She folded the page and shoved it back inside her bag. Rachel might still be nearby. If she could track her down and get her alone again, she could learn more.
She reached the bedroom door to find Tabitha rounding the end of the hall. Her niece approached, carrying a bundle of clothing in her arms like a wedding gift.
Mallory tried to conceal her disappointment. “Hey there, Tabitha.”
“All settled in, Aunt Mallory?” Tabitha asked. “I brought you some fresh clothes to wear.”
It was a sky-blue costume that matched the garments Tabitha and Nimrod wore: simple drawstring pants, shirt, and the flowing cape. All of the material was lightweight cotton. She had brought a pair of black slippers, too. There were multiple, identical sets of the outfit.
“Thank you, but I have a change of clothes in my backpack,” Mallory said.
“Sanctuary rules, Aunt Mallory.” Tabitha clucked her tongue like a cheerful but obstinate grandmother. She piled the clothing on the dresser. “We don’t allow residents or guests to wear clothing from the outside.”
Is this kid serious? From the outside? As if I came here wearing something radioactive.
Mallory’s inclination was to press the issue further. She recognized what this clothing offer was all about: control. A subtle but meaningful attempt at indoctrination. First, convince a guest to dress like you; next, convince them to think like you.
But she would go along with it. She needed to gain their trust and ultimately, loosen their tongues. If that meant playing by their strange rules, so be it. All that mattered was digging up the truth.
“I estimated we’re about the same size, you and I,” Tabitha said, looking Mallory up and down. “This is an extra set from my closet.”
“Why blue?” Mallory picked up the shirt, hung it against her chest. It looked as if it would fit her fine. “Is there a meaning behind the colors?”
“Blue represents peace, Aunt Mallory,” Tabitha said, head cocked, as if explaining a basic concept to a slow learner. “The sky is blue; the sea is blue. Both are calming aspects of our world, Father teaches. Close family ought to wear blue to represent the peacefulness of a united family.”
“And the Brides wear white because? White represents purity?”
“The perfect purity to which the Brides should aspire, yes.” Tabitha grinned. “You’re a fast learner, Aunt Mallory.”
“Father wears black,” Mallory said.
“Black is the color of authority. Father has absolute authority over all of Sanctuary. Father reigns supreme and sees all. He always wears black to remind us of this truth.”
“I understand,” Mallory said, delicately. “But I still don’t understand why the Brides aren’t allowed to speak.”
“The Brides observe silence because they have nothing to say.” Impatiently, Tabitha indicated the set of clothes she had brought. “Would you like to dress? I’ll step out for a moment to give you privacy.”
“Who are the Brides?” Mallory asked. “Why are they here? Where are their families?”
“Why do you bear these concerns about the Brides?” Tabitha’s eyes narrowed to sharp points. “Did something happen with Rachel?”
“I’m only seeking to understand,” Mallory said. “All of this is new to me.”
“We are their family,” Tabitha said. “The women join us of their own free will and remain here voluntarily because it is Sanctuary, because Father provides them the water of truth and the food of hope.”
“All right.” It was a maddening conversation that brought her no closer to understanding what was going on. Shrugging, Mallory picked up the clothes off the dresser. Tabitha waited outside the bedroom while Mallory put on the outfit.
After dressing, she examined herself in the mirror. She looked like one of them, all right. The family resemblance she shared with Tabitha and Nimrod was undeniable.
“You could be one of us, Aunt Mallory.” Tabitha smiled at her from the doorway.
Please, Mallory thought. Hell would freeze over first.
Tabitha stepped forward and reached for Mallory’s hand.
“Can you take me on a tour?” Mallory asked.
20
Booted from Sanctuary, Ben drove back into Ratliff proper, muttering to himself as his SUV bounced across the bumpy country roads.
Frankly, he couldn’t believe the turn of events.
Stuck in this backwater town while Mallory voluntarily—voluntarily!—agreed to stay at the isolated compound of some bizarre cult, headed by a seriously freakish guy who thought he was the second coming of Jesus. Before they had left Atlanta that morning, Ben had privately forecast how this little expedition to Ratliff might turn out, and he had never foreseen anything remotely like this happening. This was like something out of a bad B-movie.
God, Mallory drove him crazy. She was so darned bullheaded sometimes.
But he loved her so much he had to help her in whatever way he could. He didn’t think there was any major conspiracy brewing about her sister (God rest her soul), but he had learned the hard way with Mallory that she often had to learn things on her own before she would accept unwelcome information. That trait made her a great reporter—but sometimes, difficult to live with.
He wanted and fully intended to marry her, if she’d have him. She was a genuine force of nature. Driven to the point of recklessness. Fiercely protective of those she counted as friends and family. Beautiful but indifferent about her attractiveness, keenly aware that in the end, all that mattered was the quality of her character, the values she held dear, and whether she protected her loved ones.
He arrived back in downtown Ratliff, if you could call it a downtown, with a different perspective on the place. He was no longer planning to breeze through and forget all about it. He had to stay there overnight, or longer. He had to dig in and figure out what this little town might be hiding from him.
Why had Thelma May been so hostile toward them? What had Cecil been willing to share? Why had Chief Norwood given them directions to Sanctuary?
There was a story there worth exploring, but he wasn’t convinced it revolved around Mallory’s lost sister, though he’d never share those thoughts with Mallory. He believed the strangeness of Sanctuary might be a story of its own.
His first order of business was finding a place to stay. The Ratliff Motel, a one-story, L-shaped brick building occupying the corner of Ratliff Road and Whispering Oaks Drive, had a faded “Vacancy” light pulsing with the cadence of a dying man’s heartbeat.
Probably, there’s always vacancies, Ben thought. The old-fashioned design reminded him of the Bates Motel.
He swung his SUV into the small parking lot adjacent to the building. A late-model silver BMW X-5 was the only other vehicle in the lot, parked next to the administrative office. The BMW had Georgia tags.
He pushed open the door to the admin office and entered a stuffy, poorly lighted space. A wooden counter that rose as high as his abdomen held a cash register, a guestbook, and a tarnished silver bell. Rows of plastic key cards hung on the opposite wall. A color picture was thumb-tacked on the wall next to the bank of keys: a stunning Black woman wearing a two-piece bathing suit, the Jet Beauty of the Week heading atop the photo.
Seeing the picture resurrected fond teenage memories for Ben: flipping through Jet Magazine at his local barber shop while waiting for his turn in the chair, admiring pics of the lovely ladies. But this was a motel, not a barber shop, and the photo hanging in full view of guests seemed odd, if not downright inappropriate.
He tapped the bell on the counter. Faint light issued from a doorway beyond the front desk. Ben dinged the bell again.
“All right, all right,” someone grumbled from the back room. “I’m comin’, dammit, I’m comin’.”
A short, squat man waddled to the counter like a boar emerging from a den. He looked to be in his late forties, Ben’s age, with gray stubble peppering his broad face, and a receding hairline. He wore a white Sean John polo shirt bea
ring the Playboy symbol, the fabric strained at the seams due to his considerable midsection, and baggy olive-green khakis.
He rubbed his heavy-lidded eyes as if he’d just awakened from a nap. He gave Ben a skeptical look.
“Good afternoon, brother,” Ben said. “I’d like to rent a room for two nights.”
“Two nights, huh?” He flipped open a dog-eared book on his side of the counter. “Two nights, all right. What you in town for?”
“My lady friend is a guest at Sanctuary for the weekend.” Ben saw no reason to lie and wanted to gauge the guy’s reaction. “I’m hanging out in town in the meantime.”
“Uh-huh.” A flicker of curiosity gleamed in his brown eyes. He averted his gaze to his log. “Well, we got plenty of rooms, plenty of rooms. It’s a slow season here, uh-huh, slow time of year.”
“Is there ever a busy season?” Ben found it hard to imagine how this motel managed to stay in business at all.
“Ups and downs, man, ups and downs.” He squinted at Ben. “That’ll be fifty-five dollars a night, fifty-five, I take all major credit cards. Need to get your driver’s license, too, your state ID, uh-huh.”
“Sure.” Reaching for his wallet, Ben extended his hand. “Name’s Ben Whitfield. You are?”
“Earl Lewis.” Earl gave him a limp handshake. “Earl.”
“Sanctuary’s an interesting place, isn’t it?” Ben asked.
“Ain’t never been back there.” Earl didn’t meet Ben’s gaze, was focused on checking Ben’s credit card and ID. “I wouldn’t know nothin’ ‘bout it.”
This guy is lying through his teeth, Ben thought. But why?
“Apparently my lady friend has some kinfolk who live there.” Ben forced a chuckle. “She gets to stay overnight with the family guest pass, I suppose you could call it. But Father kicked me out, can you believe that? You ever seen him, this dude who calls himself Father?”
“Nope.” Shrugging, Earl swiped Ben’s credit card.
Ben drummed his fingers on the countertop. He nodded toward the photo pinned on the back wall.
“Jet Beauty, man.” Ben whistled. “Now that brings back memories, doesn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.” Earl cracked a hint of a smile and slid a key card across the desk. “I put you in room seven. Checkout’s at ten on Sunday. Ten o’clock, man.”
“Appreciate it, Earl.” Ben picked up the key. “Maybe I’ll see you around town.”
“Uh-huh.”
Whistling, Ben left the office.
Earl watched him leave, a frown settling deep into his thick jowls.
Then he picked up his cell and made a call.
21
The door to room seven hung open, a housekeeper’s supply cart parked on the sidewalk outside. Under normal circumstances, Ben might have waited to go inside until the worker finished—but these weren’t normal circumstances. Talking to Earl had agitated his antennae and he was willing to consider any source of potential clues.
Standing on the room’s threshold, he peered inside.
It was what he expected for fifty-five bucks per night. Weak yellow light issuing from an overhead fixture. Popcorn ceiling. Putrid green walls. Outdated patterned carpet. A lumpy looking king-size bed. A dusty flat-screen TV and other pieces of furniture that appeared as if they had been looted from a thrift store.
But he didn’t see the housekeeper on duty. He rapped on the door.
“Hello, anyone in here?” he asked.
The woman who came out of the bathroom was not what he expected. In her mid-twenties, she wore the standard blue housekeeping dress uniform: double-breasted front, A-line skirt, fitted waist. She was slender, with a flawless dark brown complexion, liquid amber eyes, full lips, and sculpted facial features. Her black hair was piled into a simple bun. She held a mop stick like a hockey goalie playing defense.
Ben’s breath snagged in his chest: the woman was stunning. He’d always felt like a lumbering idiot in the presence of attractive women.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry, I rented this room. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
She blinked at his intrusion. But she didn’t respond. She returned to the bathroom as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
Frowning, Ben shuffled inside and eased onto the tattered, upholstered chair beside the window. The chair groaned beneath his weight. He placed his iPhone on the end table and waited, tapping his knee.
He heard the housekeeper laboring: water gurgling, mop head snapping against the floor and bumping against walls. The smell of a lemon-scented disinfectant drifted out of the bathroom and infused the air. After several minutes, the woman emerged again, this time carrying the bucket and mop across the room.
She didn’t look at him or talk. He might as well have been a wax model in a museum.
“Does this room have Wi-Fi?” he asked. He was only trying to make small talk.
She paused. The name tag pinned to her uniform said, Leah.
“I forgot to ask the guy at the front desk,” Ben said. “I’m Ben, by the way, nice to meet you, Leah. I’ll be staying here a couple of nights probably.”
Leah shrugged, whether in response to his question or his comment he wasn’t sure.
“Do you speak English?” he asked. It might have been an insulting question, but her lack of response left him no alternative but to ask.
She gave him a brief, sad smile. Turning away, she headed outside and busied herself with the supply cart.
What the heck was going on? Did she think he was trying to hit on her? With her looks, she probably got approached often, but did that mean she had to ignore innocent attempts at basic courtesy?
The strange interaction reminded him of their encounter with the young woman they had seen at Sanctuary pruning the rose bushes. Despite several attempts they had been unable to elicit a verbal response from her, and Tabitha had said, “The Brides have nothing to say.”
This woman, Leah, didn’t live in Sanctuary, but her behavior was too odd to be coincidental.
She returned inside with a stack of fluffy white towels heaped in her arms. He asked her about a good place to eat locally, and as he expected by then she answered him with an indifferent shrug.
“I’ll get out of your way then,” he finally said.
When they had left Atlanta that morning, he’d no intention of spending the night in Ratliff and had no luggage to speak of that needed to be stored in the room. But he could have used a bite to eat.
Back in his truck, he drove to the only decent looking restaurant he could find in the Ratliff city limits: Church’s Chicken. He smiled wryly to himself as he pulled into the crowded parking lot. Ratliff was a food desert, like a lot of towns and neighborhoods inhabited primarily by low-income folks, offering mostly fast-food joints and limited grocery options. In his gentrified intown Atlanta neighborhood, you could find three organic grocery markets within a two-mile radius and a dizzying selection of dining choices, from sushi to vegan to Ethiopian and every cuisine in between.
Sitting at a corner booth, he ate fried chicken and French fries out of a paper tray and opened the Google Earth app on his phone. The image of the digitally rendered globe swerved into view. Ben wiped his fingers on a napkin and searched for Sanctuary’s street address.
Powered by satellite imagery, the app provided an aerial view of Ratliff, a town with less than five traffic lights; then it zoomed in closer to a forested expanse of rural property. He manipulated the view, trying to grasp the full scope of the compound’s layout.
Satellite images limited him to an overhead view of the mansion, a couple of smaller structures nearby, and then, to the north of the mansion, a larger rectangular building that looked like it might be a warehouse. A separate access road led to the facility.
He tried to use the Street View feature to get more detail, but it wasn’t available; not surprising considering Sanctuary’s remote location.
Still, what he’d found gave him something to chew on. Was the large building a church? Or somethin
g else?
22
As requested, Tabitha took Mallory on a tour of Sanctuary. Mallory looked and listened with intense attention, alert for details that could shed light on her sister’s fate, for anything that could prove they were lying about her. If these people were hiding something, she would uncover it in due time. She hadn’t spent a dozen years as a reporter for nothing, and while this wasn’t a story intended for the front page, it felt like the most important investigation of her life, as if everything she had experienced thus far had prepared her for this momentous undertaking.
“This is the South wing.” Tabitha kept her hand clasped in Mallory’s as they strode along the catwalk that bisected the mansion’s upper floor, their footsteps echoing off the hardwoods. At first, Mallory assumed Tabitha held her hand out of affection; but she was starting to suspect her niece was keeping her on the equivalent of a short leash, like a parent clutching a mischievous toddler’s hand as they traveled through a toy store.
“What’s in this wing?” Mallory asked. A pair of ornately carved French doors stood at the end of the catwalk; the doors were shut. “Is your bedroom in this wing?”
“Oh, no. I’m on the North side near your guest suite; my brother Nimrod has his own apartment where he tends to the dogs. Father alone dwells in the South wing.”
Of course, Father would have the entire wing of a mansion to himself. Go figure.
“A lot of space for one person, isn’t it?” Mallory asked.
“In this area, Father also provides special counseling to his flock.”
“Right.” Mallory tried to mask her sarcasm. “What sort of counseling?”
“Father possesses the gift of healing.” Tabitha spoke in a tone dripping with such solemnity she sounded phony, like a bad actress in a high school play. “That is why so many come to Sanctuary, and why so many decide to stay. He possesses the gift to heal whatever sickness ails you.”
The Quiet Ones Page 8