by Ann Mullen
“Geneva and Eli are more than welcome to be a part of this family, but the first time they take Maisy without my permission will be the last time I allow them in our home.”
I didn’t want to sound mean, but my worst fear was that one day I’d come home and find out that Geneva and Eli had run off with Maisy. She was their grandchild and up until now, they had very little to do with her—a choice that wasn’t their own obviously.
“Thank you so much,” Sarah said as she leaned over and kissed my forehead. “You’re a loving person and you’re so compassionate. I’m glad my son has you for a wife. You and your whole family have been an added blessing to our family. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me, Sarah. I’m the one who feels blessed. And as far as having Geneva and Eli as part of our family, I’m the one who is thankful. Maisy deserves all the love she can get. She deserves to have her family near.”
“I’m so glad you feel that way,” Geneva said as she stood by the door. “I didn’t mean to snoop, and I don’t want to interrupt you, but I knew Sarah was going to speak to you on our behalf and I just couldn’t stand not knowing any longer. May I come in?”
“Sure,” I responded.
“You’ve very lucky, Jesse,” Geneva said. “You have it all.”
“Yes, I do,” I said, looking down at my son. “The best way to enjoy what I have is to share it with the people I love. I want you to be around for Maisy. Welcome to our family.”
Geneva cried.
Sarah hugged her and said, “I told you Jesse is a wonderful person. She has much love in her heart.”
Geneva looked at me through tears and said, “I promise you that you won’t have to worry about me and Eli running off with Maisy. We know Brian wanted you and Billy to raise his daughter. We would never go against our son’s wishes.”
Ethan was ready to be burped. I put him up to my shoulder and patted his tiny back. As soon as he let out a little belch, he closed his eyes and was soon asleep.
“All he does is eat and sleep,” I said. “He never stays awake for long.”
“Enjoy it now,” Sarah chuckled. “That won’t last long.”
I placed him back in his crib and then the three of us walked out of his room. I closed the door slightly.
As we walked back to the dining room I heard Billy say, “I need to talk to Gabe and Daisy. I’m sure they’re going to be as surprised as we are to find out about Sophie Kent.”
“You can’t be sure that Sophie is still alive,” I said as we walked back into the room.
“Where’s Ethan?” Billy asked. “I was hoping to get to hold him.”
“He went right back to sleep,” I said as I walked over to Billy and put my arm around his waist.
“What did I do to deserve this?” he asked.
“Can’t a wife hug her husband?”
“Yeah, sure,” Daniel said. “Women are affectionate when they want something.”
“Don’t be a cynic. You sound bitter,” I said, smiling. “You need to find yourself a good woman and get married again. What’s one more time?”
Everyone in the room laughed.
“I don’t think so,” Daniel replied. “After three times, I’ve had enough.”
I looked at Eli and watched as he fussed over Maisy. I looked back at Billy and said, “Geneva and Eli are going to be around more. They want to watch their granddaughter grow up and I’m so happy to have them be a part of this family. How about you?”
Billy kissed me on the cheek and then grabbed me up in a bear hug. “`Ge ya, you’re so wonderful!”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are,” Chief Sam said. “You are a fine addition to our tribe. Now if we could only get you to obey your husband.”
“I obey no one,” I smarted.
“Oh, Sam, stop being so old-fashioned,” Sarah chided him. “How many times do I have to tell you that women don’t obey their husbands anymore?”
“It’s the other way around,” Daniel said. “We obey them and no longer wear the pants in the family.”
“That’s right,” I joked. “Once you guys gave us the right to vote, that was all she wrote. There was no stopping us. Now see what you’ve gone and done? You should’ve let sleeping dogs lie. You give a dog a bone and next thing you know, he wants the whole bag.”
“You have many strange sayings,” Chief Sam said.
“You must be joking. You’re the one who talks out of the side of your mouth.”
Billy regained control of the conversation. “We must come to a decision. How are we going to handle the situation?”
“I heard you say that you need to talk to Gabe and Daisy,” I said. “I think that should be our first plan of action. Maybe they’ll have some insight into our suspicions. In the meantime, I think we should be looking at some of the women in the club. I don’t think it would hurt to talk to Cole. He might be able to fill us in on what the sheriff’s doing to find my mother.”
“Let’s wait on that for a while,” Billy said. “I don’t want to ask for a favor until I have to. We’ll put that one in our pocket for the time being.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I relented. I didn’t want to ask Cole for his help either, unless I had to.
“Right now it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Jonathan added. “We need to know the whole story about Sophie Kent.”
“If she really is dead, we need to look somewhere else,” I said. “What about that woman, Irene Moss, who Daisy said stuck to her like glue? Women have a way of forming a bond, and when that bond is in jeopardy of being broken, they can get real vicious like a mother hen is over her chicks. You don’t dare come between them.”
“Like a mama bear and her cubs,” Billy joked.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “A woman who has low self-esteem feels threatened when she makes a friend and someone tries to get between them.”
“So we’re looking for someone with low self-esteem? That could be half the women in the world,” Daniel said.
“And half the men,” I joked. “No, I think we’d better just start looking. We can spread out and search the places we know might be related to Daisy.”
“Yeah, we can search the houses and surrounding areas of the dead women and the one who’s still missing. We’ll look for the cop car, although I think whoever took your mother has probably already ditched it.”
A thought came to me.
“What about that green Mustang we encountered in the hospital parking lot?” I asked. “I knew there was something funny about that woman in that car. Maybe she’s the one. Maybe she ditched the cop car for the Mustang, and she was following us.”
“If that’s true, she must’ve stashed your mother someplace right after she abducted her and then switched the cop car for the other one.”
“So we’re looking for a brown Greene County Sheriff’s car and a green mustang.”
“We’ll be looking for those two cars as we start searching for my mother. What about Kansas Moon’s house?” I asked.
For some reason, to me, that house seemed like a likely place for Sophie to hide out. “If Sophie Kent is the one behind the murders and the abduction of my mother, where would she go hide? I say she’d probably go to his place. She might even be the one who talked him into breaking into my mother’s house.”
“We’re going out on a limb here,” Jonathan said. “You’re speculating about something that might be a false lead.”
“What else can we do?” I asked. “I don’t know where to start, but I can tell you one thing, I’m not going to just sit around and wait for the cops to do their job. We all know how that can turn out. They just don’t have enough men to spare for a search as intense as this one needs to be.”
“I agree,” Billy said. “We can’t count on the police alone to find Minnie. We have to do what we can to help.”
“Okay,” Jonathan said. “Let’s divide up and choose a place to search. I’ll start with the widow
on the hill’s place. She’s still missing, I presume.”
“We need that list,” Billy said. “If we’re going to do a full and complete search, we need the addresses of all the women in the club.”
“Gabe said he’d fax us a copy of the list later this evening,” I said. “That was before we found out about Mom. We can’t wait until then. We’ll lose precious time. Call the hospital and tell him the situation, Billy. Maybe he’ll get right on it when he finds out how important it is to us.”
“I’ll call the hospital and have the operator connect me to Daisy’s room.”
As soon as Billy walked over to the portable phone on the desk in the living room, it rang. He looked down at the Caller ID and then back to me.
“It’s your sister,” he said.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you she called earlier,” Sarah said. “I told her I was babysitting and everyone was gone. I didn’t know what else to tell her.”
“I don’t want to tell her about Mom,” I said. “She’ll flip out.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Robert said, speaking for the first time. He had been silent up until now. “In the event that this doesn’t turn out well, she needs to know.”
The thought of my mother not coming back hit me hard. My heart ached. It sickened me to think that someone would harm her. The anger in me built until it was coming to the surface in full force and the reality of it all awakened my ire. As they say, I could feel my blood boil, but I had to get over it for the time being.
“You’re absolutely right, Robert,” I agreed. “I don’t want to upset my sister, but if I keep her in the dark, she’ll never forgive me if…” I let my words hang. I didn’t want to face the possibility that my mother was gone for good. I couldn’t.
Billy picked up the receiver and then handed it to me. “You need to be the one to tell her,” he said.
“Tell me what?” Claire said as I placed the phone to my ear. “Jesse, what’s going on?”
“Claire, I have something to tell you. Now I don’t want you to go off, but Mom’s missing.”
For five minutes I stood there listening to her cry, yell and curse at me. She blamed me for everything. Whatever happened to Mom was my fault. Mom should’ve gone to live with her when she asked her to that day, then she would’ve been safe. Being around me was dangerous. I should stay home and let my husband go out and do all the dangerous stuff we do. I should be a mother and run the house, not chase after criminals. I let her get it all out, until I’d finally had enough.
“You can stand there and yell at me all you want, Claire,” I said. “But that’s not going to bring Mom back to us. I have to go. We’re organizing a search party. Time is of the essence. If you want to help, come on. Otherwise, I can’t waste time arguing with you. I have to go.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Claire said in between her tears. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Jesse. I’m scared that’s all. I’ll pack right now. Until I get there, I’ll keep my cell phone on so you can reach me.”
“If we hear anything before you get…”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she interrupted. “I’ll take the kids over to Abigail’s house and get her to take care of them while I’m gone.”
“If we’re gone when you get here, I’m sure that Sarah and Geneva will be here. They’re going to take care of Ethan and Maisy. We can’t afford to wait for you. I’m sorry, Claire, but as I said, time is critical.”
“I understand,” she said. “Go find our mama, Jesse.”
“I will, Claire. I promise I’ll…”
Claire broke the connection before I had a chance to finish.
As I put the phone back down in the cradle, I looked up at Billy and said, “I guess I should call Jack. I’m sure he’d want to know.”
“Give us a few hours before you call him, Jesse,” Billy said. “By then we might have your mother home. There’s no need to upset him, yet.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I replied, upset that I had to deal with my sister at a time such as this. I was worried and couldn’t stop imagining the worst. I didn’t need to have to fight with my sister over something in which I had no control.
Sarah walked up to me and said, “You know you can count on me to take care of the kids. You do whatever you need to do to bring Minnie back to us.”
“You can count on us, too,” Geneva added. “We’ll stay here and help as long as you let us.”
“Thank you,” I said, tearfully. “Thank you all for being such a wonderful family.”
My tears started and didn’t stop until Billy held me in his arms.
“I promise we’ll find your mom, Jesse,” he said. “Nobody’s going to take her from us.”
Chapter 24
We decided that Eli and Chief Sam would stay and guard the house and everyone in it just in case an unwanted visitor happened to show up. Sarah and Geneva would take care of the kids. The rest of us would go in search of my mother.
Before we left, everyone made preparations. Binoculars, cameras and anything else we could think of to help in our search were stowed in various automobiles. Guns were a high priority on our list. If it came down to it, killing the culprit just wasn’t an option. It would be done.
There was no doubt in my mind that I would shoot the person who held my mother captive if it came to that. Anyone standing in the way of saving my mother from harm would be disposed of in a timely manner. This was a matter of life and death.
Billy called the hospital to talk with Gabe. After what seemed to be a long, drawn-out conversation, he hung up the receiver. He had a defeated look on his face.
We stood waiting for Billy to tell us about his call.
“What’s the matter,” I asked, worried that there might be more roadblocks in our way, and sure enough, there were.
“Gabe said the police posted a cop outside of Daisy’s door.”
“Why?” Sarah asked. “Is she under arrest, or is someone after her?”
“While Gabe was walking us to the elevator, someone snuck into Daisy’s room and tried to suffocate her with a pillow. Fortunately, a nurse walked in just in time to scare off the attacker. It all happened so quickly that neither Daisy nor the nurse could describe the attacker, except to say they think it was a woman.”
“How could that have happened? He wasn’t gone more than five minutes,” I said.
“It doesn’t take long to sneak into someone’s room if the coast is clear,” Jonathan added.
I stood there as if I were frozen in time. Visions of the woman in the hospital lobby and the woman in the green Mustang came flashing back. It was the same woman! Her face was familiar. The woman was Sophie Kent! I just knew it was!
“Let me see that picture again, Billy.”
He pulled the picture out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me.
“Why do you want to see the picture again? Has something sparked in that wild head of yours?”
“It sure has,” I said, looking at the photo. “I’m sure that the woman I saw at the hospital is the same one who was driving the Mustang and is the same one in the photo. Sophie Kent is still alive! Jonathan was right! He did see…”
“Hold on, `ge ya,” Billy said. “I have some bad news for you.”
“Don’t tell me that I didn’t see her, like I told Jonathan. He was right all along and I tried to convince him he was…”
“The body they found floating in the lake was identified as Sophie Kent.”
“I know what I saw, Billy! I’m telling you it was Sophie Kent!”
“It can’t be, Jesse. The woman is dead. They found her body.”
I thought for a second and then asked, “Who did you say identified the body?”
“I think we discussed this before,” Billy answered. “Gabe said Sophie’s mother identified the body. Sophie’s father is deceased.”
My spirits fell to the floor. As far as I was concerned, Sophie was the only suspect we had and now she had been el
iminated… literally. Now we’d have to start from scratch—and the pickings were slim. We had one person whose profile might put her on our suspect list, but even that personality trait was a thin reason to suspect her of multiple murders, abduction, and attempted murder. A person with a flaw in her character such as hers couldn’t possible pull off something as complicated and messy as a murder, could she?
“Did she have a twin?” Sarah asked.
“I’m sure if she did, Gabe would’ve mentioned that fact.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Sarah agreed.
“I do have some good news.”
I looked at Billy with high hopes and waited for his answer.
Billy looked around at all of us and then said, “Gabe gave us permission to search his house. He said there was a club roster in the top drawer of Daisy’s desk. We should start there. Maybe we can find something in their house that will help us out.”
“I guess we’ll have to take what we can get,” Robert said.
“They share an office in the basement. He asked that we not make a mess because Daisy would have a fit.”
“I bet.”
“He says there’s a key under the doormat on the back porch.”
“I can’t believe people still hide their house key under the mat. That’s the first place a crook looks,” Chief Sam said.
“What can I say?” Billy asked. “You try to warn people about not doing stuff like that and they still do it anyway.”
“I’m bummed out,” I whined. “I thought for sure Sophie was the woman I saw. I was certain.”
“Let’s not dwell on it. We have our work cut out for us. Come on, let’s go to Daisy’s house and have a look around.”
“So does everyone know what they’re going to do?” Daniel asked.
“Yes,” Billy replied. “Jonathan’s going to go to the widow’s house, while you drive around Stanardsville and Ruckersville looking for the brown cop car. Keep your eye open for a green, new model, Mustang. Robert will cover the Charlottesville area. We’ll head on over to Gabe and Daisy’s house. We’ll communicate by cell phone. If anybody comes up with anything, call the rest of us.”