The Motion of Puppets(53)

Egon threw his hands into the air. “Are you out of your mind? Talk to the woman.”

“You don’t understand. She doesn’t like me. Not to play the mother-in-law card. I think she still secretly suspects me in Kay’s disappearance.”

“She says she saw Kay on TV. I don’t care how crazy—”

“Not crazy,” Theo said, picking up the phone.

He pictured her on the other end making her way in the chair to answer the call. After the accident, her husband had installed a phone in every room, but at this late hour, she was probably in bed, watching one of those British mysteries she so adored. Kay had often complained that her mother would not interrupt one of her stories to pick up the phone. It rang and rang. Where could she be at this time of night?

“Hullo.” With one word, the memories returned. Her voice was the synthesis of flint and haw, an old-fashioned patrician accent like the distaff child of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

“Hello, Dolores. I got your call—”

“Theo, dear boy. I have seen the most peculiar thing. On the television. The six o’clock news last night. They were doing a story about a Halloween parade, what passes for local color these days. Children in costumes lined up on the sidewalks. Would you know, these giant effigies are carried down the middle of the street. Positively Catholic. Like they were carrying icons in a procession. And that’s when I saw her. Kay. She was one of those…”

“Puppets?”

“Yes, a puppet, a great big puppet. I just caught a glimpse of her, but I would recognize her anywhere. The dead spit. How could they have known what she looks like without seeing her? Mind, it was a very stylized face, but I could tell by her eyes. Like I was looking at my own girl again. You must think me an old fool, but I had to call someone. Where have you been?”

“You miss her,” Theo said. “I miss her, too. I see her face everywhere.”

“No, no, nothing like that. This was made to look just like her. Have you any news?”

He hesitated a beat, uncertain whether to tell her. “Nothing solid. I just got back from Québec, as a matter of fact. I met with the police, but they are no closer than ever, though there may be a new clue. Do you remember if she had a pair of heels in a kind of robin’s-egg blue?”

“Shoes? She had so many shoes. I suppose it is possible.”

“They found two shoes, one with a broken heel. I think they might be hers, the pair she was wearing the night she disappeared.”

On the other end of the phone, she paused a few beats. Her face would be contorted in that same gesture Kay made whenever she began to cry. Like mother, like daughter. He wanted to reach through the line and hug her by the shoulders, he wanted to tell her the whole story about the Quatre Mains shop, but he dared not raise her hopes. Or confuse her with Egon’s half-baked theories.

“I cannot bear to think how she might have lost them.”

“They’re not entirely sure they are hers, and I can’t know—”

“Might I ask you a favor? Could you track them down? The puppet people. Maybe they know her, used her as a model for that giant doll. Uncanny resemblance, took my breath. It was the Vermont station on the television. And the parade was just down the road in Bennington. Yesterday. The television people might be of help in finding who is responsible.”

“Dolores, I don’t know—”

“Not for me, Theo. For Kay.”

“For Kay,” he said at last, and with a promise to call again soon, he made his good-byes.

Like a jack-in-the-box, Egon popped up from behind the sofa as soon as the conversation ended. He had been eavesdropping and bore an eager expression on his face, a startling visage since Theo had completely forgotten that he was there. “What gives, mon ami?”

“Her mother was watching local news on the TV last night, and she saw a story on a Halloween parade with giant puppets in a little town in Vermont.” Theo spoke slowly as if trying to convince himself of the story. “And one of them looked just like Kay.”

“That could be her,” Egon said.

“But these weren’t small, they were big puppets. Giants.”

“Yet she swears that one of them looked like Kay? Big or small, you must follow every lead.”

Theo ignored his remark. “Dolores wants me to see if I can find the puppet makers. Her theory is that they must have used Kay as a model, but I don’t know. Could be that she just imagined the resemblance. She’s been subconsciously looking for Kay all this time, and any scant similarity might trigger a reaction. Obviously, she’s projecting her grief onto an unrelated situation. I’ve done it myself, a thousand times. Thought ‘there she is.’”

“And you sound ready to disbelieve anything and everything. You think it is a mere coincidence that we find all this evidence in a puppet shop? Maybe your mother-in-law is seeing things, maybe she is, what did you say, projecting? But, if it looks like a puppet and acts like a puppet, then she must be a puppet. Fire up your laptop. Let’s do a search.”

The video hadn’t been uploaded on any of the feeds from the Burlington station, but after watching clip after clip of parades, they chanced upon a homemade version of the Halloween march through Bennington. Ninety seconds of shaky cam, children mostly, the videographer interested in the variety of costumes, and finally a continuous long shot of all the puppets come to town. A barrel-shaped man with a walrus mustache, a devil, three sisters in Victorian costumes, a juggler and a straw-headed girl, an old witch. And for just a few seconds, there she was, the one who looked like Kay, here and gone, and then a creature made out of sticks and branches, and at the end of the procession a queen twice as tall as the rest.