by P J Parrish
Phillip shook his head. “It’s not too late to bring her some sort of peace. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
“You’re trying to bring yourself some peace. And you won’t be able to do it.”
“Let me try,” Phillip said.
“No,” Rodney said. “She’s not your problem. Mother and I have decided to take care of it.”
Phillip took a small step toward Rodney. “You bastard. You let her die in that place. You didn’t even claim her body. Why are you doing this now?”
Rodney stared at Phillip for a moment before speaking, as if he knew his words would prompt a reaction and he needed to prepare himself for it.
“Because Mother would rather she stay lost than be buried out here and have her grave tended by you.”
Phillip’s fist came up and before Louis could stop him, he slugged Rodney. Rodney tumbled backward into the storm door, crashing it open. Phillip moved to go after him, but Louis grabbed his shoulders.
Phillip jerked away from him, and leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath. Louis kept his hand on his shoulder for a moment to make sure he was going stay there, then looked at Rodney. He had tumbled down the front steps and was crawling to his feet, his fingers wiping a smear of blood off his lip.
Louis stepped to the porch. “Leave.”
Rodney touched his lip again, looking at Phillip inside the doorway. “He’s pathetic,” Rodney said.
“Leave, now.”
“You need to tell him if he keeps this up I’ll have some kind of restraining order filed against him.”
Rodney held Louis’s gaze for a long time. There was a stony coldness in Rodney’s eyes that matched the icy morning air, and Louis had a weird thought about how different the look was from Charlie Oberon’s soft sadness. And he had to wonder just who was the crazy one anymore.
“I’m going to keep looking for her,” Louis said.
“Legally, her remains belong to her mother,” Rodney said. “So even if you find her he will only lose her again. Do you really want to put him through that?”
Louis didn’t reply. Rodney turned and walked back to his car. Louis waited until he had driven away, then went back inside the house.
There was no one on the landing. Louis moved down the steps to the living room, stopping at the doorway.
Aw, man.
Frances was hunched in the chair near the television, her yellow robe pulled tight around her. Her head was down, Kleenex clutched in her trembling hand.
Phillip was standing at the window, arms folded, head bowed. And spread across the sofa and ottoman was a slew of papers and an empty manila folder. Resting on top was the admitting photo of Claudia.
Louis drew a hard breath and walked to the sofa. He started picking up the copies of Claudia’s patient file and stuffing them back into the folder. He had left the file up in the guest room, and Phillip had taken it. Louis tried not to let his anger show, but he could feel the slow burn starting across his shoulders.
“I wasn’t finished with them,” Phillip said.
Louis didn’t even look up. “I was going to show them to you when I understood them better.”
Phillip came to him. “Louis—”
“We’ll do this later, Phil.”
Damn it. He couldn’t get the papers back in the folder neatly and he finally just gathered them all up in both arms and started back upstairs.
Phillip followed him. “I read what they did to her. I saw how she looked.”
“Phil, stop.”
Phillip caught his arm. “You haven’t talked to me in days. I don’t know where you’ve been or who you’ve spoken to.”
Louis leaned against the wall, Claudia’s folder against his chest. Phillip’s eyes begged for something.
“There’s a chance she was cremated,” Louis said quietly. “I’ll be able to look at some things in a few days, and we might know something.”
Phillip nodded, trying to accept this new possibility. He slumped against the wall. “Where are you going today?” he asked quietly.
“Back to Ardmore,” Louis said.
“May I come this time?”
“No. I think you should stay here.”
Phillip looked back down the empty stairwell. “You’re right. I need to stay with Fran.” He ran a hand over his face. “I’m afraid I’ve messed this up so badly it’s too late to make things right with her.”
“I don’t think so,” Louis said.
Phillip hesitated, then gave a wooden nod. He started back down the stairs. Louis continued on up. He closed the bedroom door with his foot and dumped Claudia’s records on his tangled bedding. He sat down next to it.
He just wanted this over. He needed it to be over and he knew Phillip and Frances did, too. And for an instant, Louis considered letting Phillip believe Claudia had been cremated no matter what he eventually found at John Spera’s.
But he knew it would be no different than what Eloise and Rodney DeFoe had done, sticking Claudia away somewhere and pretending she didn’t exist.
Louis looked over at her medical records and slowly started putting them inside the folder, making sure they were straight, and hooking each paper over the metal tabs that held them in place. When he got to her picture, he kept it in his fingers for a moment.
He stared at it, trying to see some glimmer of light, a hint of the beauty that Phillip had seen more than thirty years ago, but there was nothing. He set it aside and finished putting the folder back together. Then he carried it to the dresser, slipping it in the drawer, under his shirts.
It was time to let her rest for a few days.
CHAPTER 20
Dalum called later that day to tell him that the ring they had found in the grave was from a high school in a town called Napoleon up near Jackson.
“No name on it but the year is 1987 and there’s an engraving inside that might be the initials SS,” Dalum told him.
Louis was thankful for an excuse to get out of the house. “I’ll go up to the school today,” he said.
“That’s what I was hoping,” Dalum said. “Swing by and pick up the ring first. You might need it.”
The town of Napoleon wasn’t hard to find. It was a crossroads farming village less than twenty miles north of Hidden Lake, straight up Highway 50. Louis just hoped finding the owner of the class ring would be as easy.
The sprawling fifties-style high school was surrounded by corn and soy fields, with the thrusting tower of a grain elevator off on the flat horizon. The parking lot was filled. Louis swung into an empty spot and noted a sign in front of a blue Ford: RESERVED FOR PRINCIPAL WIGGINTON.
Inside, the halls were noisy and crowded with kids, and Louis glanced at his watch. Noon. He found the administration office and went in.
“I’d like to speak with the principal, please,” he told the woman behind the desk.
She squinted up at him over black half lenses. “Are you Mr. Jeffries?”
“Excuse me?”
“Bobby Jeffries’s dad. Are you him?” She pointed a pencil toward an inner room where a young black boy sat slumped in a chair.
“No, I’m here on official business.” Louis pulled out the ID card Dalum had given him.
The secretary’s eyes widened when she saw the official seal. “Goodness. Well, I’m afraid Miss Wigginton isn’t here right now.”
Louis put away the card. “When will she be back?”
“Oh, she’s got lunch watch today.” The woman leaned over and pointed her pencil down a hall. “Follow this almost to the end, turn right at the pirate. She’s in the cafeteria.”
Louis thanked the woman and started down the hall. He passed signs for the upcoming homecoming game. The float contest theme this year was kitchen appliances and signs shouted TOAST ’EM PIRATES! NUKE GRASS LAKE!
Louis followed the noise until it built to a crescendo of laughter and clattering cutlery. He turned right at the giant papier-mâché pirate.
The lunchroom was crowded and Louis stood at th
e entrance scanning the room, but except for a few food handlers in hair nets, didn’t see any adults. Then he spotted her, a blond woman in a red blouse sitting at one of the tables. He went over to her.
The girls she was sitting with looked up at him quizzically. “Miss Wiggs,” one whispered, nodding up.
The principal turned, looking up at Louis. She was in her fifties, an attractive woman with streaked blond hair and a guileless expression.
“Yes?”
“Excuse me, ma’am—”
This sent the girls into a spasm of giggles and the principal shushed them.
“I need to talk to you in private,” Louis said. “It’s about one of your students.”
The girls giggled again, and the woman abandoned her plate of turkey and mashed potatoes and steered Louis toward the entrance. Louis pulled out the Ardmore police ID, and the principal looked at it in surprise.
“What is this about, Officer?” she asked.
“I’m trying to trace one of your students who disappeared.”
The principal let out a sigh.
“Is this about Sharon?” she asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” Louis said. “I don’t have a name yet. Just this.” He pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his pocket and held it out.
She took it, turning it over in her fingers, feeling the ring through the plastic. “Where did you find this?” she asked.
“Can we go somewhere quiet and talk?”
She nodded and started back down the hall. Back in her office, she shut the door and indicated a chair to Louis. She was still holding the evidence bag as she sat down across her desk from him.
“Who is Sharon?” Louis asked.
“Sharon Stottlemyer, one of our students here. She disappeared last year.”
“Disappeared?”
The principal nodded. “No one really knows what happened. One day she was here and the next . . . she wasn’t.”
“Could you be more specific?”
Miss Wigginton was looking at Louis with great curiosity. “The police already talked to me a year ago. They talked to everybody around here. Why are you here? And why a policeman from Ardmore?”
Louis nodded toward the bag. “We found the ring in a grave near Ardmore. We think whoever owned that ring was murdered.”
She set the evidence bag on the desk and shut her eyes. Louis waited for her to recover her composure. When she opened her eyes, they were teary.
“I knew she didn’t run away,” she said softly.
“Pardon?”
“Sharon. The police thought that’s what happened to Sharon. That’s what they told her parents, that she ran off. But I knew that wasn’t it.”
“So you knew her?” Louis asked.
Miss Wigginton nodded slowly. “We only have three hundred kids here. I know them all. Some better than others, but I know them all.”
“Did you know Sharon Stottlemyer well?” Louis asked.
“She was a quiet girl,” the principal said. “Not one of the popular kids. She was on the fringes like some are.” She paused, thinking. “Eccentric, moody, always wore black and came in one morning with her hair cut off and dyed black. I remember at graduation, when she came up onstage to get her diploma, she shook my hand and gave me this little smile and said, ‘I’m outta here, Miss Wiggs.’”
“What about friends?” Louis asked.
Miss Wigginton was staring at the ring on the desk and she looked up at Louis. “Sharon had one very good friend, if I remember.”
She rose suddenly and went to a shelf, pulling down a dark green book. It was a yearbook, Louis saw, as she brought it to the desk. She flipped to the back and then turned the book around. “This is Sharon,” she said, pointing.
Sharon Stottlemyer wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense. Her hair was cropped like she had cut it off herself and dyed a flat black. Her eyes, rimmed with heavy black liner, held a sadness that the photographer, in his desperation to extricate a happy senior portrait, had been unable to disguise.
Miss Wigginton turned the page. “This is Allison Deitz, her best friend.”
Louis noticed that Allison Deitz had been a junior last year. “Is Allison still here?” he asked.
“Yes. She’s a senior now.”
“I’d like to talk to her,” Louis said.
Miss Wigginton hesitated. “I’d like to know more first,” she said. “How do you know Sharon was . . . was . . .”
“We found the ring in a shallow grave on the grounds of a hospital down near Ardmore,” Louis began.
“Hospital? You mean Hidden Lake?”
Louis nodded.
“What was Sharon doing at Hidden Lake?”
“That’s what I need to find out. Can I talk to Allison, please?”
The principal didn’t hesitate. She punched an intercom button and told her secretary to summon Allison Deitz to the office. An uncomfortable silence filled the small office as they waited. Louis could see the questions in the principal’s eyes. After a few more minutes of silence, the secretary opened the door and ushered in a plump girl. She looked up at Louis curiously from between two curtains of dyed black hair.
“Have a seat, Allison,” Miss Wigginton said, indicating a chair near Louis.
Allison slid into the chair, clutching her loose-leaf binder to her chest. Her nails were purple and she wore a ring on every finger, one of them a huge skull.
“Allison, this is Mr. Kincaid,” the principal said gently. “He’s a policeman and he needs to ask you some questions about Sharon.”
The girl’s heavily lined blue eyes came up quickly to Louis. She seemed to shrink in the chair. The principal nodded to Louis. He slid his chair closer.
“Hello, Allison,” he said.
She murmured a hello back.
“Miss Wigginton tells me that you were Sharon’s best friend,” he said. “Is that true?”
She nodded.
“I know this might be hard for you to talk about, but I’m trying to find out what happened to her, and you can help me with that.”
“Sharon’s dead, isn’t she?” the girl said.
Louis glanced at the principal, then looked back at Allison. “Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Because I know she didn’t run away like everyone says,” Allison said. “She would never do something like that and not tell me. She just wouldn’t. We told each other everything.”
“Allison,” Louis said gently, “do you know what Hidden Lake is?”
Allison shifted in her chair, clutching her binder tighter.
“It’s a hospital,” she said softly.
“Do you know why your friend might have gone down there?”
Allison was quiet, her eyes downcast.
“Did you or she know anyone who lived around there?”
Silence.
“Maybe she went to visit someone in the hospital?” Louis prodded.
A bell rang out in the hall and the muffled noise of the kids changing classes filtered in to them. Allison sat there, motionless, her eyes on the floor. Louis focused on her hands clutching the binder. Her knuckles were turning white.
“Allison, you have to help me,” he said. “Please.”
When the girl looked up at him, her eyes were filled with tears. “I told her not to go there,” she said. “I told her there were crazy people at that place.”
“Why did Sharon go to Hidden Lake, Allison?” Louis asked.
The girl shook her head slowly, shutting her eyes tight as the tears fell, leaving black streaks on her cheeks.
“Allison . . .”
“She made me promise not to tell anyone,” Allison said. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry. I know I should have told, but I promised Sharon I wouldn’t.”
“Did Sharon go there to see a doctor?” Louis asked.
Allison’s face was hidden behind her hair. She ran a shaking hand over her face, sniffling.
“Allison, did Sharon go to Hidden Lake to see a doctor?”
An almost imperceptible nod of the head. Louis glanced over at the principal, who looked stricken. She pushed a box of Kleenex toward Louis. He plucked out some tissues and held them under Allison’s bowed head.
Allison took them and wiped her face. She was crying outright now, small hiccups of sobs. Louis touched the girl’s hand.
“Thank you, Allison,” he said.
Louis looked at the principal. She rose slowly and nodded toward the door. Louis followed her out and closed the door behind him. Miss Wigginton folded her arms across her chest as she looked back through the glass door at Allison Deitz.
“Why?” she said softly.
“Why what?” Louis asked.
She looked back at Louis. “Why would Sharon go all the way down there to see a doctor?”
Louis knew the answer. He suspected the principal did, too.
Hidden Lake was a thirty-minute drive down Highway 50, close enough to be convenient but far enough away to be private. If Sharon Stottlemyer had been troubled and gone there for help, it had to be because she didn’t want anyone to know. She had probably been eighteen, old enough to sign herself in. At least now he could check Hidden Lake’s admissions records. But there were still many other questions without answers.
“I need to speak to Sharon’s family,” Louis said. “Do you have an address?”
Miss Wigginton nodded and went to talk to a secretary. She returned with a piece of paper and gave it to Louis. He picked up the yearbook.
“It would help if I could take this,” he said.
“Of course.” The principal was looking back through the glass at Allison Deitz, huddled in the chair.
“They keep it all inside,” she said. “Some of them you can see it and maybe help. But others . . .” She shook her head slowly. “Some just fall.”
She looked back at Louis. “I’d better get back in there. Please call me if I can be of any more help.”
The Stottlemyers lived in a white frame house on East Street just a few blocks from the high school. It was a pretty house, two stories with a big wraparound porch and several bird feeders hanging in the bare trees of the front yard. As he went up the walk, Louis could see lights on inside and a curl of smoke coming from the chimney. His knock was answered by a round-faced woman with brown hair and dark eyes, and Louis had the thought that it was exactly what Sharon Stottlemyer would have looked like if she had lived to be forty-something.