Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 18



Dorothy MacKintosh’s house was a tiny white Cape with cheerful green shutters and a side porch. As I got out of the car, I caught sight of a sign in the front lawn that said IF YOUR DOG POOPS, YOU SCOOP above a drawing of a squatting dog. I recoiled slightly. I’ve always found signs that reference dog poop a smidge more unsightly than dog poop itself.

I rang the bell and was greeted—after a couple of minutes—by a massive woman with tight white curls and drawn-on eyebrows.

“Hi . . . I’m Jamie Madden.”

“Yeah, I figured. I’m Dorothy. What time is it?”

“Um . . . about two-thirty?”

“Come on in,” Dorothy said, opening the door for me.

“Okay,” I said, stepping into the covered porch, which smelled like lilac and baked ham. “Is Judy here?”

“No. Not yet. Judy’s always late.” Dorothy led me into a cramped kitchen with a worn wooden floor and brown appliances. There was a waddle to her walk, but she moved surprisingly quickly.

“How many months are you?” she asked, pulling out a chair for me.

“Seven,” I said, sitting.

“Boy or girl, do you know?”

“Boy,” I said.

With some difficulty, she settled in her own chair. “Ah. That’s nice. Or did you want a girl first, hon?”

“I honestly wasn’t hoping one way or another for the first. Next time—if there is a next time—I imagine I’ll want a girl to even things out.”

Dorothy nodded. “It’s nice to meet a friend of Gretchen’s. I’d only started to get to know her, but I miss her.”

For some reason, hearing an elderly relative of Gretchen’s say this was harder than thinking it myself. I opened my mouth to say “I miss her, too,” but was afraid my voice would crack.

“Yeah,” I squeaked.

Dorothy studied my face.

“I like your eye makeup,” she said. “Is that supposed to be like Cleopatra?”

“I guess,” I said, so startled that my tears receded.

“I haven’t seen that look in a while. Is it coming back?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s what I like.”

Dorothy nodded. “Can’t I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

“Tea would be great,” I said, then regretted it because it meant she’d have to haul herself up again.

“Can’t I help you?” I asked, standing as she did.

“Nope,” Dorothy said, putting a kettle on to boil. “So Judy says you’re a writer, too. You gonna finish Gretchen’s book for her?”

“I don’t think I could finish something so personal,” I said. “I don’t think anyone could. I’m just trying to see if we can put together what she had.”

“You write any books?”

“I’m not that kind of writer. I was a reporter for about seven years. A health reporter for the last couple. Now I’m a copy editor.”

“An editor. That’s higher than a writer, huh?”

“Sometimes. Not in my case. There were cutbacks and they moved me to a part-time position, at the copy desk.”

There was a knock on the porch door.

“Hellooooo?” said an upbeat female voice.

Two middle-aged women let themselves in. One was heavyset and red-cheeked with black hair that had a dramatic streak of white in the front. The other was tall and muscular, with soft blond-red curls framing her pale face in a puffy, outdated haircut, parted in the middle.

“Oh, good,” Dorothy muttered, in a tone that reminded me of Gretchen: either perfect sarcasm or poorly expressed enthusiasm. “The girls are here.”



Judy and Diane were very much as Gretchen described them: a couple of warm, well-meaning middle-aged ladies who seemed to have a great deal to say about Gretchen’s mother, and now, sadly, about Gretchen herself.

“I have to admit, I thought it probably for the best that Gretchen didn’t go after Bruce,” said Judy, the plump one with the white streak. “I had a feeling that wouldn’t go well.”

Diane lifted the Saran Wrap from a plate of oatmeal cookies she’d brought. “Now, I don’t know if that’s fair. Bruce has always been a reasonable guy.”

“But that son of his . . . he’s had a lot on his plate. To just have Gretchen show up like that . . . not what he needed at the moment.”

“What’s this about his son?” Diane said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He’s troubled. Into drugs.” Judy broke off a quarter of one of the cookies and put it delicately into her mouth. “Suspended for dealing dope at the high school down there in Williamsburg.”

“What was Bruce’s last name?” I asked, my pen poised in the little notebook I’d brought along.

“Doherty,” Diane supplied. “He’s a chemistry professor now at UNH.”

“Uh-huh. So to your knowledge, Gretchen never asked him to do a test?”

The ladies looked at each other, uncertain.

“No.” Dorothy helped herself to a cookie and gestured for me to do the same. “I think she would’ve told me if she did.”

“Makes sense,” I said, breaking my cookie in half. “Gretchen’s writing—at least the typed, polished stuff—seems to trail off after she found out it . . . uh . . . wasn’t Keith.”

“Kind of a shame,” Judy said. “I think for a long time Keith wanted it to be him. Sweet of him, really.”

“So when Gretchen would come up here these last few months, she was talking to you three, talking to Keith and some of Shelly’s other old boyfriends . . .” I hesitated for a moment. “Um, and Frank. The man named Frank? Do you think she ever talked to him?”

Dorothy took in a breath. Judy and Diane glanced at each other.

“If she did,” Judy said, smoothing her hair behind her ear, “she wouldn’t have told us. We would’ve told her to steer clear. My God. Did anything in her writing indicate that she did?”

Diane stared at me, waiting for an answer. Noticing a large cookie crumb stuck to her brown lipstick, I looked away.

“I haven’t searched her files for that specifically,” I said quickly. “Not yet. So, he’s still around here?”

“Not in Emerson,” Judy said. “But in Plantsville, which is just down Route 7. He lives with his brother. He’s real sick these days, I hear. I’m not sure what it is.”

“Probably liver disease,” Dorothy added.

“I’m just assuming Gretchen had a lot of questions for a lot of different people,” I said.

“Some,” Judy replied. “She talked to her mom’s old neighbors, one of the police officers who was there . . . and Diane’s dad one time, too.”

“Your dad?” I asked

Diane nodded.

“Yes,” Judy put in for her. “Dr. Skinner. I’m sure you saw his name in Gretchen’s notes.”

“Oh . . . of course.”

Dr. Skinner’s daughter—the one mentioned in the article about her trial—had been named Diane. I just hadn’t made the connection since her last name was, according to Gretchen’s writing, now DeShannon.

“So your dad was actually at the scene of Shelly’s murder right after it happened,” I said, turning to Diane.

She wiped her mouth, removing the cookie crumb.

“Yes. Before she died, actually. When Frank came home that morning, he went screaming up the road. First went to my dad, because he’s a doctor, and because he was so close. Which was a little odd . . . why not call 911? Then Shelly’s neighbors, Nelson and Laurie Wiley, heard all the noise, and Laurie Wiley came over to see what was going on.”

I nodded, remembering the name “Wiley” from the police report.

“So your dad—along with Laurie Wiley—was one of the few people who could give Gretchen a first-person account.”

“Right,” Diane said. “Although I don’t know how helpful he could’ve been to her. He can easily switch between talking about the day he tried to save Shelly and the next sentence be talking about the day Amy Vaughn got hit by a car.”

Diane finished her cookie before continuing. “He can’t always follow the conversation so well since he’s middle-stage Alzheimer’s. My mother tells me Dad really enjoyed talking to Gretchen. I didn’t know till after Gretchen had done it that they’d talked, or I would’ve come along and helped her. Talking to him can be a little frustrating.”

“George isn’t just a doctor,” Dorothy piped up. “He’s a talented fiddle player, too.”

“Or was,” Diane corrected her. “He’s lost a lot of that with the Alzheimer’s. But yes, I believe he and Gretchen talked about music some.”

“So does he even remember the day Shelly died?” I asked.

“I wasn’t there the day Gretchen spoke to him,” Diane said. “I imagine it would all depend on if he were having a good day or a bad day. Chances are their talk wasn’t that useful to her.”

“Is he in a, um, convalescent home?”

“No,” Diane said softly. “Still in the house where I grew up. My mother takes care of him.”

She lowered her gaze and contemplated her plate of cookies. I felt tactless for pressing on the topic.

“And you, of course . . . she talked to you about being a witness in the case, also?”

Diane nodded. “Oh. Yes. Of course. Did she write about that, too?”

“Not that I’ve found yet, but there are some articles in her files that mention it. About Frank’s car. You and the paperboy.”

“Oh, yes,” Judy said, shaking her head. “Not that it made much difference. Diane was Shelly’s good friend, so her account wasn’t taken as seriously as maybe it should’ve been. And Kevin was underage, so—”

“Kevin?” I repeated.

“Yes. The paperboy. I know his mother. Kevin Conley.”

I took a sip of cold tea, trying to hide my surprise. Kevin Conley—the guy with whom Gretchen had recently become friendly via e-mail.

“Um. So Gretchen probably wanted to talk to him, too, I imagine,” I said.

I knew the answer to that, but was curious how much the ladies knew about Kevin—and about Gretchen’s apparent friendship with him.

“I’m not sure,” Judy said. “Maybe. She mentioned him once, but I don’t know if she followed through. His testimony basically just corroborated Diane’s.”

She glanced at Diane, who nodded in agreement.

I decided to leave the Kevin Conley question for the moment, since the ladies didn’t seem to know anything else about Gretchen’s contact with him. After that, the conversation turned a bit lighter. The ladies started talking about their memories of Gretchen from when she’d visit as a little girl, and significantly less frequently, after Shelly died.

Judy told a story about how Shelly once brought Gretchen to a museum in Vermont that had a display of antique toys and dolls. And then Gretchen turned around the following weekend and arranged all of her dolls in a dirty old fish tank and tried to charge everyone fifty cents apiece for a look.

“She even put a sign outside in the yard—‘Doll Museum—Fifty Cents.’ She’d stand there with that sign, waving cars down, trying to get people to fork over cash to look at her half-naked Barbie dolls piled in a fish tank.”

“I remember that,” added Diane. “Smart kid.”

As they talked, it struck me how different Judy and Diane seemed in person than in Gretchen’s piece about them; she’d made them sound like sisters in gossip—gabbing, finishing each other’s sentences. But Judy was the real chatterbox. Diane seemed more tactful and thoughtful. I wondered if Gretchen had deliberately altered their dynamic to make her account of their conversation more entertaining.

Eventually, the ladies talked about how odd it was to see Gretchen after she’d spent so many years away. After Gretchen’s grandmother—Dorothy’s sister—died when Gretchen was around thirteen, Linda never brought Gretchen around, and they never saw her again—until recently. It felt very strange, said Judy, to have her suddenly appear: a thirty-two-year-old divorcée and best-selling author, asking lots of tough questions about Shelly.

“But the most startling thing about it,” added Judy, “was how much she looked like Shelly. I swear I almost fainted the first time she showed up at my door. But then the moment she opened her mouth, you knew this was no ghost. So strange, a spitting image, but then the personality, so different.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Don’t take this the wrong way . . .” said Judy. “It’s a good thing. But compared to Shelly, Gretchen was, like, an intellectual.”

“She seemed kind of WASPy at first,” Dorothy offered.

“Dorothy,” Diane said, shaking her head a little, but smiling.

“I mean, not once you got to know her,” Dorothy said quickly. “That was just my first thought the first day we talked. And I thought, wow, Linda’s done a good job making this girl into the perfect opposite of her mother. So . . . quiet. So . . . careful.”

Careful. The word stuck in my head for a few minutes, distracting me as the women reminisced about what a free spirit Shelly had been. Careful was a good word for Gretchen. I just wasn’t sure it had applied to her in her final few weeks.