Harbour Falls

by S. R. Grey

  I swallowed hard. “Who would have been checking her cell records, Dad?” I asked meekly, afraid that I already knew the answer.

  “My guess? Her husband-to-be, Adam Ward.”

  “But she called him from the pay phone at the bank,” I protested. “Why didn’t she just use her cell to call Adam? What was the point of using the pay phone?”

  “I wondered that as well,” he said. “But maybe she was originally planning to call someone other than Mr. Ward from that pay phone and then had a change of heart once she started to dial.” I bit down on my lip, while my dad added, “After all, we still don’t know why she detoured to Harbour Falls. It seems she was planning on doing something there and changed her mind at the last minute.”

  This was good stuff. Very plausible. I wanted so badly to share with my dad what Adam had told me about the strange things Chelsea had said to him during their short exchange. Asking him to tell her to not do something, telling him she’d turn around and go back to the hotel if he’d just tell her he loved her. But I couldn’t betray Adam’s trust. Not this soon after he’d been so forthcoming with me.

  And what was Chelsea doing in Harbour Falls anyway? Maybe my dad was right. Maybe she’d originally planned on calling someone else from that pay phone and then changed her mind at the last second. It certainly fit with her bizarre, cryptic comments to Adam that night.

  The rest of my dad’s theory made sense too. If Chelsea truly suspected Adam was checking her cell records, then by using pay phones that night she could be certain he’d see only what the police had ended up seeing: No calls were made from her cell phone.

  But Chelsea had been trying to call someone. It had to have been someone she spoke to often. Why else would she have attempted to make those surreptitious calls that night? And Adam, if he’d been working on tracking that person down through her cell records, must have suspected she was in contact with someone she was hiding from him. But who could it have been? Not J.T., Adam knew all about him. So who?

  By blackmailing him, Chelsea had taken away something Adam was used to having—control. Maybe he’d been leveraging to catch her in her many lies, so he could turn the tables and get out from under her hold. It was starting to look like Adam and Chelsea had been playing a game of cat and mouse, with Adam closing in on her. If only she’d used her cell that final night…

  “Honey,” my dad said, breaking me out of my reverie. “Are you OK? You look a little peaked.”

  I pushed my hair behind my ears. “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking about what you said. I think you may be onto something.”

  “Well, the most important thing is” — I met my dad’s concerned, fatherly gaze— “for you to continue to steer clear of Adam Ward. Any man with that much power is capable of anything.”

  Too late for that, and time for a subject change. I nodded distractedly and glanced up at the television, mounted on the wall, where the football game was in progress. “Look, Dad, I think we just scored!”

  That was all it took, and the mayor, thankfully, dropped the subject. The game soon ended, and my dad paid the bill, and then we headed back to the house.

  I knew it was only a matter of time before my dad found out about my relationship with Adam. I couldn’t keep it from him indefinitely. I was certain he’d also soon hear about what had happened at the café with J.T. And then he’d probably push for me to give up on the investigation and move off of Fade Island. But I was in way too deep. I wasn’t about to give up. Not now.

  I dropped my dad off at the house. But before I started back to Cove Beach, I detoured over to the bank on the edge of town, the one where Chelsea had made that last call. There really wasn’t much out here. Besides the bank, there was a sub shop, a small neighborhood where Sean and Ami lived, and Hensley Discounters, Sean’s family-owned business.

  First I pulled into the bank parking lot. A patch of unkempt grass and weeds occupied the space where the pay phone had once stood. It was quiet out here, especially today, since the bank was closed. I glanced around, but I knew there were no answers out here.

  With a sigh I pulled out of the bank parking lot. Hensley Discounters, located a block away, made me think of Ami. At the last second, I turned into the gravel lot and parked. I hadn’t heard anything from her since the day I’d signed the lease. And that had been almost three weeks ago. By my calculations, the baby would be here any day now. Maybe Sean was working today. If so, I could get an update on Ami. Not to mention I hadn’t seen Sean in ages. Spending the afternoon with my dad had made me feel a little nostalgic, and I longed to stay connected with the few people from my past that, unlike J.T., hadn’t changed.

  It was Sunday and close to closing time, so when I walked into the store, the first thing I noticed was how empty it was. A young girl of about sixteen was ringing up a sale, while the only other customer—an elderly woman with gray-blue hair—was rummaging through a sale table overflowing with discounted backpacks.

  Once the teenage boy who’d been checking out left, I approached the young girl. She was plain but cute, with long dark hair and a name tag that read, “Cami.”

  “Hi,” I said, smiling. “Is Sean Hensley in today?” The girl eyed me up and down suspiciously, probably wondering who the hell I was. So to avoid any misunderstandings, I added, “I’m an old friend of both his wife and him.”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” she said, interest apparently waning. “But he’s not here today. Neither is his wife. Sorry.”

  Damn. “Can you tell them Maddy Fitch stopped by?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Cami answered distractedly. “But it’ll have to be after they get back from their trip.”

  Trip? They? I thought. As in Sean and Ami were away? Instantly I had the sense that something was amiss.

  But just as I was about to question Cami further, the elderly lady with the blue-tinged hair called her over to the sale table. “Honey, I need some help over here picking out a backpack for my grandson.” Cami brushed past, effectively halting my opportunity to dig for more information.

  Back behind the wheel of my car, I sat, ignition off, lost in thought. How could Ami be traveling with Sean? She’d been huge; she’d told me her due date was only a month away. That would’ve put the expected delivery at no more than a week from now, give or take. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something vital. Turning the key in the ignition, I made a mental note to ask Adam about Ami once I was back on the island. Surely he’d know something, since she was, after all, one of his employees.

  Brody took me back over to Fade Island, and Adam met me, as promised, at the dock.

  Never one to miss much, he immediately noticed something was off. “What’s wrong?” he asked as we got into the Porsche. “You look distracted. Did everything go well with your dad?”

  “Everything was fine with my dad,” I replied, fastening my seat belt.

  I’d eventually get the nerve up to ask Adam if he’d been checking Chelsea’s cell phone records, but at this moment, the strange Ami development took precedence.

  So I said, “There is something kind of bothering me.”

  Adam turned to me, the car idling, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “I stopped by Hensley Discounters on my way back. Uh, to ask about the baby—”

  “Baby?” Adam interrupted, his tone clearly troubled.

  “Yeah, Ami’s baby.”

  Adam sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Did Ami tell you that she was pregnant?”

  “Adam, yes,” I looked at him in disbelief. “I mean, haven’t you seen her lately? It’s kind of obvious.”

  “Maddy,” Adam said softly. “There is no baby. Ami is not pregnant.”

  My first thought, which I voiced loudly, was “Oh my God, did something happen to the baby?”

  Adam placed his hand over mine, and said, “No, nothing happened. There never was a baby.”

  “Yes, there was,” I insisted. “I saw her! She was definitely pregnant, Adam.�
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  “No, Maddy,” Adam said slowly, as if I wasn’t comprehending what he was saying. “Sean and Ami can’t have children.”

  That sick feeling was back. “Adam, what’s going on?” I asked, my voice shaking.

  Squeezing my hand gently, he said, “I think I’d better tell you about what happened to Ami Dubois-Hensley a few years back.”

  Chapter 14

  Before delving into the tale of Ami Dubois-Hensley, Adam drove me back to my cottage, where he pulled in behind the Lexus he and Trina had, as promised, picked up earlier from the café. With a turn of the key, the purr of the Porsche’s engine silenced. In the shadows I watched as Adam breathed in deeply and then shifted his tall form so that he was angled toward me. “I should have told you sooner,” he said, sighing. “But I had no idea it had started up again.”

  “Adam, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong with Ami?”

  In the darkness of the car, lit only by the ambient glow of a half moon, Adam told me Ami’s story. And what a story it was.

  Unbeknownst to me, my former best friend had suffered some kind of a mental breakdown four years earlier. Ami had ended up in a mental health facility that autumn. After locking herself in the master bathroom of the house she shared with her husband, she’d attempted to commit suicide by downing a crazy cocktail of prescription pills and booze. Luckily Sean had come home from work early that day and found her lying unconscious on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor.

  At the hospital, after her stomach had been pumped, Ami was moved to the psychiatric ward for observation. Following a series of tests, exams, and sessions with a psychiatrist, she was deemed to be a danger to herself but not to others. So she’d been moved to a Harbour Falls mental health facility for further, more intensive treatment.

  Searching for a possible catalyst for her breakdown, which appeared to have come out of nowhere, the new psychiatrist treating her began to suspect it stemmed from her inability to have children—a condition which she and Sean had discovered that summer after a year of failed attempts to conceive.

  Following two more months of treatment, Ami was finally released and initially appeared to be “cured.” She’d gone back to her house and her loving husband, and even returned to her job at Harbour Falls Realtors.

  “I didn’t have the heart to fire her,” Adam explained, “She’d been a model employee, and I saw no reason to let her go. In fact, I hoped if she returned to a normal routine, it might actually help.”

  “Did it?” I asked, though by Adam’s pained expression I sensed it hadn’t.

  He explained that, at first, she really had seemed like her old self. But then one day, after showing a property located in Harbour Falls to a nice young couple who were expecting their first child, Ami was seen later sporting a rather impressive baby bump. In this “condition” she went to a local grocery store and a gas station. She later confessed she’d purposely sought out opportunities to talk with people about her “pregnancy.”

  For example, a man at the grocery store had allowed her to go ahead of him in the checkout line. She thanked him and then proceeded to tell him how much she appreciated his kindness and how she’d just been so tired lately with her due date coming up. At the gas station, she’d waddled in to pay with cash and then spent ten minutes talking about babies with the young lady working at the station.

  When she returned home, Sean was out in the yard raking leaves. “You can imagine how he felt when Ami got out of the car and Sean saw she was ‘pregnant.’” Adam slouched in the leather seat and leaned his head back on the headrest.

  “That’s terrible,” I lamented.

  Adam shook his head in what I guessed was dismay. “She confessed everything to Sean that night and even asked him to take her back to the hospital. He called me to let me know why Ami was going to be missing more work. That’s how I found out what had happened.” Adam paused. “He was so upset he even told me that Ami had admitted to sneaking into the high school and stealing one of those prosthetic pregnancy suits that had been used in a school play.”

  “Oh, Adam.” Tears welled up in my eyes as my heart went out to this broken woman who, as a girl, had once shared so much with me. “She didn’t end up at Willow Point, did she?” I asked, shuddering.

  Willow Point was a mental health facility that housed patients deemed to be a danger to themselves and/or others. It was located over in Bangor, perched high atop a hill overlooking the small downtown area. Even without the knowledge that it housed the insane, the old gothic structure itself was just plain creepy. In fact, Willow Point had inspired many a lurid tale. Almost everyone who’d grown up within a hundred-mile radius of the place had heard the terrifying stories of what went on at Willow Point. Many of the stories were true. Back in the sixties and seventies the place had been so overcrowded that beds were placed in the hallways. The atrocities that had occurred with patients essentially running amok were truly hair-raising. Reforms were passed, though, and conditions improved. But it still was a place that inspired terror.

  “Maddy,” Adam said, throwing me an exasperated look. “Willow Point is for the criminally insane. Ami didn’t commit a felony; she just needed more help.”

  According to Adam, despite more treatment Ami still periodically regressed back to these false pregnancies. Over time, though, the episodes appeared to occur with less and less frequency. So the doctors felt it’d be best to just allow things to play out. Especially since her farce never lasted for more than a day or two. Consequently, people who knew better just played along, and people who didn’t know—like me—remained none the wiser.

  “Should we call someone?” I asked. “Let them know she’s at it again?”

  Adam shook his head. “No. I’m sure Sean knows anyway. That’s probably why he took her out of town. To get away for a few days.”

  So he did know they were gone. “Do you know where they went?” I tried to keep my voice even.

  “No idea,” he replied. “She just asked for a few days off.” I bit down on my lip and stared out the passenger-side window. Noticing, Adam added, “Maddy, if you’re that curious, I can find out where they are.”

  There really was no reason, so I shook my head. “This is just a lot to take in,” I murmured, leaning my head against the cool glass of the passenger window.

  I kept thinking of the time I’d recently spent with Ami. She’d seemed so excited about the nonexistent baby. The whole thing was just heartbreakingly sad. So much had changed since I’d left Harbour Falls. Everyone was so different, their lives so full of complications. Me, I just wanted to go inside and forget this whole day.

  Adam put a comforting hand on my knee. “It is a lot to digest,” he agreed. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t think it’d be an issue.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I know now, that’s what counts.” I put my hand over his. “We can talk more about everything tomorrow.”

  “Uh, actually we can’t,” Adam said. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

  I resisted the urge to groan. I was beginning to hate all these business trips of his. But after suppressing my irritation, I asked, “Where are you going? Boston?”

  “No, I have some more business down in DC.”

  “When will you be back?”

  Adam hesitated. “Not until Thursday evening.”

  “Oh,” I sighed.

  Four long days with no Adam. And then I caught myself. I was definitely starting to rely on Adam’s presence far too much. But when Adam reached over and pulled me to him, I didn’t resist. A few heated kisses later, we reluctantly pulled apart and said our farewells until Thursday.

  Later that night I woke up, and when I couldn’t get back to sleep, I padded down to the living room. After lifting the loose floorboard, I pulled out the case files and paged furiously through the reams of material with renewed interest. The past twenty-four hours had been eye-opening, and surely that was contributing to my current case of insomnia.

 
There had been Helena’s tale of why Trina hated Chelsea; J.T.’s attack that had, if nothing else, highlighted his substance abuse problems and anger issues; Adam’s confession that Chelsea had indeed been blackmailing him; and then my dad’s theory that Chelsea may have been hiding her calls from Adam. On top of all that, now I had to come to grips with the fact that my former best friend was a mental mess. Little wonder my mind was in overdrive.

  I sat down, right there on the hardwood floor, and began to reread the files. When I reached the particulars of Chelsea’s last visit to Billy’s, I was reminded that I’d not heard anything from Jimmy. Obviously a return visit to Billy’s was in order. Maybe Jimmy had misplaced my cell number, or maybe he’d forgotten all about the alleged photo of Chelsea kissing some blonde girl. In any case a little reminder—and possibly another cash infusion—might be enough incentive to get him moving.

  There was something about the blonde mystery woman that was bothering me. There had been no reported rumors—like with Chelsea and J.T.—about Chelsea and this individual. Adam had known about J.T. and Chelsea for quite some time. And he had been made aware of the other random men, and the drugs. Had he known about the mystery blonde as well? Or had Chelsea kept that part of her life successfully hidden?

  I knew I should have just asked Adam, but I was reluctant. What if that night at Billy’s had been a one-time event? Or what if Jimmy had lied about what he’d overheard Chelsea and the mystery blonde saying? Hell, he could have made the whole thing up. Besides, hadn’t Adam made it clear he didn’t really care to discuss the things I was uncovering in this investigation?

  That seemed strange too. Unless he didn’t really anticipate I’d discover anything that hadn’t already been reported in those files. If that were the case, then it only served to make me want to dig deeper and solve this damn thing, once and for all.

  Somewhere along the line this investigation had become much more than “research.” Now it was personal.