Which meant Kyle had gone to prison to protect someone else.
Kyle was generally out for number one. But the Quinpools had always been tight. On more than one occasion Wade had seen Jim put his arm proudly around his son and say, “We Quinpools watch out for one another.”
Could it be his father Kyle was protecting? That might explain why Jim was drinking so heavily. The burden of guilt, knowing his son was serving time on his behalf would be extreme.
“You could be hurting your son by keeping these secrets, Kyle.”
“What’s happened to Chester has nothing to do with Daisy’s death. Instead of wasting your time here, you should be out looking for my boy, Wade.” Kyle kept his voice low, even though he was pulsing with rage. “He’s a good kid. You better find him before anything bad happens to him or I swear, when I get out of here—”
“Don’t compound your problems by threatening an officer of the law.” Wade stood, more than a little angry, himself. “If you change your mind and decide to cooperate in our efforts to find Chester, get in touch.”
Kyle’s hands were in fists, his jaw clenched and his eyes flashing murder. But he didn’t respond.
chapter twelve
When her cell phone rang shortly after lunch on Friday, Charlotte’s heart went into palpitations. Even though the chime was the unique one she’d assigned to Dougal, she couldn’t help the illogical hope it might be Chester calling. No doubt her nerves were fried from too little sleep and proper food, combined with too much worry and caffeine.
But of course it wasn’t Chester.
She tried not to sound downcast as she said, “Hi Dougal, how are things going?”
“Just finished a marathon session with Ed.” Exhaustion permeated each slowly spoken word. “He’s giving me an hour to make notes and then he wants me to check into yet another chat room again at two o’clock.”
Charlotte wished Dougal could tell Ed to screw off. Nothing was worth putting the man she loved through this anguish. Except of course, something was. Chester’s life.
The faster Ed told his story, the sooner Chester would be free. At least that was Dougal’s contention, and Charlotte was beginning to think that he was right.
“Stella was in to clean today. It was nice having company.” Stella’s younger partner Liz Brooks should have been there too, but she’d taken time off for a trip, and Charlotte had been just as glad. She found Stella very comforting to be around. Liz, not so much.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you.”
“I didn’t mean to complain. This is hell for you, too. I get that.” Charlotte paced around the kitchen island, trailing her fingers on the freshly oiled butcher block. Stella used a special beeswax cream that made the kitchen smell of vanilla.
It seemed wrong for her home to be so pristine, when her world was so messed up and crazy. She still found it unbelievable that Chester had vanished, so quickly and completely. Shouldn’t there be at least one tiny clue left behind?
“Give Jamie a call,” Dougal suggested. “I bet she’d be happy to keep you company for a while.”
“She has work.”
“Yeah. But she loves Chester, too. I bet she isn’t getting much done at the accounting firm.”
Dougal was probably right about that, but once he’d ended their call Charlotte didn’t dial his sister the way he’d suggested. Instead, she went to the study and pulled out a pad of paper.
Just a year ago, she’d thought Twisted Cedars was a nice town, a place where accidents and heartbreaks happened, but nothing truly evil.
But the events of the past few months had proven her wrong.
There had been so many tragic happenings these past few months. Everyone kept saying it was awful luck for the Quinpools. But it seemed to Charlotte that the tragedies involved her family, the Hammonds, just as much, if not more.
Was it possible all the problems sprang from the same root cause?
Charlotte started a list:
1.Daisy’s death (homicide) and illegal burial – Kyle Quinpool
2.Four murdered librarians – Ed Lachlan
3.Aunt Shirley’s suicide – possibly Ed Lachlan had a hand in this too?
4.Joelle Carruther’s amnesia – accidental, caused by truck crash
5.Joelle’s daughter’s murder – possibly Ed Lachlan
6.Joelle Carruther’s suicide/homicide – possibly Ed Lachlan
7.Chester’s disappearance – possibly Ed Lachlan
Charlotte studied the list. Had she forgotten anything? Other bad things had happened—her parents’ death in a car accident two years ago, for instance. But that had been an accident, and she was looking for tragedy combined with malicious intent.
The doorbell interrupted her focus, and she dropped her pen with a gasp.
Was it news?
A moment later Jamie called out. “It’s just me, come to visit. Okay if I let myself in?”
“Of course.” Dougal must have guessed she wouldn’t call his sister and done it on her behalf. She put a hand on her heart. She had to stop being so jumpy. “I’m in the study.”
A few seconds later, so was Jamie. She was dressed nicely for work, had done her hair and make-up, yet the dark circles under her eyes spoke of her own suffering.
“How are you holding out?”
“I’m holding.” Charlotte stood to give Jamie a hug. It felt surprisingly good. Despite being close in age she and Jamie had never been friends. Charlotte was very open to that changing. “And you?”
“I’m trying to work, but I can’t think straight. I keep wondering if Dougal is right, if Brian Greenway was our father, and if so, if there was something I could have done to stop him—before he took Chester.”
“So I’m not the only one who feels guilty. I blame myself for going back to work, instead of taking the kids to and from school myself. Hell, maybe I should have home-schooled them.”
“They would have hated that,” Jamie said firmly. “And of course you went back to work. Do you think their father ever considered quitting the real estate business and staying home with them full time?”
Jamie noticed the pad of paper then. “What’s this?”
Charlotte moved the pen, so Jamie could read the entire list.
“I think better when I write things down. So many awful things have happened recently. I was wondering if somehow they’re all related.”
“The librarians weren’t from Twisted Cedars. But if we look at the names on this list—forgetting who is victim and who perpetrator—they all fall into either my family or yours.”
She was right. “Daisy, Shirley and Chester are all Hammonds.”
“While Ed, Joelle and her baby are from my family.” Jamie circled her father’s name. “And he’s the link, isn’t he?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he sort of belongs to both families. Since Shirley was his mother.”
“That’s true,” Charlotte said. “I wonder who his father was, whether it might help to know.”
“It couldn’t hurt. Do you have any ideas?”
“Everyone who would have known is dead now—except Stella, I suppose. But I wonder if we could puzzle it out on our own. Shirley was fifteen and then sixteen years old when she had her baby. I’ve got family photo albums going back that far.”
Jamie snapped her fingers. “Good thinking. Maybe we’ll find a picture of her with a boyfriend. If we do, I’m sure Stella will be able to recognize him. Stella knows pretty much everyone in Twisted Cedars.”
It felt good to be doing something proactive for a change, and Charlotte eagerly pulled several of the older photo albums out of the cabinet, leaving behind the newer albums, which she’d shown the twins just a few weeks ago. It was painful to recall just how excited Cory—and even Chester—had been to see photos of their mother as a child and adolescent.
Charlotte checked the date on the first page of the oldest album. “This looks like it should be the right one. It starts in 19
32 which is when my dad’s parents were married.”
She and Jamie settled next to each other on the sofa. The book was large enough to rest half on Charlotte’s lap and half on Jamie’s. The chronologically organized photos had been mounted with sticky black corners, some of which had dried and lost their adhesiveness. As a consequence, they had to turn the pages very slowly, careful to keep the pictures in their proper places.
The album began with a single photograph taken at Charlotte’s paternal grandparents’ wedding. The newlyweds looked at the camera a little anxiously. Under the photo Grandmother Hammond had written John and me on our wedding day.
“Don’t you just love old photo albums? Isn’t it amazing to think of your grandmother writing these words almost a hundred years ago?”
Charlotte considered the question. A curious byproduct of being adopted was that while she’d loved the Hammonds as much as if they were her real parents, she didn’t feel the same connection with the Hammond ancestors.
“I never knew any of my grandparents that well. My parents were older when they had Daisy and they adopted me four years later when Dad was forty-five and Mom forty-three.”
“That does seem old. Especially in those days.”
A few self-conscious poses of the honeymoon couple in New York City were followed with pictures of them standing on the front porch of their first, and only home, the very house Charlotte lived in today.
There had been improvements to the house since then, of course, including new siding and a cedar shake roof, but it did give Charlotte a shiver to think of all the family history and secrets this house must hold.
By the time the Hammonds had their first child, Shirley, the photographs were in color. There was a professional portrait, large enough to cover one entire page, of Shirley at age two.
“What an angel. Look at those blonde curls and blue eyes!” Jamie tilted her head. “Your sister looked a lot like her, didn’t she?”
“She did.” There was no question Daisy, like Shirley, had been lovely to look at, and at times it hadn’t been easy being the plainer, younger, adopted sibling. To her credit, Charlotte’s mother had always done her best to bolster her youngest daughter’s self-esteem.
Charlotte remembered once her mother had actually said, “There can be such a thing as being too pretty. You end up attracting the wrong sort of attention.”
It had seemed a strange opinion at the time. Now Charlotte wondered if something specific had been behind it.
They flipped through pages documenting the birth of the Hammond’s son Jonathon, John for short, after his father. This was followed by pictures of the children’s grade school years, which all seemed perfectly normal. As Shirley matured they began to study the pictures more closely.
Shirley had grown even more beautiful in her teenaged years. She had a willowy figure and stood a little taller than most of her friends at her birthday parties. There was a noticeable gap in photographs after Shirley turned fifteen. The next photo taken was of her and her date the night of her high school graduation. It was the first time any boy had been included in a photo with Shirley—in this case a tall, nerdy fellow with horned-rimmed glasses and protruding front teeth.
“She would have been eighteen here,” Jamie observed, after exclaiming over Shirley’s pink tulle dress. “A few years after she had the baby.”
Charlotte tried to peer into the eyes of the girl in the photograph, but the poor resolution made it impossible to guess at any hidden depths. Shirley had been through so much by this point, but here she looked like just another happy, pretty, teenaged girl.
“I suppose it’s possible this boy was the father of her baby.”
“It’s the only clue we have,” Jamie agreed.
Carefully Charlotte moved the photograph from the album. She found a protective envelope in one of the desk drawers and placed it carefully inside. “Next time I see Stella, I’ll ask her if she knows who he is.”
“I could show it to her tonight, if you’re okay lending me the photo. I’m having her over for dinner. She wanted to see my new place.”
Charlotte passed her the envelope. “How are you liking your new house?”
Jamie shrugged. “The place is great, but I still feel like a mess. I’d hoped a new environment would help me make a fresh start.” She glanced down at her left hand, more specifically the finger that for a short time had sported an engagement ring, and for an even shorter period of time, a wedding band. “But it isn’t that easy. And with Chester missing, nothing feels right.”
“I’m sorry.” She wished she could think of something more helpful to say.
“I didn’t mean to complain. Especially since this is just as hard for you, if not harder.” Jamie’s gaze went to the photo of Daisy on the bookshelves.
Charlotte smiled. “That’s one of my favorites of Daisy.” She had taken the picture, actually, on a day, about a year before her sister’s marriage to Kyle, when their parents had been away. Daisy hadn’t wanted to cook, so they’d ordered pizza and watched movies until very late. It had been one of a very few occasions when the two of them had had fun together.
“It is a nice photo,” Jamie agreed. “But I should get going. I have to pick up some groceries before going home to cook. Are you going to be okay?”
“Cory should be home any minute.” Charlotte had been keeping one eye on the time ever since she’d finished lunch. She knew it was best for Cory to keep her usual routines, but she couldn’t help worrying whenever her niece wasn’t under the same roof as her.
“Do you have to pick her up from school?”
“Her best friend’s mother is doing that. Bailey Landax.” Charlotte would have loved an excuse to escape the house for a few minutes. But she needed to be here for Chester. Just in case.
“Bailey’s the Realtor who sold me my house.” Jamie tucked the envelope containing the photo into her purse. “I felt a bit guilty using my—using Kyle’s competitor.”
“You had no choice. Quinpool Realty is probably going to remain closed as long as Kyle is incarcerated. I can’t see his father running it again on his own.”
“Probably not.” Jamie gave her a hug. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”
“I’m fine. But thanks for dropping in. You’ll let me know if Stella recognizes the boy with Shirley?”
“Right away,” Jamie promised.
Charlotte walked Jamie out the back door in order to avoid the reporters camped out at the front. Fortunately she could usually get a bit a privacy on her back porch and she settled there now in one of the wicker chairs.
The fresh air felt good, and with the warm sun on her body, Charlotte was almost asleep when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her jeans pocket frantically.
“Hello?”
“Charlotte this is Bailey.”
She hadn’t expected it to be Chester, but she felt disappointed all the same. “Are you still okay to pick up Cory?”
“I’m at the school right now with Paige. The problem is Cory. She’s not here. You didn’t ask someone else to pick her up, did you?”
“No. No.” A voice inside Charlotte’s head started shrieking. This can’t be happening! God, no, not Cory, too! She struggled to stay calm and rational. “Have you spoken to her teacher?”
“Yes. Mrs. Young said Cory was definitely in class when the final bell rang. But after that...she just disappeared.”
chapter thirteen
Tuesday April 6, 1976, Librarian Cottage outside of Twisted Cedars, Oregon
Four years had passed since Shirley Hammond’s illegitimate son had shown up on her doorstep. She never heard from him anymore, except once a year when a few days or weeks after attending the Oregon Library Association Conference, there would be a knock at her door.
She never rushed to open the door, and was always mildly relived to find no one standing on the other side when she did.
By now she’d come to expect the object that would be set out for her on the wel
come mat. It would be a snow globe, a tacky souvenir from whatever Oregon city had hosted the conference for that year.
The first one, in 1972, had been from Roseburg, followed by Pendleton in 1973, and Corvallis in 1974.
This year, the snow globe would be from Medford, no doubt, the host city of the 1975 conference.
A few days after receipt of this gift she’d come home to discover another of her red scarves had “disappeared.”
The pattern seemed innocuous enough. But it was baffling.
On this April day of 1976, Shirley stood for a long time on her front porch, alternately examining the snow globe she’d just picked up, and studying the surrounding woods. He always arrived so silently, so he must either walk or ride a bike.
Which meant, he might still be out there. Watching her.
Why, she had no idea and she didn’t like speculating about it, either. Four years ago she made up her mind she wouldn’t let him frighten her. Unfortunately though, that was easier said than accomplished. She couldn’t deny that, over the years, a feeling of dread had been building inside her.
Even now, she felt a sliver of it slide down her back from her neck to her tail bone.
And that made her angry.
“What do you want from me?” she shouted out to the woods.
She waited several minutes for an answer, but none came.
Eventually she returned inside, clicking shut the new deadbolt she’d had installed last year. She hesitated, then added the snow globe to the others on the bottom shelf of her cabinet. She then tried to put the whole thing out of her mind by re-reading one of her favorite Miss Marple mysteries, The Body in the Library.
For once, however, her old friend let her down. She couldn’t sink into the story as she liked to do. And her favorite quote from the book, one that always made her chuckle, this time seemed in bad taste:
“What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one's house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean.”
exposed (Twisted Cedar Mysteries Book 3) Page 10