An Angel to Die For (27 page)

“My God,” Pug said. “Reminds me of the set of a Tarzan movie.” He got out and swung open the creaking iron gate and it screeched shut behind us with a grating, metallic clang.

The road ahead seemed to trail into nowhere, yet somewhere at the end of it my mom and Joey waited. Or at least I prayed that they did.

I
f I’d been on foot, I think I would have tiptoed through the dark tunnel of foliage and held my breath until I reached the other side. The air was heavy with jasmine whose fragrant white blossoms trailed from tree to tree, and even though it was barely after four, the road lay steeped in twilight. I drove steadily, but not too fast, and thought of how appropriate it would be if our car had a figurehead like the bow of a ship to part the veil in front of us. The atmosphere was thick enough to swim in, and it wasn’t all humidity. I was torn between my eagerness to get to the cottage and my dread at what we might find.

“Your father. He doesn’t have a weapon, does he?” I said to the man beside me.

“I told you, he’s a hunter.” Pug looked straight ahead,
his hand on the door handle. “If he’s here, you let me handle him,” he said.

I didn’t answer. If what Pug Gaines reported was true, his father had been at Ellynwood for a good part of the day. He had plenty of time to carry out his plans—and I whimpered to think of what his plans might be. But the people at the sheriff’s department had promised to see if everything was all right and we hadn’t yet heard back from them. Surely this must be a good sign.

When we finally did come out into the sunlight my spirits lifted. Azaleas that soon would be in bloom bordered an emerald lawn skirted by neat gravel paths. I heard the trickle of water and noticed a fountain in the center of what appeared to be a rose garden. Terraced steps led through a vine-covered wall to the bronze statue of a nymph perpetually pouring water. Storybook Land. But this was no fantasy, and if Pershing Gaines had his way, there would be no “happily ever after” for us.

I could hear Pug’s breathing as he sat as rigid as stone beside me searching the landscape for any sign of the people we hoped to find.

The two-story stone house, flanked by enormous live oaks, was bigger than the cottage I expected and I wondered fleetingly what the house that burned must have been like. Mom’s friend’s family must have money to throw away to be able to afford the upkeep on a place like this.

I parked beneath one of the oaks and started for the door, but Pug held out a hand. “Let me,” he said quietly, and I reluctantly stood aside and let him ring the doorbell, then waited while nobody came.

“I’m going in,” I said, trying to push past him, but Pug Gaines held me back. “Wait,” he whispered. “Just give me a chance to see if he’s here. If I hear him, I’ll try to signal you somehow.” He had tucked the cell phone inside his jacket, and now passed it to me. “Here. You might need this.” And with that he quietly opened the door and slipped inside.

I couldn’t just stand there! Quietly I circled the outside of the house, walking on the soft green grass to muffle my steps, and in a small parking area in the back I found my mother’s rental car. She had pulled it up close to the door of what looked to be the kitchen, probably to unload her groceries. I glanced in the window of the car, fearful of what I might find, but I only saw what appeared to be a discarded grocery list and Joey’s stuffed rabbit on the front seat. His carrier was still in the back. Through the kitchen window I glimpsed Pug Gaines emerging from a room off the breakfast area and I tapped on the back door and signaled for him to let me in.

We found the back door unlocked as well. Pug shook his head. “Nobody’s here. I’ve looked all over.”

“That’s Mom’s car out back,” I said, “and her keys are on the counter. They have to be here somewhere. Maybe they’ve gone for a walk.”

I looked in the refrigerator where a bowl of fruit
salad, garnished with a sprig of mint, waited to be served. A tenderloin of pork marinated in something that smelled like ginger. My mother had gone to the store and made preparations for supper. A container of formula mix and a box of baby cereal waited on the counter. Three places were set at the table with a pot of hyacinths in the center. Their heavy fragrance perfumed the room, made me feel queasy. I opened the back door and stood on the steps where a robin twittered nearby. “Shut up!” I told him. I wanted my family and I wanted them now! Joey’s nursery rhyme quilt and two of his bibs hung from a clothesline to the left of the door and a third had fallen to the ground. I brought them in and put them on a chair. But where in the world was the baby they belonged to?

“Wouldn’t your dad have a car?” I asked Pug as we went through the house a second time. “I didn’t notice it parked outside. How would he get here?”

“You saw how vast this place is, Prentice. I’m sure there’s another entrance—probably several. He’s too sly to park it right out in the open. If he’s here, it’s somewhere around here too.”

I looked at the clock. It was almost five. I knew my mother, and I knew her habits. If she expected me for supper, she would be waiting for me with dinner in the oven when I arrived. “I think we should search the grounds,” I said. “There’s some kind of building out back that looks like it might’ve been a storehouse or something . . .”

Oh, God, what was I saying? What did I expect to find in there?

The small brick building sat about fifty yards from the house, and like much of the wall around the estate, it was almost hidden by vines. The one tiny window I could see was set high in the gable, and it, too, was obliterated by a proliferation of honeysuckle. I began to run as we approached the weatherworn wooden door that, I saw, had been fastened on the outside with a heavy nail bent through the latch.

“Is anybody in there?” Pug called out, and I heard a muffled thump as the old door shook.

“Mom! Is that you? Is Joey with you?” If I could, I would have poured myself through the crack as Pug removed the nail, then tugged open the heavy door. The tears I had been holding back came suddenly with a cry so deep it hurt. “Mama?” I sobbed, resorting to a term I hadn’t used in years.

But it wasn’t my mother who stumbled out of the dark, musty building. It was Ola Cress.

“You’ve got to find them before he does!” she said, sobbing. “Please, oh, please do something!” The woman was crying so I could hardly understand her, and she brushed her arms and shivered, although it wasn’t cold. “Spiders!” she said, shuddering. “I hate spiders!” Ola continued to slap at her arms and looked back into the dank room behind her as if she suspected the creepy little varmints to be in close pursuit.

“Where’s my mom? And Joey? What happened? Who did this?”

I took Ola’s arm and tried to speak calmly. Although I really wanted to shake her, it wouldn’t help the others for me to lose my cool. Pug disappeared inside the building to look around, but I could see with a glance that no one else was there.

“A man—at first we thought he was the gardener—but I’m sure it was that Pershing Gaines.” Ola trembled as I led her back to the house. “He seemed to be weeding the same area of the flower bed over there for an awfully long time, and your mother got a little suspicious. He wasn’t the man who has been here before she said, but I convinced her he was probably just a helper or something. I really thought we’d be safe here.” Ola pointed to a hoe that had been thrown aside next to the garden wall. “See, that’s what he was using.”

“What has he done with my mother and Joey?” Back at the house I poured Ola a glass of water and made her sit down. Her breathing seemed ragged and it frightened me. “Do you have a prescription? Can I get you something?”

She gestured toward a bottle of pills on the windowsill over the sink and I hastily twisted off the top and shook one into her hand.

“I tried to warn your mother,” Ola said after she gulped down a pill. “Yelled as loud as I could. I think she ran . . . I hope she did. Maybe they got away.”

“But her car is still here,” I said.

She nodded, frowning. “He said he did something to it—the distributor or something. Besides, she wouldn’t have had time. He would’ve seen her, stopped her.”

“But where could she go? And with a baby! Joey might cry and give them away.”

“He’d just been fed, so he won’t be hungry—and he’s a good baby,” Ola said, sitting a little straighter.

Pug came in and sat opposite us at the polished maple table, still set for supper. “Didn’t the sheriff send somebody? We called earlier and they promised to check on things out here.”

“About an hour ago, yes. In fact it was right before I went outside to see if Joey’s quilt was dry. Of course we had no idea this would happen!” She took another sip of water. “If only they’d come a few minutes later!” Ola Cress frowned. “But how did you know to call them?”

Pug looked at me and I explained to the terrified woman as tactfully as I could that this was Pershing Gaines’s son Pug, but that he was one of the “good guys.”

I don’t think she believed me. “He came at me from behind,” she said. Water sloshed on the table as she set down her glass. “By the time I saw him it was too late to do anything but scream—and oh, God, I didn’t know what he meant to do! Before I knew what was happening, he’d dragged me over to that awful old shed and locked me inside. I hollered and yelled and kicked on the door, but it didn’t do any good . . . and then I heard you come and I screamed and kicked some more. I thought you’d never hear me!”

Ola’s face turned white and her voice shook, so I made her lie on the living-room sofa and covered her
frail shoulders with a sweater. “I think you need a doctor,” I said, remembering I still had Pug’s mobile phone in my pocket. “And I’m calling the police.”

The woman sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, throwing the sweater to the floor. “No! No, please don’t! He said he’d kill her if we did that.” She darted a nervous look at Pug. “That’s the last thing he told me, and he meant it too. I know he did. Had a gun and swore he’d use it.”

I looked at Pug. “So what do we do now?”

“We find them. I really don’t think he’d hurt your mother, Prentice, but I want to be there when we find him. Maybe I can talk some sense into him.” He turned to Ola. “Do you have any idea where she might’ve taken Joey?”

“None,” she admitted, softly weeping. “This place is so big, full of all kinds of nooks and crannies, and it seems to go on forever. They could be anywhere.”

“She would try to get to the road,” Pug said. “And you can be sure the old man’s watching that.”

“He can’t be everywhere. You said yourself there had to be more than one entrance,” I reminded him.

“There is,” Ola said, “but the gates are rusted shut. She’d have to climb over that high wall.”

Knowing my mother, I thought she might chance it if she thought she’d succeed, but if I were in her place, I’d wait until it wasn’t so light. I looked at my watch. It was just before six and would soon start turning darker. Unless this crazy man had already caught up with them, Mom had been out there in that jungle of
undergrowth with Joey for over an hour. Soon the baby would become hungry again. We had to find them fast.

Pug held out his hand for my car keys. “I’m going to drive back and check the main entrance. Be sure and lock the doors behind me and don’t do anything until I get back.”

Don’t
do anything?
My mother and baby nephew were fleeing from a madman and he tells me not to
do
anything! I went to the kitchen to make tea for Ola. Augusta Goodnight, I thought, you are one sorry guardian angel! We could surely use a little heavenly help about now.

I noticed the playing cards as I looked in the cabinet for mugs. They were on the kitchen counter next to Joey’s formula and I didn’t remember seeing them there before. Next to them was a narrow thin score pad for recording bridge scores. It said so on the front.

“Have you and Mom been playing cards?” I asked Ola, showing her what I’d found.

“Why no. I’ve never been any good at that, and with Joey we didn’t have much extra time.” She looked a little closer. “I think I’ve seen them around in a drawer somewhere though. Pretty, aren’t they, with those strawberries on the front.”

Strawberries
. Of course. Now I detected a slight whiff of strawberry scent in the air. Why would Augusta set out a deck of bridge cards?

“Is there a bridge here on the estate?” I asked.

“Why yes, two or three I think.”

“Can you tell me where to find them?”

Ola swung her feet to the floor. “I can show you if you’ll let me go with you, but why?”

“Call it a hunch. I’ll try to explain later, and I’d rather you wait here for Pug.”

She took my hand in cool, dry fingers. “Please be careful, won’t you? And bring my baby back to me. I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to Joey!”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised. “Now, be sure to lock the door behind me and tell Pug where I’ve gone.”

“Can we really trust him, Prentice?” Ola said, frowning. “After all, he is a Gaines.”

“And so is Joey,” I reminded her.

I
hurried across the gravel drive, daring it to make any noise, and circled the sunken garden where the fountain splashed. Other than the trickle of water and an occasional birdsong, the grounds at Ellynwood were oppressively silent.

“Take a flashlight,” Ola had directed. “There’s one in that kitchen drawer by the door. It gets dark early with all these trees. And watch out for snakes. I always carry a stick.”

Snakes
! Oh, great! I clenched a long forked stick in one hand, the flashlight in the other. I’d almost rather meet up with Pershing Gaines and an arsenal of weapons. On the other side of the rose garden a narrow trail twisted off to the right, the pathway already deep in shadow. If I followed it for about a quarter of a mile,
then took the left branch, it would bring me to a stone bridge, Ola said.

Each footstep seemed amplified. Why did the place have to be so blasted quiet? If Joey were to cry, or to make any of his cute baby sounds, Pershing Gaines would hear. He might be watching me now, lurking behind that huge pine tree, crouched beneath a spreading magnolia. Oh, how I would welcome noise! A rushing river, the drone of an airplane, a radio playing—anything but this tattletale silence.