Blood Stains

by Sharon Sala

  Savannah was in shock, probably unable to focus on anything except the fact that someone had wanted her dead.

  Holly was shaking. Her father might be a serial killer who’d murdered her mother? What kind of a family had she been born into?

  Bud stood. “Look at me,” he said, his voice deep and demanding. “A name is nothing but a means of identification. You all still bleed red. You were raised by a good man—a man of God. You need to consider yourselves blessed that God spared each of you from what sounds like certain death.”

  Savannah nodded, gulping back tears. Holly was weeping quietly as she held tightly to Savannah’s hand. But Maria’s reaction was different. She was shocked and angry.

  “My mother was a hooker! Who was my father? One of her…her tricks?”

  Holly shuddered as she met Maria’s gaze. “Trade you backgrounds. At least yours probably wasn’t a serial killer.”

  Maria shuddered, then threw her arms around Holly’s neck. “Sorry, sis. I wasn’t thinking.”

  Savannah hugged the both of them. “We still have each other.”

  “And me,” Bud added, and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

  “Yes, Bud…and you,” they echoed, drawing him into their circle.

  Coleman had expected something like this. He’d argued for days with Andrew when he’d first heard their stories, saying how they would have questions that only he could answer and that he should tell them now, not after his death. But Andrew had been set on doing it his way. He’d handed Coleman the journals, explaining that everything he knew about each of them was written down. The rest they would have to learn for themselves.

  “Hold on. All of you,” Coleman said, as he approached the group. “Pointing fingers and attaching blame will not change anything.” He picked up three envelopes from the corner of his desk. “These are the journals.” He sorted through the names on the envelopes, then handed them out. “Andrew was diligent about putting down everything he knew. There are names and addresses in each, along with informational bits and pieces of your lives. Yes, things could have been handled differently, but there’s no telling where you would have wound up if he’d turned those three women down. The best you could have hoped for was growing up in the state welfare system. The likelier possibility exists that none of you would have lived past the time it would have taken your mothers’ enemies to find and kill you. Do you understand?”

  It was the sharpness of his voice and the way in which he thrust the envelopes into their hands that brought them all back to their senses.

  Savannah stared at her name, started to open the envelope, then changed her mind and slid it into her purse.

  Holly shivered as she clutched hers to her stomach, as if it were a living, breathing entity that was going to change her life.

  But it was Maria who, once again, was the first to regain control. She yanked the journal out of the envelope and opened it to the first page.

  Your name is Mary Blake.

  The skin on the back of her neck crawled as she remembered that she’d been a witness to her mother’s murder. Her eyes narrowed.

  “I’m going back,” she said.

  Coleman frowned. “I don’t recommend any of you charging off without careful planning. Read your journals. Contact the proper authorities. Do not put yourselves in danger. It’s the last thing Andrew would have wanted.”

  “No,” Maria said. “You’re wrong. This is exactly what he did want…and it’s the reason he didn’t tell us when we were kids. He knew we would be curious. He knew we would want to explore our pasts. He knew us, Mr. Rice.”

  “Do you two feel the same way?” Coleman asked, turning to the other women.

  Savannah nodded. “I feel like I have to.”

  “Absolutely,” Holly said.

  “Then I’m going with you,” Bud said.

  Maria shook her head. “No. You’re staying here and keeping the Triple S in one piece. I need to know that there’s something here for me to come home to.”

  “Me, too,” Savannah said. “I won’t do anything to put myself in danger, but I want to meet my father’s family.”

  “I did some checking. They’re very wealthy,” Coleman warned. “At the least, they’ll look upon you as an upstart looking to lay claim to the Stewart estate.”

  Holly reached for Bud’s arm. “Please…stay for us. The Triple S is home. We can’t do what we have to do unless we have a safe place to come home to. We’ll be okay. I promise I’ll let the police handle my case.”

  “Fine,” Bud agreed grudgingly. “But you have to keep me updated when you can. If you need me, I’ll be on the first plane out.”

  Two

  “L adies and gentlemen, please stow your tray tables and return your seats to an upright position. We will be landing in Tulsa in about ten minutes.”

  The flight attendant’s words barely registered as Maria glanced out the window of the airplane to the land below. It was green—so green, even though it was only April. Back in Montana, they still had the occasional chance of snowfall from a late spring storm. Below, the landscape looked like a blue-and-green crazy quilt, squares defined by a river and farmlands that ran right up to the outskirts of the large, sprawling city. All she knew about Tulsa, Oklahoma, was something she remembered from school, that at one time it had been considered the oil capital of the world.

  It was strange to realize that she’d been born there—had lived the first four years of her life there—and yet had no memory of it at all.

  The flight attendant was moving through the plane now, gathering up the last remnants of the snack they’d served. Maria wished her life could be collected in the same orderly manner. All the bad stuff discarded into the sack and gone, never to be seen again.

  According to the journal her father had left her, the first four years of her life could not have been easy, but when she and Holly and Savannah had compared notes before they all departed to their own destinations, none of them had any memories of what their father had written.

  In a way, it made sense that they would have forgotten. Witnessing a murder could be traumatic enough to cause hysterical amnesia. And Savannah had barely been two, so it was logical that she would have had no prior memories. But Holly had been five. School age. Didn’t everyone remember their first day of school? Yet there was nothing of the story between the pages of her journal that had seemed remotely familiar to Holly.

  Maria was still pondering the expanse of unanswered questions when she heard the landing gear going down. She glanced back out the window. The land was coming up at her at a rapid rate. For a few seconds she imagined she was being swallowed whole; then she shook off the fancy and began gathering her things.

  Moments later, the wheels touched down, bumping slightly before leveling out into an uneventful landing.

  Maria’s grip on the armrests tightened as the plane taxied toward the gate. Her heart was hammering against her rib cage, and there was a panicked rhythm in her breathing. She had to calm down. It wasn’t as if she were about to meet her unknown family at the gate. She was walking into her past alone. In the journal, the only name Andrew mentioned other than hers and her mother’s was Becky Thurman, the woman who’d helped him hide her—the woman who used to babysit her.

  She shuddered.

  What in hell was she getting herself into? She took a deep breath, remembering one of her father’s favorite phrases. With God, anything is possible. A good reminder that she wasn’t really alone—and that she had right on her side. It was time to stop the pity party.

  Okay, Sally Blake…your daughter has come home to right a wrong. And if you have any pull with God, she’s going to need all the help she can get.

  After that, her focus shifted to recovering her bags and claiming her rental car. She’d booked a room online at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Tulsa and had a map of the city in her purse. Even though she was anxious to get started, it was late in the day. Her best bet was to get settled in her room, get
some food and rest and start early the next morning.

  A brief conversation with the car rental agent to confirm her route revealed that she was only nine miles from her hotel. Pleased that at least one thing was turning out to be easier than she’d thought, she got her keys and made her way across the parking lot to the car, a white Chevrolet TrailBlazer.

  Once out of the parking area, she merged onto the westbound lane of the Gilcrease Expressway and began keeping an eye out for Highway 75.

  It was nearing five o’clock. Before long, the highways would be packed with people on their way home from work. She wanted to be checked in before the traffic got too bad. It would have been great to have her sisters for backup, but they were on their own quests for answers.

  With one eye on the traffic and the other on the road signs, she slipped into the lane that took her onto Highway 75 southbound. At that point she began watching for 7th Street. Within a few minutes she exited west onto 7th. After that, it was no time at all until the seventeen-story hotel appeared on the horizon. That was when it hit her. Despite her earlier resolve, there was no escaping the fact that she’d flown halfway across the country to try to solve a murder.

  The weight of responsibility kept getting heavier and heavier. By the time she pulled up in front of the hotel, her hands were sweating. She’d spent the last few days in a fever of anxiety, and now that she was finally here, exhaustion and nerves were about to take over. Anxious to get to her room before she crashed, she left her car at valet parking, grabbed her bag and headed inside.

  The lobby was light and airy, with an underlying buzz of activity, but she couldn’t focus on anything but the reception desk ahead. She had no memory of registering, but when she found herself in an elevator and headed for a room on the sixth floor with a key card in her hand, she had to accept that it had happened. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten a real meal all day, but the thought of food made her ill. Tears were building at the back of her throat, and there was a knot in her belly that was growing by the minute.

  Murder. I witnessed my mother’s murder. Why don’t I remember? Didn’t I love her? If I loved her, wouldn’t I have remembered what happened to her? What heinous life did I live that would make me block it all out?

  Her hands were shaking as she reached Room 604. She thrust the key card into the slot and pushed her way inside, locking herself in as she went.

  The quiet within the room was like a slap in the face. Now there was nothing to distract her from where she was or why she’d come. She pushed her bag against the wall, crawled on top of the bed and curled herself into a ball. By the time she closed her eyes, the room was spinning. Reaching over her head, she found a pillow, dragged it against her belly and buried her face as the tears began to fall. Sometime later, she fell into a long, exhausted sleep.

  Maria was dreaming that her phone was ringing but she couldn’t find the receiver to answer. After several rings, she finally woke up enough to realize it wasn’t a dream. The loud jangle was a rude awakening from what had been a long, dreamless sleep. Still groggy, she reached for the receiver, fumbled it and then let it drop to the floor.

  “Dang it,” she muttered, before she finally picked it up. “Hello. Hello?”

  “Good morning, Miss Slade. This is the front desk. We have a delivery for you. May we send it up?”

  Maria glanced at the clock. Morning? She’d slept all night in her clothes? Then she realized what he was saying.

  “A delivery? For me? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, miss. Maria Slade.”

  “Okay…yes…send it up.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and disconnected.

  Maria began scrambling, smoothing down her hair and her clothes, then trying to find her purse for tip money. She hardly remembered coming into this room, let alone what she’d done with her things.

  Finally she found the purse on the floor beside her suitcase and grabbed a couple of dollars just as a knock sounded on the door. After a quick look through the peephole to assure herself it was a hotel employee, she opened the door to a bellman carrying a bouquet of flowers.

  “Just put them on the table,” Maria said, then stood aside.

  He paused on his way out the door. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “No, I’m fine, but thank you,” Maria said, and handed him the money.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, pocketing the bills as he left.

  She locked the door behind him, then headed for the table and plucked the card from the flowers.

  Remember, you’re not alone. I’m only a phone call away.

  Bud.

  Maria’s vision blurred as she clutched the note to her breast. Even though Bud Tate had been her father’s friend and employee, to her, he was the brother she’d never had. There was a part of her that wanted to grab that bag she had yet to unpack and retreat to the safety of Montana. Being here was frightening in many ways, but Andrew Slade had not raised them to be cowards. Nor had he kept those journals without reason. She knew what she had to do. For twenty years someone had gotten away with murder. It was past time for justice.

  She slipped the card into her purse, her eyes narrowing as she looked around her room. When her stomach suddenly growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten a meal in nearly twenty-four hours, she knew it was time to get down to basics. After calling room service to order breakfast, she went to unpack. Within a couple of hours she had showered and changed and had a meal in her belly. Armed with a city map and her journal, she headed out the door.

  Thanks to the help of the GPS in her rental car, Maria quickly found out that the address she was looking for was in what the locals called North Tulsa, which she was beginning to believe was the back side of hell. It was the most depressing area of a city she’d ever seen. Other than the occasional bondsman, pawnshop, or gas station, nothing was thriving. She’d seen only one grocery store, and it looked like it was on its last legs. There had been businesses here at one time, because the names and signs were still on the buildings, but the windows were boarded up and covered with graffiti. It was an area in its death throes, which she found horribly sad. She wondered if it had been this way when she’d lived here twenty years ago, or if this was something new.

  The absence of commerce would have led one to assume that people would be hard to locate, but it was just the reverse. Traffic was moving swiftly along the streets, while people standing near alleys and on certain street corners seemed to be doing a brisk drive-by business.

  Maria didn’t want to think about what they were probably selling, but it was beginning to occur to her that coming down here alone had been a rash idea. Given the gang-related signs spray-painted on every flat surface, the people on street corners who watched her passing and the noise levels of the stereos in the cars that passed her, she would not have been shocked by the sound of gunfire.

  She pulled to the curb in front of the address Andrew had given her and killed the engine, then looked around.

  This was supposed to be the boardinghouse where she’d been living with her mother—the place where Andrew had first met them—only there were no hotels of any kind in sight. Just more empty, boarded-up buildings. Frustrated, she picked up the journal again and leafed to the pages that recorded her mother’s death.

  Blood was bubbling from the corner of her lips. I’d seen a man die from a punctured lung before. I recognized the death rattle. Even though the ambulance had been called, I feared they would be too late, and your mother, Sally, kept calling my name.

  I knelt at her side and took her hand. “I’m here,” I told her. Her grip was surprisingly strong considering the fact that she was dying, yet she kept repeating one phrase over and over. “You have to hide Mary. Take her away with you.” I looked around and saw you standing in the shadows of the hallway, your eyes wide and fixed on the blood pooling beneath your mother’s body. You weren’t moving. You weren’t crying. You seemed to be in shock. At that moment, S
ally choked and her eyes rolled back in her head. I thought she was gone. Becky Thurman, the woman who lived across the hall and the woman I learned was your babysitter, came running in. She screamed, then started weeping, asking what happened. Sally gasped, then started muttering, “She saw, she saw.”

  I was still trying to grasp the fact that she was still alive when Becky asked, “Saw what?” Your mother pointed to you. “Mary saw him shoot me,” she said. Then she looked straight into my eyes. “You’re a man of God. Hide her…without me she’ll have no one. If the cops know she saw, they’ll drag her through the courts. He’ll find her and kill her, just like he killed me.”

  I was horrified. I told her I couldn’t possibly take you, but she was begging and begging. I saw her fading. I felt her terror. Finally I gave in and promised I would make sure you were safe. Then she died.

  Becky was a lifesaver. She grabbed a small bag, packed it with your clothing and toiletries, handed you a stuffed rabbit and dashed across the hall with you just as the police were coming up the stairs.

  She hid you in her room, while I stayed behind to meet the police, since I was the one who’d called. Later, after they were gone, she put you to bed at her place. I stayed over in Tulsa for two days to finish my revival. I prayed about you every night, and by the time I left town, I was convinced I was doing the right thing. You went with me without a word of complaint. Becky said you hadn’t cried, hadn’t spoken a word.

  You wouldn’t for nearly a month, and then, when you did, it was as if you’d been reborn after coming to me. You took everything I said and did at face value, and began your life over. I guess it was a coping mechanism.

  Maria sighed. It was like reading a piece of fiction about someone else’s life.

  My God. How did I forget this?

  She glanced around the neighborhood, eyeing the trio of men standing on the corner, then the storefronts. The problem was, with all these empty buildings, there was no one here she dared to question. As she started to drive away, she noticed a cross on a building a couple of blocks away, with a few people going in and out. A street mission. Ignoring her instincts to get out while the getting was good, she reached for the ignition and drove the two blocks down.