"Blown . . . up?" Norma was aghast.
"The cult had a van. Joshua was riding in it with some others. It exploded somehow. The police told me it might have been the work of a rival cult."
"You poor dear! What you've been through! And now this business with Kimberly," Norma said solicitously, steering Mrs. Baynes back to the topic at hand.
"I told you that she's been gaining weight."
"The onset of puberty will do that with some girls."
"I first noticed her developing three years ago."
"And you say she's thirteen?"
Allison Baynes nodded. "At ten."
"I read an article in Ladies' Home Journal once that said some girls start developing as early as nine. Or was it eight?"
"My Kimmo blossomed into a tiny woman almost overnight. One day she was playing with dolls, the next she was in a training bra and putting on makeup."
"They grow up so fast. My Calvin enters college next month. Law school. Tulane. I wouldn't let him go to an eastern college."
Mrs. Baynes let the veiled dismissal of Cambridge Business College go by without comment.
"I didn't think much of it at the time," she said reflectively, "but I noticed the statue grew overnight as well."
"Statue?"
Allison Baynes stared into her tea for a thoughtful interval, watching the concentric ripples created by the subtle tremor in her aging hands. Abruptly, she replaced the cup in the saucer and the saucer on the coffee table.
"I shouldn't do this but . . ." She stood up decisively. "Let me show you something."
They tiptoed up the carpeted steps-Mrs. Baynes because she had learned to tiptoe and speak softly in her own home and Norma because Mrs. Baynes was doing it.
Mrs. Baynes led her down a cream-colored hallway to the closed door at its end.
"She sometimes locks it," Mrs. Baynes explained, testing the doorknob. Norma Quinlan took advantage of the stubborn doorknob to peek through the half-closed door to the other bedroom. The expensive damask bedspread lay on the bed as if enameled to it. The open bathroom door, on the other hand, showed a slovenly array of unhung towels. Norma wrinkled her nose as if at an offending odor, but deep inside she was pleased. Allison Baynes put on such airs. It was comforting to see that she was not the world's greatest housekeeper, as some busybodies thought.
The doorknob rattled uncooperatively in Mrs. Baynes's hands and Norma's heart sank. She really wanted to see this statue.
Finally the door surrendered. Mrs. Baynes pushed it in. She looked in with more than a trace of fear on her face, Norma saw. She stepped aside for Norma to enter.
Carefully, still on tiptoe, Norma Quinlan did just that.
She gasped.
"She calls it Calley," Mrs. Baynes, said, as if speaking of the family dog.
For once, Norma Quinlan was speechless. The thing in the room was grayish-white, like a weather-beathen skull. It squatted-that was exactly the word for it-on a child's toy chest. It was nearly four feet tall, and fairly broad. The face was a malevolent mask. Norma blinked, realizing there were three faces. Two others framed the central one. But most arrestingly, it had four arms. They were upflung in spidery, arcane gestures.
Draped between the lower pair was a yellow silk scarf.
"It's . . . it's . . ." Norma began, groping for words.
"Hideous."
"My thought exactly."
"Kimberly made it. Herself."
"She must be very . . . good with her hands," Norma Quinlan gulped.
"It started as a little Play-Doh figure," Mrs. Baynes explained in a faraway tone. "She made the first one not long after I took custody. It had four arms. But she kept adding new ones. They sprouted from the chest, the legs, even the headdress. Until it made me think of an angry spider."
"I'd prefer a spider myself," Norma said, aghast. So aghast she right then and there decided not to mention the statue to any of her friends. Where would she find the words to describe it?
"One day I mentioned to Kimmo that perhaps she should stop adding arms, that the statue was pretty enough as it was. And do you know what she said to me?"
"What?"
Mrs. Baynes fixed Norma Quinlan with her steady sad gaze. "She said she didn't make the arms. Then she asked for another cat."
"Yes?" Norma said slowly, not seeing the connection.
"It was the fifth cat I had gotten her. The others had all run away."
"No!"
"She cried so much, I brought her a nice tabby. A week later it was gone. I mentioned this to Kimmo and she didn't seem very sad at all. She just asked for another cat. I didn't get her another cat. This time I got her a puppy. They're more stay-at-home."
"Dogs are a sensible pet, I'll agree. I remember when we had our Ginger-"
"The poor puppy wouldn't sleep in her room," Mrs. Baynes continued distantly. "It wouldn't even go upstairs, no matter how much Kimmo tried to coax it. It just sat at the foot of the steps and looked up. Growling."
"How odd."
"One night Kimberly came home with a leash and dragged that poor dog up the stairs. The next morning it was gone."
Norma's hand flew to her scrawny chest.
"My goodness. You don't think Kimberly had anything to do with that?"
"I called the dog officer," Mrs. Baynes said. "The highway department. The city. Everyone I could think of."
She stared at the grotesque statue a long time, her hands clutching one another.
"You know," she resumed in a too-calm voice, "they found that poor animal by the side of the road, its tongue hanging out, strangled. There was a yellow scarf around its neck. Just like that one. Just like the ones that killed Evelyn and A.H."