Down by the River (23 page)

“It isn't right!” she exclaimed.

Vincent came barging in the back door at that moment. “I just heard. Have you had another call from Margaret? Is she all right?”

Grace noticed this time Vincent wasn't as calm as he usually was in crisis situations. If she hadn't been so worried herself, she would have smiled.

Vincent kept pacing the floor and running his hands through his hair while Grace and Jack tried to tell him what had happened.

“I was in Maryville doing a book talk,” he said. “And when I got home, I got Jack's message on the machine. . . .” His voice trailed off.

The phone rang then. Jack grabbed it before Grace could.

“It's the sheriff,” he mouthed to them. Jack listened, relaying the information from Swofford Walker as he heard it. “They lost the truck. They saw it in the distance, but it turned off and they lost it.” He shook his head in exasperation.

Grace stepped forward. “What about Margaret? Is she all right?”

Swofford obviously heard her question. “Swofford said they've driven down the road looking for Margaret, but they can't find her car.” Jack paused, listening. “He says she must have turned off somewhere. A man working out in the field said he saw her car speeding down the highway. He noticed it because she was going way too fast. He also noticed the truck come along later. It's the only sighting the police have of her.”

Jack pushed his hair back from his forehead restlessly. “They don't think the truck was following her when it turned off. They think the man saw the police cars and turned off on a road he knew to lose them.”

Jack talked for a few more minutes and then hung up. “They don't know where Margaret is.” He paced across the room restlessly. “Grace, what did she tell you again about where she might go?”

Grace tried to remember. “Something about a waterfall.”

Jack slumped into a chair and then looked at Vincent. “Margaret had this crazy idea, Vince, that she'd lead the guy along for a while so the sheriff could get there. Then she said she'd speed up and lose him if she couldn't pull off somewhere.”

Grace tried to think. “She said something about going someplace where you and she had been, Vincent . . . to a waterfall or something.”

Vincent's face lightened, and then he smiled in relief. “Thank God. I know where she's gone. I'll go see if I can find her. She must be frightened.”

“I'll go with you.” Jack stood up.

“So will I.” Grace reached for her purse and phone.

“No.” Vincent shook his head and held up a hand. “Let me go. Please. I want to go alone. I feel that I'm supposed to. I don't think there is any danger of Crazy Man's having followed her there. Margaret will just be hiding out—afraid and worried. Wondering when it might be safe to try to come back. Also, if she's not at the falls, the two of you may need to go find her somewhere else when there is a lead.”

Vincent looked at Grace. “Will you trust me to go? I know right where Slippery Rock Falls is. That must be the waterfall she's talking about. It's up Piney Road off Highway 321 on a narrow, rural, ridgetop lane behind the Buckeye Knob Camp. I took her there not long ago. I know right where the path is that leads to the falls.”

Grace looked into Vincent's passionate blue eyes. How could she say no?

She nodded, leaning to Jack instinctively for support.

“Vince could be right.” Jack agreed. “Swofford might get a lead on where Margaret has gone or find her himself. Then we might be needed. We don't know if she really was able to get off the main highway and find her way to these falls, anyway. You were cut off, after all. She might have had several plans running through her mind. “

“I promise I'll call you if I find her.” Vince was already starting out the door. “I'll call as soon as I know something.”

Grace sighed as Vincent shut the door behind him. “Do you think we're doing the right thing to let him go alone?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. Margaret might not have been able to turn off the highway and try to get to those falls. Vince said she'd only been there once. The sheriff may find her car up the road soon. She might have pulled off somewhere, like you suggested to her, and gone into a business or store.”

“Then why hasn't she called?” Grace's voice shook at the question.

“I don't know.” Jack put his arm around Grace in comfort.

“Where are your girls?” She looked around.

Jack grinned at her. “I guess you were so upset you didn't notice that Samantha took them home with her when she picked up Daisy.”

Grace shook her head.

Jack led her toward the kitchen. “Let's go make something to eat and then sit down to wait.”

“I couldn't eat anything, Jack. I'm too upset.”

“Well, I can.” He flashed her a smile. “Stress always makes me want to eat. You can help me find something to eat even if you don't want anything yourself.”

Jack started toward the kitchen.

Grace looked after him anxiously. “You'll stay here and wait with me until we hear?”

Jack turned back to kiss her lightly. “Where else would I be, Grace?” His voice was gentle. “Of course I'll stay. I'm not running out on this one.”

True to his word, Jack stayed with Grace for the next tense hour or two, answering the phones for her, fending off the concerned—or simply nosy—calls that came in. It was Jack who took the call from Vincent saying he'd found Margaret and that she was all right.

“They're on their way home,” he told Grace. “Vince wanted Margaret to leave her car, but she insisted on driving herself back.”

Grace smiled in relief. “That shows more than anything that Margaret is all right. Praise God.”

“Yeah.” Jack smiled and then gave Grace a thoughtful look. “You know this is the first time I ever prayed with a woman about anything?”

“Really?” She looked over at Jack, remembering that the two of them had prayed for Margaret's safety earlier before Vincent came. And then had prayed again when Vincent left that he or the sheriff would find Margaret and bring her back safe and sound.

Jack flexed his fingers and studied them. “Did you used to pray with your husband, Charles?”

Grace saw his gaze lift to her eyes. “No. Charles would have been uncomfortable doing that. So, I guess this is the first time I've prayed with a man about anything, either—except for praying with a minister or with my father when I was little.”

A smile stretched across Jack's face. “Well, that's something, isn't it?”

“Yes. And you were a great comfort to me in this trial, Jack. I'm grateful.”

He shrugged, but she could tell he was pleased. “I'm glad I could do it right this time. It felt good.”

Before she could comment on that, Margaret called to talk to Grace herself. And soon, in a flurry of hugs and excitement, she and Vince were back. Margaret sat in the living room telling them everything that had happened in her wonderfully dramatic way.

“I am
so
disappointed they didn't catch him.” Her mouth tightened. “I
know
it was him following me. I got a feeling—and goose bumps—when I saw him, and then he followed me when I turned off the Townsend highway.”

Jack, ever practical, said, “It could have been a coincidence, Margaret.”

“No.” She gave him a steely look. “I recognized that hat pulled down over his eyes. A cowboy hat. Not many people wear cowboy hats here, Jack. And there was something creepy about the way he watched me from his truck in the parking lot, a kind of glazed-over look.” She shivered.

Vincent took her hand in his. “They'll find him now. They have more of a description than ever before—plus a description of the truck he was driving.”

“It had a front headlight out. I told the sheriff that.” Margaret leaned back into the sofa, settling into Vince's arm comfortably.

He looked down at her, and there was something different in the way they looked at each other. Grace felt almost uncomfortable watching Vincent gaze intently down into her daughter's eyes and seeing Margaret look back up into his face to smile softly.

She shifted her eyes to Jack's and saw him raise an eyebrow and grin. He'd noticed it, too. Something was different with Margaret and Vincent.

Margaret turned then to smile at her mother and Jack broadly. “Vincent and I are going to get married, Mother.”

Grace sucked in a breath in surprise.

Margaret looked up at Vincent again with that worshipful gaze Grace had never seen on her daughter's face before. “Vincent was the first thing I thought about when I was afraid and when I was hiding out at the falls, Mother. And when he walked into the clearing beside the falls, I knew. Just like that, I knew. We're supposed to be together, Vincent and I. He knows, too.”

Margaret smiled radiantly at Vincent once more. He hugged her closer under his arm before lifting his eyebrows and passing a smug and knowing look across at Grace. She knew he was remembering that first night he met Margaret—right here at the Mimosa Inn not so long ago—and what he had told Grace that night.

Jack grinned. “Guess you had a right witness, Vince, to go find Margaret on your own and be the hero. Look what it got you? Congratulations, Preacher!”

Margaret threw a sofa cushion at Jack. “You be nice, Jack Teague. This is a special occasion.”

Late that night, Margaret came padding into Grace's bedroom in her nightgown to curl up on the bed with her. Margaret had always loved to lie in bed at night and talk to Grace when she was smaller.

“Are you happy, Margaret?” Grace asked.

“Yes. And
very
sure I've made the right decision, if that's what you're wondering.”

“You weren't so sure this morning. Are you positive it wasn't just the emotions of the day that played into this sudden pronouncement?”

“No. I was thinking of it before he came to find me. Even knowing, somehow, that it would be Vincent who would come to find me. I guess that sounds silly.”

“No. Not silly.”

“He told me he loved me when he came, Mother. It was the first time. And I couldn't keep the words back from telling him the same.”

Grace patted Margaret's hand. “Those are special memories to cherish.”

Margaret hugged a pillow to herself and then turned to give her mother a shy smile. “You know how passionate Vincent is when he's preaching? Well, it's no comparison to what he's like when he's feeling romantic! Whew! Who would have thought?”

Grace found it hard to comment. This was her little girl, after all.

Margaret grinned at her mother. “I guess that's too much information, huh?”

Grace laughed and reached over to squeeze Margaret's hand. “Just as long as you're happy, darling.”

“I am. I really am, Mother.”

“What about those concerns you had when we were talking earlier this morning? Have you forgotten about those?”

“No.” Margaret hugged the pillow to her. “We talked about everything, Mother. Vincent said that, wherever I wanted to go to school after I graduate next summer, he would go with me. He has his books, you know. He doesn't really need his pastor's income. He said he could always find places to preach or give lectures on his books in whatever place I get the best offer to study. He's willing to go wherever I need to go.”

“That's very generous.”

“He is
so
supportive of my dreams and goals, Mother. He also really believes I have a gift for writing music. He said, laughing, that maybe we'd just end up back in Montreat someday, living near the conference center where he grew up, writing books and writing music—him doing lectures and events and me playing for praise and worship services. That was a sweet idea, wasn't it?”

Grace kept her comments to herself about this. She had a feeling that none of Vincent's words were ever idle words. She sighed. At least Montreat was only about two and a half hours away.

“Did you talk about a date when you might get married?” Grace asked.

“Probably not until I graduate.” Margaret giggled. “If we can wait until then.”

Margaret turned to look at Grace. “Do you think I could live with you and commute to Maryville this year, Mother? That way I would be closer to Vincent. We could see each other more.”

“Of course.” Grace squeezed Margaret's hand. “It would delight me to have you live here with me instead of in the dorm.”

As Grace drifted to sleep later, she thought how nice it was that the daughter she had thought she'd lost would be so close to her now. On a last thought, before sleep claimed her, Grace wondered what Jane Conley would have to say about all this. She was pretty sure it wouldn't be “congratulations.”

T
he atmosphere was tense around the River Road community over the next week. It made Jack nervous that Crazy Man had appeared so openly. He knew he'd been cross and overprotective with the girls because of it—causing Morgan and Meredith to flash out in anger at him several times.

“You can't lock us up in a cage because some crazy goon is leaving notes and was maybe following Margaret around!” Morgan had shouted at him defiantly with both hands on her hips several days ago.

Jack had just told the girls he wasn't going to let them go over to Kinzel Springs to a spend-the-night party one of the Scouts was having for her birthday.

“It's
only
to spend the night at Mary Jean Watkins's house.” Meredith gave him a wounded, puppy-dog look. “There will be a mommy and a daddy there.”

Jack snapped his answer back. “Well, I don't know the Watkins very well.”

Actually, Jack knew Joe and Elizabeth Watkins quite well. They were wealthy, and the socialite types in this rural community and Jack wasn't sure how conscientious they would be in minding a large group of fourth and fifth-grade girls at their big home in the mountains. The whole idea made Jack nervous.

“You're being mean, Daddy. Everyone else is going. It's not fair!” Morgan stomped out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs to her bedroom.

Meredith drifted out after her, dribbling tears and giving Jack accusing stares.

He and the girls engaged in another zinger of a fight two days later. Morgan and Meredith went tubing without having an adult with them. Jack couldn't find them at the house, and he overreacted—losing his temper and saying a few words he regretted now.

Morgan had yelled at him in retaliation. “I'll bet our mother wouldn't talk to us like that and say bad words!”

That accusation had led to yet another fight. The atmosphere between Jack and his girls had been mutinous now all week.

Things seemed testy at Grace's, too. Jack could feel her strain every time he stopped by. The sheriff had suggested Margaret not go out alone—and that she should try to have someone with her at all times. Vincent had stepped up to take the protective role of staying close to Margaret. Not a tough job, in Jack's eyes, considering how smitten Vincent was with Margaret. But Grace still felt nervous that the sheriff and his staff had not found Crazy Man.

In all honesty, Jack's mood had not been helped by finding another note from the man in his car last week—right after the incident with Margaret. It had been scrawled on one of Jack's business cards, left on the front seat of his Jeep. It read:
I saw you with her.

Jack had no idea whether this note referred again to the man's seeing him with Ashleigh Anne that day when Althea was hospitalized or to some new incident since—like seeing him with Grace out in the moonlight. Both issues were highly confidential, and Jack balked at sharing the notes. Covertly—and somewhat guiltily—Jack tucked the new note away with the other one he'd found earlier and didn't give it to the sheriff. His conscience smarted him over this indiscretion—and it made him crosser carrying his guilt around about it.

It was Friday now, and Jack was heading over to Bebe's to pick up the girls. It had been a hectic day for him, showing property all morning and through his lunch hour to a set of demanding clients. Grace had called at about noon and suggested he and the girls come over to the Mimosa for dinner, and Jack had welcomed the idea. The quick hamburger he'd grabbed at a drive-through hadn't been very satisfying.

Grace's voice rolled over Jack's phone, throaty and mellow. Even the sound of her voice turned him on these days. “Margaret and Vince are going into Maryville to dinner and a movie, Jack. So I thought maybe you and the girls might like to come here for dinner. I'll make the girls my lasagna; they love that. And I got a movie at the video store we can all watch together.”

Jack felt grateful for the offer. He hoped it would help heal the breach with the twins. He hated it when they were angry at him.

He found Bebe sitting on the porch cutting up some late okra into a pan.

“Where are the girls?” he asked after buzzing her on the cheek.

She looked up in confusion. “They didn't come over here today, Jack. They told me you were going to drop them off at Grace's for the day instead.”

Jack muttered an expletive. He doubted they were at Grace's. He'd just talked to her earlier, and she hadn't mentioned anything about the girls' being there when she offered her invitation to supper.

“Dang girls. I wonder where they've taken off to!” He paced the porch, trying to think. “I let them talk me into allowing them to walk over here this morning, Bebe—rather than me dropping them off. It's only a short distance on our own private drive. I never thought to check to see if they got here. They walk over here all the time.”

Bebe offered him a sympathetic look. “Well, it never dawned on me that they were telling me a fib when they called me either, Jack. Don't be too hard on yourself. They probably just wanted to sneak off and do something they knew neither of us would approve of. It's not like you and Roger didn't pull the same sort of tricks yourselves when you were that age.”

She put her pan of okra down and stood up to brush off her apron. “We'll start calling everyone we know. Those girls will turn up. You can cut a piece of fresh apple pie while you are phoning. I just took it out of the oven.”

Jack grinned. Bebe always offered food in a crisis.

Thirty minutes later, Jack and Bebe stood comparing notes, trying to see if they could think of anyone else to phone. No one had seen the girls.

A curl of fear crawled up Jack's spine. “That loony man's still on the loose, Aunt Bebe.”

Bebe tried not to look panicked at the thought, but Jack saw the alarm pass over her face. “Let's not jump to conclusions, Jack.”

However, they were both upset enough to call the sheriff now. And to begin making other calls around the community—in case anyone had seen anything suspicious.

Finally, Jack called Grace. He hadn't wanted to upset her until he simply had to.

She acted amazingly calm. “Have you been up to the house to check the girls' rooms for clues? When my children pulled tricks like this, I usually found clues in their rooms about what prank they had gotten up to.”

“I didn't think of that.”

“Well, why don't you head to your house to look? I'll walk up the hill to meet you and help you out.”

A short time later, Jack and Grace had finished a search of the kitchen at Jack's house—where Jack had last seen the girls—and started to look in the girls' bedrooms. The two cheery bedrooms, decorated in sunny yellows and blues, connected with a small sitting area between them where the girls each had a desk to do their schoolwork.

“Where do Meredith and Morgan keep personal stuff they don't want anyone to see?” Grace asked.

Jack scratched his head in thought. “They have what they call a ‘treasure box.' It's actually an old pink jewelry box with one of those old snap clasps. It was Bebe's when she was a girl, and she gave it to them. They usually put things in there they consider valuable.” He laughed. “Like an old dime-store ring they found when we were out hiking one time.”

“Well, you look for that. I'll check both their desks.”

Jack soon found the treasure box under Morgan's bed. It was locked, but Jack located the key in Morgan's bedside table.

Grace sat down on Morgan's bed to look through the box with Jack.

“Good heavens, Jack! Look at this.” She held out a movie magazine picture of Celine Rosen to Jack. Familiar black words were scrawled across it in bold pen. The message, blazoned across the picture, read:
He ran your mama off.

Jack felt sweat break out across his brow.

“That wicked man!” Tears filled Grace's eyes, and she shook the picture as if wishing it was Crazy Man. “Whatever possessed him to send two little girls something like this! Especially at their age and when they've only just learned who their mother is!”

Jack sat stunned for a moment. Why would anyone do this? Who would hate him this much to upset his little girls this way? To revive old valley gossip from long ago. “Do you think the girls believed this, Grace?”

Grace shook her head and blew out an exasperated breath. “I don't know, Jack. Children are very impressionable.”

Taking the jewelry box from Jack to dig further into it, Grace pulled out an old school note, which she read and then discarded, and then a folded computer printout.

She scanned over it and looked up at him with panicked eyes. “Oh, Jack, this is a printout of an e-mail from Celine, dated last week. She invited the girls to come out to see her in California. She was evidently responding to an e-mail they had sent her earlier. She even offered to arrange airline tickets for them.”

Jack snatched the e-mail from Grace to read it himself, his heart pounding.

“I'll bet that's where they have gone, Jack.” Grace jumped up from the bed and started across the room, looking around. “Do the girls have suitcases? Where do they keep them? We need to look.”

Jack felt stunned. “They're not even ten. They can't travel by themselves.” He couldn't seem to take all this in. “How could they get to the airport? Surely they wouldn't just take off like this. California is all the way across the country.”

Grace was already digging through Morgan's closet. She turned back to look at Jack where he still sat on the bed, trying to think. “Jack, you're not helping me here. Those girls might have flown out to California to see their mother.”

She paced back across the room to pick up the magazine picture again. It had water stains on it and looked weatherworn. “This is the picture from that movie magazine I found out in the gazebo—just before all that mess happened with Margaret. I figured it might belong to the girls, but I left it there for them to come back and get later on. My guess is that Crazy Man was listening to them talk about their mother out there in the gazebo. He could easily have been hiding in all that brush behind it. He must have taken this magazine later on and decided to write this note to the girls.”

Grace put her hand over her heart. “But why would he do such a thing? Why would he frighten and upset two little girls?” She paced across the room. “I'd like to get my hands on that man, I can tell you. I'm mad enough right now to take him on all by myself!” She punched a fist into her hand.

Jack fingered through the trinkets of the girls' treasure box to see if there might be any other clues. He found a folded slip of notebook paper under a four-leaf clover one of the girls had taped between two pieces of waxed paper. Scribbled on the note paper in Meredith's childish scrawl—with daisies replacing all the dots over the
i
's—was Celine's name, and a street address in Hollywood. Or at least Jack assumed that's what it was.

He held it up to Grace. “Where do you think the girls got this? Even I don't have Celine's most recent address.”

Grace studied it. “You can get anything off the Internet today. Especially about movie stars. And you know Celine Rosen has become quite a star in her own right. Celine might have given it to them, too.”

Jack shook his head. “Grace, do you really think Morgan and Meredith might have flown out to California to Celine's? They're not even ten! How would they know what to do—how to get to the airport? Or how to get their tickets?” He knew he was repeating words he'd said earlier, but he couldn't seem to help it.

“Those are smart girls, Jack.” Grace picked up the printout of the e-mail from Celine to study it again. “Plus it certainly looks like Celine was a party to their travel plans. She tells them here she'd be delighted for them to come to see her before school starts. My guess is that she called and talked to them and then made their travel arrangements.”

“Why wouldn't they have told me about this?” Jack shook his head.

Grace's eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Oh, honestly, Jack. They knew you would never let them go to California. You wouldn't even let them go to that slumber party at Mary Jean Watkins's house.”

“I had my reasons for that.” Jack knew his reply was sharp and testy.

Grace turned to him. “Look, Jack. The whys of this situation are not really important right now. What is important is that two very young girls might have made their way all the way to Hollywood, California, to Celine Rosen's home. We need to learn if that is so. If you have any contact information for Celine, we need to locate it.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “And you need to get up and search around these girls' rooms and see if any of their clothes and belongings are gone. You should be able to tell if some of their clothes are missing, Jack. And you should know if they have a suitcase or duffle they usually take when they are going on a trip. We need to see if those are missing, too.”

Jack seemed to wake to action then. He strode down the hall to search in the storage closet to see if the girls' duffle suitcases were still there. They weren't. In searching their drawers, he found pajamas and favorite clothes missing—plus toothbrushes and hairbrushes from the bathroom.

He groaned. “Confound it! They've really gone out to California! Grace, I have no current information on Celine. I haven't heard from her in four or five years. And I know she's moved since then. There was some TV show on one night talking about fancy spreads in Hollywood that the stars owned. Celine's was one of the ones they mentioned. They showed some palatial Spanish mansion with walls and security all around it. In Beverly Hills, I think.”

Grace gave Jack a sympathetic hug. “I'll go search on their little computer to see if they saved any other information about this trip . . . or if they left any other notes around.” She started toward the girls' desks. “You'd better call Sheriff Walker. See if he can help you get any contact information through the police department in Los Angeles. After all, these girls are in your custody. And Celine didn't get your approval for this trip.”