Valerie S. Malmont Read online

  His sallow face reddened at my praise. “There's more than five hundred people out there hunting him right now. And more coming from Adams and Fulton counties.”

  “You might want to lay off the brandy till he's found,” I suggested. The faint odor of alcohol told me that his facial redness wasn't entirely from embarrassment.

  His color heightened.

  “Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, Luscious, but I grew up with that smell. Are the boy's parents here? I need to interview them for the paper.”

  “The mother wanted to help with the search, but I told her it's better she stay home, in case he comes back on his own. They're on up the mountain 'bout half a mile on the Iron Ore Road. Just past the junkyard. You can't miss it.”

  I thanked him, then an idea suddenly came to me. “Have you questioned the cousins yet? The ones who were with the boy when he got lost?”

  “ 'Course I did, Tori. See this map of the mountain? The X is where they seen him last. That's the center of our search—we'll spread out from there.”

  Apparently, Luscious didn't really need my help, only my assurance, so I left him studying his maps. Outside the tent, I paused for a moment to get my bearings and take in the surreal scene before me. In the flickering light from the bonfires, the volunteers appeared almost inhuman—strange, unidentifiable creatures from another world.

  Suddenly, Ginnie Welburn's familiar voice called my name. The outerspace creatures were, once again, ordinary people.

  I walked to a table piled high with doughnuts, where she and Oretta Clopper stamped their feet and blew on their fingertips in a futile attempt to stay warm.

  “I saw you coming out of Luscious's tent. Any word?” Ginnie asked hopefully.

  “Not yet, but Luscious is doing a fine job.”

  “I suppose there's a first time for everything,” Oretta sniffed.

  “Give him a chance,” Ginnie said. “Doughnut?”

  I absentmindedly accepted one.

  “I guess we have to put up with him, now that Garnet's gone.” Oretta stared pointedly at me, as though it were my fault he'd left. Great! Now the town had something besides last summer's burning down of the historical society to blame on me. One would think accidents didn't happen to anyone but me. I took a bite of the doughnut and ended up with white splotches of powdered sugar all over the front of my jacket.

  “We could use another pair of hands. Especially unfrozen ones,” Ginnie said with a smile.

  “I'm sorry, but I have to talk to the boy's parents.”

  “Better talk to his cousins, too,” Oretta said. “I'll bet they know more than they're saying.”

  Exactly what I'd been thinking, but I wondered why she thought so. “Why do you say that?” I asked. I stuffed the rest of the doughnut into my mouth and ineffectually tried to brush the sugar off my bosom.

  “I don't trust children. Mark my words, there's more to this than meets the eye.” Oretta's chins bounced with indignation.

  “You seem to know a lot about children. How many do you have?” I asked.

  “Matavious and I were not blessed with a family,” Oretta said. “But as a playwright, I am somewhat of an expert on human behavior.”

  “You don't really believe that those kids would have deliberately hurt their cousin, do you?” Beside me, Gin-nie's usually cheerful face registered horror.

  “Things like that have been known to happen,” Oretta said. “In fact, I recently finished a play on that theme—it's much better than The Bad Seed. Maybe you'uns would like to read it.”

  “I would,” Ginnie said. “How about you, Tori?”

  I'd heard a sample of Oretta's playwriting skills earlier that evening, so I fibbed, “Love to. Soon as I find the time.”

  “I'll print out a copy and bring it by your house,” Oretta said to Ginnie.

  The two women were talking as I left to continue my ride up the side of the mountain, only now I traveled alone on the narrow road. The moon in the cloudless sky was only a few days short of being full, and it brightly lit the twisted way before me.

  As I completed a corkscrew turn, I nearly drove into an acre of heaped bedsprings, old recliners, and cracked toilet bowls … the junkyard Luscious had mentioned. A little past this charming landmark stood a crooked sign, punctured with bullet holes, telling me the unpaved, deeply-rutted drive to my left was the entrance to the Iron Ore Mansions Trailer Park.

  Inside were rows of trailers, with only inches of space between them. Many of them looked as if they had been salvaged from the neighboring junk heap. Light streamed from every window, and although I saw no one, I heard children's voices.

  As I turned in, the undercarriage of Garnet's truck scraped on something, and the screech made my teeth tingle. Almost at once, the door of the nearest trailer flew open. The man who stepped out onto the porch wore only jeans—no shirt or shoes—and his shotgun was pointed right at me. I mouthed the prayer I'd often said as a child, “Dear God, if you get me out of this mess, I'll be a good girl … and I mean it this time … a really good girl.”

  First, I glanced at the lock buttons on the door to make sure they were all depressed, then I rolled the window down about an inch. “I'm a reporter from the Chronicle,” I yelled, “looking for the Poffenbergers.”

  He lowered the gun. Thanks for listening, God. “The ones what got a lost kid? Fifth house on the right. Can't miss it—it's the one with the tires.”

  I didn't have long to wonder what he meant about the tires. They were stacked, six high, all around the trailer, making an odd-looking but effective fence. In the small yard there was a lone tree with a truck-tire swing dangling on a rope from a bare branch. Car tires, standing upright, bordered both sides of a cement walk. Others, lying on the brown grass, were filled with dirt and held withered plants.

  Reluctantly, I left the safety of my truck and entered the yard. The stench of rubber turned my stomach, and I wondered how anybody could live with it. For that matter, how could anybody live in a place as depressing as the inappropriately-named Iron Ore Mansions? Next to this place, my apartment building in Hell's Kitchen looked like Club Med.

  The woman who opened the door in response to my knock was small and shriveled, with a swollen red nose and bloodshot eyes. I explained I was a reporter and needed to ask a few questions about Kevin.

  “Come in,” she said, and I saw she was missing several teeth. She clutched at the front of her overly large gray-green sweater with one hand and held a wad of pink Kleenex in the other.

  “Karl,” she called over her shoulder. “It's a reporter. You want a beer?”

  It took me a second to realize she was offering a drink to me and not her husband. “No, thanks. I won't take much of your time. I know how upset you must be.” I sat on the orange-and-brown plaid sofa, which smelled almost as bad as the front yard but in a different way, and groped in my bag for my notebook.

  A man who I assumed was Karl swaggered into the living room carrying an odoriferous infant wrapped in a spotted yellow blanket. “Kara's dirty,” he said, handing the child to her mother.

  “Sorry. Be right back.” She scuttled sideways out of the room.

  “Beer?” He picked up a bottle from the coffee table, drained it, and carried the empty bottle into the kitchen area. He brought back two and put one in front of me. His fingernails couldn't have gotten that black in one lifetime … no way would I touch that beer.

  The front door burst open, and the room was suddenly full of children, some barely toddling, all with silvery-blond hair. “My kids: Kirsten, Kathy, Ken, Kim, Karol, Klark, Klaire. All with a K—makes 'em easy to remember. Them other two is my brother's brats. You'uns sit down and shut up,” he shouted—at them, not me. “This cute little gal's from the TV, and she's gonna put us on the news.”

  I stopped writing down the names of all the little Pof-fenbergers “with a K” and explained to them I had nothing to do with TV. Their small round faces showed obvious disappointment. There would be no TV stars discovered
in the Poffenberger mansion tonight.

  After Mrs. Poffenberger came back without the baby, I asked my questions—beginning with the usual human-interest ones about the boy: age? did he go to kindergarten? what games did he like to play? As I wrote down the answers given to me by the child's mother, I realized how little the average child of five has to show for his years on earth; it is the loss of everything that is still to come that makes the death of a child so tragic.

  I had to keep raising my voice because the little Ks and their cousins were arguing over a TV show. Karl Poffenberger, nearly prone in a blue velour recliner, had downed his beer, my beer, and another fetched by his wife, and was taking offense to just about everything she said to me.

  “Has he wandered off like this before?” I asked the mother, thinking it was time to be on my way.

  “Never,” began Mrs. Poffenberger.

  Mr. Poffenberger belched softly. “That's enough yak-king, woman,” he said to his wife. “You ain't yet said what you're paying.” This was directed to me.

  “Mr. Poffenberger, newspaper reporters don't pay for interviews.”

  “Then get the hell outta here. You'uns got some nerve barging in when we'uns is all upset about Ken's being lost.” His eyes drooped shut, and a soft snore erupted from his nose.

  “Sorry,” Mrs. Poffenberger whispered to me at the door. “He's real upset.”

  “I can tell. So upset, he forgot his son's name is Kevin.”

  “He's waiting for someone to call back 'bout a made-for-TV movie. You know, like the one they did about that little girl in Texas what fell in the well. We sure could use the money.”

  “I understand.”

  “I can't watch the little ones all the time, not with nine of 'em underfoot, you know.”

  I nodded. I felt real pity for the woman. Neither she nor those nine kids had much of a life, nor much chance of it getting any better.

  “It's time to get to bed,” she said to the waist-high towheads crowded around us. “Pearl and Peter, you'uns go home now. Good night, miss.” She closed the door, leaving me on the stoop with the two children, who followed me to my car.

  “Were you guys with Kevin when he got lost?” I asked them.

  They shuffled their feet in the dirt, shared sideways glances, and poked each other with their shabby elbows.

  “Can't either of you speak?”

  The girl stepped forward. From her height, I assumed she was the oldest. “I guess so,” she said.

  “You guess? Don't you know? What's your name? How old are you?”

  “Pearl Poffenberger.” Her green eyes glinted with something I hadn't seen much of at the Poffenberger home this evening—a hint of intelligence. “I'm near twelve.”

  “I know you weren't alone. Who else was with you?”

  Reluctantly, it seemed, she said, “My brother, Peter.”

  The other child stepped forward. “I'm eleven,” he said.

  “Anybody else with you?”

  The shiny heads shook their denial.

  “Aren't you two a little old to be playing with a five-year-old?”

  “He always tags along,” Peter said.

  “What happened up there?”

  Pearl, who seemed to be the leader, answered. “Kevin got tired of playing. Said he wanted to go home.”

  “We wasn't ready,” Peter said. “He was blubbering, so we told him to go home by hisself.”

  “We didn't know he was lost till we got home 'bout an hour later,” Pearl put in.

  I had to express my incredulity. “You mean, you just let a five-year-old boy go off by himself in the woods?”

  “Sure, why not? He done it all the time. Didn't he, Pearl?”

  She nodded vigorously. “All the time.”

  “If you guys think of anything you haven't told the police, call me at the paper. You won't get into any trouble.” I handed Pearl a Chronicle business card with my name handwritten on the back. Peter extended his hand, and I gave him one, too.

  I decided to get creative. “There's a reward,” I told them. Maybe that'd get one of them talking.

  For a brief moment, it seemed that Peter wanted to tell me something. But then he turned to Pearl, and his eyes seemed to search her face. She placed her hand on his upper arm and squeezed until he grimaced. Whatever he'd been about to say, he thought better of it.

  “Okay,” Pearl said. “But I can tell you right now, there ain't nothing we didn't already tell the cops.”

  They were keeping something back, I was sure of it. I've interviewed enough people in my life to know when someone is lying or telling a half-truth.

  “Kevin's lost out there,” I said. “He's very small, and he's cold and frightened. Do me a favor. When you get into your warm beds tonight, think about that.”

  Their sullen faces showed no emotion. I left them and drove back to Lickin Creek as rapidly as the slippery road allowed. All I wanted to do was get into a hot shower and steam away my distasteful encounter with the Poffenbergers.

  CHAPTER 3

  What child is this?

  MOON LAKE MARKS THE SOUTHERN BORDER of the Borough of Lickin Creek. Where once a sandy beach stretched along the shore of the crescent-shaped lake, there is now a thorny forest extending to the water's edge. Where once ladies in long white dresses and men in natty suits and straw hats strolled along well-tended paths, there is now only desolation. Where excited children once rode the carousel, there is now only the vine-covered ruin of a pavilion. A decaying dock is a nostalgic reminder of times when renting a rowboat on a dreamy summer day was the stuff memories were made of.

  Great mansions, built before the turn of the century as the vacation cottages of the very rich from D.C. and Baltimore, have crumbled for years beneath the ancient trees. In the summer, the area is heavy with the fragrance of wild honeysuckle and old rosebushes. Only in the winter, when the bare branches admit the sun and the snow hides imperfections, can one imagine the original grandeur of the old summer colony.

  World War I, the stock market crash, and the development of rapid transportation brought the glory days of Moon Lake to an end. But in the past few years the development had once again sprung to life, and many of the huge homes were now occupied by young professionals, some of whom commuted daily to the cities of D.C. and Baltimore. They arrived in their minivans and BMWs with grand and often unrealistic plans for remodeling the enormous white elephants and filling them with large families.

  I entered the colony through the rusted iron gates, turned off the main road circling the lake, and drove down the narrow dirt lane that approached the largest, grandest, and gloomiest of the lakefront mansions: my temporary home-sweet-home. It was the perfect setting for one of the gothic novels I'd loved to read in junior high, even rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who died during childbirth in one of its fairy-tale turrets. I've often thought it would be fun to don a long white nightgown and flit about the yard like a heroine on the cover of a gothic but have decided to wait until the weather gets warmer.

  The reason I was living in such unusual splendor was that I was house-sitting for a college professor on sabbatical in England to study the use of contractions in medieval writings. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I had a free (except for utilities) place to live for the six months I'd committed to editing the Chronicle, and all I had to do for Dr. Ethelind Gallant was make sure the house she'd inherited from her grandparents didn't collapse while she was gone.

  It was fun having all that space to spread out in, but the utilities turned out to be a huge expense. I really hadn't considered what it would cost to heat a thirty-room house in the winter. That's why I was angry with myself tonight, for I could see a sliver of light shining through the chink where the velvet drapes didn't quite meet in one of the front-parlor windows. I couldn't afford to be so careless with electricity.

  I left Garnet's macho-man pickup truck in the roundabout in front of the mansion and shuffled through the light dusting of snow to the k
itchen entrance in back. Some of the new owners had successfully renovated their homes, but Ethelind was not one of them.

  Right before she flew off to merry olde England, she'd casually mentioned that the front porch roof was on the verge of collapse. “Don't go slamming the front door,” she'd cautioned me. I hoped the warning note I'd tacked on a pillar near the steps was sufficient to protect unwary visitors.

  I hung my coat on the oak hall tree on the enclosed back porch, slipped off my boots, and opened the door into the kitchen. Funny—I thought for sure I'd locked it. I was getting to be more like the natives every day.

  Before I could turn on the lights, my nose began to twitch. My nose is unusually sensitive, and I recognized the sweet, spicy scent drifting in the air; it was the aroma of carnations, mingled with the smoky smell of burning firewood.

  Good grief! Ethelind had said not to use the fireplaces because she hadn't had the chimneys checked for safety. I hadn't lit any fires. Who had?

  As I groped for the light switch next to the door, I realized something was dreadfully wrong. There were no warm, furry cats rubbing against my legs, begging for food and affection.

  “Fred … Noel … ?” I called in a soft voice. No answer.

  I sniffed the air and identified the scent. Only one person I knew wore Bellodgia, a distinctive and expensive perfume from Paris, and that person was Praxythea Evangelista!

  Praxythea was the best-known psychic in America, thanks to the many TV talk-show hosts who desperately needed guests. She was always a welcome addition to their shows because of her glamour, intelligence, and her well-publicized talent for helping police departments solve hopeless crimes. Now, she reclined on an antique chaise longue in my front parlor. On her lap lay Fred, curled into a round orange ball and grinning like a big dope. The more sophisticated Noel rested her chin on one of Praxythea's shapely ankles and appeared to be enjoying the unexpected luxury of the fire blazing in the marble-faced fireplace.

  On the index finger of the hand that held a crystal goblet half full of amber liquid, an emerald of immense proportions, surrounded by diamonds, glimmered in the firelight. Praxythea's hair, hanging loose around her shoulders, was the color of the flames that threatened to burn the house down. She looked at me through those amazing catlike eyes, which matched her emerald, and smiled. “So glad you have Glenfiddich. Double malts cause psychic confusion—too many clashing vibrations.”