Endless Fear

by Adrianne Lee

  “Not a one, but that pseudo-granite door has been there a long time. Probably installed by Octavius himself.”

  Spencer nodded. “Considering the smuggling that went on, it makes sense the old guy would’ve built himself a few escape routes.”

  Thane handed back the extra flashlight and strode forward, hunching over to accommodate his tall frame in the low ceiling passageway. “Where do you suppose this leads?”

  “I don’t know, but judging by the effortless way that door swung open, it’s been used and used recently.”

  “Do you think April could have found this and come in to investigate?”

  Knowing her terror of the dark, Spencer couldn’t imagine anything less likely than April traversing dark corridors of her own free will. And yet, what other hope did he have? “At this point I’m willing to consider just about anything.”

  The crouched position grew uncomfortable sooner than Spencer would have thought possible, but uncertain of what lay ahead, he knew they dare not move faster. “Unless my sense of direction has failed me, I’d say we’re backtracking, skirting the house on the outside of the basement.”

  “Your sense of direction is right on, but the air quality in here could use improvement.”

  Just as he was getting used to the crick in his neck and between his shoulders, Spencer saw Thane straighten. His head disappeared from view. A second later he was stretching his own spine. They were standing in a ten-by-ten room.

  “What do you make of this?” Thane asked.

  Drawing a lungful of somewhat better air, Spencer wheeled his light across the coarse dirt walls and floor. Except for a rusted Coleman lantern sitting next to a rat-eaten mattress in one corner and a wooden ladder in the other, the chamber was empty. “Storage room, apparently.”

  “For opium, diamonds, wool, whiskey, or Chinese slaves…?”

  “Probably all of them at one time or another.”

  “Lord, if only these walls could talk. Why is there a mattress down here?”

  Spencer shrugged and kicked at it with his shoe. Dust furled upward. “It’s too new to have been for the slaves. At any rate, no one’s lain down on it for a lot of years, I’ll tell you that.” Normally this discovery would have intrigued him, but it brought him no closer to finding April, and right now nothing else mattered. He stepped to the ladder and shined his light against the ceiling. “Hey. Come here.”

  He was scrambling up the ladder, lifting the wooden hatch before Thane responded. It flopped back on its hinges, but any expected banging this should have caused was muffled. He clambered over the lip of the opening. One look at the tools hung on hooks and scattered about and he knew where they were. “So much for both our senses of direction,” he told Thane. “We’re inside the storage shed.” The storage shed sat on the rise above the dock.

  “No wonder it seemed like such a long walk.” Thane joined him. “Did you know this trapdoor existed?”

  “No.” He glared at the gunny sacks that had reposed on its top. “It’s obviously kept covered on purpose.”

  “The question is why?”

  “Who knows?” The very furtiveness of the camouflage made Spencer uneasy, for he felt certain this secret was not connected with smugglers or pirates. Inexplicably, he sensed it had something to do with April, and yet, he couldn’t say how or why he felt this. Did she know about this tunnel, this escape hatch? Had she used them for some un-guessable reason? He wanted to hope. Anything was better than the images he couldn’t quite dispel of her broken body lying on the rocky shore of Haro Strait. He strode to the other side of the building and rattled the doorknob. The resistance scrapped his hope. “Karl was right. It’s locked up tight.”

  “It’s cold in here, too.” Thane clasped his hand on Spencer’s shoulder. “Sorry about the wild goose chase. Let’s get back to the house. There may have been some word about April.”

  There wasn’t.

  Spencer’s mother placed a fresh cup of coffee and a sandwich on a plate in front of him. Evidently, Helga had sliced up the sirloin tip. The O’Briens ate hungrily. Spencer didn’t begrudge them, but he couldn’t sit here and watch them eat.

  Carrying his coffee, he retreated to August’s den and was grateful to find he had the room to himself. Apparently the party goers had all been informed of the cancellation. He jerked open the drapes. The fog stared back, pressing against the French doors like a bloated-faced monster, ugly and drippy, wetting the glass as effectively as rain, thwarting his efforts to hunt for April. The second it started to dissipate he would be ready.

  Behind him the telephone rang. He jumped and spun toward it. “Hello?” He answered tentatively, hoping the caller would be April, yet fearing it would be someone with bad news about her. “Calendar House.”

  “Finally. I apologize for the lateness of the hour, but I’ve been trying to get through for ages. I got so many busy signals, I was about to call the operator to see if something was wrong with the line.”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong with the line. It’s been in use.” Probably another guest, he thought, not recognizing the woman’s voice nor wanting to deal with her petty complaints. “Who is this?”

  “Nancy Merritt. May I speak to April Farraday?”

  The doctor. He’d forgotten he was going to call her. Only now that she was actually on the phone he didn’t know what to say to her. How did he tell April’s psychiatrist they had lost her on an island the size of Farraday? Weary beyond his years, Spencer sank to the edge of August’s desk and deposited his untasted cup of coffee next to the phone.

  “Doctor, this is Spencer Garrick. I was the one you spoke to earlier this evening. I’m afraid there’s a…a problem. April can’t come to the phone.”

  “A problem?” He could have sworn her voice had raised a notch. “Has April suffered an…ah…relapse?”

  Had she? Could the mixed signals he’d been heaping on April since the first day of her arrival here have sent her into a mental tailspin? Over the past few hours, he’d considered and rejected this possibility so many times he no longer knew what to think. “Not that I know of.”

  “Not that you know of? What kind of problem are we talking about, Mr. Garrick?”

  The moisture drained from his mouth. Spence reached for his abandoned mug and swallowed a gulp of lukewarm coffee. Just as he started to speak, the doctor cut him off.

  “April left a message on my answering machine sometime in the wee hours of last night.” Dr. Merritt’s obvious impatience punctuated every word. “She mentioned a mishap with a wine rack, but she said her wounds were minor.”

  “They were.” So April had called the doctor. Was there something to be learned from an exchange of information? “This has nothing to do with the wine rack.”

  “Mr. Garrick, you’re frightening me. What has happened to April?”

  As succinctly as possible, he explained everything he knew, including the family’s assumption that April had fallen or jumped from the cliff. “We’ve called the Coast Guard, but the fog is so dense at this moment we’ve had to discontinue our own search.”

  “Oh, God.” Nancy Merritt's whisper sounded stunned, but surprisingly resigned. “April’s message was…I…I was afraid something would happen.”

  Spencer was suddenly furious. “Then why did you wait so long to call?”

  “I’m in Seattle at a convention,” she answered defensively. “I had only collected my phone messages before I called the first time. And when you said everyone was about to sit down to dinner, I assumed you had seen and spoken with April and that she must be fine. But when she didn’t return my call…”

  “I see.” The words fell from his mouth as flat at his hopes of finding April alive and well.

  “Mr. Garrick, I can’t say April couldn’t have fallen from the cliff, but I have no reason to believe she was suicidal.”

  He rammed his fingers through his hair. “May I ask you what message she left on your answering machine?”

  “You may ask.
However, I assume you know that disclosing the confidences of my patients would breach my professional ethics.”

  “Doctor,” he ground between clenched teeth. “I appreciate your reluctance to discuss this with me, but if April can still be helped, can’t you see that every minute counts?”

  Nancy hesitated, obviously debating the virtue of doctor/patient confidentiality against patient welfare. Couldn’t she see there was no contest? April had to come first. “Doctor?”

  “All right. You understand I’m only doing this for April’s sake.” He also understood from her tone that the damned woman wasn’t going to tell him anything more than she thought he needed to know.

  “The reason I asked if April had suffered a relapse was because of the way she described the incident with the wine rack. She said at first she thought someone pushed it over on her, later she’d decided it must have been an accident, but by the time she called, she’d come to the conclusion she was losing her grip on sanity altogether.”

  His scalp felt too small for his skull. “Is…is that what you suspect?” The line went blank and for a split second he thought the doctor had hung up. Then he heard her breathing. Considering. Spencer crammed his fist into his thigh. God, couldn’t the woman think faster than this?

  Finally she replied, “I’d have to see and speak to April before making that kind of judgment. Tell me, during these past two weeks, has she shown any signs of regression?”

  Now pounding his fist against his thigh, he recounted the episode in the attic when April had acted disoriented, and the time he’d found her in the dark basement sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Actually, those are both side effects of her illness, ones we discussed and prepared for. They could mean she’d started remembering.”

  Spencer quit hitting his leg and scrubbed his face with his hand. “That’s good then, right?”

  “Yesterday I would have said yes. Tonight, I’m not so certain.”

  Fear heaved through his stomach.

  “Mr. Garrick, would—would you know who might have sent an anonymous note April received prior to her departure for Calendar House?”

  “An anonymous…?” Like a man moving in slow motion, Spencer stood. He frowned at the phone as though he could actually see the doctor at the other end in her Seattle hotel room. “You mean a threat of some kind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think someone’s been trying to frighten her?” He was shouting now. “For God’s sakes, harm her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But she sounded as though that was exactly what she thought. Heat dropped from his face so fast he felt dizzy.

  The doctor said, “I’ve rented a car. I’m driving to Anacortes to catch the first ferry. I’ll be in Friday Harbor as soon as possible, but I’m at least five hours away. I’ll call when I arrive. In the meantime, you might want to conduct another search of the house—every closet, every cupboard, anything big enough for April to fit into.”

  He gripped the phone so hard his hand hurt. “Am I looking for a place April might have crawled into on her own or one where someone might have put her?”

  “Yes.”

  Spencer’s skin cooled to a temperature near the one outdoors. He dumped the receiver into its cradle, then stood staring at the phone, shaking.

  Had someone hurt April? Had she hurt herself? His mind spun. God, the incident in the garage, the family’s assumption it had been a suicide attempt, Dr. Merrit’s insistence April was not suicidal.

  The electrician’s words assailed him, “Someone shut off the main switch on purpose.”

  His heart squeezed with pain as he mentally compiled a list: the clean path around August’s discarded hulls, the access to the tunnel through which someone could come and go whenever they please, April not just terrified in the dark basement but hysterical, the missing poems, Lily’s disemboweled trunk, the collapsed wine racks, and April dramatically plunking the Barbie doll on the breakfast table as if trying to catch someone off guard. Add to that an anonymous note. Considered separately these things appeared innocent enough, weighed together, they suggested sinister goings on.

  He lifted the receiver and dialed the San Juan County Sheriff.

  * * * *

  Spencer informed August that Dr. Merritt had called, but other than the fact she was driving up, he kept the theme of their conversation to himself. He spent the next two hours inspecting every inch of Calendar House. Alone. He confided in no one, trusted no one. How could he? April’s life or her sanity depended on his discretion.

  The others—the O’Briens in particular—probably thought he was rude or crazy, insisting on rummaging through their rooms. So much for manners. Normally, he would have gone to great lengths not to offend Thane’s future in-laws; tonight he didn’t give a damn. The worse of it was, he hadn’t found a trace of April.

  Maybe she’s in here, he thought, shoving through the doors of the west wing. Eerie darkness greeted his entrance up the three stairs and into the unused hallway. The thick carpet absorbed his footsteps, the dusty air his breath. He located the light switch. The click was loud and ineffective.

  He tugged the flashlight from his back pocket with a frustrated grunt, then played the beam into the dark corridor. He hadn’t been in this wing of the house in years, eleven to be exact. From the look of it neither had anyone else. Still the doctor had said to check every nook and cranny.

  Spencer proceeded to the old servant’s quarters at the farthest end of the hall, quickly eliminated them and moved on to the abandoned guest bedrooms. Every surface seemed coated with dust. Ignoring it, Spencer searched in, under, and around every item in each room, smudged his clothes and his face, and emitted several hearty sneezes.

  Heavy-hearted, he headed back along the corridor, absently lighting his way with the flashlight beam, to the ballroom. It was the only place he hadn’t looked. He approached the glass door with his hope in shreds, uncertain how much more of this he could take.

  He stepped into the vast room. Cold as biting as the fog cleaving the enormous glass windows stole over him. Spencer shook off a shiver. Panning the light from corner to corner, he strode stealthily across the wooden floor. Nothing. Nothing but empty spaces.

  He pivoted, gradually circling. The beam fell on the furniture at the far end of the room. Lily’s furniture. But why were the sheets tossed carelessly aside? Could April be hiding there?

  He advanced on the huddled group of sofas, tables, and chairs with a quickening pulse, the beam of his light now purposeful, now directed. “April? Are you here? It’s me, Spence. I won’t hurt you. You can come out--” Inches from the sofas Spencer stopped short. “What in the hell?”

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The sofas were ripped open, every cushion cut, the table tops lacerated with long and short gashes. What in the name of God was the reason for this? Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his light to Lily’s portrait. Shock held him rooted. Lily’s delicate face had been scored like a piece of tough steak. The hatred behind the act was so evident it lingered in the cold air around him as though the vandalizer were still here, standing just out of his line of vision. Uneasily, he fanned the light around the room one more time to assure himself he was actually alone.

  His thoughts appalled him as much as the defilement. Had April come to the ballroom, remembered her hatred of her mother and done this? The notion turned his stomach.

  He slid his finger into the pocket of his slacks, touching his mother’s gold cross. Cynthia, too, had hated Lily. But why would she wait until April was home to destroy these things? Perhaps someone hoped this carnage would be discovered and the finger pointed at April. It was a possibility he wanted to believe so badly his head throbbed. But if someone else had meant April to look insane, why hadn’t that someone found a way to expose this deed? Because they’d found a way to dispose of April instead?

  He left the west wing with the weight of the world on his shoulders. In all the elections he’d ever lost,
Spence had never felt more defeated. He returned to the den. It was deserted. Had everyone else gone to bed? Most likely. Should he? Why bother? He was exhausted, yes, but sleepy, no.

  He collapsed his long frame into one of the red leather chairs. And waited. He’d thought the night he’d waited to search April’s room for the poems had been the slowest in his life. He’d been wrong. He stared out the French doors at the unrelenting fog, then back at the sluggishly moving hands of his wristwatch. It was after one a.m. So early, so late.

  Feeling as restless as a captive tiger, he abandoned the den and stalked through the lower level, surprised to come upon his mother, brother, stepfather, step-aunt, and three of the five O’Briens in the living room. Their conversation was nothing more than a low murmur, accompanied by the nervous clack of March’s knitting needles, audienced by the stealthy fog.

  August sat slumped on one of the sofas, his face drawn with worry, his shoulders limp with resignation, while Cynthia fluttered, the perfect hostess at this imperfect affair. Thane and Vanessa accepted her offered coffee. Walter and Dee Dee O'Brien huddled together on the opposite couch, uncomfortable participants in someone else’s tragedy. Spencer joined them, but soon discovered he was unable to sit or carry on conversation for more than a few seconds. The strain of distrust kept him moving.

  In the kitchen, he found Karl pacing, grumbling to Helga and Vanessa’s aunt about the fog. The two men exchanged knowing looks, but Spencer wasn’t ready to share his worry for April with the one man who undoubtedly knew exactly how he felt. He refilled his coffee cup and left.

  At length, he found himself in July’s bedroom. A bedside lamp had been left on, evidently to placate the terrified little girl. As he strode to the bed, he realized he no longer had his coffee cup or any idea where he’d put it. Not that it mattered. He gazed down at the sleeping child. Poor kid. Overly tired, she had fought sleep until the last possible moment. She wasn’t resting peacefully. Her tiny fingers were curled into tight fists, and as he watched, she flinched and cried April’s name.

  With his heart wrenching, he sank to the bed beside her and smoothed a lock of hair from her forehead. July continued to sleep as he studied her dainty face. Until now, he hadn’t noticed the tilt of her nose was a duplicate to April’s. A half smile tugged his tense mouth. Was this what he and April’s children would have looked like had there ever been the opportunity to have any? The thought tore at his ravaged spirits. He shoved his fingers through his hair, sprang to his feet, and shuffled to the window.