The bills were elaborately engraved and printed in three colors. Anna had to look twice before she could convince herself that she was seeing correctly.
“Five hundred dollars,” she said. “For each?”
“Forty-six of them,” Mrs. Stone said. “Of the original fifty. That Thursday morning I found her near dead, she gave me the purse with the bonds before the ambulance came. But I’m not keeping it for myself,” she added, new color flooding her face. “The money is to raise the boys, for food and clothes and school fees and the like, and—”
“No one suspects you of plotting to steal the bonds,” Jack said.
Anna wondered if that was strictly true. She could see the Campbell house through the front windows, still dark. If Archer Campbell suspected that Mrs. Stone had the bearer bonds, she didn’t doubt he was looking for a way to get them back.
“Bearer bonds.” Oscar rubbed both hands over his face.
Mrs. Stone said, “All I know is, Janine said he hadn’t come by them honest.”
“It’s not important right now,” Jack said. “But it’s still unclear to me why she didn’t just leave with you and the boys that Wednesday morning.”
Anna said, “She had a doctor’s appointment, didn’t she?”
Mrs. Stone’s head dropped. “That was it. I didn’t figure it out until later, but she went to that doctor who charged so much to fix things.” She rocked a little in place. “She was so worried about another baby, sick, really, in her head and heart both. She went to that doctor right after she saw me off with the boys. She had a ticket for the noon steamer, that’s in the purse still. But it didn’t work out the way she planned.
“She told me when I found her Thursday morning, she knew as soon as she left the doctor’s office that something was wrong. She was in so much pain and bleeding so bad she couldn’t get on a steamer. She could hardly get back here.”
A fresh welling of tears cascaded down her cheeks. “I get so mad at her when I think about it. What’s another baby when there’s hands enough to do the work and money to put food on the table? But she couldn’t bear the idea, and so she went and had the operation and she never lived to see the place she bought, or her boys so happy.”
“When did you decide to go back to the city to look for her?” Jack asked.
“Wednesday evening. She wasn’t on the steamer when she was supposed to be, or the one after that. The plan we made was to meet back here if something went wrong, and it did go wrong. If you can imagine it, Janine had to spend another night with that man, knowing she was sick unto death, thinking she’d be dead within a day and what was going to happen to the boys?
“So I did come back, and thank God. Just before the ambulance came she gave me the purse with the bearer bonds. She said, ‘Mabel, think how much worse it would be if Archer had realized what I took from him. I wouldn’t have anything to give you for the boys. Now you can raise them up right and they’ll be safe.’
“Then the doctor came in and examined her in the bedroom. Not ten minutes later they put her in the ambulance and I never saw her again. It’s a sin and a shame the way she died, but she went easier, knowing I would go back to the boys. That’s all I want, to go back to the boys, me and Henry, but we can’t get away. And I don’t know how much longer Mrs. Barnes can look after them.”
Jack got up and paced the length of the parlor. “You think Campbell suspects?”
“I know he suspects,” she said, almost sharply. “Didn’t he say as much, right to my face? He said, ‘Mabel Stone, remember one thing. I’ll have what’s mine.’ And now he sits there watching us, day and night. Like a spider in a web he watches us. I know he didn’t answer when you pounded on the door, but he’s there. You can see his cigar, it’s like an evil red eye in the dark. I think he’s waiting for us both to be out of the house so he can come in and search.”
She rocked forward and crossed her arms across her chest, weeping silently but for short indrawn breaths. Anna leaned close and put a hand on the bowed back. The kind of touch that might provide a grieving mother some small comfort. Because Mrs. Stone had lost a daughter in Janine Campbell.
They talked for a half hour more, asking questions that Mrs. Stone tried to answer. She didn’t know where or how Archer Campbell had gotten some twenty-five thousand dollars in bearer bonds; she didn’t know where Janine Campbell had gone for the abortion or who had performed it. All she could say for sure was that she had paid the doctor three hundred dollars.
“She thought it was the only way to get it done quick and safe. And truth be told, I think she got some satisfaction out of the idea that it was Archer’s money that paid the doctor. Three hundred dollars, and for that he butchered our girl and now those boys have got nobody. Nobody who knows them and loves them. If we go to them, Campbell will follow. For the bonds, if not the boys.”