by Jen Carter
Any of those possibilities were feasible. Probable, even. We were all on edge after Fleming’s death and the creepy notes, but Livy being late was a totally separate issue. There wasn’t a connection. There couldn’t be a connection.
I’m going to see if she’s still at the hardware store, Hunter texted me after I sent him a message about being unable to reach her.
Okay. Let me know, I texted back.
It was a dumb response. Of course he’d let me know.
The closest hardware store was probably a four-minute drive from Otto Viti. If Hunter needed two or three minutes to grab his keys and head out, four minutes to drive, and then maybe another two or three minutes to look around, that meant we’d probably hear back within ten minutes. Hopefully.
I paced the tasting room, unable to concentrate on all the papers with names and quotes still scattered across the floor. Uni followed me the first three times across the room and then opted to sit and watch me pace.
My phone rang. I glanced at the screen before answering it.
“Hey Jules,” I said once the call connected.
“Hey, I’m with Amy. You’re on speaker.”
I tapped a button on my phone to turn on the speaker option as well. Walking toward my sister at the bar, I said, “I’m with Holly. You’re on speaker, too.”
“Did you talk to Hunter?” Jules asked.
“Yes. He’s going to the hardware store to look for Livy.”
“Right,” Jules said. “Amy and I are going to start at this end of the street and go door to door asking if anyone has seen Livy lately. Or see if maybe she’s visiting someone down here and we didn’t realize.”
“Good idea,” Holly said, leaning over the bar toward the phone. “Jill and I will go to the other end of the street and do the same.”
“Okay, talk soon,” Jules said.
As I disconnected the call, Holly said, “You head down the street, and I’ll lock up here. I’ll call Stella with an update and meet you in a couple minutes.”
I nodded and went straight for the door, stepping over all the papers without bothering to pick them up. Uni pranced alongside me.
Outside, the air was cool, and there were more people walking up and down the street than I would have expected for late March after eight o’clock. I broke into a jog, Uni trotting right at my side. Wearing jeans and a D’Angelo Winery shirt, I clearly wasn’t dressed for exercise—but if I jogged, the chances of someone stopping me to chat went down dramatically.
Entonces was not technically at the end of the street, but I stopped there first to tell Nico what was going on. When I pushed through the front doors, he and Elita looked up from where they were having what looked like a tense conversation at the bar.
“Have either of you seen Livy in the last couple hours or so?” I said, slightly out of breath.
They both shook their heads.
I knew it had been wishful thinking, but I had hoped one of them would say yes and have a perfectly reasonable explanation about where Livy was. Maybe Livy had been showing Elita’s mom how to use a new hair treatment, and Elita could point me in their direction. Or maybe Livy had been asking Nico advice on what to get Hunter for his birthday and then had gone shopping. That was really a stretch, especially since I had no idea when Hunter’s birthday was, but I would have been happy with any explanation.
I relayed to them what Hunter had told me about being unable to find Livy. Elita, ever the drama queen, gasped repeatedly while clutching her chest. Nico remained stony faced. Just as I finished getting them up to speed, Holly pushed through the front door.
“I knew I’d find you here,” she said, heaving. She must have jogged down the street, too, which was a big deal for Holly since she rarely exercised. “I just got off the phone with Stella. She and Jason were at home, but they’re going to drop the boys off at Aldo’s and then come help us look for Livy.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw a message from Hunter. It had also gone to Jules.
Her car is in the parking lot but she’s not in the store. I had someone page her over the intercom and no response. I could see her phone in her car. This is too out of character. I’m going to call the police.
I looked up. “Livy’s car is at the hardware store but she isn’t,” I said.
Elita gasped again and grabbed the bar as though trying to keep from falling over. I ignored her and focused on Nico.
“Is your car in the lot at the end of the street?”
He nodded.
“Can we drive down to the Old Everly Place? Just, you know, because.”
He nodded again.
I turned to Holly. “You and Stella and Jason can start going door to door down at this end of the street once they get here.”
“I want to come,” Elita said.
I didn’t reply. I hoped she meant that she wanted to go with Holly. Because she wasn’t going with me and Nico. And if she wanted to go with Holly, that was Holly’s problem.
Nico handed Elita a set of keys from his pocket. “Lock up.”
With that, he crossed the tasting room toward the exit, Uni and me on his heels.
We walked most of the way to the parking lot in silence. Once we got in the Explorer, I asked, “Do you remember where this place is?” I hadn’t been paying much attention to Ashlyn’s directions the night that the girls took us to Fleming, and the wine probably hadn’t helped either.
“Yes,” Nico said. “It’s not far.”
“Do you think we’re overreacting?”
“I hope so.”
“I don’t really think that she’s at the Old Everly Place,” I said. “But with everything else going on, this is just for peace of mind.”
Nico nodded, and for the hundredth time since Hunter called me, I had that terrible sinking feeling in my stomach. We lapsed into silence again. Nico grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
We parked in the same spot we parked last time. But unlike last time, there were two other cars there. As we drove up, I almost couldn’t comprehend it. Other cars? Why would anyone be at the Old Everly Place on a Thursday night after dark, especially just days after a body was found there?
I tried not to let panic overtake me. I had wanted to check out the Old Everly Place for peace of mind—to make sure that nothing fishy was going on right after Livy disappeared. And yet, there were two cars. Something fishy really could be going on there.
No way.
“Let’s take Uni with us,” Nico said as we got out.
I went around to the back and opened the hatch to the cargo area. Uni may not have been a fully-grown, fully-trained dog, but her senses were still better than ours in the dark. And when she barked, which wasn’t often, she sounded way bigger and scarier than she was.
She jumped right out and immediately sniffed around. I wished she was one of those dogs that could sniff a piece of clothing and then find the person it belonged to. We were a long way from her being able to do that.
Nico and I turned on the flashlights on our phones and swept the lights back and forth across the field.
Uni barked and then made a beeline for the dilapidated house. We followed her. She didn’t go inside, which somehow took my anxiety down a notch. Instead she pranced around to the back. We continued to follow, still sweeping the flashlights across the space in front of us.
Sitting on the back porch steps were the three girls who had found Fleming’s body less than a week before.
“Sophia! Girls!” I said, stunned. “What are you doing here?”
In the dim light from our cell phones, I couldn’t tell if the girls looked guilty, scared, or both. They stood and rushed over to us.
“We can’t find Livy!” Ashlyn said. “She’s gone!”
“We know,” I said. “We’re looking for her, too. Why are you three sitting back here?”
“It’s Esther,” Sophia said. She looked just seconds away from bursting into tears. “She and Livy were supposed to meet tonight to t
alk about building the stage, but Livy never showed up. So Esther called me and asked if I had seen Livy in OV since I live just across the street. She thought maybe Livy had forgotten about the meeting and didn’t have her phone. But I hadn’t seen Livy, so we,” Sophia pointed to her friends, “decided to meet Esther and look for her.”
I nodded, urging her on.
“We were all afraid something bad happened, so we came here first. We split up. Us three took half of the wooded area back there.” She pointed off into the darkness. “And then Esther and her—oh!”
Uni barked, cutting off Sophia’s sentence and making the poor teenager jump and yelp. I swung my flashlight toward Uni and saw her jaunting off toward the woods, much further to the left than where Sophia had been pointing.
“Stay here,” Nico said, starting off after Uni. He must have just meant the girls because he didn’t protest when I followed.
“We were supposed to meet back at the house ten minutes ago,” Ashlyn called after us.
Ten minutes was a long time. As I caught up to Nico, I hoped Esther wasn’t in trouble now.
TWENTY-FOUR
Only ten or fifteen steps into the woods, Uni stopped at the edge of a dried up, brambly ravine. She looked both ways and then froze, her head turned left. From that direction came the sounds of leaves rustling and twigs snapping. Nico and I both trained our flashlights on the area.
“Hello?” he called.
Something was moving in the brambles.
“I tripped and hurt my ankle,” a voice cried.
It was Esther, crawling out of the ravine.
Nico and I rushed to her.
“Are you okay?” I asked, helping her to her feet.
I could tell that she wasn’t. She had dried grass in her hair and dirt smudged on her face. And, of course, she had already told us that she hurt her ankle.
“Uhhh,” she moaned.
Uni barked. Then she barked again and again. And again. With a growl and another string of barks, she jumped into the ravine and disappeared.
“Jill, get Esther to the girls,” Nico said. I’m following Uni.” He disappeared into the ravine as well.
I wrapped my arm around Esther’s waist and tried to support her weight as she limped through the woods toward the Old Everly Place. Once we reached the clearing between the woods and the old farmhouse, I called to the girls. “Ashlyn, Sophia! Gracie! I have Esther. Come help her!”
I heard gasps and then feet pounding the ground. As soon as I handed Esther off to them, I sprinted through the woods to the ravine, following the sound of Uni’s barking. In the darkness, I felt so disoriented. I could only hope Uni’s bark would continue to get louder, meaning that I was getting closer. Behind me, one of the girls was saying where’s your…, but I didn’t catch the rest of the question as I stepped into the downward-sloping bramble.
“Jill!” Nico yelled. “I need help! We found her!”
Relief and fear exploded in my gut. Relief because they found her. Fear because she couldn’t have been in good shape if Nico needed help.
“Is she okay?” I yelled back, trying to make my way faster through the dried brush toward his voice.
“She’s breathing,” he said.
I cut through two extra-prickly shrubs and saw a small open area. Just on the other side of it, Livy lay on the ground, half covered by more shrubs. Nico crouched next to her, taking her pulse. Uni sniffed her forehead.
I ran to her and dropped to my knees. Her eyes were closed, half hidden by the bangs she was growing out.
“Livy? Liv?” I gently shook her shoulder. Her skin was warm to the touch—hot, even. “Livy?”
No response.
I looked at Nico, feeling totally lost. “What do we do?”
“I think we need to get her out of here,” he said.
That was going to be tricky. The ravine wasn’t too deep—we were probably only six or seven feet down—but the sides were steep enough that I imagined needing my hands to climb out.
Awkwardly, we pulled her into a sitting position and then wrapped her arms around our shoulders. From there, we managed to get her to her feet. She was all dead weight. Neither of us could hold a cell phone flashlight while supporting her, so moving in the dark felt even slower than it already was. When we reached the slope upward, I yelled to the girls, hoping they’d be able to hear me.
“Sophia! We found her—call 911!”
A couple seconds later we heard running feet.
“Where are you?” one of them asked. I think it was Sophia.
“Stay there,” Nico called to them as we took slow, measured steps upward. “We’ll come to you. It’s too dark and dangerous for you to come down.”
Livy mumbled, but I couldn’t make out her words.
“What was that?” I said. “Livy, what happened?” Already feeling breathless from trying to support her and climb out of the ravine, I barely got the questions out.
She mumbled again.
“Did you understand her?” This time I was speaking to Nico. “Did you get that?”
“No,” he said.
“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful,” she mumbled, now loud enough for me to hear. “Out of this wood do not desire to go.”
We were getting close to the top rim of the ravine—close enough for Sophia and Gracie to help pull Livy out. Further back, Ashlyn had her cell phone flashlight aim at Esther’s ankle, which looked like it was bent at an unnatural angle.
“Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no,” Livy continued mumbling. “I am a spirit of no common rate. The summer still doth tend upon my state.”
“I called 911,” Sophia said as we lowered Livy to the ground. “What is she saying? What is she talking about?”
“And I do love thee. Therefore, go with me. I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”
I looked at my dear friend on the ground, her eyes still closed. If I hadn’t just found her in a ravine, I would have thought she was talking in her sleep.
“I think she’s reciting lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I looked toward Nico. “Should we move her closer to the street to wait for the police?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We don’t know if she’s hurt, and we shouldn’t move her unnecessarily if she is. They can come to her.”
Behind me, Uni barked at the ravine. She paced back and forth at its edge and barked again.
Just then, sirens in the distance began their crescendo, the wails growing louder by the second.
“And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,” Livy mumbled, “And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.”
“Call Hunter,” Nico said to me.
***
After we called Hunter and watched Livy whisked off to the hospital in an ambulance, I told the teenagers to call their moms and have them meet us at the hospital. The girls all seemed too shaken to drive, and Esther couldn’t drive with her hurt leg, so Nico drove everyone. They’d just have to go back to the Old Everly Place later to get their cars. Luckily our house was on the way to the hospital because it only took an extra thirty seconds to drop off Uni.
No one spoke as Nico drove. I texted my friends that we found Livy. They could call off the door-to-door search, but now they had a more-daunting task: letting the OV businesses know that Livy was found but did not need visitors at the hospital.
For the second time in less than a week, Nico and I found ourselves relaying a terrible story to Detective Fitts over and over—and then relaying it to the teenage girls’ moms, Athena and Jada. Last time was at the police station, this time was in the hospital waiting room, and next time hopefully would never come.
Esther was treated for a sprained ankle and some gashes on her arms, legs, and head. I half expected that she had broken a bone in her foot or leg, but either I had imagined its strange angle at the Old Everly Place or I was just so freaked out that I automatically expected the worst. Nico offered to drive Esther home, but
she had already asked a friend to pick her up. I almost asked if it was a boyfriend, but I just didn’t have the energy to tease a shy girl about boys after the night’s events. Plus, I was supposed to be past the point of waggling my eyebrows at young twenty-somethings and asking about boys, even if it would be fun to find out the details under normal circumstances.
I hoped we’d be able to see Livy after Fitts finished talking to each of us. It didn’t look like that was going to happen, but I wanted to wait and see. Hunter was allowed to see her and the doctor, and at the very least I wanted to wait until he came back with an update. Jada and Athena gathered up their daughters about midnight and took them home. I wondered if the girls would go to school tomorrow. I didn’t ask. It wasn’t important.
Hunter reappeared in the waiting room shortly after the girls left with their mothers. He looked exhausted yet relieved.
“She’s going to be okay,” he said, sitting in a chair across from us. “She was probably drugged. They’re going to keep her overnight, and I think we’ll know more in the morning.”
Drugged.
Just hearing the word made me feel nauseated. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would drug Livy.
No one spoke for a long moment. Hunter leaned his forearms on his knees and dropped his head.
“I’m worried that it could have been belladonna extract,” he said finally. He lifted his head toward us. “Earlier this week a bottle of it went missing. We realized it the day after the high schoolers found the Romeo and Juliet quote written in their scripts, and Livy was really upset about it.”
“Was that the stockroom issue she told me about?” I asked.
Hunter nodded. “She needed the belladonna to make a topical headache remedy, and it was gone. It could have been gone for a long time for all we knew because she doesn’t use it often. But discovering that it was missing right after the Romeo and Juliet quote shook her up.”
It took a second for me to dig into my stores of Romeo and Juliet knowledge. I hadn’t taught the play recently, but back in the cobwebs of my mind, I knew Hunter was alluding to a connection between the play and the belladonna.