“Get enough dirt on it and they’ll leave it,” Lucy Fur advised.
“Good idea.” The fluffy cat hurriedly rolled the ball over wet footprints.
Harry kept on wrapping, hoping to be able to add more jackets to the boxes, which could use them.
The door opened again and Esther Mercier Toth walked in. “Girls, I’m late. Al and I had an argument over who would take the Explorer. Flipped a coin finally.”
“That means you won.” Jessica smiled at the older woman she barely knew.
Before Esther joined the St. Cyril’s ladies auxiliary, she stopped by Harry. “Thank you for visiting Flo. I take care of her. I don’t know how her name got on Father O’Connor’s list, but Flo will enjoy a good Christmas now.” She paused, thought for a moment. “How was she?”
“Uh.” Harry struggled to find a way to frame the visit in the nicest way possible.
“Say no more.” Esther smiled. “But she wasn’t hostile, was she?”
“No, Miss Mercier, I mean Mrs. Toth.”
This made them both smile.
“Old habits.” The former math teacher smiled. “Flo, brighter than I, is really a good sort. You just have to work with her, know what I mean?”
“I think I do. Her house is immaculate, coldish, but very clean. And what a library.”
“Yes, always the reader.”
As Esther joined the others, Harry realized Esther had not heard about Lou. One by one, the news was passing through the volunteers.
Esther joined the others, all making notations on their own maps. No way you could write on your GPS.
Harry kept folding, but she wondered at the various ways people cope with pain, disappointment, crushed dreams. Most people feel terrible, tears are shed, their friends take them out or talk to them. Little by little, they reemerge. Some bounce right back. If anything, they seem strengthened by the setback. Others never recover. Maybe Flo fell into that group.
Harry figured she belonged in the middle group. Noticing the women carrying boxes, she left off her task and began to tote box after box.
Once back inside, the women gabbed on as they worked.
BoomBoom closed up a box. “Lou better have a good story when he walks through the door.”
“He can always claim amnesia.” Esther picked up a light box to put in her car.
“If he’s alive,” Harry blurted out.
“Harry, that’s awful. There are all kinds of reasons why he might not have called or gotten through.” Esther had reached the door.
“You’re right.” After Esther had left the room, Harry said to Susan, BoomBoom, and Reverend Jones, “Since Friday afternoon? Something has to be wrong.”
“Maybe he was in an accident and no one knows who he is?” Reverend Jones speculated. “No ID for some reason.”
“He’d have to be a passenger in someone else’s car and he would have to have left everything in his car,” said Harry. “It is possible.”
“Yeah, well, if he was in an accident, who was driving?” Susan’s eyebrows shot upward.
The door opened and in walked Miranda. The service at her church had just ended and she wanted to join the others here to help. Plus, she liked being with her younger friends.
“Good to see you, Miranda,” said the Reverend. “Now that you’re here, I can leave. The girls are, uh, being girls.” He was glad to alter the drift of the conversation.
This made them laugh, but the cats protested.
“Don’t go. Not yet.” Elocution had indeed saved the now soggy ball.
“Come on, kitties.” He knelt down and picked up Cazenovia. “Come on.”
“The sacrifices I make!” Elocution trotted after him, as did Lucy Fur.
BoomBoom filled in Miranda on Lou, as well as Esther’s conversation with Harry.
“Flo Rice tried to attend the Church of the Holy Light, but it wasn’t for her,” said Miranda. “She had a fit when her Catholic church dispensed with Latin.” Miranda was more interested in Flo than in Lou, whom she didn’t know.
The Church of the Holy Light, an evangelical church, was Miranda’s church. She sang in the choir. Her magnificent voice brought people to services just to hear her. She had no ego about this gift at all.
“I knew Flo when she was young,” said Miranda. “We attended different schools, but Charlottesville, the county, so much smaller then, everybody knew everybody, or thought they did.”
Susan got right to it. “Was she peculiar?”
“Not at all. She was vivacious, bright, popular. ’Course she had hot competition from Esther. They battled over everything, but sisters do.”
“She’s not vivacious and popular now,” Susan said.
“She turned.” Miranda used the old southern word for a big change in behavior.
“Do you know why?” Harry inquired of her former coworker, a dear friend of Harry’s parents’.
“No, I was never that close to the Merciers. All I heard was she began to get snappy, quite irritable—oh, what, twenty-some years ago? Some people said her mother kept her in line, and when Mildred Mercier died, oh, 1990, Flo lost her restraining influence. I don’t know. She offended her friends, her boss. That sort of thing. Never knew why.”
“Do you think something like that could have happened to Louis Higham?”
“Harry, how in the world do you get from an older, highly odd lady to Lou Higham, Mr. Personality?” Susan threw up her hands. “And we don’t even know if anything bad has happened to him.”
“How do we know he didn’t turn?” asked Harry. “People hide these things, families cover up. It’s not so far-fetched. Nobody knows what happens behind closed doors.”
Everyone in the room stared at Harry, then BoomBoom remarked, “She has a point.”
On Monday, December 16, Deputy Cooper visited the Vavilov’s Ford dealership. Sheriff Rick Shaw had put another officer on the search for Lou, returning Cooper to the Vavilov case. The examiner had declared he died of a heart attack, but Cooper and Rick still wanted to know about Peter Vavilov’s missing fingers. Both of them had been in law enforcement long enough to be very uneasy about this peculiar mutilation, which seemed to signify tremendous hatred.
In the car lot, looking again at Vavilov’s Ford Explorer, Cooper realized she had not adequately inspected the vehicle. The insurance agent had gone over it, finding the Explorer salvageable. A bumper needed replacing, the driver’s door and front left fender needed repair, but all in all, the car proved how tough it was.
Clouds slid over the mountains, light faded, Cooper used a high-powered flashlight as she checked the exterior. She had expected more damage, but heavy falling snow had obscured the vehicle when she reached the Explorer that night. Just reaching the accident after the report was called in took an hour. The snowplows couldn’t keep up with the accumulation.
Satisfied with her notes on the car’s outside, Cooper opened the driver’s door. No seats had been jarred loose, the dashboard evidenced no damage at all, the windshield remained intact. The driver’s-side window was cracked. Leaning over, her rear end in the cold air, she trained the flashlight on the back of the driver’s seat, then the front of the seat. A small stain caught her attention, about a half-inch wide near the headrest. She couldn’t identify it.
Closing the door, she walked around, got into the car, sat in the passenger seat, turned on the heater for both seats. She shined her light again on the small splotch. She’d been a law enforcement officer since graduating from college. At thirty-seven, Cooper well knew that any stain might yield potential clues. As to the half-inch stain, it appeared colorless, grease perhaps. Had she been Tucker, her nose would have picked up the remnant of an odor not easily identified but a whiff of something distinctive.