Out of the Cold (12 page)

“I wish I could have done more,” I said.

He shook his head. “I gave you an impossible mission, Robyn. But you did great. Really.”

  .    .    .

I almost fell over when my mother gave me permission to go to the funeral. I had braced myself for an argument.

“My heart isn't made of stone,” she said when she saw my surprise. “That man's death is a tragedy. And, anyway, I doubt there's going to be much serious work done at school this morning.”

There were a lot more people in the church than I had expected. Art Donovan was up front with Ben. So were Betty and a few other volunteers. I recognized some of the shelter clients too. And in the middle of the church, twisted around in her seat and watching the door, was Morgan, sitting next to Billy. She waved when she saw me. I gestured to her from the back of the church. She said something to Billy, who turned and smiled at me. Then she scooted out of the pew and came to meet me.

“We saved you a place,” she said.

“I want to sit in the back.”

“But Ben's up front. Don't you—”

“If I sit in the back, I'll be able to see everyone who comes in,” I said.

“Are you expecting someone?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe.”

“I'll go and get Billy,” she said.

I shook my head. “You guys might as well stay put. I'll catch up with you afterward.”

Morgan returned to her place next to Billy. I checked out the pews at the rear of the church. The last one on the right was empty, and there was only one person sitting in the one on the left—Andrew. He started to smile when he saw me and then quickly hid his mouth with his hand.

“What are you doing way back here?” I said, sliding into the pew beside him.

He shrugged shyly. “I like to be near the exit. You know. Just in case.”

In case of what?
I wondered.

“What about you?” he said. “Don't you want to sit with your friends?”

“I want to see who comes and goes.”

“You mean you're staking out the place?”

“Sort of. I'm kind of hoping that a woman who knew Mr. Duffy will show up.”

Just as the service started, someone slipped into the same pew as me and Andrew. A man in a long overcoat. He had a black knit stocking cap pulled down over his eyebrows, and he didn't remove it. He looked at Andrew and me before turning his attention to the front. From the look of him, I guessed he was also client of the shelter. I wondered how well he had known Mr. Duffy, if. Duffy had ever spoken to him.

I continued to scan the crowd during the first half of the service. At one point Art Donovan got up and said a few words about Mr. Duffy. Mostly he said how quiet Mr. Duffy had been. Then Ben stood up and faced everyone. He glanced at a sheet of paper in his hand.

“I didn't know Mr. Duffy well,” he said. “Nobody did. Like Mr. Donovan said, he kept mostly to himself.” He looked out at the people scattered among the pews. Then he looked back down at the piece of paper. After a moment he crumpled it, drew in a deep breath, and said, “And that was his right—not to talk about himself, about who he was or where he came from. But I can't help thinking that it's too bad we don't know more about Mr. Duffy, because if we did, maybe people would care more about what happened to him. What could just as easily happen to other people like him. Most of the time, people don't think about them. If people hear that a homeless man died, that makes one kind of picture in their minds. But if they hear that a man who loved flowers and little children died, a man who liked to drink tea and read novels by Charles Dickens, that makes a whole different picture. Mr. Duffy froze to death in the middle of a big, wealthy city in a big, wealthy country. He froze to death because he didn't have a home to call his own. But because nobody knows anything about him, they don't get angry about it. And if we don't get good and angry about the fact that some of our neighbors don't have a roof over their heads, then how are things ever going to change? How are we going to make sure that something like this never happens again?”

He stopped abruptly and looked at Mr. Donovan. “I'm sorry,” he said. “But that's how I feel.”

There was dead silence in the church. Then Andrew started to clap, quietly and slowly. Someone in front of us joined in. Then someone else and someone else, until finally everyone was clapping. Ben was still standing at the front of the church. His face turned red. He said something to the minister and then went back to his seat. The minister waited until everyone had quieted down before speaking. “I don't believe I have ever heard applause at a funeral service,” he said, “but I must say, I think the sentiment expressed by the previous speaker deserves the reaction that it received. In Luke, chapter three, verse eleven, John the Baptist says, ‘Let the man who has two coats give one to the man who has none.' I think what our young friend was expressing... ”

I didn't pay attention to the rest of what the minister said because I was watching a woman walk up one side of the church. She wore a thin coat and had a scarf over her head. Under the coat she had on brown and gold pajama-like pants and a matching tunic. She was carrying a small, plastic-wrapped bunch of flowers. She held a little girl by the hand. The woman hesitated when she reached the front of the church. She looked at the people in the pews. Then she pulled herself straight and led the little girl to Duffy's casket. She laid the flowers on top of it. Head bowed, she led the little girl back the way they had come.

“Andrew, do me a favor?” I whispered. “If I'm not back before the service ends, tell Morgan—my friend up there—that I'll call her. Okay?”

Andrew nodded. He didn't ask where I was going.

I got up and hurried out the church door. By the time I got outside, the woman and the little girl were scurrying down the street. I ran after them. Maybe they weren't the two people that had been seen with Mr. Duffy, but they sure fit the description.

Both the woman and the little girl looked impossibly underdressed for the cold. Both of them were wearing cheap sneakers instead of warm boots and thin, stretchy dollar-store gloves. Their thin coats that might have protected them from rain, but they must have been all but useless in keeping out the frigid December air. I caught up with them while they were waiting for a light to turn.

“Excuse me,” I said.

The woman's dark eyes looked enormous in her thin face. She gathered the little girl against her and stared at me. She was shivering.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I saw you at the church.”

She just stared at me.

“I wanted to talk to you about Mr. Duffy.”

“Duffy?” she said.

“You were just at the church,” I said. “At his funeral.”

The little girl looked up at her mother and said something in a small voice that I couldn't understand. The woman scooped her up and held her tightly.

“Someone told me that they'd seen you and your daughter talking to Mr. Duffy on the street,” I said. I smiled at the little girl and she burrowed her face in her mother's scarf.

“Someone talked to you about me?” the woman said, her eyes widening in alarm. “Someone was watching me?” My father would have placed her accent immediately. He had a good ear—he loved to surprise people by pinpointing their place of origin based on a few sentences. But I was hopeless at it.

“No, no,” I said. “No one was watching you. It's just that I've been trying to find people who knew Mr. Duffy, and someone said that they'd seen a woman and a little girl talking to him. So I was wondering—”

The woman's eyes shifted from me to somewhere over my shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” she said. She looked nervous all of a sudden. “I must go.”

Behind me, a voice said something in a language I didn't understand. I turned and saw an angrylooking man who was as underdressed for the cold as the woman and the little girl. His light jacket had a company name and logo sewn onto it. He scowled at me as he took the girl from the woman's arms. He said something else to the woman. She shook her head as she answered. As he started to walk away, carrying the little girl, the woman looked apologetically at me. Then she hurried after him.

“Wait!” I called. “If I could just ask you a few questions ...”

The man turned and glared at me. He quickened his pace. I didn't know what to do. The woman seemed nervous. It was clear that this person, who I could only assume was her husband, didn't want her talking to me.

I watched them disappear around a corner. Then, as if I'd been tethered to them, I started to follow them. By the time I got to the corner, they were at the top of the next street. They turned again. I sped up, but when I reached the corner where they'd made their second turn, they had vanished. I stared up the street. There were at least thirty or forty houses on each side. They could have gone into any one of them.

Discouraged, I headed back to the church. On the way I noticed something I hadn't seen when I was following the family—a laundromat. The same one I had called after finding the phone number that had been tucked inside one of Mr. Duffy's books.

CHAPTER
TEN

M

y phone trilled—again.

“Yes?” I said wearily.

It was Morgan. “Explain to me one more time why I'm freezing my butt off out here in the cold
again
instead of finishing my Christmas shopping at a nice, warm mall,” she said. “You know, every time I volunteer to help you or Billy, I end up numb.”

Morgan hadn't been my first choice for a helper. I had approached Billy, thinking that he'd sign on—and he would have, if he weren't already scheduled to be at the Humane Society. Morgan hadn't actually volunteered either. She had
wanted
to go home and soak in a nice, hot bubble bath. As she put it, “That church was hot and some of those people smelled bad to begin with and it only got worse when in the heat—no offense to them.” Instead, I had talked her into coming back downtown.

I sighed. “Are you going to call me every two minutes to complain?” I said, glad that we weren't communicating face-to-face.

“We've been out here nearly an hour, Robyn. The sun is going down. It's getting
really
cold.”

“If he's going to show, he's going to show soon,” I said.

“How do you know he'll show at all?”

That
question again.

“Because he was wearing a Night Owl Cleaners jacket,” I said,
again
. “Night Owl cleans office buildings.” I had been at my mother's office many times after hours when the Night Owl cleaners were there. According to my mom, the company had practically cornered the market on the downtown office towers. “They start as soon as everyone else has gone home, around five thirty or six. If he works for Night Owl, he's going to have to leave home soon or he'll be late.”

“
If
he actually works for Night Owl,” Morgan said grumpily.

“He was
wearing
a Night Owl jacket.”

“Jason Ransome wears army fatigues to school, but he's not a soldier,” Morgan said. “He gets them at a surplus store. He thinks they look cool.”

I checked my watch. “If we don't see him by six o'clock, we'll leave,” I said. “I'll even buy you a latte.”

“And biscotti,” Morgan said.

“Done,” I said. If there was one thing I had learned during my long friendship with Morgan, it was that bribery definitely worked.

I had figured it this way: I knew which street the woman and the little girl lived on, but I didn't know which house. So I'd enlisted Morgan to stand at one end of the street while I stood at the other, watching to see which house the man came out of. After he was gone, we could go and talk to the woman. Maybe she wouldn't be so nervous this time. I had a feeling she might know Mr. Duffy better than anyone else I'd encountered so far. Duffy had bought children's clothes at the secondhand store. He had bought children's books at the library. He had stolen spices from a grocery store. And maybe all for that woman and her little girl.

My cell phone trilled
yet again
.

“I'll buy you a
box
of biscotti, Morgan,” I said. “Just hang in a little longer—”

“He's a scrawny guy, right?” Morgan said. Her voice was hard to make out. “Dark hair, thin face, wearing a short jacket?”

“Morgan, I can hardly hear you.”

Nothing.

“Morgan?” I peered up the street but didn't see her. “You still there?”

“He just went past me and got on a bus,” Morgan said, her voice louder and clearer. “Night Owl Cleaners...do their jackets have a big yellow circle on them, owl in the center?”

“You have to ask?” I said.

“Must have been him.”

“Did you see which house he came out of?”