by Nora Roberts
“All right. I hope to Christ she found it out on the shoulder of Fifteen and that the kid dropped it while she was out there hitching.”
“That’s probably just what happened.” But she had grown cold. “Kids are careless. She probably didn’t notice it was missing until she was halfway to Florida.”
“Yeah.” But something in his gut wouldn’t let him believe it.
* * *
“It doesn’t have to be your best work,” Cam said, trying to hurry her.
“Everything has to be my best work.” With infinite care, Clare soldered the link together. She was rather pleased with the design, the slim silver band that widened into an oval. She would engrave Annie’s name there in big, bold script. If Cam didn’t stop distracting her with complaints.
He paced the garage, picking up tools and setting them down again. “I want to get out to her trailer before she takes off for the day.”
“All right, all right.” He was going to bitch if she took the time to file the solder joint down. Clare examined it and decided he’d just have to bitch. She didn’t pass out inferior work. “Don’t play with my calipers.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Blair came to the doorway sporting a pair of jogging shorts and a major league hangover.
“Clare’s making a bracelet.”
“Making a bracelet?” He threw up a hand against the light and was careful not to scowl. Scowling only made his head pound more severely. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning. Sunday morning.”
Cam glanced at his watch. “Ten after.”
“Oh, well then.” Blair made an expansive rolling motion with his arms and instantly regretted it.
“I’m on police business,” Clare told him while she searched through her engraving tools.
“Making a bracelet is police business?”
“Yep. If you’re just going to stand there, why don’t you make coffee?”
“We don’t have time,” Cam put in.
“We can take it with us.”
“I’ll buy you a goddamn gallon of coffee when we’re finished.”
“You need it now,” she said, settling on the tool. “You’re cranky.”
“I’m past cranky and working my way rapidly to pissed.”
“See?”
“Listen,” Blair began and put both hands on his head to keep it bolted to his shoulders. “Why don’t you two work this out, and I’ll just go back to bed?”
Neither of them bothered to glance over.
“How much longer?”
“Couple minutes.” The fine point skimmed into the silver. “If I’d had more time, I could’ve—”
“Clare, it’s shiny. She’ll love it.”
“I’m an artist,” she said, adding neat little flourishes with the engraving tool. “My work is my soul.”
“Oh, Christ.”
She bit her lip to stop the laugh and exchanged the tool for a polishing cloth. “There now. A bit primitive, but fine.”
“Take your soul out of the vise and let’s go.”
Instead, she picked up a file. “Five more minutes. I just have to smooth down the joint.”
“Do it in the car.” He unscrewed the vise himself.
“Remind me to mention your lack of appreciation for the creative process.” She spoke on the run as Cam pulled her out of the garage. “Let’s take my car. It’ll seem less official and more like a visit.”
“All right. I’ll drive.”
“Be my guest. The keys are in it.” She took the bracelet back, settled in the passenger seat, and began to file. “What will you do after you get the bracelet from her?”
He backed out of the drive. “Hope to God she can remember where she found it. Then I’ll call the Jamisons. They’ll have to identify it.”
“It must be awful for them. Not knowing where she is, how she is.”
If she is, Cam thought.
Annie’s trailer was on the edge of town, on a small, overgrown plot of land known as Muddy Ridge. No one knew why, since the soil was so thin and the rocks so plentiful that there hadn’t been any appreciable mud there since the summer of seventy-two, when Hurricane Agnes had hit.
But Muddy Ridge it was, and the scattering of trailers that shared it accepted the title with a kind of pride.
At this hour, on a Sunday, the only inhabitants out and about were a pair of slack-hipped, skinny dogs busy holding a pissing contest on the tires of a pickup. From one of the trailers came the slick, oily voice of a broadcast evangelist, selling God.
There was no mistaking Annie’s trailer. She had painted one side of it a bright purple with some paint she’d found in the dumpster behind the hardware store. The rest of it was a faded metallic green, with the exception of the steps Davey Reeder had recently repaired and which Annie had painted a violent yellow. The result was a visual rendering of indigestion, but Annie loved it.
“I remember the last time I was here,” Clare said. “It was just before Thanksgiving, when I was—oh—fourteen, fifteen, and I rode out with my mother to deliver some pumpkin pies.” She set the file down on the armrest between them. “Do you know what I love about this town, Cam? People take care of their Annies, and they don’t even think about it. They just do it.”
Clare slipped the bracelet into her pocket. They could hear Annie singing “Amazing Grace” inside the trailer. Her voice in the still morning air was haunting, and so much truer, purer, than the practiced rise and fall of the evangelist’s.
“Wait.” Clare put a hand on his arm before Cam could knock. “Let her finish.”
“ ‘I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see.’ ”
Cam knocked on the metal door. He noted that the screen had holes in it and made a mental note to have it repaired before summer. There were sounds of shuffling and murmuring inside before Annie opened the door, blinked, then beamed.
“Hello. Hello.” She had put on one blouse over another, and some of the buttons from the bottom one were pushed through the holes of the one on top. Her tennis shoes were neatly tied, and her arms and chest clinked with jewelry. “You can come in. You can come right on in and sit down.”
“Thank you, Annie.” Cam stepped through the doorway. The trailer was crammed with boxes and bags. The white Formica counter separating the kitchen and living space was covered with treasures—shiny rocks, plastic prizes from boxes of Cracker Jacks, empty bottles of perfume and Listerine.
The walls were alive with pictures that had been carefully cut from magazines. Springsteen rocked beside a kindly-faced Barbara Bush. Christie Brinkley flashed a winning smile next to a fading portrait of the Suprêmes in spit curls and pale lipstick.
They were her friends, her companions, from Princess Di to an anonymous model for clean, shiny hair.
“You can sit,” Annie told them. “Sit anywhere you want. I have some Cherry Smash and some Oreos.”
“That’s nice.” Clare chose a faded floral cushion while Cam ducked under a Mickey Mouse wind chime. “But you don’t have to bother.”
“I like company.” Annie arranged cookies in a circular pattern on a chipped plate, then poured the sweet cherry drink into three plastic cups. “Mrs. Negley came and brought me some books. I like to look at the pictures.” With the grace of habit, she moved around the boxes to serve the drinks. “You can have more.”
“This’ll be fine,” Cam told her. “Why don’t you sit down with us?”
“I have to get the cookies first. You’re always supposed to offer company something to eat. My mama said.” After setting the plate on a box, she settled. “Did you like the parade yesterday?”
“Yes.” Clare smiled at her. “I liked it very much.”
“The music was good. Good and loud. I wish we could have a parade every day. Afterwards I went to Reverend Barkley’s house. They had hamburgers and ice cream.”
“Do you remember seeing Clare at the parade, Annie?”
“Sure. I met her friends. You had a black fr
iend and a white friend. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, and you showed us your bracelets. Cam would like to see them, too.”
Obligingly, she held out her arm. “I like pretty things.”
“These are pretty.” He slid aside plastic, gold-plated links, and painted metal to examine the silver bracelet. “Where did you get this one?”
“I found it.”
“When did you find it?”
“Oh, sometime.” She smiled, twisting her wrist back and forth so that the bracelets jingled. “Before yesterday.”
Cam battled back impatience. “Did you have it the day I drove you home in my car? Do you remember the day we listened to Billy Joel on the radio?”
Annie’s eyes clouded, then brightened. “ ‘It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.’ I like that song. I know all the words.”
“Did you have the bracelet that day?”
“Yes, yes, indeed.” She ran her fingers lovingly over the letters. “I found it a long time before that. Before the roses were blooming and after the leaves came out.”
“Okay. Can you tell me where you found it?”
“On the ground.”
“Here, in town?”
She frowned. “No.” She remembered, but she couldn’t tell him about the secret place. No one was supposed to know about that. Uneasily, she pulled her arm back and reached for a cookie. “Just on the ground. See a pin, pick it up. I pick up lots of things. Do you want more to drink?”
“No, thank you.” Clare leaned forward to take her hand. “Annie, it could be important that you remember where you found this bracelet. I thought maybe because you liked it so much you might remember where. You must have been very happy when you found it.”
She squirmed in her chair and began to stutter a little, like a child called on to recite before the class. There was a faint ring of red around her mouth from the Cherry Smash. “I just found it somewhere. Somewhere or other. Finders keepers. I find lots of things. It’s okay to pick them up because people just drop them and leave them right on the ground.”
“All right.” It was obvious to Clare that they were only going to agitate her. “I like your pictures.”
Annie’s nervous hands stilled. “I put them up, and I have company all the time. But only people who smile. No, sir, no sad faces. I made a special book with pictures so I can look through it at nighttime.”
“I made something just today. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes.” Annie folded her hands politely, even though she would rather have talked about her pictures. “You make statues.”
Sometimes. “Miz Atherton says you make statues of naked people.”
Annie blushed and giggled. “Isn’t Miz Atherton funny?”
“She’s a riot,” Cam murmured. “Clare makes bracelets, too.”
“Really?” Annie’s eyes widened. “You do?”
Clare reached in her pocket. “Today I made this.”
“Oh.” Annie drew out the words into a sigh as she ran a gentle finger along the metal. “It’s pretty. It’s the prettiest ever.”
“Thank you. Do you see the letters?”
Annie bent closer and giggled. “A-N-N-I-E. Annie.”
“That’s right. Now look at this.” She took Annie’s arm again to hold the bracelets side by side. “This one is different. It says something different.”
Frowning, Annie studied both. “I don’t know.”
“This one doesn’t say Annie, but this one does. The first one doesn’t belong to you.”
“I didn’t steal it. My mama said it was bad to steal.”
“We know you didn’t steal it,” Cam said. “But I think I might know who it belongs to.”
“You want me to give it back.” Her mouth began to quiver. “It’s mine. I found it.”
“You can keep the one I made.” She calmed instantly, like a baby with a pacifier. “Like a present?”
“Yes, it’s a present, but it would help us if you would give us the other.”
Annie turned her head from side to side, humming under her breath as she considered. “Yours is prettier.”
“It’s yours.” Clare slipped it over her wrist. “See?”
Annie lifted her arm to watch the sunlight glint off the metal. “Nobody made me a bracelet before. Not ever.” She gave a little sigh as she slid Carly’s from her wrist. “You can have this one.”
“Annie.” Cam put a hand on her arm to get her attention. “If you remember where you found it, you come and tell me right away. It’s important.”
“I find lots of things. I find them all the time.” She smiled with her old, guileless eyes. “Do you want another cookie?”
“What are you going to do now?” Clare asked as they drove away from Annie’s trailer.
“Call the Jamisons.”
She reached out to touch his arm and knocked the metal file to the floor. “It’s too bad she couldn’t remember where she found it.”
“There’s no telling what she remembers. You were a big help, Clare. I appreciate it.”
“I wish we’d found the girl instead of the bracelet.”
“So do I.”
Clare turned to stare out of the window. “You don’t think you’re going to find her.”
“There’s no evidence—”
“I’m not talking about evidence.” She looked back. “I’m talking about instinct. I could see it in your face when you put the bracelet in your pocket.”
“No, I don’t think I’m going to find her. I don’t think anyone’s going to find her.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. In the driveway they got out of opposite sides of the car. She went to him, sliding her arms around his waist, laying her head on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you come in, let me fix you some coffee and a couple of eggs?”
“I like the thought of you cooking for me.”
“I guess I kind of like it myself.”
“I’ve got work, Slim.” He kissed the top of her head before he broke the embrace. “I’m going to have to settle for carry-out from Martha’s.”
“I’ll be around when you’re finished.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Clare waited until she had waved him off before turning to go into the house. She followed the sound of voices into the kitchen.
“I don’t like it,” Angie insisted. “When it happens that often, it’s deliberate.
“What?” Clare pushed through the door and studied the trio around the kitchen table. “Something going on?”
“Where’s Cam?” Angie countered.
“He’s going back to his office. Why?”
“Angle’s a little spooked.” Blair guzzled coffee and tried to clear his brain. The hangover was down to a miserable thud-bump-thud. “The phone rang last night.”
“The phone rang three separate times last night,” she corrected. “And each time I answered, whoever it was hung up.”
“Kids,” Clare decided and headed to the coffeepot.
“One kid, maybe.” Angie tapped her foot in agitation. “That kid across the street.”
“Ernie?” With a sigh, Clare leaned back against the counter and sipped her coffee. “Why would you think that?”
“The second time it happened, I got up. There was a light on in the top window of his house.”
“For God’s sake, Angie.”
“Yesterday at the parade, he was staring at you.”
“That’s it then. I guess we’ll have to drag him out in the street and shoot him.”
“Don’t take it lightly,” Jean-Paul told her. “The boy is trouble.”
“The boy is just that. A boy.”
“He’s toying with Satanism,” Jean-Paul insisted, and Blair choked on his coffee.
“What?”
“Ernie’s got a pentagram,” Clare said, “and Jean-Paul’s seeing demons.”
“I see a troubled, and perhaps dangerous, boy,” the Frenchman said tightly.
�
�Hold on.” Blair held up a hand. “What’s this about a pentagram?”
“An inverted pentagram.” Jean-Paul frowned over his coffee. “The boy wears it, flaunts it. And he watches Clare.”
Blair set his cup aside and rose. “Clare, I think you should talk to Cam about this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing to talk about. And God knows Cam has enough to do without adding demon-busting to the list. I’m going to work.” The screen slammed behind her.
“How much do you know about Satanism?” Blair asked Jean-Paul.
“Only what I read in the papers—enough to make me uneasy about this boy.”
“Tell him about the cat,” Angie insisted, glancing toward the garage.
“What cat?”
She leaned forward, hurrying on before Jean-Paul had a chance to explain. “Someone left a dead cat—a headless cat—outside the back door. Clare insists it was dragged there by some stray dog, but I don’t think so—it wasn’t mangled.” She sent an uneasy glance toward her husband. “Jean-Paul looked it over when he—when he got rid of it.”
“It was decapitated,” he told Blair. “Not mauled, as an animal might do. Beheaded.”
Nodding grimly, Blair rose. “Keep an eye on her. I need to make some calls.”
Chapter 20
“Why the hell didn’t she tell me?” Cam demanded when Blair sat across from him in the sheriff’s office.
“I don’t know. I wish I did.” Blair’s mouth was a thin line from tension. “I’d like to get a look at that kid, too. A good, long look.”
“I’ll deal with Ernie.”
“You might want to deal with this.” Blair tapped a finger on the fat file he’d brought along. “I went up to the newspaper in Hagerstown. Did a little digging in the morgue. And I called the Post, had them fax me some articles on Satanism. I think you’ll find it interesting reading.”
Cam flipped open the file and whistled through his teeth. “We’re a long way from D.C.”
“A lot of places are. It doesn’t stop this kind of crap from going on.”
Mutilated livestock, disemboweled house pets. Cam paged through the slick fax sheets, disgust surging in him. “We ran into this now and again when I was on the force. Ritual circles in some of the wooded areas, symbols carved into trees. But here?” His eyes lifted to Blair. “Christ, we grew up here. How could this be going on without our having a clue?”