“Would you mind if I turn on the speaker? I’m so befuddled. I’d like you to hear, too, to help me keep things straight. Oh, Charlie, I dread so to speak to her. Louise and Donnie were close after Barbara died.” Cora Lee had found Louise’s number in their downstairs apartment where James Kuda had been staying.
Now, calling Louise in Texas, reluctantly waking her, she told Louise that Donnie was dead, that he had been murdered, and that his little girl was safe. “I had thought that all three children had drowned…One child survived, then?”
When Louise was at last able to talk, and to make some sense, she assured Cora Lee that Donnie’s smallest daughter, Corlie, had indeed survived the storm and that she had been with him on their flight to California.
“Corlie was the only one of Donnie’s girls to survive the collapse and flooding of the school, the only one of the three who could be reached in time.”
It took a long time for Louise to tell what she could piece together of James’s Kuda’s deception. Donnie had known Kuda for years. “James Kuda was in and out of prison,” Louise said. “I didn’t like having him here, I thought him a bad influence on Donnie. He was staying with Donnie, here, until he got on his feet, as he put it. But he…Well, he is charming. He did a lot of repairs to our house, and he…he looked so much like Donnie looked before he lost his hair that…Well, I guess I softened to him. Softened too much,” Louise said bitterly.
She was quiet for a few moments while Cora Lee tried to comfort her. “You didn’t know, you couldn’t have known…”
“They named Corlie for you,” Louise said. “Corlie Lee, because when you were kids…”
“He called me Corlie,” Cora Lee said, wiping a tear. Then, “His was such a late marriage. I was so glad for him-it did seem strange to have young nieces when I should, at my age, be talking about great-nieces. And now…Now we have only little Corlie.”
It took some time for Louise to find Donnie’s original letters hidden in the room where James Kuda had stayed. She called Cora Lee back, and then faxed them to her: the letters to Cora Lee that James had always taken to mail for Donnie when he went out early to bike or to run, the letters that were never mailed-that had been replaced by Kuda’s versions: letters giving a new flight time, many weeks ahead of when Donnie had been scheduled to arrive in San Jose, rent a car, and drive down to Molena Point.
“Kuda left here six weeks before Donnie was to fly to California,” Louise said. “He told us he was going back to New Orleans for a while, to help with the flood cleanup.” Then, “Why?” she said. “Why did he kill him?”
Charlie looked up when Max arrived, and beckoned him in, and in a minute Cora Lee handed him the phone.
“I’ll be talking with the Texas Bureau of Investigation in the morning,” he told Louise. “If you would close Kuda’s room, don’t search further or touch or change anything. They’ll have a man out there to go through everything and take evidence. We’ll run his record, but please tell them whatever you can about his background.”
Louise said, “They may find quite a lot. I heard them talking one night, Donnie and James. They stopped when I came in the room. I never…Well, I didn’t ask Donnie about it, later. I was afraid of what I might find out about Donnie, too. Donnie wanted Kuda there, and he’d been through so much…I didn’t want to fight with him. Any kind of stress was hard on him, but squabbling was terrible for Corlie. Corlie…She was in the hospital room, in her mother’s arms, when Barbara died. Her mother holding her, when she died. That took the life right out of the child.
“She didn’t cry for her mother,” Louise said. “And she did not speak again.”
37
I N THE CAR driving home, snuggled beside Max, Charlie was silent, thinking about Cora Lee. She listened as Max told her about the wreck down the coast, and that they thought they might have the missing body of the real Donnie French, of little Corlie’s daddy.
When Charlie didn’t speak, Max drew her close. “Sorry I missed the party. Sorry I broke my promise to get dressed up-and not smell of mud and seawater.”
“I didn’t marry you so you’d dress up and smell nice. I think you smell just fine. But I did miss you.”
“I understand that before the excitement, it was a great party.”
“Sicily did herself proud. I can’t believe we sold over two hundred books, besides the seven framed pieces.” She had sold the drawing of Joe Grey, too, standing like a cougar on the sea rocks, and that sale pleased her. That was to be Dulcie’s Christmas present, Wilma had told her in a whisper.
But no pleasure could mean much compared with the raw pain they all felt for little Corlie. Even the satisfaction of seeing James Kuda in custody was so small, measured against the distress he had caused-the child’s terror and desperate rage, and Cora Lee’s shock at the death of her real cousin; that pain gripped Charlie too deeply to feel joy in much else. She hardly noticed when they turned down their long lane and through the new gate into the fenced yard, was barely aware of the barking of their two big dogs. So much hurt, at Christmas, that she felt almost guilty at their own happy home and warm, good marriage-as if she and Max had too much, while Cora Lee and that little girl were so hurting. She got out of the car quietly, without speaking. As Max opened the door to the mudroom, she leaned against him.
“What?” He held her away, studying her face. “You can’t take on all the world’s pain.”
“I don’t take it on. It just…I guess that kind of hurt is catching, something bearing down that I don’t know how to sidestep.”
“Don’t let it steamroll you,” he said, holding her tight. “Sometimes you can help more by stepping back.”
She tried to think about that; and she was grateful for his strength and good sense. But then later, in bed, clinging close, she said, “What will happen now? What will you do tomorrow?”
“Soon as we can get a warrant we’ll search his room, pick up latents, fiber samples. You know the drill. And we need a top computer technician. I expect we’ll call the Bureau.” He turned on the pillow to look at her. “You’re asking a lot of questions. You planning a life of crime?”
Charlie smiled. “I don’t think I’m emotionally detached enough. I’d die of fright before I got caught.” She nuzzled into his shoulder. “Guess I’m just trying to ease my distress for Cora Lee. To not dwell on the sense of betrayal she must feel, and the guilt for bringing James Kuda here.”
“She didn’t bring him here, Charlie. She was scammed. It happens. And as for Gabrielle, I wouldn’t cry too hard. She was more than eager to catch a man, and that can be asking for trouble.” And before Charlie could answer, he was snoring.
Sighing, she stared up through the skylight, too distressed to sleep but too tired to stay awake. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and it would not be at all the comforting and restorative finale to a busy and often stressful year that she had hoped for.
Loneliness and pain, at Christmas, seemed so much more destructive than at any other time, so much more invasive.
Tomorrow is the day of the contest awards, she reminded herself. She tried to think only of that, tried to put herself to sleep visualizing Lori and Dillon stepping up to the judges’ table to accept the first prize and to hold the check and grin. If she imagined that scene hard enough, made it real enough, then it had to happen.
O N CHRISTMAS EVE morning, a bright sun angled into Gabrielle Row’s room at the back of the tall, rambling house. Hers was a large, spacious rectangle with long windows overlooking the backyard and canyon, its own bath and dressing room, with the smaller alcove furnished as an office/sewing room, where she still produced a few exclusive gowns for her old clientele. Her desk stood in one corner, and already, at eight-thirty, a Bureau agent sat at the computer flashing codes and diagrams on the screen that meant nothing to her. Agent Mel Jepson was young, dark-haired, and sleekly groomed, dressed in a dark suit and tie. He was pleased that only one-fifth of the hard drive was in use, that no one else in the household used her computer, and that she had not turned it on, herself, since she last made a cash transfer, two days ago.