by Carolyn Hart
“Don’t, Millie, he isn’t worth it. We know that’s a lie. We’d never believe that kind of thing about Joe, never in a million years.”
Behind them voices rose, Peter swearing, Julie crying out. Serena ignored the uproar and tried to soothe the furious old woman as she pulled her from the room.
“Just ignore him, Millie. He’s a gringo.”
“My Joe.” Tears slipped down her wrinkled face. “They have hurt my Joe.”
Serena kept her arm around Millie’s shoulders as they walked down the hall. “Don’t be frightened, Millie,” she said reassuring. “Maybe Joe had some better idea where Danny might be. Maybe he’s still looking.”
Millie was shaking her head. “He was coming back to talk to you and he never came. Now he will never come.”
The pain in her voice tore at Serena’s heart, and she felt a dreadful sense of foreboding.
They were walking into the kitchen when Jed came up behind them. “Millie,” he said abruptly, “I want you to stay in my room tonight. It has a good lock on the door.”
Serena looked at him, fear in her eyes. “Why should Millie be in danger?”
“Somebody may not believe she didn’t know everything Joe knew.”
Everything Joe knew. The past tense. Serena swallowed hard. “All right. Millie, perhaps you’d better.”
“You lock your door tonight,” Jed ordered Serena.
“I will. You don’t have to worry about that.” She asked sharply, “What are you going to do tonight?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be here and there.”
“Do you think you carry a magic circle with you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why should you be safe if the rest of us aren’t?”
His mouth twisted. “I’m going to be damn careful, lady, that’s why.”
He left then, taking Millie with him.
Serena stood in the empty kitchen, then wearily started work on dinner.
Julie burst through the door. “Where is that old witch?”
Serena turned around from the stove. “As long as I am manager of this ranch, and I will be until a court order says differently, Millie is cook here and no one is to give her any trouble.”
Julie’s lovely face quivered. “Serena, don’t be mad at me. I can’t help what Peter does—and sometimes I don’t like him very much.” Tears trembled in her violet eyes.
Serena felt a rush of compassion. She started to speak, then stopped. Peter was Julie’s husband. That was a fact, hard and unpalatable, and it made all the difference. Finally, she said, “Look Julie, why don’t you give me a hand. Millie has gone to her room and I have to get dinner ready.”
Jed came back in a few minutes. He didn’t say anything, but he nodded and Serena knew Millie was safely in his room. She wished they could talk. Maybe he could make some sense of all of it, but Julie had brightened at his entrance and was smiling up at him.
“Oh Jed, you’ll carry this heavy old tray, won’t you? I don’t think I can budge it.”
Somehow Serena got dinner ready for those in the big house and prepared hampers for the dudes to take to their cabins. The storm was obviously going to break at any minute and they didn’t want to be caught up at the hacienda.
Dinner at the main table came down to Serena, Julie, Jed, Peter, and Will. Peter glared when Jed joined them but he said nothing.
As they ate, Jed spoke to Serena. “The sheriff told me to tell you he’s gone back into town. He says they can’t do anything else here tonight. He left a deputy to stay the night.”
“Who said he could do that?” Peter demanded.
“I did,” Jed answered shortly.
“That’s good,” Serena said approvingly.
Peter started to speak, frowned, and began to eat, his face sullen.
Will toyed with his food. “Joe must be dead,” he blurted out.
Everyone looked at him uneasily.
His eyes looked wild. His red hair was rumpled, his face unshaven. “That’s right,” he said loudly. “Somebody’s killed Joe.”
“Will, you are such a fool,” his sister cried. “Why would anyone kill Joe?”
“Because he knew what happened to Danny. That’s right,” and he rushed ahead, drowning out her response, “I’ve been thinking about it. Nobody would bother Joe. That doesn’t make any sense. It’s all tied up with Danny.” Will’s face twisted, “I’ll tell you, if somebody’s hurt Danny and Joe, I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.” He pushed his chair back and stumbled out of the room.
As they looked after him, the lights in the dining room wavered, blinked off, came on again. Sheet lightning seared the sky, streak after brilliant streak. Thunder rolled like a cannonade and the storm broke, rain sweeping against the house in sheets.
The wildness of the storm made conversation impossible. They finished eating in silence. Serena and Julie cleared the table and put the dishes in the washer. Neither of them spoke. There wasn’t any more to say. No one knew what was happening. Too much had been said, or too little.
As soon as they finished, Serena said goodnight and started upstairs. The sounds of the storm raged against the house. Outside, the noise would be terrifying.
Could Danny and Joe hear the storm?
Serena ran the final few steps to her room. It seemed another lifetime when she had left the hacienda to go to Santa Fe, trying to escape the brooding nemesis at Castle Rock.
She couldn’t escape.
She reached out for her door handle. At least she could bathe and change. Perhaps that would make her feel a little better. She was still wearing the skirt and blouse she had pulled on so quickly that morning in Santa Fe after Will’s call came. She felt frowsy and crumpled.
She opened her door and turned on the light. Once again lightning flashed, thunder roared, the lights wavered, then came back on.
Serena stood stone-still in her doorway, staring in shock at her room.
Someone hated her, hated her very much. Why else this pointless violence?
The whole long row of Kachinas had been knocked from the shelf into a brilliantly colored jumble on the floor. Just inside the door lay the remnants of her very favorite doll, the Ongchoma, ripped and twisted into bits. Serena knelt and began to pick up the pieces of painted cottonwood root, her hands trembling.
Ongchoma was the compassionate Kachina who looks out for children and tries to protect them when they are going to be whipped, touching them so they will feel no pain. Serena held the colored bits of wood in her hand. Her favorite Kachina. Who could have known that?
Sick at heart, she lay the pieces on her bedside table, began to pick up the other dolls. None of these, she realized gratefully, has been vandalized, though the Butterfly Maiden Kachina’s feathered headdress was bent and the staff of the Black Ogre Kachina was broken. They could easily be repaired.
When they were all back in place, Serena walked back to the table to look down at the crumpled remains of her favorite doll.
It was a deliberate choice. How could it be otherwise? There were sixty-four Kachinas. It was too much to ask that she believe her very favorite had been destroyed by chance. Entirely too much to ask.
Serena shivered. Who could have known how much that particular doll meant to her?
She held the fragments and remembered the day Joe Walkingstick had given Ongchoma to her. She had been in the hospital in Santa Fe, thirteen years old and frightened, her throat a fury of pain. She had cried to come home to Castle Rock, certain she would feel better there. She had lain in her bed, her throat a burning agony, and looked up to see Joe in the doorway, holding Ongchoma in his hands. He brought the doll to her and explained how Ongchoma made little children feel better, saved them from pain. When he left, the doll rested in her arm and she felt better and no one could persuade her to let go of it.
Only Joe would know what that doll meant to her. Only Joe . . . Through the years, no matter what happened, a twisted ankle, a broken date, an unki
nd slight, she had managed to smile at Joe—well, Ongchoma will make it feel better.
Now the little doll was destroyed and couldn’t be put together again. Just like her world at Castle Rock.
She sighed. Only Joe knew . . . Then she stood very still, looking at the pale peach spread on her bed. There on the be . . . Yes, it was a piece of the fox skin ruff Ongchoma wore around his neck.
Why would the Kachina have been on her bed?
If Joe wanted to leave a message for her, what better place to secret it than in the doll he knew to be her favorite? If she had come to her room this morning when she arrived from Santa Fe and seen the doll on her bed, she would have known it meant something and she would have looked until she found the message.
But she hadn’t come upstairs.
Who had come to her room?
What could Joe’s message have been? Why hadn’t he come back from where he was on the ranch and talked to her?
Could it be that he was afraid to come. That he didn’t want to see a particular person?
So he left her a message.
Hours ago.
Serena looked toward the rain-flooded window. The storm assailed the foot-thick adobe walls. The wind howled, a high eerie keening like witches wailing.
Hours ago someone slipped into her room, saw the Kachina, guessed at its purpose. Hours ago. The message read, the intruder ripped the Kachina apart, pulled down the rest of the dolls to hide what had happened.
Now she was left with broken bits of a doll and no hope of learning the message it had held.
Serena’s fingers tightened onto the pieces of painted root. What could Joe have wanted to tell her? Where would he have told her to come to meet with him privately?
Think, she told herself angrily.
She had gone to Santa Fe, asked Joe to keep watch over Danny. Joe was absolutely dependable. She would bet her life on Joe. That was why, really, Will’s phone call reporting Danny missing had been so shocking. Although no one could have expected Joe to foresee a kidnapping . . .
Serena stood very still, scarcely breathing.
What was it Joe had told Millie? He told her that Danny would be all right, that the Kachinas would care for Danny. Joe was sure of Danny’s safety.
Oh my God, Serena thought, of course, it made every kind of sense. Why hadn’t she seen it before? She should have known. Joe always did his job.
Joe must have come up to Danny’s room last night to check on him and found the dead cat. Or perhaps Mr. Richard wasn’t dead yet, perhaps he was sleeping heavily, his breath drawn thickly through an open mouth, obviously drugged. It wouldn’t take Joe long to spot the milk and the almost empty capsule of pills and to realize that Danny was in deadly danger.
A sleeping boy. A dead cat. A dark house. Somewhere near, a killer who stepped quietly in the night. Joe’s first responsibility was to protect Danny. What would happen if he raised an alarm? He didn’t have the authority to call the police. That would have to be done by Will or Julie or Peter.
Obviously, Joe hadn’t believed he could prevail so he must have taken Danny somewhere to hide him and intended to meet her on her return the next morning and tell her what had happened.
But she hadn’t come to her room, hadn’t found the message.
When had the Kachina been destroyed? How long ago? Oh God, how long ago?
Serena whirled around, hurried to her closet. She changed into Levis, a flannel shirt, boots, and her poncho. She was dropping it over her head when she heard a low knock on her door.
Quickly, she turned off the light then stepped back into an alcove. She had no time to talk to anyone.
The door handle turned, the door edged open.
“Serena?”
Her heart ached. She loved the sound of his voice.
“Serena.” Jed spoke louder.
She stood frozen in the dark. Could she trust him? She knew the answer. No. He was too mysterious, his appearance on the ranch too fortuitous. How could she trust a man who would look at her as he did then make love to Julie?
“Damn,” he said angrily. The door slammed shut.
Serena waited a long five minutes. She couldn’t afford to run into Jed. Still, she felt a frantic impulse to hurry.
When she opened her door to dark and quiet, she slipped down the stairs, listening as she went. First she would find the deputy. He could get in touch with the Sheriff. She had an idea where Joe might be waiting for her. Castle Rock wasn’t the only place on the ranch with caves. She and Will and Julie had played in a favorite cave for years. It was in a sandstone cliff just beneath the biggest cottonwood tree on the ranch.
Serena paused at the foot of the steps. The hacienda lay quiet as a tomb. She shivered. Everyone had withdrawn this stormy night. She walked quietly down the hall. The only light came through the windows from the huge uneven flashes of sheet lightning and the only sound was the fury of the storm.
She looked in all the downstairs rooms but found no one. She saw a crack of light beneath the kitchen door. She felt a rush of relief. The deputy must be having a snack. She pushed through the swinging door and started to call out, but the kitchen was empty.
Serena paused in the doorway. Someone must be about, but she didn’t want to call out. The bright empty room frightened her. Where could the deputy be?
She didn’t have time to hunt for him. Quickly, she crossed to the telephone. She would call the sheriff. She picked up the receiver. There was no sound at all on the line.
It could be the storm, of course. This kind of storm often whipped the lines until they broke. Sometimes they lost service for several days. Of course, it could be the storm.
But where was the deputy and why did the hacienda have this awful waiting silence about it?
Serena quickly replaced the receiver and looked fearfully around the bright kitchen. There was something terrifying in the absolute stillness within and the rumble and roar outside.
The deputy gone. The phone dead. The dark rooms beyond the brightly lit kitchen.
Serena fled from the kitchen. She hesitated in the dark foyer. She felt alone and frightened.
Will.
She could trust Will. If there was no one else in the world left for her to trust, she could trust him. With a tremendous sense of relief, she ran back up the stairs and down the dark hallway to his room. She turned the knob, stepped inside, again into darkness.
“Will,” she whispered, “Will, I need . . .”
She turned on the light. The bed lay untouched. Serena looked frantically around, but Will wasn’t there.
Through the uncurtained windows, lightning flashed. Rain flooded against the glass panes. She didn’t like summer storms. They frightened her. She had always been careful to be safe at home when they struck. But tonight the hacienda held more terror than the storm.
Serena turned off the light and left Will’s empty room behind, leaving, too, part of her certainty in what she could trust to be good and right. She crept downstairs, feeling now that danger lurked in the dark rooms. She reached the den and threaded her way around shadowy clumps of furniture to the gun case. Reaching up on the ledge, she found the key and opened the case. She carefully lifted out the Winchester rifle from the second slot. Using the same key, she unlocked the drawer beneath the cabinet and felt until she found the right cartridge boxes. She slipped two boxes deep into the pocket of her poncho after loading the rifle.
She knew guns, knew bullets. Thanks to Uncle Dan she could shoot very well indeed. She could drop a running coyote at fifty yards.
Perhaps that would come as a surprise to someone tonight.
The house still seemed deserted when she reached the front hall. She edged the door open, slipped out onto the porch. Behind her the house lay dark and quiet as the hulk of a drowned boat. She felt menace, sensed it in the brooding lifelessness of the silent house. She plunged out into the battering rain almost with a sense of relief.
A gigantic spear of lightning exploded above her,
splitting into jagged prongs that lit the night with a ghostly radiance. Rain came down so thick that it shimmered like a curtain of silver.
The rain struck Serena with physical force, pelting her head and shoulders. She pulled the hood of the poncho low over her face and ran from memory, her boots slipping in inches-deep water.
Serena was breathless by the time she reached the door of the stables. She had never ridden Hurricane in this kind of weather. He was a steady, serious horse. Would he panic and bolt when big lightning flashes danced above him? But there was no other way to reach the cave.
The cave might lie empty, might be a musty bat stop on the way to nowhere.
But Joe had to be somewhere.
She opened the stable door and started to step inside, then she saw light spilling out of the tack room. Boots gritted against concrete.
Serena dodged to her left and crouched at the end of the stalls.
A stall door opened and a horse moved uneasily. A man swore and grunted as he slapped the saddle atop the horse and cinched it. Then footsteps came toward the end of the stables.
Serena saw them pass. She saw his face, strained and hard, a frightening distortion of a face she knew so well. As the stable door slammed shut behind horse and rider, Serena was torn by relief and sadness.
It wasn’t Jed. Oh God, it wasn’t Jed. But pain twisted inside her. She had grown up with Will. She had been sure in her heart that she could always count on Will.
She tried to shut the memory of his pale, strained face from her mind as she saddled Hurricane. It did no good to think. She must not think, she must only move and do this night. She would not think.
She slid the rifle into its long holster and led Hurricane to the door. When she opened it and the rain’s spume slanted inside, Hurricane stiffened his legs. She patted his shoulder and talked softly to him. She mounted and gently urged him forward. Hurricane hesitated for an instant, then he moved.
Rain splashed over them like the thundering wash from a waterfall. Hurricane stepped jerkily for a few minutes, then, as if to say, well, all right, whatever you want, he settled into a steady trot.