Cradle Of Secrets

by Lisa Mondello

  His face grew hard, but she knew his anger wasn’t aimed at her. He clearly blamed Serena for his brother’s disappearance.

  “Why do you think I’d judge Cash?”

  He looked at her directly now, a flash of anger striking his eyes and then disappearing. “Because he’s being judged by everyone, and now hunted down like a dog because of it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Dylan sighed, dropped his fork and sat back in his seat. “He was arrested a few months ago for drug trafficking.”

  “Oh, I see.” She hadn’t expected anything like that.

  “No, you really don’t. He didn’t do what they said he did.”

  “Your loyalty to him is admirable. I’m sure I would—”

  “He didn’t do it,” he insisted. “You see, it’s not just that I love my brother and know he could never be a party to giving drugs to kids. It’s more than that.”

  “That is what they’ve accused him of?”

  “More or less.”

  Trying to remain neutral, Tammie tried to take the side of reason. “There must have been some evidence that led the authorities to that conclusion.” When he just stared, she added. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m just wondering how the authorities could have charged him with a crime as serious as drug trafficking if they didn’t have some kind of evidence against him. I’m just trying to understand it from your point of view.”

  That would be impossible, and Tammie knew it. She didn’t know Cash. She didn’t love him the way Dylan did. And she didn’t have the unconditional trust that came from living and sharing a home with someone all your life.

  Dylan seemed to understand the tack she was taking. “My brother was DEA. Had been for years. He’d made a trip to Colombia not long ago. He said it was business, but…” He scratched his head. “The people at the DEA said he didn’t have business in Colombia, and he didn’t say anything to me. He traveled a lot. Mostly out to the East Coast. But that wasn’t unusual. It was part of his job. The prosecutor is claiming that the only business he had in Colombia was to arrange to bring drugs into the country.”

  “The prosecutor just pulled that out of thin air?” she said delicately.

  Dylan leaned back in the seat and scrubbed his hand over his head, leaving his hair slightly disheveled. “They found a stash in his apartment.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he added, “Cash was framed.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  “I’d been at his apartment the night before. Since I’d been back in the States, I watched his place when he traveled.”

  “Collect the mail and feed the fish?” she said.

  He smiled for the first time since the conversation about his brother started. “Something like that. Cash had only just gotten home when they raided the place. He couldn’t possibly have been in two places at once. He hadn’t even dropped his bag on the ground when the DEA broke the door in. There wasn’t time to stash anything. And there was nothing in his bag.”

  “Maybe it was already there.”

  “I just told you, I’d been there. There was nothing where they said they found it. I saw the police report. I made sure I went over it with a fine-tooth comb. The report is clean. They did everything by the book. It’s like someone scripted the whole scene as a test to give new officers. But he’s looking at getting locked away for life for something he didn’t do.”

  She took a sip of her coffee, which had started to get cold, held both hands around the cup and stared at it.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  Tammie raised her gaze to him and shrugged. “I don’t really know you or your brother at all. But I believe you believe he’s innocent. I still don’t know what this has to do with Serena.”

  “Because of the charges, and the fact that he traveled so extensively, the judge set bail at a cool million. My parents put their house up as collateral for the bail bondsman, and Cash was released. The last thing he said to me was that he was coming to Eastmeadow because Serena needed him. He’d never uttered her name before. He didn’t tell me who she was or what she was to him. Just that he had to go. I’ve never seen him like that. No one has seen him since.”

  “I can understand now why you were so eager to talk to Serena.”

  He drained the rest of the coffee from his mug and set it down. “She knows something. She has to.”

  “Serena doesn’t seem like she’s in a condition to be much help. She was talking a lot of gibberish last night.” She got up from the table. “Do you mind if I make another pot of coffee?”

  “I could use another,” he said. “Did you talk with her?”

  As Tammie tossed the old coffee grounds and placed a new packet of coffee in the machine, she recalled the events in Serena’s room.

  “Not really,” she finally said. “She was having a nightmare and was pretty out of it. It woke the whole house up. She kept crying over and over, ‘They’re stealing babies.’”

  “Babies?”

  “Yeah. It didn’t make any sense.” With the coffeemaker filled with water, Tammie hit the on button and sat back down.

  “I’ll admit I didn’t expect her to be like that,” Dylan said. “I didn’t expect any of this.” He said the last part quietly, looking out the window into the campground. Some of the other campers were starting to rise, making their way out of tents and building fires.

  “Do you think Cash skipped the country?”

  “Cash? No way.” He laughed, but it held no humor. “He’s not the type to run from trouble. In fact, he’s more the type to go straight into it with both guns cocked.”

  She raised an eyebrow, which he responded to by repeating, “He’s not one to run from trouble.”

  “Did anyone see Cash here in town? I mean, if he came here to help Serena, someone might have.”

  “If they did, they’re not talking.”

  Tammie thought of her parents, and the strange way they were behaving in the last months before their deaths. “Then what?”

  He closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “I’m afraid to even think sometimes, but it’s hard. He was in trouble. And for someone to have it in for him enough to do the kind of damage they did, bringing in the drugs, making sure the DEA had him as a suspect, they’d have to be pretty heavily connected to organized crime. I hate even thinking of him caught up in that. It’s the kind of thing he’d fought against in his job. I pray to the Lord every day to keep him safe, to watch over him and help him get out of whatever mess he’s found himself in. Cash is a faithful man. He couldn’t have done the things he’s been accused of.”

  Tammie lifted her eyes to his. Something inside her warmed at the way he spoke of his brother and his unabashed way of speaking of his faith.

  When she was growing up, talking about the Lord and her faith had been as easy as breathing in her house. Her parents had always said that God was the friend who was with you even when you were alone. She’d forgotten that over the past year. She never spoke of her faith to Bill. He wasn’t a believer. He hadn’t dismissed her when she talked about her faith, but soon she’d stopped talking about the Lord and how she felt His presence, because she knew it made him uncomfortable. Then she’d stopped talking about her faith altogether.

  “What is it?” Dylan was looking at her, and she realized she’d drifted off in thought.

  She felt her cheeks warm at having been caught daydreaming. “It’s just that it’s nice to hear you talk about your faith. It’s been a long time since I’ve been with someone who is that comfortable with it.”

  His brow furrowed. “You don’t go to church?”

  He wasn’t accusing her, she realized. It was curiosity.

  “I did. I stopped after my parents died. It’s been hard.” It pained her to say it. “My parents were very faithful people. They taught me that God was the one who sat in the empty chair next to you and then stood behind you when that chair was occupied by someone else.”

&nbs
p; He smiled. “That’s a nice way of putting it. It’s nice to think that wherever Cash is right now, God is with him.”

  “How do you think Serena is connected to Cash?”

  “I think Cash was in love with her—is in love with her.”

  Her breath hitched. Had Dylan already given up hope that his brother was still alive?

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, misinterpreting her reaction. “But a relationship with Serena is the only thing I can figure. He never mentioned her at all. Not until the last day I saw him. It’s like he was giving me a message that day. A riddle of some sort that he wanted me to figure out. Except I can’t.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t he just tell you what was going on?”

  “He said he was afraid for her. Said he had to get her out of here. The look on his face…”

  “He never mentioned why?”

  “No. I was so bowled over by the drug-trafficking charges and what to do about them—how to prove his innocence—that I didn’t pay it much mention. I warned him about coming out to Eastmeadow, since he was on bail. He assured me it was going to be fine and that it was only going to be for a day or two.” Dylan looked out onto the campground, regret etched in the lines of his face. “I should have come with him.”

  Dylan abruptly got up from the table and picked up his half-eaten plate of eggs. She hadn’t done much better on her plate. He tossed his paper plate into the trash and stood by the camper door.

  “What do you really think happened, Dylan?”

  “I thought maybe Serena had something to do with it. But after meeting her, seeing how out of it she is, I think he stumbled into someone’s territory and they didn’t like it. He’s not one to back away easily just because someone intimidated him. I know you’re skeptical about his innocence.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ve read the expression you gave me many times. No one thinks he’s innocent. But I know better. He never would have skipped bail to get out of punishment if he was due. And he never would have let my parents put their home up as collateral if there was a chance they’d lose it. Something happened to him that kept him from coming home. In my heart, I don’t want to believe it, but I think he’s…I think he’s dead.”

  He turned to her then, and she saw the pain in his face at the thought that his beloved brother was gone. She knew that feeling all too well.

  “You have a ray of hope I don’t have,” she said delicately.

  “Meaning?”

  Tammie wiped the toast crumbs from her hands onto her plate and then picked it up and tossed it in the trash along with the plastic-ware. She busied herself pouring another cup of coffee before turning around.

  “You have hope of finding Cash. Maybe alive. I know it looks bad now. But you have to keep your faith that God will watch over him.”

  “Oh, I believe God is with him,” Dylan said resolutely. “I just don’t know where that is or what His plan is for Cash.”

  He stared at her for a moment, and awareness flashed across his face.

  “You were talking about your parents when you said I have hope that you don’t.”

  With the coffee cup in her hand, Tammie pushed through the camper door to the outside. A blast of fresh air hit her face, and she breathed deeply. She hadn’t realized how claustrophobic she’d been feeling inside. Walking to her car, she leaned against it and took a sip of the hot liquid.

  It took a minute, but Dylan followed her outside, holding a cup of freshly poured coffee in his hand. Tammie didn’t look at him as he approached. Instead, she watched the people who were milling about. Some had towels draped over their shoulders as they headed toward the pond. Others were dressed in jogging clothes and were just out for a quick morning power walk. They nodded good morning as they walked by, but no one was really paying attention to them.

  Dylan didn’t say anything to her, as if he were giving her space to make up her mind about whether or not she wanted to talk.

  “I don’t remember telling you about my parents,” she finally said.

  “You didn’t tell me directly. You mentioned to Aurore they were killed.”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes, in a boating accident, nearly two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you. That’s the reason I came here to Eastmeadow.”

  He frowned.

  Her smile was weak. “We’re not so different, you and I. You’re searching for your brother and the truth about what happened to him. I’m trying to put my parents’ deaths to rest by learning the truth about what really happened to them.”

  “You said they were killed in Oregon, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But I think the answers lie here.”

  “Oregon and Massachusetts have a whole lot of country between them,” he said.

  “It’s not like I put my finger on the map and decided to come here. I had my reasons.”

  “Care to share them?”

  Something prickled inside her. She didn’t need any more people shooting down her suspicions. She needed help. Dylan’s interest in what she had to say was refreshing. After so many months of opposition from Bill and her other friends, to have someone believe that there might be something to what she’d suspected for a long time gave validation that she wasn’t so crazy for coming all this way.

  “After my parents were killed, I had the task of closing up their house in Winchester. I’d found a hatbox in my mother’s closet. I’d seen it there before, but since it was among her private things, I never dared to look inside.”

  “Until she was gone.”

  Tammie nodded. “There were little mementos in there. A few birthday cards from my father, love notes, some pictures of my mother, me and my grandparents when I was a little girl. They’d died when I was quite young. And there was this letter from a person named Dutch. It came from Eastmeadow, and it mentioned closing their old house and taking care of things for them. And it said for them to stay safe. It was cryptic, to say the least, and it only had a post office box number.”

  Dylan thought a second. “Dutch. Was that a first or last name?”

  “Don’t know.” She chuckled lightly. “There’s a whole lot I don’t know or understand about Eastmeadow or what happened, Dylan. I never even knew my parents lived here before. I’ve never seen a place that is so beautiful and yet holds so many secrets. Everyone that I’ve met here seems to have something to hide.”

  He darted his eyebrows up and made a face. “I get that.”

  “My parents weren’t like that normally, though. At least, I’d never known them to be. So it seemed odd when for a few months before their deaths they acted…”

  “Weird?”

  “Exactly. I was so busy that I dismissed it. I was working and living on my own in Vancouver at the time, and hadn’t been home in a few months. But then, all of a sudden, Dad called and insisted we go on a family vacation.” Tammie snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

  “What’s strange about that?”

  “This private cruise was like some urgent thing that had to happen right then. My mother called me every night to press me on it. They insisted I go with them.”

  She put the coffee mug on the hood of her car and turned around, leaning her elbows on the hood. “I finally agreed because I knew it was important to them. It was such short notice that I ended up having all these wild ideas that one of my parents was dying of cancer or something and wanted to go on one last family trip before they…”

  She played with the dust on the hood of the car with her finger, making swirls and then wiping her fingers on her jeans.

  “It was a nightmare getting the time off from work but I did it. The semester had just started at the private school I was working at, and because I wanted to get ahead and make sure my lesson plans were in place for the substitute teacher, I ended up being late to the marina.”

  “What happened?”

&nbs
p; “I’d called my mother’s cell phone to tell her I was going to be a little late. To save time, the captain decided to fuel the boat while they waited for me. The boat was at the fueling station when I got there.”

  She laughed without humor, shaking her head at the memory. “I remember looking at that boat, thinking my parents had to have spent their entire retirement to afford this stupid trip, and how angry I was that they did it. At the same time, I was scared out of my wits, because the only way I could figure my parents would do something so out of character was if someone was dying.”

  She dug her heel into the dirt, stared at a rock to keep control of her voice. “And then the boat just blew up.”

  “What?”

  “Just like that. Flames and a million pieces all over the harbor. The boat exploded, and they were on it. My parents were killed, along with the captain.”

  Dylan blew out a quick breath. “I’m so sorry. It must have been horrible to see.”

  “Actually, I remember very little of the actual explosion. I was blown back into the water by the force of it, and was fished out by someone who’d seen the whole thing happen from the parking lot. If there hadn’t been someone there who’d seen me go into the water, I would have drowned. The wind had been knocked out of my lungs. At first I couldn’t breathe because of the force of the blast, and then later because I couldn’t believe my eyes. Couldn’t believe what had happened.”

  “You were lucky, then,” Dylan said, placing his hand on her shoulder.

  She shrugged. It hadn’t felt that way when she woke up. Still didn’t.

  “What caused the explosion?”

  “Officially? A fuel leak. But even the detective who investigated the explosion had his doubts.”

  “Why?”

  “The boat my parents had chartered was a diesel. Diesel engines don’t explode when taking on fuel, not like gas-powered engines. It takes a lot longer for the diesel fuel to fire. If there had been a leak, the captain would have recognized the signs, and they would have all been able to get off in time before it exploded. But they didn’t. It just went up.”