Legacy of Masks

by Sallie Bissell

“Will we see any bears?” Avis’s heart fluttered as she envisioned wolves and wildcats.

  “I didn’t the last time I was up there, but then I wasn’t really looking for them.”

  Avis knew that to question Kayla further would brand her a chicken, so she stuffed the rest of her candy bar in her mouth and kept quiet. With her tailbone aching, she climbed back on the bike. This time they pushed along a rougher road that twisted upward through a black lacework of pine trees. As her leaden feet pumped the pedals, a screech owl swooped so close to her head that she had to duck, its eerie trill raising the hairs on the back of her neck. They rounded another tight curve and a possum scuttled in front of them, its bare pink tail whipping behind it.

  She pedaled faster, trying to close the distance to Kayla before anything else leapt out at them. The climb grew steeper, and she pushed the pedals with all her strength, barely able to keep the bike upright and moving. Just when she thought her lungs might explode, the road ended in a small clearing. Kayla stopped, got off her bike, and walked to the edge. There, spread out like diamonds on dark velvet, were the lights of Hartsville, twinkling in the distance. Realizing that she’d just ridden to the top of a mountain, Avis dismounted her bike and on legs trembling with fatigue, walked over to stand beside her friend.

  “Wow!” For a moment she forgot her burning lungs and aching tailbone as she stared at the glittering earth below. “No wonder they came up here.”

  Kayla took off the backpack that held their digging equipment. “Come on. We need to get busy. The trip took a lot longer than I thought.

  “I think we parked here,” she said, trying to retrace her sister’s steps. “Then they got out of the truck and went over there.” She walked toward a grassy area where low-growing cacti covered the rocky ground. Avis followed, keeping a wary eye out for more possums.

  “Then they turned this way,” Kayla said almost to herself, playing her flashlight along the ground beneath the trees. Avis searched for any place that looked dug-up, but she saw nothing but scrubby grass and fallen pine needles. As Kayla began to walk deeper into the surrounding woods, making wide sweeps with her flashlight, something caught Avis’s eye.

  “Shine the flashlight over there!” she cried. “I thought I saw something!”

  Kayla pointed the light where Avis directed. A twig protruded upward from the ground at an odd angle. Stripped of its outer bark, it glowed like a skeletal finger in Kayla’s light.

  “Maybe that’s it,” said Avis. “Maybe Ridge marked the place with that stick.”

  Kayla looked doubtful. “I remember it as being more over that way, but I guess we could dig a little bit and see.”

  They hurried over to the twig. Kayla laid the flashlight on the ground and gave Avis one of the two camp shovels she’d brought. Kneeling down, the girls started to dig. They could tell immediately that the earth was different from the hard clay soil around it—loosely packed and interspersed with what smelled to Avis like some kind of animal dung. She was wondering why Ridge would have buried shit in his hole when suddenly the blade of her shovel scraped against something hard.

  “Get the light!” she cried. “I found something!”

  Kayla grabbed the flashlight as Avis uncovered a piece of flat shale, the kind of rock normally found at a creek.

  “This is it!” Kayla said, elated. “I saw them with a big rock that night! Here.” She handed Avis the flashlight. “Give me some light while I pry this up.”

  Using the other end of her shovel, she tried to pry the stone up, but the dirt around it was too hard. She tried a stick, then the blade of her Swiss Army knife, but nothing would budge the rock.

  “What can we do?” Avis cried as Kayla began to sweat from her efforts.

  “Loosen the dirt around it with your shovel,” ordered Kayla. “I’ll try to wedge my fingers underneath it.”

  Avis dropped the flashlight and did as Kayla ordered. She loosened the sticky clay soil from one edge of the rock until Kayla was able to get her fingers beneath it.

  “Okay,” she said. “Here goes nothing.”

  She lifted, straining. The rock moved, but not nearly enough. “Help me,” said Kayla.

  Avis joined her, now wedging her fingers beneath the stone. Together, they pulled with all their strength. At first the rock only moved an inch or two, then suddenly it flipped on its edge, throwing dirt into their faces.

  “Quick!” said Kayla. “Shine the light down there.”

  Avis did as she was told. The flashlight revealed a foot-deep hole in the ground that wiggled with earthworms and pill bugs. At the very bottom lay a tanned deerskin pouch.

  “Golly!” Avis was so surprised, she almost dropped the flashlight. “We found it!”

  Kayla reached down and retrieved the pouch. It was soft and supple, and wrapped with a leather thong. Quickly she untied it and dumped the contents on the ground between them. Out tumbled two Sacagawea gold dollars, a small knife, a picture strip of Ridge and Bethany at the mall, and three Altoid mint boxes bound with rubber bands.

  “Shine the light down there again,” said Kayla. “There must be something else.”

  Avis poked the flashlight down the hole. It revealed nothing more than a few more wiggling earthworms.

  “There’s no insurance policy here.” Kayla’s voice broke. “They must have dug another hole somewhere else!”

  For a moment Avis stared, heartbroken, at the odd collection of junk, then her gaze fell on the mint boxes, wrapped in rubber bands. “Hold the light a minute.”

  Kayla took the flashlight. With shaky fingers, Avis picked up one of the Altoid tins. Though the lid had warped, she tore off the rubber band and pried it open. When the flashlight beam fell on the contents, she gasped. Inside lay not breath mints, but two tiny tape cassettes, labeled the “personal private property of Bethany Ann Daws.” Hurriedly the girls opened the other two small boxes. They held similar contents—cassette tapes, bound and labeled the private property of Bethany Daws.

  “What on earth?” The glow from the flashlight made Kayla’s face look round and moon-like. “Why would she bury six minicassettes?”

  “I don’t know.” Avis cupped the little tapes in her hand. “But I bet something important must be on them.”

  “Probably her stupid love poetry,” said Kayla, disgusted.

  “No,” Avis replied urgently. “You wouldn’t tape love poe-try. You’d write it in your diary. Read it to your boyfriend, if you were really brave. You bury stuff you don’t want anybody else to find. Something’s on these tapes, Kayla. Something that Bethany didn’t want anybody else to hear!”

  Kayla stared at the tapes. “My dad’s got one of those little recorders. He keeps it in his desk, at home.”

  “Then we need to take these back to your house and listen to them,” said Avis, trying to sound like an expert. “And if anything is on them, we’ll take them to the cops.”

  Kayla shrugged, acquiescing to her friend’s vaster investigative experience, then she looked up at the sky. The eastern horizon was growing light. “Come on! We’ve got to get back home. If my dad finds out what we’ve done, he’ll kill me!”

  “He might be mad, Kayla,” corrected Avis. “But he won’t kill you.”

  Kayla shook her head. “No, Avis. You don’t understand. If my dad finds out about this, he’ll kill me.”

  32

  The next morning, the deep jangle of Irene’s old-fashioned telephone roused Mary from a dream about driving Lily around one of Deke Keener’s housing developments in a golf cart. Opening one eye to the dim morning light, she groped for the heavy receiver of the phone beside her bed.

  “Hello?” she croaked, wondering if Jen had remembered any more vanished girls.

  “Mary?” A deep, familiar voice broke through the muzziness in her head. “Are you awake?”

  “Jonathan?” She sat up in bed. He sounded so close. “Where are you?”

  “Polk County, Tennessee.”

  “Where’s that?”


  “Just across the mountains. I can see North Carolina from my living room.”

  She shut her eyes, feeling queasy inside. His living room. His house. His whole new life with Lily, without her.

  “It’s not that far away,” he continued. “We’re no more than an inch apart, on my map.”

  An inch, she thought. Nothing to a cartographer. In real terms, if she got in her car, it would take her hours to reach him, and then only by driving along twisting mountain two-lanes. And how far apart their hearts were, she couldn’t begin to fathom.

  “So what’s your house like?” she asked, determined to sound upbeat and cheerful. “How’s Lily?”

  “We have a kitchen with a dishwasher. And a clothes washer and dryer. And our own bedrooms, although Lily didn’t sleep in hers last night.”

  “Where did she sleep?”

  “In my room.” He laughed. “I guess it all just seems too strange to her.”

  I know exactly how she feels, thought Mary. Still, she tried to keep her voice light. “I bet she’ll be fine by tonight. Kids adjust quickly.”

  There was an awkward pause, then he said, “So how are you doing?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Anything new with Standingdeer?”

  “I’m working on a few things.” She glanced at the thick stack of papers she’d brought back from Dana’s. “I might have something in a day or two.”

  “Any more masks hanging on your door?”

  “Not so far, but I haven’t been in to work this morning.”

  Another pause, as if he wanted to say something further, but had no idea of how to begin. “Well,” he finally said. “I guess I’d better go. Pomeroy’s coming over and I have to give Lily her breakfast.”

  “Give her a kiss for me, will you, Jonathan?” She was fighting tears. How had they come to this? How had this happened?

  “I will. I’ll call you in a couple of days, okay?”

  “Okay.” She held the phone tightly, as if that might keep him close. “You be careful!”

  He said good-bye, and suddenly she was sitting alone in bed, the dial tone ringing in her ears. For a moment she considered calling him back and telling him that she was driving on over, right now. Then she thought of the mask and all of Jen’s meticulously gathered data.

  “Just find these girls first,” she told herself as she threw off her covers and headed for the kitchen to heat water for a sponge bath. “Then you can find Jonathan.”

  She hurried down to her office. She’d hoped to catch Dana before she started her morning’s work, but her DO NOT DISTURB sign was hanging on her door. Instead she ran into Ravenel, banging up the stairs with a seedy-looking briefcase. He frowned when he saw her.

  “Any new leads, Detective Crow?” he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Any more masks from the Ani Zaguhi?”

  “Possibly,” she called airily as she walked past him. “I’ll let you know. Just don’t take any deals, Ravenel. And for God’s sake, don’t plead out.”

  His brows lifted in surprise. “Have you got something to tell me?”

  “Don’t know yet,” she answered, not wanting to get his hopes up. “But I think you could have seriously overpaid your man McGruder.”

  “I rather doubt that,” Ravenel replied with an arrogant chuckle.

  She went into her office and closed the door behind her. The bear mask stared at her intently from her desk, its dark eye holes pinioning her with a look of fierce entreaty.

  “Okay, okay,” she whispered, as if the thing had been awaiting her return all night, impatient for her to get to work. She grabbed her phone book and began looking up the numbers of the families whose daughters had disappeared. Out of the six names Jen had given her, three still apparently lived in the area. The Chester Flemings at 1 Acquoni Road, the Dawson Rankins at 1 Swannanoa Lane, and the J. C. Hendersons at 1 Cullasaja Crescent. Odd, she thought as she jotted down the addresses. They all lived at the same street number, but she didn’t recognize any of the streets.

  She put down the phone book, puzzled. Had the town grown so large in her absence that she now only knew half the streets? Frowning, she stared vacantly at the map of the Keener empire Deke had left propped against one wall, then she realized what it was. Acquoni Road, Swannanoa Lane, Cullasaja Crescent were all Keener streets, running through new Keener developments. Each of these girls had lived in a house built by Deke Keener and Glenn Daws.

  “Wahdo, yonuh ahgudulo,” she murmured to the mask as she grabbed her car keys. “If it hadn’t been for you, I might not have figured that out.”

  Twenty minutes later she stood at the door of 1 Acquoni Road, a sprawling redbrick rancher that stood at the entrance of Acquoni Acres. According to the phone book, Chester and Lurlene Fleming lived here, as once had their daughter, Valerie.

  As she let the door knocker fall, Mary realized that she had not thought of what she was going to ask these people, provided they would even talk to her. Dredging up memories of a long-lost child wasn’t anything distraught parents particularly enjoyed. Still, she badly needed some answers to her questions. She decided she would simply tell the truth, as much as she could, and be very careful not to raise any false hopes.

  She’d just lifted her hand to knock again when the door opened. A woman with skin like parchment stood before her. Though it was easily ninety degrees outside, she clutched a pink chenille bathrobe as if she were freezing. Her lips were thin and pinched and she wore thick glasses that magnified pale, red-rimmed eyes. Somewhere deep in the house, Mary could hear the melodramatic dialog of a television soap opera. “Yes?” the woman said, her voice as anemic as her complexion. “Can I help you?”

  Mary had seen people like this before; people whose lives had stopped forever on the day their loved one had disappeared. Although their hearts still pumped blood and their lungs still moved air, they were, for all intents and purposes, dead. Mostly they were women; mostly it was a child they mourned. “Are you Valerie Fleming’s mother?”

  “Yes.” The woman’s eyes brightened. After all these years, she still longed for some word of her girl. How Mary wished she could oblige her.

  “My name is Mary Crow. I’m an attorney. I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions.”

  “Do you know something about Valerie?” The woman’s hands fluttered to her throat.

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to see if some pieces of information fit together.” Mary watched the hope in the woman’s eyes die. No news of Valerie. This day would be just like all the other days, just like all the other days to come until the end of her life. “May I come in for a few moments? I won’t take much of your time.”

  “All right.” Mrs. Fleming stepped away from the door.

  Mary entered a living room that was a small shrine to the girl who’d disappeared. Photos were displayed on every flat surface available, from the top of the spinet piano to the china cabinet in the corner. Skinny, blond, and pretty in the gawky way of young teenagers, Valerie appeared in every photo. Mrs. Fleming then confirmed that she’d disappeared on September 29, just weeks after she started the ninth grade.

  “She went to school one morning and just never came home.” Mrs. Fleming nervously rubbed her cheek. “Everybody saw her in sixth period study hall. Then they didn’t see her anymore—not in the parking lot or on the bus or anywhere.” The woman clutched at her bathrobe again. “She was always trying to run away. I guess she finally succeeded.”

  “Why did she want to run away?” asked Mary gently.

  “We moved here when Val was ten. She was fine at first, then she changed.” The frail little woman leaned closer. “She got so moody—laughing one minute, crying the next. She would say awful things to her father and me, then cry. Or run away. We tried to control her, but nothing worked.”

  “Did she play sports? Have any hobbies?”

  “She loved to play that piano,” Mrs. Fleming nodded at the instrument across the room. “And she play
ed softball. My husband’s company had a team.”

  “Your husband’s company?”

  “Keener Construction. Chester was a carpenter.”

  “Mr. Fleming was a carpenter?” Mary wondered why Mrs. Fleming was speaking of her husband in the past tense.

  “He was framing a house over in Swannanoa Downs and took a wrong step backwards. The fall broke his neck.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Fleming.”

  “I am, too. Sometimes I think it would’ve been better if we’d just stayed in Alabama. We might have been poor, but at least we’d still be together. . . .”

  Mary thanked the grieving woman for her time and assured her that she would be in touch, if she found anything that might pertain to Valerie. The second house on her list was a modern version of a clapboard cottage, listed as the home of Hope Henderson, but it was locked up tight, with a Hartsville Realty sign in the front yard. “Not much hope for Hope,” Mary said, checking off the girl’s name. “Now on to Suzanne Rankin.”

  Swannanoa Downs was not far from Acquoni Acres. Like Mrs. Fleming, the Rankins lived just inside the entrance to the subdivision, at the very first street number. This house had a bit more Arts and Crafts look to it, with clean, squared-off lines. Mary had to admit that however much Ravenel railed against Deke’s subdivisions, they looked classier than most, and appeared to be constructed with a great deal of care.

  She rang the doorbell. A man dressed in the brown uniform of a UPS driver jerked open the door immediately, as if he’d been tapping his foot, waiting for her to come.

  “Yeah?” The man’s jaws worked overtime, chewing gum.

  “Are you Suzanne Rankin’s father?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”

  Mary asked him the same questions as Mrs. Fleming. After some initial reluctance, he told her a similar tale. His daughter had been the joy of his life until junior high school, when she’d taken up with a bad crowd of kids. After getting a “smart mouth and a bad attitude” Suzanne had disappeared one Saturday night, after her mother had dropped her off at the skating rink. Nobody had seen her since.