“You’re part of the order?” Cork asked.
“No,” Skye said. “I’m a teacher. Kids with learning disabilities. Annie and I met playing softball. We hit it off right away. She had her calling, I had mine. A mutual admiration.”
“So the sisters didn’t send you?” Jenny said.
Skye shook her head. “My idea to come. We all knew she was going home for Christmas, but she took off way early, without saying anything to anybody, her friends or the sisters. We’ve tried calling her cell phone, but she won’t answer. We’ve been worried sick. So I thought I’d come out, make sure she was here, and see if she’d talk to me in person.”
Cork thought it was an extremely caring thing to do, suspiciously caring, in fact, not to mention expensive. A flight during the Christmas season, a ticket bought on the spur of the moment.
Jenny whistled. “An expansive display of friendship. You could have just called us.”
“I know. But I thought it was important to talk to her face-to-face. And as for the cost, well, the truth is I’m pretty well off. My father is Colton Edwards.”
She said the name as if she expected them to recognize it. Cork didn’t. But Jenny said, “The Silicon Valley Colton Edwards? The Xtel Processor Colton Edwards?”
“Yeah. We call him Chip. Drives him crazy.” She hadn’t drunk much of her coffee, only enough to be polite. She swirled it in her mug and asked, “Do you think I could go out to this Crow Point and see her?”
“We’ll talk to Annie,” Cork promised. “Do you have a place to stay? You’re welcome here.”
“Thanks, but I’ve arranged for a room at the Four Seasons. I don’t want to put anyone out. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying and, honestly, I’m more comfortable in my own hotel room.” She smiled disarmingly. “I snore horribly. Do you have a pen and paper? I’ll leave you my cell phone number, and I’d appreciate it if you’d call me after you’ve spoken with Annie.”
They saw her to the door. She put on her new parka and went from a slender woman to a walrus. She thanked them and walked down the sidewalk to the Escalade, which she’d told them she’d rented at the Duluth airport. They waved good-bye as she drove off.
Cork closed the door against the cold pushing in from outside. “She’s very nice,” he said.
“Yes,” Jenny agreed.
“And clearly she cares about Annie.”
“Uh-huh. And?” Jenny arched a brow.
“I get the definite feeling that there’s something she’s not telling us.”
“Exactly.”
Cork looked at the door he’d just closed.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he said.
CHAPTER 19
Cork got the call from the hospital an hour later, but it didn’t come from Stella Daychild.
“Dad, it’s Stephen. Marlee’s ready to go home.”
“You’re going to take them?”
“No. Marlee doesn’t want to see me.”
Stephen’s tone was flat, unemotional, not like him at all.
“Okay,” Cork said. “I’ll be right over.”
He found Stephen in the hospital lobby, alone, sitting on an orange plastic chair, one in a long bank of orange plastic chairs. His son was staring at a far wall that was strung with sparkly holiday garland in a wavy line that reminded Cork of the readout on a heart monitor. He took the chair next to his son. “So. What’s the story?”
“I don’t know.” Stephen didn’t look at him, just kept his eyes on the wall. “I tried to see her, but her mom said not today.”
“Was that because Stella preferred it that way?”
Stephen shook his head. “Pretty sure it was Marlee’s idea.”
Cork let a couple of quiet moments slide by, then said, “She’s been through hell. She’s got a lot to process.”
“I was there in hell with her.”
“I know. Maybe she doesn’t want you to see her looking the way she probably looks today. Those bruises of hers are only going to get uglier.”
“I don’t care how she looks.”
“But she does. Give her time.”
The front doors slid open, and a woman entered with a child, a boy of maybe five, dressed in a bulky red snowsuit and coughing like the bark of a loud dog. She glanced toward Cork and Stephen, dismissed them immediately, turned her child toward a hallway running in the opposite direction, and ushered the kid that way, as if she knew exactly where she was going.
“Did you have any chance at all to talk to Marlee today?”
Stephen shook his head.
Cork tiptoed delicately toward his next question. “Stephen, if Marlee were keeping a secret of some kind, would you know it?”
Stephen finally looked at his father. “What kind of secret?”
“That’s pretty much the question. I’m trying to figure out why someone might want to harass Marlee. It’s possible that has to do with her mother, but I’m also wondering if it’s because of something Marlee may be involved in.”
“Like what?”
“Have you ever had the feeling that she’s . . . well, that she wants to tell you something but just can’t quite bring herself to do it?”
“Dad, if Marlee has something to say, she says it.” Stephen’s voice cracked at his father, whip-like, angry.
“Okay. That’s fine. I’m just kind of fishing here, guy.” Cork sat back and rubbed the knuckles of his right hand, which were chapped and flaking from the dry winter cold, and decided to change the subject. “So, did you get Annie all squared away on Crow Point?”
“Yeah. Only she’s not in Henry’s cabin. She said it felt like a trespass. So we put her in Rainy’s cabin instead. That was all right, wasn’t it?”
“I’m pretty sure. I’ll give Rainy a call just to be on the safe side. By the way, Annie’s got a visitor from out of town.”
“Who?”
“Does the name Skye Edwards mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Didn’t to me or Jenny either. She’s a friend of Annie’s from California. She came out because she’s worried about your sister. She’d like to see her.”
Stephen looked uncomfortable. “I’m not sure Annie wants company.”
“How about you do me a favor? Give her a call. If she says it’s okay, take Skye out to Crow Point. Would you do that?”
“Sure. And you’ll take Marlee and her mom home?”
“That’s the plan,” Cork said.
“Okay.” It was a situation clearly acceptable to him, though not ideal.
Stephen got up, moved to the other end of the lobby, and used his cell phone. Cork could hear only snatches of the conversation that followed. After a minute, he shut his phone, came back, and said, “Where is Skye?”
“Staying at the Four Seasons. Annie said yes?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“What?”
“It was really strange, Dad. Annie sounded . . .” Stephen frowned, thought, finally settled on the right word. “Afraid.”
* * *
Marlee moved like an old woman, as if each step hurt her somewhere, everywhere. A bruise, dark purple and long, lay like a great fat leech across the left side of her face, and her left eye was swollen nearly shut. On the way home, she sat in the backseat of the Forester, brooding silently. Up front, Cork and Stella talked of inconsequential things.
At the house, he stood by while Stella helped her daughter inside.
“You’re welcome to come in,” Stella said.
“Thanks, no.”
“Don’t go away,” she told him. “I’ll be right back.”
While he waited, he walked the clearing in the way he had before, looking for clues to the violation of the Daychilds’ sense of peace two nights earlier, looking for anything he might have missed. It was habit, this visiting and revisiting the elements of a crime. At the entrance to the trail that led through the trees to Iron Lake, he spotted something that he hadn’t seen before. Off to one side was an aspen sapling that stood only eight feet high and with branches that began just above the snow line. Cork noticed that a couple of the lower branches had been broken, one snapped off completely and the other hanging from the trunk by threads of bark. It was the kind of damage that neither wind nor any freeze and thaw cycle would have caused. Something had blundered there, some substantial body. The surface of the snow was smooth, no tracks, and Cork figured that the damage had been done before the recent storm.