Dead Winter (16 page)

So far, I haven’t actually cast toward that brown trout. I figure I’m going to get one chance. I want to make sure I’ve thought it through.

It’s a problem of tactics and execution that I have not yet resolved.

This brown trout does preoccupy me.

Occasionally, my law practice brings me the equivalent of that Swift River brown trout, a difficult case, a challenge, a situation unprecedented in my experience that requires me, metaphorically, to negotiate overhanging branches, deceptive, swirling currents, and a shrewd, experienced adversary. The death of Maggie Winter struck me as one of those. Zerk may have been correct. Perhaps it was what it appeared to be, a jealous husband hitting his wayward wife too hard, what the police liked to call a “domestic situation.” Sad, tragic, and utterly commonplace.

But I didn’t think so.

I disembarked in the Asheville airport, looked around for a pay phone, and heard my name on the public address system. “Brady Coyne from Boston, you’re wanted at the information counter.”

I looked around, saw the sign, and went over, my single flight bag slung over my shoulder. I stepped up to the window when I felt a hand on my arm. I turned. “Mr. Coyne?”

She was about fifty, rail thin and leathery. Her gray-streaked black hair hung long and straight down her back. She wore sandals and jeans and a short-sleeved white blouse. No makeup, no jewelry. She had a long, bumpy nose, heavy-lidded dark eyes, and a broad expressive mouth which was now smiling at me.

“Yes. I’m Coyne.”

She held out her hand. “Victoria Jones, at your service.”

I shook hands with her. “I didn’t expect you to greet me.”

“Southern hospitality. I also booked you a room. I hope you don’t mind. It’s just a motel, but it’s clean and convenient. There’s a restaurant next door that’s decent if you like genuine southern barbecue.”

“I love genuine southern barbecue.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Returning tomorrow. I just wanted to talk to Greenberg’s client.”

“Too bad. There’s a lot to see in Asheville.”

“Another time, maybe.”

She steered me out of the airport, chatting about the Biltmore mansion, the minor league baseball team, mountain music, clogging. We got into her car, a Ford Escort, and ten minutes later she deposited me at my motel, an establishment that appeared to be considerably more prosperous than the one in Danvers, Massachusetts, where Nathan Greenberg had gone to die.

“Here’s the drill,” said Victoria as we sat in the Escort outside the motel office. “Lanie—that’s her name, Lanie Horton—she starts work at four. She waits tables in town, but she lives outside town. She’s expecting us at one. So I figured you’d like to clean up, grab a bite. I’ll pick you up—let’s see, it’s about eleven now—say around twelve thirty?”

“That sounds fine,” I said. “But you really didn’t need to go to all this trouble.”

She shrugged her bony shoulders. “Lanie is our client. It’s how she wants it. She’s a very proper young lady. She wouldn’t meet you in a public place. In her home, she wants me there. Anyway, she’s a bit nervous about this. She’s quite upset about what happened to Nate. Figures somehow it’s her fault. So she feels guilty, which I guess is why she agreed to meet you.”

“Well,” I said, “I really appreciate all you’ve done.”

“No problem,” she said.

I checked into my room and changed out of my suit into chino pants and a blue shirt. Then I walked to the restaurant, which featured high-backed booths, dim lights, country music over the speakers, and a luncheon menu similar to those in most Boston restaurants.

My waitress was blond, buxom, and young. She served me a cheeseburger and iced tea for about half what I would have paid in my city.

I went back to the motel and sat on an aluminum chair beside the pool to smoke and wait for Victoria Jones. Three little girls frolicked in the shallow end. Two of them were trying to persuade the third to duck her head all the way under. They were kind, patient, and imaginative about it. Two young women—mothers, I assumed, although they looked young enough to be teen-aged babysitters—watched the little ones closely. I caught fragments of their conversation, not enough to understand the words, but enough to identify their accents. New Jersey.

The little girl bobbed under and blew bubbles. She came up sputtering and laughing. Her two teachers shouted. The two women by the pool applauded. I joined in the applause.

Victoria showed up on the dot of twelve thirty. I got up and headed for her car. The little swimmers yelled “Bye-bye” to me. I waved and smiled.

As we drove through the city, Asheville seemed to me to be more like a large, well-kept suburb than a city. I saw no skyscrapers. The residential areas seemed to merge seamlessly with the business districts. I mentioned this to Victoria.

“Best city in the U. S. of A.,” she told me. “That’s not just my opinion. Couple Yankee boys wrote a book a few years ago that says so. Climate, culture, nice people, everything you’d want.” She glanced sideways at me. “I came here from Oregon to get away from my husband. That was twenty-seven years ago. Never wanted to go anywhere else. Anyway, there’s plenty of work for a lawyer here.”

I wasn’t aware of leaving the city limits until Victoria told me that we had entered Woodfin, where Lanie Horton lived. We followed a wide river, turned off onto a winding two-lane road that seemed to be climbing into the forest, and pulled to a stop beside a mobile home on the edge of the woods.

A stark white picket fence demarcated a tiny front yard. The grass was freshly mown. A picnic table and benches sat out front. Roses grew on a trellis that leaned against the trailer beside the door. A very old Pinto hatchback, originally yellow but painted in several patches with flat black, hunkered under a carport attached to the end.

I read in this yard poverty and pride.

Victoria and I clambered out of her Escort. As we did, the front door of the trailer opened and a girl came out. She carried a pitcher in one hand and three glasses in the other. She wore red running shorts, sneakers without socks, and a man’s white shirt with the tails knotted across her stomach.

She moved coltishly. Her legs were long, knobby at the knees. She had narrow hips, a thin waist, not much bosom. Her black hair was pulled back into a short ponytail tied with a bright red ribbon.

She moved to the picnic table and put down the pitcher and glasses. “Well, come on in, y’all,” she said to me and Victoria.

We walked through the gate and sat at the picnic table. Up close, Lanie Horton looked a little older than from a distance. She had tiny squint lines at the corners of her eyes, and a way of setting her mouth that made one believe she had experienced some grown-up problems. She wasn’t fourteen, which had been my first guess. Eighteen or nineteen, maybe.

“Iced tea,” said Lanie. “Made in the sun.”

She lifted her eyebrows at me, and I nodded. “Perfect.”

She poured three glasses.

“This is Mr. Coyne from Boston,” said Victoria.

“Ah figured that out,” said Lanie, grinning nervously.

“I really appreciate your seeing me,” I said to her.

She shrugged. “Don’t make no difference to me.”

“I’m trying to figure out why Mr. Greenberg was in Boston.”

“And why he got killed, huh?”

“Yes.”

“I know why he was in Boston.”

“I understood you did.”

“At least, if he was there on account of why I hired him.”

“That was the only case that would take him to Boston,” said Victoria.

“Not why he was killed, though,” said Lanie. “I don’t know nothing about that.”

I nodded.

“He was trying to find my parents for me,” said Lanie.

L
ANIE SIPPED HER ICED
tea, then licked her upper lip. She frowned at me. “See, Mr. Coyne, I’m adopted. I didn’t find this out until me ’n’ Eddie were planning to get married. I had to get a birth certificate before we could get a marriage license. I figured out from the birth certificate that I was adopted. My momma never told me. She brought me up as if I was her own kid. I think she really plain forgot she adopted me. She loved me so much. I was her only child. I think she just fooled herself into thinking I was her real baby. When I saw that on my birth certificate, at first I was mad at her. What kind of right did she have to pretend I was her natural child? I was going to tell her what I knew. Make her explain herself. Who did she think she was, keeping something like that from me? But then I thought about it. What difference did it really make? She loved me, she always took good care of me. What right did I have to spoil it for her?”

She appealed to me with raised eyebrows. I noticed how dark her eyes were. I nodded.

“None,” she said. “I had no right. So I never said anything to her. Still haven’t. I think it would’ve really hurt her. It would’ve killed her if she knew I knew, and if she thought for a minute that I didn’t love her like a real momma. And the thing is, I do love her. She’s been real good to me. A real momma, in every way. So if it wasn’t for what happened, I suppose I would’ve just forgotten about it. Because once I thought it all the way through, I knew I wasn’t hung up on it, and I knew I shouldn’t let on to her. But now, after what happened, I really do have to find out about my real parents.” She paused to sip.

“You didn’t mention your father,” I said.

She shrugged. “He ran out on Momma when I was little. It used to bother me. Funny. Soon as I found out I was adopted, and he wasn’t my real daddy, it stopped bothering me. That was one good thing about it, I guess. Getting over that feeling about my daddy. Anyways, so Eddie and me got married and I got pregnant, which was how we wanted it. Lotta folks figured it happened the other way around, but it didn’t. Eddie’s got a good job drivin’ trucks, and he’s gone a lot. It gets lonely. But he’s real good to me, and when I wanted to wait until we were married proper, that was okay with him.” She hesitated and looked away from me. “The rest is kinda hard to talk about.”

Victoria reached across the picnic table and touched her arm. Lanie smiled wanly at her and put her hand on top of Victoria’s. “It’s okay,” she said. She looked up at me. “See, I lost my baby. That was in April. He was—I’d been carrying him for five months. A little boy. Couple weeks later the doctor’s office called me, wanted me to go in and meet with the doctor. Eddie was on the road, so I went in by myself. The doctor started asking me a lot of questions about me and Eddie. What we’ve been sick from. Did we ever have—you know, venereal disease. He got real personal, especially asking about Eddie. Did he shack up on the road? Made me almost mad, except the doctor was so professional and all, like it didn’t matter to him. And he wanted to know all about my momma and daddy, and Eddie’s too. And going back to grandparents even.”

I thought I saw what had happened. “A complete medical history of both you and your husband, then?”

Lanie nodded. “Right. And I told him everything I knew. But finally I said to him, I said, ‘Why are you asking me all this?’ And he told me. That—that my baby, my little boy, he died—he miscarried—because he had some problem that was either my fault or Eddie’s.”

“A genetic defect,” I said.

She nodded. “Something that might mean—”

She stopped and bent to her iced tea. When she looked up at me her eyes were shining. “Might mean I shouldn’t have any more babies,” she finished. “That they’d all be—they wouldn’t be able to live, or they’d be retarded or something.” She tried to smile. “Anyway, I felt stupid, answering all those questions about Momma and my daddy. Because they had nothing to do with my baby’s genes. I was adopted. So I told the doctor that. He said it was real important that I try to find out about my biological parents, see if I could get them to talk to him. I told him I didn’t know how to do that. He said I should try a lawyer.”

“So you came to us,” said Victoria.

Lanie shook her head. “Not at first. I didn’t know what to do. Eddie’s working so hard so we can get a down payment on a house, and I put everything I make from waitressing into it, too. At first I decided just to go ahead and have another baby, take my chances. But then I realized it would about break Eddie’s heart to go through that again. Mine, too. So I went back to the doctor and told him what my problem was. He said he’d see what he could do. Couple days later Mr. Greenberg came to the restaurant. He told me he was a lawyer, he was going to help me. I said that was nice but I couldn’t afford a lawyer. He said there was some sort of special fund for things like that. I wouldn’t have to pay him.” She peered at Victoria. “This didn’t sound right to me, to tell you the truth. And I hate to say anything bad about somebody who’s—who’s dead—but…”

Victoria smiled. “Nate was not a particularly pleasant man,” she said to me.

Lanie nodded. “It wasn’t like he said anything or did anything you could put your finger on.”

“He was a sleazy man,” said Victoria. “He oozed sleaze. He couldn’t help it.”

“Anyhow,” continued Lanie, “I told him no. I wouldn’t hear of anybody doing something for me without getting paid. He argued, but I can be stubborn when I want to be. Finally he went away. The next day the doctor called me at work. Bawled me out. Tried to explain that Mr. Greenberg was going to get paid, that he was good at doing that kind of work, and that it was important. The doctor is real nice. So I said okay, and Mr. Greenberg came back the next day. He asked me some questions.”

“Like what?” I said.

She frowned. “Like where I was born—where it said on my birth certificate, I mean. Some stuff about my momma. I told him I didn’t want him to talk to her, and he agreed to that. Said it probably wasn’t necessary. So that was like a couple weeks ago.”

“How old are you, Lanie?” I said.

“Eighteen. Going on nineteen.”

“And where
were
you born, according to your birth certificate?”

“Winston-Salem.”

“And as far as you know, Nathan Greenberg was in Boston looking for one or both of your parents?”

She shrugged. “If he was there on my account, that’s why.”

“Did you talk to him again?”