Broken Bonds (4 page)

“Bad spelling, so maybe an uneducated writer,” Char observed. “Sad to say, there are plenty of those around here. What do you think it means?”

“Don’t know,” Gabe said. “Nothing about this whole thing makes sense. Despite the fact he usually has a driver, I’m tempted to theorize the attacker thought it was Royce Flemming in that truck. He’s got as many enemies as friends around here, making some folks rich while their neighbor lives in worse poverty, compared to the bonanza next door. It’s splitting not only shale rock layers but friends and families when some cash in on the fracking and some don’t. Fracking breaks a lot of family bonds. Some have their quiet roads ruined by big semis and their views wrecked by rigs and concrete. Outsiders, blasting, worries about the purity of well water most depend on here.”

“Listen, you two,” Char said. “Let’s try to just forget all that for a while. I’ll get the table cleaned up, get things in the dishwasher, then go up to finish my meager packing. You two need time alone without the cares of the world. Go on now. The day care kids will be here all too soon in the morning, and Gabe will be off trying to find the guy or the truck that hit Matt.”

Gabe gave her a tight grin. “Thanks, Char. We’ll take you up on the clean the kitchen offer, and I’ll worry about all that tomorrow. Mrs. McCabe, please come with me. You are under arrest and in my personal care,” he said, and took Tess’s hand to pull her to her feet.

Char sighed as they left the kitchen. It suddenly seemed very empty. She was glad she wouldn’t be intruding on their hospitality and kindness much longer, though they’d never made her feel that way. But as soon as she got the keys to the cabin, she’d be on her own in a beautiful spot. Really, really on her own.

5

“A
h, the keys to the kingdom!” Char exulted to Tess the next morning as her new landlady drove away from Tess’s house after giving her the key to the rental cabin.

“But you promised you’d get the locks changed,” Tess reminded her as she continued arranging the small beanbag chairs in a circle for the children that were due to be dropped off soon. Gabe had already headed for the office. Char had overheard him tell Tess he was going to interview Royce Flemming as soon as he showed up in town again.

“I said I’d get the locks changed, and I will,” Char promised. “I’ll get moved in and do my visits with kids closer to town just for today instead of climbing every mountain again, fording every stream, following every rainbow...”

“
The
Sound of Music,
my favorite musical. I teach the kids the ‘Do-Re-Mi,’ song, you know. Oh, here’s the first drop-off. No,” she said, looking out the window. “I don’t know that car. Char, it’s Matt Rowan! Here, you go to the door, and I’ll keep straightening up. Don’t mind me.”

Char almost scolded Tess for her excitement, but her own heartbeat accelerated. She felt herself blushing. Waiting inside the door for him to ring the bell or knock, she fanned her face.

He rang the bell. She counted to five, and before Tess could run in to see what was wrong, opened the door. He was taller than she recalled and looked so good—that is, no dirt, no messed-up hair, no apparent bruises.

“Matt. Come in. How are you doing after—after everything?”

He brought in a blast of crisp, fresh air with him. The first car with day care kids pulled up right behind him, but Char got him inside before the storm of little squealers hit. “Hi, Miss Tess. Where’s Miss Char?” she heard as she led Matt down the hall.

“Bad timing, I guess,” he said. “Do you help out here?”

“I have but, actually, just if I have free time from my new job. And I’m moving out today.”

She indicated they should go into the living room while Tess herded the children into the large play area. “Do you have kids?” Char asked, then felt maybe she’d overstepped by asking about that right away. Might as well ask if he was married. “Tess loves to teach kids, but I prefer standing up for their rights,” she rushed on as they sat side by side on the sofa. “I’m not quite as much hands-on as she is.” She bent one leg up on the seat and turned toward him. He tilted inward, too, throwing one arm across the back of the sofa, almost touching her shoulder.

“To answer your question, no kids. No wife, either.”

“Oh. Well, I’m so glad you are looking good—okay, I mean.” She felt like a babbling idiot. Usually, she was in control with women or men.

“I’d be happy to take a load up to your new place. Or I could get a Lake Azure truck—one that’s not totaled—to deliver some of your things. Actually, I came to ask something. First of all, I’d like to take you to dinner, and second, I heard from Gabe and Jace that you need to visit the McKitricks up on Pinecrest. I do, too. Yesterday I was taking clothes and food up to the family of Woody McKitrick, our head groundskeeper, who died tragically in a fall.” As he shook his head, she realized he was thinking he could have, too.

“I heard. I’m sorry. I knew that would make my visit there harder. Jemmie McKitrick, the six-year-old I’m concerned about, is Woody’s grandson. I knew he’d be missing his grandpa and, evidently, the family’s major breadwinner. The boy’s father was wounded in Iraq and doesn’t work, gets minimal checks to support the grandmother, mother and Jemmie.”

“Yes, Sam, Woody’s son, has post-traumatic stress disorder. Woody said that Sam wants to go out hunting the enemy all the time, and he’s disappeared in the middle of the night once in a while. They’ve had him treated at a VA hospital, but he’s still not—not right. So I thought it might work out that, as soon as I replace the things I’d bought for them, which I plan to do today, we could call on them together. At least the money I had to help get them through the winter was in my jacket pocket so that wasn’t lost in the fire.”

“Sure, we could go together. I’d be trying to help them in a different way, getting Sam and his wife Mandy Lee, to agree that Jemmie should attend school.”

“Tomorrow then? We could talk about it tonight at dinner if you’d let me take you.”

“That would be great. As for your helping me move things, I’ve never had my own place since I graduated from college, so I travel light. It won’t be furniture or anything like that, but we could put some boxes in your trunk.” She knew everything would fit in hers, but she didn’t want to turn him down on this—on anything, and that scared her.

“Are you sure you want to live alone? In a cabin, even a nice one? I know the owner and the place. It’s kind of isolated.”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t you start sounding like my sister. I lived on the edge of the Navajo Reservation, and now I’ll be living on the edge of Appalachia. But thanks for your offer because Tess is busy for a while—obviously.” She smiled as the sound of children singing the alphabet floated to them. “And, of course, Gabe’s going to be extra busy. He said he’s going to interview your partner, Royce Flemming, next time he comes to town. You just winced. What did I say?”

“He’s here. And not too happy to have that sort of publicity for Lake Azure.”

“I can understand that. Oh, can dinner be a bit late tonight? When Tess is done today, we’re going to visit the Hear Ye cult to see our cousins Lee and Grace Lockwood, and their two kids, who live there.”

“Really?” he said, frowning. “I don’t know anyone who lives there.”

“Anyone who’s
crazy
enough to live there, you mean. The entire area is like one big haunted ghost town. We’re really worried about all of them. I guess it’s an old joke around here, but it sure seems right that the cult has moved onto the old lunatic asylum grounds since their other place was bought with big bucks for fracking—well, I’m sure you know all about that because of Mr. Flemming.”

He frowned again.

“Oh, you don’t think you’re known by the company you keep, do you. I mean that someone would try to hurt you to get to Royce Flemming?” she asked.

“It’s crossed my mind. I’ll be careful.”

She extended her hand to him and he took it, not exactly in a handshake, not really holding hands, but a link, an unspoken bond. The moment passed, and she felt awkward again. She hated to admit it but she was attracted to him, yet felt so vulnerable with him.

“I can wait until you’re ready to carry things out,” he said. “We can put a load in my car, and I’ll follow you up. I’ve got a lunch meeting, but if you give me your number, I’ll call you later, see when you’re ready to be picked up for dinner if you think you’ll be safe with me— You know what I mean,” he added hastily. “Some idiot is loose out there.”

But she was starting to think Matt Rowan was a man worth being near even if someone was out to get him.

* * *

“I swear, this place always give me the creeps,” Tess told Kate and Char as she drove them toward the old asylum gates. When Kate had heard where they were going, she’d insisted on coming, too. “And not just because it’s supposed to be haunted,” Tess insisted. “Every time I see Brice Monson, I feel I’m looking at an alien, a creature from beyond.”

“Bright Star’s a mind manipulator of the nth degree,” their practical older sister, Kate, put in with a roll of her hazel eyes.

Tess slowed as they passed through the rusted, open iron gates and fence that surrounded the long-deserted Falls County Mental Hospital grounds. The hospital had started life in the 1880s as the Cold Creek Lunatic Asylum. They passed the modern playground area with its swings, slide and jungle gym. The county-owned park was deserted, though with the wind the swings still squeaked back and forth as if someone sat in them. The few dry leaves on the trees seemed to shudder, and little eddies of dead ones on the ground swirled and danced.

The hospital had once been a busy, self-sustaining establishment. Two five-story towers with cupolas stood sentinel over a large main red brick building, a relic from post–Civil War times. Gabe had said the big central structure once had male and female wards and separate dining rooms with patient rooms stacked above, under the copper roof. It was all derelict now. Vandals and ghost hunters broke in at times, especially around Halloween as they had just a few weeks ago.

Empty outbuildings in various stages of decay dotted the acreage, cottages for overflow patients, a small barn and greenhouses that had once helped to feed the patients and staff, even a carriage shop. Two graveyards, one with only numbers on the small tombstones were on the site. Flush with cash from selling the old cult compound site for fracking, Bright Star had hired workers to renovate two of the larger outbuildings and quickly build two wings with more expansion to come.

“They used to do lobotomies here,” Kate told them, shaking her head. “You know, primitive brain surgery that turned anxious, paranoid patients into zombies more or less. I swear, Bright Star’s doing a version of that himself the way everybody falls in line with his weird ideas. Grace and Lee used to have minds of their own, but no more.”

Kate was always the bright one, the scholar, and she’d been like a second mother to Char and Tess when their father had left and their mother had gone to work to support them in Jackson, Michigan. Through scholarships, grants and hard work, she’d earned her doctorate in archaeology, lived abroad and led archaeological digs—and then to Tess’s and Char’s amazement, had ended up back in little Podunk, Cold Creek, Ohio. And not just because of the ancient Adena Indian mounds here, but because of a man, so let that be a warning. But even here in Cold Creek, if there was any trivia or clue to be had, any theory to be probed, Kate was the one to ask, so maybe later Char would run past her the mystery of who tried to kill Matt on the mountain yesterday.

“Well, Bright Star will have trouble refusing to let Gracie and Lee see the three of us,” Tess declared, but her voice shook. “Safety in numbers! If only Lee and Grace would stand up to him, I wonder how far he’d go to keep them here. You’re right, Kate. It’s like he has some hypnotic hold on them—all of them.”

“If their children are being abused in any way, I’d like to get a court order against them,” Char said. “He can only hide behind freedom of religion so long if he’s hurting those kids.”

“I’m sure Gracie—and Lee—would never allow that,” Tess insisted.

They got out of the car at the closed gate to the new compound, one almost as ornate as the old Victorian one. The fracking must mean money coming out Bright Star’s ears, Char thought. This gate had a star bursting with beams formed from the metalwork.

“Bright Star likes to hit us idiots over the head with symbolism,” Kate muttered. “Such humility!”

As usual, a guard stood sentinel at his post. Kate did the talking, asking to see their cousins Lee and Grace Lockwood and their children. The guard, a tall man, apparently unarmed but with a walkie-talkie, moved a few yards away and spoke to someone in it.

“So far, so good,” Char whispered. “One for all and all for one.”

“You’ve been reading
The Three Musketeers?
”
Kate whispered. “But don’t bet on ‘so far so good.’ Tess and I have both tangled with the guy.”

To Char’s relief, the man opened the gate and waved them in. Following him, they went up the new-looking concrete walk toward the main building with its two curved additions shaped like—like embracing arms? Angel wings?

“Gabe told me this was once a cottage for tubercular patients that they used to segregate, but it’s been really redone,” Tess whispered.

Another man met them at the door, and the guard went back toward his post. This man seemed his clone in their garb, kind of Quaker or Amish—definitely pioneer-looking. No Bright Star so far, but that could be a good sign. The man directed them down the center hall to a small, sparsely furnished room.

Char remembered their first cousin Lee from their childhood—fun, lively, a little shy maybe and handy with all kinds of tools. And Grace—Gracie, Tess still called her—had once been Tess’s best friend. They’d all missed Lee and Grace and their two darling kids, Kelsey, age four, and Ethan, two. Char had only glimpsed the children once on a weekend market day since she’d been back. She’d never grasped how Lee and Grace had been caught up in this weird web.

The room where they waited had no windows and was plainly furnished with four straight-backed chairs and a bench. The two torchère lamps reminded Char of the uptilted, soft lights in funeral homes. On the walls were framed quotes from the Bible in beautifully scripted writing. The largest one read:

You do well to heed a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

“Maybe that’s where he took his nickname from,” Char whispered, pointing.

“And check out the other Bible quotes framed here,” Kate said. “They’re about hunting people down. I swear, that’s the way he targets people to get them in here, with initial goodwill, then total mind control, so we’d better—”

She stopped in midthought as the hall door opened and Lee and Grace entered. Char was pleased their escort closed the door behind them so the family could have some privacy, but she was disappointed they didn’t have the children with them.

Tears prickled behind Char’s eyelids. As they exchanged greetings and hugs, Tess started crying. When Char hugged Grace, she realized the sort of cloak she wore over her dress in this chilly place could not hide the fact that she was pregnant—very pregnant. She’d sure seen a lot of that out West under loose skirts and capes.

“Oh, Grace. Another baby!” Char cried. “Congratulations!”

Kate and Tess joined in, congratulating Lee, too, who didn’t seem a bit pleased. And Grace was acting so strangely that Char wondered if she was going to faint. She kept darting her eyes toward the scripted, framed star quote on the wall.

“What?” Tess asked. “Are you all right? Dizzy? Want to sit?”

Lee stood back as the sisters fussed over Grace, who looked not only delicate but ill. She had violet shadows under her eyes, and her face was drawn, almost gray. She was too thin despite her bulbous belly.