Free Flight of the Stone Angel by Carol O'Connell Page B

bed of mustard-slathered bread.
    Darlene Wooley was looking at Charles with the suspicion common to overprotective mothers.
    “Forgive me for staring,” said Charles. “Sandwiches are my hobby.”
    Ira looked up for a moment as Charles spread mustard on pumpernickel and then embellished it with stripes of red from a pointed squeeze bottle of catsup.
    Ira reached into his mother’s salad bowl and carefully picked out the carrot sticks and arranged them in a Crosshatch over his sardines.
    Charles made a perfect circle of croutons on his stripes of catsup. Ira noted this and added a squared slice of ham on top of his carrots. Charles laid down two slices of bright yellow cheese, one layered askew over the other to form an eight-point star. Ira countered with a dollop of cream cheese spread over the ham in the rough smear of a triangle.
    Though Darlene Wooley seemed very tired, she was smiling at the pair of them as they engaged in this conversation of sandwiches.
    Charles stacked his ingredients faster and higher. Ira took up the challenge, finishing his own design first and crowning it with a slice of white bread.
    Charles applauded the winner, and Ira’s laughing mother joined in, taking unreasonable delight in the moment. It must be an oasis in her day. He noted her bitten nails, the red veins of her eyes and the vertical worry line etched between her eyebrows. All the telling signs of life with an autistic child.
    Well, her son’s mind was certainly alive. Wheels were turning, and quickly. Charles wondered if Ira was articulate. Many autistic people were not. They were as diverse as snowflake patterns in their behaviors; few generalizations would hold for all.
    Ira was again absorbed in his food, and never looked up when his mother exchanged names with Charles and introduced her son. Ira’s eyes were looking elsewhere, not fixed on any point in the immediate universe.
    When Charles had explained his interest in autism, he learned that eating lunch in the cafe was part of Ira’s behavior therapy, and he approved. This daily exercise would account for the lack of stress, despite the babble of conversation, the comings and goings, and the company of strangers.
    “There’s no local program for autism, so four mornings a week, Ira goes to a state school for the mentally retarded.”
    “Well, it’s miles better than no therapy at all,” said Charles. And it was common practice. A sympathetic doctor would alter the diagnosis of autism to that of retardation in order to utilize whatever program was available. “I imagine they use many of the same methods, learning skills through repetitive tasks?”
    “Yes, and they do make a special effort with Ira. I tried to get him into a private program in New Orleans,” said Darlene. “But he couldn’t pass the screening test.”
    Finally, the conversation turned to Charles’s business with the sheriff. “Augusta Trebec believes the young woman in custody might be Cass Shelley’s daughter. As the executrix – ”
    “Well, who else could that girl be, Mr. Butler?”
    When she became comfortable with calling him Charles, she recounted Mallory’s arrival in Dayborn on the day of the murder. “She stepped out of a cab in front of the bed and breakfast.”
    Darlene had been sitting on the front porch, talking to her friend and neighbor, Betty Hale. “The girl was the very image of her mother. You couldn’t forget a face like that, even without the reminder of Cass’s angel in the cemetery.”
    Babe Laurie had also seen Mallory, and reeled like a drunk, his eyes grown to the size of saucers. “So Babe sat there on the edge of the fountain while the girl was checking into Betty’s. Then his brother Malcolm came for him in the car. But Babe wouldn’t leave the square, and they got to arguing.”
    Her son had slipped away and gone home to his house next door. “And then I hear Ira at the piano, and he’s playing this same little handful of notes, over and over. It drove