Dark Storm

by Karen Harper

  Trying to ignore the doll, Claire leaned closer and put her arms around Lexi to lift her up into her embrace. “I said this rain and wind are the outer bands of the storm—way far out. Your daddy and Mitch will be back soon, safe and sound, and we’re all safe here. Please, Lexi, just calm down and take a little rest and everything will be fine. Your daddy will come back, and we’ll find Aunt Dar—”

  “You keep saying that, but so far it isn’t true!” Lexi made the doll say. “We just want to find Aunt Darcy. Jilly does, too, or all three of us are going to go looking for her ourselves!”

  When Claire finally calmed her enough that she laid the doll down again, Lexi went to sleep almost immediately, obviously exhausted. Weren’t they all, though, physically, emotionally? But now, one more fear: she had to tell Steve and Nick, Nita, too, that it was possible Lexi and Jilly had talked about finding Darcy on their own.

  * * *

  That night, again, no one slept well and not just because of the rain. Despite the baby monitor, Claire went in once or twice to check on Trey and then Lexi, who was so sound asleep she had hardly changed positions. Claire was tempted to rip that doll out of her arms and destroy it, but the repercussions from that could make things worse, if that was possible. At least Jilly was sound asleep, too, in the other twin bed.

  Claire padded barefoot back into Trey’s room to check on him—yes, thank heavens, someone was sleeping like a baby—then headed back to bed, hoping not to wake Nick, who had tossed and turned before finally dropping off to sleep. Outside, the rain and wind thrashed the palm fronds against the roof. A distant rumble of thunder made her wonder if the butterflies outside had found shelter.

  “Lexi okay?” Nick whispered when Claire slid back in bed. So he was sleeping fitfully, too.

  “Still out. I thought you were asleep.”

  He reached over and drew her to him, pulling her back against his chest with her bottom cradled in his lap. He kissed the nape of her neck, then her bare shoulder before whispering, “Sleep, sweetheart. That’s the best thing you can do for yourself right now and for the rest of us. I’ll go check on Lexi and Trey next, just for my own sanity. Think we could save some money being our own baby monitors? And did you take your narco meds?”

  “Yes. I hate to be back on those heavy-hitters but I need them for now. If I don’t get some rest, I’ll fall asleep on my feet, and I have to go see Tara as soon as possible and research some things.”

  “That’s all for tomorrow. We’ll go together. For now, just sleep.”

  It felt so good, so safe, in their bed, in his arms. If only this lurking, dark horror about Darcy’s fate would not hold to her, too.

  * * *

  Claire was drifting, but at least Darcy was here, too. Mother was reading aloud to them when they’d much rather watch TV or play outside with the other kids. But Mother collected books, had ever since their father had left without a word—at least without a word to his daughters. Why did he leave? Where was he, and why didn’t he come back?

  Oh, Mother was reading from a book called The Collector. There was a butterfly and a door key on the cover. But the same book she had from Darcy’s house was different—a headless woman held down with tape.

  Claire shuddered. She knew she was dreaming and wanted to escape, but she had to stay. She had to know about the story. No, she could wake up and find her own book, the book Darcy had. And here, she thought Darcy had hated Mother’s stories. Mr. Warren’s at the library were so much better, funny, fun books, things Claire could understand.

  Now she remembered. This story called The Collector was about a man who was obsessed with a woman. He usually collected butterflies, but he drugged her with chloroform and kidnapped her and kept her prisoner. But what was also sad was that his prisoner wrote letters to her sister she knew would never be delivered. She tried to escape but she died—she died!

  With a gasp, Claire sat straight up in bed.

  “Claire, what is it? Are you all right?”

  Nick’s voice yanked her back to reality, but could that fictional book have been real—an omen? Now she remembered why she and Darcy had hated it. That Mother had read it to them made her angry now. How dare she read a horror story with an abduction and sexual obsession and a tragic ending to her daughters, who had been traumatized years before by their father’s strange desertion! How much she had tried to love Mother, how much she missed her and felt sad for her, but that was bordering on child abuse!

  But did Darcy know someone who was obsessed with her, so she’d picked up a copy of that old book she remembered because—because...

  “Claire, did you hear me? A bad dream?” Nick asked, gently pulling her into his embrace.

  She nodded. They both jumped as a crash of lightning nearby shook the house. The dim light in the master bath went out; the bedside alarm clock began blinking its 3:17 a.m. red numbers, then dimmed to black. Their security alarm began to beep.

  “A bad dream but maybe good,” she whispered to herself as they both got up to check the house and their children.

  “Hope the electricity comes back on soon,” he muttered. “I’ll turn off the alarm.”

  She fumbled for the small flashlight in her bedside table drawer. “Nick,” she whispered, shining the thin beam ahead of her in the pitch dark, “I just realized I have to talk to Will Warren again. Soon.”

  * * *

  The electricity came back on in the morning. Once Nita had arrived to stay with the children, Claire, Steve and Nick headed out to the Flutterby Farm. The three of them hoped to catch Will Warren at the main library later, though Claire would rather go alone. Steve was adamant about talking to him, too, and she and Nick didn’t want Steve facing down anyone alone.

  Tara had phoned Claire to tell her that her migraine was under control, and she would like to see them, so they drove out immediately in Nick’s car. Claire was relieved he was going along, because she still felt Steve could be volatile. She prayed he wouldn’t blame poor Tara.

  The curtains were drawn and no lights were on inside the old house, because Tara had said on the phone that helped her “poor aching head.” Although Claire was hoping they could ease into an interrogation, Steve asked right away if he could see where Darcy had been taken. Claire volunteered to show him so that Tara wouldn’t have to go out into the bright sun. Nick went along, too, since he had not examined the scene.

  “I see the so-called butterfly door is double-netted,” Steve observed. “So how did someone leave it open, if that’s how some of them escaped?”

  “As I understand it,” Claire said, “both netted curtains were shoved aside, which allowed some of the exotics to get out. At least, they were missing. On her own, Darcy would never have been so careless.”

  “So,” Steve said, “it was someone else’s fault, deliberate or just ignorant.”

  Claire said, “I’m thinking the netting must have been left that way for a while for close to twenty orangetips to escape. Actually, I looked that breed up in Darcy’s butterfly book, where she had them bookmarked. They’re properly named falcate orangetips, commonly called just orangetips. The males, you might know, have showy orange spots on each wing, while the female is plain white. They’re not large, and they don’t live long.”

  At that last wording, Steve’s and Claire’s frowning gazes clashed before Steve looked away. They don’t live long hung in the air with their thoughts again on Darcy.

  “So,” Nick put in during the awkward pause, “are orangetips worth a lot of money for some reason? Rare? Special?”

  “That’s one of the questions I have to ask Tara,” Claire said. “I do know they’re not indigenous to South Florida and prefer a woodland setting—Louisiana and Kentucky, places like that. Not the Everglades and swamps.”

  The two men looked around at the plush tropical growth of the plants most butterflies loved. Claire pointed out where Darcy’s phone was found—with Tara’s prints on it in her panic. Nick looked jumpy when the butterflies landed on
him and he blew them carefully off. Steve just shifted away from them. They would hardly, Claire thought, make obsessed fans like the Japanese men Kris had mentioned.

  “Let’s go talk to Tara,” Claire suggested. “I hope the dimness in her house helps her, and I’m sure loud sounds would startle her,” she added, hoping both men took that as a hint to avoid raising their voices. She could tell they were both frustrated, but so was she.

  Carefully closing both butterfly doors, they headed for the house.

  * * *

  Jace was pleased to be back on land where his phone worked. He wanted to call Claire so he could talk to Lexi. He checked his texts, then his emails. Damn, no “Welcome back to earth, Daddy” message, so he’d just call Claire and have her get Lexi on, then call Brit. Or he could call Brit first. She’d said she’d make an effort to see Lexi while he was gone.

  He went to his texts again. Yep, several from Brit. He opened the latest one.

  Claire’s sister, Darcy, has disappeared from her job. Police on it. Big local news. Darcy’s husband here. Jilly distraught but Lexi worse, hiding behind imaginary friend and some old doll. Call me when you land.

  “Everything okay?” Mitch asked when Jace stopped walking and just stared at his phone.

  “My former sister-in-law, Lexi’s aunt, is missing. Gotta get home. Out of the hurricane and—and back into a storm.”

  9

  Even in the dimness of Tara’s house, Claire noted the living room walls were covered with framed photos of Tara with her friends—all women, one including Darcy.

  Claire looked at it closely but quickly. It must be a blowup of a selfie, because it was blurry and not a very good photo of either of them, maybe because the camera was too low. Darcy looked merely content; Tara was beaming and had her arm around Darcy. Although Darcy had not worked at the butterfly farm for long, Claire wondered if Tara, an only child and childless, regarded Darcy almost as a daughter. Claire berated herself for wishing she had an older friend and mentor like that. Despite resenting Mother’s treatment of them, Claire had tried to close that gap in her life. Yet she admitted that she missed her selfish mother and traitor of a father.

  But on the other wall, opposite of where she, Nick and Steve now sat on a flower-print sofa, they all seemed to admire not just the photos, but the beautifully framed rows of butterflies, meticulously arranged by size and color under glass. Claire skimmed the many specimens for the orangetips she’d seen in Darcy’s book. Yes, there—both a male and female with wings perfectly outspread, pinned, motionless, dead.

  Claire waited for Tara to answer Steve’s questions, some things she, Ken and Nick had already been over. Tara was openly weeping now, wringing her hands and apologizing again and again for Darcy’s disappearance, for going to the post office despite the fact she’d done that many times before while Darcy worked in the butterfly houses.

  “No, Steve,” Tara said to answer his question. “Darcy did not seem one bit upset or despondent, and she was looking forward to your coming back on the weekend for your anniversary. She had just learned from someone that the tenth wedding celebration was symbolized by tin or aluminum. She said at first that sounded cheap, but she’d found out the point was that items made from either of those metals could be bent but not broken—a milestone of love and lasting duty.”

  “But now, it may be all broken,” Steve muttered, leaning forward and staring at his hands gripped between his knees so hard his fingers went white. Perhaps he was holding his panic and anger in because he saw that Tara was obviously grief-stricken, too.

  “Tara,” she said, partly to change the subject, “tell us a bit about the orangetips that seemed to be disproportionately missing. Darcy was reading up on them.”

  “They are exotic—meaning not from this area. They make their home from Louisiana to Kentucky, points north,” she told them, wiping tears from under her eyes. “We were trying to take very good care of them in all three of their stages—you may have seen their pupae in their cocoons—in the other room. You see, they were paying guests, and we needed that.”

  Nick said, “That breed—the ones with so many missing were ‘paying guests’? How so?”

  “I accepted about thirty of them nearly four months ago to protect and breed. My client wanted to see if they could be introduced here. It was for a master’s degree thesis project for a local biology teacher, that’s all. Needless to say, I’m all for education, and the grad student is one I’ve known for years, admired and followed his up-and-down career after he was in my elementary school class a good while ago.”

  Claire saw Nick sit up straighter. She was sure he was thinking of Lincoln Yost. He asked Tara, “Could you share his name with us?”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t until I get his permission, especially since this might become a criminal investigation. And he asked for privacy. I’ll ask him and let you know. Actually, his thesis is on extended hibernation in two animals as different from each other as—well, as day and night. I am as proud of this person as I am of all my pupils, including your darling Lexi. He was an excellent athlete as well as a fine student, and when he had an athletic career–ending injury, he did not mope around but channeled his interests in another direction. He’s been forced to take a different career path, but he’s managed to still live on a teacher’s salary and live well, something not easy to do in South Florida, as I could well tell you.”

  Claire held her breath, wondering if Nick would insist on knowing more, but the careful, circumspect lawyer came out in him, whereas she would have mentioned Lincoln Yost’s name and his connection to the Fly Safe group. No doubt Detective Jensen would have brought it up if he’d been here. Of course, the Yost connection could be wrong, but something right had to turn up soon. Jensen had said to never ignore an apparent coincidence.

  “No, that’s all right,” Nick told Tara. “Don’t bother whoever it is over this. We all have more important things to worry about now.”

  “I’ve been thinking he’d contact me since the media has mentioned some butterflies disappeared, too. I suppose that many adult orangetips could have made their way out the netted doors since there were so many inside, but a few of the pupae in their cocoons were missing from inside, too, which did not make the news. I suppose Darcy could have moved them outside as she’s done before since several were ready to emerge. With her being missing, I didn’t give those a second thought—and then my migraine just drained me, scrambled me,” she added, looking distraught and shaky.

  “We should have mentioned the loss of the pupae or cocoons earlier,” Claire blurted out, trying not to sound as upset as she was both at Tara and herself. “Detective Jensen could look for fingerprints or DNA—something in that room, since there was nothing like that in the butterfly house.”

  “I—I’m sorry. I was upset that someone would have come into my house. When I first feared Darcy was gone, I ran in here to look for her in a panic, but didn’t glance at the cocoons until later. At least the middle stage of their metamorphosis, the worms, were not taken from the exotics house. I’d best call my client and tell him all that, but I fear the repercussions—the financial fallout, too. He—it—was quite generous.”

  “I don’t mean to accuse you of anything,” Claire told her, reaching out to take her hands. What had happened to all her interview training and experience? she scolded herself: keep calm and build up the interviewee so they talked more freely. Here she’d worried that Steve might explode or that Nick might question the woman more rigorously than he had when he’d probably held back so he could visit Lincoln Yost again without him being tipped off.

  As they left the house, Claire followed Nick’s lead not to tell Steve about Lincoln Yost yet or he’d be likely to accost him. Besides, the orangetip abduction was of little consequence: it was Darcy they had to find and get back!

  * * *

  While Nick drove, Claire checked their phone messages to see if there was any news. Nothing except a text from Jace saying Brit had
contacted him about Darcy and he’d soon be back in town for a short stay. Meanwhile, Steve, checking his phone in the back seat, announced, “Lots of condolences, as if she’s gone for good. She’s not dead, damn it! I can feel she’s out there! That she needs me!”

  Nick said, “We’ve got to hang in and hang together on this. Claire, see if you can call the library to learn where Will is today—working or home. Actually, I’d like to see his place. Didn’t you say he told you it was out a ways on the edge of Golden Gate?”

  Again she thought of that dreadful story in The Collector. The kidnapper had a house at a remote location where he kept his victim. But no. No way! She had to stop such thoughts.

  “I’ll call the library first to see if he’s there,” she told Nick. “But I’ll bet we can get his address from Ken Jensen if we need it.” She asked her phone assistant for the number to call and punched it in.

  “Collier County Library headquarters on Orange Blossom Drive,” the sweet voice answered.

  “I’m wondering if Will Warren is in today. Our daughter has loved his story times.”

  “Why, yes, there’s a story time in this building at two this afternoon, though he’s here now. He is so very popular, one of our library’s treasures. If you would like to leave him a specific message, I can connect you to his voice mail.”

  “No, that’s all I needed to know. Thank you,” she said, and punched off.

  “That’s not all we need to know,” Steve muttered. “I didn’t give it much thought before that he seemed to ’specially like Darcy. Who doesn’t like Darcy, but I think she always had Jilly with her around him. Unless he came out to the butterfly farm,” he added, his tone darkening. “I might carefully question Jilly about him, ’cause she’s very perceptive.”