“Wow!” she said, ruffling Becket’s thick fur. “Did you get to play in it?”
“Not that I remember. Unfortunately, my grandfather died in an accident, and my dad blamed my great-uncle. There was a big fight, and my dad and mom went back to New York City. My dad died before he ever got to make up the quarrel, and my mom, being a spitfire herself, only brought me out here once, after my dad died. She had a big fight with my uncle Melvyn and we left. I didn’t remember that until I came out here. I never knew that this was my legacy—the castle and the property—until after Melvyn died and the lawyers found me.”
“That’s amazing.” She stood and dusted off her bottom. She was wearing a long flowy skirt in a moss green, with a billowy floral top in soft greens, rose and taupe. She leaned on the breakfast bar and watched me chop romaine. “Didn’t your uncle try to contact you all those years?”
“He was looking for me, but I was married and had legally changed my last name to Paradiso. My husband and I traveled a lot, and then after Miguel died I still moved around. I was . . . restless. Sad. Disconnected, even though I had—have—a couple of good friends who kept me grounded. This is the longest I’ve lived anywhere since my Nana and mother died within six months of each other when I was just twenty-one.” I finished with the veggies and rinsed my hands in the breakfast bar sink. “What about you?” I asked, drying my hands as I examined her face. “What brought you to this area?”
“How do you know I wasn’t born here?”
I smiled. “Well, for one thing everyone knows everyone around here. I know exactly when you arrived eleven months ago. But also . . . you have New York City in your voice. So do I. I didn’t realize it until the tenth time a local told me.”
She laughed. “Ambition brought me here, believe it or not. I came here for the job. It was either struggle along in the prosecutor’s office, just another grunt in New York City, or become ADA here. This was going to be short-term, while I got some experience.” She looked out the back window at Virgil and Urquhart, both with bottles of beer in their hands, earnestly talking. “It was going to be.”
Hmmm . . . did that mean things were more serious than I realized between her and Urquhart? I wanted to ask what she saw in the sheriff, but there was no polite way.
“Can I help, Merry?” Patricia Schwartz, now married to Dewayne, had become a good friend and shopping buddy, both of us favoring plus-sized women’s stores and outlets. She first came to Autumn Vale to help her mother, one of a group of women who invaded the castle for a time—the Legion of Horrible Ladies, as I had named them—but she came back after returning her mother to the city, and had stayed. She made the lightest, most delicious cakes, and had made a business out of it, named after her nickname as a child, Pattycakes. She’s a big woman, handsome, sweet-natured, over-the-moon happy with solid, handsome Dewayne. Tonight she had on a flowy caftan-like dress in olive and tangerine, with floral earrings and her hair up in a turban. She was starting to dress like Janice Grover; maybe they even shared a wardrobe.
“I think I’m good for now, but as soon as the food is ready it will be great to have some help toting everything to the table.”
Virgil popped his head into the kitchen. “Put some music on, will you, Dewayne?”
His friend headed into the living room. I expected Motown or old R&B, but he went to his other favorite, some soft jazzy blues. He came back and grabbed Patricia, whirling her around and dancing with her, her silky caftan billowing, his dark-eyed gaze never leaving her face. They were rhythmic and graceful, matching each other’s steps with effortless ease.
Ellie sighed. “You guys are all couple goals for me,” she said, eyeing them and then turning back to me.
“You wait until I pick a fight with Virgil during the dessert course and Dewayne falls asleep on the sofa after dinner,” I said, tossing the big bowl of salad.
“Still,” Ellie said, turning back to again wistfully watch Dewayne and Patricia, “hashtag couple goals.”
Dinner was great. Wine flowed; conversation too. Worry had been nagging at the back of my mind all day and evening, but I made a concerted effort to let it go for a few hours. My friends deserved that much from their hostess. We ate, Virgil and I cleaned up and served drinks, and we retired to the great room again.
After an hour of laughter and intent chatter, we entered that phase of the evening when all of the partiers, worn out from a week of work, became earnest and philosophical. Urquhart, Virgil and Dewayne headed out on the back patio again and started a fire in the firepit Virgil had built. I thought it was too cold, but if the guys wanted to talk in private, that was okay with me. They had already divulged one of the many treasures Isadore Openshaw had found at the prophet’s hidden lair and pointed out to them, a stash of stolen merchandise, which possibly explained a rise in break-ins at stores and shops lately all over the area. There was more, Virgil had hinted to me, but we hadn’t had a chance yet to talk about it.
Ellie, Patricia and I sat in comfort in the big great room off the kitchen. I put the giant TV, which was mounted over the fireplace, on to something innocuous—the weather channel, I think—and we drank even more wine, the alcohol breaking down any social barriers of age or experience we may have felt. Wine, the great social lubricator!
After a few minutes of chat, getting to know each other (much about Patricia’s cake business and Ellie’s move to Autumn Vale, and how jarring that had been for a city girl), the ADA finally fixed me with a gimlet lawyerly stare and said, “So, I understand that you have a long and troubled acquaintance with our newest gal mixed up in the Light and the Way Ministry investigation, Miss Lynn Pugmire.”
I smiled wryly. “Yes . . . aka Leatrice Pugeot.” I briefly told her of our tangled history. “I’m the reason she’s even here. She came looking for me.”
“What’s up with her? Our investigators tried to interview her this afternoon but even when the nurse swore she was not on any meds that might make her confused she was . . . confused. Your friend Pish was wonderful—a translator, you might say—but . . .” She shook her head. “We’re trying to find evidence to arrest some of the men at the encampment, but she was zero help, despite saying she was trying to remember. And that she’d been there for weeks. Or months. She wasn’t even sure about that.”
I sipped merlot and stared into the fireplace. “Lynn is a long-term addict. She was on oxy and dabbled in meth; she mixed and matched drugs to try to make her feel better without wanting to eat. She had a fear of gaining weight.” I smiled and glugged some merlot. “I think she hired me as a kind of example of what not to do, you know? An example of what could happen if she let go and ate whatever she wanted.”
Ellie rolled her eyes. “Please, as if a donut or two or three would hurt that woman. Was she always that thin?”
“Mmmm, I’d say she’s probably lost ten or twelve pounds since her modeling days. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but ten pounds down from one-o-five is scary-thin, not healthy-thin.”
“So the drugs were to keep her thin?”
“God, no. The drugs were because she didn’t know how to be okay without them. The drugs were so she wouldn’t have to feel anything, or care about anything. The times I managed to keep her clean she was worse: abusive, manipulative, whiny, a people user.”
“Why did you stay with her so long?”
“I was a mess too.” I stared into the merlot, swirling it in my wineglass, thinking of the past. “It took me a long time to climb up out of the hole of depression after my husband died. Years! My friends kept me alive and sane, but just barely. I think I stayed with Lynn so long because . . .” I took a long drink, then frowned down into my almost empty glass. “Maybe because it made me feel better to know there was someone worse off than me.” I wanted to change the subject. “Off the record, Ellie, what do you think is going on at that encampment? I’m so confused; is it a genuine religious organization, or is that a cover for other activities?” Again, something tugged at my mind, something
to do with that question.
“We don’t know. Your husband’s information, and that given to us by Ms. Openshaw, leads me to believe—off the record—that the Light and the Way Ministry is a front for some illicit activity.”
“Maybe drug smuggling?” I asked.
“Maybe. Or a theft ring. Or prostitution.”
My eyes widened, and Patsy and I exchange glances. “Is that . . . do you think the girls who have disappeared . . . I mean . . .”
Ellie shook her head. Her lips clamped together. Finally she said, “We don’t know anything yet. Honestly. I’m speculating, and I shouldn’t. I’m going to blame the wine and shut my mouth.”
I went to get another bottle. Somehow that didn’t feel right, prostitution as a solution. Some of the folks seemed sincerely to believe in the religious mission of the group. I was trying my best to tie it all together—the prophet and his hideaway with the stolen goods, luxury living and messed-up books—and the missing girls, and Glynnis’s murder. But maybe it didn’t go all together.
At that moment Pish arrived, letting himself in. We greeted him with glad cries and wine. I hugged him hard, holding him close. He rested his head on my shoulder, then kissed my cheek. I led him to the sofa and ensconced him next to Patricia, then poured him a glass of his favorite pinot noir. He was weary and troubled, but the good wine started to relax him and the forehead lines smoothed out as he sat back on the comfy sofa.
“I was telling Ellie about Lynn and my background. How is she, Pish?”
“She’s . . . confused.”
“Ellie was just saying the investigators for the DA’s office can’t get much out of her. You said she’s talked about hearing a woman screaming. Does she have any better idea of when that was?”
Her wine haze completely worn off, the assistant district attorney was sitting on the edge of the sofa now. “How reliable is this woman?” she asked. “Merry says not very.”
Pish cocked his head. “I was talking to one of your investigators, Ellie . . . Detective Sanchez—”
“I thought you two would hit it off,” she said with a wink toward me. “Sanchez is a great guy. When he first joined the county prosecutor’s office a few months ago I was interested in him, even if he is a bit old for me—this was before I met Urquhart—until I realized he was not attracted to my . . . type.”
“Detective Sanchez was most professional,” Pish said with a stern look at Ellie.
“Okay, all right. So, back to my question: how reliable is Lynn Pugmire ultimately?”
“I don’t think she knows when she’s lying, sometimes,” I said. “I’m beginning to realize that all the years she screwed me around, told blatant lies—ones that could be verified or disproved in five minutes or less—and told two different and opposite stories within a ten-minute conversation, she was probably suffering mental health issues. It could explain a lot, including her addiction issues.”
“But she could be telling the truth this time,” Pish said, a worried look on his lightly lined face.
“Why do you say that?” Patricia asked. She glanced around at us and made an apologetic face. “I only ask because I knew someone like that once, and there were . . . oh, in poker we’d call it tells that let you know when she was lying or telling the truth.”
Pish nodded. “You’ve got it,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “That’s the thing . . . I’d swear she at least believes this is true, about the girl or woman screaming.”
Ellie grabbed her purse and got out a notebook, scribbling what Pish had said. The ADA in her was most definitely emerging. She shot a rapid-fire round of questions at Pish, which he answered, concerning Lynn’s assertions. He and Sanchez had gotten much more out of her than the local police had been able to.
It was late in the night and Lynn was wandering the encampment. She had been living alone in the hut I had found her in because none of the other women would put up with her. She didn’t help out, she didn’t cook or clean, and she wouldn’t even do her own laundry. Night terrors meant she woke up screaming fairly often, and she occasionally sleepwalked. She was thoroughly miserable, and decided that she was ready to leave. Wandering, trying to figure out how to leave, she sat down on something, lost and afraid. She said she heard multiple male voices and one female screaming. She had no one to tell, no one to run to. When the screaming stopped, she got up and tried to find her way back to her hut.
That was the story she told. At first.
Much of this was new, gotten by Sanchez and Pish after an hour of delicate probing. But by the end of the hour her story had changed subtly. She did intend to leave. That was true. And she did hear screaming, but there was more to it. She finally—reluctantly, appearing afraid—admitted that she saw two men carrying a girl who was now silent. She could not identify either man, since it was dark, but both were tall. And there was, she believed, a woman nearby who spoke to the two men. That was all she recalled, Pish told us. She could not say what day it was, except that it was not long before she was rescued. She swore it was the truth.
I was stunned; if it was true, it could be solid proof that Glynnis had been beaten at the encampment and was moved, or she had been knocked unconscious, beaten, then left by the highway to die, or she had escaped her killers and made it to the highway. “Did she say where this was in the camp?”
Pish frowned. “She didn’t know; I believe that. According to her she had started across a field, trying to make her way to the highway. She didn’t say why she didn’t try to escape in daylight. I had a sense she was afraid of someone there, but she wouldn’t say who. She had been walking a few minutes when she heard the screaming, and then that stopped. She then headed toward a distant light that she thought might be a farmhouse or a truck stop on the highway. The clouds parted, and she started to see shapes. That’s when she saw the men carrying the girl.”
Like Lynn, it was confusing.
“I’ll get the official report from Sanchez later,” Ellie said. “But this gives me something to think about. Pish, do you think she’s telling the truth?”
He sighed and grimaced. “I told the detective this, and I’ll tell you . . . it feels like it’s an actual memory. I think she’s telling the truth, as she knows it.”
“Which part, her first or second story?” I said, my tone caustic. It was classic Lynn to confuse issues so much, but this was vital.
“The second,” he said. “But who knows?”
“How did she get back to her hut?” I asked. “And why did she go back?”
He shrugged. “She’s not sure . . . in fact, she’s downright vague on that part. She wandered, and found her way back. Once she got there, she passed out and didn’t wake up until broad daylight.”
“I hate to ask, Pish, but could it have been a dream?” I asked.
“The screams fit with what we know,” Ellie said. “We have to assume that at least some of it is true. We know that Glynnis was at the encampment, and she was badly beaten. It’s likely that what happened to her was at the hands of someone or more than one person from the encampment.”
“I hope her information helps. When I saw her in the hospital, she was afraid that ‘men’ were coming to get her,” I said. “I wonder if that’s from that night? Didn’t anyone else there hear any of this?”
“We’re going out to that encampment tomorrow morning,” Ellie said. “Our investigators have been out there several times, but they have to go easy. We don’t want to frighten anyone into taking off, and unless we’re willing to take people into custody, we don’t want to start throwing our weight around. We’re hoping for cooperation. But we can’t force these women to talk.”
“You’ve been investigating the missing girls in connection with the encampment, I assume?” She nodded. I had been obsessing over everything I had seen and heard in the last while, so I told her as much as I could remember, and Pish added more from our visit to rescue Lynn, and his talk with Mother Esther. She jotted it all down. I felt like there was someth
ing more I knew or suspected, but either my brain was tired or I had merlot memory.
Dewayne, Virgil and Urquhart had joined us as I talked. Dewayne, working pro bono for the family of Glynnis Johnson, listened intently.
Virgil, who had already told Ellie what he and Dewayne had discovered—the place where Voorhees spent most of his time, in the hut with wifi and satellite TV, as well as the stolen goods and the ledgers Isadore was working on, with the unaccounted-for income—and then Dewayne looked around at all of us.
“This stays among us, okay?”
When Dewayne said something like that, we listened.
“The trucker who owns the land and sold that piece to the Light and the Way Ministry . . . Virge and me have a feeling there is something going on that involves him. The hut that Voorhees hides away in . . . it’s just a football field away from Bob Taggart’s farmhouse. I think that’s why he sold Voorhees the land, that there is some agreement between them.”
I spoke up with the explanation I had heard from Garth that Taggart was lazy, and his agreement with Voorhees allowed him cheap farm labor and women to clean, and who knew what else. I added what Cecily had said that confirmed what Garth said. Virgil nodded and said that she had told the police that.
Dewayne looked unconvinced. “I think there’s more to it. I’m still going to have a look around Bob’s place.”
Ellie was about to speak, but Dewayne held up one hand. “You don’t know about that, and never heard this,” he said with a slow smile. “If I find anything out, you may get an anonymous but well-informed tip from a concerned citizen.”
I wondered aloud if Mother Esther was innocent, or complicit in whatever had happened. “If there was a woman there when the girl was screaming, as Lynn says, I would bet it was her.”
“But we don’t know if the screaming girl was Glynnis,” Ellie said.
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