Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [45]
“Yes,” I said, “we’ve heard how special she was, the effect she had on people.”
“You know,” said Odd. “I think I’d like that cocoa now.”
We followed her into the kitchen, and as she made the cocoa, Odd’s eyes travelled over the counter, the table, the stove, and all the appliances.
He opened the door to a counter-top toaster-oven. “This is new,” he said.
“That? No, it’s ten years old if it’s a day.”
We talked about that terrible night. I was pretty much convinced by now that this lady was Odd’s mother in another life. I surrended, I accepted it, I waited to see where it would take us. We sat down at the kitchen table and drank the cocoa, which felt thick in my mouth.
“Mrs. Olson…can I call you by your first name?” I asked.
“Yes, of course you can.”
“What is it, your name?”
“Janet,” said Odd, simply, and sipped his cocoa, a long lost man with his big hands around a familiar mug, an affectionate dog sleeping on his lap.
“Yes, that’s right, my name is Janet.”
“We’re not here, Janet,” I said, “in any official capacity, but this is more than a matter of curiosity to us.”
“Do you…have some idea… who did it?” she asked, tentatively.
“No, but it may be possible now to find out.”
“But how? It’s been thirty-three years.”
“Well…we might have an eye witness,” I said.
“What? After all these years…?”
“There was a twelve-year-old boy had a crush on Jeannie,” said Odd.
“Oh, all the boys had a crush on Jeannie. Did he see it, this boy?”
“He might have,” said Odd.
“But that’s not the eye witness we have in mind,” I said. I wanted the other shoe to drop, and drop soon, but I didn’t want to freak her out.
“He was a serious little guy,” said Odd, “followed her around all the time, too afraid to talk. Jeannie towered over him.”
“Gosh, it could have been anybody.” She thought for a while and said, “I do remember….a little Indian boy.”
“Yes! It was an Indian boy, a very shy boy, and Jeannie was the first girl he ever felt that way about. Do you remember his name?”
“Lord, it was so long ago. Maybe it will come to me. But how do you know about that?”
“Ah, Janet, yes, that’s the hard part to explain,” I said, wishing Odd would take a crack at it and get it over with.
“Her room…” said Odd, “first door on the right at the top of the stairs. What’s in there now?”
“It’s still her room. We had no other use for it. We had no other children.”
She was speaking reasonably but I could see in her face a new level of confusion and fear, and she looked only at Odd, who casually scratched the terrier’s neck.
“Could we see her room?” I asked.
She led us upstairs. The doors were all open. A sewing room at the top of the stairs, the master bedroom and the bathroom to the left, and Jeannie’s room to the right. She went in ahead of us, and Odd seemed to falter at the last step, then regained himself and went into the room. It was a small room, with windows to the street. The bed was nicely made and populated with several stuffed animals. The dresser was maple and tucked into the mirror’s framing were yellowing photos that once meant something to a young girl. A cedar chest was at the foot of the bed. On the floor was an old style hi-fi set and on either side of it stacks of vinyl albums. There was a small bookcase with high school mementos placed among the books. In the far corner of the room was a door, which I assumed was the closet.
I took it all in, in just a second, and focused on Odd’s face, looking for the flash of recognition. I believe Janet Olson was doing the same thing. We were both waiting for him to say something.
“It’s small,” he said. The remark was anticlimatic. But I remembered the first time I went back home to Pennsylvania after many years on the west coast and went into my old room. My reaction was exactly the same. It seemed so much smaller than I remembered it.
Odd began looking closer, especially at the things in the bookcase, and he said, “There was a blue spiral notebook that she always kept with her, with stick-on’s, all kinds of