by Greta Boris
“I’ll find out what happened, Paul. You go home now.” I wanted him to leave.
But Paul turned and followed my gaze. He stepped off the porch and met Doug at the edge of the grass, his shoulders set and determined. “You’ll be sad to know, Pepe is going to make it,” he said.
A small smile crept across Doug’s features. “What are you talking about?”
“Like you don’t know.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m filing a report with the police.” Paul shoved past Doug, heading toward his house.
“What are you going to say in that report, Paul?” Doug called to his retreating form. “How’re you going to prove I had anything to do with anything?” Paul didn’t answer, just kept walking. “Because I didn’t, you know. I didn’t poison your damn dog.”
Paul froze for several moments, then pivoted to face him. “What did you say?”
“I said, I didn’t do anything to your damn dog.”
“No. That’s not what you said. You said: ‘I didn’t poison your dog.’ How did you know Pepe was poisoned?”
It was Doug’s turn to freeze. The smile he’d been wearing slid off his face. “I don’t know. I figured, if he’d been hit by a car, we’d have heard about it.”
“Right,” Paul said. A moment later, I heard the slam of his screen door.
Lily stared at me. Tomas stared at the ground. I opened my arms, but only Lily ran into them. Tomas didn’t move, his face hard. Doug mounted the stairs to the porch, gaze straight ahead, avoiding my eyes. “Doug, what did you do?” I said. He walked into the house without answering.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ON MONDAY NIGHT, Olivia, Mike, and Sarah sat in Sarah’s gray-blue dining room with mugs of coffee in front of them while Brian watched television in the living room.
“This isn’t Proctor’s first rodeo,” Mike said. “I called the people whose names you gave me, the judge...” He shuffled through some papers.
“Drew Reynolds.” Sarah supplied the name.
“Right, and the Anderson woman. Once they heard I was working privately, not in any official capacity, they admitted he’d sold them photos. They didn’t say what was in the pictures, but my guess is they’re the same as the ones he’s blackmailing you with.”
Sarah’s cheeks flushed. “Did he leave them alone after they gave him money?”
“Yes.” The word came out long and stringy like he’d had to pull it out of himself. “But, Sarah, I think he’s only on round one. Reynolds told me Proctor left a message on his phone a couple of days earlier saying he’d be back in town after he finished up some business in So Cal. Said he was hoping to get together for dinner.”
Sarah digested the news. “What do you suggest we do?”
“Well, it took me a few days to find him, but I also called Greg Forsythe.” Greg Forsythe was the man Olivia had known as Teach.
“Greg never made any money to speak of. Why would Proctor blackmail him?” Sarah said.
“He didn’t. I went on an information gathering tour. Decided to contact as many people from that commune as I could find, which wasn’t easy. Some were dead, some off the grid. But I did talk to Forsythe, and he told me something we might be able to use. Turns out he was browsing an art website looking for prints for his home and saw a picture that looked a heck of a lot like his son Mark when Mark was a kid. The artist’s name was Jeff Proctor.”
Jeff? Olivia had never heard his first name. She’d only known him by Proctor. It seemed wrong. Jeff was too benign, too ordinary.
“So what?” Sarah shrugged. “He was an artist. He was forever snapping photos and then sketching from them. He probably drew everybody at the farm at one time or another.”
“The thing is the boy in the picture was naked. When Greg Forsythe asked his son about it, Mark was shocked. He’d never given Proctor permission to photograph him, sketch him, nada, nothing. In any case, he was too young to consent.”
That didn’t surprise Olivia. She had a vivid memory of sitting by the fire in the great room at the farm reading The Hobbit for the second time, and feeling her skin prickle. There was no reason for it. She was in a pleasant part of the book, no orcs or Black Riders in the chapter, nothing to make goose bumps rise on her arms.
She glanced around the room. No one was there, not seated on any of the other furniture, not by the bookshelves, not in the doorway. She was about to return to her book when she saw him. Proctor stood outside the large paned window near her chair, not moving, arms by his side, his face only feet from hers.
Panic leaped into her throat, but she turned her eyes to her book and pretended to read. The words might as well have been hieroglyphs. She stared at the pages until she heard the sound of boots on gravel. It was the first time she’d caught him watching her.
After that it seemed he was everywhere. His predatory stare found and fixed on her wherever she was and whatever she was doing. No place was safe. When she played outside with the other kids, she’d see glimpses of him behind trees and outbuildings. When others weren’t looking, he’d catch her eye across the table at meals. She lost so much weight that year, her jeans wouldn’t stay up without a belt.
Once, when she was leaving the bathroom after a shower, he blocked her way in the upstairs hall. She stepped right to walk around him, but he mirrored her movements. She dodged left. He slid the same way. The strange, silent dance went on for several minutes before another adult climbed the stairs. She’d felt naked and ashamed despite her long terrycloth robe.
She tried to tell her mother about him, about his eyes. But her mom laughed and said, “What do you expect? You’re a beautiful child. Proctor is an artist.” The adults at the commune were so impressed with his talent in charcoal and pastels, they were blind to everything else.
“So how does that help us?” Sarah said.
“It’s illegal.” Mike swirled the coffee in his mug like it was wine. “You can’t take pictures of a naked child without his parents’ permission.”
“But it’s art.” Sarah’s voice rose.
“Contrary to popular opinion, being an artist doesn’t give you immunity from the law.”
Olivia spoke for the first time, her voice sounding rusty from lack of use. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations?”
“Well, now, that’s the interesting part. We could make a case that this was sexual exploitation of a minor. In Vermont, the statute of limitations on that is forty years, and it’s only been twenty-something.”
“But would Teach be willing—”
Mike interrupted Olivia. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t plan to take this to court. It would be a hard case to prove. The painting isn’t an exact representation. A lawyer would argue it’s art, not exploitation.
“But Proctor doesn’t have to know any of that. Our message to him is: you may have something on Sarah, but we have something on you. We’ll make it clear that if we did win that court case, the least of his worries would be public humiliation.”
Sarah’s face brightened. “Do you think it’ll work?”
“I wouldn’t take the chance if I was him. Would you?”
A flicker of anger ignited in Olivia’s gut. It was all about Sarah Richards once again. What about the children he’d hurt years before? Proctor had exploited Mark, and her, and who knows how many others.
She’d had to take matters into her own hands when she was a child because there was no one else to turn to. Her mother had been so focused on her rocky romantic relationship with the man, she was deaf to Olivia’s pleas for help.
Olivia had launched what, at the time, she thought was a brilliant intimidation campaign. She’d decided to give Proctor a taste of his own medicine, show him she wasn’t afraid. Whenever she caught him watching her, she would lock eyes with him in a defiant gesture. It seemed to be working. More often than not, he was the first to look away.
Later Olivia realized he broke their staring matches whenever someone else came into the room,
but at the time she thought she’d gained the upper hand. She was too young and too stupid to realize it wasn’t a war she could win.
“So we let him get off for what he did to Mark?” Olivia said.
Sarah and Mike both stared at her, surprise registering on their faces for several long moments. “Livvie—” her mother started to say.
Olivia pushed away from the table in a violent gesture and stood. “No one protected us from Proctor when we were children, and no one is standing up for us now.”
“Did he hurt you?” Mike’s voice was low, like a growl.
“She was fine. She is fine,” Sarah said.
She and Olivia stared at each other mutely. “I’ve got to go.” Olivia broke the spell.
“What do you want from me?” Sarah said.
“I don’t know, Mom.”
“I made a mistake. I tried to rectify it.” Sarah looked at her hands.
“He may not win this battle, he may not get any money off you, but he gets to walk away. That bothers me.”
“The painting isn’t our fight,” Mike said. “It’s up to Mark Forsythe if he wants to open that can of worms. They’re thinking things over, but they’ve agreed to let us use the information and not to do anything with it until Sarah is in the clear. If you have charges you want to bring against the guy, that’s a whole different story. I’ll help you if that’s what you want to do.”
Was that what she wanted to do? Olivia thought about walking into a court room, sitting on the stand, and reliving the events from her past. “No,” she said. “Just get rid of him.”
What she wanted was to put the past behind her. Bad memories and bitter feelings tunneled beneath her life like gophers in a garden, uprooting and destroying. If Proctor was no longer a threat, if he was gone for good, maybe she’d finally be able to build a future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“WHERE IS IT?” Olivia said under her breath. It was Wednesday evening, and she and Fiona had stayed past closing to wait for a UPS shipment. In the meanwhile, she’d been doing a bit of online research and had discovered that clove oil could substitute for pine in a flu season mix she’d been playing around with. The original scent was too medicinal for her customers. She wanted to tweak it but couldn’t find the recipe card.
Then she remembered she’d taken it home one night last week. She closed the cabinet drawer and fished out her tote from under the counter. She used the bag to cart around all the stuff that wouldn’t fit in her purse and rarely cleaned it out. If she was searching for something—paperwork, overdue library books, last week’s uneaten lunch—that was where she found it.
She rummaged around and pulled out the journal she used to log all the things she didn’t want to forget. She leafed through a month’s worth of notes and smiled. The recipe card was there, tucked into the book’s spine.
“Hello, hello.” Their UPS delivery girl struggled through the doorway with an overloaded dolly.
“Those aren’t all for me are they?” Olivia tossed the journal into her bag and hurried over to help.
“No. Only the top three.”
Olivia signed for the packages, took them off the cart, and held the door while the delivery girl backed out. Then she turned to the boxes and got busy trying to find places to put things as she unpacked them. She fit the yoga pants and tops on shelves with others they sold. The aromatherapy candles snugged in next to the diffusers. But the big box of deflated exercise balls stymied her.
“Looks like Christmas in here,” Fiona said as she walked in.
“Want to be elf to my Santa? I need help figuring out how to display this stuff.” The packages of brightly colored balls were spread out on the counter.
Fiona bent and picked something up off the floor as she walked over. “What’s this?” Olivia’s heart skipped a beat. Fiona held the articles about the dead boys in her hand. They must have fallen out of the notebook when she threw it into her tote. She reached for them.
Fiona stepped back, her eyes on the papers. “Why do you have these?” She looked up, forehead creased.
Olivia’s mind went blank. She didn’t say anything, just reached for the pages again.
“Olivia. What’s this about?” Fiona asked.
“Nothing. They’re... nothing. Just some old stories someone gave me.”
“Why would someone give you something like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know.”
Olivia sank into a swivel chair at the desk. “Someone left them on my windshield. I don’t know who. I don’t know why.”
“What?” Fiona’s voice raised. “When?”
“About three weeks ago.” Olivia stared at her hands folded in her lap. She was a child again, being reprimanded by a teacher.
“You go out to your car one day and these articles are just sitting there?”
“Yes, and no.”
“Would you stop being so cryptic and tell me what on earth happened?” Fiona’s voice lowered in irritation.
Once the closet door was open, the story spilled out. Olivia told Fiona everything, about the flit of white at the Mission, the feeling of being followed and watched, the car in the lot, the graffiti, and finally the articles on her windshield.
“Have you called the police?” Fiona said when Olivia finished.
“No.” Olivia’s head snapped up. “What could they do about it, other than tell CPS? If CPS thinks Brian isn’t safe with me...” her voice trailed off.
“But you and Brian could be in danger. Someone is obviously stalking you, trying to scare you.”
“I think I know who’s doing it, and it’s being handled.”
“Who? Who would do a thing like this?”
“A man from the past. He’s bothering my mother. Mike’s taking care of it.”
“What do these articles have to do with your mother?”
That was a good question. What did the articles have to do with Sarah? Nothing as far as Olivia could see, but they had to have something to do with Proctor. In Olivia’s experience whenever he showed up, bad things happened.
“This is crazy. I don’t understand why you didn’t go to the police when you found these.” Fiona tossed the articles next to the computer.
“I didn’t want to give Davy any ammunition. He was talking about joint custody. If he heard about this, he might go for full.”
Fiona perched on the edge of the desk and looked out the window at the sea for several moments. Then she turned toward Olivia and said, “Could it be him?”
“Who? Davy?”
“Yeah. Maybe he’s, I don’t know, trying to scare you into getting back together with him?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Olivia said. “His new car, it looks like the one that was in the parking lot that night, and the one that trailed me when I met Tom at Turks. But there are a hundred cars on the road that look like it.”
“Yeah, but not a hundred cars driven by your ex-husband. An ex-husband who has a reputation for pulling elaborate pranks.”
“I thought about all that, but it doesn’t fit.” Olivia gestured to the articles. “How does sending me articles about little boys who died in other states help his cause?”
Fiona chewed on a thumbnail for several seconds, then said, “Okay, let’s look at this logically. What do these articles have in common? What connections to you or Brian could there be?”
“I’ve already done this,” Olivia said.
Fiona opened the computer printer drawer, took out several sheets of paper, and grabbed a pen. “Humor me. What do both boys have in common with Brian?”
“They’re close in age. One was ten. The other eleven. Brian’s ten.”
“Good.” Fiona wrote that down.
Olivia reviewed the facts she remembered from her Internet search, and they came up with a list of commonalities. Both boys had single mothers, some kind of behavioral issue, and died in accidents after they wandered off.
“
Now the differences.” Fiona sat with pen poised over the paper.
“Location, of course. The first boy, Peter Compton, lived in Boise. The other one lived in Phoenix.” As soon as she said the names of the cities in sequence, Sage’s words from the other night came back to her. His first teaching job was in Boise, but he didn’t like the winters. He transferred to a school in Arizona for several years, but Phoenix was too hot. She paled.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. A coincidence.”
Fiona waited for her to go on.
“Tom lived in Boise and in Phoenix before he came home to Southern California.” Olivia’s voice sounded stilted even to her own ears.
“That’s a heck of a coincidence,” Fiona said.
Outside the large picture window, a cloud blew across the sun darkening the room. Olivia hugged her sweater around herself. “Those are big cities. We don’t know if Tom even knew those kids.”
“No. But we need to find out.”
“Even if he did, the boys’ deaths were accidents.”
Fiona’s mouth tightened into a stubborn line.
“How could we even find out?” Olivia said.
“You could ask him.”
“I couldn’t do that. How would he feel? Besides, if he had something to do with those boys, if he was guilty of something, he’d lie about it.”
“How about Mike? Maybe he could give you some advice.”
“Mike’s pretty busy with my mom right now. And if I talk to him, he’d tell Davy. Davy would want to take Brian away until we figure this out. Maybe even use it to get custody.”
Fiona stood and paced across the lobby. Olivia slumped in her chair. After several moments Fiona stopped mid-stride. “I have an idea.” Olivia wondered if that was a good thing. “Tom is a teacher, right?”
“Yes. He teaches math,” Olivia said.
“What if we call the schools these boys went to and pretend we’re from the HR department at St. Barnabas? We don’t ask a bunch of questions, nothing to get anyone suspicious. We just verify employment. Did Tom so-and-so—”