Hazel whispered in his ear how shocked she’d been, to discover that Thaddeus Gallagher was an invalid in a wheelchair!

“He is? An invalid?” Gallagher squirmed and twitched beneath the bedclothes, staring toward the ceiling. “Christ. I guess he is.”

29

Hazel Jones: this will be our secret.

For the remainder of his life he would send her small gifts. Flowers. Every four or five weeks, and often following a public performance of Zack’s. Somehow he knew, he made it his business to know, when Gallagher would be gone from the house, and timed deliveries for those mornings.

The first came soon after Hazel returned to Delaware Park, Buffalo, to the house Gallagher had bought for them near the music school. Numerous red climber roses, small-petalled roses, in a thorny cluster that was awkward to fit into even a tall vase. The accompanying note was handwritten, as if in haste.

August 22, 1970

Dearest Hazel Jones,

I have not stopped thinking of you for a single momment since last week. I had a (secret!!!) tape made of Zachiaras playing at the music festival, truly your son is a suberb musician! So hard to believe he is only 13. I have photographs of him, he is so young. Of course in his heart he is no child is he! As I at 13 was no longer a child. For my heart was hardened young, I knew the “way of the world” from boyhood on & had no illusions of the “natural good” of mankind etcetera. Dear Hazel, I hope I am not offending you! Your husband must not know. We will keep our secret will we! Tho‘ I think always of you, your beautiful dark kind eyes that forgive & do not judge. If you would be so kind Hazel you might call me sometime, my number is below. This is my privvate line Hazel, no one will pick up. But if not dear, I will not be hurt. You have brought into the world the remarkable boy. That he is my grandson is our secret (!!!) & I will meet him sometime but in secret. Do not fear me. You have given me so much I did not expect or hope. I will not be hurt. I will think of you always. Chester is a good man I know, but he is weak & Jealous as his father at that age. Utnil another time, dear

Your Loving “InLaw” Thad

Hazel read this letter in astonishment, distracted by the numerous spelling errors. “He’s crazy! He’s in love with her.” She had not expected such a response. She felt a pang of guilt, if Gallagher should know.

She threw the letter away, she would not reply to it. Never would Hazel Jones reply to Thaddeus Gallagher’s impassioned letters, which became more incoherent with time, nor would she thank him for the numerous gifts. Hazel Jones was a woman of dignity, integrity. Hazel Jones would not encourage the old man, yet she would not discourage him. She supposed that he would be true to his word, he would not confront her or Zack. He would admire them from a discreet distance. Gallagher seemed never to notice the gifts in the household: vases of flowers, a heart-shaped crystal paperweight, a brass frame for a photograph, a silk scarf printed with rosebuds. The old man was discreet enough to send Hazel only small, relatively inexpensive and inconspicuous gifts. And never money.

In March 1971 there came by special delivery a packet for Hazel Jones that was not a gift, but a manila envelope with the return address GALLAGHER MEDIA INC. Inside the envelope were photocopies of newspaper articles and one of Thaddeus Gallagher’s hastily scrawled letters.

At last my assistant gathered these matrials, Hazel. Why it has takken so long I frankly DO NOT KNOW. Thought you would be intriguing, Hazel Jones. “Only a Conincidence” I know. [THANK GOD THANK GOD this poor Hazel Jones was not you.]

There were several pages more, but Hazel tossed them away without reading them.

In an upstairs room of the Delaware Park house where no one was likely to disturb her, Hazel removed the photocopied material from the manila envelope and spread it out on a table. Her movements were deliberate and unhurried and yet her hands shook slightly, she seemed to know beforehand that the revelation Thaddeus Gallagher had sent her would not be a happy one.

The newspaper articles had already been arranged in chronological order. Hazel tried to keep from glancing ahead to learn the outcome.

Yet, there it was:

GRISLY DISCOVERY IN NEW FALLS

FOLLOWS DOCTOR DEATH

Female Skeletons Unearthed

And,

DECEASED NEW FALLS M.D.

SUSPECT IN UNSOLVED 1950S ABDUCTIONS

Property Searched by Police, Skeletons Found

Both clippings included an accompanying photograph, the same likeness of a genially smiling man of middle age: Byron Hendricks, M. D.

“Him! The man in the panama hat.”

Both articles, from the Port Oriskany Journal, were dated September 1964. New Falls was a small, relatively affluent suburb north of Port Oriskany, on Lake Erie. Hazel told herself sternly It is over now. Whatever it was, is over now. It has nothing to do with me now.

It was so. It had to be so. She had not given a thought to Byron Hendricks, M.D., for eleven years. Virtually all memory of the man had faded from her consciousness.

Hazel turned to the first of the articles, also from the Journal, and dated June 1956.

NEW FALLS GIRL REPORTED MISSING

POLICE, VOLUNTEERS EXPAND SEARCH

Hazel Jones, 18, “Vanished”

This Hazel Jones had attended New Falls High School but had dropped out at the age of sixteen. She had lived with her family in the country outside New Falls and had supported herself by “babysitting, waitressing, housecleaning” locally. At the time of her disappearance, she had just begun summer work at a Dairy Queen. Numerous parties had seen Hazel Jones at the Dairy Queen on the day of her disappearance; at dusk she had left to ride her bicycle home, a distance of three miles; but she had never arrived home. Her bicycle was subsequently found in a drainage ditch beside a highway, about two miles from her home.

Apparently it was not a kidnapping, there was no ransom demanded. There were no witnesses to any abduction. No one could think of any person who might have wanted to harm Hazel Jones nor did Hazel Jones have a boyfriend who might have threatened her. For days, weeks, eventually years Hazel Jones was the object of a search but she, or the body she had become, was never found.

Hazel stared at the girl in the photograph. For here was a familiar face.

Aged seventeen at the time of the photograph, Hazel Jones had thick wavy dark hair that fell to her shoulders and across her forehead. Her eyebrows were rather heavy, she had a long nose rather broad at the tip. She was not pretty but “striking”-almost, you might say “exotic.” Her mouth was fleshy, sensuous. Yet there was something prim and even sullen about her. Her eyes were large, very dark, untrusting. For the camera she tried to smile, not very convincingly.

How like Rebecca Schwart at that age, this Hazel Jones! It was unnerving. It was painful to see.

Former New Falls classmates said of Hazel Jones that she was “quiet”-“kept to herself”-“hard to get to know.”

Hazel Jones’s parents said she would “never have gotten into any car with anybody she didn’t know, Hazel wasn’t that kind of girl.”

A subsequent article depicted Mr. and Mrs. Jones posed in front of their “modest bungalow-style” home on the outskirts of New Falls. They were a middle-aged couple, heavy-browed and dark-complected like their daughter, staring grimly at the camera like gamblers willing to take a risk though expecting to lose.

The fake-brick siding on the Joneses’ house was water stained. In the Joneses’ grassless front yard, debris had been raked into a mound.