Susan was a rebellious teenager who had given her parents fits over the past two years. Apparently things had only gotten worse when she’d hitched her star to Ned, who had a reputation as a tough guy who dabbled in selling and using dope.
Jimmy had a feeling Jack and Lorraine Thompson loved their daughter and not only feared for her, but actually feared her temper and violent outbursts. Twice in the past two years officers had been sent to the address to settle an issue between the parents and their daughter that had become physical.
It took the detectives two hours of intense grilling to finally get Susan to break and confess that she and Ned had cooked up the scheme for some quick cash. She sobbed and fought them as they put her in cuffs and placed her in the back of their car.
“What will happen to her now?” Lorraine asked as she wrung her hands and tears spilled down her cheeks.
“We’ll talk to the D.A.,” Jimmy said. “We’ll see if we can get her a fairly light sentence. If we push forward on the statutory rape issue, then a defense attorney can argue that she is a minor and was under Ned’s control when the robbery took place.”
Lorraine nodded as her husband placed an arm around her shoulder and silently led her away from the officer’s car.
Once they had deposited Susan at the police station, they got back into the car and headed out to find Ned Manning.
Ned Manning lived in an old trailer on a plot of overgrown land just outside town with three other young men, all of them with criminal records of one kind or another.
As the three detectives got out of the car in front of the trashy place, they all had their guns pulled. They had been out here several times before for a variety of reasons and never knew what to expect. They had no idea who might be inside besides Ned and they had no idea how Ned or his buddies would react to Ned’s arrest.
It was quickly decided that Steve and Frank would go in the front and Jimmy would head around back in case the suspect decided to dive out the back door.
Hurriedly Jimmy stepped through weeds and brush thigh-high as he made his way around the trailer. He stood just to the side of the back door that had two small wooden steps leading up to it.
The trailer emitted the smells of garbage and urine and booze. He was grateful he was the one standing outside rather than having to go in.
A cool calm swept over him while he waited for the action to begin. It didn’t take long to hear the sounds of shouts coming from inside the trailer and a moment later the back door flew open and Ned Manning raced out.
He got only three feet away from the door when he was halted by Jimmy. “Put your hands up and slowly turn around,” Jimmy instructed. Ned hesitated. “I’ve been in the mood to shoot somebody lately, it might just as well be you,” Jimmy said.
Apparently Ned heard something in Jimmy’s voice that made him believe him, for he slowly raised his hands and turned to face Jimmy, his features twisted into a dark rage. “Whatever that little bitch told you, it isn’t true. The convenience store gig was all her idea. She wanted to get money for the baby.”
“Whatever,” Jimmy said before he read the man his Miranda rights and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. By that time Steve and Frank had joined him and together they got Ned in their car.
“Productive afternoon,” Steve said once they were back at the station.
“It was so productive I think I’m going to take off.” It was just after five and officially they were all off duty. Jimmy wanted to go home and take a shower, wash the day of crime dirt off his body and soul before he met with Sheri for pizza at six-thirty.
It was five forty-five when he stepped out of the shower and heard the ring of his cell phone. The caller identification indicated it was Sheri. He hoped she wasn’t calling to cancel.
“Jimmy, I—I just left the store to head to my house and that s-same car is following me.” Her voice held more than a tremor of fear. She’d told him she only stuttered when she was anxious or under tremendous stress. She was afraid.
“Where are you now?”
“About five miles from my driveway.”
“Just keep heading up the mountain. I’ll catch up with you and we’ll find out who is in that car. Drive slow and I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
He clicked off, pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and then grabbed his gun and keys and took off. He used his siren to get him down the length of Main Street and onto the mountain road that led to Sheri’s place.
He shut it off as he traveled the two-lane road and instead punched the button on his steering wheel that would allow him to make a hands-free phone call.
“Sheri,” he said when she answered. “Are you on a hands-free phone?” The last thing he wanted was an accident caused by her using her cell phone talking to him.
“I am.” Her voice held a tense fear.
“Is the car still following you?”
“Yes. I’ve slowed down several times and pulled over as far as possible to allow it to go around me, but it just keeps pace with me.”
Jimmy stepped on his accelerator. “I can’t be too far behind you. I just passed the turnoff to your place.”
“I’m about ten miles up the mountain from there,” she replied.
“Hang tight, drive slow and I’ll be there in a minute or two.” He murmured a goodbye and then focused on the road and once again sped up.
Within minutes he saw taillights in the distance and his heart began to beat wildly. Who was following Sheri? It was definitely a car. He could tell by the shape of the taillights. Why were they pacing her and what did they want from her?
He’d know in just a few minutes. As he drew closer he saw not only the black vehicle but also the shiny yellow cab of Sheri’s pickup truck just ahead of it.
When he was close enough, he turned on his siren and held his breath, hoping this all didn’t result in some kind of mad chase through the narrow, winding mountains roads.
He released a sigh of relief as the car pulled as far off the road as possible and shut off its engine. Jimmy pulled right behind it, noting that the license plates were from Arizona and that Sheri had also pulled over some distance in front of them.
He called in the license plate to dispatch, who got back to him within seconds that the car was registered to a Louis Harper, from Phoenix. The vehicle had not been reported as stolen.
So, what was it doing here in Wolf Creek, Pennsylvania, following behind Sheri? Jimmy opened his car door and placed a hand on the butt of his gun. Traffic stops always had the potential to be dangerous and cold washed over him. Steadying his nerves he mentally prepared for any scenario to play out.
* * *
Sheri watched in her rearview mirror as Jimmy approached the driver’s side of the car behind her. Twilight had begun to fall deeper, darker here where ancient, thickly leaved trees crowded the sides of the road and absorbed the last of the day’s sunshine.
Jimmy looked as if he meant business, with his hand on the butt of his gun as he stepped up to the dark sedan behind her. She tightened her hands on the steering wheel, wondering who he would find in the car that she was certain had now followed her more than once.
Would he be met with a gun? Shot before he could even react to the danger? She restarted her engine, ready to make a run for it if necessary.
Papers were handed out the driver’s window to him and he took a step backward, as if surprised. Sheri’s tension grew. He walked back to his car and her phone rang once again.
She punched the button on the steering wheel to allow her to answer. “Who is it? Why have they been following me?” she said before he got an opportunity to speak.
“She doesn’t have a driver’s license, but she does have a birth certificate and some other forms of identification.”
She? Sheri frowned. The fact that it w
as a woman took away none of her fear. It had been a young woman who had nearly killed Roxy on the second floor storage room in her restaurant.
“Sheri? It’s your mother. It’s Ramona.”
A rivulet of shock swept over her. Her mother? Why was she here after all this time? What did she want? Did she have something to do with Aunt Liz’s disappearance?
“Sheri? What do you want me to do?” Jimmy’s deep voice pulled her from her thoughts. “I can arrest her right now for driving without a license.”
“No...no, I don’t want her arrested. D-did she say what she wanted? W-why she’s been following me?” She grabbed hold of the steering wheel and drew several deep breaths, trying to get control of the stutter that threatened to erupt in full force.
“She said she’s been trying to get up her nerve to make contact with you,” he replied.
Make contact? Why now? Sheri didn’t know how to feel. Ramona wasn’t her mother. Aunt Liz had held her when she’d cried as a baby, she’d bandaged every scratch with a kiss. Aunt Liz had been safety and security and love—all the things a mother should be and all the things Ramona had not been.
Make contact... Exactly what did that mean? She wanted to do lunch? She wanted to step into her role as mommy now that Liz was missing?
“Sheri?”
“Tell her to meet me at the store in the morning around eleven,” she finally said. “And, Jimmy, can we postpone pizza until tomorrow night? I have a feeling by then I’m really going to need a friend.”
“You got it.”
She watched in her rearview mirror as Jimmy returned to the side of the car. He was there only a moment and then the black car pulled away from the shoulder and passed Sheri, the taillights disappearing into the encroaching darkness.
Sheri unclenched the steering wheel as her phone rang once again. “I’ll follow you back to your place and then see you tomorrow night at The Pizza Place at six-thirty,” Jimmy said.
“Thanks.” It was all she could muster as she turned her truck around and headed back to her cottage, her brain in a freeze of stunned surprise.
She was still numb when she walked into her cottage and Highway greeted her with his usual enthusiastic tail-thuds. “Hey, boy,” she said, and absently scratched the top of his head affectionately.
Ramona was here in town. What could she possibly hope to achieve after all these years? Sheri flopped on the sofa, her brain still working to make sense of things. She patted the cushion next to her and Highway jumped up and made himself comfortable next to her.
As she stroked his thick fur, she consoled herself that at least she now knew who had been following her. Had Ramona done more than that? Was she the person who had been standing in the woods, watching, waiting for the perfect opportunity to introduce herself to Sheri?
There was no question that she felt relief at the thought that her spooky man stalker was actually the mother who had been absent from her life since she’d been a baby. She was probably out there in the woods trying to get up the nerve to approach Sheri and that was what Highway had gone crazy about.
She should call Roxy and Marlene and share this latest development, but she wasn’t going to, not until she spoke with Ramona in the morning and learned what her intentions were.
If she expected some warm and fuzzy family reunion she was sadly mistaken. Roxy made no bones about the fact that she hated Ramona and Marlene wasn’t far behind Roxy in that sentiment.
Sheri didn’t know what to feel. Certainly the woman had given birth to her, but she was also a stranger and according to the stories Sheri had heard about Ramona, she’d been a drug addict and loser for most of her life.
She had a feeling Jimmy and the other two detectives would be speaking to Ramona before morning to find out where she’d been and if she had anything to do with Aunt Liz’s disappearance.
Sheri’s gut instinct was that she hadn’t. A criminal didn’t put herself in a position to be stopped by a cop and questioned. At the moment Sheri had to take what Ramona had said to Jimmy at face value...that she wanted to reconnect, although Sheri couldn’t imagine why.
She must have fallen asleep, for when she awakened it was to the dawn of morning seeping in through the windows. Highway had abandoned the sofa for the floor at some point during the night. Sheri sat up with a moan as her back protested not spending the hours of sleep in the comfort of her bed.
Today I meet my real mother, she thought minutes later while she stood beneath a hot shower spray. She didn’t feel particularly excited about the prospect, nor did she feel any real dread. The truth was that today she was meeting a stranger. It happened all the time when she was working in the store.
She dressed no differently than she would for a day at work. A pair of jeans and a light blue T-shirt that advertised the Roadside Stop in bold navy letters.
She didn’t put on makeup or fix her hair in anticipation of meeting the mother who had abandoned her years ago. She wasn’t sure what Ramona’s intentions were, but she also wasn’t sure of her own. She’d lived a long time without Ramona Marcoli in her life and she wasn’t sure she needed her in her life now.
It was just after nine-thirty when she finished up filling bird feeders, checking the corn that the squirrels loved to munch and headed for the store.
It was only then that a fluttering of nerves shot off in the pit of her stomach. She was going to meet the mother she’d never known, the woman who had given her life and then had given her away without a backward glance.
Sheri had never really wondered why Ramona had given her to Aunt Liz, not after Roxy had shared with her some of the details of Roxy living with Ramona for the first seven years of her life.
According to Roxy, living with Ramona had been hell on earth and Aunt Liz had been her salvation after years of chaos and terror. Marlene had been raised by Ramona for four years and even she had some pretty terrible memories of that time, although not as many as Roxy.
What Sheri didn’t understand was why Ramona had continued to have children after Roxy and lived a lifestyle that was wrong on every level for a child.
She had specifically set the time for meeting with her birth mother at eleven when Jennifer would be in the store and Sheri and Ramona could have a private conversation in the back room while Jennifer took care of the front of the store.
Sheri’s nervous tension only increased as she made a pot of coffee, poured herself a cup and then officially opened the store by changing the sign in the window from Closed to Open.
She sat at the stool behind the register, her hands cupped around the warmth of her mug as she waited for the first customer to arrive. It would be another hour or so when Ramona would show up, if she showed at all.
There was really no reason to believe for sure that Ramona would be any more dependable or responsible today than she’d been years ago. It was quite possible that eleven o’clock could come and go without any sign of her. It was possible she’d chicken out and disappear for years to come.
Jennifer came in at ten-thirty and Sheri told her that she had a meeting set up for eleven that would take place in the back room. She didn’t confess that the meeting was with the mother Sheri had never known.
“Not a problem. I can handle things,” Jennifer assured her. “Tuesdays are usually pretty slow anyway.”
Sheri nodded absently, realizing that she wouldn’t even recognize her mother when she walked in the door. Certainly she didn’t believe that some special sixth sense would make a daughter recognize a mother. Sheri didn’t believe that some magical genetic bond would make bells ring and doves fly at the mother-and-daughter reunion.
And what do you say to a woman who had given birth to you and then virtually thrown you away? If Ramona had shown up because she’d heard that Liz was missing and thought her daughters might need her for some sort of emotional support, s
he was sadly mistaken.
At precisely eleven o’clock the door to the shop opened and the slender, older woman with the long salt-and-pepper hair who had been in the store a week before walked in and gave Sheri a small smile.
Sheri returned the gesture and then watched her curiously as she meandered up and down the aisles for a few minutes and then finally headed back toward the counter.
Sheri’s stomach clenched as she saw the chocolate brown of the woman’s eyes...so like Roxy’s, and the delicate line of her jaw that resembled Marlene. “Ramona?” Sheri asked tentatively.
The woman nodded. “Hi, Sheri. Long time no see.”
* * *
Things had changed.
Over the past couple of days Liz Marcoli had become even more afraid than she’d already been and she wouldn’t have thought that possible after finding human bones in the earthen wall at the back of the bunker where she had been held for what felt like a lifetime.
She’d been keeping track of the days she’d been held captive by using the tine of a fork to scratch a line in the wall that was made of earth...until she’d made a line in the dirt and had found the human hand.
She’d lost track of time since then. But, in the past couple of days the routine of the days since she’d been here had changed and the simmering terror that had been her constant companion threatened to wail out of her in primal screams.
Despite her circumstances, she had become oddly comforted by the routine established by her captor over the past weeks or months.
Each morning the small doggie-like door opened and a food tray was pushed in. Breakfast was usually oatmeal and coffee. Lunch came some time later, a sandwich and slaw or potato salad. Dinner was a hearty meal of meat and potatoes and a vegetable. The meal deliveries had been a way for her to keep day and night right in her head and had spoken of somebody who cared about keeping her alive.
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