by Lisa Jackson
“No. No, I haven’t.”
“Good.” She swallowed hard. “Maybe she . . . maybe she somehow. . . Oh, no, I won’t let myself think it.” She sketched a sign of the cross over her thin chest and then caught herself. “Old habit,” she admitted. “And it’s true what they say, old habits really do die hard. I was born and raised Catholic. But then, well, I met Ezra and . . . well, he convinced me to start attending his service and I did.” She looked over her shoulder again. “He said he wouldn’t be long—oh, I think I hear him.”
She did. Heavy footsteps heralded her husband’s approach and he appeared, a big bear of a man with snow-white hair and a thin white beard that just traced the edge of his jaw. “Reverend Ezra Le Roy,” he said, extending his hand as Reed stood.
“Detective Reed,” Margaret explained. “He won’t let me see the girls.”
“Oh.”
Reed ended the handshake. “No, I just suggested that it might not be a good idea because of the years that have passed, the condition of the bodies.”
Margaret let out a little squeak of protest.
“I see.” Her husband sighed heavily. “It’s probably for the best.”
“If you think so.” She wasn’t convinced.
Her husband was nodding his near-bald head. “I do.”
“Well . . . well, I was . . .” She pulled herself together and said, “I was just asking about little Rosie.”
“You found her?” Le Roy’s eyebrows quirked up expectantly.
“No, not yet.”
“But you’re still looking.”
“Of course. I just came by to ask some questions.”
“Oh.” Margaret’s face fell, but she bravely sniffed back her tears. “I guess I should be glad about that. I’ve been after the police for years and no one seemed to care . . . but then maybe it doesn’t matter. The girls were already gone.” Her gaze slid to the canary. From its perch, it pecked incessantly at a tiny mirror dangling from the top of its cage.
“If you could tell me about the day they went missing,” he suggested.
Margaret sighed. “What good will that do?”
“We need to find out who did this to your girls, Mrs. Le Roy. And we need to find Rose.”
Her eyes filled. “Yes, yes, of course. It’s just that it’s been so long and I thought, I prayed that the girls would be found. Alive.” Her voice cracked and she swiped at her eyes. “And why now? After all these years? Why couldn’t you have found them earlier? Before . . . before . . .” She took in a shaky breath. “This should never have happened to the girls, never! I don’t know how many times I was down at the police department! If you people had located them when they went missing, if you’d done your job then, they might be alive today! Oh . . . oh . . . dear God.” She was weeping, her shoulders shaking.
“Oh, baby.” Ezra took a spot next to her on the couch and wrapped his arms around her. “Come on, Margie, honey. The detective is just doing his job. Maybe you and I, we should pray, huh? How about that?” He placed his forehead onto hers and began to whisper a prayer.
Reed looked down at his hands, giving them time, the canary pecking softly against its own reflection.
“. . . and please, Lord, help us locate Rose and may she be found healthy, a now-grown woman . . .”
Reed’s heart sank. What were the chances? This was probably just false hope, but he didn’t interrupt.
“. . . accept them into heaven . . .”
Reed waited.
“. . . in the name of our savior, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.”
“Amen,” Margaret repeated, calmer, her eyes dry. Her husband released her, and she focused on Reed again. “Forgive me, Detective,” she said calmly, though her face was still blotchy from her spate of tears. “I know you’re here to help us. What . . . what can I tell you?”
“How about we start with the day that the girls went missing?”
She let out her breath slowly and told them the story, just as he’d heard it from Delacroix and read for himself before driving here. Margaret explained that she and her husband at the time, Harvey Duval, had been together, going through open houses as they had been planning to move, and they’d had dinner later at a crowded restaurant. They’d allowed the girls, even the youngest, to go to the local cinema with their older brother, Owen.
At the mention of her son, Margaret looked away, to the window, her hands working the handkerchief in her lap. “Oh, dear,” she said, and Reed followed her gaze. At the edge of the yard a large news van was rolling to a stop, its satellite scraping the lowest branches of one of the live oaks.
“I’ll handle them,” the reverend said, on his feet quickly. He snapped the blinds shut and headed out the front door.
Margaret licked her lips. “You know,” she admitted, “for years I called the newspaper and TV stations and tried to drum up interest, attempted to keep the story alive, if you will.” She swallowed hard. “I think I talked to your wife, she’s a reporter for the Sentinel, right?”
“Yes.”
“But time goes by, other stories become more interesting, more ‘relevant.’ And so my girls faded away and now . . .” She shook her head, her graying hair sweeping the back of her neck. Her lips pursed. “Now we have to find Rose.” Her eyes met his. “That’s your job, Detective.”
“Yes. So, about the day the girls disappeared.”
“Worst day of my life . . . well, if you don’t count this one, I suppose.” She went on with her story. She and her husband had come home and learned that Owen had lost his sisters. He hadn’t gone to the movies with them but instead had spent the late afternoon and evening with his girlfriend, Ashley McDonnell. Her lips had tightened at the mention of the girl. “She’s a piece of work, let me tell you. She’s married now, has children of her own. But back then she and Owen were hot and heavy, if you know what I mean.” One eyebrow arched over the rim of her glasses in obvious disapproval. “Owen was hot to trot. Couldn’t get enough of that little tease.” Her lips pinched down in disapproval. “But then, after . . . after the girls vanished, well, of course they broke up. She dropped him like a hot potato.”
“Does she still live around here?”
“Yes.” Again the expression of disapproval. “After dating a plethora of local boys, especially the rich ones like Tyson Beaumont and Jacob Channing, she married a local boy who made good, some kind of software developer or something. Lives out on Tybee . . . fancy place.”
“You’ve been there?” he asked, as Tybee Island wasn’t far, about half an hour by car.
“Oh, my, no. I mean, I’ve been out on the island and drove by, but I haven’t been in. Don’t want to.”
“What about your son?”
“Innocent!” she snapped, indignance flaring in her eyes. “Don’t go there, Detective. The police have dragged Owen’s name through the mud. Over and over again. I know you all think he’s a prime suspect, but he would never, never have harmed his sisters. He adored those girls!”
“He was adopted by Harvey Duval?”
“Yes.”
“And his biological father?”
Her cheeks flushed crimson. “Out of the picture. Was from the time before Owen was born.” She inched her chin upward. “Owen’s never known him, and that’s for the best.”
“But he has a name.”
“He’s not involved! For all I know that son of a . . . he might be dead. He’s absolutely irrelevant, so just leave his name out of it!”
Making a mental note to find out about the man who elicited such a harsh response from Margaret, Reed heard the front door open, then close with a soft thud. A few seconds later, Ezra returned. He handed Margaret a business card. “Kimberly Mason. With WKAM. Says she’s talked to you before.”
“Barely gave me the time of day,” Margaret sniffed, but clutched the card.
“She wants an interview. I asked her to call and we would work it out. Possibly later this afternoon.”
“Fine.” She turned her ey
es back to Reed. “We’re about done here, I think.”
“Just about,” Reed said. “I’d like to talk to your son, so if you have a phone number, e-mail or an address, I’d appreciate it.”
Margaret’s shoulders stiffened, but the reverend was nodding. “No problem. Margaret has that information and probably a lot more that would help the police.” He smiled benignly at his wife as she silently bristled. “She’s kept up with the case, of course, and made certain she updated the names and numbers of anyone who knew the girls. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Obviously irritated with her husband for being so forthcoming, she nodded curtly.
“If I could see it?”
“I’ll make copies,” she said. “And e-mail the information to you.”
The reverend said, “I know, I mean the detective and I know this is hard, honey, but the police are just trying to help.”
“Too late for that.”
“Maybe not for Rose. You have to have faith.” Her husband gave her a squeeze. “Remember: ‘Don’t be afraid; just believe.’ ”
“Mark 5:36,” she whispered, and cast her eyes downward.
“Right.”
“Think of Rose,” her husband said softly.
“Of . . . of course.” She stared at the floor for a second, then added, “Owen’s not in Jacksonville any longer. He moved back here about two”—she glanced at her husband as she thought—“no, almost three months ago. He rents a place in Bloomingdale, well, just outside of it. Give me a sec.” She stood and headed toward the back of the house.
When she was out of earshot her husband said, “You have to understand, Detective Reed, that this is hard on her. Very hard.” His brow furrowed. “I worry about her. She’s a strong woman, but there’s only so much a mother can take. Do you have any children?”
Reed hesitated, felt a pang of regret, then shook his head.
“Well, this is tough. Let me tell you. I don’t have any of my own, but I’ve seen what it’s done to Margaret and then, of course, I deal with all kinds of family crises with my congregation—”
Footsteps heralded his wife’s return and she handed Reed a sheet of paper, lined and frayed from where it had been torn from a spiral tablet. Owen Duval’s name, address, e-mail and phone number were written in a smooth, flowing hand. “He’s innocent,” she said.
Reed knew she’d given as much as she would. He handed her his card. “If you think of anything else that might help us, please call.”
She bit her lip and crushed his card in the fist that still clutched a similar card from the newswoman. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be mean, to be rude. It’s just that after all the years I tried to give the police the information I’d gathered and then was treated like I was a nutcase, you know, like there was something wrong with me for trying to find out what happened to my daughters, it’s a little unsettling that now . . . now you want my help.”
Reed stood. “Yes, yes, I do. Thanks. I can’t change what happened in the past, but I’m sure the department has always sought to find your daughters. Now we want to locate whoever did this and bring him to justice, as well as find Rose.”
“You think the kidnapper, the murderer is a man?”
“Don’t know,” Reed said, tucking the note with information on Owen Duval into his pocket, “but we will find out.”
“Just find my daughter.” Again Margaret’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “And please, oh, God, please, when you do locate her, bring her back to me alive.”
* * *
I wondered when they would be discovered, when the bodies would show themselves. I’ve waited. And I’ve worried. And I’ve anticipated. Expecting this day. Finally, now, the truth will be exposed, and I will have to be oh, so careful. Too easily I could give myself away, too easily I could be found out. And I just can’t let that happen.
CHAPTER 12
Reed will kill you! You’d better think twice about this, Nicole . . .
Nikki’s conscience harangued her as she parked at the park two blocks away from the house where once the Duval family had lived. As far as she could tell, she was alone. No other reporters staking out a home that had been bought and sold three times in the twenty years since the girls had gone missing.
Well, he won’t really kill you, of course, but he could divorce you. Is that what you want?
“Of course not,” she argued with herself as she locked the car and felt her shoulder begin to ache. Too bad. It had been four days since she’d been released from the hospital and she was feeling better. She’d always healed quickly, and this time proved no different. Her shoulder gave her just a twinge of pain now and again, and the other . . . well, she was healing inside as well. Even emotionally, she decided.
Besides, she’d been through worse, she thought, as she walked along the sidewalk that rimmed the park, and now she had the list of names, numbers and addresses Millie had e-mailed her. Yeah, she had to get some things straight with her husband, but come on, he’d proposed and married her knowing full well she would never let a story go, especially a mystery that had swirled around Savannah as the Duval girls’ story had, especially one involving people she’d known, girls she should have grown up with.
A thicket of trees had been uprooted by the hurricane, the sidewalk buckled and cordoned off with neon cones and yellow tape for several yards, so she jaywalked across the street and eyed the small home where the family had resided. The stucco exterior was painted a soft gray with white paned windows with black shutters and flower boxes filled with trailing petunias in pink and white. The yard was tended, any debris from the storm already raked away. The house appeared to be one story, but the pitch of the roof and windows cut into the eaves on either end suggested a bedroom or two upstairs.
This was where the girls had lived.
Where Harvey and Margaret had raised their family.
Where Owen Duval, too, had made his home. She’d tried to contact him already, using the phone number that Millie had found, but he hadn’t picked up and she’d left her name and number asking him to call. So far, he hadn’t.
As she stared at the house, she tried to remember Owen, to conjure up something she’d known about him when they were in school, but couldn’t recall ever speaking with him. Even though he’d lived in the area, she’d never run into the boy who had lost his sisters that fateful day.
She’d looked up pictures of him, from the high school yearbook and from any photos she’d located on the Internet. But she’d found no recent shots of Duval, so she was stuck with the image of a dark-haired sullen youth with a perpetual frown and thick black eyebrows.
She wondered where he’d slept in this house. The people who owned the place now were an elderly couple with the neat front yard, tidy detached single garage and a lush, if hurricane-ravaged vegetable garden of squash, pumpkins, pole beans and rows of corn visible through the opening between garage and house.
Nikki had come here on a whim, thinking that seeing the home where the Duval family had once resided might give her some insight, a different slant on the story, but the house was like so many others on this street.
Had pure evil resided here?
Hidden by the charming facade?
She felt a chill run down her spine as she stared at the upper windows, but told herself she was letting her imagination run away with her. Whatever malevolence may have resided here, it had left when the Duval family moved on.
Still bothered, she walked the few blocks east, toward the street where the cinema had been built, a wide boulevard skirted with storefronts, cafés, a couple of bars and an apartment building. The theater, a staple in this part of town for over a hundred years, had closed not long after the Duval girls’ disappearance. It had been on the market, empty for years before the owner had sold to a developer, who had converted it to this mini-mall, but the original ticket-taking booth was still positioned in front of a double set of glass doors.
Inside, of course, everything had changed. Where o
nce the floor had descended with row upon row of seats, it was now level, skylights cut high into the domed ceiling. The lobby with its old-fashioned refreshment counter, alcove leading to separate restrooms and doorways to the stairs leading to a projection room and offices one floor above were gone, replaced by two stories of small shops and kiosks tucked against the walls, all of which opened to the center courtyard where café tables had been strewn around an old caboose from a train that had been converted into a bakery and coffee shop. A balcony rimmed the entire building, with staircases at each corner. In one glance Nikki noticed a florist, a T-shirt shop, a sunglasses “emporium,” a wine shop and a kiosk that promised “the freshest homemade candy in all of Savannah.”
Her phone buzzed as she was passing a small deli, and she saw the call was from her mother. She walked out a side entrance and took the call. “Hi, Mom.”
“Nikki? Where the devil are you?”
“Out. Why?”
“I stopped by. Well, we did. I was with Lily. Your sister and I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine, Mom.” Nikki didn’t say it, but she wasn’t all that sure Lily had wanted to visit, or spend any time with Charlene. A free spirit, Lily was a musician and a pseudointellectual and a single mother by choice. She and her straitlaced, by-the-book, churchgoing mother were always at odds. It said something that Lily was concerned enough to put aside her feelings for her mother to visit Nikki.
“But shouldn’t you be resting? In bed?” Charlene asked.
“Seriously, Mom. I’m okay.”
“Well—”
“I’m following doctor’s orders, okay?” That was a bit of a lie, but there was no way Nikki could spend another day or hour or even damn minute holed up in her supposed misery.
“If you say so.”
“I do. Sorry I missed you.”
A beat. Then, “Me too. Be careful, Nikki,” she added. Then her voice was softer as if she’d turned away from the phone. “Lily, is there anything you wanted to say to your sister? Here, talk to her. I need to freshen up. And don’t go out onto the veranda to sneak a cigarette. You know how I feel about that. You’re a mother, for God’s sake. What kind of example are you setting?”