The Bishop’s Wife (Linda Wallheim Mystery, #1)(57)

She took off her shirt and opened one of her drawers. It was carefully stacked with folded shirts. Even her sock drawer, which I opened, was divided with plastic bins into white socks, dark socks, and socks with stripes. Her underwear was similarly divided. And her closet was organized by color of dresses, from yellow to red to blue and purple.

“Did Grandpa Alex arrange your closet, too?” I asked.

She nodded. “He likes things neat,” she said.

Neat was one word for it. “All right. I’m going to go put in that load of laundry. Why don’t you sit here and read a book for a few minutes, okay?” I settled her next to me on her bed with several books. At the touch of her warm body, I felt another surge of that emotion I’d felt when she played the piano with me. It felt like the whisper of the Spirit was saying, She is yours. She belongs with you.

I hugged Kelly tightly and I felt her arms wrap around me and hug me just as tightly. Did she imagine for just a moment that I was her mother, as I was imagining for just a moment that she was my daughter? I was a great deal rounder than her mother, and old enough to be her grandmother. And she was too young to be my daughter, if my daughter had lived. But I had missed the small arm years, and maybe those were the parts I wished to have back the most.

Maybe that is why other women like the idea of having their children back to raise again at the age they lost them. It never works that way, though, does it? We can’t have any children back, no matter how much we miss them. Time marches on, even for the eternal. We have to find new children to love, grandchildren or other replacements, if we want to continue to be mothers.

“Mommy likes books,” said Kelly, pulling back and looking at me curiously. “She reads lots of books to me. But sometimes she cries when she reads them.”

“Oh? Did she read you sad books?” I asked.

“No. Books her daddy read to her when she was little.”

Was Carrie so unstable that she often cried in front of Kelly, or was she just nostalgic for her own childhood?

“Which do you want me to read to you first?” I asked Kelly.

“I will read it to you,” said Kelly. “So I can show you the right way to do it.”

I didn’t know if she had already learned to read so well or if she had simply memorized the stories, but she read with a great deal of emotion. She read through Pig Pigger Piggest and even did voices for each of the pigs and witches. I was impressed. “Did your mother teach you how to do that?” I asked.

“Yes,” Kelly said.

“Well, I think those voices you did are so cute.”

Kelly looked at me as if I was crazy. “You have to do voices, to make the story fun.”

She was a special child. She had a light in her, a talent for life and for learning. It was electric, and it sparked on me whenever I was with her.

Kelly fell asleep on the last page, and I had to tug the book away from her. I tiptoed out of the room to leave her undisturbed, then went upstairs into the master bedroom on the top of the split-level house, nervous and determined. I opened the door and saw a room that was magazine perfect. The bed was made, decorative pillows and all. The curtains had been pulled back to let in the light. There wasn’t a hint of dust anywhere. There was one double dresser on the near side of the wall, and on top of it was a photograph, not of Carrie and Jared Helm, but of Grandpa Alex and Kelly.

The police had searched the car and the house already, but they weren’t looking for the same things that I was. They wanted evidence that Carrie might have been killed. I wanted evidence that she’d ever lived here. I wanted to know Carrie Helm’s story.

I opened a drawer and found nothing but male clothing on the right hand side. The left hand side of all the drawers was empty.

Where had it all gone? Had I missed the chance to find anything useful about Carrie? Surely, her father-in-law could not have erased all trace of her.

I went into the master bathroom and looked in the left cabinet for Carrie’s makeup, but that, too, was gone. There was a toothbrush and a man’s razor—presumably Grandpa Alex’s, because Jared’s were in the right cabinet. Was Alex staying in this room with his son now? That seemed a little strange, to say the least.

I looked for laundry, which was the reason I was supposed to be here, making up a load. But I couldn’t find any dirty clothes, either.

I backed out of the room and put Kelly’s things in the dryer. Then I went downstairs and searched through the lower levels of the house. There was a family room off the garage, then below that an unfinished basement, and that was where I found garbage bags full of Carrie’s things. The clothing I was less interested in, but there was a bag of her photos and other memorabilia, a wedding album that, strangely enough, had not a single photo of Alex Helm in it that I could see, and a cheap, flip-top cell phone.

There was also a stack of picture books, including a well-worn copy of Harry the Dirty Dog, which made me feel a pang of sadness at Kelly’s loss. I couldn’t bring it up to her now. Her grandfather would just put it away again, and likely be angry at Kelly, even if it was my fault. I held the book for a long moment. But the cell phone was far more important.

I tucked it into my pocket and left everything else as I had found it, or at least as close as I could manage. After seeing the rest of the house so carefully organized, I wondered if Alex Helm would notice someone had been down here.