Stolen in the Night (26 page)

J
ake and Julie embraced and Dawn beamed. “It’s all right now, it’s okay,” Jake said,
although it was questionable whether he was talking to himself or to his wife. Julie
struggled to hold back tears as she clutched his back, her small diamond ring winking
in the light of the inn’s foyer. Kenneth and Ben stood by awkwardly, witnessing the
family reunion.

“How did you manage it?” Kenneth asked the young attorney. “Dawn was really worried.”

“Well, it took a while to track down the guy who was mixing Jake’s paints at the paint
store in North Conway. But we found him.”

Kenneth nodded. “Lucky he had you to help him. I’m Kenneth Phalen, by the way. I…I’m
a friend of Dawn’s. I used to live here. A lifetime ago.”

“Ben Ramsey.” The two men shook hands.

“Let me get one of those,” said Dawn to her daughter-in-law.

Julie reluctantly let go of her husband. Jake gave his mother a brief, fierce hug.
Then he released her and turned to Ben. “I owe you, man,” he said.

“Glad I could help,” Ben demurred, smiling. “We should tell Tess you’re back.”

“Tess isn’t here,” said Julie.

Ben’s disappointment was visible in his face. “She’s not? Was there some news about
Erny?”

“No, there wasn’t and I’m worried sick,” said Dawn. “We’ve been trying to call her
for the last hour and there’s no answer on her cell phone.”

Ben frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. She’s got to have that phone in her hand,
just in case there’s news about Erny.”

“I know,” said Dawn. “Believe me, I know.”

“And you have no idea where she went?” Ben said.

Dawn shook her head. “I wasn’t here when she left. Kenneth and I walked up toward
the campground looking for some sign of Erny. In vain, it turns out.”

“I was here,” said Julie.

Ben turned to her. “What did she say exactly?”

Julie was clutching her husband’s hand. “Well, the cops…” Julie turned and looked
down the hall, but the officers had not yet returned from the kitchen where they had
gone to get a cup of coffee. Julie lowered her voice. “One of them challenged her.
Said she shouldn’t be leaving with Erny missing, in case some kind of decision had
to be made, you know?”

Ben nodded gravely.

“Tess insisted she had to go and said that if any decisions needed to be made that
they could ask me. That she would trust me with…” Julie’s voice choked for a moment.
“Trust me with Erny’s life.”

Jake shook his head. “What is she up to?”

Julie frowned. “I had the feeling…it was just a feeling, mind you…”

“What?” Jake demanded.

Julie shook her head. “I don’t know. Like she didn’t trust the police. For some reason,
she didn’t want them to know where she was going.”

Ben’s eyes widened. “Oh damn.”

“What?” said Jake.

“Nothing. Never mind,” said Ben.

“Well, I’m going to look for her,” said Jake. “I don’t know where the hell to look.
But I know Kelli’s car. I’ll look for that.”

“Oh don’t,” Julie pleaded. “It’s too dangerous.”

Jake turned to her with a surprisingly gentle demeanor. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll
be okay. What about you, Mr. Ramsey? Ben?”

“I think…I might talk to Edith Abbott. Maybe she’s remembered something useful. It’s
worth a try.”

Dawn and Julie looked at him anxiously, clearly doubting that he would be getting
anything helpful from Edith. “Jake,” he said, “let’s keep in contact while we’re out
there. Call me if you hear anything. About Erny or Tess.”

“You, too,” said Jake.

The two men shook hands.

“I can take another turn around, as well,” offered Kenneth.

Jake eyed him suspiciously, but Ben nodded. “We can use all the help we can get.”

“Call us. And be careful,” Dawn pleaded as the men went out to the driveway, and got
into their vehicles.

Jake roared off first in his truck and Kenneth followed. But Ben sat in the driveway
idling for a moment before he set out. He looked over at the bench where he and Tess
had sat earlier in the day, recalling their conversation. He had as much as suggested
to her that Rusty Bosworth might be the one responsible for Nelson’s death and Erny’s
abduction. But Ben had spent the entire afternoon with Rusty Bosworth either sitting
in the same room or coming and going with a phalanx of officers. Rusty literally hadn’t
had a moment in which he could have waylaid Tess. Wherever she was, it wasn’t with
the police chief, who had been preparing for a press conference as Jake and Ben were
leaving the station.

No, he was forced to admit to himself, if someone was holding Tess, Rusty Bosworth
was not the guilty party. Ben was going to the Abbotts’ to ask Edith if she might
know of another relative of Nelson’s who would share his DNA markers. There had to
be someone. And something he could do. He had to find Tess.

Ben drove up the driveway and out onto the road in the dim purple twilight, putting
on his headlights as he headed toward the Abbott place. As he drove, he thought about
Tess. She had aroused a feeling of possibility that seemed dead in him after Melanie’s
death. He had first noticed Tess during the tumult of the press conference about Lazarus.
With that creamy skin and dark hair, she was too beautiful to overlook. But he told
himself that he was immune to beautiful women. After all, Melanie had had the face
of an angel.

But that same afternoon, at the campground, when he encountered Tess walking Leo,
he had felt an unmistakable spark. There was an intelligence, and a sort of gallant
loneliness about her that touched him. And he was intrigued by the fact that she had
a son who seemed too old to be hers by birth. Since that day, each time he saw Tess
or spoke to her, he was more and more drawn to her.

It had seemed that he would never get over Melanie. His hair had turned gray. He had
left everything behind that had been familiar. Three years later he was still bitter
and stunned by Melanie’s betrayal. She had told him she was going on a weekend trip
to Florida with a college girlfriend. He had learned the truth when he was contacted
by the Miami police and found out that she was staying in a luxury hotel suite in
Coral Gables with a junior associate in his own law firm. It was there that Melanie
had died of a burst aneurysm while her lover lay passed out in bed beside her.

Even now, when he thought about it, his face flamed and his heart felt like a heap
of ash, incinerated by shame and fury. He had quit his firm, abandoned the city, and
tried to forget, but you could never forget. He’d thought he’d known his wife. And
he had never known her at all. It seemed impossible that he would ever trust someone
again. And then, something in Tess’s beautiful sad eyes, when she looked at him, made
him think he might want to try. He could see that she was cautious, that he would
have to go slow with her. And he wanted to, more than he cared to admit. If only he
had the chance.

“Where are you, Tess?” he whispered aloud as he drove. “What’s happened to you?” He
reached the Abbotts’ driveway and drove slowly up toward the house. There were several
cars parked beside the house and it was alight in a way it had never been on previous
visits. Ben always had the impression that Nelson was penurious and probably insisted
they turn off each light as they left a room. But tonight, light spilled from every
window. Ben parked behind an old Chevy station wagon, walked up the steps, and knocked
on the door.

A small, round woman with gray hair and flushed cheeks pulled the door open and smiled
at him. “Hello,” she said, glancing admiringly at his suit and tie. There was the
sound of voices and tinkling glasses coming from the kitchen.

“I’m looking for Edith,” he said. “I’m her attorney. Ben Ramsey.”

“Oh, of course,” said the woman. “I’ll call her. Come on in.”

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he said. “I know she’s been through so much.”

The woman shook her head. “Not a bad time. She’s doing all right. We’re just having
a little bottle of wine and relaxing a bit. I’m her friend, Jo, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Jo,” he said.

Ben walked into the spartan living room and waited as the woman at the door yodeled
for Edith. After a moment, Edith came into the living room. Her normally colorless
skin was an unfamiliar shade of pink, everywhere but around her eyes, which were decidedly
not red-rimmed behind her glasses. “Oh Mr. Ramsey,” she said. “Aren’t you nice to
come.” She walked unsteadily to Ben, raised herself up on her tiptoes, and kissed
him on the cheek.

Ben tried not to betray his surprise at the gesture, which was completely out of character
with the severe, taciturn woman he knew. “How are you doing, Edith?”

Edith gave an abrupt nod of her head. “I’m doing well. A few people are here with
me. You met Jo.”

Ben nodded.

“Come on in. Have a glass of wine with us. My friend Sara brought a cake that’s delicious.”

The expression on her face was placid, almost…relieved. The loss of her husband did
not seem to be weighing on her heart this evening. Ben noted, from the sounds of laughter
in the other room, that the atmosphere was closer to that of a party than a wake.
“I can’t stay, Edith. I do have an important question for you, though. Could you spare
a minute?”

“For you. Of course,” said Edith. She indicated one of the straight-back chairs in
the living room and she sat down on the other and looked at him expectantly.

“This is about Nelson. His death.”

“What about it?” Edith asked.

“It appears that Nelson may have been killed by someone related to him.”

Edith seemed unfazed by this information. “I know. Rusty told me that. I told him
it wasn’t me.” She smiled at her own pleasantry.

“I mean a blood relation,” said Ben. “Because of the DNA evidence. As far as blood
relations went, he had only one sister and his nephew, right? No other children, or
siblings…? No skeletons in the family closet, if you know what I mean?”

Edith rocked back in the chair, pursing her lips and raising her eyebrows.

“Edith?” he said.

“The police have already asked me all this stuff,” she said bluntly. “Earlier today.
I told them all I knew.”

Ben looked at her keenly. The wine had loosened her normally rigid manner. He had
the impression that she was suppressing something that she wanted to say. “You and
I have always been able to speak very frankly, Edith. It’s important to me that we
speak frankly now. In fact, it’s a matter of life and death. For someone I care deeply
about. And I promise, I would keep any confidence. This would fall under attorney-client
privilege. You know you can trust me. Is there something else? Something you didn’t
tell the police?”

To Ben’s amazement, tears came to the old woman’s eyes. He had never seen tears in
those steely eyes, even when she’d learned that Lazarus was vindicated. Perhaps he
had misjudged the depth of her feeling for Nelson. “I’m sorry,” Ben said. “I didn’t
mean to imply that Nelson…well, that there was any…wrongdoing on his part.”

Edith shook her head. “No.” She gazed at Ben with an almost tender expression on her
face. Then she said, “You were the only one. The only one who helped me. The only
one who believed me about Lazarus. If it weren’t for you…”

Ben raised his hands as if to ward off her praise. “It’s okay. Really,” he said.

Edith frowned and seemed to be considering what to do. Finally, she said, “I don’t
know of anything, for a fact. Not for a fact.”

Ben stared at her. “Idle speculation will do. Anything.”

Edith raised her eyebrows. “This is just a…suspicion I once had.”

Ben held his breath.

Edith twisted her worn, scratched wedding band on her ring finger. “When we were married
a few years, I’m pretty sure Nelson cheated on me. She was young and pretty and…bored,
I guess. I don’t know for the life of me why else she would have lowered herself.
He thought I didn’t know about it, but I did. Wives have a way of knowing. I just
didn’t say anything. I hoped it would blow over and it did. She left town, and it
seemed like that was that. But then, when he was a teenager, her son came back. The
minute I saw that kid, I knew. He’s the image of Nelson as a young man. I don’t think
Nelson even realized it. We never do see ourselves as we really are, do we? Anyway,
I’m not saying he’s the one who killed Nelson. I mean, why would he? But if you want
to know…”

Ben stared at her. “Nelson had a son?” he said. “Who?”

C
han rummaged around, first in the trunk of the Mercedes and then under the hood of
Kelli’s car. Then he returned to the driver’s seat. Using a screwdriver and a pair
of pliers, he fiddled with wires under the steering wheel until the engine suddenly
roared to life. He sat back with a look of satisfaction on his face. “There we go,”
he said. “Hey, I’m pretty good.” He turned the car in a K-turn so that it bumped off
the road and came to rest, idling on the edge of the pond’s bank.

Tess looked over at him. Chan was gazing across the water. Tess followed his gaze,
which scanned the pond, quiet but for the call of the marsh birds that wheeled out
over its surface. “You know, I should have thrown Nelson in there,” he said. “None
of this would have happened. I mean, this business with you and your kid. But I panicked.
He came to the paper and confronted me. I said I couldn’t talk there and that I would
meet him here, where it was more private. But after I killed him, I didn’t want to
bury him here on my property. I was afraid someone would find him.” Chan shook his
head. “So I tried to bury him at the campground. That was stupid. I wasn’t thinking
clearly.

“There’s no excuse for it except that he took me by surprise, telling me how I was
his son, and how he knew it was me, not Lazarus, who had killed your sister. He said
that Lazarus had always tried to blame me, but he never believed him. He threatened
Lazarus for even daring to breathe such an outrage, but, what do you know, it turned
out to be true.” Chan chuckled, but without pleasure. “Nelson offered to protect me.
Hah,” Chan barked. “Another father to protect me. That’s rich. I wonder what this
one’s protection would have cost me. He’d probably want to get paid in money rather
than blow jobs. But you never know. I wasn’t about to find out.”

Chan sighed. He turned to Tess and spoke earnestly, with something resembling regret
in his cold, gray eyes. “I want you to know that I have nothing against you personally,”
he explained. “I just don’t have a lot of options. If your son hadn’t looked in my
car and seen Nelson…if I hadn’t panicked…I don’t know. The day I found your sister
in that gardener’s shed…I should have walked away from her. I should have.” Chan shook
his head. “But when I saw that it was her, the desire for revenge just got the better
of me.”

Even in the midst of her revulsion, her fear, Tess noted the strangeness of the word
he chose. Not lust. Or frenzy. Revenge. On Phoebe? Chan didn’t even know Phoebe. Why
would he take revenge on her?

“I figured Lazarus would be blamed,” Chan went on. “The pervert. He did take her in
the first place. Probably meant to kill her. Anyway, I should never have come back
to this town,” he said. “And now…” His voice trailed off. Then he looked at her. “I
need to get rid of you and this car. Even if your kid gets away, they’ll think he’s
lying. That pond just seems like the best solution.”

Tess followed his gaze back to the placid surface of the pond.

“It’s called a pond, but it’s pretty deep,” he observed.

The terror in Tess’s eyes was more eloquent than words. Her heart shriveled in her
chest. She started trying to plead, to protest, but all that came out from behind
the tape were muffled noises.

“No use dragging this out,” said Chan. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t believe that,
but I am. I’m really sorry.” He did not look at her when he said it.

He released the parking brake and put the car into park. Then he reached his hands
toward Tess’s neck. She thought he was about to strangle her and she pressed herself
up into the space where the seat met the car door. Chan smiled and shook his head
at the misunderstanding. He untied the woolen scarf at her neck and tugged it free.
Then he rolled the scarf up from the narrow end, until he had a roll about the size
of a coffee can. He leaned over and shoved the rolled scarf under the brake pedal.
“There,” he said. “We don’t want you to halt the march of progress,” he said. He rolled
the windows up tight and opened the driver’s-side door. “It won’t take too long to
sink,” he said, throwing the gearshift into neutral. “Just let it take you,” he advised.

Then he slid from the driver’s seat and slammed the car door behind him. Slowly, Kelli’s
Honda began to roll forward, down the bank. Tess tried to scream, but the only sound
she could make was a gargled moan. She rubbed her wrists together frantically behind
her back, trying to get free. Her chest was heaving and even though the car was still
aboveground, she felt as if all the air around her had been sucked away. She pressed
herself back against the seat, planting her feet under the dash, as if she could somehow
halt the forward motion, but the front of the car was angled down and it was rolling.
Rolling down into the water as Chan applied his shoulder to the task, pushing the
car from behind. She saw the top of the hood start to descend toward the water. NO,
she tried to scream. Oh please God, NO. But the car was tilting now, and there was
no sound inside the car except for the sucking of the water as Kelli’s Honda floated
out onto the water’s surface and hung there. And then slowly began to sink.

Erny crouched in a huge, black knothole that formed a hollow in a tree trunk, made
himself as small as he possibly could, and wished with all his might that Leo was
here. If Leo was here he would jump on that Chan guy and bite him with his big sharp
teeth until the guy was begging Erny to call Leo off. But he could beg all he wanted.
Erny would not call him off. He’d make that guy let his mother go and then he’d tell
Leo to keep on biting him and biting him until the cops came. With Leo by his side,
everything would be all right, and his mother would be safe and they would all go
home. But Leo wasn’t by his side. Erny was alone.

Although he hadn’t been able to hear her voice, he understood the words his mother
had said when she’d spotted him hiding in the trees. Run. Get away. And he’d recognized
the look she was giving him. It was that look she always gave him when she was really
serious about something. That look that said she really meant it. He knew enough to
obey.

But he didn’t know where to run to, and he didn’t want to leave her behind. What if
that guy hurt her or…he couldn’t think about the rest. You have to run, he thought.
Ma said to get away. Erny’s stomach churned as he thought about plunging into the
woods, not having any idea where he was going. It was getting dark and there might
be wild animals or vampires or…

He took a deep breath and reminded himself of something important. If he could find
his way back to the road, maybe he could get help. There might be somebody there who
could help him and his mother. The thought of that possibility made him feel a little
less shaky. He knew he had to do it. He peeked around the tree’s huge trunk but he
could no longer see them.

Erny did not know why the man was doing all these things, but he did know that this
was the same bad man who had locked him away in that dark, stinky shed. And now, after
his mother found him and got him out, the guy had his mother as a prisoner. You have
to run now, Erny thought. Do it now. You have to go!

Erny screwed his courage up and inched away from the shelter of the gaping knothole.
Then, with a burst of crazy, fear-driven energy, he took off at a run. He didn’t know
where he was heading. He heard strange noises as he ran in a zigzag path around the
trees, scuffling through a carpet of dead leaves as he plunged on into the woods.
Several times he tripped over ropy roots and nearly went down, but then he caught
himself and kept running. He didn’t know where he was running to, or when he was supposed
to stop, but he kept going anyway. It seemed as if he went up one rocky slope and
down another, over and over, the trees a chainlike blur of stinging branches and gray
bark. Erny ran until he was out of breath and his heart felt ready to burst and he
felt like he was completely lost.

And then, just when he was sure that he would die right here in these woods, he saw
a light up on the embankment ahead of him. He thought it might be the moon, but it
was brighter than the moon, and besides, he thought he recognized the sound of a car
engine passing by. He clambered up the embankment and through a row of trees he saw
that the light, which he had spotted and followed like a star, hung from a pole over
the front gate of the farm. The road! He had managed to make it all the way to the
road. Yes! He pumped his fist in the air. He had found his way out.

But now what? He leaned out over the shoulder of the macadam and looked up and down.
There were no lights, no houses as far as he could see. Now, which way to run? From
somewhere deep in the Whitman farm, he heard the sound of a car’s engine roar. It’s
him. He’s coming after me! Erny’s head swiveled as he looked both ways, trying to
pick which way to run. Then, randomly, he decided, and tore off along the edge of
the road to the right, away from the gate, his elbows pumping as he gasped for breath.

Suddenly, up ahead, coming down the road in his direction, he saw a car. A car with
a driver. Someone who could help him. Erny could see nothing but headlights, but headlights
were enough. He darted out into the street, waving his arms over his head. “Help,”
he cried. “Help me! Please help me!” Too late he realized that he had startled the
driver. That he shouldn’t have jumped out into the car’s path.

There was a horrible screeching of brakes. Erny was frozen in the headlights, too
paralyzed by his own fear to jump out of the way. The car swerved toward the shoulder
of the road and then bumped and jounced to a stop, narrowly missing a tree.

Erny approached the tan-colored car cautiously, afraid the driver was going to scold
him for sending him off the road. Part of him wanted to run away, but then he remembered
his mother, still with that man. He knew he had to be brave. The driver, a thin man
in a gray coat, opened the car door, got out of the car, and stood up. He put one
bony hand on the roof of his sedan and looked around. Then he spotted Erny, crouched
by the side of the road, shivering.

“Mister, I need help,” Erny said to the driver. “It’s an emergency.”

“Come over here where I can see you,” said the stranger.