by Greta Boris
He turned to face her. "Abby, can't you see how nuts this is? I can't imagine Tallulah or Mimi being part of a crime like this. Can you?"
"We never know who people are, or what motivates them, not really." Abby's eyes closed. "They change when bad things happen. I thought I knew my mother." A yawn split her face. "Just because Mimi shares your love of gardening doesn't make her a wonderful person."
They were fighting again. Fighting less than twenty-four hours after he made a vow to himself to try to see things from her point of view. "You need to get some sleep, and I need to get back to work." What he needed was to end this conversation before he said something he'd be sorry for. "We'll talk about this later."
Her eyes opened. "Look around for me while you're over there, would you?"
"Right," he said, but he wasn't going to. "Now go to bed." He held out a hand, pulled her up and gave her a little push toward the bedroom.
Abby went a few steps, then turned. "I forgot to ask you. What are you doing tomorrow?"
"I don't know. Why?"
"My dad wants me to stand in for him at the Mission festival booth. I have to be there around eight. Want to come and help?"
"Sure. I have to stop by South Coast Nursery's booth anyway. We're doing a cross-promotion thing. I'll meet you there."
"Thanks." The word was interrupted by another yawn.
"Let me know how your dad is doing when he wakes up," he said. She nodded and shuffled toward her bedroom.
***
It was warmer outside than it had been earlier. Carlos stripped off his sweatshirt and threw it into the cab of his truck. He was about to take the right hand path around the house, his usual route to the garden, but hesitated. He didn't think for one minute Bradley and Chad were the men Abby had seen at the Mission. But he'd promised himself he'd respect her opinions. If he checked out the garage and didn't find a prison, maybe she'd let go of her suspicions.
He headed left, to the far side of the garage. There was no walkway. Weeds grew between the stones someone had spread on the ground to prevent them. He stumbled on a rock and balanced himself on the old wood siding. Flecks of paint peeled off on his hand.
He walked along the length of the building until he reached the small window. It was coated with grime. He shaded his eyes with cupped hands and looked inside. Boxes. That was all he could see.
He moved to the left and looked toward the front of the garage. The boxes filled the space all the way to the single plank garage door. He took a big step to the right and looked in the other direction. The boxes stopped about four feet from the back wall.
Four feet by the width of the garage was a big enough area to hide someone, but it wasn't secure. There was nothing to stop them from leaving. From what he could tell, the girl could've walked to the front, pushed the door open and escaped. That was that. He could tell Abby he’d checked things out.
He was about to head to the yard when the sun came out from behind a cloud. It shone on the window and lit the inside of the garage. He saw a thin line running up the back wall.
He breathed on the window and rubbed it with his arm. The line became a rectangle. Could it be the outline of a door? An exit? But it looked like the outer wall of the garage was several feet farther out than the wall the door was set in.
He walked to the end of the garage, and turned the corner. There was no door, or window, or anything in the back wall. The door inside must lead to a storage room. A storage room that ran the width of the building.
He stood, hands on hips, for a long time. He hadn't liked being inside Abby's anchorhold. It would be much worse to be locked in this room. It was secluded here. No people. Nothing to watch and no window to watch it through. Could Mimi and Bradley be that cruel?
He turned and headed to the garden. Abby was getting inside his head with her crazy ideas. The police didn't know if the girl had been held prisoner, not for sure. She was sick and starved, but that was all they knew. The rest was guesswork. No one knew what really happened except the people who brought her to the Mission.
Abby was panicking because of her dad. She wasn't thinking clearly. If Carlos told her there was a storage room at the back of the garage, she'd do something stupid. She may have already alienated her father's new neighbors with her snooping. He'd done what she'd asked. He'd looked around. But, he wasn't going to let her mess things up any worse than she already had.
What they needed to do was convince Sylla that Paul wasn't a religious maniac. If they were going to do that, Abby had to act normal. Breaking into other people's garages wasn't normal.
For the next two hours, he shut up the argument in his head with physical labor. He turned soil and fertilized and planted and watered. When he was done, he pulled a water bottle from his tool bag and sat on a big rock. He guzzled half the bottle, wiped his mouth, and looked at his work. It was good. There was nothing better than taking a patch of dirt and making something beautiful.
He heard the squeaky screen door and looked up. Mimi came down the kitchen steps with two glasses. "You look like you could use an iced tea."
"Sounds great." Carlos stood.
She handed him a glass and looked at the plot he'd just planted. "The garden is going to be amazing."
"I think so too. Hey, let me show you something." Carlos led Mimi to another corner of the yard and explained his plans for the spot. Then he took her to the old garden shed and told her his idea to use hollyhocks to hide it. He and Mimi brainstormed their way through the garden and ended up back at the rock where they'd started.
"I love it, Carlos. I really do. I'm thinking about pitching it to the Home and Garden Tour committee for next spring. If they accept it, I want to make sure we're here together. That everyone knows this was your handiwork."
His cheeks got warm, and it wasn't from the sun or the work. If he had any doubts about his decision to keep the storage room quiet, they were gone. This job was too important to lose because of Abby's unfounded suspicions.
"Refill?" Mimi reached for his glass.
"No. I'm good. I have to get to the office. This is the fun part of my job."
"I'm glad you feel that way." She turned to go into the house, but stopped. "I hope you don't mind me asking what's happening with Paul? Abby said he's got some kind of amnesia."
Carlos blinked. Abby said Paul had amnesia? He had no idea why she'd say that. "Yeah. Not too bad though."
Mimi nodded, but he could tell she had more to say. "I'm just worried. For him, but also for the community. If he's the only one who saw anything the night the girl died, it would be a shame if he didn't have any recollection now."
Oh, he understood. Abby wanted to make sure no one was worried about her father fingering them. She was trying to protect him.
"You know, I like Paul, I really do, but I have some concerns."
"What kind of concerns?"
Mimi pursed her lips. "Well, he just seemed to have a unhealthy interest in the area where the girl was found. Maybe the brain damage. . ." Her words died away.
Carlos looked at his boots. What the hell should he say to that? He wanted to defend Paul. Make sure she knew she didn't have to be afraid of him. He thought for a minute, then met her eyes. "You know the Swallows Nest exhibit at the Mission?"
She looked confused, but she nodded.
"Paul built that. Well, he didn't build the whole thing, but he added another wall and a roof to what was there. The police think someone was living in it."
"Who? Him?"
"No." His mouth went dry. "Maybe a homeless person." He hated lying, but didn't know what else to do. "I think, maybe, he feels a little responsible. You know. . ." Carlos had no idea what he was saying. Not only did he hate lying, he was terrible at it.
"Do they think the exhibit had something to do with the girl's death?" Mimi's eyes got wide.
"I don't know." Carlos began picking up his tools. All he could think about was getting out of there. "Maybe a homeless guy. . . Who knows?"
He dumped his first load into the bed of his truck. He hoped Mimi would be gone when he got to the garden to get the rest of his things. She wasn't.
She stood exactly where he'd left her, holding her iced tea glasses so tight her fingers had turned white.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 5:45 PM
ABBY STUCK HER head into the living room. "I'm going to run to the store. We're almost out of coffee. You okay?"
"I'm fine." Her father's eyes were heavy with sleep. She might have lied about his having a memory lapse, but she was beginning to worry if there might be more brain damage than the doctors had thought. He'd been sleeping a lot. Even more than when she'd first brought him home. She was going to make an appointment for him Monday morning, first thing.
"Can I get you anything else?"
"Maybe some of those ginger snaps. You know the ones?"
"With the crystallized ginger bits?"
He yawned before he answered. "Right. Those."
"Have you eaten all the chocolate chip and all the molasses cookies already?"
He turned up the volume on the TV instead of answering her.
Abby walked out into the evening. The sky glowed red and orange in the dying light. She'd only been up from her nap for two hours. According to her internal clock it should be close to noon, not sunset. She was all out of sync with the world.
By the time she reached the grocery store, the sun was all the way down. She parked under a street lamp, an automatic safety precaution instilled in her by her father, and entered the store. She hurried through the brightly lit aisles to the shelves of coffee. From there, she walked two rows over to get the cookies. She also planned to pick up cheese, a bottle of wine, and something to throw on the grill.
While she was drifting off to sleep earlier that day, it popped into her mind she ought to invite Carlos for dinner after the parade. It would be a peace offering. She was beginning to understand, maybe even share, some of his feelings about her book. Locking herself in the anchorhold to write it had caused a world of problems. But despite his feelings, he'd risked arrest by going to the Mission for her. She'd never thanked him.
As she rounded the corner to the dairy section, she caught a whiff of perfume. It was a strong, spicy scent, not unpleasant, but it aroused a vaguely unpleasant association. For a moment, she was in her anchorhold, but that was where the memory ended.
Abby looked down the row of milk, eggs, and cheeses. The aisle was empty except for a forty-something man with a gallon of milk in his hand. She chose a triangle of Brie and a square of Irish cheddar and continued to the cracker display at the end of the aisle. She should get some of the multi-grain crackers with the poppy seeds on top that Carlos liked so much.
She saw wheat crisps, soda crackers, baked pita chips, but no multi-grain. There were crackers at the house. She'd bought them herself only a day or two ago. No sense in getting more if they weren't the ones Carlos liked.
She turned toward the checkout and heard a crash. A split second later the wall of cracker boxes erupted. She threw her arms over her face as cardboard cartons rained down on her. They bounced off her head and shoulders, piled up on the floor around her, and filled her cart.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." A woman swam through the flotsam to Abby's side. "Are you all right? It was so silly of me. I was in a hurry, not looking where I was going."
"I'm okay. No harm done," Abby said, although she would be surprised if she didn't end up with a bruise or two. The corners of some of those boxes had made contact with tender flesh.
The woman sprang into action, stooping to retrieve crackers, standing to re-shelve them.
"Here. Let me help." Abby began stacking the crackers from her cart onto the display.
"No, no. It was my clumsiness."
"I don't mind." The familiar perfume floated in the air around the woman. Abby slid a glance at her. Her dark hair was pulled into a knot at the back of her head, but a section in front had come loose and hung in her face, obscuring it.
A tall man in a red vest with the store logo on it joined the effort and seven minutes later, the crackers were on their shelves again. Abby plastered a smile on her face and turned to reassure the woman that all was well. But she was already halfway up the dairy aisle, beating a hasty retreat to the rear of the store. The wheels of her grocery cart protested with loud squeaks.
"Well," Abby said.
"I guess she was embarrassed," the man in the red vest said. "At least she helped pick everything up. You'd be surprised how often people don't. They don't even tell us when there's broken glass, or spilled milk, or whatever. Not if they're the one who did it anyway."
He walked Abby to a closed checkout stand, flipped the "open" light on, and began putting her groceries on the moving counter. "I'm not going to make you wait in line after all that."
By the time Abby left the market, forty-five minutes had passed. She hadn't meant to leave her dad alone that long. She tossed her bags into the trunk and drove home.
When she turned onto the driveway, she was struck by how bright the kitchen lights were. She must have left them all on. Generally, if she wasn't cooking, she turned the overhead lights off and navigated by the glow of the softer counter lamp.
She also noticed the lights were flickering. Her first thought was there was something wrong with the electricity, or maybe the bulbs in the recessed sockets needed to be switched out. Then realization slapped her like a cold wave of water. It wasn't the electricity or the bulbs; it was fire.
***
Abby pulled her cell from her purse, hit 911, screamed fire, her father's address, and dropped her bag and phone on the grass as she ran. She threw herself at the front door. It flew open. Smoke rolled out and over her. "Dad," she screamed, but there was no answer.
The living room. She had to get to the living room. Harsh fumes bit her throat and seared her lungs as soon as she crossed the threshold. She pulled off her sweater and held it over her mouth and nose.
She pressed her other hand to the wall on her right. Thank God, it was cool. The fire seemed to be contained in the kitchen. For now. Two more steps and stinging tears sprang to her eyes. She closed them, and moved forward blindly, feeling her way along the hall.
When the wall dropped away, she opened her eyes. The living room was clearer, the air a hazy gray. She could see her father. He was still in his chair, a table lamp glowing next to him. The peaceful scene belied the danger.
"Dad." Abby choked out the word. Her father didn't move. "Dad." She ran to him and shook him. His head lolled from side to side. "Dad, wake up." She shook him harder. His eyes opened, but only for a second. At least he was alive.
A coughing fit struck Abby, beating at her ribs, tearing at her throat. Through streaming eyes, she saw a poisonous black cloud inching along toward them. She had to get him out of there. She looked in the direction she'd come. The wall of smoke in the hallway was impenetrable now. But even if it had been clear, she couldn't carry her father all the way to the front door. He wasn't a big man, but he was too heavy for her.
The picture window was her only hope. She grabbed the end table next to her father's chair. The lamp hit the floor, sparked, and went out. She slammed the table into the window. It bounced off. She struck again, and again, sobbing her frustration with each failed attempt.
Finally, she held the table top against her chest, its legs extended like spears, and ran at the window. Crack. Fine lines appeared where the legs had hit. She lunged again and more of the window shattered. One more time and most of the glass lay in the yard outside.
She gulped in fresh air, but within seconds she was enveloped by pitch-black smoke as it rushed to the opening. She blinked back tears. Large shards of glass stuck up from the windowsill like fangs. She tugged at them, trying to clear the opening for her father. Her hand came away bloody.
It was dangerously dark in the living room now. Not dark like the absence of light. But a dark that had form and substa
nce. A dark that was a deadly presence.
Abby wrapped her arms around her father, hugging him to her, and lifted. He rose a foot or so from his chair, then fell into it again. She adjusted her hold, and this time threw all her body weight into the effort. He lifted again, teetered for a second, then fell against her.
It was all she could do to stand upright and not collapse under him. When she got her footing, she began to drag him toward the window. It was only feet away, but their progress was slow. So slow. Right foot, step. Drag. Right foot, step. Drag. She feared the smoke would overcome them both before they reached the opening. Right foot, step. Drag.
She was so focused on the job at hand, the emergency vehicles were almost to the house before she heard the sirens. Relief washed over her with such intensity, her legs almost buckled. One more step. One more drag. And strong arms were reaching through the window taking her father from her, then lifting her across the sill into the unbelievably clean night air.
CHAPTER THIRTY
SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 6:45 AM
Money might not be the root of all evil, but it is the root of some. Attention addiction can be fueled by greed. Shows where men and women allow themselves to be humiliated before thousands to compete for a lucrative reward are some of the most popular on television. We dangle ourselves like bait to catch the biggest fish. We sell our souls for financial gain.
Marriage was often a dismal affair for women from the upper classes during the Middle Ages. Girls as young as fourteen and fifteen were promised to much older men for financial reasons. One can imagine that a life devoted to the church might seem a more palatable prospect.
Christina of Markyate, a young girl from a wealthy family, vowed to remain a virgin. Her family, disregarding her wishes, betrothed her to a man named Valerian. On their wedding night, Christina managed to avoid consummating the union by telling him religious stories. The tales put a damper on his ardor, but she knew he wouldn't be dissuaded for long.
