Tears welled in Melissa"s eyes. This couldn"t be happening. Any minute now she"d wake up back in her mother"s filthy trailer. She"d open her eyes to a stained, saggy ceiling. Hear her mother"s hack and cough, the clink of the first bottle she"d pulled from a paintpeeling cabinet. Gin. The whiskey would come later. Melissa would smell the trailer"s stale mustiness of dirt and despair. A life going nowhere. She"d pull on old clothes and slip out the door to school before taking a true, deep breath.
Melissa blinked back the tears. She never cried in front of anybody, much less people she hardly knew.
She looked down at her lap, taking in the new designer jeans Linda had just bought for her. The pink, crisp top. Matching sandals. They"d stopped at a big mall before coming here. Mr. Jackson-Baxter, he told her to call him-had waited patiently while she tried on a bunch of stuff. He told Melissa she looked "very nice" when she came out to show Linda the jeans and top she liked best. He was holding Linda"s hand, and they smiled at each other like they shared a fun secret.
Baxter wasn"t hot-looking at all. He had a boyish face, kind of round, with thick, dark hair parted on the side. The hair looked totally eighties. He had brown eyes, and his jawline was a little soft. Sort of looked like a grown-up choirboy. But there was something about him. He wasn"t that tall, but he seemed to tower over Melissa, as if some power vibrated from his body. She"d found herself eyeing him, trying to figure him out. He was nothing but kind to her. Not coming on to her in any way. But what was it about him? In a huge party, you"d know when this guy entered the room. You"d feel it, as if the air changed. Magnetism, that was the word. He oozed it.
Melissa"s hands trembled. She stuffed them between her knees. This day was too much already. Had to be a dream. One wrong move with these people, and she"d find herself back in the system tomorrow, praying for another foster home.
The last one hadn"t turned out so great.
"You like the house?" Linda asked from the front seat. Her voice was light, sort of chirpy. As if she was talking to a child. She half turned around, part of her face in view. She was pretty, with smooth skin and gray-blue eyes. Her makeup looked stunning. She"d done the model thing with eye shadow, darker at the corners, and colored liner smudged just right underneath. Melissa wanted to learn how to do that. Probably needed expensive makeup, not the cheap stuff she"d managed to buy for herself. Or steal.
"Yeah." Melissa affected a shrugging tone. "It"s nice."
Linda smiled. "Good. I hope you like your room. We can change anything you don"t like."
"Are the walls all gray stained?"
Linda made an empathetic noise in her throat. "No."
"Does it smell like old socks and stale cigarette smoke?"
"No."
"We don"t smoke," Baxter said. "Nasty habit."
Tell me about it. "Then I"ll like it."
Baxter pulled the Mercedes into a three-car garage. In the s.p.a.ce next to them sat a blue BMW. And on the other side of that, a red Corvette.
Melissa thrust her jaw forward, studying the vehicles. Why have three cars when you didn"t even have kids? Mrs. Campbell, her social worker, had told Melissa the Jacksons couldn"t have children. Maybe they planned to bring a bunch more foster kids home. Maybe Melissa would end up babysitting a bunch of little brats. Or cleaning out the fireplaces like Cinderella. Something had to go wrong here. This was looking too perfect.
Baxter turned off the engine and caught Melissa"s eye through the rearview mirror. "Welcome home, Melissa."
Home. Not "welcome to our house." Welcome home.
Melissa stared back at him. She wanted to say something, but her throat felt too tight. She nodded.
Linda turned around again, and Melissa"s gaze wandered to her face. She studied Melissa with a mixture of sadness and hope. "We know you"ve had a hard time, honey." Linda"s voice was soft. "But everything"s going to be fine now. We"ll all work together to make it fine."
"Better than that." Baxter patted his wife"s arm. "We"ll make it great."
FIVE.
FEBRUARY 2010.
In the kitchen I flipped on the fluorescent light, the door to my garage closing behind me. My gaze cruised the room. The porcelain sink lay clean and empty, a gla.s.s to its right on the counter. The beige cabinets and drawers were all closed. The floor, except the spot I stood upon, was dry. Nothing looked out of place.
My eyes fixed upon the sliding gla.s.s door that led to my small backyard patio. Locked.
I took off my dripping coat and laid it on the counter. Set my purse on the table. The sounds of my movements seemed so loud. For a moment I stood, breathing. Feeling the house. Had that man been here, done something?
Why would he?
My feet took me through the kitchen and into the living room, in the front part of the house. I lingered just inside the doorway, looking at my brown suede couch and matching armchair, the women"s magazines scattered on the long wooden coffee table. My TV and stereo and tall, slim cabinet of CDs-most of them cla.s.sic rock. All appeared normal.
"Melissa saw it." The man"s voice echoed in my head.
I crossed the living room to check the locks on the front windows. In place.
Next I walked straight across the entry hall and into the second bedroom used as an office. My desk and computer sat as I"d left them, the screen saver randomly sifting through pictures. A photo of me and Tom filled the monitor. I stared at it remembering the day five years ago, only three months before his fatal heart attack. Tom had been an outdoorsman, rugged in his way, yet gentle and kind. Laid back. He"d been a counterbalance to my fighter personality. "Just calm down, Joanne," he"d told me more than once. "Think twice before you rush into things."
If only I could hear his wisdom on this night.
The picture faded, and a shot of Linda materialized. She was sitting on my back patio, laughing, head thrown back, and perfectly made-up eyes half-closed. One hand in her fashionably blonde-streaked hair. Her nose was scrunched. I could almost hear that laughter now-boisterous and full, with a note of sheer abandonment. n.o.body laughed like Linda.
The scene poofed away.
My head pounded.
I touched my mouse, and the file I"d been working on before leaving for Dineen"s blipped onto the monitor. The Bruce Whittley case. A month ago Whittley had skipped out on his wife and two children in Burbank, California, leaving them with a mountain of credit card debt and an overdrawn bank account. His wife"s incensed parents had hired me to find him.
Now I needed to find Melissa.
That might not be so easy. A trail six years cold, maybe a new last name from marriage. And after seeing Baxter kill Linda, being tracked down as a legal witness would be the last thing Melissa would want. She"d be at least a medium-level "fresh" skip. Maybe even a hardcore skip by now if she"d spent those six years running up bills she couldn"t pay. Even if I did find her, she could refuse to talk.
My gaze rose to the wooden clock on the wall. Its gold hands read 8:48. I"d left my sister"s house just fifteen minutes ago.
How could that be?
A shiver racked me from shoulders to toes. Something inside me whispered that my life had changed in those fifteen minutes. As if I"d entered a malevolent cave and did not know what lay before me. In the last few days, I"d already become a pariah in this town. Hooded Man"s stunning information now shoved me into a far darker place-Baxter Jackson"s greatest enemy. Because if anyone could find the runaway teenager after six years, I could.
"If he finds out, he"ll kill you."
I closed Bruce Whittley"s file on the computer.
Rubbing my arms, I turned aside and focused on the window behind and to the right of my desk. The blinds were drawn. I always shut them after dark. I leaned over the desk, lifted the bottom of the blinds, and peered at the lock. In place.
Did Hooded Man stand alone, a single person who wanted to bring Jackson to justice? Or was he one of a group?
Whatever the answer, he was a coward. Knowing the truth, yet saying nothing all these years. Leaving me to ferret it out alone.
Fine. If I had to go this alone, so be it. When it was all over, everyone would know the truth. This time I wouldn"t let Linda down.
I left the office through its second exit, into the hallway stretching to the master bedroom on the end. High on the wall to my left, just outside the kitchen, Billy Ba.s.s the Singing Fish stretched motionless upon his wooden mount. He faced the kitchen and the door leading to the garage, his tail toward me.
I moved to stand before him. "You see anything, Billy?"
His cold gla.s.s eyes revealed nothing.
Dineen had given Billy Ba.s.s to Tom on what turned out to be my husband"s final Christmas. The thing nearly drove me crazy, but Tom loved it. Billy Ba.s.s had a motion-sensor switch. If anyone walked past him, he"d burst into the stupid song "Don"t Worry, Be Happy," flipping his tail and raising his head to look you in the eye. Three-year-old Jimmy and Tom had played it over and over that Christmas, laughing for hours. I swore I never wanted to hear the song again.
Once Tom died I couldn"t bear to take Billy Ba.s.s off the wall. Once in a while I even turned it on just to hear it sing. It always made me think of Tom. But by now the batteries had died.
Oh, Tom, I need you now.
Turning away from Billy Ba.s.s, I walked down the hall to peek into the laundry room, then the second bath on my left. I saw nothing askew. All the same I stepped inside each room to inspect the window locks.
My bedroom remained. I entered the room, which ran the length of the house from front to back. The bed was still neatly made, its magenta comforter meeting a matching dust ruffle. The drawers of my two dressers were shut, scattered framed pictures of me and Tom untouched. Near the window facing the front yard sat an armchair-my favorite place for reading. The novel I was halfway through sat on the chair. A romance.
Why did I torture myself like that?
More important questions nagged me. Once I found Melissa-then what? How to convince her to come forward now, after six years of hiding such a terrible secret?
I checked all my bedroom windows. Still locked.
On dark impulse, I picked up the phone on the nightstand by my bed. Pushed talk. The dial tone hummed in my ear.
The beige-tiled master bathroom looked normal. I lifted aside a window curtain and pressed my face to the gla.s.s, peering into the backyard. My two gnarled oak trees bent beneath the deluge like wizened old men. I could barely make out the black wood fence at the rear of my property.
If someone had wanted to approach my house unseen, this was the night to do it. But no way could Hooded Man have come inside without leaving footprints, a trail of water.
Which he easily could have cleaned up.
Another violent shudder possessed my body-both of fear and penetrating cold. I should take a hot shower. But stepping under that nozzle would place me in such a vulnerable position. Naked. Running water masking other sounds.
Time to install a burglar alarm. In the quiet town of Vonita, I"d never before felt unsafe.
As I pulled back from the window I caught sight of my reflection in the gla.s.s-a pitiful sight. My chin-length brown hair was plastered to my head, my face looking white and clammy. My dark, frightened eyes appeared sunken, and the lines running from my nose to mouth cut deep. Age fifty-two, nothing. I could have been sixty-five.
I dropped the curtain into place, a needle of despair piercing deep. Linda"s disappearance had been terrible. Tom"s death one year later had aged me. We"d never been able to have children-a crucial loss Linda and I had in common. I"d felt so alone since Tom"s pa.s.sing. Now this. Suddenly a part of me didn"t want to find Melissa at all. I was just too tired.
Maybe I should move away from this town, start a new life. I could live anywhere in the country, since my work was done from home.
But I"d have to leave Dineen and Jimmy-my only family. And how could I ever live with myself, knowing Baxter Jackson still walked the streets? Linda deserved justice. And if Cherisse had been murdered, so did she. If I did manage to present the Vonita police with evidence of Baxter"s guilt regarding Linda, they"d likely take a second look into Cherisse"s death.
My teeth chattered. I had to warm up. In a flurry of motion I peeled off my clothes and turned on the shower to hot.
As I stepped into the tub, a frisson shook my shoulders. I swiveled my head, focused with sharp eyes on the bathroom door. My bedroom and the whole empty house loomed in my mind, full of shadowed corners and unknowns. I hadn"t checked closets.
Where had Hooded Man gone after he"d disappeared? Where was he now?
"Jackson will kill you if he finds out."
My jaw tightened. I didn"t want to give in to fears. Hooded Man had relayed his information and was now long gone.
Stubborn imaginings chewed my mind.
Unclothed, skin still wet from the rain, I battled cold worse than ever.
Exhaling aloud, I wrapped myself in a towel and traversed the chilly bathroom tile in my bare feet. I walked out into my bedroom, crossed the room, peered down the hallway. Nothing. Just my house. Lit. Safe.
Why couldn"t I believe that?
With a firm hand I shut my bedroom door. Locked it. No harm in being cautious.
Back in the bathroom, I locked its door also.
The shower pelted hot water, steam rising from the tub. My soaked skin couldn"t bear another minute of cold. I hurried over to the tub and stepped inside. Yanked the shower curtain shut. Eyes closed, heart thumping, I surrendered myself to blessed heat.
SIX.
Hot water never felt so good.
I stepped out of the tub, body red and muscles throbbing with heat. The long shower had beat my headache back to a dull pinch. My thoughts had settled into grim determination. I would find Melissa Harkoff. And I would start tonight.
Bruce Whittley and the other skips I was being paid to find would, by necessity, still claim my work days. So what if I lost a little sleep working on Melissa"s case after hours? And for the moment I still had the rest of the weekend.
My fingers itched to get started.
Quickly I dressed in a sweat suit and super-warm socks and blow-dried my hair to keep my head warm. A new and volatile wind moaned around the back corner of my house. It taunted that I would never find Melissa. That she"d made herself as invisible as the brazen air that formed its groaning.
When I shoved those thoughts aside, questions about Hooded Man nibbled my mind. Had he driven out to Stillton and waited to flag me down as I returned from Dineen"s house? If so he"d stashed his car on some turn-off. Or had someone dropped him there, prepared to pick him up after the message was delivered?
A b.l.o.o.d.y-cheeked mask. Why had he chosen that? Didn"t he know such a visage on a wild-weather night would be frightening? Why not wear a clown mask, or a Richard Nixon, for that matter?
Right, Joanne. As if those would be any less scary.
Whatever the reason, Hooded Man had obviously gone to great lengths to hide his ident.i.ty. A telephone call would have been so much easier. But he was no doubt paranoid about the number being recorded. Maybe he knew just enough about skip tracing to think I had super capabilities on both of my phone lines. I didn"t. My home line would record a number just like anyone else"s-if the ID wasn"t blocked. But I did also have a "trapline" using an 877 toll-free number, which recorded all incoming numbers whether the ID was blocked or not. Traplines are one of my many crafty tools.
In a skewed sort of way Hooded Man"s paranoia bound us together. We were both scared of what Baxter Jackson would do if he discovered my mission.