Deadly Thyme

by R. L. Nolen

  She waited for Trewe to say something. She’d confessed, and now she was in his hands.

  Trewe stood back, not meeting her eyes.

  She pressed a hand out, touched his chest, briefly. “Please. I think my identity has the sanctity of the law, but I’m not sure. I have all the paperwork. It came at great sacrifice, you know. I haven’t visited my mother in ten years.”

  “I assume you’ve told me this because …”

  “He’s found us.”

  “… you believe he’s found you.”

  “I do.”

  “This is quite serious.”

  “I realize that.”

  “What do you want me to do, Mrs. Butler? You’ve placed me in a damned hard place.” The cold eyes again.

  “Please.”

  “I’ll be totally honest. I don’t know what I need to do first: call out all the king’s men to find this monster or call on immigration to find out what my culpability will be defined as if I don’t report you.”

  She forced her hands to unclench. Her breath caught before she found sound again—loud enough to be carried into the next room. “I don’t wish to get you in trouble, sir.” She slammed her hands together. “I’m not the important thing. Finding my daughter is.”

  Trewe leaned away from her. His voice still low, he said, “She is my first priority, and as such, I will put out the word while protecting you, for the moment, from exposure. I need you to help me with a full name and description, and I must bring Constable Craig in on this. We will investigate your—is it ex-husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, Mrs. Butler, I will need to find out more about him to check whether he has entered the country recently. I don’t know how this will affect your status. We will try to keep you out of it. But then, rocks will fall where they will, won’t they?”

  Her racing thoughts stumbled over the misquote. “I understand.”

  Trewe went back out to the constable and carried on a brief conversation in low tones. He beckoned Ruth closer. “You’ll share all the information you can about … this man. I want a picture, age, last known address. Constable Craig shares your concern as deeply as anyone else in the force does. You can trust her. The information will be given out as to a possible person of interest only, not as Annie’s father. But if this secret of yours comes back to bite me, I won’t be pleased.”

  After relaying her new information to the WPC, Ruth stood with them at the door as they prepared to leave. Someone had pulled the plug on all her feelings. She rubbed away tears. “Take me with you. I’m useless here.”

  Trewe held up one hand. “We’ll locate your daughter.”

  “Call me,” Constable Craig said, handing her another card, “if there’s anything you’d like to talk about. And my name’s Allison, by the way.”

  “Thank you, Allison.” Ruth clenched her arms around herself. Her teeth clattered.

  “Wait for me, sir.” Allison ran after Trewe as he climbed into his car.

  Ruth turned as Sam bounded from the kitchen to rejoin her. He must have been sipping his tea with one ear at the door.

  “Why have you come?” she demanded. She tucked both the officers’ cards under her computer’s keyboard.

  “You may need me as a solicitor, but … You know how I feel.” Wandering around the room, he fussed and straightened furniture. As he moved, he made an irritating moaning sound.

  No, Ruth didn’t really know how he felt. Not really. He was too closed up inside. She couldn’t get through all the walls he put up. Good looking? Yes, he was a blond god. Ruth had been very attracted to him, so much so, something may have come of it but for his enshrouded core. Never mind that she was hiding something from him, as well.

  She could not live with his inability to make a firm decision. He couldn’t even decide what film to watch on the television. She had ended their relationship months ago. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone?

  Now, watching him putter around the room being useless with her, she wondered what she could possibly have seen in him. She would have told him she didn’t want him there, but he had disappeared into the kitchen. Then he was in front of her with a bowl of something that smelled suspiciously of fish.

  “Look what I made just for you. You should eat.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  He set the bowl down and sank to his knees. “I’m only doing what a friend would do. You should eat. What will happen when they find Abby and you’re too weak to go to her?”

  “Her name is Annie! Why can’t you ever get her name right?” Looking away, she shook her head. “Please leave.”

  Sally watched their exchange. When Sam left, she mimicked him. “I’m only doing what a friend would do. For Abby!”

  The rain had passed. Bright sun filtered through the rain-dabbled window. Ruth could sense the spring freshness outdoors and instantly wished to walk, but the trouble it would take to don a jacket and wellies seemed exhausting. She found herself drifting in and out of the quiet sunlit room until exhaustion finally caught up. A stray chill kissed her neck and jerked her awake. She could see by the way the sun glowed from behind a mountain range of clouds darkening the western sky that it was late afternoon. Was he feeding Annie? What was he feeding her? Was it enough? When would he make a move to give her back? She would admit to anything—plead guilty, do whatever it took—if he would only bring her back.

  She called her mother in Texas. Someone had to tell her about Annie, but her mother must have gone to bed. She left a short message, the first she’d left in years. It was all she could choke out.

  More people dropped by. Good people. They gave news about what the police were doing. The full force of the law with officers from all over Cornwall and Devon—and even Wales—had been and presently were still searching.

  Evening brought more visitors, flowers, and teddy bears. Her daughter’s school chums came in small waves. They tittered all the way to the front stoop where they morphed into a single, silent entity. Memorials sprang up across her front garden with flowers, candles, dolls, and letters.

  The Women’s Auxiliary dropped off two meals to heat up when Ruth wanted, and she found that her hunger became more insistent and gnawing with each passing hour. When pressed, she did eat. It didn’t feel good. It didn’t appease the monster in her gut, but she ate. Sally answered her phone for her. It grew dark, and still people brought flowers. None would come past the entry. “Don’t want to impose.” “Just know we’re thinking of you.” “Had to stop and let you know we care, must run.”

  There were three categories of people in Cornwall: the Cornish, the incomers and the foreigners. The Cornish had lived there for generations born and bred. Anyone visiting was a foreigner—including any other English. Incomers were people who had moved here as more-or-less permanent residents—incomers were incomers for twenty years or more.

  Ruth and Annie had graduated from foreigners to incomers as soon as they purchased Riverside. Most of the villagers were slow to talk at first, but when they figured out she was friendly and interested in learning about Cornwall, those same villagers could become quite talkative. On the whole, the villagers were decent, hardworking people who were proud of their heritage, as well they should be. She and her daughter had loved living here.

  It had felt safe.

  9

  Jon cut his connection to the Internet and sat deep in thought. It was too hard to believe. But there it was. He had to think it through. Thirty years. Had this been going on all this time and no one had seen it before?

  The morning’s search activity in the village grew at every turn. Dogs, police, searchers on horseback, and volunteers probed the countryside with poles. Parked vehicles crowded the roads and the air throbbed with two helicopters circling like blowflies. Like that scene from Frankenstein in Technicolor, the stick-carrying crowds were out for blood. He imagined that they would likely be wondering who would harm a child—and that they would not stop until they found him.

&nb
sp; Jon hadn’t joined in the search parties, but he hadn’t been inactive. He decided to take the opportunity to blend in and explore the village, from the church tower at the top, to where the river emptied into the sea at the bottom.

  He had taken the packages to the post office. The county combined courthouse also housed the post office and several administrative offices. The postmistress’s eyes glittered under thick brows. Stoop-shouldered and thin-skinned, she hulked over the smaller package, taking her time, sneaking a cold look at him every few seconds. Her actions were even more exaggerated with the larger package. That was fine with Jon. He didn’t like her either.

  While it was true, under the circumstances, that strangers would be regarded with suspicion, something about this woman did not seem right. She had two ears, a mouth, two eyes, a nose, all placed in the correct spots. But something about her left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.

  The postmistress took his money, wrote him a receipt, and carried the packages into a back room and set them on a table in full view.

  He called out a half-jolly “cheers” and left to do some more walking.

  Like an exhausted angel guarding the lives clustered below it, the weathered church tower perched above the village.

  Jon stood on High Street. Looking down, he could see a squat yellow building with the word “Pottery” splashed in purple across the slate roof. Farther along the slope and as the road turned sharply to the sea, there sat a narrow stone building. A black sign above the door proclaimed it “The Spider’s Web.” Up the other side of the road, various shops specialized in trinkets commemorating the legend of the disappearing pirate, or, more often than not, trying to cash-in on the King Arthur lore that bounded up and down this side of Cornwall. There was a prominent sign advertising the Museum of Witchcraft, behind which were a newsagent and a tea garden.

  He walked down the steep incline to the quay and decided to trace the dark car’s imagined path to see where it had come from. High Street ended in a car park. There was a narrow turn around. He climbed down to the beach. He noted how the steps the girls had taken went to the top of a short cliff. At the top was a gate. He took the steps up and went through the gate. It opened upon a narrow road, more like an alleyway. Originally designed for horses and carriages, roads around the village were unlikely to ever be widened. This road would barely contain a carriage. It led upward between buildings and then turned to skirt behind the village.

  He had included in his package for Bakewell the video that showed the car’s movement on the morning the girl disappeared. Jon wondered what he would make of it.

  He would have to include that footage in an anonymous package to DCI Peter Trewe. No good deed will go unpunished, he thought. He was in for it, and quite soon, unless he could find some answers to his own investigation and leave.

  He spent the rest of the day wandering the village and its back streets. As the sun was setting he found a shortcut to Perstow’s cottage on his maps. It meant taking a path that led along the top of the cliffs. The sea foamed below him as he took the slippery turns. Seagulls lifted away from the cliff wall below him and hung in the air at eye level. He thought he saw malicious intent in their beady little eyes. A breeze carried the faint odor of something long dead, something the seagulls were working on, no doubt. The first of April and already greening vines twisted through a thorn hedge on the land side.

  A ringing from his pocket and he had his mobile open and at his ear, “Jon Graham.”

  “Jon.” Bakewell’s voice. “You are not back. I’m not surprised but a bit disappointed.”

  “Things have taken a turn.”

  “I’m following the news of the missing girl. It’s all over the telly. Seems there is a suspect—an American. His picture and name are on the news. I’ve received the email attachment of video footage. Not much to go on. I do think these should be handed over to Trewe. Use Perstow, he can make a perfunctory visit to the CCTV monitoring station and use it as an excuse. I’ve sent some files on Trewe’s service record to you. What’s Trewe been up to that you know of besides the search for the girl?”

  “To and from work is all, really boring stuff. After reading Sergeant Browne’s reports I’ve decided I’m going to have to speak to him to get more details.”

  “Which means another day?”

  “Yes, sir. I sent you VHS tapes that I have not viewed because I have no VCR. As to the missing girl, I had a run-in on the way into Perrin’s Point with a car. In the other email I sent you footage that shows the car coming and going.”

  “You think it has to do with the girl’s disappearance?”

  “Must be a reason for not stopping after hitting my car. And,” Jon hesitated. “I’ve been doing some internet research.”

  “Oh?”

  “Missing young women from other regions found dead in Cornwall.”

  Bakewell gruffed, “Another matter. This girl didn’t go missing from Wales or Devon. And hasn’t been found dead.”

  Jon’s grip tightened on the mobile. “Even so—”

  “You’re investigating Trewe, not the whereabouts of teenaged girls.”

  Jon swallowed what he wanted to say. He respected Bakewell, but he found his implication offensive.

  Tuesday, 11:59 a.m.

  Charles stared at his wristwatch, a gift he gave himself. The just-baked bread from the steaming dishes of food at a nearby table had his mouth watering. He had only meant to stop briefly but now considered ordering. Had he the time? Would it seem strange he was eating alone? Better food here at the pub than what he would get at home. A cheddar and prawn jacket potato would be good.

  He watched the regulars and wondered if they were pretending not to notice him.

  The girl behind the bar burst out laughing at something one of the men must have said to her. She waved a mug. “Chris, you would-na sed sech a thing.” Her face went rosy and she giggled at his murmured reply. She deposited the mug in the dumbwaiter where it clinked against the others. She slid the tin door shut.

  Charles held his head up and went to the bar. With a nod to the girl, he pointed to the mugs hanging from the ceiling.

  The girl asked, “Which one is it then? Fourth one back, I remember.” She reached up to the ceiling beam, counted the handled glasses and mugs hung from hooks, and pulled down the one she wanted. “Fancy that. Has yer initials on it.” She rinsed it. “The usual?”

  He nodded.

  She handed him his bitter, took his money, and left to collect used glasses from empty tables.

  He carried his drink back to a table. Sitting heavily, he willed himself to relax. Filthy mortar outlined the painted stones in the wall at his shoulder. Everything was stained with soot and there were spider webs between the beams on the ceiling, health inspector or no. The fug in the air was a constant.

  “You look like a toadstool sitting there, Chubby.”

  He almost ducked, stopping himself just in time. She had found out the kids at school teased him because of his weight. “Chubby Charlie, puddin’ and pie. Kissed the boys and made them cry.”

  He stood quickly, accidentally tipping the heavy table. He caught it before the salt and pepper and open sugar bowl could slide across and crash to the floor. All conversation stopped. People stared. Not a friendly eye among them. Just as he supposed, they suspected something.

  He gulped his bitter and left. Better a dry morsel in peace than a good jacket potato with the village idiots.

  Ruth could hardly breathe for despair. Annie had disappeared on Sunday; this was Tuesday. She rubbed her clenched jaw. If she unclenched it the screams would come out. She checked her email again. No ransom note. Her email confidant and relative, Aunt Maybe in Galveston, Texas, emailed her not to give up hope. Ruth had called her, and, just as with her mother, she had had to leave a message.

  Finally, it looked as if her aunt was going to respond to her Skype message to get on the computer with her now.

  Aunt Maybe, nicknamed after her reply to her fut
ure first husband’s proposal, always looked the same: disheveled white hair, glasses perched at the tip of her nose, sparkling blue eyes.

  “Aunt Maybe, Bubba has her.”

  “No, that isn’t possible, Ruth.”

  The screen’s picture pixilated beyond recognition. “Email!” Aunt Maybe yelled. Their connection froze mid-sentence.

  Ruth rubbed the back of her neck. She was useless when it came to putting her feelings to paper. Sure, she could write technical stuff, but she was using words from manuals. She was an artist, not a writer. How could she write in an email that she had no hope when it came to Bubba Roy Brock? Despite his ridiculous name, he was no fool. He appeared normal. He used a charming personality to win people over and get them to trust him. At home he was a horrific beast.

  Sally told her, “Why don’t you go out for a walk? I’m here. I’ll not let a thing get by you’ll want to know about.”

  “Thanks.” On her way out, Ruth stepped on another nosegay of flowers that had been left on the doorstep with an odd, handwritten note. She didn’t understand what they meant. She left them on the stoop for the police and took off, ready to run or walk off the unrest threatening to bust out from inside. She wished there was some way to unlock the building where she’d taught kickboxing cardio classes in the village. She hadn’t begun a new class since her last class ended two months ago. She could give her boxing bag a dent or two.

  A cold wind funneled down the narrow streets from the north and pushed her along. She found herself in St. Nicholas’s churchyard. The bells gonged the hour.

  This was Thomas Hardy country. Had he helped with the design on this square tower during his architectural apprenticeship? Salt-shorn and wind-bent, trees leaned inland along the seaward side of the churchyard. She’d been brought up “chapel,” not “church,” but the very age of this place shouted to her soul, “Come and worship.” All these years and she’d been inside two or three times for funerals and weddings and had even come to the last fete held on the bare mound of green next to the church walls, but she’d never before heard the church call to her like this.