“Precisely,” my grandmother said. “And I worry that if you don’t go first, the police won’t welcome you to come look. Better sometimes to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
I didn’t trust the police at all. Not to let me look, not to find Natasha if she was in plain sight instead of hiding, not wanting to be found. “Dogs!” I said. “They need dogs.”
“I’m sure they do,” my grandmother said. “Maybe they have them. Maybe they have already found her. Maybe they are trying to find Gert to tell her that right now.”
Lance said, “And maybe not. I’ll go.”
“Not without me!”
“Noel, wait . . .”
“Now don’t you . . .”
“I’m taking Bub,” he said. “Somebody with a club is going to snap either one of us in a blow. But there’s not much Alex can’t handle. And I don’t want you in with him.”
“I’ll cope.”
“Noel, if he has to protect me, he’s going to do it with rage,” Lance said.
“And maybe he’ll direct it where it belongs for once. I’m going up to change my clothes, Lance, and if you aren’t waiting for me when I come down the stairs, then I’m going . . . I’m going to be angry.” I had almost said, I’m going to get an annulment, but the lie wouldn’t leave my mouth. We were married now. For better or worse, till death do us part. “Don’t you dare go get yourself killed without me.”
“Right,” he said. “Because dying is so much more pleasant in company.” His soft smile took the edge off his words. I hugged him quickly, then hitched the skirt up a little and headed up the stairs.
He followed me closely to get changed, calling down behind us, “Somebody find my phone so I can call Rick.” I handed him mine.
Even getting undressed in record time and with Lance’s help, I still scurried down the stairs too long after my new husband, whose suit came off much faster than my dress. He was flipping my phone shut after having called Rick, and someone had Marguerite’s minivan idling in the street, Alex in the passenger seat. He hit a button that opened the power door on the side so I could get in back.
I pulled myself up. “OK, Margie,” I said. “Tell Nana to call the police, now. She’ll . . .”
Marguerite swung around into the driver’s seat before I noticed she was wearing street clothes too. “Nana knows what she’s doing,” my sister said.
“What are you doing?”
“If we find that little girl, she’s going to need a mother,” my sister snarled. “And all of you need to buckle your seat belts in my car.”
Alex never wore his belt, but under Marguerite’s glower, he stretched the belt across his midsection.
“Let’s go.”
My new husband said, “Rick’s going to meet us by the mall site and drive us in. I guess I should tell you we own a brand-new already-defunct strip mall now.”
“What? Don’t you mean the sanctuary . . .” I corrected him.
“No, we do. This whole thing was Art’s idea of a wedding gift to us.”
“Oh, Art!” I clapped one hand over my mouth and sagged back in my seat. “How do you know?” I asked Lance through my fingers.
“There’s more.”
“What more?” What more could there possibly be? What possible more? I had been asking that question for the last two days.
“I’m sketchy on the details, but Rick said Art was going to sign it over to us at the surprise grand opening tomorrow. Rick has a copy of Art’s will. He hasn’t been to the attorney’s office yet, but he knows the details. He’s the sole heir and executor, and he plans to honor his uncle’s wishes.”
“So . . . what? This isn’t even part of the rest of the sanctuary?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it is. I think he assumed we would turn around and donate the land to the society.”
“But why give it to us in the first place?”
“Rick says to get around the board.”
“What getting around do they need?”
“Art was retiring. He wanted to give us negotiation power so one or both of us could assume his position formally. Rick said he was getting some kind of pushback.”
I shook my head, as if physical motion would clear this whole conversation from my mind. “I’m not thinking about this right now,” I finally said. “Later.”
“Later,” Lance agreed.
We fell into an uncomfortable silence as Alex squirmed in the seat belt. He had always claimed they chafed him, something I had never questioned. But his discomfort seemed more intense than a strap across his chest might justify. Sure, he pulled at the belt, arranging it on the outside of his shoulder and tugging it away from his stomach like a pregnant woman. But he also kept twisting his head, like he was looking over at Lance, though he was really darting his eyes back to me.
CHAPTER 25
* * *
I hated the feel of Alex’s eyes. He used to be able to cut me with a glance. Now, it seemed more like he was wounding himself. “What?” I finally snapped. “What the hell is eating you, Alexander?” I hadn’t really meant to use his full name. But I didn’t apologize for it.
“I’m sorry, Noel,” he said.
“You’re not seriously doing this right now?” I had half suspected it was coming. I had seen it in his stance last night while my car burned (a distant event that felt like it had happened to someone else). I had seen it in the way he stood away from the other guests while I walked down the aisle with Dad. In the way he kept trying to get my attention during the family photos.
“I wasn’t going to,” he said. “But you asked.”
“Yes,” I conceded. “I did.”
He took this as license to continue. “Most of these conversations were less complicated. They were nine years ago, and they all started out ‘I’m an alcoholic.’ But I don’t need to tell you that.”
No, he didn’t. I ground my teeth and let him keep going, hoping he would be quick.
“And I thought probably the best kind of apology I could give you was to stay away. But when Mom called, and I had to come . . .”
As soon as I had made it, he snapped my resolve to be civil. “You did not have to come!”
“I did have to come.” His voice had an edge I didn’t like at all. A familiar edge that made me want to tell Marguerite to stop the car so Alex could get out. But I think he heard it, too, or else felt it, because he stopped talking to draw in a long breath through his nose and exhale through his mouth. He breathed in and out one more time, then repeated in a level tone, “I did have to come. You don’t know my mother, Noel. Lance never should have let her invite herself to your house like that.”
“He didn’t,” I interrupted. “He didn’t want her at all. That was my mistake. I thought it was a fence that could be mended. Clearly not.”
“No,” he said. “But it’s a fence that’s got nothing to do with you. Bub, have you ever . . .?” Alex let the question hang, and Lance mutely shook his head. It drove me nuts the way they called each other “Bub.” Always had. “Then I’ll try not to,” Alex said.
“No,” Lance said. “But I should have. And now isn’t the time for it, but if you want her to understand why you had to come, I’ll try now.”
“What’s with the brotherspeak?”
“Short version, OK?” Lance said, and I realized he was talking to me.
“Yes, fine, short version.” Short version, long version, this wasn’t what we needed to be talking about right now. I could see them going further off course, and Marguerite doing nothing to help redirect them.
Lance said, “Mom’s destructive. Bub and I spent about a year in foster care one time while she tried to get it together.”
“Foster care?” That was Marguerite. “What about your father? Wasn’t he a competent caretaker?”
“Wouldn’t leave her,” Lance said. “It hurt him to let us go, and he fought like mad to get her in shape and get us back, but that’s not really the worst part.”<
br />
Not the worst part? “And you’ve never said word one about this to me?”
“I’ve never said word one about this to anybody. I try not to think about it.”
“Not the worst part?” Marguerite echoed my thoughts. “What could be worse than that?”
“The worst part,” Lance said, “is that a week after we got to come home, she tried to kill herself, and then she spent a year inpatient.”
“I’m sorry,” Marguerite said. “And I’m sure it sounds cold, but she blew up my sister’s car yesterday, so I’m not feeling a lot of sympathy for her right now. At least you were home with your father, not off with a bunch of strangers.”
Alex shook his head, much in the way I had shaken mine earlier, like he hoped to clear it. “OK, but you get the point,” he said. “She hasn’t ever been stable. And neither have I. Not until . . . Noel, you saved my life when you prosecuted me. I know you think rehab wasn’t good enough, but I’m telling you, I was suicidal. What I did to you, that was my rock bottom. I would be dead. I would have killed you and then myself. It was a lot like Mom. And I’m more like her than I . . . she and I have the same triggers, or a lot of the same ones. I thought I could predict her and stop things from getting out of hand.”
The more he talked, the less I cared. The less I wanted to hear his voice. Trying to kill me saved his life? “Narcissistic, oblivious asshole! Could you get to the point?”
“I just did!” This time, he turned around fully in his seat to look at me. And there was that edge again. I had an idea that I was one of those triggers he was talking about, that by opening my mouth, I pushed my brother-in-law to anger. He might be trying to apologize, but he was really telling me that he still blamed me for his nearly murdering me.
“If you think for one minute,” I said, “that I’m going to fall over and be grateful you showed up, you can forget about it right now. It is not my fault your childhood sucked, or that your mother is a nut job, or that you drink . . .”
“Drank!”
“. . . or that you spent eight months in rehab when you came after me with that telephone. Do you want to know something, Alex? I had two facial surgeries to reconstruct my nose and cheekbones. I still have bursitis in my left shoulder. You mumbled apologies to a couple of athletic directors and had another job within a month. I spent an extra half year working on my dissertation and missed three unique research opportunities because of my delayed graduation date. So don’t you dare come down here and act like I ought to want you here, because I don’t, and I’m not ever going to.”
He closed his eyes while I was speaking and did some more of that nose breathing. When I stopped he said, “I deserved that. And I don’t think you want me here, and I absolutely know it. Bub asked me to stay. And right now, I can help you find that kid. I hope. Or if I can’t, I can at least look imposing so you and Bub can look.”
Lance said, “Listen, Noel. Mom tried to take Alex with her when she tried to kill herself. Dad and I were out back, and he wouldn’t eat the pills she was shoving in his face. She forced several down, though, and he had to have his stomach pumped. By the time he got loose to run outside to us, she was chasing him with a knife.”
None of us said anything for a while. I stared back and forth between Lance and his brother, slack jawed.
Finally, Alex said, “I’ve always been the only one who could pull her back. When she called me, she wanted to burn your parents’ house. She was acting stupid but not . . . crazy. I thought if I stepped in and talked sense, she’d back down long enough that Dad and I could get her out of town before she screwed over your wedding. She’s screwed Lance and me over from day one, and I didn’t want her to sour this. I owe him that. I owe you that.”
I could not imagine a sense of responsibility for a family member as strong as the one Alex seemed to carry with him. No wonder his drinking. No wonder his violence.
Abusers, especially abusive parents, often focus on one child. It sounded like Sophia had focused on Alex. Lance had, perhaps, been a little more sheltered. No wonder Lance hadn’t said anything.
And the simple fact was that today, we needed Alex. Two men had been beaten, one to death, in our woods. It was even odds whether we would find Natasha or something far more brutal at our new enclosure. Lance was strong, but he was no fighter. I had self-defense training, still spent Monday evenings in Tae Kwon Do classes. But I was strictly studio. I had never participated in anything resembling a street fight. And I really didn’t know how I would fare against someone big enough to smash Art’s face in like that. We needed Alex for brawn.
Our argument had carried us to the mall site, and Rick’s faded work truck waited for us now. He got out. “You folks want to follow me? Or do you want to ride along? It’s not far, but it’s a pretty bumpy ride.”
We piled out of Marguerite’s minivan. As I walked the short distance to climb up in the truck bed, I studied the ground.
Rick and Lance clasped hands briefly and Lance got in front while everyone else got in back. Rick and Lance talked through the open cab back window with the others about Natasha, the enclosure’s layout, and the most efficient way to go about searching the property as we thumped down a dirt track through a grassy field. “We’ve been moving the equipment around out front here every day so you folks would think we’re working on the mall. We’ve got done with the enclosure proper. All that’s left is the barn structure. Not much to look at there right now . . .” Rick went on. He had a great deal more to add, and Lance had several questions, but I tuned him out. For all the attention I paid, they could have changed over to talking politics and the national debt.
Something had caught my attention as I was getting in the truck, and now I hung over the side, watching the ground. Finally, Alex said, “Are you all right Noel? You’re not getting sick, are you?”
Without looking up, I said, “What? No.”
“There was scat all over the ground back there,” Lance said. “She’s trying to see if there’s any other sign of the orangutan.”
“Oh, God,” Margie groaned. “I forgot about King Kong.”
Lance said, “Kong was a gorilla.”
Then the truck lurched to a stop, and Rick said, “Do you see that?”
I pulled my head back into the truck and stood up so I could look out over the cab. I rose until, at the bottom of the hill, I saw our new enclosure, domed with black mesh and blended into the forest exactly like Art had surely planned it. “It’s beautiful,” I said. But I was distracted, and I pulled my eyes away quickly to look nearer to the truck for any sign of Chuck.
Instead, my eyes lighted on a corrugated metal shack. “Rick,” I said. “Do you have security cameras here?”
“Yup,” he said. “Mr. Oeschle was kind of paranoid the whole time this place was being built. I guess from what you say, he had some cause.”
Lance asked, “Can we get at the video?”
And I explained, “Art said . . . the last thing he said to us was to watch the security video. We didn’t see anything really helpful on the center’s video. But maybe this . . .”
“It would explain why he went out back,” Lance said.
“After we find that girl,” Marguerite said. “We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes to look before the police get here.”
“Right.”
Rick pulled down the hill and we all clambered out. I was unsure whether we should make a lot of noise calling or not, but Marguerite solved that problem. “Natasha!” she shouted. “Natasha honey, come out if you’re here. We’re here to help!”
In the distance, police tape fluttered around a tree. Was this where Art had initially been beaten? What about Stan? The grass was trampled down as if many people had passed through the area. Had the police already come and gone?
And then we all started yelling, even Alex, whose bellow had always had a bull-like quality. We circled the enclosure twice on the outside. “I don’t see her. We can’t help someone we can’t find,” I said.
> We walked back toward the truck, an absurd little posse dejected because we had failed without even trying.
“No, we need to go inside,” Marguerite insisted.
“Rick, are there keys?” I called.
He threw down his entire ring by way of answer. “It’s the only padlock key on there,” he said.
Lance, who had caught them, fumbled a little, then walked over to unlock the door. He handed them to Marguerite and she went without being asked back up the hill to give them to Rick. “Go back and check out that security shack,” I said to her on an impulse. “I’ll call if we find her.” I waved my cell phone. As we walked into the enclosure, I heard Rick’s diesel rumble back to life to carry Marguerite back up the hill with him. I felt better with her gone, though I couldn’t say why.
Art had already prepared spaces for the animals, which surely proved he had been expecting them. He had ropes strung throughout and huge branches. The space’s defining feature, though, was a domed center built around an existing tree trunk. The tree spiraled up beyond the top of the mesh, and the wire ended in some kind of metal circlet that kept it from either wounding the tree or being an easily removed obstruction to escape.
“If she’s anyplace, she’s up there,” Lance said. He started up the tree, leaving Alex and I standing below. And then, when he was halfway up the trunk, I heard faint rustling in the imported browse off to my left.
“Shh,” I told Alex.
A quiet voice said, “Don’t go up there. Please, don’t go up there.”
“Natasha?” I said.
Lance stopped climbing.
I strained to see into the foliage, which had, I now realized, been dragged into something of a nest. “Please don’t go up,” she repeated. “You’ll be able to see straight down on me, and I haven’t got . . . I don’t have . . .” She took a loud, shuddering breath. “He took my clothes,” she wailed.
The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) Page 23