See Something, page 6
Pete came back into the living room and sat beside me on the love seat. “Something new,” he whispered. I could tell by the way my aunt leaned forward in her chair, her head turned away from the TV and toward Pete, that she’d heard the whispered words—or maybe had read his lips. Not much gets by Aunt Ibby. Buck had gone to commercial, so she muted the sound.
“Something new going on, Pete?” she asked, her tone polite, her expression innocent, her intent undoubtedly devious.
He folded his arms and shook his head. “Might as well tell you, I suppose. The media will have it soon enough. Forensics says that John Sawtelle definitely drowned, but not in salt water. He was already dead when the body was dumped onto the beach.” He looked directly at Jane Doe as he spoke. Janie’s expression did not change. No flash of recognition. No gasp of discovery. Nothing.
“So he was drowned somewhere else then? But in fresh water?” Louisa asked.
“They’re still analyzing the water in his lungs,” Pete said with another glance in Janie’s direction. By this time I was totally concentrating on watching her face. Still nothing.
“So he was killed in a pond or a river or a lake, right?” Betsy tossed her Farah Fawcett–like hair, pointing a manicured finger in Pete’s direction. “So now we have to figure out where he was drowned.”
“What if it was a bathtub or a swimming pool?” Louisa suggested.
“If it’s not someplace with plumbing though, it has to be someplace fairly secluded,” Aunt Ibby reasoned. “He must have struggled, and if his mouth wasn’t bound up like his hands, he probably yelled for help.”
He did. I saw his mouth open. He screamed.
I watched Janie’s face. Interest. Nothing more.
“We need to find out how they sneaked his body into the water at Collins Cove,” Louisa said.
“Wait a minute, ladies.” Pete held up both hands. “What’s this ‘we’ all about? This is strictly a police matter.”
“Oh, Pete, dear, don’t you worry. We won’t get in your way one single bit, will we, Angels?” Aunt Ibby wore her very sweetest smile. “And we’ll come straight to you with every clue we discover, won’t we, girls?” That pronouncement was greeted with enthusiastic agreement from the other two. I made no comment. Neither did Jane Doe, who looked from one to the other of the Angels, her expression registering—what? Curiosity maybe. Nothing more.
Pete launched into his speech about the importance of citizens letting the professionals handle dealing with crime and criminals. “Citizens should ‘see something, say something.’ That’s helpful. Amateurs sneaking around, putting themselves at risk is not helpful.”
“Of course. That’s what I said. Every little thing we see or hear, we’ll come straight to you.” My aunt crossed her heart. “Promise.”
Pete wore his exasperated-cop face. “Lee. Try to talk some sense into these women while I get Jane’s escort for tomorrow set up. Mind if I go upstairs and use your computer?”
“Go right ahead. I’ll be up shortly,” I said, knowing full well that “talking sense” to the Angels was a waste of time. They were on a mission and wouldn’t be deterred by any words of mine. “First, let’s see about getting Janie here settled into the guest room. She’s had quite a day. Aunt Ibby, will you check on Janie’s clothes?”
“I’m sure everything is dry. I’ll be right back.” She hurried out the back door, returning within minutes with Jane’s blouse and skirt on hangers, undies neatly folded. “Here you go, dear. She handed the clothing to the woman. “Maralee will lend you shoes and a sweater, I’m sure.”
“Of course.” I stood, motioning for Jane Doe to join me. “Ready for bed, Janie?”
“Sure,” she said, looking around at the others in the room. “Thank you, everybody. Good night.”
To a chorus of good-night wishes, she followed me to the foyer, pausing in front of the hall tree. The tall antique mahogany piece with its handy lift-up storage seat, well-placed coat hooks, and ornate carving surrounding the full-length mirror, has stood in the same place for as long as I can remember. It is, I suppose, a useful, interesting, and decorative piece of furniture. Aunt Ibby likes to check her appearance in the tall beveled mirror before she answers the door.
I try hard to avoid ever looking into that mirror, but since Janie stood right in front of it, the flashing lights and swirling colors were impossible to ignore. I saw two Janies back-to-back. One, wearing a blue blouse and jeans, faced me. The other, the one in the mirror, had her back to me. She wore a white blouse, beige skirt, and a pink cashmere sweater. As I watched, she reached into the pocket of the sweater and pulled out a key fob.
CHAPTER 9
“Janie,” I said in as casual a tone of voice as I could manage while seeing double images, “do you remember having a car?”
She moved away from the mirror and toward the staircase. That was good. It was easier to address jeans-and-blue-shirt Janie. “A car?” She climbed the first step, then paused, looking at me. “A car. Yes, I think so. At least I know to drive. I’m sure of that.” She held out both hands, as though she was gripping an imaginary steering wheel. She reached down with her right. “Stick shift.” The words were almost whispered, as she made the quick hand movement indicating shifting from park to first gear. The motion was a familiar one to me.
“Me too.” I watched her face. “My husband was a race car driver. He taught me. I love cars. Pete calls me a gearhead. Who taught you?”
“Daddy,” she said, and continued climbing the stairs. “Daddy taught me to drive his car.”
“That’s nice.” I spoke softly, following her, hoping she’d keep talking, remember more. “Not many people these days know how.”
Abruptly, she stopped climbing. I nearly bumped into her. “I remembered that!” She turned and faced me again, her voice excited. “I remember my daddy.”
I reached out, wanting to hug her, to share her joy in the memory, but stopped, afraid I might interrupt this new flow of information about her past. “What kind of car was it?” I kept my tone conversational.
The answer came promptly. “A 2015 Jeep Renegade. Black. Way more fun than automatic shift I had.”
My inner gearhead emerged. “Six-speed manual transmission? Two-point-four liter engine?”
“Right.” With a pleasant nod she resumed climbing the stairs toward the second-floor guest room.
“That’s good, Janie,” I told her as I pushed open the door to the pink room and turned on the overhead light. “The remote for the TV is on the bedside table and there are plenty of books and magazines on the window seat. Have a good rest and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night, Lee,” she said. “And thank you so much. I . . . I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“You’re going to be fine,” I assured her. “You’re already beginning to remember things. Tomorrow will be better. Good night.” I pulled the door closed and started up the stairs. Pete had used the back stairs, so I pulled the keys from my bag and unlocked the orange door. I thought of the key fob I’d seen in Janie’s hand in the mirror and wondered if that key would start the Jeep Renegade, or some other vehicle.
Pete looked up from my laptop. “I’ll be through in a minute here. Did you get Jane Doe settled in for the night?”
“I think so. She remembered a few more things just since you left. She remembers her dad and she knows how to drive. Stick shift.”
“No kidding. That’s great. Maybe by tomorrow she’ll be able to help us with something useful.”
“I hope so. It must be awful. Not remembering. Not even your own name.” I suppressed a shudder. “Poor Janie. I think I’ll change into my jammies too. Be right back.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, returning to whatever he had going on the laptop.
I grabbed my Donald Duck–print pj’s and headed down the hall to the bathroom. I hit the start button on the Mr. Coffee on the way out of the kitchen, planning to keep Pete awake for a while so I could try a little more prying. He’d seemed a little more generous with “cop talk” lately, since I was no longer a field reporter. I planned to take advantage of that.
When I returned to the kitchen—showered, moisturized, and pajamaed—Pete had closed up the laptop and was on his phone. “Okay, thanks for the heads-up.” He put the phone back into his pocket. “Well. I’ll be damned,” he said. “St. Peter’s Church.”
“Saint Peter’s Church?” I echoed. “What about it?” I pulled a couple of mugs from the cabinet, poured us each a cup of coffee, and pulled out the chair opposite his. “What’s going on?”
“Darndest thing,” he said. “Seems Sister Judith from St Peter’s called the station this morning to report that someone had left a car in the small lot behind the church, with the doors unlocked and a handbag in the front seat. She wanted the department to know she’d taken the handbag inside for safekeeping in case the owner called us.”
“That was wise,” I said. “So did someone call about it?”
“No.” He took a thoughtful sip of his coffee. “No. No, they didn’t. But when an officer went by the church this afternoon to follow up on the call, the vehicle was still there, so he checked the registration.”
“And?”
“It’s registered to John Sawtelle.”
I tried to smother a gasp. “Don’t tell me it’s a Jeep Renegade.”
He frowned. “No. What makes you think that? It’s a white 2020 Audi Q8. We’ve already towed it.”
“What about the handbag? Any ID in it?”
“Yep. License. Credit cards. Cell phone. All belonging to one Emily Jean Hemenway. The key to the Audi was in it too.”
“Emily,” I repeated. “Our Jane Doe?”
“Definitely. Good thing we printed her earlier. We have no official ID on her yet, but our Jane Doe’s prints are all over the Audi.”
“So you think Janie drove John Sawtelle’s car into the lot behind the church this morning.”
“That’s what we think.”
“But she doesn’t remember doing that.”
“Looks that way.” He glanced around the kitchen. “Got any cookies or anything?”
“Girl Scout. Are you going to try to question her about it right now?” I got a package of Samoas from the Red Riding Hood cookie jar. “One or two?”
“Two, please.” He glanced at Kit-Cat. It was past eleven. “Questioning her can wait until morning, I think. Why did you think the vehicle was a Jeep Renegade?”
“That’s what she learned to drive a stick on. I guess it must be her dad’s.” I slid three cookies onto a paper plate. Two for Pete and one for me. “Or hers.”
“Her memory is coming back pretty fast,” he said. “She could be a big help to us in figuring out what happened to John Sawtelle.”
I thought again of the screaming man in my vision. “She might remember some things she’d rather forget,” I said. “After all, something made her lose her memory.”
“You’re right. But according to Doc Egan, she’s going to remember it all fairly soon, for better or for worse.” He bit into a cookie. “Whatever she saw, I’m betting it will lead us to a killer.”
“I hope so,” I agreed. “I hate the idea that somebody mean enough to tie a man’s hands and throw him into the water to drown is walking around free in Salem.”
“I guess you realize that this has changed our plans to have Sergeant Rouse take Jane Doe—I mean Emily Hemenway—to Brookline,” he said. “There are some serious questions that need to be answered—memory loss or not. Your newfound friend is now a possible witness or maybe even a suspect in a murder investigation. She’ll be riding with Rouse to the station, not home to Daddy, whoever he is.”
Detective Sergeant Joyce Rouse is a high school classmate of mine, and a genuinely nice person. I was glad she’d be the officer accompanying Janie. “Speaking of the daddy, you’d think by now somebody would be wondering where she is,” I said. “Still no missing persons reports?”
“Nope. There weren’t any on Sawtelle either.”
“That seems odd to me.”
“Not really,” he said. “Sawtelle and whoever was in the adjoining room—quite possibly Jane Doe—had reservations for two nights. We’ve contacted Sawtelle’s family, of course, regarding his death. We expect the body will be released fairly soon.”
“Did you ask them about Jane Doe?”
“No.” He frowned. “We don’t know for sure what that connection might be. Business, pleasure, or nothing at all. An older man traveling with a young woman? Well, it could be awkward.”
It sure could.
* * *
In the morning I was the first one up for a change, anticipating a busy day—on so many levels. First, of course, was the mysterious young woman one floor below us. Was she an innocent bystander who might have witnessed a murder? Was she a business associate of the victim? Possibly a girlfriend? Or did she have something to do with his death? Or all of the above? Besides that, I had a whale of a job to do at WICH-TV without a clear idea of how I was going to accomplish all that needed to be done in the time frame I’d been given. I started the coffee, poured O’Ryan’s breakfast kibble into his red bowl, then hurried down the short hall to the bathroom, trying not to disturb the sleeping man and cat on my bed.
I returned to get dressed for the day while Pete headed for the shower. “I’ll get Janie up and take her downstairs to Aunt Ibby’s for some breakfast,” I told him. “I guess you’ll need to come downstairs and tell her about the Audi and that we know her real name before Joyce Rouse gets here.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so,” he promised, pouring himself a mug of coffee. “You look nice.”
“Thanks,” I said. I’d picked a pale yellow silk shantung pants suit, aiming for a businesslike but casual look for my foray into simultaneous set designing and program directing. “I’m not sure whether I’ll be sitting at my desk making plans, or running around on the set arranging props, or trying to build a bull chute out of closet poles.”
“I have no idea what you just said, but I’m sure you can handle it.” He gave me a quick kiss. “See you downstairs. O’Ryan has already left.”
“I don’t suppose Janie can have her own handbag back.”
That brought only a head shake and an exasperated eye roll. I picked up the sweater and the small cross-body Brighton handbag I’d selected to lend to Janie along with a pair of Gianni Bini tan flats, and stepped out into the upstairs hall and looked over the railing. I could see part of the second floor landing, including the door to the pink guest room. It was slightly ajar.
What if Jane Doe is gone? What if she’s remembered what happened to John Sawtelle and has run away?
I ran down the stairs, tapped on the door, and without waiting for an answer, pushed it open. The bed was made. The TV was off. The pajamas I’d loaned her were neatly folded on the flower-print boudoir chair. “Janie?” I called. My voice sounded like a croak. I tried again. “Janie, are you here?”
CHAPTER 10
I had never before in my life been so happy to hear the sound of a toilet flushing.
“I’m in the bathroom, Lee,” came the welcome voice. “Be right out.”
“Okay,” I said, hoping the panic I’d felt a moment ago didn’t show in my voice. I put the sweater and handbag on the bed and the shoes on the floor, wondering as I did so if they’d give Janie’s handbag with all her stuff in it back to her anytime soon. I’d been pretty sure they wouldn’t, so I’d put a comb, lip gloss, tissues, and an inexpensive watch I’d won at a church raffle along with few dollars into the cross-body bag I’d selected for her. “I’ve brought some shoes and a sweater and stuff for you.”
“Thanks, Lee.” The bathroom door opened and she stepped into the room, smiling, attractive in her own clothing. She sat on the edge of the bed and slipped on the shoes. “These feel fine. You’ve been so generous.” She put the watch onto her wrist. “So kind.”
“You’re very welcome. I’m so pleased that we can help. Did you sleep well?”
“I did. I’d probably still be in bed if O’Ryan hadn’t scratched on my door. I guess you must have sent him. Smart cat.”
“Yes, he is,” I agreed. Was he checking to be sure she was still here? “But visiting you was his own idea.”
“Oh, that’s sweet.” She picked up the handbag and tossed the sweater over her shoulders. “I guess it’s about time for me to take a ride with the lady officer, right?”
“Um—yes, but there’s been a change of plans. Pete will explain. Let’s go downstairs to Aunt Ibby’s and have a bite of breakfast.”
“All right.” Her voice was hesitant. “Is anything wrong?”
“Pete will explain,” I said again, opened the door and stepped into the hall, really glad that the explaining wasn’t up to me. Janie followed me silently down the front staircase. I didn’t dare to look at the hall tree mirror. O’Ryan waited for us at the arched entrance to Aunt Ibby’s living room, then turned and bolted for the kitchen as soon as we’d both reached the foyer.
“Aunt Ibby, it’s Janie and me,” I called, although I was sure the cat had already alerted her.
“Good morning, girls.” She stood next to the open oven door and waved to us with oven-mitted hands. “You’re just in time for date scones,” she said, deftly moving the pan from stove to counter. “Nigel’s mother’s recipe.” Nigel St. John is my aunt’s Scotland Yard gentleman friend who occasionally visits Salem. “Coffee’s ready. Help yourselves. Where’s Pete?”
“He’ll be down shortly,” I said.
