World Tree Girl

by Kerry Schafer

  “Maybe it’s personal.”

  “And maybe somebody’s driving your body. Out with it.”

  “She’s right,” Jake says. “This team thing seems to require full disclosure.”

  Matt’s jaw clenches. A little white dent appears in the side of his nose. “I told you, I thought I saw something at the funeral home.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Something that—wasn’t there. I kept catching glimpses out of the corner of my eyes. Things moving. But whatever it was, I couldn’t see it in the room, only in the reflection from the coffin. Maybe there are paranormals that reflect but you can’t see? The opposite of vampires.” He looks at me, hope in his eyes, but I shake my head. If there’s a creature like that, I’ve never heard tell of it.

  Matt sighs, accepting the inevitable. “And then, with the crystal ball, the images were clear. I didn’t see much, before you put it away.”

  “What did you see, Matt?”

  “A series of dead bodies. All of them bloodless.” His voice sounds raw, like there are rocks in his throat. His hands on the steering wheel are white at the knuckles.

  Jake looks from Matt to me and back again. “Help me out here. Does that mean these people are all dead? Or are we talking something like—Scrooge and the spirits?”

  His voice sounds distant; I’m focused in on Matt. Maybe he’s young and inexperienced, but he’s still FBI. It’s going to take more than an unexpected vision of some dead bodies to rattle him this badly.

  “What else?”

  He doesn’t answer me.

  “Matt!”

  “Sophie,” he says.

  Jake’s color is almost as bad as Matt’s. Men. Never can keep their heads in a crisis when someone they love is in trouble. He swallows. “Sophie killed them?”

  Despite my lack of faith in seeing stones and visions, Matt’s face in that moment chills me to the marrow of my bones. He shakes his head.

  “Sophie was one of the dead.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I end up flying to Seattle alone.

  Jake, always the stickler for the rules, says there will be trouble if he strays outside of his jurisdiction. Besides, somebody needs to keep an eye on Jill and keep looking for Sophie closer to home. Matt stays to keep an eye on the Manor.

  Both of them worry about me going off alone, but I don’t let that bother me. It would only be a day trip if it weren’t for the drive to the Spokane airport. I pack an overnight bag and spend the driving time mulling over what we know and creating theories to follow up with the investigation.

  We don’t know much about Aline’s parents. Maxine and Jim Montgomery have done an admirable job of keeping their lives off the public record. My Internet snooping, assisted by the spyware programs I’ve borrowed and modified from the FBI, has yielded very little information. Aline was their only child, born at Swedish Medical Center. In the year before her birth there was a fertility consult canceled a week in advance. The chart note said: PATIENT HAPPY TO REPORT PREGNANCY.

  There was nothing remarkable about Aline’s birth. Her health has since been unmarked by anything more dramatic than the occasional sprained ankle. She was vaccinated on the usual schedule. They’ve attended a quiet, old-fashioned Baptist church that keeps to itself and has no electronic records. Neither of them has ever been arrested.

  A modest insurance policy covers their home, one vehicle, a four-door 2006 Impala—and their most recent purchase—a yacht.

  My flight is uneventful. The GPS in my rental car guides me to a modest house, one of six identical models all crammed in close enough to pass a cup of borrowed sugar to the neighbor through the kitchen window. No frills. No flowers. Beige drapes in the windows. I navigate four steps up onto a concrete porch. A sheaf of dried corn leaves leans up against the metal railing, anchored at the base by three knobby gourds. A hand-lettered sign taped to the door says, “No solicitors, please.”

  I ring the bell, a straight from the factory ding-dong, and check out the street while I wait. The neighbor to the right still has Halloween cat decals on the windows. The neighbor to the left confines his decor to empty six packs, lined up neatly. Across the street the houses are quiet. No kids playing, nobody out washing cars or doing yard work or even getting in the car to go to work.

  The Montgomerys don’t answer the door. I ring again, then knock, but I’m pretty sure the house is empty.

  When I was younger, it would have been the easiest thing to sit down on the porch steps and wait. But after even the short hop from Spokane to SeaTac sitting in coach, and then my drive here to suburbia, my leg is kicking up enough of a fuss that if I did something stupid, like sit down on a concrete step, I’d probably never get up.

  Just as I’m debating the merits of letting myself in through the back door or going back to wait in the rental car, a man emerges from the Halloween cat house, whistling and jingling car keys. Neighbors are trouble when you’re contemplating a little friendly lock picking, and I immediately don a hopeful expression and ring the bell again, as if I’ve just arrived.

  The whistling stops, although the key jingling continues. “You looking for the Montgomerys?”

  Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. His age is somewhere between sixteen and twenty. He’s wearing lace-up boots and one of those beards that has, for some obscure reason, become fashionable lately. A backpack hangs over his left shoulder, and his left hand rests in the pocket of a long coat, spacious enough to conceal any number of weapons. Car keys dangle from his right hand.

  I feel naked without a gun.

  “They’re not here,” he says, oh-so-helpfully.

  “I don’t understand.” I shoot for bewildered and weary. “I called ahead. They knew I was coming.”

  A crease mars his perfect young forehead and the keys jingle louder. “I have to be somewhere, and my folks are out. Otherwise you could wait over at my house.”

  Either he’s a nice young man, worried about my well-being, or he’s a smooth-talking psychopath.

  “Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to trouble you. I do wonder where they’ve gone. Is Aline at school, then?”

  “You haven’t heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  “Aline vanished a couple of months ago. Not a trace of her since.”

  I put the back of my hand up to my mouth as though to stifle a sob, and lean against the railing, overcome by shock. “Oh my God. This is terrible! Last time I saw her she was just a wee bit of a thing. What happened? Was she kidnapped?”

  “My opinion is she ran away. Who could blame her?” He realizes, too late, that he doesn’t know who he’s talking to. “No offense,” he adds, quickly. “Who did you say you are?”

  “They always were strict with her,” I say, taking a guess.

  “Strict is the understatement of the year.” He has good intentions, but the threat of an emotional outburst makes him restless. The keys jingle louder as he tosses them up in the air, catches them, and descends to the bottom of the stairs. When he turns back, his face is open and unmasked.

  “They probably aren’t grieving much. Aline was a great kid. They didn’t see that.”

  “Young man, how can you say such things?”

  He shrugs. “Like I said. I didn’t mean to offend. If you want to find Jim and Maxine, I’d suggest the Shilshole Marina. They’re probably down there working on the boat.”

  I ring the doorbell again, looking over my shoulder to watch my informant unlock a bicycle and ride away. Only then do I make my way back down the steps and head out in search of a boat.

  • • •

  I hate the ocean. Call this the sound or a bay, or whatever you want, but it’s still ocean. The vastness of the water, the alien smell of salt, the hundreds of moored boats with their sails all furled, the squawking seagulls—all of it has the effect of making me feel small, mortal, and uncomfortably alone. The best antidote to such emotions is putting my brain to work, so I study the layout, methodically turning a bewild
ering chaos of boats into order.

  Really, it’s nothing more than a giant parking lot, if you turn the boats into cars and the water into asphalt. Each pier is conveniently labeled. Each boat has a numbered slip. I know that Maxine and Jim are at Pier C, slip number 80. Not so conveniently, the ramps down to the piers are gated and locked.

  Fortunately for me, a man is headed up the ramp.

  He’s fortyish, bare-headed, a couple of days’ worth of unshaven. He carries a canvas gym bag slung over one shoulder and whistles an off-key tune. When he sees me, he makes easy eye contact and grins, but lets the gate slam shut behind him instead of holding it open for me.

  “Lose your fob?”

  I pat my pockets as if looking for this mythical item. “I feel so stupid. I’m new to this. I left it on the table at the house.”

  “Are you far?”

  “Not so much. But I took a GoCar, and somebody nabbed it before I’d made it a hundred feet.” I make a point of looking as old and frail as I can manage.

  His eyes flicker from me to the gate. “I haven’t seen you around.”

  “Right. I’m new to this. Just bought the boat. I was so excited to come down and try my sea legs I forgot the damn fob.”

  “I could give you the grand tour,” he offers. “Which slip?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t trouble you with that. You’re on your way someplace.”

  “Just up to the showers,” he says, but he shifts his weight and the fingers of his free hand tap a tattoo against his thigh.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t think of stopping you. I don’t suppose you could let me through?”

  He hesitates, then shrugs, and touches a key fob to an electronic panel. The gate clicks and he opens it for me.

  “People take the gates seriously,” he says. “Try to remember the fob.”

  “Got it. Thank you so much. God bless.” I start down the ramp, letting my limp become exaggerated and not looking back to see if he is watching me. Fortunately, my cover story lets me look a little uncertain, watching the pier numbers, reading the names on the boats. Straight ahead is sky and what looks like a forest of tangled masts to my land-bound eyes. A wind springs up and sets a clanking and rattling into motion.

  I find Maxine and Jim on the deck of a boat larger than any of the others on Pier C, moored at the far end. Maxine is polishing windows with a spray bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. Jim has a can of paint and is carefully painting letters on the side of the bow. Both of them are wearing blue jeans and matching sweatshirts, with the lettering KESTREL on the back and a screen print of a soaring bird superimposed over an old-time sailing vessel. The effect looks like a giant flying creature attacking something that is more sail than ship.

  Jim is balding, middle height, a little rotund, the sort of man my eyes tend to slide over without fully registering his presence. Maxine makes up for any of his self-effacing qualities. He’s got more curves than she does. Flat belly, breasts that don’t register under the bulky sweatshirt, square hips. Her hair is tied back in a ponytail so tight it raises her eyebrows and gives her a perpetually questioning look.

  “Yes,” she says, looking down at me. In her hands, the bottle of window spray looks like a weapon, as if she might begin squirting me if threatened. “You want something.”

  Most people would turn this into a question. Not Maxine. No subtle beginnings here, no discussion of the weather. Not even the opening of asking what I’m doing on the dock and how I managed to get past the gate. Do I have a boat? Do I belong here? Which is fine by me. I can do without the preliminary chitchat.

  “I’m here about your daughter.”

  Her expression, already unwelcoming, shifts to hostile. “I don’t have a daughter.” She turns her back on me and goes back to scrubbing windows.

  Jim freezes, the paintbrush poised halfway between the paint can and the boat. Black paint drips onto the slip. His mouth opens, sucking in air. He looks like a runner at the end of a long race, replenishing oxygen reserves.

  “But you had a daughter. Aline. Sixteen years old last month.”

  Maxine’s gaze scours me from head to toe. Nothing of softness in any inch of her. “We’re busy here.”

  “I understand she disappeared. What—a month ago, two?”

  Jim is still having trouble with his breathing. His face looks haggard, jowls hanging loose under hollowed cheeks.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maxine says.

  My eyes rove over the boat. There’s a rectangle of black right where Jim has started painting. It is of a slightly different shade than the rest of the boat.

  “I see you’ve changed the name. Good for you.”

  “I don’t—”

  “The Kestrel. I like it.”

  “Jim, don’t you say a word. Look, whoever you are—”

  “How much did they pay you?”

  That’s what does it. Jim drops the brush. Maxine swings around and stomps across the deck. “Go. Away. Now.”

  “Enough to buy the boat, I’d guess. Maybe a new car. You should have held out for a house while you were at it. Or is that still in the works?”

  Jim leans against the boat as though he’s about to topple.

  “Are you a reporter?” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “They promised there would be no reporters.”

  “Don’t you dare judge us!” Maxine spits like an angry cat. “We deserve some compensation after what we’ve been through.”

  “Max,” Jim says. “Don’t.”

  His voice might as well be the buzzing of a fly. “Everybody wants to go on about the poor child, as if she’s the one suffering. What about us? What about the heartbreak and the expense?”

  “Maxine. Stop it.” Jim’s voice is stronger now, his spine straightened. She turns to look at him and he blows it all by whispering, “Please.”

  “Oh, you always were soft on her. You know as well as I do the girl has been heading in this direction from the day we brought her home from the hospital. If she hadn’t gotten herself murdered, she’d have wound up in prison. Sooner or later.”

  As soon as the words leave her mouth, she covers it with her hand but it’s too late to call them back.

  “I’m right then,” I tell her. “You do know.”

  “They said there was a serial killer and Aline was a casualty. That we needed to pretend she was still missing, or we would hinder the case. You’re right about the money. But she was a child. Our child.” Jim’s voice breaks and he smears his palm over his eyes.

  “If you were half the man you think you are, maybe she’d have turned out different.” Maxine’s voice is a knife, wielded with the skill of long years of combat.

  I see the hit strike home, but it’s an old wound. Jim is a man with no blood left to lose. He sighs. “Always my fault.”

  “We should have bowed to God’s will. But no, you had to bypass that. A child, a child. Give me a child. Well, you got a child all right. I hope you’re happy.”

  Jim’s face flushes. He draws in a visible breath. And between that breath and the next, a transformation happens. Same balding head and unremarkable features. Same rounded belly and sagging jeans. But the weak jawline firms. His muscles tighten and energize.

  “Not another word about Aline from you,” he says. His voice is a commandment.

  Maxine startles and nearly drops her window spray. “How dare you?” Her face flushes with anger, but for the first time she is asking, not telling.

  “I loved her. She was a bright, beautiful child. You drove her away with your blathering and nagging and constant criticism. I was a party to that. I let you do it. My sin, to carry with me into death and possibly hell. But no more.”

  He pulls his Kestrel sweatshirt off over his head and drops it onto the deck.

  “Put that back on. You’ll get a chill.”

  He laughs, a bitter, coruscating sound. “And how would that matter to you?”

  “I’ll be the one taking care of you
when you’re sick. Fetching tea. Doing laundry. Making chicken noodle soup.”

  “Good news. You’re off the hook. If I die from a chill, you won’t be around to tell me how it’s my fault.”

  They stare at each other. He’s as surprised as she is at what he’s said.

  “Jim. Come up here. Don’t be ridiculous.” There’s fear in her voice now, but if he can hear it, he’s long past caring.

  “Goodbye, Maxine.” He nods at me, touching his hand to his forehead in a casual salute. “No idea what you came for, but I thank you all the same.”

  Maxine follows him with her eyes until he’s out of sight, and then continues to stand there, looking at nothing, as if he’s going to suddenly reappear on her horizon. When he doesn’t, her arms drift toward the ground, not by intention but as if gravity has overpowered her will. The paper towel roll hits the deck.

  She stares at it, as if wondering how it got there, and then finally looks at me. Her assurance is cracked right down the middle. “You’re still here.”

  I clear my throat. “Your daughter—”

  “I don’t have a daughter.” The words are automatic, no energy behind them.

  “My granddaughter has gone missing. I know—”

  “You don’t know anything. How about this? I didn’t really want a child. That’s my secret. When we failed to get pregnant, I was fine with that. God’s will, I said. It happens. But the Bible also says, obey your husband. And where did that get me?”

  The chance to play martyred wife. That’s what it got her. I can see it clearly. Dutiful, dedicated, and all the while toxic and corrosive toward both him and the child.

  “Men,” I say, voice weighted with meaning. She doesn’t take my offered bait.

  “I don’t need him.” Her voice is flat. She seems oblivious to the tears streaking silently down her cheeks. Without brushing them away, she bends, picks up her paper towels, and goes back to her windows. I’ve been dismissed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I could sure use a cup of coffee, and there’s a little café right on the corner by the marina. Two teenage girls stand in line at the register, both busy with their phones while they wait for an Asian businessman to pay for his order. The single barista behind the counter is focused and busy. There are only two other people in a small, well-lit room. One faces me, a newspaper spread out over the table in front of him, both hands on the table, circling his coffee.