“What was Hector’s wife like? Virginia Crow?”
“Real cool,” the man told Abe. “She stood there and watched as we loaded him on the stretcher and carried him off. For all she reacted, she could’a been watching us carry a slab of meat from the freezer out of her house. Dry-eyed and not a sniffle out of her.”
“Did you see her son, Spencer Crow? He would have been little, not even two years old.”
Dan nodded.
“Caught a glimpse of him sitting in the kitchen when we carried out the boy’s daddy. He didn’t make a sound, just sat in a chair staring at the table. A quiet little guy. I remember feeling real bad for him and his mama, though she was a card, I’m sure.”
“The mother didn’t console him?”
“Not in front of us,” Dan said. “One thing I remember bein’ a little strange.”
“What was that?”
“I saw that woman about six months later, walking down to her mailbox. Belly out to here.” Dan held his hand two feet out from his stomach.
“She was pregnant?”
“Sure looked it, though she never mentioned it when the husband died. I ran into her a few years later at a store in town, asked about her children. She told me she had one child, and he was fine. Then she turned and walked away as if I’d insulted her. Strange woman, indeed.”
“You have no idea what happened to the second child?”
He shook his head.
“Noe of my business. Might’a lost it, maybe gave it up because her husband was dead. Impossible to say.”
“Not impossible,” Abe said.
Chapter 37
Abe
Abe sat at his desk at Up North News.
He had missing girls’ tips to follow up on, he still hadn’t called his mom, and he’d told his dad he’d stop by again for dinner. Instead, he’d spent hours calling hospitals, inquiring about records for Mrs. Virginia Crow. He scoured birth records but found nothing. He’d left messages with a handful of connections. Finally, he got a hit.
“I’m looking through midwife records from 1963,” the woman who worked for Leelanau County Health said. “A birth that happened at 311 Sapphire. A midwife assisted.”
“So, she had the baby. A boy or a girl?”
“A boy.”
“Got a name?”
“No name on record.”
“How about a name for the midwife?” Abe asked.
“Rosie Hyde.”
Abe’s editor stopped at his desk.
“I was hoping for a follow-up story, Abe. Some leads, at least. Not to mention you promised me a work-up on each girl. Instead, I’m looking at a blank basket in my office with your name on it.”
Abe held up a finger, finished scribbling the address for Rosie Hyde, and stood.
“I’m on it, Barney.”
“You’re on what? I need a pitch. Wait, where are you going?”
Abe grabbed his keys, walked backwards toward the door.
“You’re not a detective, Abe. You’re supposed to write the story. You…”
But Abe had already pushed open the door and was running down the hallway.
Hazel
Hazel turned onto Sapphire Lane, driving at a creep while studying mailboxes. Many of the houses stood far off the road, invisible behind the wall of trees and foliage. The few Hazel observed were grand estates surrounded by sprawling yards with gardens, flowering shrubs, and several elaborate fountains displaying kissing children or chiseled saints.
She slowed at the mailbox marked three-eleven, staring into the thick forest. The stone driveway disappeared into the woods, concealing the house and its inhabitants.
She pulled onto the shoulder, gazing in her rearview mirror at the mailbox for 311 Sapphire Lane.
What would it hurt to get out and look around?
“If he’s a murderer, it could hurt a lot,” she grumbled, opening her door.
Bird song and crickets greeted her. It was peaceful. She loved her house in town, but sometimes the traffic and neighbors made her garden feel as if she lived in Chicago instead of northern Michigan. She enjoyed the sounds of nature and the quiet, the deep penetrating quiet, beneath them. Except as she slipped into the woods, the quiet grew unnerving. Her feet crunched over twigs and leaves so loud, she paused every few feet to listen. Had someone heard her?
An acorn fell from a tree overhead, and she sprang back when it landed in the leaves in front of her.
“Where are you going?” a woman’s sharp voice sliced through the stillness, and Hazel froze, caught.
And then another voice, a man’s voice, answered the woman’s question.
“Out,” the man said.
“Out where?” The woman’s shrill tone made Hazel’s ears ring.
She crept forward until she spied them through the trees. A man and a woman, facing off in the stone driveway of 311 Sapphire.
“What’s the problem, Mother?”
The woman stomped her foot and stabbed the air with a finger.
“The problem?” she shrilled. “It’s not safe.”
The man didn’t respond. He’d turned and started away, but the woman lunged forward, stopping just behind the man. He shrugged her off.
“Spencer!” the woman wailed, but the man got into his gold sports car and pulled down the driveway.
Hazel turned and sprinted back to her car. She waited until Spencer turned on Sapphire Lane, and then she jumped behind the wheel and followed him.
When she reached M-22, the car had disappeared.
“Damn,” she cursed.
She turned south, hoping the man in the gold car was heading for Traverse City, but she’d lost him.
“It’s not safe,” she said out loud. What had the woman meant?
Abe
“Hi, are you Rosie Hyde?”
The woman had frizzy red hair pulled into a white scarf. She sat on a huge tire half-buried in the sand. Kids ran around the yard, screaming, blowing bubbles, crawling over an iron jungle gym.
“That’s the name my father gave me,” she said with a big, joyful smile. She beamed at the kids as if they were all her own.
Abe jumped to the side as two little boys raced by with squirt guns, shrieking and spraying water in long, sparkling streams.
“Michael and Andy, watch where you’re aiming those things,” Rosie called.
Abe stopped near Rosie and held out his hand.
“I’m Abraham Levett. I called about the Crow baby.”
Rosie frowned and leaned sideways, grabbing his hand and giving it a little shake. She looked soft and warm, like a grandmother who baked cookies and sampled every batch.
“Such a sordid tale for a sunny day as this,” Rosie told him. “But I’ve suspected ever since that dark day in that big, drafty mansion that someone would come calling.”
Abe climbed onto a matching tire, propping his feet in the grooves to keep from falling off.
“Why did you believe someone would come calling?”
Rosie slid from the tire, her large, soft bottom swishing as she walked to a bucket and pulled out a big wand. She blew a stream of bubbles into the air. The kids screamed with delight and set about chasing the bubbles through the grass.
“Children are the light of the world,” she said, returning with a smile and moving deftly back onto the tire. “I became a midwife because I love children, and I love mothers. I have four children myself, grown and scattered now like seedlings from a cottonwood tree.”
Rosie lifted a locket from her large bosom and opened it toward Abe.