Death by the Bay Page 7

  She even smelled old, but her eyes were bright and a smear of soft pink glistened on her lower lip, a match for the uneven splotches of rouge that she had dabbed on her cheeks.

  “Mrs. Fadim, I’m Dave Cubiak, the sheriff.”

  “Sheriff! Smeriff!” she said in a sharp bark that sent spittle flying from her mouth.

  She slapped his hand and raised her voice. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, you have to push yourself away from the table and go look for her. You need to find her. Don’t you understand? Don’t you care?”

  Anxious to ease the woman’s agitation, Cubiak kept his voice calm. “Need to find who?”

  With a screech, Mrs. Fadim bolted upright. “Your sister!” she said.

  Rage nearly lifted the elderly woman from the chair but as quickly as the outburst erupted, it dissipated, and she released her hold on Cubiak’s arm and crumpled into herself.

  “She’s been gone for so long,” she said. Slumped in the chair, she stared at the slit in the curtains. Then she closed her eyes and dropped her head to her sunken chest. Almost immediately she began to snore.

  Cubiak pushed back to his feet and flexed the stiffness from his knees. As he rubbed the spot where Mrs. Fadim’s fierce grip still resonated, he stared at the old woman. The outburst seemed to substantiate Cate’s story about a missing girl, but the woman’s insistence that he was someone named Tommy indicated that she was crazy, sick, or sadly forgetful. If Tommy was her son and the girl was his sister, then she would be Mrs. Fadim’s daughter. But Cate said she wasn’t. If there was a missing girl, who was she? What had happened to her? Why had no one had ever reported her to the sheriff’s office? Was she real or a figment of Mrs. Fadim’s imagination? How long had the poor woman kept her sad, futile vigil at the window? And who the hell was Tommy?

  “Fuck,” Cubiak said half out loud. Life could be so cruel.

  He glanced back toward the open door. He hadn’t told anyone, not even Cate, about his plan to visit the Fadim farm. He could turn around and walk out and forget the entire episode. Let someone else try to make sense of her wild ranting. But he knew he couldn’t do that. At the very least, he could fix a cup of tea for Mrs. Fadim and exchange a kind word before he left.

  By now his eyes had adjusted to the thin light. From the windows, he moved past a sagging brown velour couch and a matching chair whose arms had been rubbed to a sheen by years of use, past a small round table littered with photos, past a narrow bookcase crammed with leather-bound books whose titles had faded to illegibility, past a faux gilded mirror on one wall and painted landscapes on another, past a set of tall lamps with torn shades. Everything in the room was as worn as the woman in the chair.

  The small kitchen had an old feeling to it as well. The dull oak table by the window, the wall clock in the shape of a black cat whose tail no longer switched back and forth to keep the time. The speckled, creviced linoleum floor that reminded Cubiak of the one he had known as a kid, the one his mother scrubbed on her hands and knees and never got completely clean.

  He filled the kettle with water and rummaged through the rough-hewn cupboards for food. Next to four half-empty boxes of cereal he found a canister of tea bags and an unopened package of vanilla wafers. He brewed the tea and when it was ready, he arranged everything on a small tin tray and carried it back to the living room.

  Mrs. Fadim was awake, transformed by sleep.

  “Hello, young man. My goodness, I do get the handsome ones, don’t I? Usually it’s my grandson who comes to check on me or some old biddy who comes with a tuna casserole and box of biscuits,” she said when he bent to set the tray in front of her.

  She exclaimed over the simple repast as if it were a feast. “Who are you anyway?” she asked as she dunked a cookie into the hot tea.

  Cubiak told her.

  “Well, I didn’t realize I was that important. The sheriff, my goodness.”

  “You thought I was someone named Tommy.”

  “Oh, did I?” she said.

  “You asked if I had found my sister.”

  “Not your sister. Not Tommy’s sister. My sister.” Mrs. Fadim closed her eyes and took a deep raspy breath. “I ask everyone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we have to find her.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  She opened her eyes. “No.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

  Mrs. Fadim bit her lower lip. “Somewhere north, I think.” She hesitated. “Or was it south?”

  “When did she leave?”

  “I don’t remember. Last month, maybe. Or last year.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I get confused sometimes, but I know she should be back home by now. He said she wouldn’t be gone for long. He promised.”

  “Who promised?”

  “The man who came for her. He said he would bring her home as good as new. That she would be strong again and could run and play like the rest of us.”

  A dreamy whimsical look came over Mrs. Fadim. “She was so pretty. The prettiest of us all.”

  The old lady grabbed the sheriff’s arm again. “She didn’t want to go. She wept and begged us not to send her away. She didn’t understand that it was for her own good. Father only wanted to help her.”

  Cubiak felt cold. Was it a reaction to the damp chill in the room or to the tale the woman was relating. “Who took her away? Can you tell me the man’s name?”

  She hung her head. “I knew it once but now I can’t remember.” Then suddenly she perked up. “He was a doctor. He was someone important. He said that he worked at a place where they helped children get well and that he drove all the way here just for Margaret.”

  Mrs. Fadim laughed. “He had a shiny black car, and we said, ‘Margaret, don’t you want to go for a ride in the fancy car?’ He gave her a chocolate candy bar and called her Peggy. She didn’t like that. She got very annoyed with him. ‘My name is Margaret,’ she said. So then he called her Margaret. And after that, she took the candy and she got in the car.”

  The old woman looked at Cubiak. “She didn’t even give me a hug or kiss me good-bye. She just got in the car and left. I waved to her. I ran to the end of the driveway, waving. I like to think that she saw me and waved back, but I don’t know. The car was going so fast it was hard to see anything through the dust.”

  Would she know the vehicle make or model? Probably not, Cubiak thought.

  “Was it a new car?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. It wasn’t like one of those cars people drive today. It was an old-fashioned one. Like you see in the gangster movies.”

  “Do you have a picture of Margaret?”

  “Just one. Over there.” Mrs. Fadim nodded toward the table with the photographs. “Please,” she said, motioning at the cane.

  He offered his arm instead, but she pretended not to notice. With a look of stubborn concentration, she lunged for the walking stick. Holding it with both hands, she lifted herself up off the seat cushion, one vertebra at a time. When she was upright, she smoothed her skirt and gave a small, triumphant smile. Then she turned and began the long, slow shuffle across the threadbare floral carpet to the round table.

  For several minutes, she surveyed the small cluster of photos as if she were reacquainting herself with long-lost friends and family. Finally she lifted her bony hand and pointed.

  “That one,” she said, aiming her finger at a small silver frame in the middle of the collection. The image in the frame was a color picture of a young girl who looked to be about five or six. From what Cate had said, the mysterious Margaret had disappeared decades earlier. If the missing girl had really existed and there was a photo of her, wouldn’t it be in black and white? he wondered. And if the girl in the picture wasn’t Margaret, then who was she?

  “Can I take this?” he said, reaching for the photograph.

  Mrs. Fadim slapped his hand. “No, it’s the only one I have. And you always lose things.”

 
She thought he was Tommy again.

  “I won’t lose it.”

  “Why do you need it?” She sounded querulous.

  “So I can make a copy to show to people. Maybe someone in town has seen Margaret.”

  Mrs. Fadim brightened at the prospect. “Yes, maybe they have. But I must have it back. Promise you won’t lose it.”

  “I promise.”

  He gave her his card. “If you need anything, call me,” he said.

  Before he left, Cubiak escorted Mrs. Fadim to the kitchen. While she watched, he opened a can of soup, poured it into a bowl, and set it in the microwave. A red arrow pointing to the On button had been taped to the door. “To heat the soup, just push this,” he said.

  She flapped a hand at him. “Silly boy. Don’t you think I know how to take care of myself? You go now or you’ll be late for school.”

  Feeling helpless and unsure what else to do, Cubiak buttered a slice of bread and left it wrapped in a piece of paper towel along with more cookies. “Something to go with your soup, and then a little dessert for later,” he said.

  Mrs. Fadim had lost interest and sat staring out the window at the backyard. “We used to have a chicken coop and a granary and a building for the pigs,” she said. She frowned. “There was a corncrib, too, and a doghouse for Shep, our collie. But Shep died.”

  Cubiak followed her gaze and tried to imagine what she saw. In the space behind the house, an unused driveway circled around an old well. The only structure left was a weathered barn at the far end of the weed-infested yard.

  “Did you have cows?” he asked.

  “Cows? Oh, yes. Of course. You can’t have a dairy farm without cows.”

  She grabbed Cubiak’s hand. “Find Margaret. Find her before something bad happens to her.”

  Back at his desk, Cubiak went online and searched county records for information about Florence Fadim. According to the official documents, she was born in Brussels, Wisconsin, to Mary and Joseph Stutzman, one of seven children and the only girl. At eighteen she married Elgar Fadim, who was nearly half again as old, and moved down the road to his family’s small dairy farm. Elgar died following a fall from a ladder, leaving Florence a widow with a young son, Thomas. She was twenty-four at the time and the boy five. Twenty years later, Thomas was killed in a car accident. He left a wife and three children: a daughter, Lorene, and two sons, Thomas Jr. and Jason. It was a life punctuated with loss and grief.

  The official records and the brief obituaries for the Stutzmans did not mention a daughter other than Florence herself. So who’s Margaret? Cubiak wondered.

  When Joey was three, he had an imaginary friend named Baseball. Maybe Margaret was Mrs. Fadim’s imaginary sister. It was pretty lonely where she had ended up, the sheriff thought. He pictured late summer when lush green fields of twelve-foot-high cornstalks surrounded the little island of house and yard, choking the inhabitants off from the rest of the world. Left on her own, how easy it would be for Mrs. Fadim to conjure up a young girl stepping out from between the rows of green and crossing her small patch of lawn to keep her company.

  The scenario made a certain kind of sense.

  But he didn’t entirely believe his own version of things. If Margaret was a fantasy companion, wouldn’t Mrs. Fadim want to hold on to her? Wouldn’t she imagine Margaret sitting on the sofa and chatting with her, reliving the good times and recalling those that weren’t? The last thing she would want was for her companion to disappear.

  He pulled the small photo from his wallet. There wasn’t a name on the back, no hint of the subject’s identity. But there was no question that the photo was not old enough to be a picture of Mrs. Fadim’s sibling. Was there enough similarity between the missing Margaret and the girl in the picture to convince the old lady that this was a portrait of the sister she claimed had disappeared?

  More important, did Mrs. Fadim have a crippled sister, and if so, who was the doctor, or the man posing as one, who said he could cure her? Mrs. Fadim’s story predated the one that Francisca had told him by many years, perhaps decades, but it was the same sad tale. What were the odds of two women of such different ages and from such different cultures fabricating similar stories? Equally puzzling to Cubiak was how such a tragic event could occur not once but twice. And if twice, then how many more times?

  8

  THE GIRL WHO NEVER WAS

  Cubiak slipped the photo back into his wallet and started an online search for Mrs. Fadim’s grandsons. Within minutes he found two Jasons and one Thomas with the same surname. The first Jason lived in Anchorage, but he was seventy-five and ruled out by virtue of his age. The only other Jason had a Janesville address and was forty-two. Thomas Jr. lived even closer and was two years younger than Jason. The two could be brothers. Tom Fadim was a CPA in Sturgeon Bay. His office was on the west side, a five-minute drive from the justice center.

  Shortly after noon, the sheriff headed out the door. During the height of the season, parking spots were hard to come by in the town’s main downtown district on the east side of the bay. But across the steel bridge where the office of Thomas Fadim Jr. was located, parking was rarely a problem, especially early in the summer. The street outside the CPA office was empty except for a beat-up silver SUV at the curb. The vehicle idled in front of a blue, wood-frame house in need of paint. Weeds filled the patch of lawn and obscured half of the sign for Fadim’s office. Either business was so good that he didn’t have to keep up appearances or so bad that he didn’t bother.

  As the sheriff pulled up, a scrawny man hurried out the door. He wore jeans and a yellow-and-black plaid shirt. His baseball cap was pulled down low over his face, and he carried a tackle box in one hand and a fishing rod in the other.

  Given Mrs. Fadim’s comment about Tommy needing to push away from the table, the sheriff expected her grandson to be a large man. This had to be someone else.

  “I’m looking for Tom Fadim. Would you happen to know if he’s in?” Cubiak said.

  The man stopped short and flinched, as if he were a schoolboy caught sneaking out before the recess bell. “That’s me,” he said. Regaining his composure, he lowered the sporting gear to the ground and extended a hand. “I was going fishing but . . .” The rest went unsaid; there was always time for a new client.

  When Cubiak introduced himself, Fadim paled. “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  Fadim’s expression swung from a look of relief to one of puzzlement. “Then why—”

  “I was hoping to ask you a few questions about your grandmother. I was out to see her earlier today.”

  “Why’d you do that?” The retort was sharp and laden with suspicion.

  This was not a conversation the sheriff wanted to have on the sidewalk. “How about if we go inside. This will just take a minute,” he said.

  Fadim tossed his gear into the back of the SUV and turned off the engine.

  “This way,” he said, leading Cubiak toward the house.

  The inside was as dreary and poorly kept as the exterior. The CPA’s office was at the front of the building, in what had probably once been a living room. Except for a desk, a couple of chairs, and two sets of metal file cabinets, the office was empty. Fadim took the chair behind the desk and motioned the sheriff into the one that faced him.

  “Now, what is this about? Has the old lady gotten herself into trouble with the law?” he said, in a feeble attempt to be funny.

  Cubiak hesitated. He had taken an instant dislike to the man and was trying to neutralize his feeling.

  “There’s nothing wrong. My wife used to have a friend out that way. She told me about your grandmother living there alone, and since I was in the area, I thought I’d stop in and see how she was doing. The department recently instituted a policy of wellness checks on elderly residents and I figured I’d do my part.” It was Cubiak’s second white lie that day but the CPA didn’t question it.

  Instead, he drew himself up in an attempt
to make himself tall in his chair. “It’s not like we ignore her. My ex-wife and I take turns. Even my daughter goes out to see her, now that she’s back in Door County.”

  Cubiak ignored the whiny protest. “She called me Tommy. Do you think she confused me with you?”

  Fadim laughed. “She calls every man she sees Tommy. I’m Thomas to her, always have been. Sometimes she knows who I am, but mostly she thinks I’m my dad. He’s the one people called Tommy.”

  “It’s sad when that happens,” Cubiak said.

  “Yeah, it is, but nothing we can do about it, is there?”

  “She mentioned someone named Margaret. Do you know who she was talking about?”

  The accountant tossed up his hands and sighed. “My ex-wife would tell you that Margaret doesn’t exist and never did, that she’s a figment of Florence’s imagination, a tool the old lady uses to get attention.”

  “Do you agree with that assessment?”

  Fadim shrugged. “My grandmother always was a pretty colorful person. She has one of those flamboyant natures, used to drive my ex-wife crazy with all her theories. But I’m pretty certain that Margaret was real, although I can’t really say where she fit in the family. My best guess is that she was my great-aunt.”

  “Your grandmother’s sister?”

  “Yes.” Fadim rolled back from the desk. For a moment the squeak of the wheels on his chair was the only sound in the room. Then he went on talking. “After my father died, my mother went back to work, and during the summer my brother and I stayed out on the farm with the old lady. She had us pick wild blackberries for jam, and every week she made us a cherry pie. She was nice, but she was one of those people who couldn’t stay quiet. She was always talking, and the one thing she talked about the most was Margaret. It was always the same story. After a while we stopped paying attention. But whenever the two of us started acting up, she’d threaten us with the story of the bogeyman MD who absconded with Margaret in his shiny black car. If we didn’t behave, she said, he’d come back and get us too. I thought it was just a silly story until a couple of years ago.”