by B. J Daniels
“Sixteen,” the man interrupted.
Sixteen? Edwin did the math. No way was the woman in the photo forty-one. He tried to hide his disappointment.
“That her photo?” the man asked and took the enhanced snapshot with his thick fingers.
“It’s not a great photo. But you think you know the woman?” Edwin asked even though he already knew the answer. This man couldn’t have known her. The dates were all off.
“That’s not my Caligrace.”
“No.” Edwin started to take the photo back when he realized the man was crying. He glanced toward the waitress, wondering if he’d been right the first time to suspect this man was unbalanced. But the waitress was flirting with Pete and not paying any attention to this end of the counter.
“She looks just like her mama, though,” the man said, wiping his eyes before he handed back the photo. “It’s good to see that she made it all right.”
Edwin frowned at him. “Her mama?”
“That’s the Caligrace I knew. But she’s buried out at Pauper’s Acre,” he said with a nod of his head in the direction of Westfield Manor.
“You’re telling me that this woman’s mother was one of the girls who lived at Westfield Manor?”
“She’s the spittin’ image of her mother, so I’d say, yeah, I am. The home took the bad girls, but they also took unwed mothers when no one wanted them. Caligrace was pregnant. Had a baby girl.”
Edwin frowned, trying to make sense of this. “So Caligrace and her mother shared the same first name, and this woman in the photo is the baby girl she had after she came to live at the home?”
The man nodded.
“How is it that you know this?” Edwin asked, still not sure he could trust this man—or his information.
The man blew his nose into his paper napkin, took a drink of his coffee, then said, “I saw her the night the bus dumped her off. She was crying. I could see that she was pregnant. She had nothing but the clothes on her back. It was winter. I gave her an old coat I had in the back of my rig. I would have given her more, but...”
“But?” Edwin prodded.
The man looked away. “I was thirty-one, married with a pregnant wife at home and two little kids of my own.” He shrugged, his hand trembling as he lifted his coffee cup again. “I couldn’t help her. That’s just the way it was.”
So the man was fifty-six. He looked a whole lot older. Chalk it up to a hard life, apparently. A married man with a pregnant wife at home and two kids when he met the pregnant sixteen-year-old Caligrace.
“How was it that you were there that night? Did you work there?” Edwin asked hopefully as he tucked the photo back into his jacket pocket.
“I was a sheriff’s deputy returning one of the runaways that night.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“WHAT ABOUT THE CHILD Caligrace gave birth to?” Edwin asked after he and former sheriff’s deputy Burt Denton introduced themselves. “What happened to her?”
Burt shrugged. “Never heard.”
By Edwin’s calculations, the Caligrace in the photo would have been about five at the time of the raid. So maybe her birth certificate was right and she was thirty. Apparently, she’d been put on the state bus that had taken the girls away. Unless someone in town had taken her.
“Any chance some couple felt sorry for the little girl and took her as their own?” he asked.
“I would have taken her in a minute, but like I said, I had enough mouths at home to feed, not that my wife would have stood for it.” He shook his head. “No one around here took her in, but someone must have somewhere else since, according to you, she’s still alive.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t say why you were looking for her.”
“She might be a witness in a homicide,” he said carefully.
The former deputy merely nodded as if he recognized bull when he heard it. “I hope she has a better life than her mother did,” he said, getting to his feet. He glanced at Edwin. “Is that too much to hope for?”
“No,” Edwin said. “By the way, you wouldn’t have any idea where in that building the two lived, do you?”
The former deputy, in a telling gesture, looked away. “Facing the building, farthest room to the right on the third floor.”
“Did the woman you knew ever tell you her last name?”
Burt shook his head. “She said her family had disowned her. She had no name, and neither did her kid. It broke my heart. I guess that’s why she gave her little girl her own name. It’s all she had to give the kid.” He looked like a broken man as he started to leave. “I really don’t want to talk about this anymore. What’s done is done. Some things are best left in the past.”
Edwin watched the former deputy leave, then joined Pete at the other end of the counter.
“Now what?” Pete asked as Edwin took a stool next to him.
“I have one more thing I have to do,” he said. “You should come along.”
Pete gave him a wary look. “If it’s what I think it is, not a chance in hell.”
* * *
AFTER HIS TALK with Rourke, Frank Curry climbed into his pickup and headed for the state mental hospital. It had been months since he’d seen his daughter. Not that he hadn’t tried to visit. He’d gone up there anyway because he hadn’t known what else he could do.
Unfortunately, after Tiffany had injured a nurse and several guards during a short-lived escape, she’d been locked up in the isolation ward. At first the doctor hadn’t wanted her to have any visitors—maybe especially the father she hated.
But through the use of some heavy-duty drugs, she had been downgraded as a threat and was now able to have visitors, Frank had been told. She just hadn’t wanted to see him the times he’d driven to the hospital to visit.
So he’d been surprised—and with good reason, a little worried—when he’d gotten a call from the hospital saying that Tiffany had asked to see him.
He tried not to be too hopeful. Up until a year and a half ago, he hadn’t known he had a daughter. Tiffany was the secret his ex-wife, Pam, had kept from him to punish him because she’d felt he hadn’t loved her enough during their short marriage. She’d raised the girl to hate the father she’d never laid eyes on. Pam had poisoned Tiffany against him to the extent that when they’d finally met, Tiffany had tried to kill him.
After she’d been sent to the mental hospital for evaluation, Frank had hoped that someone there would be able to help her. Pam had washed her hands of her daughter, making it even more painful for Tiffany.
The last time Frank had seen his daughter, he’d had to tell her that her mother was dead, murdered, and that he was a suspect. Actually, the number one suspect.
But in a turn of events, his name was cleared. Unfortunately, it was too late for Tiffany, who’d compounded her problems by making her escape and almost killing several people in the process.
Now as Frank waited in the sunroom, he wasn’t sure what to pray for. If Tiffany was better, she would be charged with not only her attempted murder of him, but also her attacks on the people at the hospital.
He feared she would be going to prison.
If she wasn’t better...well, then she could end up in an institution for the rest of her life.
He turned at the sound of footfalls behind him. The first time he’d laid eyes on Tiffany, he’d thought she was barely a teen. She had the look of a waif, with long, fine blond hair and pale blue eyes. She’d been seventeen, just out of high school. Old enough to be tried as an adult.
The last time he’d seen his daughter, her long blond hair had been hacked off with a pair of scissors she’d somehow gotten her hands on.
Now her hair was longer. It gave her a softer, sweeter look. For a moment, he could almost tell himself that Tiffany was better.
“I wondered if
you would come,” she said, stopping a few yards from him. A male nurse had come with her. He stood a few feet back, there for Frank’s protection. While comforting, it was also another indication that Tiffany probably wasn’t as well as he might hope.
“How could you think I wouldn’t come?” he demanded. “I’ve come every week even though they wouldn’t let me see you at first, and then you refused to see me.” He sighed, hating that he came off so defensive. “Tiffany, do we have to do this?” he said, sounding as tired as he felt. She wore him out, wore him down. He’d never known what to say to her that wouldn’t set her off. No matter what he did, it was wrong. His ex-wife, Pam, in her bitterness, had made sure he would never have a relationship with the girl.
“They wouldn’t let me out to go to my mother’s funeral,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him as if it had been his fault.
“I told you there wasn’t going to be a funeral.” No one would have come for Pam, and he couldn’t bear the town attending in sympathy for him. “Was that why you tried to escape, because you wanted to say goodbye to your mother?”
“Where is she buried?”
He hadn’t known what to do with Pam’s remains. There had been no one but him to handle the arrangements, so he’d had her cremated, figuring her soul was already burning in hell. Her ashes he’d had put in an urn. It sat on a shelf in his barn, since he didn’t want any part of the woman in his house. He’d had no idea what to do with the urn.
“I had her cremated. I thought you might want...” He tried to read his daughter’s expression. She hadn’t cried when he’d told her that her mother was dead. She’d seemed...relieved. He never knew how she would react. Or if her reactions were even real. If he was truthful with himself, he was afraid of her.
“You think that someday I am going to want my mother’s ashes?” She seemed amused by this.
“Wouldn’t you like to sit down?” Frank asked. He’d hoped that one day they could have a normal conversation.
She didn’t move, so he continued to stand, as well.
“Do you need anything?” he asked.
Tiffany cocked her head. “What were you thinking of bringing me? Maybe a teddy bear? Candy?” She shook her head. She was so young. That was what always struck him. She’d turned eighteen on a mental ward. Just the thought of what Pam had done to this girl... He felt his stomach roil. He wondered what he would have done if he’d found his ex-wife before her killer had. He’d often dreamed of wrapping his hands around her throat and choking the life out of her, even though it went against everything he believed in as a lawman.
“Why did you want to see me?” he asked impatiently. He was sick of her games and had begun to question why he still came up here. While the state had run paternity tests and sent him the results, he’d never opened them. Tiffany believed she was his daughter. Did it matter if that was true or not? He felt responsible for the way her life had turned out.
“Didn’t my doctor tell you the news?” she asked. “I’m well enough to stand trial. I’ve hired myself a lawyer. No matter what you think of my mother, she came through at the end. She left me all of her money, money we can only guess at how she came by. But that aside, apparently I am a very rich young woman.” Her eyes narrowed. “I would have been richer, but you had some of the money returned to the woman in Big Timber. Don’t you get tired of always doing what you think is right?”
“Your mother swindled the woman out of her fortune,” Frank said. “I merely made sure the woman got it back.”
Tiffany shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I have plenty of money.”
“I’m happy for you,” Frank said, seeing that the idea of being rich appealed to Tiffany. He’d seen that same glow of greed in her mother’s eyes. He figured Tiffany would use the money to get what she wanted, which apparently was out of here. “So, you’re going to make an effort to get better? I’m glad to hear that.”
“I’m making an amazing recovery,” Tiffany said, smiling. “My doctor said so. He said that my realizing the terrible things I’ve done and feeling remorse is a huge step in my being released. My lawyer thinks that if I throw myself on the mercy of the court...” She smiled, looking sweet and young and so vulnerable—just what a judge and jury would see. She just might walk.
He looked into her pale blue eyes and shuddered inside. He wondered how he played into her future plans. He would have to start locking his doors and sleep again with a gun beside his bed as he had when her mother was alive.
Frank hated to even think what Tiffany would do to the crows he considered part of his family. She’d killed one out of spite, and they hadn’t come back for over a year.
“There is one more thing,” Tiffany said and lowered both her head and her voice as she stepped closer. The male nurse went on alert.
“Mother has been coming to visit me,” Tiffany said, raising her head just enough to meet his gaze. She kept her voice low so the male nurse couldn’t hear her.
Only moments ago, he was thinking that Tiffany might have been faking crazy all these months and that inheriting her mother’s money had made her decide it was time to stop. Now, his blood running ice cold, he saw the psychotic young woman who hadn’t even blinked when she’d pulled the trigger and tried to kill him.
“She sent you a message,” Tiffany said. “‘Tell your father that if he marries Nettie Benton, I will come to your room one night and kill you.’”
Frank took a step back from his daughter and that wild frightening look in her eyes. “Have you talked to your doctor about these visits from your mother?”
Tiffany let out a brittle laugh that quickly died on her lips. Her pale blue eyes darkened. “She will kill me if you marry that woman. You want my death on your conscience, Daddy?”
With that, she turned and left, the male nurse hurrying after her down the hall.
Frank stood watching her go, his heart pounding. What he’d seen in his daughter’s eyes was pure evil. God protect them all if she ever got out of this place.
* * *
“I’M GOING TO look around Westfield Manor, and then I’ll be ready to fly out,” Edwin told the pilot. The last thing he wanted to do was go into that old building, but he needed to verify the deputy’s story if at all possible.
“I’d watch out for rattlesnakes if I were you,” the pilot told him. “Not to mention falling through the rotten flooring or having a beam drop on you. I guess I’m going to have to go with you.” At the detective’s surprised look, he added, “You haven’t paid me yet.”
The afternoon sun fell at a slant across the empty streets as they left the town and walked the quarter mile toward the hulking skeleton of the girls’ home. The land had fallen to weeds; now dried and knee-high, they brushed loudly against their pant legs as they walked. A chill had fallen over the autumn afternoon and seemed to settle in the growing shadows.
Edwin was glad to have the pilot’s company the nearer they got. No sunlight shone behind any of the broken or missing windows. The front door stood open, cold darkness beyond.
“You sure you have to go in there?” the pilot said, stopping some yards away.
Burt Denton had told him that Caligrace’s room was farthest to the right on the third floor. “If you’re too scared...”
“So I’ll wait out here for you.” The young pilot smiled. “My daddy didn’t raise no fool.”
The light was fading fast as Edwin stepped through the doorway. He was instantly struck by the cold and several unpleasant smells as he cautiously moved toward the stairway. He could see where the back of the building had burned. The structure smelled of smoke even after twenty-five years, but only because teenagers had been using the lower floor to party. There were beer cans and bottles strewn around a fire ring in one corner of the room and a stack of old mattresses against another. The blaze had scorched the plastered wall and burned a h
ole in the floor, but hadn’t spread, as if nothing could destroy this place—just as the convenience-store woman had said.
The stairs felt secure enough. He took them two at a time, anxious to get this over with. The second floor wasn’t quite as littered, but varmints had made nests in the corners. The remains of abandoned metal bed frames and old soiled mattresses with their guts spilled across the floor littered the common area as he took the steps up to the third floor and tried to get his bearings.
The afternoon light had dimmed this far north. Edwin wished he had borrowed a flashlight at the café. In the dusky light, he moved along the scarred wood floor down a long hallway until he found a room that faced town at the corner of the building.
Like the other rooms he’d glimpsed, this one was bare except for the mice nest, part of a bed frame and what was left of several thin soiled mattresses pushed to one corner. He stared at the stark room and wondered why he had bothered. What had he hoped to find here?
“Are you all right?” the pilot called up from the ground below.
He gingerly stepped to the window. “I’ll be right down,” he called back, his voice echoing eerily. As he started to turn away, he brushed the windowsill with his fingers and felt something.
As badly as he wanted to get out of the building as quickly as possible, he turned back to the windowsill. Crudely carved into the weathered wood was one word. CALIGRACE.
* * *
“CAN WE GET out of here now?” Pete asked as the P.I. came out of the old abandoned building. He sounded anxious and a little creeped out.
Edwin felt the same way as he stopped out front to look up at the gaping dark square of glassless window on the third floor. He took a photo with his cell phone for his client, just as he had of the name carved into the wood.
“There is one more place I have to go first.”
“If it’s back inside that building—”