell phone and my story for tomorrow written.
I could let the sunset take my breath away, let it make me feel small and aware that the universe was too big for me to really think about. As I stood at the reedy shore of Willow Lake, I concentrated on shadows of swimming loons and then their breathless cries as they took off over the water. I concentrated on places where bass leaped and set off circle after widening circle. I breathed in northern air and dusk with ice at its edges though it was almost summer, then closed my eyes, fingers of cold on my skin, and thought about women and their babies and what kind of strength it took to bear them and love them and maybe lose one. And I thought about my fierce friend with this new fear in her eyes.
I went back up to the house and settled in a chair on the deck to watch the last sliver of sun disappear. I wrapped myself in a big blue sweater and poured a glass from the half bottle of Pinot Grigio I’d brought out with me, salve to calm emotions Baby Jane and Jackson had stirred. Maybe it was that infamous internal clock I heard ticking in my head. No baby in sight. And Jackson’s familiar voice had stirred other feelings. Hey, it could be fun planning a baby and then roping Jackson into a little roll in the hay for old times’ sake. And then being pregnant and huge and unable to bend over to hug Sorrow, and throwing up, and stretching my skin so little shiny silverfish raced across my belly.
I shelved that idea.
Later, when it was true dark and a universe of stars shone overhead and even the baggy sweater wasn’t warm enough, I went back inside to sit at my desk and make notes for the new novel I hoped to work on soon—something about a little lake not far from my house. The lake was drying up. The last time I was out there all kinds of things had surfaced around the edges. With a mystery writer’s brain, I was asking myself what else could be down there and, of course, I’d come up with a grinning skull.
I didn’t call Jackson because I didn’t respond that quickly to his needs anymore. Ever so slowly, I was weaning myself from the leg-hold trap love can be. Ticking clock silenced, I assigned him a new place in line, far behind more important things.
I nodded off, sitting up, and woke after one a.m. to stumble back to my bed, where Sorrow had laid himself crosswise, snoring worse than Jackson ever snored, and protesting with shocked grunts when I pushed him to the floor.
I grabbed a cup of tea the next morning, fed Sorrow, patted his head, and promised I wouldn’t be late. I patted him again until he understood and rolled his eyes so the whites showed. I closed him out on the screened porch knowing full well, if he felt like it, no matter what I did he’d soar through the screening and terrorize the loons.
At the Leetsville police station, I pulled in and parked next to Chief Lucky Barnard’s old car. Inside, Lucky was at his desk in an office down a side hall, beyond Dolly’s broom closet with her tiny desk and chair shoved in a corner, and a single file cabinet. There was a baby’s rattle left on top of her desk, causing the smallest tug of pity inside me.
Lucky looked up, then slapped a tall stack of files he’d set at one corner of his desk. “Got Dolly and Jane first thing this morning. Should’ve brought the files but I wasn’t thinking. Found a couple more when I got back here anyway. No way of knowing which one went off like that and tried to do in Dolly’s car.”
“And Baby Jane,” I reminded him, taking a chair and slouching, tired already. A lot to get done in the day ahead.
Lucky was quiet a moment then leaned forward, his muscular arms braced on the desktop. His lined face was worried. “I got something to tell you . . .” He hesitated. “Don’t want this in the paper though. And you can’t tell Dolly just yet. She’s got so much on her mind right now. But I got a call from Jack’s Towing. He’s the one picked up the squad car from the cemetery.”
Lucky hesitated. “Just called a minute ago . . .”
I waited, hoping he’d get to whatever point he was making.
“There was a note stuck up under the windshield wiper. Had to be put on the car sometime last night. He found it this morning.”
“A note? You mean like ‘Sorry for the damage’ or ‘Didn’t mean to do it’?”
Lucky shook his head, his face gravely serious. “It just said, ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal.’”
“Steal? What?”
Lucky sniffed and glanced down at his rough hands. “Can’t say. Dolly’s the straightest shooter I ever met in my life. She never stole a thing from anybody.”
“This has got to be a terrible mistake.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Mistake? You hit a marked police car by mistake?”
“Did the note say anything about Baby Jane?”
“That was all. I’m going out there now. Jack didn’t touch the note so I’m picking it up and taking it to the state police lab. Maybe we’ll get fingerprints. If it’s one of these guys she put in jail, the prints will be on file and we can get him.”
I set my hands on the wooden chair arms and got up, hesitating. “You know I’ll have to put this in my story. I can’t . . . Lucky . . . you can’t ask me not to report something so important. Somebody might come forward. You know how people are up here—they’ll protect each other, but only so far. This is way over the line . . .”
“Well, if that’s how you’re gonna play it I won’t be able to tell you things from here on in. I only said something because you’re Dolly’s friend.”
“And as her friend, I’m telling her about the note. She can’t investigate without knowing everything. You can’t protect her, Lucky. You ought to know that by now.”
Lucky pulled in a deep breath. “Okay, you tell her and I’ll call as soon as I get back from the lab in Grayling. And tell her I’m going out to talk to the Harpy boys and to see Will Friendship. They’ve been heard blowing their mouths off about Dolly over at the Skunk. If you guys can get out, go see those I put on top of the pile, then let me know. I got a feeling this will break fast. The whole town’s mad as hell. Going after an adult, if you’ve got a beef with somebody—well, that’s one thing. But you don’t hurt babies while you’re doin’ it.”
I went back out to my Jeep. Dolly was home. I had those files she wanted. Still, she’d be distracted by visitors for a while and I was hungry. I headed over to EATS for tea and toast—since I’d had no time for breakfast. And for a talk with Eugenia about a wedding party.