“I went,” said Joyce. “I just love what you did with that fairy palace. It’s probably supposed to be a secret, but I couldn’t help looking. Gail, why don’t you run upstairs and take a bath now, before dinner?”
“Why? It’s still daytime.”
“Lots of people take baths in the daytime. It’ll cool you off, you’re all hot and sticky. And look at your knees.”
Gail inched toward the stairs. “A bubble bath?”
“Of course. But not too long, Carl will be home. Do you want me to start it for you?”
Then she would know when Gail was in the tub.
“Why does Carl take so many showers?” Gail asked, following her up the stairs.
“Because he gets hot and sticky, too.”
In the muggy summer weather, Carl always seemed to melt. But then, it wasn’t easy, that daily trek into New York and back.
When Gail’s tub was running, and Gail sitting happily among the bubbles, Joyce went downstairs to the telephone in the kitchen. She looked in the directory, first under “P,” then realized she hadn’t been thinking.
Cedarville, Village of.
She dialed the number. It rang twice. A voice answered, “Cedarville police. Chief D’Amico.”
“I don’t know if this is anything at all,” she began. “My daughter and her friend—they were playing in the woods near here—”
“Take your time, ma’am. Where is ‘here’?”
“Shadowbrook Road. They were playing in the woods, and they found—something.”
She thought she heard a change in his breathing, some alertness. He said nothing.
“They couldn’t see what it was,” she went on, “but it upset them. I went over there—”
She described the mound of leaves, the flies, the smell. “It must have been an animal. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“Where did you say this was?”
“The woods. Up near the Lattimer place, near Shadow-brook Road. But the more I think about it—”
“We’ll check it out, Mrs.—”
“Gilwood. No, really, I’m starting to feel like an idiot.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mrs. Gilwood. You did right to call us. Can you tell me the exact place?”
“You start from the end of Shadowbrook Road, right near Mr. Lattimer. There’s this brook …”
She directed him along the brook and onto the path. She did not know what those dead plants were, but he couldn’t miss them, the bone-white stalks. She described the hill, the second one, the crevice of leaves and sticks. He asked for her full name, her address, and said, “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Gilwood. We’ll check it out.”
Probably just an animal, she thought again. A dead animal that somebody covered with leaves.
Her ears caught the sound of a car in the driveway. She got up from her chair and lit the broiler.
Carl came into the kitchen utterly wilted, his tie loosened, jacket over his arm. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with golden brown hair that looked blond in the light. His face was strong and his jaw square. She liked that jaw. Although nature had not endowed him with the outrageous beauty of Larry, her first husband, Carl had an air of calm strength, as though he could cope with anything. And he certainly managed better than Larry ever had at living in the real world.
She kissed his cheek. “Hi, honey. Gail’s in the tub, I’ll get her out. I bet you’ll be glad to see the end of summer.”
“Don’t talk about the end,” he groaned. “This is only the beginning.”
“Oh, well, it won’t last forever.” She ran upstairs and banged on the bathroom door.
“Time’s up, luv, there’s a line forming.”
Gail said something indistinct and petulant. She knew the “line” meant Carl.
While he showered, Joyce quick-broiled the meat. When he came down ten minutes later, she was putting the finishing touches on the table.
He said, “I thought Gail was supposed to do that.”
“I made her take a bath,” Joyce explained. “I guess she’s still dressing. They were playing out in the woods, she and Anita. Got kind of grubby.”
“Who?” he asked absently. “Oh, that little sexpot.”
“Carl, for God’s sake! The kid’s only nine years old.”
He shrugged and went into the kitchen, where she heard him breaking open a tray of ice cubes.
Sexpot. How could he? And yet she understood what he meant. She had seen it herself that afternoon. A few more years and Anita would be leaving Gail far behind.
Carl came into the living room, an old-fashioned glass tinkling in his hand. He settled back on the sofa. “What sort of day did you have?”
“Hot,” she answered.
“Restful? Peaceful?”
“Well—Barbara called. Mary Ellen’s coming tomorrow.”
He set his glass on the floor. “No kidding. Why tomorrow?”
“I suppose so Barbara won’t have to see you. And vice versa.”
A mirthless chuckle. “That Barbara. Poor girl.”
“She strikes me as more of a woman than a girl,” Joyce said. “But I suppose you knew her when she was younger.” She went to the foot of the stairs and called Gail.
Carl brought his drink to the table. “So except for Barbara, it was a pretty good day.”
“Pretty good, as days go.” It was not only Gail’s approach down the stairs that stopped her from telling him about the mound of leaves and her phone call to the police. By now, the whole thing seemed too trivial for words.
“How about your day?” she asked as she passed him his plate. She enjoyed hearing about the office. It was where they had met, when she changed jobs after Larry’s death. Carl had been a young executive, charming and personable. And pursued. Joyce, so recently widowed, had paid little attention to him, which was probably what piqued his interest.
He grinned, giving a small laugh. “Well, now, you know that place. Does anything ever happen? Same old accounts, same old people, same grind.”
“So tell me about the people. Who’s doing what? Who got fired, retired, married?”
He pondered the question. “Nobody.”
She was hardly surprised, not by the lack of activity, but by Carl’s lack of interest. He had never been really people-oriented, and did not much care about any of his colleagues on a personal basis.
“I guess I’ll just have to go and visit sometime,” she said.
“Why don’t you? We can have lunch.”
“I was thinking of bringing Adam, to show him off. How would he behave in a restaurant?”
“Don’t bring Adam. They’ve all seen babies before.”
She was stung, but had to admit he was probably right.
Long after dinner, when Gail had finished clearing the table and taken her accustomed place before the television set, and Joyce was wiping the last of the kitchen counters, the telephone rang.
A male voice asked, “Is this Mrs. Gilwood? Police Chief D’Amico. You called us a couple of hours ago.”
“Yes. Right.”
“We checked the place you told us about. I thought you’d want to know.”
She listened vainly for a note of humor. A report on Mr. Lattimer’s garbage, perhaps. But he was saying, “You were right to call us, ma’am. It’s bad news. We can’t establish identity yet, but there have been a couple of missing persons—”
“No!”
“I’m afraid so. You say your daughter was upset by it. How much did she actually see?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. I don’t know what bothered her.”
“Does she go out there often?”
“Pretty often.” Oh, God.
“Did she ever mention seeing anybody?”
“Nobody except—Mr. Lattimer.”
“Okay. Thanks, ma’am.”
She hung up the phone and discovered Carl in the kitchen doorway.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“Oh, Carl, I—” She sat down weakly in one of the dinette chairs. “This afternoon, they—Gail and Anita—they were playing in the woods.”
“You told me. And?”
“They saw—I just don’t believe it.”
“A UFO,” he suggested.
“It’s not funny. I went over, too. It looked like—a pile of leaves. There were a lot of flies around. I don’t know how the girls knew. It frightened them. I called the police.”
“Because of a pile of leaves?”
“But, Carl, it
was”
“Was what? You’re a very poor storyteller. You leave out the best part.”
“Not
the best. It’s not a story, it’s real. Somebody was killed and buried, practically in our back yard.”
At last she saw the twinkle disappear from his face.
“Killed?” he said. “How do you know that?”
“People just don’t bury themselves.”
“It could be any number of things. Could be, for instance, somebody died from an overdose. Not anyone’s fault, necessarily, but a lot of people don’t like to get involved with that.”
“All right,” she conceded, “but it’s the same thing. A death that someone tried to hide. And
right here.”
“Why the hell,” he exploded, “didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Because I—after I called them, I decided it couldn’t be anything.”
“You should have told me.”
He thought he was protecting her. They could have faced it together.
“But what if it turned out to be nothing?” she said.
Another outburst. “Are you crazy, letting your kid play there?”
“In the woods? That’s what we came to the country for.”
“Don’t ever let her go there again.”
The woods that Gail loved. Her fairy palace, with the beautiful garden.
But Gail wouldn’t want to. “No,” she said, “not after this.”
And thought, Whoever did it was out there. He could have been watching her.
Carl left at seven-thirty as usual the next morning. After another cup of coffee, Joyce set about her chores, clearing away the breakfast dishes and tidying the living room, which always seemed to get untidied by itself. Later, as a welcoming gesture, she and Gail made up Mary Ellen’s bed.
Gail worked slowly, mooning out of the window at the driveway. A flash of something caught her eye. “Here they come.”
Joyce had debated letting it all slip out, but at the last minute said, “Honey, you won’t mention anything about yesterday. You know, in the woods, will you?”
“I wasn’t going to,” Gail answered in a tone that implied she wasn’t going to talk to them at all if she could help it.
Joyce went out alone to meet them.
“Hello, hello,” Barbara called, swinging her long legs from the car. “How do you like this weather? I thought we were going to have a nice cool summer, the way it started.”
Mary Ellen groaned, “Oh, Mom, you’re always complaining.”
“Which is something you
never
do,” retorted Barbara.
“It’s nice to see you, Mary Ellen,” Joyce lied. “We missed you last month.” Because of Adam’s being so new, Barbara had suggested that Mary Ellen skip her June visit.
The trunk was unlocked and out came two suitcases, a shopping bag filled with shoes, a grocery carton of books, records, tapes, and miscellany, including a small red radio.
“Do I get my same room?” asked Mary Ellen.
“Yes, it hasn’t changed a bit.” Joyce picked up what she could carry. “We’re keeping Adam in our room for now anyway. It makes it easier, getting up at night.”
“Am I glad I’m finished with that part of it,” Barbara gloated.
When all the luggage had been taken upstairs, Mary Ellen asked, “Can I see the baby?”
Joyce led them, tiptoeing, into the room where Adam slept. Barbara stood some distance from the crib and gazed at its occupant with a wry half-smile. Mary Ellen leaned into it, her face almost touching the baby’s. He stirred in his sleep.
“When he wakes up,” she whispered, “can I hold him?”
Joyce nodded, and watched her reach out a finger to stroke his soft hair.
She was actually a very attractive girl, petite and delicate, unlike her long, rangy mother and her large, tall father. She had none of the awkwardness of most twelve-year-olds, but instead was a little pearl with creamy skin, fine dark hair, and an enchanting aura of young girl mixed with sly, teasing womanhood.
Something like Anita. Yet for all their surface charm, Anita was bratty and Mary Ellen self-centered and rude. Except when she chose not to be.
They tiptoed out of the room and Mary Ellen began unpacking. Barbara stood watching her for a moment, ignored. Joyce said, “How about a cup of coffee for the road?” She had to offer, but still felt awkward in Barbara’s presence. They had met only briefly at other times.
“I’d really like something cold,” Barbara ventured.
Mary Ellen said loudly, “No alcohol.”
Barbara rolled her eyes. Joyce suggested, “Iced tea okay?”
She settled Barbara in the sunporch and served a tray of iced tea and vanilla wafers.
“You’ve really got a nice place here,” Barbara said, looking out at the green lawn, the strip of woodland next to it where daffodils bloomed in the springtime, and the meadow beyond the stone wall. “It’s so private. Except I think I’d get a little nervous. I like to hear the neighbors crashing around. It lets you know that people are there.”
“I guess I had enough of that before,” Joyce said, and scurried to find an ashtray as Barbara took out a pack of cigarettes. Her face must have changed color, she thought, and Barbara could read on it a history of recent events.
“Before what? Before Carl?” Barbara’s voice was muffled as she gripped a cigarette between her lips.
“Mmm. Too many neighbors.”
“You make it sound like a real tenement.”
Joyce flinched, and answered solidly, “It was.”
“That was after you were widowed.”
If only she could agree. But either way, it would sound as though she had grasped at Carl.
“No, before. You see, my husband was an actor. A hopeful actor. He was still hoping when he died. I don’t mean,” she went on hastily, “that all actors have to live that way, especially when they have a family, but Larry was very idealistic.”
“Idealistic? And he kept you in a place like that?” Barbara blew smoke across the room.
“Idealistic about his career,” Joyce explained. “He didn’t want to dilute himself by working at something else, just to make a little money. Most actors live, you know, by working at something else. Until they really make it, but that’s pretty rare. It’s just too competitive.”
“Then, uh—who brought in the bacon?” Barbara seemed flustered by her own nosiness, but had to ask.