Charlaine Harris: Crimes by Moonlight

“I figured maybe he was the kind of man who had no interest in women. And if that was true, it might point toward an explanation for the missing boys. But I had no evidence, no proof, and it would have been stupid to tip my hand. So I put men to watching him.”

“And then the fourth boy disappeared,” D’Angelo said.

“Yep. Early spring, two months after the last kid.”

“Edward Greeley,” D’Angelo said. “A young man with ambition, a desire for Broadway or the movies. He had the lead in the senior class play, The Boyfriend. After the final performance, he went to a cast party at the home of Gwendolyn Murdoch, the drama teacher who’d directed the play. She caught him spiking the punch with rum from a silver flask he’d brought, which she confiscated. She gave it to the police during their investigation.”

“You’ve done your homework,” Gorman said.

“What about your surveillance of the baseball coach?”

“According to the man I assigned to him that night, Abernathy went to the movies and then to a diner for a late meal. He was sitting on a stool, eating, when Edward Greeley left the party and vanished.”

“Which effectively eliminated him as a suspect?”

“Pretty much. From what I understand, he eventually married a librarian in a neighboring town, so maybe he was just going through a period of adjustment in Hixton. Who knows?”

“Where did that leave you?”

“Looking for other possibilities.”

Gorman’s daughter shoved the screen door open with her hip and stepped onto the porch, holding a plate of cookies in one hand and a pitcher of iced lemonade in the other. D’Angelo stood up quickly. “Let me help you.”

The pigs near the marsh set up a rage of grunting again, but the young woman ignored them.

“Thank you,” she said sweetly. She handed D’Angelo the cookies and set the pitcher on the wide flat of the porch rail. “I’ll be right back with glasses.”

D’Angelo was tempted to follow her into the dark of the cabin, but Gorman’s voice held him back. “Sit down. We haven’t finished talking.”

D’Angelo placed the cookies next to the pitcher and returned to his seat. The swine had fallen silent again but continued to stare at the cabin.

“Other possibilities?” he said.

Gorman nodded. “I figured there was some other common thread to the boys that I wasn’t seeing. I racked my brain trying to think what it could be. The pressure from the local police and from the populace was tremendous, I can tell you. I lost a lot of sleep thinking it through.”

Gorman’s daughter returned with two glasses and poured lemonade for both men. She asked, “Have you tried one of my cookies, Mr. D’Angelo? They’re just sugar cookies, but I do a pretty good job with them, if I do say so myself.”

D‘Angelo took one, bit into it, and thought he’d never tasted a cookie quite so delicious, and he told her so. She smiled, a blush rising in her cheeks, and D’Angelo decided he’d never seen a young woman so beautiful.

“Finish your cookie, Mr. D’Angelo,” Gorman said. “We still have talking to do. Leave us, Sweetie.”

She left them. D’Angelo finished his cookie, sat down, and felt an immense emptiness in the wake of the young woman’s departure. A deep longing for her rose in his chest.

“Like I said,” Gorman went on, “I lost a lot of sleep thinking it over. I looked at their friends, but they didn’t have many and none in common. I looked at people in the town they might all have had contact with, a minister, maybe, or a postman. Nothing there. Early on I’d looked at the routes they’d all taken on the night of their disappearance and didn’t see anything of interest. But I revisited that possibility and, without the blinders of a particular suspect narrowing my vision, I saw something.”

The young woman’s voice came through the window again, and her song was like a soft rope wrapping itself around D’Angelo’s heart and pulling it to her.

“What did you see?” he asked absently.

“That their paths all crossed at the Sweet Shoppe, a little confectionary in Hixton. It was a relatively new establishment, run by a woman named Circe Cane. I talked to the parents of the missing boys, and they told me their sons liked to frequent the shop, dropping in after school or on Saturdays. They talked with great affection about Miss Cane and about the wonderful sweets she served. So I began to investigate this Cane woman, trying to discover her background before she’d come to Hixton. And you know what, Mr. D’Angelo? I hit nothing but dead ends. Which in itself told me a whole lot. I began watching the Sweet Shoppe and Miss Cane myself.”

“And then the last boy went missing,” D’Angelo managed to say above the swirl of fog that seemed to be filling his head.

“That’s right.”

“He was a boy who’d graduated and was preparing to go into the army,” D’Angelo said. He spoke slowly, deliberately, as if he were a drunk trying to make sense.

“Yes,” Gorman said. “One night he took his little brother to a movie, and when it was over, they went to the Sweet Shoppe. Afterward he delivered his brother home safely, then returned alone to the Sweet Shoppe. It was late, almost midnight. Main Street was deserted. He stood on the sidewalk in front of the confectionary, where earlier he’d had lemonade and a sugar cookie. And he listened to the song Circe Cane sang to him through the upstairs window. He reached for the door and found it unlocked, and he went inside and never came out. And no one saw him do these things.”

“No one except you,” D’Angelo said.

Gorman nodded. “Except me.”

“Why?” D’Angelo stood up, struggling to keep his thinking straight, to fight against the current of the song inside his head that was drawing him further into the fog. “Why didn’t you do anything to stop him?”

“Oh, I tried,” Gorman said. “I slipped in after him and followed him upstairs, where Circe Cane lived. I listened at the door, and what I heard I couldn’t believe.”

“What?” D’Angelo asked, desperately trying to stay with the old man’s words. “What did you hear?”

“Circe Cane talking low and sweet to that boy, and I heard the boy answering. At first, it was in his own voice, but slowly that changed until what came from him was the sound of an animal.”

“What animal?”

“A pig, Mr. D’Angelo,” the young woman said in a lilting voice as she stepped from the cabin door. “I find them such wonderful little creatures. Sweet and loyal and, in the end, quite delicious.”

D’Angelo turned to Gorman as the world around him tilted and reeled. “Why didn’t you… why didn’t you…”

“Why didn’t I tell someone? Because, Mr. D’Angelo, who would believe such a story? No, I left my job and left Nebraska and came with Circe to this place, where I’ve done my best all these years to protect her secret and keep her safe. Here, as you so correctly pointed out, I can see all that approaches. We have enough of those pesky traveling salesmen drop by that Circe’s little pen over there is never empty. And this marshland around us, it swallows a car without a trace, believe me.” Gorman looked at Circe with deep contentment. “In return she’s fed me. There’s nothing she can’t coax from the earth. She’s a marvelous housekeeper, cook, and companion.” He reached out and ran a wrinkled hand over the soft, fair skin of her forearm. “She has other charms as well, which I’m sure you can easily imagine.”

D‘Angelo felt his legs grow weak, and he collapsed into the chair. “D’Angelo,” Gorman said. “I know that name. The last boy in Hixton, his name was D‘Angelo, too. And his little brother would be about your age now, if I remember correctly. A newspaper reporter, Mr. D’Angelo? I think not. I think you came looking for an answer.”