Last Seen Alive (42 page)

Moonlight danced off the waters of Lake Manicora and the night seemed full of fireflies. “It’s almost like a firecracker display!” Zoey was saying, her voice gleeful, her brown eyes filled with delight. “I think this is the most beautiful, wonderful night of my whole life!” And then she looked up at the face of a man.

Gage Ridgeway.

Chyna was so shocked she dropped the necklace and opened her eyes. She’d remembered that earlier in the visit Zoey had run into Gage Ridgeway. He’d greeted her, told her she was “lookin’ good,” and Zoey had been transported. Apparently, they’d talked again and set up a rendezvous at the lake, a rendezvous kept secret from Chyna.

Everything in Chyna rebelled against picking up that necklace again, seeing what had happened to Zoey at Gage’s hands, but she knew Zoey wanted her to see. Zoey had wanted her to see since the first time she’d spoken to Chyna at the lake. “I owe her that much,” Chyna muttered, and again clutched the necklace.

More darkness. The fireflies. Then Gage bending down and kissing Zoey deeply. After the kiss, she’d looked at him with tears in her eyes. “I won’t get to see you again until next summer,” she’d said mournfully.

“Next summer isn’t so far away. And by then you’ll be seventeen and I don’t think Vivian Greer will object to you going out with me. We won’t have to sneak around like this.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Zoey had looked at him with pleading eyes. “Will you write to me?”

“At least every two weeks. And I’ll use a fake name on the return address. How about ’Irma Vogel’?” Zoey, who had met Irma, laughed delightedly. Gage had smiled and leaned down to kiss Zoey’s freckled nose. “Everything is going to be fine, Zoe. I promise.”

And you had no idea to how many girls he’d made that same promise, Chyna thought. Gage simply could not resist girls of sixteen or seventeen. She sensed that he already had been feeling relieved that Zoey was leaving tomorrow. There were so many other girls to conquer.

They hugged. And now he’s going to grab her, Chyna thought with dread. Now he’s going to put a hand over her mouth and pull her backward….

Instead, Gage had begun walking away from the lake toward the parking lot. Zoey had stood still, watching him climb onto his motorcycle, throw her a casual wave in return for the kiss she blew to him, and roar out of the parking lot. Then, wiping tears from her cheeks, Zoey had begun to climb the hill up to the Greer house, the hill on which Chyna slept peacefully in the grass by the road.

“No!” Chyna cried, making Michelle jump. “No. That’s not what happened. She was killed by the man she met at the lake!”

Except she wasn’t.

Chyna squeezed her eyes shut. Her head was pounding now, her neck grew stiff with tension, and her entire body felt damp with perspiration in spite of the comfortable temperature of the house.

She’d dropped the necklace in shock when she’d seen Zoey, healthy and only unhappy about parting from her “big love” of the summer. Zoey had been headed back to Chyna, who lay sleeping between Zoey and the house. Zoey had been
fine.
It couldn’t be possible. Chyna’s vision of that night was “off.” With determination, she picked up the necklace one last time.

This time the vision was not slow in coming. She felt as if she were flying through time, back twelve years, to that warm, beautiful July night. Zoey was humming to herself as she climbed the hill. She was humming and smiling and touching the four-leaf-clover pendant on her necklace—

When Ned stepped out from the woods beside her. She squealed slightly in surprise. Then they both laughed as Ned said, “Geez, Zoe, I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“I thought you were a bear or something,” Zoey giggled self-consciously. Chyna could feel that the girl was actually afraid she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t. “It was so hot tonight and Chyna and I couldn’t sleep, so we decided to take a walk….”

Zoey seemed to run out of breath and her smile was stiff and unnatural. But Ned looked completely at ease as he said, “Sometimes I need to get out of the house, too. I get, I don’t know, claustrophobic at night.”

“Is that why you quit listening to your music and came out?” Ned looked at her quizzically. “You said you were going to listen to music with your headphones on all evening so you wouldn’t bother anyone.”

“Oh yeah.”

“You were lying that night, Ned,” Chyna now murmured. “You’d heard Zoey make plans with Gage….”

Back in the past, Chyna could see Ned looking around. “You’re all alone except for Chyna?” Zoey nodded. “Well, she’s asleep in the grass on up the hill.”

“Asleep? Well, I’ll have to wake her up.” Zoey looked at him pleadingly. “You won’t tell on us, will you?”

“ ’Course not.” A tight, narrow smile appeared on Ned’s face. “You can count on it.”

“Oh God,” Chyna moaned as in her vision she saw Ned grab Zoey in the way she’d already come to know—hand over mouth, arm around her midriff, and tilting her backward as he dragged her off into the woods. “Zoey, I’m so sorry,” Chyna said aloud. “I should have been there for you.”

“But you weren’t.”

Chyna whirled around to see Ned standing right behind her. “N-Ned!” she blurted in a bright, brittle voice. She tried to casually push the letter and trinkets aside. “I didn’t know you were coming by. Did you bring Bev and the kids?”

“It’s too late to try to act natural, Chyna. I’ve been standing here for at least five minutes.” Her heart felt as if it were plunging to her stomach, but she could think of nothing to say. “I see you have a letter. No doubt it’s from Mom, and hidden someplace only you could find, hidden because it told you all her secrets. Where was it, Chyna?” She stared at him. “Oh, come on. It can’t hurt to tell me now.”

Chyna felt as if her mouth were so dry she could barely speak. “It was behind the portrait of Mom and … Dad.”

“Don’t you mean Mom and
your
dad?”

Ned grinned. She’d always thought he was so good-looking—blond, blue-eyed, even-featured, with that slightly lopsided, charming smile—but he wasn’t good-looking now. Now he looked pale and flat-eyed and his smile had turned into the slit of a shark’s mouth. Something about him didn’t even appear human anymore. “The man in the portrait isn’t
my
father, Chyna.”

Should I bluff or be honest? Chyna wondered. But something in Ned’s expression told her they were beyond bluffing. “Did Mom tell you Edward wasn’t your father?”

Ned looked away from her for a moment, those awful, flat eyes focused on the portrait of her parents. “Vivian didn’t tell me when I was a kid. But I knew. You’re not the only one who can sense things, Chyna. I think I was about nine when I began to wonder if Rex was my father instead of Edward. When I was old enough to know anything, I thought it was odd that I was a seven-and-half-pound premature baby. Then I read a book about a boy who thought one guy was his father and he found out another guy was. All at once …
bingo!
I knew I was just like that boy in the book.” He gave her a weird, crooked smile. “Bizarre, isn’t it?”

“Very. And pretty flimsy evidence, if you ask me.”

“Oh, you mean I should have checked with you? Gotten a reading from the walking ESP machine? Oh, but you were only six then. It was a whole year before the boating accident that triggered your visions.” He paused and smiled. “You didn’t have the slightest idea that it wasn’t just one boat banging into another that sent you over the side of the
Chyna Sea,
did you?”

“W-what?” Chyna was flabbergasted. “Do you mean …”

“That you had a little help? Yes. When the boat jerked, I was standing beside you. In a flash I just put my hand on your back and sent you right over the side.”

Chyna felt as if she could hardly get her breath. “Then why did you save me?”

“Oh, Chyna, don’t act stupid. If there’s anyone in the world who’s not stupid, it’s you. You were everyone’s little

darling. So pretty, so smart, so accomplished. Everyone’s golden girl. Oh, Ned was okay when he was behaving himself—average intelligence, good sense of humor, temporarily gawky looks he was bound to outgrow—but Chyna! Well, she was another matter altogether.

“You got all the attention until that day when her brave, athletic brother risked his ten-year-old life to save his sister and succeeded! Wow, was I the glory boy for a while. It felt so good, Chyna. It felt so very, very good. Even Edward looked at me differently. Not that he’d ever let anyone else see the coolness in his eyes when he’d looked at me earlier, but after that day even he let a little warmth show—warmth he usually reserved for you.”

“Ned, Dad never treated you different than he did me.”

Ned smirked at her. “He never treated me different, but treating us the same was an effort for him because he
felt
different I didn’t have to be a psychic like you to know. Kids sense those things. Edward Greer did not love me. He resented me with every fiber of his being.”

“No, he didn’t!” Chyna and Ned both stiffened when they heard Rex’s voice as he descended the stairs from the second floor. Chyna had forgotten he was still in the house. “You weren’t Edward’s biological child, but you were Vivian’s child and my child, and he loved both of us. He loved you, too.”

Ned nearly spat, “He hated me from the minute I was born because I was the child of Vivian and
you!”

“When you realized you weren’t Edward’s child, you made up this whole fantasy about how you were unloved, resented, maybe even hated,” Rex lashed back. “You were jealous of your sister, but you couldn’t admit that. No, Ned, you’ve always had one thing your sister doesn’t—a huge ego. You couldn’t admit to feeling something as petty as jealousy of a little girl, so you invented reasons to explain all the foulness that’s festered inside you since you were a child!”

“That is a damned lie!” Ned snarled. “You—you got Vivian pregnant and then you deserted her. And after your own brother saved her from disgrace, you had a soul rotten

enough to betray your brother and start up with her again. I remember the first time I saw you two together. I came home early from school. I heard noises in the guest room and I peeked in and there you were, you and your brother’s wife, heaving and sweating, riding each other, grunting like a couple of animals—”

“Shut up!” Chyna realized she’d screamed at Ned. Michelle had nearly entwined herself around Chyna’s legs and she could feel the heat of the dog’s fear, a fear that almost equaled her own. She’d had no idea Vivian and Rex had carried on an affair, but the reality hadn’t hit her yet and she couldn’t make herself be quiet. “Just stop talking, Ned!” Her voice cut through the air like a knife. “What Mom and Rex did was wrong, but it’s over. I don’t want to hear any more about their affair. I don’t want to hear about how Dad hated you. He didn’t, but even if he had, it doesn’t matter anymore. Dad’s been gone a long time. And now Mom is gone, too.” She paused, feeling as if lights were flashing behind her eyes. She could see Vivian standing at the top of the stairs. She saw Ned standing only a couple of feet away from her. And she could see Vivian’s face—flushed and horrified but absolutely determined and relentless as she threatened her son.

Chyna held her breath for a moment as all three of them stood as if frozen. Meanwhile, evening fell early without the benefit of daylight saving time. The only light came from a small lamp on the desk, a lamp that sent wavering shadows crawling up the walls and across the ceiling. Chyna felt as if a ball of ice had settled in her stomach. At the same time, sweat slithered from her hairline to the neck of her sweater like a slender, treacherous snake. Still, she managed to find her voice, even though it emerged thin and raspy. “You admitted to pushing me off that boat when I was seven, Ned. You know that / know you’re responsible for the deaths of Zoey, and Heather, and Edie. Probably Nancy, too.” She paused. “Now tell me what happened to Mom.”

“She had a heart attack,” Ned said flatly, his gaze never leaving Chyna’s.

“The medical examiner says Mom did have a heart attack. But I can see you with her, Ned. I can see the two of you at the top of the stairs. What happened that morning, Ned? You might as well tell us. You have nothing to lose now.”

“Nothing to lose?” Ned repeated. He glanced at Rex, then back at Chyna, and started to laugh. “Well, I guess I don’t. I was always afraid you’d figure it out one day, little sister, although I thought your so-called visions were just the result of intense scrutiny. You were constantly observant, never missed a trick, even when you were young. I wasn’t absolutely sure, though. That’s why I’ve avoided touching you ever since you came home. Did you notice that?”

Chyna quickly cast through her memories. The night she arrived he hadn’t hugged her when he and Bev came over. He hadn’t even laid a hand on Chyna’s shoulder after the crowd had gathered on the lawn. He seemed to see the dawning comprehension in her gaze and smiled ruefully. “I didn’t count on having to tell Rex everything, but maybe it’ll be entertaining to describe to him exactly how his paramour, or more aptly his whore, died.”

Rex winced and briefly closed his eyes. It had hurt him to hear Vivian called a whore, Chyna thought. Even though he’d turned his back on Vivian when she needed him before Ned was born, even though Rex had only dallied with her when he came to visit between wives, he had cared for Vivian. Somehow, as disappointed as she was in her mother, knowing Rex had at least cared made the pain a bit less sharp for Chyna.

“Sometimes I noticed Mom looking at me like she didn’t know me,” Ned began. “There was all this speculation in her gaze. I don’t know if she said anything to Edward or he just started to wonder about me, too, but I saw the same look in his eyes.” Ned grinned. “I’ll tell you, it freaked me out. Scared me. And I don’t like being scared. So, I thought that if they
were
on the scent, if they thought their Edward Junior might be the killer of young girls, what better way to make them think I was just a normal guy than by getting married

to a sweet, pretty girl from a nice family, a gentle girl they knew and loved, a girl they would have picked for a daughter-in-law? So I proposed to Beverly.”