“Uh-oh,” she said.
“Shit.” Scott turned toward home and sped up.
4
“Do me a favor, would you? Drive yourself the rest of the way home, and I’ll come by and collect my car later.”
Mouth tight, Scott glanced at Lisa as he braked, then slid the transmission into park at the top of the paved drive that led down to her home. To his right, three police officers were now dragging his struggling, handcuffed father, clad in a wife-beater and baggy black pants and cursing at the top of his lungs, out of the run-down white farmhouse where Scott had grown up.
Lisa barely had time to say “Sure” before he got out of the car, leaving the door open for her, presumably, to take his spot behind the wheel.
“Settle down, Dad,” he called sharply, striding toward the scene of the fracas as she got out, too.
“You no-good piece of shit, where the hell have you been?” The cops were force-marching Mr. Buchanan down the steps as he turned his vitriol on Scott. Lisa, trying not to hear, walked around the front of the car. “Think you’re too important now to come over here and help me out when I call you? If it’d been you who’d come through that door, I’d have taken a shot at you, too. And I would have been pissed as hell that I missed.”
Lisa winced.
“Shut up, Dad.”
Scott’s voice was hard, his body tense, his hands curled into near fists at his sides. If he remembered her existence as he crossed the yard toward where the little group had stopped to wait for him at the foot of the steps, he gave no sign of it. She understood. With herself and the cops as witnesses, this was embarrassment on a far higher order than any she had ever experienced, and she had little doubt that there was pain connected to his father’s nonstop boozing mixed in there somewhere, too. This was trouble, but it was Scott’s trouble to deal with, an ongoing burden he’d been carrying for his entire life.
“What’s up, guys?”
This question Scott addressed to the cops, who were clearly doing their best to control their belligerent prisoner without resorting to violence. Beth didn’t wait to hear the reply. Instead of lingering to add to Scott’s problems, she got into the Jeep and drove away. But not before she saw the whole group talking at once as Scott reached them.
He was the Lexington-Fayette County DA, but this was Woodford County. He had influence but no authority here. As she drove on down the lane, she wondered if he would be able to convince the cops to let Mr. Buchanan go. Then she wondered what the mean old man had done to get the cops called on him. With no kids left at home to beat up and his wife long dead, there wasn’t a lot he could do to attract police attention at home. He’d said something about shooting at Scott. Since that hadn’t happened, he’d probably taken a shot at somebody else.
Whatever, she had little doubt that Scott would deal with it, just as he’d dealt with all kinds of problems having to do with his father over the years. In the meantime, she had problems of her own, first and foremost of which was a broken-down Jaguar. Fishing her cell phone out of her purse, she called Triple A and arranged to have it towed back to the dealership that was supposed to have fixed it. For tomorrow, she supposed she could take the farm truck. Or, well, she’d work something out. The key was not to be late for a second day in a row. At the idea of facing Scott again under those circumstances, she grimaced.
Grayson Springs was maybe half a mile in distance but light-years in every other respect away from the five-room, two-story farmhouse with the saggy front porch and leaky tin roof where Scott had grown up. Her own home, she thought, as it came into view at the bottom of the oak-canopied lane, was the very picture of an antebellum southern mansion. Surrounded by undulating acres of grassy fields crisscrossed with miles of four-board white fences, Grayson Springs was a white-painted stone house with front double porticos supported by soaring Grecian columns that stretched up more than forty feet to the slate roof. It looked like something that belonged in Gone With the Wind. The original part of the structure, the main house, had been built before the Civil War and was three stories tall. The two-story wings, one on either side, had been added later. There were more than twenty rooms, not counting bathrooms and pantries and connecting hallways as large as rooms and the odd little nooks and crannies common to old houses. Most of them were unused now. The size of the place meant that the utility bills were outrageous, as Lisa knew only too well because she now paid them. Another half-mile or so behind the house were the barns, four of them, once the heart of the operation that had made the name Grayson Springs revered in horse-racing circles and now empty of Grayson Springs-owned horses except for her mother’s twenty-eight-year-old mare, Firefly. A host of factors, from the crashing economy in general to the savage downturn in the Thoroughbred industry in particular and including the long decline in its owner’s health, had led to the present sorry state of affairs. Its horses sold off, mortgaged to the hilt, its glory days no more than a memory, Grayson Springs teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Lisa had little hope of saving it beyond her mother’s lifetime. But as long as Martha Grant breathed, Lisa would do everything in her power to keep them all in the house, the bank at bay, and the property unsold. Lisa was determined that her mother’s last days, however many she had left, would be spent in the home she loved, unclouded by the knowledge that the trust funds set up to secure their futures were all but gone, casualties of bad management and the tsunami known as the Great Recession that had so recently rocked the financial world. She was fairly confident that when the farm was eventually sold, as it would have to be, it would bring enough to pay off the mortgage that had most ill-advisedly been taken out when the income had started to drop, and the other debts as well, but there would be precious little, if anything, left over. What she was going to have once her mother was gone was what she could earn for herself, and no more, which wasn’t the greatest news she had ever heard but was something she could deal with. Most likely she would move back to Boston, where a lot of her law school classmates had settled and where she could reasonably hope to find work as a full-fledged attorney again rather than being stuck earning a less than adequate living as a research assistant due to the lack of jobs. In any case, until that happened she meant to do what she could to keep things going here until there was no longer any need to pretend that life was the same as it had always been. She had leased the barns and fields to a nearby Thoroughbred operation so that, from her windows, her mother saw as many horses about the place as she always had. She did her best to keep up the gardens, with their winding brick paths, where Robin Baker, the family’s longtime employee, pushed Martha every pretty day in her wheelchair, and the yard and the house. If they no longer entertained lavishly, well, as far as anyone knew, that was because of her mother’s health and Lisa’s own disinclination. If the full-time staff had dwindled to two, they were the two Martha most counted on. Robin and her brother, their erstwhile farm manager Andy Frye, who, at sixty-six, stayed on with them as kind of a groundskeeper cum jack-of-all-trades because he had worked for Grayson Springs for most of his adult life and was, as he said, too old now to make a change, had over the years become almost family. Keeping Martha’s world intact until she no longer needed it was, Lisa felt, the least she could do for the mother who had adored her all her life, and whom she adored in turn.
I’ll be sad when all this is gone. When Mother’s gone . . .
Even the thought made her throat tighten, and resolutely she pushed it away. She wasn’t going to think about that. Not now. Not until she had to.
As she pulled the Jeep up under the porte cochere and got out, a glance at the asphalt parking area just a little farther on told her that the workers were still there, repairing the damage from the tree that had come crashing into the roof of the north wing during a violent thunderstorm the previous month. They’d finished fixing the roof last week and had moved on to repairing and painting the ceiling of the bedroom the tree had lodged in. It wasn’t too far from her own room, so she supposed she
ought to consider herself lucky that it hadn’t been hers that had been hit. The thing was, though, their homeowner’s policy had a big deductible, and she was going to have to figure out some way to come up with the funds to pay that part of the bill.
Chalk up one more headache.
“Whose car you got there?”
Andy’s voice had her head turning to find him. Tall and spare, his military-cut hair a reminder of a youthful stint in the army, his face deeply lined from years spent working in the sun, he was on the back porch, which was connected to the porte cochere by a set of steps and ran the full length of the back of the house. His arms were full of flowers. The vibrant oranges and whites and purples of the mixed lilies and hydrangeas and butterfly bush blossoms were one of the signs of summer she loved the most. As determined to keep Martha from finding out the truth about the farm’s precarious state as Lisa was herself, Andy had been working in the garden, she knew, and was bringing the flowers in for her mother. Like everyone else, Andy had benefited from Martha’s kindness over the years. He was another of those who loved her dearly.
“Scott Buchanan’s. The Jag broke down again, and he gave me a ride home.”
Andy glanced past her, toward the car, then lifted his eyebrows at her questioningly as, heading for the kitchen door, she joined him on the porch.
“So, where is he?”
“At his house. Scott got out there. There was some problem with his father.” No need to tell anyone about the police being at the house. That was Scott’s business, to disclose or not as he chose. “He’ll walk down to pick up his car later.”
“What’s the old bastard up to now?”
He was referring to Mr. Buchanan, whose proclivities were common knowledge.
“The usual. Drunk and mean.”
“Cracker.” Uttered in a contemptuous undertone, the term was beyond derogatory. Lisa didn’t reply but instead turned the conversation in another direction.
“Andy, do you remember hearing about a family that disappeared around here about, oh, thirty years ago? Their name was Garcia. A couple and two children.”
He frowned, then slowly shook his head. “Can’t say that I do. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. Just a case I came across at work. I was curious, that’s all. Listen, I’m probably going to have to take the truck into work tomorrow. Can you manage without it?”
“Sure. You know where the keys are kept.” On the hook in the kitchen beside the refrigerator, which was where all the keys to all the vehicles were always kept. Andy’s face creased in a smile. “That’s going to be something to see, you in your fancy clothes driving into your fancy office in that old truck.”
“Hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.” Lisa smiled in turn, though the idea of driving the mud-spattered farm truck to work was a little ego-deflating. She only hoped that no one would be around to see her park and get out.
With Lisa in front, they’d reached the kitchen door by this time. Opening the creaky screen door and then pushing the wooden door open, she gestured for him to precede her inside, enjoying the spicy fragrance as he carried the flowers past her into the kitchen. It was a large, old-fashioned, sunny room with white cabinets, white tile countertops, and a well-worn hardwood floor. A large oak table occupied the center of the room. Except for the color of the paint on the walls, which were currently a soft blue, and the appliances, nothing had changed in it for as long as Lisa could remember.
“Those for me?”
Having acknowledged Lisa’s arrival with a quick smile, Robin addressed the question to Andy. Square-faced and stocky at sixty-four, with chin-length hair dyed a defiant red, clad in a flowered smock and bright pink polyester pants, Robin was now her mother’s near-constant companion. She was still nominally the housekeeper, a position she had held for longer than Lisa was old. As Martha’s health had declined, Robin’s primary task had become taking care of her, although she still did some housekeeping and cooking as well. A nurse had started coming in to relieve her and Lisa, who’d been trading off sleeping in Martha’s room until her breathing had gotten so bad six weeks ago. At the moment, Robin was stirring something in a tall stockpot on the stove. From the smell, Lisa guessed a significant ingredient was chicken.
“That for me?” he countered, glancing significantly at the pot as he carried the flowers over to the counter beside the sink. Robin made a face at him.
“Who’d want your ugly mug at their supper table? Not me, that’s for sure,” Robin retorted, then smiled at Lisa. “Miss Martha’s in the TV room. Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Painter are with her.”
They were two of her mother’s legion of friends. Lisa nodded and headed upstairs to change clothes without interrupting. Martha had so few diversions now that visits from friends were highly prized. Lisa was only glad that they hadn’t forgotten her mother.
By the time she had discarded her suit in favor of conservative, mid-thigh-length khaki shorts, a white tee, and slip-on Keds—now that she was home again, she eschewed anything too short, too tight, or too trendy out of deference to her mother’s sensibilities—most of the day’s tension had left her. This beloved house where she had grown up always had a calming effect on her, and even the muffled hammering that accompanied the ongoing repairs—and the worry of paying for them later—couldn’t change that. Everything about the house, from the rich wood paneling in the reception rooms on the first floor, to the beautiful stained-glass windows that shed prisms of colored light into the most unexpected places, to the hand-carved, winding main staircase that curved up from the center hall, to the leaded glass dome that was a central feature of the roof, was a reminder of a bygone age. She felt almost as though she were a part of the house, as if living there was something that had been bred in her bones, which she supposed, since it had been in her mother’s family for generations, it had been. Her own large bedroom was located at the back of the newer (having been constructed in 1894) north wing, not far from her mother’s. Or at least not far from her mother’s old room. Since her illness had progressed to the point that she had to be carried up the stairs, Martha had had the library, which was on the ground floor of the main wing, converted into a bedroom for her use, both for ease of access and because the halls in that section of the house were consistently wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. That meant Lisa was all alone in the north wing. Not that she minded. To tell the truth, she relished the privacy, which had been in short supply since she moved back home. Plus, she loved her bedroom. The walls were real plaster, painted a creamy yellow, and a cheerful and ruinously expensive floral chintz in yellow and pink and green that she had chosen herself at age sixteen had been custom-made into draperies and a matching bedspread. A Tabriz carpet in faded shades of rose and blue covered the floor. The room had twelve-foot ceilings, a rarely used fireplace with an elegant Adam mantle, and tall windows overlooking the swimming pool and the Baby’s Garden, which was a brick-walled explosion of roses in gorgeous peaches and pinks and reds surrounding a small bronze fountain in the shape of a winged baby-boy cherub, from which the garden took its name. Her furniture was antique except for the bed, a queen-size four-poster, and the soft-green easy chair and ottoman in one corner. An en suite bathroom and a room-size closet had been fashioned out of the bedroom next door at about the same time she had chosen the chintz. The bathroom stood between the bedroom and the closet, with a door opening into each. Walking into the bathroom, Lisa washed her hands and face and touched up her makeup. As she stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing her hair back into a ponytail in a concession to the heat, she realized she’d left the door to her closet open. She was able to see, through the mirror, both the rack where she had hung her discarded suit among her other clothes and the collection of dolls that lined the shelves. Growing up, she hadn’t exactly been a girly girl, but she had loved her dozens of dolls, and even when she’d stopped playing with them she’d carefully kept her favorites.
Now, as she secured the elastic around her hai
r, her gaze ran over them absently, only to stop with an arrested expression on Katrina, as she had named the nearly life-size toddler girl doll that now stood all but forgotten in a corner. Katrina had shoulder-length black hair, deep bangs, and was dressed in a blue velvet dress. With a lace collar and smocking on the bodice.
Looking at her, Lisa drew in her breath.
The little girl. The missing family.
The doll’s coloring. Her hairstyle. Her dress. It all made her look eerily similar to the picture of the young daughter of the Garcia family. What was her name?
Marisa.
The name seemed to whisper through her mind.
Arrested, her gaze still fixed on the doll, Lisa felt her heartbeat quicken and her pulse kick up a notch.
“Don’t be stupid. Of course it ’s a coincidence,” she scolded herself aloud, just to break the tension that had held her momentarily spell-bound. Making a face at herself, she turned away from the mirror and stepped into the closet, which despite having had the bathroom carved out of it was as large as most bedrooms. The windows that still remained were covered with heavy closed curtains. As ridiculous as she knew it was, the deep gloom made her uneasy. Quickly she snapped on the overhead light, then knelt in front of the doll that she ’d happily played with for years and was now, suddenly, embarrassingly, just the tiniest bit afraid of.
You’re being a complete idiot here.
She knew that, of course, but knowing it didn’t help. She ’d had Katrina for as long as she could remember, for so long that she couldn’t even remember getting her. Katrina had just always existed in the background of her life. Lisa’s mouth went dry and her pulse began to race as she looked the doll over. Designed to depict a child of perhaps four or five, Katrina was pink-cheeked and sturdy, with wide blue eyes that stared sightlessly forward beneath a sweep of bristly black lashes. Warily, with what she knew were ridiculous visions of the evil doll Chucky dancing in her head, Lisa touched Katrina’s face. The reassuring smoothness of cool, hard plastic eliminated the wildest flight of her imagination; this was not little Marisa Garcia’s somehow amazingly well-preserved body, hidden all these years in plain sight in her closet. It was, instead, simply her own familiar, well-loved doll.
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