When Did We Lose Harriet? Read online

  Put that way, it sounded not only harmless, but like an excellent idea. Truth to tell, since I started dating Morse, I hadn’t even been out with girlfriends much. He liked me to stick close. I hated to admit how much I was enjoying some time to myself that week.

  I’d have felt more virtuous, though, if Lewis Henly weren’t so attractive. In a black turtleneck and slacks, he looked like a young priest.

  “Hey,” I asked, suddenly suspicious, “you aren’t a preacher in disguise, are you? I don’t even go to dinner with preachers.”

  He shook his head. “Used to be a lawyer, until last year. What you got against preachers?” He took my arm and led me toward the door.

  “I drive,” I informed him. “I’ve got a real liking for air conditioning. And how about if we go to Sinclair’s instead of for pizza? I feel like a salmon salad.”

  “You don’t look like a salmon salad, sister, but if you’re driving, you drive where you want to go. Now, what is it you’ve got against preachers?”

  I waited until we were on the road before I told him. “What I’ve got against preachers is, my daddy was one, before it got him killed.”

  He’d been fiddling with the radio, but he stopped and stared. “Henry Davidson? Used to go around with Martin Luther King?”

  “Yeah, before I was born. Dr. King was shot before I made the scene. Daddy got shot when I was nine. Only difference is, Daddy didn’t get statues and streets named after him.”

  “But he was a fine man.” Lewis looked at me like he thought I was suddenly somebody, and said in this wondering voice, “I’m going out to eat with Henry Davidson’s daughter. Think of that. You know what? You and I are old friends, Josheba. When I was a little boy, my granny used to go to your daddy’s church. When we came to visit her, I used to see you sitting on the front seat in hair bows and frilly skirts. Your daddy was the first preacher I ever really listened to. Man, could he preach!”

  “Yeah.” I always hate it when people talk about Daddy, because mostly what I remember about him is how he died. “Look,” I told Lewis, “if we’re gonna talk about Daddy all night, I don’t want to go. All right?”

  “Sure. Whatever you say. No Daddy and no Harriet Lawson. I can handle that.”

  We had a terrific time. Sinclair’s is a little restaurant somebody made out of an old Sinclair gas station. It’s decorated in black and white, and has all these old photographs hanging on the walls. The food is delicious, too.

  That night, though, I hardly noticed what I ate. Lewis talked about his days as what he called a “hotshot lawyer with more money than sense,” and got me laughing so hard at some of his cases that I nearly wet my pants. I told him a little bit about working in the library and some of the funny things kids say, and he laughed so much he spilled his wine.

  After dinner, we split a Bananas Sinclair—bananas, ice cream, brown sugar, butter, rum—oh, it was grand! By the time we’d scooped up all the runny parts from the bowl, I felt like I’d known that brother all my life.

  It wasn’t romantic or anything. He didn’t touch me the entire meal, not even hold my elbow as we left the restaurant. But you know, it just felt good to walk beside him and know we were breathing the same air—together, yet our own selves.

  When we got back to the center, he climbed out quickly. “The basketball team’s gonna wonder where I am. Thanks!” He hurried inside.

  I drove home slowly, savoring the whole evening. I wouldn’t trade Morse in for Lewis, of course, but Lordy, how that man could talk!

  I refused to think about the way my pulse reacted to his last smile.

  Fifteen

  As twisting the nose produces blood,

  so stirring up anger produces strife.

  Proverbs 30:33

  While Josheba was having fun with Lewis, I—MacLaren—was fixing supper and calling Dee to report on our trip to Eunice’s. When I told her there seemed to be a good chance Harriet was with her mother, Dee was bewildered. “Her mother? She hasn’t seen her mother since she was two.”

  “Several people say Harriet’s heard from her lately, though.” I didn’t add that I suspected Harriet’s legacy might have had something to do with her mother’s change of heart.

  Instead, I asked when I could bring “a few things of Harriet’s” over, and she suggested Friday morning. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that the things were hundred dollar bills.

  I was feeling curiously deflated. Maybe it was a reaction to how over-the-moon I’d felt right after Jake’s surgery. I was certainly concerned about Josheba—that young man of hers worried me. But mostly I was feeling pretty low about not having found Harriet and having to give up the search in the middle. I’ve never liked leaving jobs half done, and it nearly killed me to realize it was entirely possible that I would never know if Myrna came, if Harriet was found, even if Harriet was still alive.

  That evening I visited with Jake a few minutes, but he was too drowsy to care if I was there or not. I returned to the waiting room to find Glenna talking with a tall woman with iron gray hair swept back into a soft twist. Her skin was so thin, and her eyes so large and dark, that when I first saw her, all I saw was eyes. From the way she curved over an ebony cane, I suspected she was on the upper side of eighty.

  Glenna welcomed me with a happy smile. “MacLaren, honey, I want you to meet my good friend, Lou Ella Sykes. Lou Ella, this is Jake’s sister.”The woman wore a soft blue cotton dress embroidered all up the front. It had probably cost about half as much as I’d spent on my entire shopping spree, and the pearl earrings she wore with it were the size of gumballs. I was so busy admiring her outfit that I scarcely heard Glenna tell her, “I think you’re the only member of your family MacLaren hasn’t met in the two days she’s been here.”

  Her big dark eyes bored into mine. “Really? Why is that?” The woman’s voice was musical, with a hint of somewhere other than Alabama.

  “She’s been looking for Dee’s niece, Harriet,” Glenna told her.

  “Oh?” Lou Ella drew down her fine silver brows. “Why?”

  “She’s missing,” I said.

  “Missing?” She flapped one hand in dismissal. “Oh, pshaw. She’s probably just gone off again. It’s not the first time.”

  I shook my head. “No, but this time she’s not with Ricky Dodd, like she was before.”

  Lou Ella was astonished. “How on earth do you know?”

  “I went out there looking for her. She’s not with her mother’s sister Eunice, either.”

  “No, I don’t suppose she would go there. Harriet’s never had much to do with that side of her family.” Remembering what Eunice had said about Harriet running in and out of her house all the time, and that Harriet might at this minute be with her mother, I figured Lou Ella didn’t know as much as she thought she did about the girl.

  Then Lou Ella surprised me. I’d have expected her to sympathize with Dee and William. Instead, she said, “Poor Harriet, she’s had a hard time with William and Dee. She’s been used to a lot of freedom, and they treat her the same way they do Julie, who has been much more delicately reared. I keep telling them that Harriet has to find her own way. Both her mother and her father had wanderlust in their blood. She’s got it too. If I were them, I’d let her have her head a bit more. As for running away, I wouldn’t give it another thought. Perhaps a few days on her own won’t do her any harm.”

  “She’s been gone six weeks,” Glenna told her gently.

  “Six weeks?” Clearly shocked, Lou Ella’s long fingers seemed to wring the neck of the silver duck at the top of her cane. She turned back to me. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “I had no idea,” she murmured. “And they haven’t reported her missing?” Her voice dropped as if she were talking to herself. “Of course they haven’t. I would have heard.”

  “William refuses to report her missing,” I told William’s grandmother frankly, “and unless he does, I don’t think the police will do a thing.”

 
; Lou Ella’s eyes grew even bigger and darker with worry. “I suppose—” she began, then shook her head. “No, it’s unforgivable. Somebody ought to have looked for her.”

  “The thing I find the hardest to understand,” Glenna told her, “is that nobody, absolutely nobody, seems to remember the last time they saw her. It’s as if she has vanished from the face of the earth.”

  The old woman quivered with indignation. “Then we must find her.” Her face wore a stricken look. “Not one of us ever gave that child a second thought. Now, I’m very much afraid we are going to have to answer for it.”

  Glenna decided to sleep in her own bed that night. On our way home, the storm broke over us like an egg. Long jagged lightning brightened the sky through a perfect deluge. We hadn’t taken umbrellas, of course, so we were soaked between the car and the house. We dashed inside and dried off, then Glenna went straight to bed.

  I was still reading when the telephone rang. I leaped from my bed and hurried through the dark house to answer it in the kitchen before it woke her. It was probably Joe Riddley again, or somebody from the church. Hopefully it wasn’t another volunteer opportunity Jake had kindly left me.

  “Crane residence,” I said softly. “This is MacLaren, Jake’s sister.”

  Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. A loud whisper hissed through the receiver to fill my ear: You’ll never find Harriet Lawson. Harriet Lawson is dead!

  Sixteen

  I applied my heart to what I observed

  and learned a lesson from what I saw.

  Proverbs 24:32

  The brown-haired child looked up from a smeared, torn paper. “Granny, I can’t do this math! Come help me.”

  The voice from the kitchen was weary and short. “I don’t know nothin’ about math, girl, and I got things to do. Ask your teacher to help you. That’s what they’re there for.”

  The teacher towered over her desk. “No homework again? And you’ve failed another test. If this keeps up, I will have to call your parents. Put away that book and pay attention.” She moved on down the row of desks, stopping to rest one hand on a boy’s shoulder. “Good work. Another perfect paper.”

  He turned his head and gave the brown-haired child a satisfied smirk. She glowered and returned to her novel. Nobody saw the tear she wiped off her cheek.

  “No!” I moaned. “No! Help her! Help her!” I woke to find my lips still mouthing the words. When I looked at the clock, it was only half past two. A heck of a lot of night still to get through.

  I got up and padded into the bathroom for a drink of water. In the lavatory mirror I saw the big dark eyes of the child in my dream. Now I recognized her face. It belonged to my older granddaughter.

  I sank onto the toilet with a groan. What if it were my granddaughter who was missing? We’d have turned over heaven and earth by now. Would nobody turn over even one clod of dirt for poor Harriet?

  Clod of dirt.

  Grave.

  I remembered the phone call. Had that been a dream, too?

  No. I could still hear that loud, hissing whisper, then a click.

  I hadn’t been really frightened. The thunder and lightning effects outside the window made it seem more theatrical than scary. But who would make such a call? Why?

  “Maybe Ricky?” Josheba suggested when I called her early Thursday morning. I felt like I’d burst if I didn’t tell somebody, and I didn’t like to tell Glenna. I think I woke Josheba up, but I didn’t even apologize.

  “I thought of Julie, myself,” I told her. “She’s down at Gulf Shores all week with a friend, but kids these days think nothing of using long distance. And my favorite suspect is William. Especially if his grandmother called him after I met her in the hospital last night. She was appalled that he hasn’t reported that child missing before now.”

  “Then he could well be trying to scare you off,” Josheba agreed. “Or maybe Eunice was more upset by our visit than she seemed.”

  We weren’t saying anything I hadn’t already thought. In the dark kitchen after the call, I’d come up with good reasons why the caller could have been anybody I’d talked to so far.

  “Why would anyone bother? That’s the big question, Mac.”

  “It’s not the biggest one, Josheba. Do you think Harriet is truly dead?”

  “The only question I have,” Lewis Henly said later that morning, “is why you and Josheba can’t leave poor Harriet alone.”

  I called the teen center from the hospital while they were moving Jake from intensive care to a real room. I wanted to tell Lewis about the call to see what he’d say.

  What he said was, “I don’t for a minute believe she’s dead. In fact, if she heard you were looking for her, she could well have made that call herself.”

  “Looks to me like if she heard somebody was looking for her, she’d have showed up at the center to get her money back,” I argued.

  “Don’t get too hung up on the money thing, Mac. Kids around here shed belongings like a snake sheds skin. I’ve known a kid to leave every stitch of clothing he owned, including a brand-new leather jacket, lying in the bathroom at an interstate rest stop because somebody offered him a ride he didn’t want to lose. With these kids, it’s easy come, easy go. Harriet will come back for the money if she needs it. Meanwhile, she’s just gone.”

  “You don’t sound very sorry.” As soon as the words were out, I regretted them.

  He didn’t sound offended, though. “I’m not very sorry, Mac. Harriet can be a royal pain in the be-hind. She loves finding out things about people, and if she finds out anything about you that isn’t perfectly up-and-up, heaven help you after that.”

  I wasn’t sure I understood. “You mean she tries to blackmail people?”

  Lewis barked a short laugh. “Not tries to, does. Look, you may as well have the whole picture. One of the guys at the club got into trouble some years back. He’s clean now, but Harriet found out about it. She sidled up to him one day and asked for Coke money. When he refused, she asked, ‘Do they know about you around here?’ and told him enough to convince him she could blow his cover real good. He went numb and handed her money without thinking. Next thing he knew, she was coming after him for money on a regular basis.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What did I do? What could I do?”

  “You could tell her to stop bothering him, couldn’t you?”

  “Sure—and I did, once I found out about it. I even paid her a little bit to answer the phone after school. I felt sorry for her. Heck, I know what it’s like to be short of cash. But don’t go painting a picture of Saint Harriet in your mind. Saintly she isn’t.”

  This opened all sorts of possibilities, though. “If she operated like that around the club, she may have tried the same thing with other people. Ricky Dodd, for instance,”

  “He’d have wrung her neck before giving her a penny.”

  “Okay, not Ricky, and not Dee, probably, but maybe William? Or Julie? Maybe somebody got tired of it, or—”

  Lewis interrupted in exasperation. “Look, Mac, the girl hasn’t turned up dead. Even if a dozen people wanted to murder her, nobody has. Can’t you get that through your head?”

  “No, because something’s wrong, Lewis. Penniless fifteen-year-olds don’t disappear leaving three thousand dollars behind. I hear what you’re saying about kids being careless about possessions, but not money, Lewis—surely not money.”

  “This one was. And if you want the honest truth, my center is a pleasanter place this summer without her. I suspect the Sykes house is, too. So if she ever does come back, the only two people singing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ will be you and Josheba.” He must have realized he’d climbed up on his high horse, because he added in a gentler tone, “You’ve got plenty of other things to do with your time in Montgomery, Mac. The only question I have is, why can’t you and Josheba just leave poor Harriet alone?”

  “I can’t, Lewis. I started all this because it was a puzzle, but it’s not a puzzle any l
onger. It’s a child. I never saw her, but I dream about her. She has my granddaughter’s face. This week has showed me how much I care for Jake. I keep thinking somebody ought to care about Harriet like that. Until we find her, I can’t forget her—and neither should you.”

  He gave another short laugh. “What you really mean is, ‘I can’t forget her, so neither will you,’ isn’t it, Mac? You and Josheba are gonna make sure of that, aren’t you?”

  “Probably so,” I admitted cheerfully. “I keep thinking Just one more person and we’ll find her. Well, I have another person I want to talk to. The other day Kateisha mentioned somebody named Ms. Scott who might know something. If Kateisha comes in today, will you ask her how to find Ms. Scott?”

  He laughed, and finally he sounded amused. “You and Josheba are two hearts that beat as one. She’s already bugged me this morning about Ms. Scott. I’ll talk to Kateisha. Call me back after lunch, and I’ll tell you what she says.”

  I called back while Jake took his afternoon nap. “All Kateisha would say is that Ms. Scott was a friend of Harriet’s grandmother,” he told me.

  I was already looking up Scotts in the telephone book—which I kicked myself for not doing earlier. There was a C. Scott on the Lawson’s old street in Cottage Hill.

  The voice on the phone, cracked with age, brought to mind immediately black-eyed Susans and wisps of white hair escaping from a straw hat. “You the same woman come by here t’other day lookin’ for Harriet?”

  “I sure am,” I told her, “and I’m still looking.”

  “You haven’t found her?” The old woman was obviously surprised. “Did you ask Dixie? Didn’t she tell you Harriet’s gone away for the summer?”

  “Not exactly. She said Harriet and her uncle quarreled about some summer plans, and Harriet ran away. They haven’t seen her since June.”