Forbidden

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Eighteen

  TELEVISION CREWS ARRIVED FASTER than a summer storm. Gathering at the Jayquith estate, they pressed their faces against the high cast-iron fence and crept under the circling evergreens, hoping to find a way in.

  The closed-circuit cameras that recorded movements along the drive reflected faces greedy with excitement. Crowds who habitually gathered at major house fires and bloody car accidents quickly materialized. People who thrived on the trouble and agony of strangers mingled as if at a garden party, hoping something terrible had happened.

  A tragedy complete with beauty and romance was revealing itself. They were reveling in it. No stranger at the gate cared about Annabel. They just wanted a big, gory share of the action.

  Daniel had spent his life stared at by people lusting to see him cry one more time; people hoping his mother would have a nervous breakdown in public. People wanted to be sure that the rich and famous got hurt as deeply as the poor and anonymous.

  Oh, Annabel, thought Daniel. I was pretending you and I could get away from this. We’d be partners in escape. What has happened to you? Unless Hollings is a brilliant actor, he’s afraid. His daughter is missing, and he’s not in control. Money to buy the world but not enough money to know where you are and if you’re safe.

  Annabel, where are you?

  Hollings Jayquith stared at the closed-circuit TV screen. “Theodora announced it,” he said numbly. “What’s the matter with her? A kidnapper buying silence wants silence. If this gets broadcast on television, Annabel is dead.”

  Annabel dead? Daniel had been haunted by one death for a decade. Was another to be with him forever? One laughing girl—dead?

  Hollings Jayquith paced. He circled the telephones several times. This was a man accustomed to being in charge the way only dictators of small countries can be in charge. Dictators of small countries can order murders, thought Daniel. But do they hurt their own daughters? What is really going on here?

  What if she was kidnapped by somebody else? Daniel asked himself. What if they called The Camp to speak to me? “Which phone can I use?” he asked Mr. Jayquith. Daniel would like privacy for his phone call, but nothing in this house would be private. He might as well be monitored in person. He dialed The Camp.

  Daniel’s mother answered in her sweet voice. “Daniel, I don’t know where you are. It isn’t nice to worry me.”

  I’m twenty-two, Mother. I’ve lived away from home since ninth grade. “I’m … in Connecticut,” he said, postponing the name Jayquith. “Mother, a few hours ago, I got a phone call at The Camp. I have to know if there was a follow-up.” He took a deep breath. “Annabel Jayquith has apparently been kidnapped. Somebody telephoned and told me to stay off the networks with our announcement or they’d kill her.”

  “That black-haired viper who’s always in the magazines?” said his mother. “Why would I care if a Jayquith dies?”

  “Mother, we’re always in the magazines, too.”

  “We don’t have parties in French mansions calculated to snag the world’s attention and show off our cleavage. We’re living quietly and reasonably at The Camp planning campaigns.”

  In Daniel’s memory, his mother had never been reasonable. He said, “Mother, were there more phone calls?”

  “For you?” She was still very sweet. Even calling Annabel a viper she had been sweet.

  “Yes, for me.” He hung onto his courtesy. Otherwise she would hang up on him.

  “No. Nobody has called. What possible connection could you have developed with Annabel Jayquith anyway?”

  “We met at the charity ball in the Egyptian Room. I’ve gotten to know her. Somebody found that out.”

  “Gotten to know?” said his mother, as if these were disgusting swear words. “You’ve gotten to know the daughter of your father’s murderer? What does gotten to know mean?”

  He debated how to answer that. He wasn’t sure himself what it meant. “Mother, listen to me. I don’t want Annabel killed.”

  In a chilly voice, his mother said, “I didn’t want Madison killed, did I?”

  His hair prickled.

  The lake was silent, cold, and deep. Had Catherine inveigled Annabel off the deep end? Was Annabel’s black hair swirling at the bottom of the lake while his mother rocked on the porch and smiled? Was his own mother’s voice the whispered tremolo on the phone?

  “You need to come home now, Daniel,” said his mother.

  Whoever had murdered his father had also half murdered his mother. Taken the goodness and the light out of her, left her bitter and obsessed and easily crumpled. Yes, he needed to go home now. Oh dear God, he thought, what’s happening? Please don’t let my mother have done anything … please let Annabel be all right … please, please … Formless prayers filled his head. He thought of the pennies he had given Annabel. We shouldn’t have wasted our wishes on true love or revenge. We should have wished for long and safe lives.

  Daniel set the phone down. “I have to go home,” he said.

  “And accomplish what?” said Mr. Jayquith.

  He couldn’t betray his mother to Hollings Jayquith.

  Annabel, where are you? Send me a message. I’ll catch the thought!

  Emmie ran into the room.

  Annabel kidnapped. It was impossible. Kidnapping had been a Wythefield in-joke. Whenever a particularly ugly boy appeared at a social event on the campus, somebody was sure to mutter cruelly, “Annabel’s kidnapper.” Or, if the boy was particularly adorable, “Hey, Annabel. There’s a kidnapper for you.”

  Annabel had been very angry when she left Emmie and Alex in the Jeep. It had not been intelligent of Hollings Jayquith to call Daniel’s family pathetic. Mr. Jayquith, when he telephoned Emmie to ask if she’d heard from Annabel, had been hoping the “kidnap” was an extended and stupid joke.

  Let it be Daniel and Annabel gone off the deep end with love, Emmie prayed. Because if it’s real, I know who has to be involved.

  She fought the weakness of tears.

  Spread around the vast white living room, like snipers caught in the open, were four furious people. Mr. Jayquith, Mrs. Donavan, Mr. Thiell, and Daniel. No Theodora and no sign of the sudden cousin.

  Daniel was wrecked. His shirt was out, his hair sticking up, his face hot and red. His hands were knotted at his sides.

  Hollings Jayquith, from his twitching eyes to his pacing feet, was frantic.

  “Now, Daniel,” Mr. Thiell was saying briskly, like a teacher with a difficult child, “you don’t even know Annabel.”

  There was some truth to that. Those two had skipped getting to know each other. They had gone straight to Love.

  “Daniel,” said Mr. Thiell, “fond of you as I am, and much as I respect my son’s choices in friends, it is impossible to take seriously the accusations of a boy who plays tennis with the girl whose father he says killed his. You’re the one with explanations to make! Where have you put Annabel? What was this call to your mother? Let’s hear from you, Daniel.”

  “Daniel wouldn’t hurt Annabel,” said Emmie.

  The men were irritated that Emmie would intrude on their conversation. They glared at her.

  “He loves her. She loves him. I could tell. It was in their eyes and their walk and the way they held hands.”

  Mr. Thiell and Mr. Jayquith rolled their eyes.

  “Emmie,” said Mr. Thiell, “I’m very fond of you. We’re so proud to have your sister in our family. But touching as weddings are, there is no such thing as true love. Certainly not when the two involved have known each other a matter of minutes. I assume Daniel is using Annabel.”

  “I am not using her,” said Daniel.

  No. The girl being used is me, thought Emmie. The answers are sitting in the Jeep. “It’s Alex,” she said dully. The lead weight in her voice stopped them better than clanging cymbals. “That’s not his real name.”

  How many years would she weep over this? She had let onto their grounds and into their homes the very person who had kidnapped her
best friend. She had known early on that he was false, and let it go by.

  And for what? For a tennis partner.

  “His name is Scott Alexander, not Alexander Scott. I read it off his driver’s license. He’s not anything he says he is.”

  Face it. She hadn’t let Alex pretend to like her, or pretended herself, just to have a tennis partner. She had wanted romance and happy endings. She had wanted to be what Annabel was. Beautiful and surrounded by admirers. She hated herself for wanting these things so much she didn’t care if they were trumped up.

  Kidnappings were not romantic. They did not have happy endings. Annabel would be killed.

  Kidnappers were not kind. They didn’t care how much it hurt nor how long it lasted. What pain or personal assault would Annabel endure before her life ended? What terror would her soul and body face before death came like a gift?

  My fault, thought Emmie Pearse.

  “I thought he wanted my money,” said Emmie. When she finished these sentences, she would never want to talk again. She could feel the end of her voice, a few syllables away. “But he didn’t even want my money.”

  Had she really started to love Alex, in so short a time? She hoped Mr. Jayquith would hurt Alex, hurt him badly badly badly.

  Maybe the pain of this would kill her, too; they would have a double funeral for her and for Annabel.

  He didn’t even want my money, she thought, let alone me. I was nothing but the door to Annabel. “He’s in the Jeep,” said Emmie.

  Mr. Thiell was out of the room in a heartbeat. Mr. Thiell’s heart was probably the only one still beating anyway. He flung open the big white doors and Emmie caught a glimpse of Alex. Alex, shocked. Alex, slammed back against the wall by Mr. Thiell’s bulk. Alex, trying to shout her name.

  Emmie! out came the word, half-strangled, half-smothered.

  Mr. Thiell kicked the door shut.

  The music practice room was entirely empty. Nor was there a window. That left the basement.

  Annabel knew cellars only by repute. She certainly had never had reason to go in one. It would be filled with spiders and grim, dark, horrible corners and maybe rats or snakes. What’s worse? she said to herself. Rats and snakes and spiders or getting blown up?

  She actually had to think about that one, and then laughed at herself. Getting blown up is worse, so go down those stairs and check out the cellar.

  There would be no other way out of the cellar, either. She could sit against the doors here in a relatively clean and unfrightening hallway, writing desperately until her lighter died, waiting until she herself died.

  She wanted to talk to Daniel about light and dark. About primitive people making the first try at comprehending the world. There was such rhythm to the world. While earth remaineth, said the Bible, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

  How comforting. In primitive circumstances you needed to hear that there was a cycle, you would come through on the other side, day would always follow night.

  To Daniel she could say, I know why the ancients worshipped the sun. Dark, complete dark, is so terrible. So awful. But there is something even more terrible than dark. Wondering if the people who love you put you in there.

  She opened the cellar doors, flashed her lighter quickly enough to see clear steps down to a cement floor, closed the lighter, and went down in the dark. She was just as terrified as she had been the first moment in the dark. Perhaps strange places were always scary, no matter how old you were, no matter how much experience you had.

  The cellar was vast. It spread horribly on and on, no doubt beneath the entire stage and auditorium, and perhaps undiscovered building wings as well. It was filled with unknown pieces of large shadowy equipment: Furnaces, she supposed, things to heat with. It was silent as a tomb.

  My tomb, she thought.

  She came upon a set of steps, wide cement steps going up to a strange flat-lying set of double doors. A bulkhead door, through which to get huge things into the cellar. It was secured by a long steel bar threaded through several large metal hands.

  The lighter died.

  Annabel clung to the tiny plastic cylinder. She loved the lighter. The lighter had been her only friend and companion. The total dreadful extent of the darkness swirled around her. There was so much more dark down here! It went so far! As if the cellar really extended to the Underground, the Underworld. As if the costumes above her might slide off their hangers, slither down the stairs, and engulf her in their slippery, forgotten personalities.

  She wept in the dark. She let go of the worthless lighter and put her hand to her face. Dusty ancient spiderwebs swirled against her skin.

  Theodora arrived amid squealing sirens and screaming tires. She rushed in, distraught but still smashingly effective. Her hair was in place and her earrings were breathtaking. Even Daniel, who noticed jewelry for the first time when he touched Annabel’s earrings, was struck by the size and importance of Theodora’s trademark.

  Theodora was followed by her clone.

  Daniel had heard nothing of Jade and was temporarily distracted. Jade was eerily similar to Theodora, but she was less. A watered-down Theodora. Not brass nor bronze. More like a recyclable soda can.

  Jade caught Daniel’s eye and came over to him. She touched him in the way he most loathed: covetously, as if he were a fine car or sable coat that needed to be stroked before purchase.

  Daniel stepped back. He could not suppress a shudder. Jade’s eyes turned as blank as a painted mannequin’s and she walked out of the room. Theodora hardly noticed. She cried, “My poor Annabel! Hollings, have you heard anything more? She has to be all right! We can’t lose her! Who is doing this?”

  The phone rang.

  Hollings grabbed it, and this time flicked the controls so that it came over the stereo speaker, and they could all listen.

  But no speech came over the telephone. No words. Nothing human. Only hot gloating breathing. A purposeful thrust of breath, like an alligator in a swamp.

  Daniel’s hair prickled. A primitive hatred came right through the phone line.

  Mrs. Donavan said, “Very interesting. Everyone wait here a moment please.” She left the room.

  Daniel had no interest in waiting. He had been thrown off by the arrival of Theodora, by the presence of the creepy little clone, and now he had to follow up on this Alex thing. Who was Alex? Who could have hired him? What could possibly be his purpose in kidnapping Annabel? Mr. Thiell must be interrogating Alex even now, perhaps finding out where Annabel was, and Daniel was standing around listening to heavy breathers.

  He left the room swiftly, Emmie hard on his heels.

  “He’s nothing,” said Mr. Thiell. But he was holding a gun on Alex. “I’ll dispose of him.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Emmie. “You can’t dispose of people.”

  “He was just a gate-crasher,” said Mr. Jayquith impatiently. “He wanted your money, Emmie. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “I have everything to do with this,” said Alex evenly, “and so does J Thiell. My brother—”

  Mr. Thiell actually lifted the gun, as if he intended to shoot. Daniel’s fist smashed down on Mr. Thiell’s grip, knocking the gun to the floor. Kill the person who could tell them where Annabel was and why? Daniel felt as if he were wading through a murky rerun of his father’s murder; people would keep killing people so that secrets went on being secrets.

  “Listen to me, Daniel!” said Alex. “J Thiell killed my brother, Alan Alexander. My brother was a reporter. He was assigned to research Senator Ransom’s murder. His paper wanted an in-depth story on the tenth anniversary. He accomplished what nobody else did. He found out the truth. I have my brother’s backup disk with his notes. J Thiell killed your father, Daniel. J Thiell killed Senator Ransom.”

  Mr. Thiell merely looked exasperated. His gun lay on the floor. His eyes fastened on it, but he did not attempt to stoop down to get it. He was too slow for that. T
wo young men would get there first.

  “No,” said Daniel. “My father was putting together a dossier on Jayquith. He told my mother that.”

  “On Theodora Jayquith, not Hollings,” Alex said. “Your father was having Theodora followed because she always went where J Thiell was and she left a much more visible trail than J Thiell. Theodora, the world’s top investigative journalist, never investigated her own partner. She never knew it, but all this time, all over the world, the man she loved was evil.”

  Emmie sucked in her breath. “Partner!” she said. “What was the evil? What was the senator going to expose?”

  “J Thiell’s cause. The environment. Green space.”

  Daniel had been thinking of drugs, of money laundering, of arms sales, or nuclear weapons dealing. Those were evil. But—green space?

  “He didn’t buy those factories,” explained Alex. “They were his all along. J Thiell hasn’t bothered to dispose of toxic waste ever. He just stuck it in the ground. The green space stuff, the whole wildlife preserve thing, is nonsense. Just a cover.”

  Emmie tried to figure out what he was talking about.

  “Don’t you see? It saved him tons of money to skip disposal costs. And then he took the toxic wastes of anybody who’d pay him enough. All he did was stick it in basements, bury it in meadows. Years and years now. And when people seemed to be gaining on him, he came up with the preserve idea, the high fences, the barbed wire, no humans ever. He even had charity balls to raise money for it.” Alex laughed grimly. “For himself, really. Inspecting the records of that so-called charity should be enough to put him in prison.”

  Daniel turned to stare at J Thiell. The man continued merely to look annoyed. If Alex’s accusations meant a thing to him, it didn’t show. Daniel could not get interested in green spaces and corrupt charities. “Why would J Thiell take Annabel?” said Daniel.

  “Because,” said Alex, “if my brother found out about the waste sites, so could other people. If you investigate my brother’s murder, the trail leads to your father’s murder, Daniel. And don’t forget why your father was shot. It was because he was going to expose an entire industry. What industry? That’s the key. What was Senator Ransom going to say that morning? Whoever killed your father still doesn’t want his industry investigated.”