Dark Storm

by Karen Harper

  “Well!” Tara said. “He’s always been passionate about butterflies, but—I thought—not so much about people. I must have read him wrong.”

  “I just hope I haven’t,” Claire said. “He’s tried to help us find Darcy, bring her back home.”

  Her eyes welled up with tears to make two Taras sitting across from her. But what she was really seeing in her mind’s eye were those poor, delicate bodies of butterflies, dead and smeared across the soil, ready for burial. If that was a sign or symbol or threat about Darcy’s fate or future, she couldn’t bear it.

  22

  Despite the encroaching storm, Nick felt he was on a roll. The prosecuting attorney had asked for a delay of the trial to admit additional evidence, even though the storm was likely to delay proceedings anyway. Nick again assured his elderly client they had a strong case that would find her not guilty. Then, before heading home, he decided to stop at Linc Yost’s house to try to dig a little deeper. It still puzzled him that Yost seemed to live on a CEO salary, when most teachers, sadly, in the state of Florida were lucky to live in Bronco and Nita’s neighborhood. Ken Jensen had said an injury had kept Yost from playing pro ball, so no money there.

  After he pulled up to Yost’s house, he ditched his tie and suit coat and left them in the car. He wondered how Claire was doing with Will and Tara. He could have gone to join them, but this had to be done. He had to force Linc Yost to answer some of the questions he’d been skirting.

  As he walked toward the house, he heard pounding from around back, so maybe the Yosts were boarding up. He didn’t go to the front door but walked up the driveway. A full-size basketball net with an iron base stood there, its net swaying wildly in the quickening breeze. That dwarfed a smaller, child’s size, plastic net-on-wheels version. That was right, Yost had at least two sons. He had to hurry, to get home to his own son, to Lexi and Claire.

  He saw no one at first, but the pounding drew him to the back of their yard where Linc was hammering nails into two-by-fours around a small, strange-looking building. A kid’s playhouse? Yost, hammer raised, looked up and saw him.

  “Storm coming, Mr. Lawyer,” Linc said. “You better get inside somewhere safe.”

  “My family’s been in a storm since my sister-in-law disappeared. I was hoping you could help.”

  “Like how? Why do you keep coming back? I’ve seen the media coverage, but don’t know anything to help. Can you push that board closer?” he said, raising his hammer even higher.

  For one moment, Nick thought he might strike him so he stood away, didn’t put his head down, only reached out one hand to hold the board steady.

  “This is my boys’ army station, supposedly in Iraq,” he told Nick as he pounded away, knocking long nails into the board and the building. “My brother’s stationed there. They play soldier. They like anything in a uniform, even the police. Well, I don’t want them to hate the police, anyway.”

  “Good. How about you? The police are working hard on Darcy’s disappearance, but can you throw light on anything? I’ll make this quick and honest, because I see how good you are with your students and your kids, and I admire and trust someone like that.”

  Linc stopped, then dropped the hammer in the grass and tightened his Naples High School baseball cap on his forehead, giving it a hard twist.

  “Okay, so I boarded, so to speak, my falcate orangetips at Tara Gerald’s. But I did not—repeat, did not—go out to the Flutterby Farm the day your sister-in-law went missing.”

  “Do you know anyone who did, or even who might have?”

  “No.”

  “So let me get this straight. Fly Safe, which you support and work with, is against someone having a butterfly farm—”

  “Hardly. I admit I’ve boarded some of mine there. But I hate it if any place imprisons butterflies in those little envelopes or sends them away to amuse people when they should—obviously—fly safe and free.”

  “Look, I admit we’ve covered some of this before, but you understand my wife and I are desperate for answers, for any lead. I’m concerned someone has imprisoned a young woman, a wife and mother. I take it the falcate orangetip breed of butterfly can be valuable for study because of their suspended animation technique, which could be developed for mankind, and be lucrative. Does that have anything to do with your study of them, your doctoral thesis or whatever?”

  Linc’s eyes widened, and his lower lip twitched. It hit Nick that he’d just struck a nerve. Maybe this high school teacher was living large because he was in on a much bigger study. And that linked to the talent the dolphins had for putting half of their brain to sleep at will, another of this man’s passions. But who would be heading that up—probably secretly? And wouldn’t that mean imprisoning and even killing the butterflies he seemed such a champion of? Nick decided to come at it from a different angle.

  “I see you’re interested in dolphins, too. Do you think Larry Ralston actually took one of those—like maybe for study?”

  “And put it where? In our fish tank at Fly Safe? In my guest room bathtub here at the house? I see you’ve been doing your homework, Mr. Markwood, but you’re not hitting the nail on the head, far as I know, and I got to do that now.” He stooped to pick up his hammer again. “Unless you want to play carpenter’s helper, I suggest you go take care of your own backyard because I have nothing else to say.”

  He started to pound again with a vengeance.

  “Actually,” Nick told him, raising his voice, “my backyard does need some help. Someone sneaked in after dark last night and yanked up all our butterfly bushes and left about forty dead butterflies, the same breed that were released by someone at Larry Ralston’s memorial service.”

  Yost registered such sudden surprise that Nick, at least, chalked him off the list for that. He stopped hammering and turned to Nick again. “Listen, man, sorry to hear that, sorry about everything, really. I hope you get your sister-in-law back safe and sound. Beyond the science angle of suspended animation—yeah, I’m interested in that—I don’t have anything else to add.”

  “Even about who I could see next?”

  “I can’t help.”

  Can’t or won’t, Nick wanted to demand, but he was done here for now. Maybe he could get Jensen to try shaking something out of this guy, who was in over his head and seemed really shaken about being questioned.

  As Nick walked away, the hammering started again, fast and furious. The pounding almost matched his sudden headache.

  * * *

  When Claire described the mess in their backyard to Ken on the phone, he told her, “I’m sorry, Claire. I’m going to be busy preparing for this storm, but I will also keep following leads about Darcy.”

  “Nick figured you’d be on special assignment during the storm. Do you think there’s any way it will miss us?”

  “Right now, the forecast is landfall somewhere between Marco Island and Fort Myers, so that includes us, but it could veer off westward. Will you shelter in place or go to a shelter?”

  “Our house is hurricane proof and far enough away from a storm surge, so we’ll be here. We’ll have another family with us, two friends, plus Steve and Jilly, in case you hear anything. I hope we can continue to work together. I just can’t—can’t believe she’s gone...isn’t showing up, I mean.”

  “Stranger things have happened, but everything I’ve heard about her makes her look very stable.”

  “You mean, you actually thought she might have gone off on her own? Run away or hurt herself?”

  “Claire, we’ve been over this. We have to look at all angles. If you and Nick think of another possibility, just leave a message on my cell, if the cell towers don’t go down. Sorry, but I have to go. I will not let this become a cold case, I promise you. I will keep in touch as best I can.”

  He was gone. A cold case? She shivered. Darcy’s loss, that is, her disappearance, a cold case after one week? Never. Never in her lifetime was she stopping her search for her sister.

  * * *
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  “Déjà vu all over again?” Mitch tried to tease Jace after they safely taxied and took off from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi heading for MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. They were immediately out over the Gulf of Mexico heading south, talking only to each other now, not their NOAA crew or ground control.

  “Roger that, but this storm’s a real killer—and it may be on Naples’s doorstep. Just glad we got assigned to scope it out. We can’t be there to help on the ground at home, so we can help in the wild blue yonder—or the black storm yonder.”

  “Affirmative,” Mitch said. “We won’t be on the ground long there before we head up to take it on. Maybe enough time to call home, though we’re not supposed to upset everyone, as if they aren’t already. I’d like to tell Kris we’re doing all we can.”

  “With the prep and worry they’re going through, they don’t need to know we’re going up into the storm, anyway. Just say we don’t have final orders if she asks. They’d be getting ready for the hit and still panicked over Darcy—I don’t know if I’ll call, as much as I’d like to hear Brit’s and Lexi’s voices again.”

  “Bet we won’t even need radar or ground control to describe Hurricane Jenny—just take a look at her appearance. Jenny—nice, sweet name. Sounds like someone who should be playing with Jilly, Lexi...and that smart doll.”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe how big the outer bands of the storm in the Caribbean look on the TV radar,” Claire told Nita as they fixed dinner together late that afternoon. Claire was trying to help her all she could since Nita was so very “with child.” “I just wonder if Jace and Mitch will be observing it up close and personal.”

  “If I was their boss, I’d send someone else. I mean, wouldn’t they be extra nervous and maybe not do their job if it’s gonna hit their homes?”

  “Nervous, maybe. But not so much that they wouldn’t do their jobs, no way. Even under fire in war, men like them are trained and dedicated to do what is necessary.”

  Her own voice, strong and proud, surprised her. She did admire Jace, still cared for him in a way and always would, and not just as her first love or as Lexi’s father. But on a personal, forever level, their relationship just wasn’t to be. She was so grateful to have found Nick and to have the beautiful baby they had made together. And if that storm came here, she would die to protect her family, but then, how she wished she could have protected Darcy. She blinked back tears and tried to concentrate on what Nita was saying.

  “Our new house—I mean, it is an old one—I been praying it stands so we have a room for our baby. I heard some women, they go into labor early with depressions or pressures, something like that.”

  “Old wives’ tales,” Claire told her, patting her back. But Nita’s “depressions or pressures”—she was feeling that herself and had been since Darcy disappeared.

  “But one thing I been wanting to tell you,” Nita said, turning to Claire. “You been such a good friend to me. If the doctor’s ultrasound of the baby is right—and it’s a she—I’m going to name her Clarita, named for you.”

  “Oh, Nita!” Claire said, and hugged her hard with the big baby bump between them. “You couldn’t do anything that means more to me. It helps some—since I’m missing Darcy so.”

  She heard Nick’s voice, so he’d come in before she’d heard his car or the garage door going up. She thanked Nita again. They both wiped tears away, then Claire went to greet Nick in their bedroom, took his suit coat jacket and tie from him. She told him her good “baby” news and hugged him, too.

  “Great! We really need another ‘Claire’ around here,” he teased. “Listen, the trial’s delayed, so I dropped by Yost’s house on my way home. He didn’t exactly say so, but I’m thinking someone might be paying him big bucks for his research on the falcates—maybe on the dolphins, too. I had the feeling he wanted to tell me more, but was scared to. His fear might have something to do with Larry’s being accused of killing a dolphin, and then being murdered, like maybe Yost’s afraid of talking more, talking to me.”

  “This is all getting too...too spiderwebby,” she told him.

  “But hey, I’m getting good at reading facial expressions and body language, my love,” he went on in an obvious attempt to lighten the conversation again. “I’m going to take a quick shower, then we’ll gather everyone to make a plan for when and if the storm hits here. I hope we have two days before that monster churns up the gulf and decides where it’s going to make landfall.”

  “Okay. I’m helping Nita in the kitchen, trying to do some normal things. But I’m already churned up.”

  On her way, she checked on the girls again. Lexi’s doll was telling them the storm could be bad, using the exact words that had been on the TV. The doll was a recording device, of course, but what did it record? And did it then just speak what it had “learned,” or was it controlled by some outside source that had preprogrammed it before it was sold? She’d been so busy, so obsessed—and grateful the doll comforted and distracted both girls—that she hadn’t really studied it.

  She noticed the wind was picking up as she hurried to her laptop and put in “Smart Dolly.” That led her to interactive talking dolls. She read that they were similar to remotely controlled baby monitors operated by computer software. The system both transmitted and recorded voice prints, whatever that was.

  But another link led her to a site she just stared at wide-eyed. An exact picture of the doll came up—German made. But in that country, there was a huge fine for not destroying those dolls. And that brand of Smart Dolly violated US privacy laws!

  She fought to calm herself. Of course there were risks with interactive devices. Lexi loved and needed that doll, but what if—

  She jolted when the doorbell rang. She rose from the laptop and peered out the library window, but could only see part of someone standing on the front porch under a black umbrella. She could see wet, dirty running shoes and damp jeans, but it looked like a woman. It must be Kris or Brit.

  She went to the front door, opened it, jerked back and gasped.

  Darcy stood there, thinner, half-drenched.

  “Sorry I’m late, Claire,” she said, shaking water off the umbrella and stepping in to drop it in the large porcelain umbrella stand. “Is Jilly ready to go home? I think there’s a bad rainstorm coming. What—what’s the matter with you? Is everything okay?”

  23

  Claire just stared. She must be having a narcoleptic nightmare.

  “Claire, I said are you okay?” Darcy asked, looking closer into her face and squeezing her arm.

  This was true, really happening. She wanted to burst into tears, scream and dance. Wanted to hug Darcy—but it was Darcy who was not okay.

  Her eyes were dilated. She wore not a bit of her usual makeup and looked pale. Alive, but something was so terribly wrong—with her—with all this.

  Claire hugged her hard. Had to feel her, know this was real. So thankful. Answer to prayer, fear over. Or was it?

  “Is it something with Jilly?” Darcy asked, pulling back. “I should have called but I lost my phone.”

  Lost eight days, Claire almost blurted, but she led her into the library. Either she or Darcy had lost her mind.

  “No, Jilly’s fine, and Steve’s here. I’ll call them.”

  “Steve! Oh, he came to surprise me for our anniversary, after all!” she cried as tears filled her eyes. “And he came here to get Jilly, but you probably said she had to wait for me, or I’d think something was wrong.”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s it.”

  Darcy was articulate, thinking straight for the world she knew. The world of eight days ago when she disappeared. Someone or something had wiped out those days.

  Call Jensen first? Get Steve and Jilly? Then Darcy would think they’d all lost their minds when—evidently—she had.

  “Okay,” Claire said, trying to sound normal and upbeat, but her voice kept breaking. “How about you stay here a sec, and I’ll bring Steve in so you guys c
an have a little reunion before I get Jilly?”

  “Oh, boy, I don’t want to ruin his surprise. I know I’m a little late. I’ll bet you were worried and Steve, too. All right, I’ll stay here while you get him—don’t tell him it’s me!”

  This was insane. Or was Darcy insane—or the entire world? Claire hugged her again—yes, solid flesh—and went to find Nick before telling Steve. But Jilly would give it all away, let Darcy know she was crazy. Who or what had done this to her?

  Nick was outside helping Bronco sweep up the mess on the patio. They’d thrown some plants in the trash can and put back some in the ground and watered them heavily. The area was still a dirty, muddy mess.

  “Nick!” Claire called, gesturing with her hand. “I need to see you for a minute.”

  He left his broom and came in, clapping dirt off his hands.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded when he got close and saw her face. “Are you ill?”

  “Stunned. You aren’t going to believe this, but Darcy’s here, in one piece and—”

  He gasped. “Ken brought her here?”

  “She brought herself—drove up. She has no clue she’s been gone. She says she came to pick up Jilly. When I told her Steve’s here—”

  “She’s really here?” he interrupted. “But is she all right?”

  “She thinks everything’s normal, but she’s not. Really weird. She believes it’s eight days ago.”

  “We need to get her to a doctor, tell Ken Jensen.”

  “Go ahead with Jensen, but we’ve got to warn Steve so he doesn’t say she’s crazy and set her off. Something horrible must have happened to her, so bad she has amnesia or was drugged or—”

  “Thank God she’s back, but—but... Whew!”

  He pinched his nose with his thumb and index finger, leaving what looked like dirty tear marks. She could see him try to steady himself. Yes, she had to find Steve, warn Steve.