I glanced out the window. It was already dark. “They’re not going to freeze to death overnight, are they?”
George chuckled. “Oh, you don’t know these guys. They give layering a whole new meaning. And if they’re there now, they’ll be there in the morning.”
“Thanks a lot, George.”
I hung up the phone and turned to Sammie, remembering her reaction to being left out of the previous night’s action. “You ready to pay a visit to Mary Wallis with me?”
Considering Wallis’s bellicose lifestyle, her home was a contradictory reflection of bland self-effacement. Tucked away on Allerton Avenue, a short, dead-end street off Western-and within a short stone’s throw of the interstate-it was of the same post-World War Two building style that had made Levittown famous and architects shudder. And given her manic concern for the environment, I found it ironic that the singsong throb of high-speed traffic permeated the surrounding air with the same dull monotony of waves crashing on a beach. It occurred to me that either Mary had come to embrace her causes after she’d moved in here-and then couldn’t afford to leave-or that she needed the stimulus of a nearby and constant enemy to keep her dander up.
Sammie and I got out of the car, crossed the lawn where the mailman had seen Shawna Davis, and paused at the front door. The house, though lighted inside, didn’t issue a murmur.
But when the door swung open after I rang the bell, Mary Wallis stood before us, white-faced, tear-stained, and so visibly near collapse that I instinctively reached forward and took her by the elbow. “Mary. Are you all right?”
She looked at me in shock and violently pulled her arm away. “What do you want?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing-I just heard a friend of mine had died. What do you want?” Her voice was hard, almost strident.
“Was your friend Shawna Davis?” Sammie asked. Often not the most diplomatic of questioners, there were times when her bluntness was above reproach.
Mary Wallis looked stunned, her hand gripping the door so tightly it began to shake.
“She was last seen here, at your house, sometime last spring.”
Mary worked her mouth to say something, but no words came out.
I spread my hands in a gesture of peace. “Mary, can I fix you some coffee or tea at least? Or call someone to come visit?”
More slowly this time, I reached out, took her elbow, and made a motion to escort her indoors. She showed no resistance, and we were able to cross the threshold and cut off the freezing air that had been rapidly filling the house. Mary began shivering only after the door was shut.
I peeled off my overcoat and draped it over her shoulders.
“Where’s your kitchen? Let me make you something hot to drink.”
She gestured vaguely toward the right, and I steered her ahead of me down a short hallway to a modest kitchen facing the front of the house. I sat her in a chair at a small table in the room’s center, poured some hot water into a kettle I found on the stove, and lit a fire under it.
“Where did you and Shawna meet?” I asked, sitting opposite her.
Sammie leaned against a counter, watching Mary’s face as she spoke.
Her words came out slowly, or maybe carefully, I thought.
“At Mother Gert’s. I was on duty-volunteering-when she came by looking for a bed. I took an instant liking to her.”
“Did she talk about herself much?”
“Not at first. We have a form we’re supposed to fill out for every newcomer, and all I could get out of her was her name and age. Afterward, when I showed her to her room, she began to open up. We didn’t have much business that night, so I stayed with her, listening, for almost three hours.”
My mind returned to Susan Lucey, and to how she, too, had triggered Shawna’s need to share her burdens. “What did she talk about?”
Mary took a deep breath, almost a sob. “Her mother, her school, where she’d grown up. She’d had a very hard life for someone so young. She’d suffered badly at the hands of others.”
I paused for a moment, looking at the woman before me, and suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen or heard from her in a long time, not since her predictable but unsuccessful attempt to derail the convention center project on the Putney Road a half-year ago… And not since the time of Shawna’s disappearance-a coincidental piece of timing I hadn’t noticed until now.
I ventured a guess. “You must have found much in common with her.”
She’d been staring into space and now raised her eyes to meet mine. “Yes. That’s quite true.”
The kettle began whistling, and Sammie went about making tea.
“What were her plans when you met?” I asked.
Mary wiped her cheeks with one hand-a gesture of returning self-control that made me think I should have taken Sammie’s cue and pushed her harder early on. “She had the name of somebody in town-I forget who-a friend of a friend-where she could stay. But I don’t think she had any plans exactly. She just wanted to get away from home.”
“Was she fearful her mother might come after her?”
“Yes, although I told her that being eighteen, she was legally immune. But that’s not what worried her-the legal threat. She was running from her mother’s influence, and there was really no hiding from that.”
“You offered to put her up, didn’t you?”
Her wan, pale face relaxed into a small smile. “Yes-totally against the house rules and good judgment. Gert would have been furious. But Shawna wasn’t interested in any case. She didn’t want another mother figure. I wouldn’t have either, in her shoes.”
Sammie placed the teacup before her. “You want any milk or sugar?”
Mary shook her head. “No, thank you.”
Sammie took advantage of the opening to press on. “But she came back in the long run-about a month later-didn’t she?”
Mary lifted the cup to her lips and took a sip, watching us closely over the brim. She then replaced the cup and shrugged my coat from her shoulders, draping it over the chair next to her. “She came to visit once, to say thank you. It was the last time I saw her. She said she was going away… ”
Her chin began to quiver suddenly, and she dropped her head. “Poor, poor girl… ”
“The day she was here,” Sammie said, almost harshly, “she was carrying a thousand dollars of someone else’s money. She tell you about that?”
I gave Sammie a cautionary glance as Mary straightened and fixed us both with a startled expression. “What?”
“Shawna stole a thousand dollars from the man she was staying with,” I explained. “That’s why we think she was heading out of town.”
Mary’s eyebrows knit slightly. “I wondered why she was so excited.” Her voice then hardened, becoming more businesslike. “So you think that man may have killed her?”
“We were hoping you might give us some insight on that,” I said.
She took another delicate sip of tea. “She was very vague about her recent past.”
“Why would she stop here?” Sammie asked. “Hot money in her pocket-you and she had only talked for a few hours a month before. Seems kind of crazy.”
Mary looked at her coolly, now clearly holding something back. “I don’t know.”
“And she didn’t say where she was headed?”
“No.”
Sammie scowled openly but remained silent.
“Mary,” I asked, “why didn’t you give us a call when you read about Shawna?”
A bit of her old combative self rose to the surface. “It’s not my job to help you, Joe. I had the answer. I knew that a young girl I’d become very attached to-whom I’d last seen full of hope-hadn’t even made it out of town before being killed-a town, I might add, that you are supposed to be making safe.” She shot a baleful look at Sammie, whose tight, mistrustful expression hadn’t changed. “But I know nothing that can help you identify her killer. What good was a call from me going to be? What good has this conversation been, in fact, except to stir up painful memories?”