My smile was the biggest lie of all, because Chad Petri had soured my relationship with Belle Fleur. I now looked on the house with suspicion, and I began to watch the house and Annie with a closer scrutiny.
25
Saturday afternoon, Bob went to watch Erin ride. I thought I might have a moment alone with him to discuss what I’d learned from Mr. Petri. Belle Fleur was not the home he’d been led to believe it was, and he deserved to know the true history of the house. There was something very much amiss on the property. If he chose to tell Berta, that was up to him. The true story of Chloe would likely drive Berta out of the house, but to withhold what I’d learned was a form of deception.
As I walked down the shady trail to the stables, I realized it was mid-October. Margo had been gone for two months. It truly was as if she’d vanished into thin air. Not a single trace of her had been found anywhere.
Except for that strange blond creature I’d seen near Crystal Mirror Lake.
In the split second I’d had to really look, it had looked exactly like Margo. I knew it had to be a trick of light shifting through the leafy branches of the trees combined with my desire for Margo to come home. But it had looked so much like her. Until it began to change.
My logical brain denied what could only be described as a transmogrification. The amorphous fetal features—neither human nor sheep nor fish—shifting as if the process of full development happened in a moment, a creature already birthed yet still developing into the identity of a missing girl.
The inability to explain what I’d seen and the possibility that I was losing it made me hold my tongue. The stress level in Belle Fleur was through the roof. Even though I wasn’t blood kin, I suffered the loss of Margo and the impact on the Hendersons. My “vision” on the path home could be the result of fatigue, poor sleep, anxiety, or some combination of the above—and I would have written it off to that had Donald not seen it too.
As I drew closer to the riding ring, I heard Bob’s voice, a business tone, and one filled with excitement. “Of course. I’ve already drawn up the plans for the hotel renovation. The structure that’s left is solid. It’s just a shell, but we can build from that. It’s a grand building. A real showplace.”
Another voice, masculine, asked, “You really think Coden could become a resort destination again?”
I rounded the curve in the path and saw Bob with another man. The railing of the riding ring supported a set of architectural plans Bob had unrolled. They were discussing the old hotel on the grounds of Belle Fleur, the project Bob had moved here to take on. The man was a financial backer, an investor. Now wasn’t the time to talk about haunted Belle Fleur.
“Mimi,” Bob motioned me closer, “this is L. J. Martin. We share the same vision for the Paradise. He’s considering becoming an investor.”
I nodded and smiled and listened to the men talk about the prospects and what the renovation would mean to the local economy. All of it was true. But somewhere along the way, my feelings about Belle Fleur and the property had changed. Bringing the property back to life had taken on a far more sinister tone.
Erin loped Cogar around the ring, warming up. When she began a series of jumps, we all stopped talking and watched the elegance of her riding. She completed the double oxer, a sharp turn that led to a triple jump and a final in and out and trotted over to us as we applauded.
“Mimi, would you open the gate? I’m going to take a ride around the lake. Stretch Cogar’s legs.”
“Sure thing.”
A frown touched Bob’s face. “Maybe you should stay—”
Erin’s laugh stopped him. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You’ll still be standing here gabbing.”
He yielded, but I could tell he worried for his daughter. I worried, too. Erin was strong and agile, but she didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. Riding alone in the woods wasn’t a good idea.
Bob’s voice jolted me out of my worry. “Mimi, would you show Mr. Martin the house?”
“Of course.” It wasn’t what I’d planned, but Bob was proud of the work he’d done on the place. For him, Belle Fleur was still the dream of a wonderful French family, not a prison where a sixteen-year-old girl was starved to death.
“I’ll join you shortly,” Bob said. “I want to snap some photos of the old hotel so we can get them developed right away. L.J. is about to sweat to death. Give him a cold drink.”
The investor did look uncomfortably hot, though the weather was milder than it had been in months. “I’ll fix him up.”
Indicating the path I’d come down, I walked with him toward the house.
“I’m sorry to learn of the daughter’s strange disappearance,” he said when we were out of earshot of Bob.
“It’s been very hard on all of us.”
“Are there any leads? Did she run away?”
My first inclination was to snap, but I battled it down. “We don’t know. I can’t understand why Margo would run away, but we certainly hope that’s what happened. She was eager to leave the nest, to find her own life, even if she wasn’t old enough.”
He glanced at me. “I’ve been concerned about Bob, but he seems to be pulling out of it. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be.”
“Please don’t mention Margo in front of Berta. They’re both trying to hold their lives together and move forward. It’s raw.”
“Absolutely.”
“Belle Fleur was almost a total ruin when the Hendersons bought it.” I pointed to the house, which was magnificently framed by the widespread limbs of live oaks and surrounded by the dense green foliage of azaleas, camellias, and bottle brush plants.
“It’s incredible,” Mr. Martin said, stopping for a moment.
In the third-floor window, Annie watched us. She spent a lot of time alone. If Bob wasn’t home, Annie was in her room. When Bob walked in the door, Annie came downstairs to be with the rest of us. She took every opportunity to touch Bob, to pat his shoulder or stroke his hand or slip her arm around his waist. Berta failed to notice because she’d never consider betrayal from someone she loved. To her, Annie was just a child starved for affection.
I knew better, and I had to figure a way to get Annie out of the house. Maturity had come with her fuller figure. Sometimes, when she looked at Bob, there was a predatory glint to her gaze.
Berta’s resurgence as mistress of the house and loving wife had stymied her for the moment, but it wouldn’t be long before Annie struck. I’d come to see her as a viper waiting for the prey to draw close enough to swallow him whole.
“Who’s that in the window?” Mr. Martin asked.
“A young girl staying here for a while. She’s not part of the family.” I touched his arm lightly. “Let’s go inside.”
We walked in and I made a gin and tonic for Mr. Martin and retired to my room while Berta gave him the tour of the house. From the conversation I overheard, Bob had landed enough investors to start work on the Paradise.
The Hendersons would not be leaving Belle Fleur in the immediate future. If I told them what I’d learned about their home, would it make a difference now?
After Mr. Martin left, I sat Donald at the kitchen table and worked with him on Alabama history. His fascination with the Native American tribes, the Choctaws and Creeks that populated Alabama, made him an eager pupil.
“Annie says that there are lots of Indian burial mounds around here.”
“Oh, really. And how would Annie know that?” I sounded shrewish, but I couldn’t help it. Annie lied about everything and I was tired of her stories that twisted things to suit her purposes. I’d heard her earlier in the morning telling Erin some foolishness about Chloe Desmarais—something she couldn’t possibly know but told as the absolute truth. Annie played fast and loose with facts, and sometimes attributed her information to me.
Donald frowned at me. “Are you mad, Mimi?”
I sighed. “No. I’m sorry. I just get annoyed when she blends history and fiction.”
<
br /> “But if the Indians lived here, they had to die and be buried somewhere.”
His logic made me roll my eyes. “Very true.”
“So she wasn’t really fibbing, right?”
“Whatever you say.”
“Why are you mad at Annie?”
If Donald could read me so easily, I had to do a better job hiding my suspicions—until I had solid proof.
“I’m not mad. You know, I just don’t want you confusing facts with her story-telling. Making things up is fun and interesting, but to understand history, you have to know the real facts.”
“Gottcha.” He grinned. The place in his cheek he’d pierced with the fishing lure had left only a tiny white scar.
“Enough history. Let’s call it quits.” I had a slight headache and wanted to go to my room.
“Yay!” He jumped up, slammed his book shut, and took off out the back door. He was all boy, and he made me smile.
I climbed the stairs to my room and closed the door softly behind me. It wasn’t yet time to prepare supper; I had half an hour to myself. I went to the window and looked out over the back yard. Donald was in the swing, pushing himself high into the lacy leaves of the oak.
His joy was palpable. The simplest things made him happy. I was about to turn away when I saw something moving through the thick undergrowth only a short distance from the swing.
Since it was daylight, I stared with more curiosity than concern. A dog or deer or even a large raccoon would rustle the branches. Whatever it was angled closer to Donald and the swing. I watched to see who would startle whom. Donald remained oblivious to the scuttling intruder.
I can’t say why the first jolt of fear arced through me. I leaned forward and placed my hands on the cool glass panes. Donald swung to and fro, his short legs pumping higher and higher. He leaned back, holding tight to the chains, so he could look up into the tree branches that swirled above him, a small boy happy with the sun and the freedom of a swing.
At first I tried to calm my fears. Even as I argued with myself that it was some wildlife or stray dog, sunlight touched the gilded blond of her hair. She stood slowly, unsteady, as if she were waking from a long and dream-filled sleep. She was just on the edge of the dense shrubs, and she watched Donald with such intensity that I struck the glass with my fist to stop her.
While I could see Donald clearly, a diffused light illuminated her face, obscuring her features.
“Margo?” I whispered the name even as my eyes told me it couldn’t be her. But the creature was the right size and shape, the right posture. I raised the window and leaned out, my gaze riveted upon the girl. Except it wasn’t a girl. Not at all. It was … some fetal creature growing and changing as if the shrubs were an incubating womb.
Before my very eyes the creature shifted from something that looked like Margo into the spitting image of the child in the swing.
It wasn’t possible. It was absolutely impossible. Yet I saw his wide-set blue eyes, the blond hair that fell over one eye, the chin that came to an elfin point. It was Donald.
While the little boy I loved and adored swung high into the air, his eyes blissfully closed, this other boy, this creature who had assumed his appearance, looked up at me.
The creature grinned, revealing teeth sharpened into points.
“Donald!” I screamed his name. “Donald! Run!” I knew instinctively that the other child meant danger. I flailed my arms out the window. “Donald! Run!”
His blue eyes opened and he stared at me, failing to comprehend the danger lurking not twenty yards from him.
“Run!” I frantically waved him toward the house.
He slowed the swing to a stop. “What?” he called up to me.
The boy in the shrubs was perfectly still, unmoving. He lifted one hand in a solemn wave, a perfect replica of a gesture I’d seen Donald make a hundred times.
“Come inside the house!” I called urgently.
My fear communicated itself to Donald and he hopped from the swing and came inside at a dead run.
When I looked back at the shrubs, there was no one there.
26
The wind whipped over the water, a fair warning of the storm that brewed just offshore. It was the third week in October, and I loved the flat gray of the Sound that met the heavy gunmetal sky. The unrelenting heat was over, at least for a few months. Fall and winter were spectacular at Coden. None of the flashy color of New England or the pristine snow of the Rockies, but the soft browns and grays of fall and winter gave me a sense of serenity. The pagans believed the seasons marked the cycle of the soul. Youth, maturity and bounty, the decline, and ultimately death in preparation for the spring and rebirth. I wasn’t so sure about all the soul stuff, but I knew that energy transformed. Maybe that was soul or spirit or essence. Whatever people called it, it remained behind.
I drove along Shore Road at a leisurely pace, a little melancholy in mood. I was worried about myself, my imagination, which had taken a dark turn. After scaring the bejesus out of Donald, I searched the area around the swing and found—nothing. There was no evidence of a Donald-creature or a dog or deer or anything else. I’d upset Donald to the point of tears. Luckily, I’d persuaded him to keep the incident from the adults. I had to tell Bob, but not yet. Not until I had some way to prove that I wasn’t losing my mind.
With the arrival of cooler weather, maybe our lives would regain some balance and rhythm. Belle Fleur had huge, wonderful fireplaces, and Bob had promised that as soon as it was cold, we’d build a fire. This image of Bob and Berta, Donald, Erin, and me, all gathered around the fire, was a promise I intended to make real. Hot chocolate and popcorn, laughter, maybe a game of Clue. I loved solving the mystery.
I rounded the last bend in the road and saw the outskirts of Coden. I had errands in town, and a meeting. The drive and the daydreaming had relaxed me. My shoulders were knotted from tension and recurring headaches plagued me. The sun, not too hot, and the smell of the water was what I needed.
Not far from shore, a trio of shrimp boats trawled for the bounty of the sea. The fishermen had their own cycle, based on tides and winds, storms and seasons. Except for my parents, who I was too young to remember, I hadn’t experienced death. Cora was old, but she was in great shape. Without undue circumstance, she would live to see me into my fifties or sixties. Soon, though, she would begin to lose her lifelong friends, the older generation of Coden. Their cycle was coming to a close. While it was a natural progression, it was still painful. But not as painful as the death of a young person. That kind of death was out of order, abnormal.
I pulled into a parking spot by the old bridge and bayou and got out of the car. Leaves from a saw-tooth oak blasted across the road and skittered onto the brackish surface of the bayou. I sat on the cement bench to wait. Exactly at three on the dot, Jimmy Finch pulled his shiny Rambler Sportabout beside the Hendersons’ station wagon. He took a seat beside me on the bench.
Before he started, he pulled a pack of Camels out of his pocket, shook one out, and offered it to me. I didn’t smoke often, but I accepted it and the light.
Blue smoke curled between us before a gust of wind cleared it away.
“I gather there’s nothing new on Margo or you’d be talking to Berta. So what about Annie?”
“I can’t find a damn thing on the girl.” He said it with frustration. “It’s like she came from nowhere.”
“You checked the fire business?”
“I looked into house fires in every community in South Alabama and Mississippi. There were twenty-two last year and not a single one of them reported missing a teenage girl. I checked back five years. Nothing fits with a girl her age surviving. To go back farther, I’ll have to spend some time driving to the small communities. Volunteer fire departments don’t keep the best records, so it’ll have to be personal recall.”
“Maybe the fire was just a dream. Maybe she made everything up.” I inhaled deeply and let the smoke relax me. My shoulders ached, and the he
adache was returning.
“I checked every missing person notice for the whole Southeast. I checked with the FBI for missing children. I took a photo of her down to the sheriff’s office in Mobile to see if they’d uncovered anything, which resulted in nothing. The sheriff told me quick enough he was more interested in finding the girl missing from the Hendersons instead of trying to identify a child who was well-fed and safe living at the Hendersons.”
Finch lit a cigarette off the butt of the one in his hand and offered me the pack, but I declined.
He looked into the distance. “It’s as if she dropped out of the sky. If she’s pretending amnesia, there’s a good reason, and she’s done a damn good job of covering her tracks.”
I listened with my jaw clenched. She was smart. “What about birth records?”
“She says she’s sixteen. I checked with the local hospitals to find her birth record. She wasn’t born around here. Or let me rephrase that—she wasn’t born in a hospital or with an attending physician. There are children born at home with a midwife. Some of them don’t get registered.”
“I don’t think you’re going to find anything about Annie.” I’d come to believe she was something other than an amnesiac teenage girl. I hadn’t put it all together, though. She had a strange knowledge of the local area, a mainline into some of the legends and tales. Who was she talking to? When was she gathering this information? Annie had wormed her way deeply into Berta’s affections, and she was Bob’s shadow. The few times I’d attempted to broach my concerns, they’d brushed me off, just as Cora did. If I insisted on talking about such things, it would be me who was sent away—to a mental institution. I was the one who saw frightening creatures in the woods, the one who glimpsed the dark-haired invader. Such sightings would paint me as unreliable and unstable.
“I’ve pretty much exhausted my sources for Annie. I have feelers out. If anyone contacts me, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Mr. Finch.” I stood. “I think we should drop this. Focus on Margo.” I relayed to him what Peggy Cargill had told me about New Orleans. He made a note and said he’d check with the tugs and riverboats on the river.
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