“What about my mother?” Thea was angry now. “What did you do about her?”
He shook his head. “She...seemed okay. She kind of followed along behind us as I walked my dad along the path. I made a call to 911 from a public phone. Your mother was...I looked back once and I thought I saw somebody with her.”
“What? Who?”
Another head shake. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just the bushes swaying in the wind. But I could see she was headed toward George’s car so I knew she wasn’t going to wander off.”
“Thank God George left it unlocked,” Thea said, with more than a trace of irony. “Otherwise, who knows what would have happened to her?”
“I know, I know,” Whit said, turning away. “I shouldn’t have left her. I shouldn’t have let the police think she was the one who pushed George—”
“No!” she said, grabbing his arm to make him look at her. “No, you shouldn’t have! And you shouldn’t have lied to me about what you saw!”
He was cringing, trying to pull away from her and then, in her peripheral vision, she caught a flash of movement at the overlook. Puzzled, she started to turn, and time seemed to slow down.
At the guardrail, a tall figure in a dark coat with a hood was standing. Thea blinked. It was so much like the dark figure from her dream—it couldn’t be real. Was she reliving last night’s dream? No, no, not the dream. What she was seeing was more like a hallucination. A vision that shouldn’t be there, couldn’t be there. But it was.
“What the—?” she heard Whit mutter next to her.
The hooded figure bent forward, picking up something before extending its arms overhead in the theatrical gesture of a triumphant warrior. In those arms was the limp body of a white-haired man wearing a bathrobe and bedroom slippers. As Thea watched, one of the slippers fell off and skittered across the rocks and vanished.
Next to her, she could sense Whit turning, shouting out something she couldn’t understand. She, too, was trying to cry out, but her throat was frozen.
The dark figure seemed to pause for a moment, as if aware of its audience, and then shrugged and flung the old man’s body over the edge of the cliff. There was no cry, no sound—until they heard the thud of a body striking the rocks below.
CHAPTER 46
Thea was sitting on a bench at the overlook. Jerry Anderson was with her. Whit was standing at the railing, alternately talking with another detective and peering out at the water where a River Rescue boat was retrieving the body of his father.
She was aware that the light was starting to fade, but other than that she had no concept of time. She remembered that she had called Luanne Varner right after she had called 911. She had also tried to call her aunt, but had gotten her machine. Whether or not Aunt Dorothy would be able to understand the stuttering, stammering message she’d left was something she had her doubts about.
Jerry had been extraordinarily kind and humane to her, she thought. They had gone over the salient points, and then he had brought her a bottle of water which she had guzzled down, very much aware that she was in shock. Since then he had been sitting with her quietly, letting her take the lead on what else came to her mind. And things were coming back to her in a willy-nilly, haphazard sort of way. Her brain did not seem to be functioning in a linear fashion. She wondered if it ever would again.
She did remember Whit leaping over the rail and running to the edge of the overlook and, as he gazed down, he began sobbing. She had followed him more cautiously, and couldn’t bring herself to look at the rocks below. She had pulled him back from the edge and made her calls. By the time she thought to look for the dark figure, no one was there.
Whit had told the detectives he had no idea who the dark-coated figure was, but Thea was pretty sure she knew: Mattie. It had to be Mattie. She couldn’t even say how she knew—maybe it was something to do with the exaggerated posture of that dark figure; maybe it was just her intuition finally revealing to her something she had suspected all along.
But she couldn’t tell this to Jerry, not yet. She had no proof, only that bad feeling she’d experienced any time she’d been in Mattie’s presence. And what could she tell him had been the motive for Mattie to have killed Fred Collins? Nothing that made any sense to her because, up until today, Whit had kept the truth hidden about George’s death, so Mattie couldn’t have done it out of revenge.
She thought Jerry sensed that she was withholding something from him, but he didn’t push it. And for that she was grateful. Maybe in a little while, after she’d thought things through, perhaps she’d suggest that he ought to look into Mattie’s background. Thea’s cell phone rang in the coat pocket where she had stuffed it. “Sorry,” she said to Jerry and reached for it. She was surprised to see that it was Beryl on the line. “Hey,” she said, not at all prepared to deal with her sister’s peremptory manner.
“Where are you?” Beryl demanded, her voice only a decibel or two under a shriek.
Not wanting to give her any kind of explanation just yet, Thea said, “Where are you? Are you here?”
“I’m at the house,” Beryl responded, her voice somewhat less shrill, but her impatience even more apparent. “I told you I was coming.”
“Right. I remember,” Thea said, making her own tone more conciliatory. “I’m sorry I’m not there, but, listen, I need you to do me a favor, okay?”
Big sigh. “What?”
“Mother isn’t with me. She’s at the house of a woman in the Alzheimer’s support group. Can you go over there and pick her up? It’s not far.”
A hesitation. “Well, why can’t you go get her? What are you doing?” And then her voice became playful, knowing. “Oh, I get it. I heard about your lunch with Whit. Now I understand. So fine. Tell me where Mother is and I’ll go get her.”
Not wanting to take the time to disabuse her sister of her romantic notions about her meeting with Whit, Thea simply gave Beryl the directions to Luanne’s house.
Her next call was to Luanne to advise her that her sister would be picking Mother up.
“Thea,” Luanne replied, “are you all right? Has something happened?”
“Yes. I can’t really talk about it now,” Thea explained. “I’ll try to call you and tell you about it later.” She knew that Luanne would probably find out about Fred Collins’s death either through the grapevine or the local media long before she had a chance—or the emotional stamina—to tell her face-to-face, but at least Luanne would realize that her intentions were good.
When she got off the phone, Thea saw that Jerry had moved away from the bench. He was standing at the guardrail with Whit, joined by the other detective and a couple of uniformed officers. They were watching the River Rescue boat as it pulled slowly away from the rocky outcropping below. In the open back of the boat lay a black, vinyl body bag.
CHAPTER 47
The streetlights were on as Thea turned down the block to George’s house. Idly, she wondered if she would ever be able to think of the house in any other way. George’s house. Poor George. Now that she knew how he had met his demise, she realized how much the know-it-all, bossy side of his personality had contributed to his death. That, of course, and an alcoholic, delusional old man regressing to a lovestruck adolescent.
Thea thought about that star-crossed teenage infatuation and how it might have affected her mother’s life. Had it changed her? Had it made her bitter? Had she lived her entire life with a painful secret, a secret she had never told anyone? A secret about the young love that was snatched away from her?
Thea had already surmised that this loss had made such a profound impact on her parent because of the fact that her mother had never talked about it. Otherwise, Thea would have grown up hearing all the breathless details of the romance with the scion of Rockridge’s first family. Mother was Queen of the Name Droppers, and for her not to ever have even whispered Fred Collins’s name among the list of her conquests convinced Thea that her mother had been hurt and humiliated by the loss of her tee
nage swain.
Thea didn’t think it was the depth of her mother’s feeling that had caused so much anguish. No, it was more likely the shattering of her Cinderella-type dream: the prince had picked her out of all the other girls at the ball, a course was set for her glittering future. But then her glass slipper was crushed by the heavy foot of someone in the royal family. No prince. No glittering future.
Had this one simple act affected her mother’s personality? Had it possibly turned her into the shrewish woman who had reigned over Thea’s childhood? It would explain so much: the disappointed sighs and glances that Thea remembered being directed at her quiet, reserved father. He’d made a decent living as a mechanical engineer, but it was never quite enough for her mother’s aspirations. Mother had always longed to buy a house in the Rivercliffs area, but their father had said no, he thought it was more important to send his daughters to college. Then Mother had tried to get him to join the country club and take up golf; he had retorted that he could play just as well on the municipal links.
All those long-ago memories came flooding back to Thea. Had Mother been plotting to get close to Fred Collins again? If they had lived in Rivercliffs and belonged to the country club, Mother might have seen him in ever-so-casual encounters and then...perhaps sparks would fly again and they would be reunited. In retrospect, Thea doubted that Mother would have consciously planned for such an event, but the lingering hope of that bittersweet adolescent romance could have lain there, just below the surface, for all of her mother’s adult life.
Thea would never know the truth. Not unless Mother, in one of her ever-decreasing lucid moments, were to blurt out what she remembered of that blustery March day on the overlook. Or the poignant memories she held of her long-lost, teenage Romeo.
Nearing the house, Thea was surprised to see no lights on. Beryl’s BMW was in the driveway, so they had apparently made it home. But where were they? Could they have gone to a neighbor’s? If so, why hadn’t her darling sister called to tell her?
She parked the car behind the BMW and got out, so weary that all she wanted to do was go inside, sneak up the stairs to her bedroom, and sleep for several days. Instead, she knew that she had long hours ahead of her, telling Beryl what had happened and then dealing with a lot of other people calling. And of course, the media. They would probably be showing up on the doorstep at any minute.
As she walked up the driveway toward the side door, the security lights flicked on. Well, most of them did, anyway. The one which illuminated the upper driveway and the back door had obviously burned out. Something else she’d have to take care of.
She fumbled for the house key and then stopped, sniffing the darkness around her, like an animal sensing danger. Ever so faintly, she could smell something that didn’t belong. Chanel N° 5, the perfume that Beryl had worn ever since she was a teenager, her “signature scent” she called it. Why was it wafting around out here in the cold and shadows?
Thea turned, the little hairs on the back of her neck prickling up in dread. Someone was there—nearby—a presence. She could feel it. “Who are you?” she said, hoping her voice sounded much braver than she felt.
There was an answering moan.
All the fearful emotions of the night she had found Bud Prentice’s body just a few feet from here came rushing back at her. She was not going to go stumbling around in the dark—not again. She turned back toward the house, determined to go inside and call Jerry Anderson.
Another moan. Only this time there was a familiarity to the sound. Beryl!
Thea shuffled across the darkened driveway, feeling with her feet. At the point where the single lane widened into the entrance to the two-car garage, she felt her toe strike something yielding. She leaned down and reached out tentatively with her hands. A piece of cloth, like the back of a coat. Then farther up, it was warmer. And the smell of Chanel N° 5 was stronger here. It was Beryl, lying on the concrete. Face down. And she was hurt.
Thea bent over her sister, wishing she could do something more for her than calling 911. As she reached into her pocket to get her cell phone and started to punch out the numbers, she heard a noise nearby. Whimpering, like a small child.
Puzzled, she stared into the darkness, and thought she could make out a crouched figure near the lilac bush at the side of the garage. The whimpering sound was repeated, and then a tiny voice said, “Dot! Run!”
“Mother?” Thea was rising to her feet, fixed on the voice. She never saw the other dark figure come rushing toward her, brandishing a piece of firewood.
CHAPTER 48
Nausea welled up in Thea’s throat, gagging her. She needed to vomit, but somehow sensed her head was at the wrong angle. Wincing at the pain, she began to turn her neck, and as she did, consciousness came swimming back from a distant shore. The nausea wavered, then passed, but her head continued to throb like an overstretched guitar string.
It was dark wherever she was. Dark and quiet. She was lying on her side with her legs drawn up. Nothing else seemed to hurt, just her head. Very faintly, she could smell gasoline, and that wasn’t helping the nausea. She decided to ignore the nausea and turn her attention to figuring out where she was.
She stretched out her hand and felt some kind of scratchy carpet. The air was still, so she knew she was in some kind of enclosed space. Then, as she lifted her head ever so carefully, she realized the darkness was not complete. There was a faint, neon-green glow near her feet and she stared at it, trying to make out what it was. Oh, sweet Jesus! A trunk release. She was in a car trunk!
She maneuvered herself around so that she could pull on the handle, then paused, listening for any noise outside. Nothing, except maybe the faint whir of some kind of appliance nearby. She tugged at the latch, waited a breathless moment, and then nearly cried with relief as the trunk lid slowly rose.
She pushed it up high enough so she could scramble out. It was a tight space between the end of the car and the garage door, and she was pretty unstable on her feet, so she found herself staggering and stumbling as she worked her way out from behind the car.
The light was dim, but she could see that she was in a single-car garage. She looked over the car, couldn’t tell what make it was, but it looked American, and was almost certainly the car that had been parked outside George’s house night after night. If she inspected the front bumper, she’d probably find a dent from the night the car hit her.
As dizziness overtook her, she leaned against the car. She felt her head where she’d been hit. Her hand came away dry, but there was a swollen area of tenderness behind her right ear. She wondered if she had a concussion. She’d had one once before when she’d fallen off her horse, Paloma, and this felt similar. Wooziness, nausea, weakness.
Okay. Take inventory: She was in bad shape, had no idea where she was or who had assaulted and kidnapped her.
No. That was wrong. Instinct told her it was the same person who had thrown Fred Collins off the cliff earlier that day. And it was the same person who had killed Bud Prentice and taken her mother.
Mother! Where was Mother?
Thea’s brain conjured up those last few seconds before she was struck down. Her mother’s maternal instinct must have managed to overcome the short-circuit’s in her brain long enough to try to warn her daughter. The poor woman had probably already witnessed her younger daughter falling prey to this assailant.
Oh no! Through the haze in her mind, it came back to her: Beryl was hurt, unconscious. Thea had been trying to call 911 when she was attacked but she’d never completed the call.
She reached into her pockets. No cell. Damn! It probably fell out of her hand when she was struck.
Shit! She was useless, unable to help her mother, her sister, even herself. And, stupidly, she had chosen not to tell Jerry Anderson the one thing that might have saved them that all her instincts had been screaming at her to tell: she knew the identity of the killer.
Mattie. Crazy Mattie. Thea had no doubt Mattie really was crazy—and a kill
er. But she had no proof, only that gut instinct she had every time she was in the woman’s presence.
But enough of that. She had to do something now; find a way to call 911, get the police but, damn it all to hell, her head hurt so much. She looked at a large white freezer nearby. Maybe she could get some ice to put on her aching head; that might help a little.
Using the car for support, she made her way over to the freezer and leaned against it. She lifted the top up and peered inside, but it was too dark to see anything. She glanced up and saw a light switch on the wall and reached to flip it up. A fixture overhead came on and Thea looked down into the contents of the freezer. Then stifled the scream that rose unbidden in her throat.
CHAPTER 49
Through the frost that covered it, Thea could make out the shape of a woman’s body. It was lying partially on its left side, the legs bent to fit into the freezer. The hair was matted and the same hue as the frost: white. So she was elderly. The skin was gray, the features flattened. The only color was the bright pink sweatshirt and pants the corpse was wearing.
Thea sagged against the freezer, fighting down another wave of nausea, her mind not wanting to absorb what her eyes were showing her. Then the neurons began firing and her mind went into overdrive. The body was somewhat smaller than the six-foot, heavy-set Mattie, but there were similarities in the composition and even in the facial features. Putting it all together, this had to be Mattie’s mother. That meant this was Mattie’s house. And Mattie had to be somewhere inside, holding Thea’s mother captive!
Adrenaline started pumping through her weary body, making any pain and weakness fade into the background. They were replaced by a single thought: Mother! Must save Mother!
Her hands shook as she lowered the lid on the freezer. Near the light switch she spotted the control panel for the garage door opener: an escape route. She could go for help. She reached out to press the button on the panel, but hesitated. If there wasn’t a house nearby where she could call the police, she would be wasting precious time. No, she pulled her hand back. She had to go into the house.
What Has Mother Done? Page 25