The Face of Deceit

by Ramona Richards

  They waited until Karen’s tears subsided. Mason felt adrift, uncertain of what to do or say, yet oddly thrilled that she’d turned to him in such an intimate moment. His arms tightened, and he closed his eyes as he took in her gentle scent of sleep and flowers. More than anything, he wanted to make her pain go away. And never let her go.

  Yet as the sobs eased, she pushed away from him, her eyes downcast. “This is embarrassing,” she murmured.

  The old man on the couch slapped his leg and leaned forward. “Nonsense, girl! Nightmares are some of the most terrifying experiences we can have. I’ve seen grown men squall like babies after having rough ones.” He leaned back against the couch. “Might have even been known to shed a few tears over them myself.”

  Karen glanced briefly at Mason’s face, then down again. She plucked at his shirt. “I got you all wet.”

  “It’ll dry.” He gently pushed the wayward strands of her hair away from her face. “What can I do to help?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure anyone can do anything.” Karen looked around at Maggie and Fletcher.

  Jake was more positive. “Of course they can, child. Just give us the chance.” He looked at each of them. “Now. What do we do about Miss Karen here?”

  “I am still in the room,” Karen muttered, more color returning to her cheeks.

  “Which leads us to the first question. What do you want to do?” Jake motioned for Karen to get back on the couch. “Get up here where we can look at you.”

  She did, her face pinched in thought, and Jake wrapped her in the quilt again.

  Fletcher cleared his throat. “All of these actions seem aimed at terrifying you. Scaring you so you’ll stop making the face vases. Let’s skip the why for a moment in favor of a firm decision. Do you want to stop making them?”

  Karen shook her head. “I don’t think I can stop. The nightmares stopped years ago only after I started making them. Obviously my brain is giving me fair warning that they’ll come back if I quit.” She looked around, her lips a thin line, a serious stubbornness coming back into her eyes. “Besides, I don’t want this person to win. That would leave me in fear the rest of my life—that there’s someone out there with that much anger toward me. Even if I stopped, that person will still be out there!”

  Fletcher nodded. “Yes, but you know if you don’t stop, this whole business could get a lot worse before we find out who’s responsible.”

  “Which brings us back to the why.” Mason stood up. “I’m wondering if your brain is not also telling you that this isn’t random. That this is not just some nut with a problem with your vases. That it is, in fact, connected with whatever is causing your nightmares.”

  “I don’t want it to be,” Karen whispered, looking defeated. “It can’t be.”

  “Hmph.” Jake let out a frustrated grunt. “Look at me, girl.”

  Karen did.

  “Now. You want to tell them or shall I?”

  No one moved for a moment, then Karen looked down at the floor, her shoulders drooping. Jake looked up at Fletcher and Maggie. “From the first nightmare, I believed we both knew who she was seeing. It’s one of the reasons why we fought so hard to find a way to make them stop. The face in her dream is the face of the person who killed her parents.”

  SEVEN

  As Jake spoke, Mason watched Karen turn more and more inward, hugging the quilt around her shoulders like a child afraid of the dark—or her dreams. He could relate, given the nightmares he’d had after his own parents’ deaths. We have more in common than we realized, my dear Karen.

  Jake’s voice broadened, dropping into the clear, light cadence of a gifted storyteller as he recalled the background of the murder. “David and Stephanie were typical children of the sixties. They traveled all over the country in an old minibus, hitting concerts and rock festivals before spending time in a commune outside San Francisco. That life eventually wore thin for both of them, native-born Mercer kids that they were. They returned home in the seventies, after David’s father passed away and left him the family farm.”

  He reached out and took Karen’s hand, trying to pull her into the conversation. “Do you remember anything from the time at the farmhouse?”

  She shook her head, her eyes still distant. “I barely remember that there is a farmhouse.”

  Jake hesitated, wetting his lips. Then he looked up at the others again. “David loved the farmhouse, always had, and Stephanie took to their new home life with gusto. Stephanie started a little home business with her fruit and vegetable canning, and David went into real estate. Karen was born a few months after David completed his real estate courses. Turned out the man the old farmers around Mercer called ‘that hippie boy’ had quite a talent for business. Stephanie put her energies into her daughter and her little side business. They rejoined the church they’d grown up in and became deeply involved in the community.”

  He paused again, checking Karen to see how she was handling his narrative. She remained in her own world, and Mason sat down on the other side of her. He took her hand, which remained limp in his palm.

  “They put down roots that were New England deep, and seemed to live an incredibly normal life. This is a small town. We all know each other. They were homegrown kids. Everyone was stunned by their deaths.”

  Fletcher crossed his arms. “Which is one reason why people think the murders had to be connected to David’s business. It couldn’t have been local or someone would have seen it coming.” At Mason’s and Jake’s looks of surprise, Fletcher tilted his head to one side and nodded at Karen. “When I moved to Mercer, Tyler asked me to look over the files on every unsolved crime since 1970. This one kinda stood out.”

  Karen snapped back to the present, glaring up at him, then Jake. “Yeah, I guess double homicides don’t come along every day.”

  “Karen, I just meant—”

  She held up a hand to interrupt him. “Never mind, Fletcher. I—Just never mind.” With that, she tugged the quilt tighter and retreated into herself again.

  In the silence that followed, Mason squeezed her hand. This time, she returned the gesture. He took a deep breath. “Jake, since you’re telling us all this, you must think it’s local, someone they knew, not business.”

  Jake shrugged, but Fletcher stepped in. “The problem is that the crime scene information makes it look personal and more about Stephanie than David. But if it were about Stephanie, or both of them, it’s a rather remarkable bit of timing. You would have to know that David was in the house, which, admittedly, was no great feat. Open houses are advertised widely. But if this were about Stephanie, then the killer would also have to know that she would be there, as well.” He paused. “It’s actually pretty ingenuous, if you think about it. It looks like a random robbery gone bad. Open houses aren’t strangers to crime. And it makes gathering evidence a nightmare of conflicting finger- and footprints, not to mention trace evidence like hairs and DNA samples. You’d have to eliminate every person who’d been in that house since it had gone on sale.”

  Jake nodded. “In the mid-eighties, Mercer wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime scene technology.” He shrugged. “Still isn’t.” At Mason’s frown, he went on. “Just ask Tyler. I sit on the city council, and he’s been begging for more equipment since he took the job.”

  Fletcher looked at Mason, then Karen. “Given what they knew at the time, I can see why they drew the conclusions they did, and got nowhere. David appeared to be a scrupulously honest businessman, and he and his family were just in the wrong house at the wrong time. Random. Unsolvable.”

  Mason spoke slowly, recognition finally dawning. “Except for what Karen saw.”

  Karen shuddered and looked up at him. “I don’t know that I saw anything. I may have been in the backyard.” She turned to stare at Jake. “That’s why I can’t be nearly as certain as you that the face in my dreams is the murderer.”

  He shook his head. “You were too traumatized. Memory repression is not something the mind d
oes lightly or easily.” He touched the side of her head gently. “Our minds are curious creations. We take in so much, storing it carefully. Children can witness horrible things and remember—car wrecks, war. We learn, we teach, we absorb. You saw something your brain couldn’t accept. To your mind, it was an absolute impossibility. Yet it happened.”

  Karen sat a little straighter. “What do you suggest I do?”

  Fletcher tilted his head sideways as he looked at her, curiosity in his eyes. “Where do your earliest memories take place?”

  “Home.” She paused, shaking her head. “Not the farm. Aunt Evie’s. I don’t remember the farm at all.”

  “Have you ever been to the farm?” Maggie asked.

  Again, a shake of the head, more determined this time.

  “It’s been abandoned for years,” Jake said. “Evie sold the livestock, but she couldn’t bring herself to sell the farm. As far as I know, she never even cleaned it out.”

  Maggie stared. “Are you saying it hasn’t been touched since they died?”

  “Well, I certainly couldn’t go there.” Karen’s protest sounded like a pouty young child.

  “Maybe you should,” Mason said softly.

  “Not yet.” Jake cleared his throat, a rough, phlegmy sound, and stood. “We need to go back to our house. There are some of your parents’ things…of your dad’s…that were left to me because we were best friends.”

  Karen looked startled. “I never knew that!”

  A long sigh escaped the old man. “I’m sorry. There’s been too much hidden for too long.”

  Fletcher stood and joined Jake. “Karen may not be too happy about what you have to tell her.”

  “Yes, but even dirty water is better than rancid mud.” He held out his hand to Karen. “Are you ready?”

  Karen looked at each of them in turn, then pushed back the quilt and stood. “Let me get dressed.”

  Karen’s silence on the ride to her aunt’s house added significantly to the queasy knot in Mason’s stomach. Fletcher had bowed out, feeling this needed to be a family discussion without outsiders. But Karen had refused to go without Mason. Jake went ahead in his pickup as Karen got ready. Now Mason drove as Karen stared resolutely out the passenger window of his sports car. Glancing at her occasionally, he wondered exactly how deeply this would wound her.

  He tried to imagine how he would feel if he were forced to go back over the day of the fire, the day he watched both of his parents die. After the funerals, he’d left town, never to return. A few years later, he’d sold the farm to a cousin and used the money to pay off his student loans. Closure. A luxury Karen had never had.

  Lord, please help her.

  The prayer startled him, and he glanced quickly at Karen. Then again, Lord—he let the prayer continue—maybe her influence on me is greater than I realized. He hesitated, then, Thanks, Lord. I might get the hang of unexpected prayers sooner or later.

  “Turn here.” He barely heard her soft words, but when he followed her directions, pulling off the road onto a paved, quarter-mile-long driveway, the queasiness sharpened. The drive followed a curving path up a sloping hill to a massive jigsaw Gothic house that stood out starkly against the bright May sky. Two towers, one at a front corner and the other on the back of the house, dominated the roofline, and the massive front porch stretched around one corner of the house.

  “Wow,” Mason muttered.

  “Yeah, that’s what everyone says the first time.” Karen snapped the door handle and got out before he’d put the car into Park.

  He shifted and opened his door but paused as Karen turned left instead of going to the front porch. Instead, she plunged through thick, calf-high grass around the side of the house to a cluster of outbuildings behind it. Crossing a flagstone patio, she opened the door of the largest one and went in. His curiosity piqued, Mason trailed behind her.

  Inside, Jake’s pottery studio resembled a larger, older, slightly more cluttered version of Karen’s, as if hers had suddenly been supersized. One long wall was filled with ceiling-high shelves, each one loaded with carefully labeled baskets, boxes and plastic containers. Glazes, texturing tools, knives, pattern blocks, brushes and paints sat on worktables as if in constant use. The kilns were larger, but the wheels were about the same size. Jake stood near one, watching. “I knew you’d come here first.”

  Karen was immovable. “You always knew me best. I thought—” She broke off and looked away a moment, then back at him. “I always felt safe here. I trusted you. I thought you told me everything I needed to know.” She motioned around the studio. “About pottery. About life. But you never told me about my own family. You let me pick up everything I know—even about the farmhouse!—from people around town. Why? Why did you never tell me you and my father were close friends? Why did you never tell me that?”

  Jake crossed his arms. “I suppose it would be coy to say that you never asked me.”

  “Coy. And cruel.”

  Jake looked her over, taking in the stiff posture, the hard look in her eyes. As he did, he seemed to age a bit. His shoulders dropped forward, and the long sigh he exhaled seemed to deflate him. “We never meant to be cruel, Karen. We just wanted to protect you and keep you safe.”

  Mason froze a moment, hearing an echo of his father’s words, “Hide her and keep her,” in Jake’s “protect you and keep you safe.” An honest instinct, but is it ever truly possible?

  Karen’s voice became even more demanding. “Then tell me, please, that nothing you know could have prevented any of this.”

  Jake pulled two stools from behind a table and motioned for them to sit. Karen perched on the edge of hers, almost as if she were ready to leap up at any second. Mason settled, determined to stay as silent as possible this time.

  Jake straddled his own stool. “I’d like to think not, but the truth is, I really don’t know.”

  “That’s not helpful.”

  Jake straightened a bit, then ran his hand through his graying hair. A short, sturdy man in his sixties, Jake’s arms and hands still had the firm strength of a lifelong potter, and his voice had the even flow of a man used to dealing with upset women.

  “Attitude is not the way to go here, girl. Especially not if you wind up talking with Evie.”

  “But—”

  Jake held up a callused palm. “Just listen for a few minutes.” He shifted on the stool and braced his feet flat on the floor, as if preparing for battle. “Your cousin has been pushing us to talk to you for years. Shane cares a lot about you, and he said part of your problems with focus, with relationships, was that you didn’t know your history. He said you needed to know your family—all of them—the good, bad and ugly. Evie couldn’t do it, though. She still breaks up if she talks too much about Stephanie. That murder tore the entire family apart and just about ripped Evie in half. You may not remember this, but Evie and Stephanie’s mother, Elizabeth, died less than two months after. Mrs. Steen had been the center of the family, and Stephanie was its star. Evie was adrift without them.”

  Karen frowned and closed her eyes. “I remember…I remember a lot of people in the house. Women crying.”

  Jake nodded. “And she didn’t want to, but in some ways, Evie took that out on you.”

  Karen’s eyes opened wide with understanding. “The silences. The outbursts.”

  “And more. She could barely look at you without thinking of them.”

  “Then why didn’t she send me away?”

  He shrugged. “You were still family. Where would you have gone? You stayed with the Elkins a lot, anyway. You and Penny were inseparable. She helped you get through it.”

  “I stayed there because here was so miserable. At least until you got here.”

  Jake’s craggy face broke into a wry grin. “You were a handful. I think one reason you latched on to me is that you missed your dad more than you understood.” He paused, looking slightly over her shoulder and more than twenty years back in time. “You were definitely a daddy’s gir
l. I thought David would burst with pride when you were born.”

  “How close were you to him?”

  Jake brought his gaze back to the present. “We grew up together. He was the athlete, I was the artist. Unlikely friends, but that’s what happens in a small town. There were only about twelve boys our age in Mercer. We spent summers together fishing. He taught me to hunt. I taught him to draw well enough to pass art class in school. We didn’t go our separate ways until he got that football scholarship at Boston University, while I took an apprenticeship in California. Then he hit the road with your mama, and I went south, to a place in North Carolina where they still dug their own clay out of the riverbanks. Took a while, but we both landed back here.”

  Karen stood up, stretching her back. “Why would anyone think he had brought his death on himself? That it was his fault?”

  Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “The easy answer is that he was a Realtor, and Realtors sometimes make enemies they don’t even know they have. But he also had made some strange investments, and the cops wondered where he had gotten the money.”

  “Where did he get the money?”

  Jake stood. “Come into the house, both of you. I have some things I want to show you.” As they walked, Mason trailing behind, Jake continued the tale. “David, like a lot of New England men, was a stubborn old cuss. He got tired of Mrs. Steen’s meddling in his and Stephanie’s finances.” Jake waved his arm at the side of the house and spoke to Mason. “As you can see, they were raised rich. Mrs. Steen naturally assumed a man who had been raised without much money couldn’t possibly manage it. Evie inherited a lot of that attitude. So David set up a front company and started buying, renovating and flipping some of the older homes up near Portsmouth. No one down here knew. The last one he flipped netted him about $150,000. Back in the mid-eighties, that was serious money.”

  Mason hmphed. “Still not exactly petty cash.”

  Jake chuckled. “No, indeed.”