by Angie Kelly
According to the articles, Dr. Tarpley mysteriously reappeared over a year later, claiming he was unable to remember where he'd been. The one picture accompanying all the articles showed the same man who was in the snapshot I'd found, looking thin, pale, and wide-eyed. He was trying unsuccessfully to shield himself from the camera's flashing in his face.
The last thing I found was Dr. Tarpley's obituary. He'd died in a fall from his roof on January 12, 1998 at the age of seventy-eight. He was survived by his wife of thirty-eight years, Madeline Tarpley. I wondered what a seventy-eight-year-old man was doing on the roof in the wintertime? Where was Mrs. T.? Why wasn't she watching her elderly husband? More importantly, how was it possible Madeline Tarpley wasn't elderly herself? Was she a different woman than the one Dr. Tarpley married? And what did all of this have to do with the garden labyrinth?
My head hurt from staring at the computer screen so long. A shriek from outside caused me to run to the window. It was only Devon, Lily, Tomi, and Mrs. T. playing volleyball. I rubbed my eyes and went back to the laptop and started to close the lid when I noticed Mrs. T.'s name in her husband's obit was highlighted making it a link. I clicked on it and was taken to an article in the February 1997 issue of Ancient Realms magazine entitled The Mysterious Mrs. Tarpley.
The strange disappearance, and even stranger reappearance, of Dr. Everett Tarpley only served to create another more perplexing mystery, a mystery as enduring as the yearlong whereabouts of the renowned archaeologist. Who is Madeline Tarpley?
When Everett Tarpley was found disheveled and wandering down a road near Lyon, France, in September 1970, he wasn't alone. He was accompanied by a nun. The nun, known only as Sister Madeline, claimed to be from a convent in the nearby countryside, and spoke a form of antiquated French no longer spoken in modern day France. She told authorities she found Dr. Tarpley wandering in the woods near her convent. Yet a search of convents within a 200-mile radius of Lyon yielded no one who knew Sister Madeline. Nor did she appear to be a member of any of the families living in the area. Many people thought Sister Madeline was actually Marie Neville, a cleaning lady with a history of mental illness who went missing around the time of Madeline's first appearance. But the discovery of Neville's body in the Rhone River, an apparent suicide, put the theory to rest. Soon after his reappearance, Dr. Tarpley married the mysterious Madeline and took her back to the United States. To this day, Tarpley steadfastly maintains he has no memory of his missing year, and he and his wife both adamantly refuse to be interviewed on the subject of his disappearance, or the mysterious origins of Madeline Tarpley. The Tarpleys fiercely guard their privacy and have all but disappeared from public view in the wake of Dr. Tarpley's retirement from teaching in 1986.
The article had the same picture I'd seen with the story of Everett Tarpley's reappearance, only it had been enlarged. This time, I noticed someone standing in the background I hadn't seen in the other picture. Standing a few feet behind Dr. Tarpley, with her face turned just slightly away from the camera, and looking completely terrified, was a nun dressed in a long black habit. The nun was Mrs. T. I could see now I was wrong about the other picture. Dr. Tarpley wasn't shielding himself from the cameras. He was shielding the nun.
"Mia, are you feeling okay?"
Startled half out of my skin, I jumped up, and whirled around to find Mrs. T. standing in the doorway. The bright sunlight streaming in through the bedroom showed lines around her eyes and mouth and deeper lines in her forehead. I could also see a few silver strands in her dark hair. She was clearly not getting any younger. But, she still didn’t appear anywhere near the age she should be. I couldn't help it. I didn't want to be afraid of a woman who'd been so nice to me, but my body involuntarily tensed up with fear. Who was this woman? Where did she come from? And just how did her husband fall off of the roof?
"Are you okay?" Mrs. T. stepped into the room. She glanced over my shoulder at the laptop screen and I reached back and quickly closed the lid.
"I'm okay." My voice was a high-pitched squeak.
"Are you sure? You're so jumpy." She reached out a hand to feel my forehead. I jumped back out of her reach like she had cooties, not sure I wanted this strange woman touching me.
A hurt expression flashed across her face and then she gave me a strained smile. "Well, we're out in the garden if you'd like to join us. It's so nice out today, we're having lunch on the back porch."
"I think I'll just hang out here for a little while. I'm kinda tired." I managed a little smile, and Mrs. T. continued to stare at me for a long minute before reminding me lunch was at twelve thirty.
After she left, I went over and peaked out the window. Tomi and Lily were still playing volleyball. They had now been joined by Alex, who was playing them two against one. Devon, who had stripped off her shorts and tank top, was sitting on the blanket wearing an orange bikini and slathering suntan lotion on her arms and legs. I saw Mrs. T. rejoin the volleyball game. It all seemed so innocent. But I was cold as I watched them. There was something wrong here.
At least when I lived with the Higgins and at the children's home, I knew up front what monsters I was dealing with. Besides Devon's snotty attitude, I had no idea what else was going on at the Tarpley Estate. I went over to the bedside table and reached into the drawer for the snapshot of the Tarpleys I'd found inside the window seat. But the drawer was empty. The picture was gone.
Chapter Four
The picture was gone. I looked everywhere. No luck. Someone had been in my room. And there was only one person who'd have reason to take it — Mrs. T. Only I couldn't figure out why she would have been snooping through my room in the first place. Since they were all still outside, I decided to do some snooping of my own. I'd seen all of the first floor, as well as the basement. All four of our bedrooms, as well as two bathrooms, a library, and a games room were on the second floor. I had yet to see the third floor, attic, and tower. It occurred to me I'd never been encouraged to go beyond the second floor and hadn't had a reason to want to before now. Mrs. T.'s bedroom was in the tower. So the tower was where I was headed.
A quick peek out the window confirmed she was still outside playing volleyball. I headed down the hall to the landing and took the steps to the third floor two at a time. The steps leading to the tower and attic were at the end of the dark hallway. I couldn't help but notice all the doors I passed were heavily reinforced and padlocked, all of them. A couple of the doors were double padlocked at the top and the bottom. There were eight rooms in all, four on either side of the hallway. I stopped and lifted one of the padlocks and was surprised at how heavy it was.
The chiming of the grandfather clock in the foyer startled me, causing me to let go. The padlock hit the door with a loud, echoing thud. Once the chiming stopped, I heard a faint rustling sound coming from the other side of the door and I jumped back. I automatically assumed the padlocks were to keep people out of the rooms. But they could just as easily be to keep people in the rooms. I crept closer and pressed my ear to the door and listened. I couldn't hear anything and knocked softly on the door and listened again. Still nothing. I was relieved, and after my heartbeat had steadied, I quickly walked down the hall trying hard to ignore the prickly feeling I was being watched.
I reached the door leading to the tower and couldn't believe it was unlocked. After another quick peek out a small window in the hallway to make sure everyone was still outside, I ducked inside. The tower was two stories, with a winding staircase connecting Mrs. T.'s office and her bedroom, which was on the smaller open loft overlooking the office. The gleaming hardwood floors were bare and rug-free making my footsteps creak slightly as I crept further into the room.
There was a large, square, glass desk with a brown leather swivel chair in the center of the office. Smaller matching chairs sat in front of the desk for visitors. The office was decked out with high-tech office equipment, including a computer with a flat screen. I hit the space bar on the keyboard and a login screen popped up. Man, th
is woman had serious trust issues. What was the big secret? There was a silver tray with a stack of papers in it sitting on one corner of the desk. I flipped through the stack but they were mostly invoices, receipts, recipes, and store coupons. No snapshot.
The walls on either side of the room were taken up with shelves covered in books, sculptures, vases, and decorative boxes. There were no drawers in Mrs. T.'s desk, but a long metal file cabinet sat behind the desk against the wall. I headed for the cabinet, but it was locked, and I smacked the top of it in frustration. I couldn't see any place else to hide a snapshot. I also noticed there wasn't a single picture of any kind in the room. This part of the tower must be for business only. So I headed upstairs.
Mrs. T.'s bedroom was plain with hardly any furniture, only a large bed with a canopy and white, fringed silk curtains drawn around it, a full length oval-shaped mirror on a stand in one corner, a bedside table with a crystal vase full of fresh flowers, and a tall, narrow chest of drawers on the wall opposite the bed. There were no pictures here, either. A search of the chest of drawers revealed boring-looking cotton underwear like my grandma used to wear, night shirts, socks, and a small ceramic jewelry box full of earrings, colored beads, and nose studs.
The only thing I found pointing to a past life as a nun was a Bible written in French, which was bound in cracked black leather so old pages were falling out, and an ancient-looking black beaded rosary. Her small bathroom was just as boring and held nothing personal beyond a laundry hamper, scented soap, perfume, and other toiletries, including an unopened jar of facial moisturizer from Brooks Labs, the cosmetics company Carter Brooks owned. Realizing I'd completely wasted my time, I was heading back down to the office when I heard someone at the tower door.
Panicked, I ran back up to the bedroom looking around wildly for a place to hide and finally ducking into a closet I'd neglected to search because the frameless door was almost flush with the wall and I'd missed it. I peeked out and saw Mrs. T. sit down behind her desk and turn on her computer. She was settling in for a nice long while and I quietly closed the closet door and headed further back into the deep closet. It smelled like cedar and was filled with clothes neatly hung on wooden hangers. The shelves overhead were filled with boxes I was itching to search through, but I was too afraid she'd hear me. Dim light and a soft breeze streamed into the closet from a small round window in the back.
I was sitting on the closet floor, waiting for my foster mother to leave, when something brushed the top of my shoulder. It was a dark faceless figure dressed in a nun's habit. I screamed. The nun's handless arms were outstretched as if to grab me. I was frozen to the spot faint with terror, my heart hammering loudly in my chest, until a stream of sunlight from the window illuminated what it was I was actually looking at. It wasn't a nun at all. It was a nun's habit on a dress form. The sleeves of the habit were blowing in the breeze coming from the open closet window. The sound of footsteps rushing up the steps made me press further back into the closet behind a garment bag.
"Who's in there?" said Mrs. T.'s stern voice.
I held my breath and pressed myself as flatly against the closet wall as was humanly possible, even pulling my knees up to my chest to make myself smaller. Mrs. T. walked further into the closet, and then I heard her chuckle softly as the sound of screams and laughter from Alex and the girls, still outside playing volleyball, drifted through the window.
"Only noise from outside," she said, sighing in relief. "Calm down, Madeline." I heard her whisper aloud.
I saw her slender feet in sandals as she walked past where I was hiding to the back of the closet and heard her close and latch the window, which had been open a crack. Once she was gone, I was able to let out the breath I was holding. A few minutes later, I peeked out of the closet door again to see her sitting back behind her desk. I was in for a long wait. So, I crept quietly over to the dress form and examined the nun's habit.
This had to be the same habit Mrs. T. had been wearing in the picture I'd seen on the Internet. It was not only old and slightly faded, but also old-fashioned, something nuns wore eons ago. There was no label in the back of the habit. In fact, there were no labels anywhere on the habit. The fabric was rough cotton. The white headdress nuns wore over their head and shoulders was stained in spots and coming apart at the seams in some places. The black veil worn over the top of the headdress was motheaten. My grandma Rita sewed all of her own clothing and mine too, until I got older and rebelled, not wanting to wear homemade clothes anymore. This habit didn't even look as if it had been made using a sewing machine. The small, tight stitches were hand sewn.
The habit was heavy and must have been torture to wear in the summer time. I dropped the sleeve, suddenly creeped out again. With the window now shut, there wasn't enough air circulating in the closet. Between the airlessness of the closet and the thought of wearing a heavy habit, I was feeling claustrophobic, and I badly wanted out. I started to open the closet window again, when I noticed a small door in the back corner of the closet. The door was half the size of a regular door and had a hole where the doorknob should have been.
I stuck my fingers through the hole and pulled the door open. The opening of the door caused a light to come on, revealing a long, narrow hallway with a low ceiling and another small door at the other end. I crawled through the small door and pulled it shut behind me. I couldn't straighten up and I was panicky for a minute when it occurred to me I'd probably just trapped myself in an even smaller space. If so, it was game over for me because they'd hear me screaming and freaking out all over the house. Thankfully the door on the other end swung open easily when I pushed it. I crawled out into a much larger semi-dark room filled with boxes, trunks, and old furniture. I realized I must be in the attic. The same type of small, round window as in Mrs. T.'s closet was also in the attic, only there were a half-dozen and they did little to light the room. The attic was as hot and stuffy as the closet, but the windows were too high up for me to open.
I spotted a single, naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling and pulled the long chain. The room was flooded with light, and I could see how jammed packed with crap it was. There was broken and outdated furniture, empty appliance boxes, an old mattress, rusted-out window fans, stacks of metal folding chairs, card tables, and boxes of books and old magazines. Lining the walls were shelves with dusty ceramic figurines, chipped flower vases, and dented wicker baskets. One corner of the attic was crammed with trunks and pieces of luggage. I spied a large brightly colored duffel bag sitting on top of an old trunk and went over to investigate.
The duffel bag was purple, pink, and yellow plaid. The name M. Lake was written on the bag's thick, wide, yellow strap in black magic marker. This was Morgan Lake's bag. The bag was so heavy I could barely lift it and so full when I pulled back the zipper; stuff came spilling out all over the attic floor. There were several pairs of jeans, a dozen tops, a couple of skirts, a dress, pajamas, socks, and lots of underwear. There were also four pairs of shoes, a full make-up bag, music CDs, and a frosted pink flip phone with the name Morgan spelled out in tiny hot pink crystals. I turned on the phone but it was dead. I sat down heavily on a nearby trunk wondering why in the world Morgan Lake would leave all of this stuff behind if she'd truly left the Tarpley Estate like they all claimed. I didn't have time to wonder for long.
"What are you doing up here?" Devon was standing in the main doorway of the attic. I hadn't even heard her open the door, let alone noticed the rush of cooler air coming from the hallway.
She was still dressed in her bikini but with an oversized T-shirt as a cover up. When she saw Morgan's things lying all over the floor, she rushed over and started stuffing them back into the duffel bag.
"This isn't your stuff! You have no business being up here!"
"I was just looking around. What's the big deal? What are you all trying to hide?" I jumped up from the trunk.
"Hide? What are you talking about?" Devon stood to face me. She was looking at me like I was crazy.
It ticked me off so bad I was no longer scared of what they might be up to. I wanted answers and I wanted them now.
"Cut it out! I know you all are hiding something from me."
Devon laughed nastily. "Are you crazy? What would we be hiding?"
"For starters, if Morgan Lake left then why did she leave so much stuff behind?"
"Probably because she didn't want this crap anymore. Duh! She lost weight and the clothes didn't fit and she bought new ones. She got the butt ugly pink flip phone for her birthday from Mrs. T. and she hated it. And she dyed her hair before she left, which made her make-up all the wrong colors. Got any other questions, Einstein?"
I didn't say anything. I felt silly for letting my imagination get the best of me again, and could feel my face flush with embarrassment. Devon noticed and laughed hysterically.
"Did you seriously think we killed her, cut her up into little pieces, and fed her to the cat? You are so pathetic!"
"Then what about all those locked doors on the third floor? What's in those rooms?" I refused to give up.
"Only all of Dr. Tarpley's important research papers, as well as a collection of valuable artifacts from his digs, which Mrs. T. loans out to museums." She sounded totally bored and flipped a piece of hair over her shoulder.
"Well, what about the labyrinth?" I countered angrily.
"What about it?" she snapped, putting her hands on her hips.
"I overheard Mrs. T. telling you all to keep me out of the labyrinth. And you all have been breaking your necks to keep me busy and out of the labyrinth all week long. You all know something weird happened to me in there. Why won't you tell me what's going on and what's with those rings you guys wear?"
Devon stared at me for a long minute like she was trying to make up her mind about something before she finally spoke. "Okay," she said, shrugging. "You want to know what's going on. Fine. I'll tell you."