“Did you find her?”
“Yep,” I replied. “She has a great grandmother in a retirement home here, and while she wasn’t sure of her exact age, I think it could fit.”
I went back into the file to check out the birthdates of the missing ski hikers.
“She was born in 1930, which would have made her twenty-four when she disappeared, and if she was still alive, she’d be…” I did some quick mental calculations. “She’d be eighty-one.”
“Well,” he said, rising to his feet. “Looks like we gotta go get ourselves a great Grandma.”
Chapter Nine
“We can’t just go charging into a retirement home hoping to interview her,” I said to Lyndon as we drove to the Bakewell Springs Retirement Home. “Might scare some of the old folk. And I doubt the locals will be too happy if they hear we are sniffing around, thinking someone here has something to do with all the missing people. Even if it’s true.”
“True.” He nodded. “How about we pretend to be relatives, come to visit our long-lost great aunt?”
I snorted. “I don’t think I can pass for a relative. Hilda Beaugard was white, and I’m decidedly not white. And we don’t even know what last name this woman is using, if it even is her. All we know is that her name is Heidi. Come on, Lyndon, at least pretend like you’re a qualified FBI agent.”
Lyndon looked at me, put his hand on my thigh and squeezed. “Well, I’ll be the relative. And you can be my girlfriend. We’ll figure out the rest. What did you say that little girl’s name was again?”
He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling up at the sides with amusement. My heart fluttered slightly at the idea of being his girlfriend, even if it was just for show. Lyndon didn’t have girlfriends. He just had girls.
The Bakewell Springs Retirement Home stood next to a spacious park complete with a lake, walking path and bridge over the water. Perfectly-manicured hedges lined the winding drive up to the facility, and we pulled into the parking lot and exited the car, briefly stretching our legs before heading inside.
The woman behind the desk at the main reception area of the retirement home was a petite, harried-looking middle-aged redhead, and she looked up and smiled briefly at us as we entered, little bell dinging above the door to alert her to our arrival.
“Hello. How can I help you folks today?”
Lyndon immediately turned on the charm and looked down at her nametag. “Howdy, Julie. My name’s Andrew Logan. I’m here to visit my great aunt Heidi. Came into town to visit my cousin and her lovely little kids, and I figured I better stop by for a while.”
“Okay,” the woman fiddled around with her computer for a moment. “Heidi Urquhart, I assume?”
Lyndon nodded slowly. “Sure, I think so. I can never remember her married name, but Urquhart sounds right. Maiden name was Brent, if that’s any help.”
“Well, luckily for you we’ve only got one Heidi,” Julie said, her smile faltering for a moment. Oh no. She was starting to get suspicious. “You must be Dora’s cousin. How are her kids?”
“Rachel’s doing great, growing up real quick. And her brother’s a handful,” Lyndon said.
Julie smiled again and nodded. Crisis averted. The fact that he’d known Rachel’s name had certainly helped ward off suspicion.
“And who is this lovely lady you have with you?” she asked, nodding in my direction.
“This is my partner, Amy.” He leaned closer and put an arm on the reception desk. “Might have to marry this one. Unless you’ve available for dinner.”
Julie cackled as her face turned slightly pink, and I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. God, Lyndon could even make women in their mid-fifties blush and giggle like love-struck teenagers.
“Okay, well, Heidi is just in our main living room at the moment watching some TV. I assume Dora has told you of her condition?”
“Sure, she mentioned it,” Lyndon said.
“Good. Well as you know then, she might have trouble recognizing you. Some days it’s like she doesn’t have dementia at all, but others she barely even remembers her own name. So don’t be too upset if she acts strangely.”
Lyndon nodded and adopted a somber expression. “I understand.”
“I’ll just need you and your partner to sign in here, and then I’ll get one of the nurses to take you through.”
We signed in with our fake names, and as I was putting pen to paper, Julie leaned in and whispered. “You’re a lucky girl. Gorgeous man you’ve got there. How’d you pull that off?”
I smiled weakly. “Thanks. I don’t know, I guess I am lucky.”
I knew she was just trying to be nice, but the way she’d worded it made it sound like I was some sort of hideous swamp creature who was lucky that someone as sexy as Lyndon was anywhere near me.
A caramel-skinned nurse directed us into a lounge room, where elderly people watched TV, played cards and chess and leafed through books. She steered us over to a sofa.
“Here we are. Heidi, dear, your great nephew Andrew is here to see you, and he’s brought along his lovely girlfriend.”
The old woman turned her head to look at us. Her hair was light grey and her once-smooth skin wrinkled, but her eyes were exactly the same crystal-blue as Rachel’s.
“I don’t know you,” she said, her eyebrows creasing together in confusion. “I don’t have a great nephew named Andrew.”
“Now, now, Heidi,” the nurse boomed, throwing us a sympathetic look. “You know how you have trouble remembering things some days. These people are here to see you because they love and miss you, so be a good girl and have a chat and some cookies.”
Heidi still looked confused, but she smiled at Lyndon. “Oh…of course, dear. Have a seat.”
She patted the floral-printed sofa cushion next to her, and Lyndon sat down. I sat in a chair across from them, and the nurse brought us a plate of chocolate chip cookies. “Here you go. Hope you enjoy your visit!”
Heidi looked at Lyndon, and then slowly turned her head to stare at me. “Who are you people? Now, I might be an old lady, and some days I have trouble remembering things, but other days I’m as sharp as ever. And I know that I don’t have a great nephew named Andrew.”
Lyndon tentatively patted her on the shoulder. “You’re right, Heidi. Please don’t be concerned; we just want to talk. We’re from the FBI, and we think you might be able to help us.”
She drew in a sharp breath, and her blue eyes widened slightly. “I don’t know how an old woman like me could possibly be of any help to the FBI.”
“You really don’t need to be frightened, Heidi,” I interjected, leaning forward and giving her my most sympathetic look. “We’re investigating all the disappearances in this town over the years, and we wondered if you could just look at a few pictures and see if you recognize anything.”
She slowly nodded, and I pulled out the picture of Hilda Beaugard. I passed it to her, and there was no missing the look of recognition that flitted across her face.
“Do you know that woman, Heidi?” Lyndon asked gently.
“Please show me your credentials,” she whispered. “So I know I can trust you. So I know you’re not one of them.”
We surreptitiously flashed her our badges, and she stared into my eyes, her own eyes wide. “That…that picture is of me,” she said quietly. “I used to be Hilda Beaugard.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “What happened to the ski hiking group that night, Heidi?”
She stared into space, a slightly glazed expression crossing her face as she recalled the incident that had occurred so long ago now. “There were ten of us. Seven men and three women including myself. We all thought it would be such an adventure, hiking and camping in such a beautiful part of the world. We reached the eastern shoulder of the mountain and set up camp, and then we settled in for the night.”
She paused and tilted her head a bit, as if she were having trouble recalling exactly what happened.
“It’s okay,” Ly
ndon said. “Anything you can remember at all is great.”
“I think…well, I’m not certain of the time. But we all woke up sometime in the middle of the night. Bobby was the first to wake, and he told us he had been hearing strange voices around the tent for a while. But that was impossible…we hadn’t run into any other ski hikers on the trail that day, let alone anywhere near our campsite. And what kind of people would go hiking in the snow on a freezing night?”
“So Bobby woke because of the voices. Did you hear the voices?” I asked.
She hesitated again, and then nodded. “Ah. Sorry, it’s all a bit of a blur. It’s been decades, after all. Bobby woke us, and we all listened. He was right. Footsteps, voices…and they were getting closer. We were all frightened, and none of us knew what to do. Then we heard an unearthly growling sound coming from somewhere behind the tent, and it was getting closer by the second. Mitchell grabbed his pocket knife and sliced the front of the tent open from the inside because with so many layers on the tent, there were at least three zippers, and we needed to get out as fast as possible. We didn’t even have time to put shoes on. And then we ran. We ran…”
“What happened?” Lyndon asked.
“I…I’m not sure. It was so dark…so cold. Bobby and James slipped and fell into a ravine, and out of the corner of my eye I saw some…some creature jump in after them. To make sure they were dead, I presume. Then something grabbed Leanna and Trish up ahead, and I remember their screams. I tried to run to them to help, but then something grabbed me.”
“What happened then?”
“I’m not sure. I woke up at some stage in a new house. I had a few injuries and a touch of frostbite, and a man had been treating me. My Bill. You know, he wasn’t a bad man. What he and the rest of them did was terrible, but he always treated me well. He loved me, and after a fashion, I loved him too. I gave him five children, and when he died two years ago I mourned as any other grieving widow would.”
She turned her now-steely gaze to me. “Bill was a good man, despite what he did.”
Lyndon looked at me, and I returned his gaze with a shrug. Heidi/Hilda hadn’t exactly been specific about the circumstances under which she ended up with her husband.
“Heidi,” I said gently. “We need to know more about what happened to you. Did someone force you to marry Bill? Why did you stay and take on a new identity, and never try to escape?”
Heidi stared into space again, and this time the glazed look in her eyes was even more noticeable.
“Heidi?”
“Oh, hello,” she said, looking across at me. “Who are you? It’s lovely to have visitors. I don’t get many these days, you know.”
Lyndon shook his head at me, and I leaned across and grabbed Heidi’s hand. We’d lost her. “Heidi, it’s been wonderful chatting with you. You’ve really helped us a lot.”
She looked confused, but nodded. “Oh, all right then. Would you care for a cookie before you go?”
“Sure,” Lyndon said, grabbing one and then patting her on the shoulder. “Bye, Heidi.”
She smiled, totally unaware of the lucid moments she’d just had and the information she had shared with us, and Lyndon and I dashed back to the car. I drummed my hands on the dashboard as he drove us back to the police department, my mind racing.
“I knew it,” he said, looking at me. “I’ve had a feeling there was something weird going on here, and now we know there is. You were right!”
“Lyndon, we still can’t be entirely sure. It’s exciting, but you saw what Heidi was like. She has dementia. Maybe she had heard about the missing hikers and her brain sort of just invented that story.”
Lyndon narrowed his eyes at me. “This was your idea. You were the one who found this lead and thought there might be something going on here. You were the one who thought Heidi was Hilda Beaugard.”
“I know, I know,” I replied. “But there’s still something missing. If she was kidnapped and made to marry a man here, then that still leaves about a million questions. Why did she stay, and never try to escape and tell anyone who she really was? Why was she even kidnapped in the first place? What about the rest of the hikers that have gone missing?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I can feel it, Myla. We’re close to something here.”
I nodded. He was right. Even though there was still a whole load of unanswered questions, I could feel it too. We were on to something.
We spent the rest of the afternoon going through town records to see if we could find anyone else who had seemingly moved to the town and married a local not long after there was a missing person case, but it was difficult with half the records missing. Grumbling, I went and asked Ted.
He sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Annoying, isn’t it? Most of our records are digitalized, and they were all taken from the paper records in the town archive. Unfortunately a fire destroyed a lot of those records about fifteen years back. So we make do with what we’ve got.”
Dammit. “Thanks anyway, Ted,” I said, forcing a smile.
“Why do you need townspeople’s records anyway?” he said.
“We’re just trying to get a feel for the town and pursue every angle we can,” I replied. “You never know.”
“Good for you, Myla. The FBI’s lucky to have someone as sharp as you,” he said. “You know, you could always try the local Gazette down on High Street. They might have back issues that could help you find useful information on the town.”
“Hmm, that’s a good idea.”
“But Myla…” Ted hesitated, a concerned expression knitting his brows. “Just be really careful. Make sure it doesn’t get out to the townsfolk that you’re digging around. People here are very protective of their town and preserving their way of life. If they think you’re snooping around them, they might get scared that things are changing, and then the blowback from that could hit us all.”
“I understand. Don’t worry, Ted, we’ll keep it under wraps.”
I returned to the office and informed Lyndon, and he glared at me. “Don’t go telling anyone else about what we’re doing. Even Ted.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because we don’t know who we can trust here. If the wrong people find out we are digging around, we could be in for some trouble.”
“I guess so,” I said. “But maybe it would help if we went and saw Heidi again. We could show her photos of other people that have gone missing over the years and see if she knows anything about what happened to them.”
He nodded. “Good idea. I’ll give them a call and find out what the best time to visit her tomorrow might be.”
He wandered over to the corner of the room, speaking into his cell phone, and he returned a minute later, his face ashen. “Myla.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Heidi’s dead. The nurse said that only a couple of hours after we left, she went into cardiac arrest.”
“Oh, shit,” I whispered. It wasn’t completely unwarranted that she had died; after all, she was a very old woman, and heart failure was a common occurrence in the elderly. But it just seemed like far too much of a coincidence that she just so happened to die within hours of speaking to us.
We worked quietly for another few hours, neither of us needing to say what we were thinking. By now, it was palpable. Something really strange was going on in this town, and someone didn’t want us to know.
“I think we need to call it a night and head home. What do you say?” I said.
“Sure.”
We drove in silence, our minds still consumed by the case, and just as we pulled onto the side street where our motel was, Lyndon pulled over. “I just realized we forgot to grab something for dinner,” he said. “I’ll drop you here and you can go shower up while I pick up some stuff. Any preferences?”
“Hmm,” I replied, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “A Lyndon rump steak would be nice.”
“Hey, hey,” he said, playfully batting me away. “Why are you
always sleazing onto me? Finally run out of men to trick into bed with you?”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, cheeks turning hot with embarrassment as I recalled saying virtually the same thing to him and then almost falling straight off a cliff only a week or so earlier.
I gave him another kiss and then headed over to the motel. Lyndon beeped the car horn at me and turned around, heading back down towards the main strip, and I waved and entered my room, deciding to watch some trash TV and shower later instead.
Half an hour later, I wondered what was taking Lyndon so long. It was a Friday night, so perhaps the wait for takeout food was longer seeing as everyone was out for dinner.
Shadows passed over the blinds a second later, and it looked like a car had just pulled in.
Finally.
“About time, Lyndon!” I called as I opened the door and looked for him. Odd. He wasn’t there, and neither was our rental car. I must have just seen the shadow of another passing car. I turned to go back inside when a figure stepped out of the darkness to my side and growled something at me. The deep, unfamiliar voice made my blood run cold in my veins.
“Agent Peyton, I presume?”
Chapter Ten
My heart raced as the figure drew closer. It was clearly male, and a hell of a lot bigger than me. He wore black jeans and a black hoodie, and I didn’t recognize him from anywhere.
“You need to stay the fuck out of our business,” the brawny man hissed, getting right up in my face and towering over me.
“Who are you?” I asked, slowly reaching into my waistband for my gun. “What business?”
Lightning-quick, the man grabbed my hands and pinned them over my head, slamming me up against the wall. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop sniffing around our town.”
His rancid breath wrinkled my nose and almost made my eyes water, and I squirmed under his powerful grip as I hissed back at him. “Are you threatening me?”
He leaned his face even closer to mine. “Oh, it’s not a threat, little lady. It’s a promise.”
“I’m with the FBI. You know how much trouble you’ll get into for assaulting a federal agent?”
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