Mom began to laugh. She was still crying, of course, but my goofs had broken the tension, I guess. Anyway, she laughed for about a mile, taking a Kleenex from her purse and wiping her eyes.
I sighed. “I guess I’m glad you can laugh about it now, Mom. But you must had been absolutely terrified at the time. A young girl. Alone in a big city. You must have been running out of money by then.”
“I admit I was getting close to the end of my resources. I’d bought a return bus ticket, however, and I told Sheriff Van Hoosier that. I said I couldn’t stay away much longer. I told him I’d have to use that return bus ticket and come home because I was nearly out of money.”
“Did that change his mind?”
“It seemed to make him think. He asked me where I was in Chicago. Then he said, ‘No, don’t tell me. Can you find the main Chicago post office?’ I told him I’d manage that. And he said he’d send me a letter in care of general delivery. He promised to get it off that day and to send it special delivery, so I should have it the next day. Then he said something really odd. He said, ‘Sister, is there someplace far away you’ve always wanted to go?’ I didn’t answer, and he went on. ‘Don’t tell me where it is. But you decide, and after you pick up that letter, you be ready to go there.’ And then he said, ‘And listen, girlie. When you get my letter, take it back to your room before you open it, hear!’ ”
“Ye gods, mom! He wasn’t kidding. Did the letter come?”
“Oh, yes. The next day. It was a plain manila envelope, stiffened with cardboard. Mailed from Holland and with no return address. That envelope nearly burned a hole in my hand all the way from the post office to my hotel room.”
“What was in it?”
“Two thousand dollars.”
I gasped, and my mom went on.
“Two thousand dollars in cash. Which was probably like five or six thousand today.”
“Good night! Was there any explanation?”
“Just a note. It said, ‘Don’t blow it. There isn’t any more.’ ” My mom gave a deep sigh. “I think that little note scared me more than anything else.”
“It sure sounded final. What did you do?”
“I paid my hotel bill and packed my bags. I hid the money here and there in my suitcase, in my purse, and in my bra. The next morning I walked to the bus station. I looked the destinations over and bought a ticket to Dallas.”
I laughed. “You mean you became a Texan on a whim?”
“Oh, I was far from becoming a Texan at that point. Dallas had a romantic sound to me. Cowboys and all that colorful stuff. I didn’t necessarily intend to stay forever. That just happened. Or your father just happened. He was from a real Texas ranching community. I was bowled over because he could ride a horse.”
“Daddy may be able to ride a horse, but he hates to!”
“I found that out later. When I met him I thought he was John Wayne.”
I thought about my dad—tall, slim, ruggedly handsome. But no romantic cowboy. In fact, he doesn’t like either horses or cows very well. Daddy’s just interested in motors—trucks, cars, and boats. Suddenly I saw what a disappointment Prairie Creek must have been to my mom. She must have moved there expecting the Old West. Instead she found Blah City—a dull and colorless narrow-minded town on the prairie. No trees but mesquites, nothing more cultural than a small public library, and three thousand people who talked through their noses.
“You must have thought Prairie Creek was the end of the earth,” I said.
We spoke in unison, quoting an old Texas joke. “It’s not quite the end of the earth, but you can see it from there.” Then we both laughed.
Again, a small laugh had broken the tension, and we rode along silently for a few miles. Mom was the next one to speak. “I’ve always wondered where that money Van Hoosier sent came from.”
“It could have come from his own bank account.”
“I wouldn’t have expected a small-town law enforcement official to come up with that much.”
“Oh, Van Hoosier could have.” I quickly sketched the signs of the ex-sheriff’s financial well-being.
Mom’s voice was surprised. “But where did he get all that money in the first place?”
I thought a minute before I answered. And the answer to her question became clear—at least in my mind.
“I believe,” I said, “I believe that he must have gotten the money from the McKay family. I have a feeling he got a lot of the money he had from the McKay family.”
“If he did,” Mom said, “I’m sure the McKays were smart enough to cover their financial tracks. We’ll never be sure.”
“Maybe not. But I think I know someone who might give us a lead.”
“Who’s that?”
“The man who was county attorney at the time you left Warner Pier. Joe knows him very well, and he’s a sweetie. His name is Mac McKay.”
“McKay!” I should have realized that Mom would be aghast. I spent the rest of the trip to Warner Pier—which wasn’t very long—explaining to her that this McKay was one of the good guys, but that he knew a lot about the people he called his “rich relatives.” Of course, I assured her that I would talk to Joe and to Hogan before I called Mac McKay, but she didn’t know Joe and Hogan as well as I did, so that wasn’t reassuring.
At least the discussion made the time pass quickly. We pulled into Aunt Nettie’s drive before it was over. Joe parked behind us.
The next hour was spent greeting Aunt Nettie, and getting Mom settled into the bedroom that had once been hers and which was now the guest room. I had to try on my dress for Mom, of course. She approved and even shed a few tears. Then we went downstairs, and Aunt Nettie asked her if she thought it would be a good idea to paint the fireplace wall of the living room an “accent” color.
“Maybe crimson,” she said.
“No!” Mom and I yelled in unison.
Then Hogan showed up for dinner. Mom had never met Hogan, of course, and she’d met Joe only briefly when we’d gone to Dallas at Christmas. Joe suggested, quietly, that we let Mom get acquainted with Hogan before we described the episode at the airport.
I wasn’t sure about this at first, but after I saw how Hogan was charming my mom, I decided Joe was right. So it was over coffee and apple pie that we told the story of the nefarious events at the airport.
After the unbelieving reaction of the Grand Rapids police and the airport security, I was relieved to see that Hogan was taking the situation seriously. He didn’t jump to the phone and call the FBI, but he didn’t say I’d been a scaredy-cat either. He guided the questions toward Mom.
And she repeated the whole tale about why she’d run away thirty-five years earlier. Well, she did leave out the part about being stark naked when she and Bill got caught in the McKay master bedroom, but she told the rest of it.
“Oh, Sally!” Aunt Nettie said. “If only you’d called us. If only you’d called Phil.” A few tears ran down her cheeks.
“I was simply too afraid,” Mom said. “I didn’t want to tell the whole story to my mother, and I was afraid of the sheriff.” She turned to face Hogan. “I’m not sure I could analyze just how I felt that long ago, but I think that—even then—I was pretty sure that Bill hadn’t committed suicide. Today, I’m sure he was murdered.”
Nobody had anything to reply to that. It seemed pretty obvious to all of us, but no one had verbalized it before.
After letting that sink in, Mom spoke again. “I think that’s the real reason I ran. I was afraid I’d be killed, too.”
Hogan leaned toward the table and looked steadily at my mom. “I understand, Sally,” he said. “You were just an inexperienced young girl. It’s easy to see why you ran away. It may well have been the smartest thing to do. My question is: Why have you come back now?”
Mom looked as if she’d been slapped. She ducked her head, sighed deeply, and toyed with her coffee spoon before she finally answered. Even then she seemed to be speaking to her dessert plate.
“I guess I figured it was time to straighten everything out,” she said. “Thirty-three years is long enough to be on the run.”
Aunt Nettie patted her hand. “We all want to help you, Sally,” she said.
That pretty well summed up the evening. Hogan took Mom into the living room to go over her story again while Joe, Aunt Nettie, and I did dishes. Then Hogan arranged for his night patrol officer to come by the house periodically, and he asked me to leave a light on in the upstairs hall. If anything at all happened, we were to call him immediately and to turn out that upstairs light as a signal that all was not well.
“I like this old house as well as you and Nettie do,” he said, “but it’s not real secure. I keep telling Nettie she needs either a security system or a yappy dog.”
Joe and I, with Hogan’s approval, agreed that we’d try to see Mac McKay the next day, if he could fit us into his Sunday schedule. Maybe he could tell us more about the McKay clan and how they might mesh into my mom’s story. I still felt sure that Van Hoosier’s money had come from them.
Joe offered to stay overnight, saying he could sleep on the couch, so he could hear if anybody prowled around outside.
I laughed. “Like that yappy watchdog Hogan recommends? How loud can you yap?”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m really more of a lap dog,” he said.
Aunt Nettie spoke then, and her voice was firm. “Lee and Sally and I need a night to have some girl talk,” she said. “You men just run along.”
Actually, Aunt Nettie went to bed pretty soon after Joe and Hogan left, but Mom and I did wind up with some girl talk. Which, considering how poorly the two of us communicate, was probably the most unusual part of the entire evening.
Mom even initiated it, knocking softly at my door after I thought she’d be sound asleep. I heard her whisper. “Lee, are you still awake?”
“Come on in,” I said. “I’m too keyed up to sleep.”
She sat on the edge of my bed, as if ready for a mother-daughter chat. Then she didn’t seem to know how to start.
“If you’ve come for a talk about the birds and the bees,” I said, “I have to tell you that you’re a little late.”
Mom smiled. “Oh, I know you’re a grown woman, Lee. But sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get to be one.”
“I wouldn’t say you were doing so bad, Mom. What brought this on?”
“That comment you made about my running away from everything.”
“When did I say that?”
“When you called and asked me to come for the wedding.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it, Mom. At that point I didn’t even know that you’d left Warner Pier on what should have been your wedding day.”
“Nettie didn’t tell you?”
“She told me later. But she’d never realized that I didn’t know. So she hadn’t brought it up.”
Mom sighed. “Whatever you meant by it, I guess that comment broke the camel’s back for me. I’d become aware long ago that I dodged all the problems in my life. I guess I’d hoped that you hadn’t noticed.”
“I hadn’t.”
“It must have been hard to miss. First I ran away from Warner Pier.”
“Mom! You were young! After what Van Hoosier said, how could you stay?”
“That was my excuse at the time, but looking back I see that it was my responsibility to come back, to see that justice was done for Bill. I’m sure he didn’t commit suicide, and I should have told the whole story to someone besides Van Hoosier, someone who would have listened.”
“But even Bill’s mother told you to stay away.”
“Yes, but I think she meant for just a day or two. It was Van Hoosier who told me to go away and stay away. Anyway, I ran. Then I got resettled in Dallas, went to airline school, got a job, and two years later I met your dad, and we got married.”
“And you got pregnant with me, and he dragged you to a town you never wanted to live in.”
“I guess I was running away then, too. We had so many financial problems.” She sighed. “I thought we could live within our income in Prairie Creek. Of course, your dad would never be able to live within his income. If he earned a million a day, he could spend it.”
She sighed. “But I learned to live with financial uncertainty. It was Annie I ran from when you were in high school.”
“Annie? Was Daddy seeing her before you left?
“If you didn’t know about it, Lee, I’m sure you were the only person in Prairie Creek who didn’t. I’m glad to learn I was successful at keeping it away from you. But didn’t you ever figure out why I packed you off to Phil and Nettie that summer?”
I shook my head. I felt as if I’d been kicked. I’d always blamed my mom for my parents’ divorce. I thought she’d left because she hated Prairie Creek. To learn that she left my dad because he was involved with another woman—well, it rocked me.
Mom patted my hand. “I guess I shouldn’t have told you. It’s pointless, now that J.B. and Annie are married.”
“Why do you say that you ran away from her?”
“Looking back, I guess I should have tried harder to keep your dad. Tried to cut Annie out.”
Now I patted her hand. “If things had been right between you and Daddy, Mom . . .”
“She wouldn’t have been a factor? Or if I’d cared more, I’d have been willing to fight for J.B.? Fifteen years after the divorce it’s hard to say. Certainly there’s no going back now.” She smiled. “There’ve been a few more times I ran that you didn’t know about.”
“Hal Mead?”
“Oh? You knew about Hal? He did ask me to marry him, but I was too chicken. And there were a couple of other guys—ones who might have gotten serious if they’d had any encouragement.”
“It’s not too late! You’re a very attractive woman.”
She patted my cheek. “You’re the beautiful one. That’s why I wanted you to do the pageants, so everyone could see how beautiful and smart you are.”
“Smart? You thought I was smart?”
My mom looked surprised. “Of course. You’re extremely intelligent, Lee. I’ve always known that.”
“I thought you . . .” I was too choked up to go on.