Outside on the porch I saw a changeling. A little girl with her face aimed intently at a huge, four-foot dollhouse, fashioned to look exactly like my mother’s home. Long blonde hair drifted in disciplined rivulets down her back, which was to me. As she turned, I realized it was the girl I’d spoken to at the edge of the woods, the girl who’d been laughing with her friends outside Natalie’s funeral. The prettiest one.
“Amma?” I asked, and she laughed.
“Naturally. Who else would be playing on Adora’s front porch with a little Adora house?”
The girl was in a childish checked sundress, matching straw hat by her side. She looked entirely her age—thirteen—for the first time since I’d seen her. Actually, no. She looked younger now. Those clothes were more appropriate for a ten-year-old. She scowled when she saw me assessing her.
“I wear this for Adora. When I’m home, I’m her little doll.”
“And when you’re not?”
“I’m other things. You’re Camille. You’re my half sister. Adora’s first daughter, before Marian. You’re Pre and I’m Post. You didn’t recognize me.”
“I’ve been away too long. And Adora stopped sending out Christmas photos five years ago.”
“Stopped sending them to you, maybe. We still take the dang pictures. Every year Adora buys me a red-and-green checked dress just for the occasion. And as soon as we’re done I throw it in the fire.”
She plucked a footstool the size of a tangerine from the dollhouse’s front room and held it up to me. “Needs repolstering now. Adora changed her color scheme from peach to yellow. She promised me she’d take me to the fabric store so I can make new coverings to match. This dollhouse is my fancy.” She almost made it sound natural, my fancy. The words floated out of her mouth sweet and round like butterscotch, murmured with just a tilt of her head, but the phrase was definitely my mother’s. Her little doll, learning to speak just like Adora.
“Looks like you do a very good job with it,” I said, and motioned a weak wave good-bye.
“Thank you,” she said. Her eyes focused on my room in the dollhouse. A small finger poked the bed. “I hope you enjoy your stay here,” she murmured into the room, as if she were addressing a tiny Camille no one could see.
I found Chief Vickery banging the dent out of a stop sign at the corner of Second and Ely, a quiet street of small houses a few blocks from the police station. He used a hammer, and with each tinny bang he winced. The back of his shirt was already wet, and his bifocals were slung down to the end of his nose.
“I have nothing to say, Miss Preaker.” Bang.
“I know this is an easy thing to resent, Chief Vickery. I didn’t really even want this assignment. I was forced into it because I’m from here.”
“Haven’t been back in years, from what I hear.” Bang.
I didn’t say anything. I looked at the crabgrass splurting up through a crack in the sidewalk. The Miss stung me a bit. I couldn’t tell if it was politeness I wasn’t accustomed to or a jab at my unmarried state. A single woman even a hair over thirty was a queer thing in these parts.
“A decent person would have quit before writing about dead children.” Bang. “Opportunism, Miss Preaker.”
Across the street, an elderly man clutching a carton of milk was shuffling half-steps toward a white clapboard house.
“I’m not feeling so decent right now, you’re right.” I didn’t mind gingering Vickery along a little bit. I wanted him to like me, not just because it would make my job easier, but because his bluster reminded me of Curry, who I missed. “But a little publicity might bring some attention to this case, help get it solved. It’s happened before.”
“Goddam.” He threw the hammer with a thud on the ground and faced me. “We already asked for help. Got some special detective from Kansas City down here, off and on for months. And he hasn’t been able to figure out one goddam thing. Says it might be some crazed hitchhiker dropped off the road here, liked the looks of the place, and stayed for near on a year. Well this town ain’t that big, and I sure as hell haven’t seen anyone looks like they don’t belong.” He glanced pointedly at me.
“We’ve got some pretty big woods around here, pretty dense,” I suggested.
“This isn’t some stranger, and I would guess you know it.”
“I would have thought you’d prefer it to be a stranger.”
Vickery sighed, lit a cigarette, put his hand around the sign post protectively. “Hell, of course I would,” he said. “But I’m not too dumb myself. Ain’t worked no homicide before, but I ain’t a goddam idiot.”
I wished then that I hadn’t sucked down so much vodka. My thoughts were vaporizing, I couldn’t hold on to what he was saying, couldn’t ask the right questions.
“You think someone from Wind Gap is doing this?”
“No comment.”
“Off record, why would someone from Wind Gap kill kids?”
“Got called out one time because Ann had killed a neighbor’s pet bird with a stick. She’d sharpened it herself with one of her daddy’s hunting knifes. Natalie, hell, her family moved here two years ago because she stabbed one of her classmates in the eye with a pair of scissors back in Philadelphia. Her daddy quit his job at some big business, just so they could start over. In the state where his granddad grew up. In a small town. Like a small town don’t come with its own set of problems.”
“Not the least of which is everyone knows who the bad seeds are.”
“Damn straight.”
“So you think this could be someone who didn’t like the children? These girls specifically? Maybe they had done something to him? And this was revenge?”
Vickery pulled at the end of his nose, scratched his mustache. He looked back at the hammer on the ground, and I could tell he was debating whether to pick it up and dismiss me or keep talking. Just then a black sedan whooshed up next to us, the passenger-side window zipping down before the car even stopped. The driver’s face, blocked by sunglasses, peered out to look at us.
“Hey, Bill. Thought we were supposed to meet at your office right about now.”
“Had some work to do.”
It was Kansas City. He looked at me, lowering his glasses in a practiced way. He had a flip of light brown hair that kept dropping over his left eye. Blue. He smiled at me, teeth like perfect Chiclets.
“Hi there.” He glanced at Vickery, who pointedly bent down to pick up the hammer, then back at me.
“Hi,” I said. I pulled my sleeves down over my hands, balled the ends up in my palms, leaned on one leg.
“Well, Bill, want a ride? Or are you a walking man—I could pick us up some coffee and meet you there.”
“Don’t drink coffee. Something you should’ve noticed by now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“See if you can make it ten, huh? We’re already running late.” Kansas City looked at me one more time. “Sure you don’t want a lift, Bill?”
Vickery said nothing, just shook his head.
“Who’s your friend, Bill? I thought I’d met all the pertinent Wind Gappers already. Or is it…Wind Gapians?” He grinned. I stood silent as a schoolgirl, hoping Vickery would introduce me.
Bang! Vickery was choosing not to hear. In Chicago I would have jabbed my hand out, announced myself with a smile, and enjoyed the reaction. Here I stared at Vickery and stayed mute.
“All right then, see you at the station.”
The window zipped back up, the car pulled away.
“Is that the detective from Kansas City?” I asked.
In answer, Vickery lit another cigarette, walked off. Across the street, the old man had just reached his top step.