Leather Maiden

33

It didn’t take much research to find Mrs. Soledad’s phone number. Next morning, I called her and told her I wanted to talk to her about Ronnie, asked if she knew where Ronnie was these days.

“No,” she said. “But I don’t talk about things like that over the telephone.”

I gave her my background, told her I was running down a story about missing women, meaning Ronnie and Caroline, and from some letters I had come across, I knew she knew them well.

Mrs. Soledad was silent for a moment.

“Letters?” she asked.

I explained.

“Those were private,” she said.

“Came across them by accident, and we’re doing an investigation.”

“We?”

“My assistant and I.”

“I don’t know I like you going through letters I’ve written.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Soledad. We just sort of came across them.”

“Did you have permission? Isn’t there a law about that?”

“They had been confiscated by the landlord for back rent. He gave us permission to look through what was left.”

No word from the other end.

“You know that Caroline went missing?” I said.

“Of course. Ronnie told me. We exchanged letters and phone calls. Mostly letters. I don’t do that new thing everyone does.”

“New thing?”

“Mailing off the computer.”

“Oh. E-mail.”

“That’s right. We did it the old-fashioned way. Envelopes and stamps. But, yes, I knew Caroline. I knew her well.”

“Can you tell me about her and Ronnie?”

“You come see me. I see you face-to-face, then maybe I’ll want to talk.”

“All right,” I said.

“You get here, I’ll be the one with a .357 in my lap.”

“Oh.”

“No. I mean it. Come on, but you better have good intentions.”

“I use my powers only for good.”

“Yeah, well, you better.”

She gave me the directions I already had from the Internet. Belinda and I drove over to Cleveland in my junker. When we left, a dark cloud came in from the west and brought thunder and lightning with it. The noonday sky was dark as midnight. We drove with the headlights on. We saw a strand of lightning hit the ground out in a pasture, and when it hit, the world lit up brighter than a floor show in Las Vegas, made my vision go white for an instant. When we were a half hour out from Cleveland, the bottom of the cloud collapsed and down came rain. We had to turn the windshield wipers on high. One of my wiper blades was a wounded soldier. Part of it came loose, slapped frantically at the windshield.

It was still raining when we got into Cleveland. Mrs. Soledad lived in a little white house just off the highway with a covered porch with a swing on it and a couple of cloth foldout chairs. As we drove up in the yard, the wind picked up the chairs and slapped them across the porch and hung them up in the swing.

Belinda and I sat in the car for a moment. The driveway ended some twenty feet from the porch steps, in front of a closed-up garage. I said, “I’m thinking about the .357 she mentioned.”

“She shoots you,” Belinda said, “I’ll go for help.”

“Comforting.”

About that time, a woman, who I surmised was Mrs. Soledad, came out on the porch. I didn’t see the .357 in her hand. She waved us in.

“Here we go,” I said, and I opened my door and slid out, and Belinda slid out behind me. We fought our way through the rain, and the moment we stepped up on the porch steps, the wind picked up again, jerked one of the cloth chairs out of its tangle against the swing, carried it away in a swirl, just missing us. I watched it fly off the porch, hit the yard twice, like a skipping rock, then go sailing into a stand of trees where it got hung up.

I gave a hand to Belinda and helped her onto the porch. I turned and looked at Mrs. Soledad. She was about five feet tall with black hair streaked with gray, and she had a little body and a pleasant face. She looked elderly, but spry, like an android version of a grandma. In spite of this, I kept the .357 she had mentioned in mind.

“Sorry about your chair,” I said. “Rain slacks, I’ll get it for you.”

“Don’t worry about the chairs,” she said. She pushed the screen door wider. “Come on in. It’s gotten chilly out here. Not to mention wet.”

The other chair gave way then, came up and over the swing, banged against one of the chains that supported the swing, then darted off the open end of the porch and sailed out to join its cousin.

Inside it was a little cool, but nothing like outside. The place was dark and smelled of Lysol. After a moment my eyes adjusted, and I could see the place looked like the classic grandma home, with knickknacks here and there, and a big comfy couch with a Chihuahua lying on it like something stuffed. There was a small blackened fireplace and some really thick, comfy chairs nearby. Out a back window I could see a big fenced-in yard being rained on.

We stood there as she went away, and came back with towels.

“Dry off,” she said, and we did. She took the towels, folded them up and placed them on an arm of the couch.

“Sit down,” Mrs. Soledad said. “I’ll make us some tea.”

“Thanks,” Belinda said. She and I chose the comfy chairs by the dead fireplace. Mrs. Soledad disappeared into the kitchen. A light came on in there and some of it fled into the room where we sat. I could hear pans clanging around in there.

About five minutes passed, Belinda and I not saying anything, just glancing at each other from time to time. Occasionally checking out the Chihuahua, who had almost raised its head once, but had decided on a shrug and a soft sigh.

I looked around for the .357, but didn’t see it.

Mrs. Soledad came out of the kitchen, came over and stood between us in our chairs. “Take about fifteen minutes for the water to be ready,” she said. “I’ll start us up a fire. Can you believe this?” she said, stopping to snap up some wood in a little metal bucket, and put it in the fireplace. “This time of year it ought to be hot. I had to turn off the air conditioner.”

“Weird times,” I said.

“Global warming,” she said. “It makes the seasons all screwed up.”

She built a fire in the fireplace, and I stood up and got some larger wood out of a bin on the other side of the mantel and gave it to her and she put it in the way she wanted. Pretty soon the fire was jumping and crackling and throwing shadows over the room.

Outside the rain came down hard on the roof. Mrs. Soledad sat on the couch beside the motionless Chihuahua.

“They usually yap, Chihuahuas,” I said.

“He’s too old for that,” Ms. Soledad said. “He barks too hard, he might throw up a lung. He’s twenty-one years old. I kid you not.”

“Wow,” Belinda said.

“About Ronnie,” she said. “Do you know where she is?”

“We were hoping you might,” I said. “She knew Caroline, and Caroline is also missing…possibly murdered, and it ties in with another investigation our paper is doing.”

Ms. Soledad shook her head. “No. I was hoping you knew where she is. I’ve tried shaking every tree you can imagine. I reported her missing, but nothing really came of it. They said she checked out of the university and left, just no one knows where.”

“Wouldn’t she just go home?” Belinda asked.

“This is home,” Ms. Soledad said. “Home of a sorts. The one she knew best. I did home care. A foster parent.”

“Ronnie was one of your foster kids?” I asked.

Ms. Soledad nodded. “And so was Caroline, for a while.”

“Can you tell us about it?” I asked.

“Caroline and Ronnie came to me when they were preteens. They had been with an adoption agency, but no one adopted them. Ronnie would have been adopted, I suppose, but when she came to stay with me, she just never left. I pretty much became her mother, and she my daughter. I love her dearly, and I’m very concerned about her.”

“Why didn’t the police follow up?” I asked.

“I think they did. But there was nothing to follow. She checked out of school, left her apartment and just went away. There was no evidence of foul play, they said.”

“Except she left everything she had in the apartment…” I said. “Oh, I didn’t mean to worry you, Mrs. Soledad. It’s just that I’m not that impressed with our police force in Camp Rapture, previous or present.”

“Nor I,” she said. “Fact is, I’m quite sure something has happened to Ronnie. She wouldn’t have quit writing. She would have called me on Mother’s Day. She always did, you know. I was worried because she was so close to Caroline, and that was like having a rattlesnake for a friend. In the end, it just doesn’t work out.”

“Can you tell us about Ronnie and Caroline?” Belinda asked. “Maybe we can help find them, if we knew more about them.”

“Truth is, I hated Caroline,” she said. “Isn’t that an absolutely awful thing to say? I raised her to some degree, but, as they say in East Texas, that girl just wasn’t right.”

Belinda looked at me out of the corner of her eye, then back at Mrs. Soledad. “When she was a kid did you hate her?” Belinda asked.

Ms. Soledad nodded. “I never said such a thing to her. I tried in every way to like her and to get along with her, but she was…wrong. Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think she was born wrong. Having helped raise many foster kids, I’m convinced that we humans make our own monsters. But sometimes, the monster gets made very early, and there’s no rescue. The deed is done.”

The teapot whistled and Mrs. Soledad walked into the kitchen and came back with a tray and three cups of tea. She gave one to Belinda, one to me. She sat down on the floor and fixed her tea, then got up without effort and went to the couch.

“Notice how I get around,” she said, and it was easy to see she was proud of her agility.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yoga. I swear by it.”

I nodded. “I may have to take it up.”

“Good for the back.”

“I’m sure it is. You were saying about Caroline.”

Mrs. Soledad sipped her tea. “Yes. She was a pathetic thing. Her parents, they had done a number on her. Her mother was thirteen when she had Caroline. Can you believe that, thirteen? I didn’t even know about sex until I was fifteen or sixteen. Christ, are hormones really working at that age? I guess so, but it seems so amazing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Anyway, her mother had her at thirteen, and the old boy who was the father ran off and didn’t come back, and when Caroline was two or so, her mother…what was her name…Jennifer something…Well, Jennifer took up with an older man. Some fellow twenty-five, worked as a pulpwood driver. This guy drank when he worked and drank when he was home, and he took to beating Jennifer like she was a dusty rug, and he didn’t have a lot of patience with a baby either. I don’t know what went on there exactly, but it wasn’t good. I’m sure little Caroline took a few whippings herself. If not worse.

“Well, things looked like they were turning for the better when the old boy had a pile of pulpwood snap its chain and cover him up and kill him good…But Jennifer, therein lay another problem. She wasn’t any smarter at sixteen than she was at thirteen, and the next thing you know she’s pregnant again, some black fellow from over around Houston. Now, I know how some people feel. I don’t give a damn about skin color. What I think’s wrong here is that Jennifer was little more than a baby and this fellow was nearly thirty, and he wasn’t any better than the husband she had before. Except he didn’t drive a pulpwood truck. He kicked Jennifer one night while she was pregnant, and the baby died from the kick. The kicker, her old man, disappeared into the woodwork.

“Caroline was soon the stepdaughter or stepniece or pal to whoever came along and was shacking up with her mama, and that’s all Caroline knew. She didn’t know that these men weren’t supposed to touch their daughters, or stepdaughters, and they sure weren’t supposed to have sex with them. She started being molested early on, I figure, but certainly by the time she was eleven she was being taken full advantage of by her mother’s boyfriends, or husbands, whatever Jennifer called them. And as Caroline got older, she turned into a real looker, and that brought all manner of boys around.”

“How did you learn about all this?” I asked.

“Her social workers, people who knew her. Things she told me. Believe me, I did my research. I wanted to do whatever I could to help her. I had had abused children before, but this poor girl, she was the most worked over and manipulated I had ever seen. Her mother used her. It was a way for her to attract men to help take care of her and Caroline. She put her out there like bait on a line. And she didn’t care if Caroline was servicing them like a show heifer. Long as it kept food on the table and she didn’t have to bother with work or raising a kid. By this time my guess is the mother had pretty much worn out on sex, and she was just then old enough to really start having it.

“Sex isn’t just an act. It’s an emotional investment, though kids these days try to tell you different. They call it hooking up. At least they’re making the choice to hook up. Caroline, she wasn’t making the choice. Least not at first. But by the time she was fourteen she knew something about manipulation herself. Two men came to live with Caroline and her mother, and they both were there for Caroline. And somehow, Caroline worked them. Or that’s my guess. And one of them killed the other, and the survivor ended up in jail. Caroline, she never went to see him or had anything else to do with him. She had played them. She was a hollow shell. All of her goodness, or any potential for goodness, had been sucked out and blown away dry. She took to hurting animals and setting fires, and finally she was taken away from her mother.”

“And that’s how you ended up with her?” Belinda said.

“That’s right, sugar. That’s how I ended up with her. Her mother swore she was going to clean up her act, but what she did was put a needle in her arm that was full of something that killed her. Caroline, when I told her about it, she said, ‘Huh.’ Just like that. Nothing else. She didn’t go to the funeral. She didn’t have any real connection to anyone, except maybe me a little, and Ronnie.

“But I don’t know how to explain their relationship. I think Ronnie was someone she had feelings for, but I just don’t think Caroline could have deep feelings. Wasn’t in her. Ronnie was a way for her to travel with the normals, though Ronnie was a mess herself. She had had a bad family, but nothing like Caroline. Mostly just neglectful. She was damaged goods, but she wasn’t ruined goods. More tea?”

“No thank you,” I said. “So did they stay with you a long time, Ronnie and Caroline?”

“They stayed until they graduated. And here’s the funny thing. Suddenly Caroline quit acting out. She did her homework, did well in school. She spent the rest of her time here in the back room playing games and writing stories.”

“Do you still have the stories?” I asked.

Mrs. Soledad shook her head. “She took them with her.”

“Did you ever read any of them?” Belinda asked.

“Once. They were mystery stories. They were stories where puzzle crimes were invented and the cops tried to figure it out, and the criminals got away with it.”

“Not too unusual,” I said.

“No. It wouldn’t have been unusual, except that it was coming from Caroline. I lay down here at night, I locked my door. I didn’t trust her, and finally I wasn’t sure I could trust her with Ronnie. That was just instinct, nothing to validate it. Anyway, she graduated with high grades, and Ronnie got through on a hair and a prayer, and they got in the university, though Ronnie just barely managed it. I remember asking Caroline, trying to be mother-like, what she was going to major in. You know what she answered? ‘Cleverness.’”

“What did you make of that?” I asked.

“I took her at her word. I think her life was about manipulation. She’s returning the favor of what was done to her, by her mother and by a horde of men and lovers. I think she sees the world as just one big game to survive. She’s just going through the motions, and she’s going to try and make other people go through the motions she wants them to go through. Not because they have done something to her, but because they haven’t. Because they are just innocents that she can hurt and make miserable. The way she was made miserable. Worst part is, she had her own child.”

“A child?” I said.

Ms. Soledad nodded. “She had a child when she was thirteen, right before she came to be with me, by one of the men who raped her, or misled her…all the same. It’s rape no matter how they had sex with her. I think this man was someone she really cared about, someone who had really done a number on her. From some things she said I got the feeling if there was anyone she might have trusted, it was this man.”

“I assume that trust evaporated after she had the child and the man left?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Ms. Soledad said. “I think she always had something for this guy. Maybe she gave him all the love she had left and could never quite take it back. In a way, I hope not. That shows a side of her that’s more truly human than most of what I saw. But her getting knocked up like that, it was just like her mother. History repeating itself.”

“What happened to the child?” Belinda asked.

“A relative or a family friend ended up with the child. I don’t really know any more than that. Maybe she put it up for adoption, but the story I heard was the one about the relative or family friend. I also heard they died. But it could have just been a story. I don’t even know if the child is alive. I just know that she and Ronnie went to the university in Camp Rapture, and that I told Ronnie to watch herself, to make new friends. Ronnie began to write me, and she told me that she thought she was gay, and that she had fallen in love with Caroline. Thing is, I don’t care who loves who, as long as it’s healthy, and there wasn’t anything healthy about Caroline.”

“More gamesmanship?” I asked.

“Exactly. It’s like Caroline was petting and grooming Ronnie for something mean. I think Caroline was always about something mean. And she was patient. She could wait a long time to do what she wanted to do, and the closer you were to her, the more likely you were to be a victim. My dog here, George, he had a companion, Albert. The day Caroline left I found Albert floating in a bucket of water out back of the house. It was a bucket I used to catch runoff from the roof. I put it on my flower beds. I had a hard time believing he climbed up there to get a drink and fell in. I think Caroline, as a kind of going-away present, dunked him in there and held him under until he drowned.”

Outside thunder rumbled, like God falling down stairs.

“How did Ronnie take Caroline going missing?” I asked.

“Last letter I got from Ronnie she said she felt both sad and relieved. I think she had started to listen to me, or perhaps due to events there she had come to believe that Caroline was a real troubled little girl. I hate Caroline for what I think she became, but I feel awfully sorry for her too, but I’m glad she’s gone and I’m glad she’s dead.”

“We don’t know she is for a fact,” I said.

“But that’s how it usually is in these cases, isn’t it?” Mrs. Soledad said.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s how it is.”

“You know what I think?” Mrs. Soledad said. “I think she tried to manipulate someone as bad as she was, maybe someone worse. And, like she did with my little dog, they killed her for the sport of it. It’s sad and wrong of me, but I hope so. It’s bad enough her killer is loose in the world, but it’s a better place with her gone. And you want to know my guess? Whoever killed Caroline killed Ronnie, otherwise I would have heard from her by now. We were too close. That’s why I agreed to talk with you. I want you to find whoever killed her and make them pay, even if they did kill that monster Caroline.”

“We’ll do our best to find out what happened,” I said.

“One more thing. I have something of Caroline’s, though I doubt it’s of any importance.”

Mrs. Soledad got up and went into a back room and came back with a little red book done up in leather. “I think this is something that one of her many daddies had. I think she kept it. Maybe she had some connection with the owner, or maybe she just liked the book. I read a little but couldn’t get much out of it. It was behind the bed, hung up on the headboard at the back. Way it was back there, it was hard to see. I found it when I took the bed apart. I don’t think she meant to leave it.”

Mrs. Soledad gave me the book. The cover, like the rest of the book, was solid red, but in gold letters was written: Leather Maiden, Jerzy Fitzgerald. I opened it up. Inside was a handwritten inscription. “To the best girl in the world.” I thanked Mrs. Soledad and slipped the book in my back pocket.

“She read that book all the time, and Edgar Allan Poe. She loved a story called ‘The Premature Burial.’ That was her favorite. She found an old movie of the story. She said it was different than the short story, but she liked it anyway. She watched it a lot.”

“You think that was odd?” Belinda asked.

“I like Poe and I liked the movie. Lots of people do. But she was drawn to it for different reasons than you and I. She saw things with a different eye. Now, unless you want another cup of tea, that’s about all I have.”

“No, ma’am, we’re good. We’ll use your restroom if we may, and then move on.”

She pointed to its location.

“One thing,” I said. “Do you really have a .357?”

She reached under the couch cushions and pulled it out. “I decided I didn’t really need it.”

“That’s good. You don’t have kids here anymore, do you?”

“No,” she said, replacing the gun. “I decided after Caroline, and what happened to poor Albert, and now sweet Ronnie, that I had had enough. There’s only so much do-gooding a do-gooder can do.”