by Leslie Meier
“Yeah. She’s a single, working mom. She’d probably let him play with the spawn of Satan, just to get him somewhere after school.”
Lucy nodded. “Didn’t you say something the other day about the doctor and his receptionist being an item?”
Phyllis smirked. “Like I said, she’s a single mom. She’s available.”
Lucy’s computer chimed, notifying her that an e-mail message from the state police public relations department had arrived. She opened it and learned that the department was investigating a fatal accident that had taken the life of Amanda Connell, thirty-one, of Tinker’s Cove.
“She’s not available anymore,” she said. “Amanda’s dead.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was quiet in the office, except for the tick of the antique wall clock, which had hung there for more than one hundred years, since the days of the old Courier & Advertiser, counting down the hours and minutes to thousands of deadlines.
Finally, Phyllis spoke. “I better call Elfie, let her know what happened.” Lucy listened as Phyllis punched in the numbers and broke the news; she heard Elfrida’s shriek from all the way across the room. When she hung up, Phyllis had plenty to report.
“Elfie couldn’t believe it. She said Amanda was a really cautious driver, wouldn’t even start the car until everybody was buckled in, never exceeded the speed limit, and counted to three at stop signs.”
“Barney couldn’t understand it, either,” said Lucy. “Packet Road is so twisty that he didn’t see how she could have gotten up much speed. His theory was that she might have zoned out because she made the same drive every morning, but even so, he didn’t see how she could have gotten up so much speed. He thought her brakes must’ve failed.”
“Not likely. Elfie says Amanda was fanatical about following the recommended service schedule. She changed her oil every three thousand miles, got the tires rotated frequently, and got the car inspected a month before her sticker expired.”
Lucy was silent, thinking over this new information, which seemed to confirm her suspicion that the accident wasn’t an accident.
“I can read your mind, Lucy Stone,” said Phyllis, pointing an apricot-tipped finger at her. “You think there’s something fishy about that accident.”
“Well,” said Lucy. “What if Amanda somehow knew Bart killed Tina in order to get his wife sent to jail? What if she thought she was going to be the next Mrs. Bart Hume, only to discover that Dr. Bart Hume had no intention of marrying her? What if she threatened to go to the police? What do you think?”
“I think that’s a whole lot of what-ifs,” said Phyllis.
“I know,” admitted Lucy, “but somehow it feels right.”
“Sounds like a Lifetime movie to me,” said Phyllis. “And what about his daughter? Even if he manages to get rid of Bar, he’s still stuck with a teenager.”
What about his daughter? Lucy remembered what Sue Finch had said about how controlling Bart was with Ashley. “Almost sexual,” was how Sue had described it. And Lucy knew from personal experience that Bart was a creep. But could he possibly be involved in an incestuous relationship with his daughter? These things happened; Lucy knew that. She’d heard about it on Oprah and she’d even covered a case or two in Tinker’s Cove, but those cases had involved troubled, poverty-stricken families with a host of problems. Still, the social worker she’d interviewed had stressed that incest, like wife abuse, crossed all social strata. “You just don’t hear about the rich ones, because they can hide it better,” she’d said.
“You’re awful quiet,” declared Phyllis. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering why men are so icky,” said Lucy.
“Now, now, they’re not all bad. Take Wilf, for instance. He’s a real gentleman,” said Phyllis as the phone rang. “It’s for you,” she said, transferring the call to Lucy’s extension.
It was the high school attendance officer. What now? Lucy braced herself for more bad news.
“I’m calling to let you know that your daughter, Sara Stone, was reported present by her homeroom teacher, and she attended her first two classes but was absent for period three.”
“There must be some mistake,” said Lucy. Sara was a good student; there was no reason for her to cut class.
“Perhaps she had a doctor’s appointment or some other reason for early dismissal? Sometimes the kids forget to check out at the attendance office.”
“No, nothing like that,” said Lucy.
“Well, this will go down as an unexcused absence, and she will have to serve a detention,” said the attendance officer.
Lucy was troubled as she hung up the phone. What was going on with this kid? First, she went to a booze party in the woods and got arrested, and now she was cutting classes? When did she stop being a model student and turn into a juvenile delinquent? And if she wasn’t at school, where was she? Not, Lucy prayed, with Chad Mackenzie. She quickly dialed Sara’s cell phone, intending to read her the riot act, but got the recording telling her to leave a message.
“Trouble?” asked Phyllis. “You look like a mother cat who lost one of her kittens.”
“That’s exactly right,” said Lucy, shoving back her chair and standing up. “And I’m going to go find her.”
“Is that what you want me to tell Ted?” asked Phyllis.
“Tell him whatever you want,” said Lucy, losing patience and hurrying out of the office.
But where to start? she wondered as she marched down Main Street to her car. Chad’s house? As good a place as any, she decided, striding past the hardware store and the post office. It was there that she encountered Lenny, standing by the blue mailbox on the sidewalk, holding his cell phone and looking extremely puzzled.
Before she knew what she was saying, Lucy asked, “Attendance officer?”
He looked up, amazed. “How did you know?”
“Because I just got a call, too. My Sara cut third period.”
“So did Heather.” He paused. “What do you think is going on? She’s never skipped class before.”
“Neither has Sara,” said Lucy, adding, “And she’s not accepting phone calls” when she saw Lenny pushing some buttons on his cell phone.
“Neither is Heather,” he said, closing his phone and looking at her with a baffled expression. He gave a great sigh and blinked a few times. “It’s times like this that I really miss Tina,” he said. “She’d know what to do.”
Lucy’s heart went out to him. People could say what they might about the simple funeral he’d given Tina; there was no mistaking that this was a man who deeply grieved the loss of his wife. She wanted to reach out and hug him, and was trying to think of a way to comfort him when she had a bright idea. “Well, what would Tina do in this situation? Did anything similar ever come up?”
Lenny thought for a minute. “Yeah, one time Heather said she was going on an overnight with the church youth group. Tina had the idea of taking them pizza for a midnight snack, but when we got to the church, there was no sign of Heather. Tina was furious. She drove right over to Ashley Hume’s house, and, lo and behold, there was Heather.”
Lucy was puzzled. “Why did she have to lie about spending the night at Ashley’s?”
“Oh, Tina didn’t approve of their friendship. It drove her crazy. She couldn’t stop them from seeing each other at school, but she forbade any other contact.”
Weirder and weirder, thought Lucy. “So do you think we should try Ashley’s house?”
“It’s as good a place as any to start,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
When Lucy got to the Humes’ house, Lenny was waiting for her. He’d parked his ancient Volvo in the pristine white oyster-shell driveway and was sitting inside it. The junky car seemed out of place, a blot on the image of perfection presented by the carefully maintained and landscaped mansion. Lucy parked behind it, and they followed the herringbone brick pathway to the back door, where they rang the bell. They could hear it chiming inside, but nobody ca
me to the door, not even Alma. Lucy gave the knob an experimental twist and was surprised when it turned.
“Do you think we should go in?” she asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“What if they’re in there, overdosed on drugs or something?”
Lenny bristled. “What makes you say a thing like that?”
Lucy stared at him. “Do you read the newspapers? Watch TV?”
“Not much,” admitted Lenny.
“Well, take it from me, when kids cut school, it isn’t because they want to play croquet.”
“Okay,” he said. “But we’ll just take a quick look and get out.”
“Right,” said Lucy, pushing the door open and stepping inside the mudroom.
The house seemed empty, quiet except for the distant chime of a grandfather clock. They went from room to room, but there was no sign that anybody was there: no half-drunk glasses, no coffee cups, no scattered newspapers. The television sets were all off, the stereo was quiet, everything was neat and tidy, the beds were made, and the clothes were hung up. Lucy was impressed by Ashley’s bedroom—a spacious room done up in pink-flowered chintz—until she realized it was the sort of room mothers and decorators thought teenage girls should like but that they really didn’t, preferring instead to experiment with black paint, Day-Glo stickers, and rock star posters. It was neat as a pin, which Lucy also thought atypical. She looked around for a computer but found only a printer, so she concluded that wherever Ashley was, she probably had her laptop with her.
There was a computer in Bart’s office; he’d left it on in standby mode. Lucy hit the ENTER button, earning a sharp reproof from Lenny and little else. The files listed were all work related. He had a bunch of unopened e-mails, mostly from pharmaceutical companies, and Lucy figured it wasn’t worth the risk of discovery to read them. She scanned his Favorites queue, checking to see if it included some porn sites, but it was empty.
Back outside, she turned to Lenny, who was studying a lilac bush. “Well, it was worth a try,” she said.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to a patch of broken branches. “It looks like somebody drove into this bush.”
Looking closer, Lucy realized that the bush had taken quite a hit. Not only were several crushed twigs lying on the ground, but the leaves and blooms on several branches were wilting fast, a sure sign that they had been damaged.
The discovery made Lucy uneasy. “What do you think happened?”
“It looks like somebody drove out of here real fast and clipped part of the bush,” said Lenny. “That’s what it looks like to me.”
Lucy had to admit the damaged bush certainly didn’t go with the carefully groomed perfection of the landscaping, which seemed to issue a challenge to the boldest weed that it would not be welcome. “That’s what I think, too,” she said, looking for other signs of disturbance. At the end of the drive, she found a small wooden sign with the house number broken off its stake and lying amid the tulips.
“I bet the girls are on a joyride,” said Lenny. “There’s an old cabin, a camp, out near the Audubon preserve that the kids use for booze parties. You know where I mean?”
“Unfortunately,” said Lucy, “I have heard of the place.”
Lucy was backing out of the driveway when she noticed Lenny running after her, waving. She braked and watched as he hurried down the drive. He certainly cut an odd figure, with his mop of curly hair, his mismatched pants and jacket, his heavy tortoiseshell glasses, his argyle socks, and Birkenstock sandals.
“My car won’t start,” he said, with a shrug, reaching for the door handle.
“Do you want to call triple A or something?”
“No,” he said, opening the passenger door and seating himself beside her. “It’s happened before. It’ll probably be fine when we get back.”
“Okay,” said Lucy, shifting into reverse. “You be the navigator.”
“It’s off Shore Road,” he said, fastening the seat belt and settling in for the ride. After a bit, he sighed. “I wouldn’t want to be a kid nowadays, that’s for sure. They’ve got it a lot harder than we did.”
Lucy didn’t agree. She remembered her own teen years as an emotional seesaw between terror and yearning. Terrified of the teachers in her strict all-girls school, she’d put in long hours studying: memorizing French verbs, the classification of species, the philosophical influences that shaped the American Revolution. The words compare and contrast still made her heart skip a beat. The few moments she hadn’t been studying had been spent yearning, mooning after boys she saw on the subway and wishing she could be like the perfect girls in Seventeen magazine.
“I don’t think growing up has ever been easy,” she said.
“Sure, but now it’s harder than ever. These kids are under so much pressure, it’s no wonder they need to blow off steam.”
“Well, I know one thing that’s different. When I was in high school, my mother knew what I was doing. She knew my friends. I even had to get permission to use the telephone to call them.”
“Now they’ve all got cell phones,” said Lenny.
“And we don’t know what they’re saying to each other, do we? My mother couldn’t help overhearing my conversations, because the family phone was on a desk in the front hall.”
“Ours was in the kitchen,” said Lenny.
“Now there’s all this technology that they’ve mastered and we haven’t,” said Lucy. “We can’t find out what they’re up to even if we want to. It’s as if they live in an alternate universe. The generation gap is a chasm.”
“I never thought of it that way,” said Lenny. “Turn here.”
Lucy pulled off the road onto a grassy drive that was just wide enough for her car; leafy branches brushed the sides as she crept along the uneven surface. Eventually, the undergrowth parted, and they came to a clearing with a ramshackle old hunting camp and a glittering black Mercedes.
“Bart’s car,” said Lenny, his face growing red. “If he’s messing around with my daughter, I’ll kill him!”
Lucy sat, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place, and she didn’t like the way it was shaping up one bit. “What could he be doing with three young girls?” she asked, thinking out loud.
“Maybe he’s making pornographic films. Or maybe he’s initiating them into some sort of satanic ritual. Or maybe he’s into bondage and stuff. Or group sex. I don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m going to find out,” he said, flinging the car door open.
“No!” hissed Lucy, grabbing his arm. “We need to be cautious here. The whole family has guns. They target shoot for fun.”
Lenny pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call the cops!”
“Take it easy,” said Lucy, who didn’t want Sara involved with the police again if she could avoid it. “Let’s find out what we’re dealing with here, okay? Then we’ll decide what to do.”
“Okay.” Lenny was off, heading straight for the front door.
“Hold on,” called Lucy, running after him. “I think it would be smart to come around from the back, just in case.” She began weaving her way through the trees and undergrowth. Lenny followed, moving clumsily and stumbling on stones and roots. A few minutes later they were standing at the edge of the woods, looking across a stretch of overgrown grass dotted with buttercups, staring at the back wall of the cabin. It was covered in worn plywood siding, broken by a chimney made of round stones and a small square window.
“Let’s go fast and stay low,” advised Lenny. “Head for the far corner, and use the building as cover.”
Lucy looked at him in surprise. “Where’d you learn this stuff?”
Lenny shrugged. “Movies.”
“Let’s hope it works in real life,” said Lucy, hunching over and dashing through the grass. Moments later Lenny joined her, and they stood very still, listening to the muffled sounds coming from the cabin: first, the thumping beat of rock music, then a feminine shriek.
Instinctively, Lucy reached for Lenny, restraining him. Together they crept along the wall until they reached the window. It was closed tight and very dirty.
Lucy pressed her finger to her lips, and steadying herself by pressing against the wall with her fingers, she slowly raised herself just high enough to peek over the sill. Lenny did the same, and snatching a quick glimpse, they ducked back down.
Flipping around, Lenny collapsed with his back against the wall, his face white with shock. “Oh my God,” he said.
Seeing him sitting there, with tears running down his cheeks, Lucy had the fleeting thought that he looked like one of the shocked and wounded survivors of terrorists’ bomb blasts you saw pictured on the evening news.
Chapter Nineteen
Now it was Lucy who had to be restrained. The moment she’d glimpsed Sara, tied to a chair, back-to-back with Bart, who was also bound, she was ready to charge to the rescue. Now it was Lenny who was hesitating. He’d grabbed her by the elbow and wasn’t letting go.
“Okay, so we’ll call the cops,” she said, glaring at him and opening her phone.
“No,” he said, squeezing her hand and forcing her to close the phone. “I need a minute. I need to think.”
“This is out of control,” she hissed. “We have to do something now, before…” Her voice trailed off. Before what? Was it really true? Had she seen what she thought she saw? Suddenly everything was topsy-turvy; all her assumptions were wrong. Bart hadn’t abducted the girls; Heather and Ashley had abducted him…and Sara, too. They had taken their victims to the cabin, tied them together with duct tape, and were tormenting them. The likely valedictorian and salutatorian of Tinker’s Cove High School had put on black raincoats, smeared their faces with black paint, and transformed themselves into whirling dervishes, each holding a disposable lighter in one hand and a handgun in the other. The were playing a rap song at top volume on a boom box, dancing and prancing around Bart and Sara, flicking the lighters in their faces, and poking them with the handguns. Bart looked furious; Sara was terrified.