Close to Home (34 page)

“Don't be a goose,” she said, repeating words her mother had spoken on more than one occasion.

She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her coat, but even though she was wearing gloves, her fingers were cold. In fact, her whole damned body felt like it was fast becoming an icicle. “Come on, Liam,” she said, her breath fogging in the already cloudy air. The whole scenario was weird, and the campus seemed strangely isolated now, even with the dog walker and runner.

This area was a little remote and private; that's why she and Liam had picked it—a spot where they could meet on the sly, a place where the only security camera, above the back door of the gym, was broken.

Rubbing her arms, she wished that he'd just show up as he said he would. Waiting here in the foggy afternoon made her uneasy.

She'd seen on Facebook that another girl, Candice-Something-or-other had gone missing. Not that Mary-Alice really cared, she didn't know the victim, had never heard of her; Candice attended public school, while Mary-Alice had been in the Catholic school system since she'd turned five.

Mary-Alice paced the pockmarked asphalt lot with its ever-growing potholes. She wasn't going to wait all day! She checked her phone for the twentieth time. Liam hadn't texted or called, and he was five minutes late. He was
never
late.

As the fog thickened, turning day to night, she grew more nervous. Eyeing the track again, she'd lost sight of the guy on the bleacher and the woman with her little dog, but the jogger, a small man in a stocking cap, sweatshirt and tights under his shorts, was still doing laps. She wasn't completely alone.

She texted Liam, then remembered he had that new number. What a pain! Everything was changing. She started to text the new number just as she heard a truck's engine roar up the street.

Maybe he was finally here!

The truck's engine slowed, as if to turn onto the access road that led to the back of the school.

About damned time.

Headlights cut through the rising mist, and a pickup she didn't recognize slid around the corner.

Not Liam's truck.

She was all set to be pissed again when she saw the magnetic sign on the driver's door, one with the logo and phone number of Longstreet Construction.

So Liam was driving one of his father's vehicles. She breathed a sigh of relief. Keith Longstreet was always swapping out one of his company vehicles for another, the removable signs making it easy for him to add or subtract a truck, van, or car from his company's fleet. Liam, when he could, drove some of the vehicles as his own truck wasn't all that reliable.

The truck slid to a stop only a few feet from Mary-Alice.

“I was about to give up!” she said, starting in on him as the door opened and she realized that the driver wasn't Liam.

She slid to a stop. “Hey . . .”

The man who jumped from the cab was big and angry-looking, a man she swore she'd seen before—and he had a gun in one hand, aimed at her chest.

She screamed, a loud piercing wail, and turned to flee, hoping the jogger or the dog walker or anyone would hear her.

He was on her in an instant, a huge hand with a work glove covering her mouth and nose, his brute strength drawing her hard against him. She couldn't let this happen! No, no, no! Biting hard into the leather glove, she tasted deer hide and oil.

Her assailant didn't so much as flinch. “Don't' move!” he ground out against her ear, and her skin crawled with the heat of his breath on her skin. This couldn't be happening! Not to her!

Struggling, she ignored him and desperately tried to wrench away.

And then she saw her savior. The jogger was running toward her, his face red, his wiry hair poking out of his cap.
Help me!
She tried to yell, but the sound that emitted from her throat was a strangled scream. Beseeching him with her eyes, kicking and flailing at her attacker, she hoped the jogger would stop the attack.

Instead he whipped off his cap, his straggly hair held in place by a headband. “Ah, she's a nice one,” he said, grinning lewdly.

The big man ordered, “Get the cuffs on her!”

What? No!

“With pleasure.” With a twisted grin, the smaller man tried to put handcuffs over Mary-Alice's wrists, and though she fought and squirmed, believing that any minute the guy holding her would put the gun to her temple and shoot her dead, she was no match for the two of them. The little guy whipped off his headband, his hair unleashed as he used the sweaty rag to gag her. Unable to stop the knot from being tightened at the back of her head, she nearly threw up with the stench of his sweat on her lips and in her nostrils.

She couldn't let this happen!

Frantically she fought, but it was no use.

Who were these psychos? What did they want? But she knew. Deep down, she knew, and her heart nearly stopped. They were taking her, as they'd already taken two other girls. Her blood froze at the thought of what they might do to her, the torture she might endure, so she fought harder, trying to scream. Where was the woman in the puffy coat? Where was anyone? This was a school, for the love of God; the parsonage was nearby.

But no one appeared through the rising mist to save her.

“Get her inside.” The bigger man said, breathing hard while his partner, the jogger, wheezed and coughed, all the while propelling her toward the open door of the truck.

Mary-Alice bucked and twisted, but she was no match for the two, and within minutes of the truck's arrival, she was unceremoniously tossed into the back, the jogger taking the time to grab her purse and gym bag from her car. Once he'd robbed her, he climbed into the cab and slammed his door shut. The bigger man was behind the wheel, and he shoved the idling truck into gear, then punched it. In a spray of gravel, the big rig took off.

Please, God, help me,

Mary-Alice felt sick and was shivering inside, afraid to think what these horrid men might do to her. As she rolled over and got her bearings, she realized she wasn't alone on the long bench seat.

Dana Rickert, a girl in her trig class, was already hogtied in the backseat, her big eyes round, her mouth gagged, fear emanating from her. The big man drove fast, through the lot, up the access road, and away from the school with its tall spires and large cross. Mary-Alice tried the back doors with her cuffed hands. Locked. She thought about flinging herself into the front seat, to cause an accident, but she saw the jogger in the front passenger seat half turn to stare her down and point the gun at her again.

“Don't even think about it,” he warned and cocked the gun.

Click,

Oh, shit!

For the first time in a long, long while, Mary-Alice didn't just repeat a prayer, she sent up a plea to God, a soulful request asking Him to please, please, please spare her.

A
t the dining room table, the journal spread out in front of her, Sarah read over the translation. It didn't make any sense. If she was right, and she'd double-checked herself, Helen was on the roof the night that her mother, Angelique Le Duc, was supposed to have fallen to her death nearly a hundred years before.

The account loosely translated was,
I found Mother on the roof with George
.

But that couldn't be right. Maxim was Angelique Le Duc's husband, the man who was supposed to have killed her, one of Sarah's ancestors and the man who had built this very house. For his wife.

“What the devil?” she whispered.

“What, Mom?” Gracie was all ears as she looked at the script in French, Helen's second language, the one she'd learned from her stepmother. “What are you reading?”

“This diary entry is Helen's account of the night Angelique disappeared,” Sarah explained, her gaze skimming the thin pages. “If she's telling the truth, Helen was on the widow's walk that night. She saw her stepmother and George fighting near the railing.”

“George?” Gracie repeated.

“I know, there's no mention of Maxim.” Sarah read through the faint handwritten passage again; Helen's picture of that stormy night was clear. George was attacking his stepmother with an axe, trying to kill her and the child she was carrying, while she sought to fend off his blows with a candlestick.

“What happened?”

“Helen claims that they were fighting and George accused her of being . . . all sorts of not nice things,” she said when the direct translation was “whore.” According to Helen, George was furious that his stepmother had been sleeping with someone, having an affair . . . no, that wasn't right. As she read further, Sarah realized that George, Maxim's oldest son, was actually Angelique's lover. George was furious, out of his mind, according to Helen, that Angelique was carrying a child he thought was his father's, the man to whom Angelique was married.

“What're you saying?” Grace asked, when Sarah stopped trying to explain the translation.

“According to Helen, George and Angelique were having an affair,” Sarah went on reluctantly. “They were close in age, you know.”

“Oh . . . ,” Gracie made a face. “But he was like her son.”

“I know, but he'd been raised by his mother, Myrtle, Maxim's first wife. Angelique married Maxim when George was almost a man. Not that that's an excuse.”

Gracie nodded, soft curls bouncing around her face. “Did Angelique die?”

“Angelique and George were apparently locked in some kind of macabre embrace, intent on doing bodily harm and struggling, before they fell over the railing, together.” Sarah stared down at the confession of a young girl who had witnessed the horrid battle and demise of her stepmother and brother from the cupola.

“And then?”

“The section just stops with the fight on the rooftop that night.” She shivered as she thought about it. No wonder Angelique's soul had found no peace. Quickly, Sarah flipped through the following pages, but the rooftop was where Angelique's story had ended. After Helen witnessed the fall of the lovers in their death throes, she wrote more sporadically and talked of taking charge of the family. Sarah imagined Helen trying to be a mother to Maxim's brood. She would have been so young—about Gracie's age, the others younger still. It seemed nearly impossible. “If she's telling the truth, then . . . then all three of them—George, Maxim, and Angelique—disappeared on the same night.”

“So, if George and Angelique fell into the river and drowned, what happened to Maxim?” Gracie asked. “Where was he? Why didn't he return?”

“She doesn't know . . .” She studied the pages. “Twice Helen adds a lonely note at the end of her entry: Where's Papa?”

“Maybe he left when he found out about George and Angelique.”

“Maybe . . . but to leave his children? The house? The diary continues for only another couple of weeks, but wait a minute . . .” She read the faint words twice, and her world shifted. Was it possible? Here in this decades-old journal of a young girl, was the mystery of Blue Peacock Manor, finally solved? If so, everything Sarah had thought was her family history had been upended, and her stomach churned uncomfortably. “It says here,” she said reluctantly, “that Helen believed Jacques, the baby in the picture we saw, my great-great-grandfather, was George's son with Angelique, not Maxim's. She'd overheard arguments to that effect.”

“Freaky.” Gracie thought hard. “So, he was still a Stewart. Oh . . . wait . . . What does that mean?”

That Jacques's half brother was his father, that Maxim was his grandfather, that everything I believed about my lineage is really messed up,
“It means it's complicated.”

“That's what you always say when you don't want me to know the truth.”

“Until I can read this entire diary and authenticate it, I don't know what the truth is.”

“I believe Helen,” Grace defended. “Angelique had a son from her husband's son. It's incest. That's what you're saying.”

“Not technically, but yes, that's what I'm saying. In any event, it wasn't healthy.” She cleared her throat. “But we're here to find out the truth, not judge them, right?”

“I just want to help Angelique pass.”

“I know.” From the corner of her eye, Sarah caught sight of a vehicle rolling up the drive—a Jeep, one she didn't recognize. “Looks like we've got company,” she said, almost glad to change the subject. As she scooted back her chair, she slammed the journal shut. Through the window she watched as the Jeep slid to a stop next to her Explorer, which was parked near the garage.

Belatedly, Xena caught wind that someone had arrived. On her feet in an instant, the dog began barking like mad, turning circles, going out of her mind, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.

“Great watchdog,” Jade said as she strode into the dining area. “I heard the car before she did.” She had been in the other room, sorting through some of her boxes before they moved into the guesthouse at the beginning of the week. “Who's here?”

Sarah recognized Lucy Bellisario, someone she'd gone to school with, as she climbed out of the Jeep. According to Dee Linn, Lucy, never married as far as Sarah knew, was now a detective with the Sheriff's Department. “The police,” she stated flatly.

“Why would they come here?” Jade asked, staring out the window.

“Good question,” Sarah thought aloud as she watched Lucy push the Jeep's door shut and start up the walk. Her hair, still a vibrant red, was clipped away from her face, her eyebrows were knit, her expression stern on a face devoid of makeup. “Guess I'll find out. Someone deal with Xena, okay?”

“Got her,” Gracie said, grabbing the dog's collar. “Hush, girl,” she commanded, and surprisingly Xena's fierce barking was reduced to a soft whining sound that, once Sarah stepped through the front door, became silent.

“Lucy,” she greeted her.

“Hi, Sarah.” She flipped open her badge. “I'm Detective Bellisario now. With the Sheriff's Department.”

“I heard you were with them,” Sarah said, feeling the chill of the afternoon pierce through her sweater and jeans. “Dee Linn. She keeps me informed.” She wrapped her arms around her to ward off the cold. “So, this isn't a social call?”

“No.” Lucy shook her head. “I'll cut right to the chase. We've had some girls who've gone missing, and we're checking out everyone associated with them as well as looking at known predators.”

A cold knot twisted in Sarah's stomach. She had a sense where this might be going.

“May I come in?”

“Sure.” Without hesitation she swung the door wide. “Excuse the mess,” she said automatically. “We just moved here from Vancouver, and all our stuff is everywhere until we can settle into the guesthouse.” Why she felt she needed to explain or make excuses she didn't really understand, so she ended with, “We've got a lot of work left in fixing this old place up.”

“I heard you were planning to restore it.”

“Easier said than done,” Sarah admitted, guiding Lucy around stacks of boxes and crates to the living room. To her credit, the detective took in the mess inside the house but didn't comment. No doubt she'd seen lots worse.

“Known predators, you said,” Sarah prompted when they were in the parlor, where the fire was still glowing, embers bright, flames crackling. The sleeping bags were folded but piled with their pillows in a corner. “That's why you're here.” No reason to beat around the bush when they both understood whom Lucy was looking for.

“Roger Anderson's name came up.”

“It always does.” The knot in her gut cinched a little tighter, and she noticed her girls walking in from the dining room. Great. They would get to hear about their uncle again. “These are my daughters,” Sarah introduced, waving them into the living room/parlor. “Jade's my oldest, and this is Gracie. Girls, this is Detective Bellisario. She and I went to school together. Yes, Jade, the dreaded Our Lady.” To Lucy, she said, “Jade's not a fan.”

For the first time Lucy really smiled. “Nice to meet you,” she said as the girls murmured hellos. Gracie was holding onto Xena's collar with a death grip, though the dog was wagging her tail. “I hated the school when I went there too,” Lucy confessed, “but it turned out okay.” She patted the dog on her head and said to Jade, “The way I heard it, most of the really mean nuns retired.”

Suspicious as ever, Jade said, “Remains to be seen.”

“You're here about the missing girls,” Gracie said as Xena trotted to a rug she'd claimed in the corner by the fireplace.

“She's looking for your Uncle Roger,” Sarah answered, then said to Lucy, “I haven't seen him in years.”

“Not even when you visited your parents?”

“Roger left home for the first time when I was very young, an infant. I don't remember it, of course, but according to my sister, Dee Linn, who must've heard it from Mother, Roger had a major falling out with my dad, the whole power struggle between a stepfather and stepson, or something like that,” she said, and for a second she thought of what she'd read in Helen's diary about the struggle over Angelique between Maxim and his son, George.

“You didn't grow up with him?” Bellisario clarified.

“No, though he came back off and on,” Sarah said. “But Roger and my parents, even my mother, didn't get along. So he never stayed very long.”
But long enough to be with you in the rain on the widow's walk and to carry you, traumatized, down the stairs to your shrieking, panic-stricken mother. His mother.

Her throat went dry as the memory played with her, rising up but never quite breaking the surface of her conscious mind. Her skin was suddenly clammy, and she felt Lucy's gaze upon her, as if the cop were reading her mind.

“When was the last time he lived here?” Bellisario asked, and the question seemed to come from a distance, the words echoing.

“Uh . . . I don't really know. He could have returned after I left home at eighteen. The time before that, the last time that I saw him I was . . . twelve maybe?” She swallowed hard, remembering Roger's strong arms, his wet face.
I won't let him hurt you, I won't . . . I promised her, I promised, I'll save you,

Whom
had he promised?

Save her from
what?

Lucy was looking at the fire, watching as the flames licked at a mossy piece of oak. “So you haven't seen him recently?”

“No.”

“You never visited him when he was incarcerated?”

“No,” she said as within the grate the moss sizzled, shriveling and blackening as it caught fire.

“And he hasn't come to the house?”

“No. I already told you. Not since we've moved here.”

“I'm just double-checking, because we have information that he's back; he's been seen in town but is flying under the radar. I thought he might want to come home.”

“This isn't his home anymore,” Sarah pointed out firmly. “Dee Linn said he lives in The Dalles.”

“The room he rented there has been vacated for a while. The woman who leased him the place said he just up and left. Paid for another month, then disappeared without a word.” Lucy's expression shifted. “Do you know how your brother took his sister Theresa's disappearance? I understand they were close.”

Sarah wasn't sure what she thought about the change of topic. “I heard it bothered him a lot. From what I understand, that's when he left home.”

Lucy glanced at the girls as if weighing what she was about to say, then asked, “Do you know if Roger and Theresa were . . . romantically involved?”

“They were full brother and sister,” Sarah pointed out coldly.

Lucy inclined her head in agreement. “Could it have been—”

“No.”

“All right. I just needed to follow up on a rumor. If he comes by, will you call me? Tell him I want to talk to him.”

“He won't,” Sarah assured her, unnerved. Roger and Theresa? No . . . no way. Roger might be a lot of things, some of them not very good, but . . . Her mind spun with images from her dream.
I'll keep you safe, I promised her,
Her lungs tightened. Was the
her
Theresa? Had he promised Theresa that he'd keep Sarah safe? But why?

A distant chord thrummed through her. Maxim, George, and Angelique, a love triangle that had ended in murder and death . . . and
Theresa and Roger?

“Are you all right?” Lucy asked, and Sarah could feel that her face had drained of color.

“Yes . . . yes . . . just fine,” she lied, trying to sound calm and together when it felt as if her whole life was turning on its head.