The Hiding Place

by Karen Harper

  This compulsion to risk anything and everything was what Alex must have felt when she had slipped into Tara’s office and rifled through her papers, then sneaked them out of the house. This was how driven Alex must have felt, facing down her dangerous ex-husband to get her child back.

  The gates swung outward, and Jim drove slowly through. His truck’s wheels sent small waves across the pavement, almost as if the place were surrounded by a moat. When the tall iron gates with the entwined initials MM for Mountain Manor began to slowly swing closed, she darted in.

  The entire area, which wrapped around the side of a mountain above Evergreen, had once been the estate of a local cattle baron. But the old family mansion had fallen into disrepair and now stood, a roofless hulk, far into the acreage. Tara had walked through the skeleton of the old mansion once, admiring the remnants of fine stone craftsmanship on a single fireplace that still stood, imagining the family that had once walked its spacious rooms and gazed out its now glassless windows. Much of the woodwork had been pirated for the interior of the clinic reception room and Jordan Lohan’s office. But it was the isolated cabins and, now, strangely, the chapel, since Jim had mentioned her strange journey there, that haunted her more than the bones of that old building.

  Distant thunder rumbled as if the whole mountain shuddered. Using the trees for a partial shelter, Tara moved quickly off the road onto a path. The trees and foliage were thick here. She hoped there was no lightning with the thunder. The narrow walkway was familiar territory from her weeks of rehab within the iron, spiked fence. Today she would move about like a ghost until she located Veronica. She had her red hair pinned up under a black baseball cap and wore khakis, old running shoes and Nick’s too-big camouflage jacket. Pulling up the collar and hunching her shoulders, she told herself that the weather was a blessing, since not many would be outside today.

  But even the dripping trees bothered her. They loomed over her like dark, faceless monsters from a fairy tale. Despite the fact that she was sweating, raindrops dripping down her neck made her shiver with foreboding at some sort of misty memory she couldn’t quite recall. She hugged herself for warmth and comfort as she crossed a humpbacked bridge over a rushing stream. She glanced down, mesmerized by the foaming white rapids that beat themselves against the rocks.

  As she strode farther into the hilly clinic grounds, the path wound its way through denser vegetation. The needlelike fingers of pines and blue spruce snagged her clothes and scratched her. Deep in the heart of the clinic forest, she was surprised to see pine beetle damage, a common Colorado blight that turned the ponderosa and lodgepole pines a dry, deadly brown. The unseen devourers had devastated forests westward toward Vail, but many once-green trees were also dying here as if they’d been cursed by a powerful hand.

  To get to the cabin she assumed Veronica was in, she would need to pass what had been her own cabin, then traverse the more public areas near the large central lodge that housed the welcome center, meeting rooms, classrooms and offices. The staff psychiatrists, therapists, doctors and adjunct staff had offices in the maze of corridors, as did Jordan Lohan, the driving financial force behind all this. Everything was regulated here, everyone’s schedule planned and controlled, from seven in the morning wake-up to lights-out at eleven. Appointments, classes, group therapy, assignments, meditation time, rest and relaxation. Her schedule had been different, since she was a unique patient here, but, during her weeks of rehab, she’d learned the daily drill from the staff, most of whom seemed to regard her with a mix of fascination and pity—the outcast Lohan, the woman about to be exiled from the bounteous hand of the family behind Mountain Manor’s largesse.

  She hesitated when she reached the trees circling the cabin where she’d spent so much time, both comatose and then recuperating. Sadly, the pine beetle blight had withered the trees here. The lights were on; some other patient was inside, and she wished him or her well. But what could the cabin say if it could talk? Could she have been pregnant there? Had a baby? And had that dearly beloved child both come into the world and departed from it there?

  She tried hard to recall living there, before those days in April when she began to really live again, to venture outside into the world. She’d been told that the specialist who had tended her was on a three-year leave of absence, traveling in Europe. If she could access some contact information, she could call or write him. But why, as she stared long and hard at that cabin, so rustic on the outside, so luxurious within, did the memories she needed elude her?

  But one memory stabbed at her: the Lohans had actually asked her psychologist to break the news to her that her marriage was over, and only then because she’d kept asking where Laird was. He’d left the area…he’d gone to start a new life…he was sorry, but all communications with him from now on would be through the Lohan lawyers.

  Biting her lower lip hard, Tara forced her feet off the path, cutting through the trees toward the lodge and Veronica’s previous cabin, the closest to the lodge. But what if they’d changed her locale? If she had to search the grounds for her former mother-in-law, it could take hours. It was so dark that she kept forgetting it was only midday, but she still didn’t have that kind of time.

  The rain hadn’t let up, and the wind moaned through the limbs. She hoped she didn’t get sick from being out here like this, for she felt chilled to the bone. At the next rumble of thunder, she hugged herself again to stop her shaking. How would it have been to hold her baby in her arms?

  Yes, through the trees, the main clinic building, which looked like a spacious lodge with its sprawling log and stone exterior. Lights were on today; wan squares of amber shone through the gray slant of drifting mist. No one would expect someone out in this, threading their way through trees, camouflaged to blend in, on a mission. She remembered how Nick’s expression had darkened when she’d merely mentioned the word mission to him the other day. She guessed he must have been on a mission that went bad. She prayed this one would not.

  As soon as Claire arrived home from school, which was early because of a half-day, district-wide teachers’ meeting, Nick took her and Beamer for a walk down their long driveway to get the mail. He listened to Claire’s chatter, but he was worried about Tara.

  She wasn’t answering her cell phone. She wasn’t at Marcie’s, because he’d just phoned there. Marcie said she was checking with a funeral home for when she got Rick’s body back. The coroner had phoned to tell her Rick’s death was being ruled a suicide. She also said the police would soon bring her computer back. But Tara hadn’t called her.

  At least he knew Tara hadn’t gone to face down the senior Lohans, because Jordan Lohan had left a recent phone message that she should call him and they could meet at the house. He wanted to update her on Veronica and talk to her about some family matters. Nick hoped Tara would forgive him for playing her messages, but he was getting downright scared about where she was. The worst scenario was that she’d taken a flight to Seattle to confront her ex and his new wife.

  “I said, can you read this Highlights Magazine with me, Uncle Nick?” Claire said, flourishing a brightly colored cover she’d found in the mailbox. “There’s a really neat drawing in here where you have to find hidden things. Aunt Tara and I love to do it.”

  “Sure, but shouldn’t you wait for her, then?”

  “Can we read ‘Goofus and Gallant’ then? See, one guy always does something nice and polite, but the other messes up all the time.”

  “Sure, fine. But let’s take Beamer for a little stroll first.”

  “You can get a hidden picture minibook too, and we could all do that together, the three of us. There’s all kinds of things you can’t see real easy and have to look and look, ’cause things are hidden—”

  “Yeah, good.”

  “You’re not listening, are you?” she demanded, one hand on her hip, her tone that of a grown woman. “You don’t want to read with me or Aunt Tara either. Why are you so mean today?”

  “Claire, I’m
not mean. I just have a lot of things to think about, like where I’m going to work, where we should live.”

  “But can’t we live right here, with Aunt Tara too? See, if you’re my uncle and she’s my aunt, it would be just right for you two to get in love and get married, and I could be in the wedding, so—”

  “Honey, I’ve only been home five days!” he said, staring down at her and trying not to look as upset as he felt. “You don’t fall in love and make plans to get married with someone you’ve only known five days!”

  “But what about love at first sight, like in Cinderella and Snow White? I can tell you’re mad at me, and maybe at Aunt Tara too. You want to take me away from her! You don’t want her to be with us.”

  “Yes, I do, and right now!” he roared.

  Claire thrust out her lower lip. When she blinked, tears flew onto her cheeks. Even Beamer cocked his head. Nick never shouted at his dogs, but these women were getting to him. He gritted his teeth. He wished he could give Claire an order to stop all this fluffy-feelings, female stuff.

  “Claire,” he said, speaking slowly, calmly, “you’re going to have to learn to give this time.”

  “But what if time runs out? In Cinderella, the clock struck, and everything went back the way it once was—real bad, too. I mean, I’d like to go back to when Mom was alive and my dad was nice, but then I’d lose Aunt Tara, and I don’t want to lose her.”

  That last word dissolved into sniffles and bigger tears. The child was actually quivering. Nick knelt and hugged her to him. As her thin arms wrapped around his neck, even Beamer cuddled closer. But, like Claire, Nick felt a big hole in their little circle.

  Where the hell was Tara?

  As Tara gave the lodge a wide berth to head toward Veronica’s old cabin, she saw the lights were on in the chapel. Though attached to the main building, the addition with its peaked roof was off to the west end. And—was she imagining this?—muted music drifted from those windows.

  Could this be near where she was standing when Jim had found her wandering in the snow in the dead of winter? But she’d just walked that way now from her cabin. Even if her legs had been bare that night, she was pretty sure they would not have been so cut up that she’d bleed. True, today the pine needles had caught her pants and might have given a superficial scratch. Maybe if she were out of a sickbed, staggering, she could have fallen and cut herself that way. But to leave bloody footprints in the snow?

  She felt lured on toward the chapel, by the music and the possibility Veronica was playing. The melodies were beautiful, haunting. Jim had mentioned that Veronica was “restricted,” which meant she was closely monitored, but who else could play that well?

  Glancing up and down the driveway that circled the lodge, Tara sloshed through the puddles and darted to the stone wall of the chapel. Pressed against the exterior of the building, she was certain she could feel the music as well as hear it, like a memory that was still so vivid she felt she was living it again.

  Other than that night she could not recall, she’d only heard Veronica play for the family, mostly classical, but she’d remembered this piece. It was from The Phantom of the Opera, her former mother-in-law’s favorite musical. She closed her eyes to try to picture being here in the snow, bleeding into the snow. But all she saw in her mind’s eye was that white mask the Phantom wore in both the stage production she and Laird had seen, and the movie, which she’d seen again this year on TV. Something contorted and grotesque was behind that mask in her mind. This tune was “Think Of Me”; why couldn’t she remember?

  The music segued into another, louder song from Phantom called “Masquerade.” Tara jumped as distant thunder rumbled, reverberating off the stone building, as if it blended with the organ. She couldn’t look in the windows because they were too high. Despite the fact Veronica must be accompanied by a clinic staff member, who would surely report Tara if she showed herself, she edged closer to the back door. The main entrance was through a hall that led to the client reception rooms. She could only pray that, somehow, this back entrance was open. If she could get Veronica’s attention, get her away for a moment, or at least have a few minutes before someone could be summoned to throw her out…

  She tried the heavy door. It pulled out toward her. Using both hands to open it wider, she darted in and braced it while it swung silently shut.

  Tara moved into the shadows in the back corner of the high-beamed room, which rang with the reverberating notes of the song. At the front, across the rows of ten pews, the chancel was well lit, but it was darker here. Her heart fell when she saw two women sitting in the front pew with their backs to her. From Veronica’s descriptions, she was pretty sure that one was Elin Johansen; the other was dressed like a nurse in the pale peach the medical staff all wore.

  Feeling like a fool or a felon, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled along the outside, carpeted aisle toward the front of the chapel. Once she showed herself, she might not have much time to talk to Veronica and she needed every precious second.

  14

  Could Tara have had an accident on a slick road?

  Nick was starting to panic. When any of the Delta Force guys didn’t report in on time, it had been alarming, but this was worse. Though it was early afternoon, it had gotten dark outside because the weather was degrading. He didn’t approve of snooping, but he went into Tara’s office and played all her phone messages again, even those before Jordan Lohan’s recent one. She’d left Jim Manning’s on, one he’d already heard. The guy sounded totally believable. But he was recounting a rumor that could have actually been about Tara.

  Of the other messages, only the new one from her former father-in-law seemed significant, so Nick replayed it. At least, he thought, if Jordan Lohan was inviting her to their home, maybe the family was finally going to provide some answers. He didn’t think she could have gone there already, because this message had been unplayed when he first heard it. But maybe Lohan had contacted her some other way.

  Nick could hear Claire playing with Beamer in the other room. He paced, fists jammed in his jeans pockets, shaking his head. Of course, he had no right to tell Tara what to do or to order her not to go somewhere. Even if, as in Claire’s fairy-tale dreams, he was her husband, he wouldn’t do that. They’d be a partnership, comrades as well as lovers and spouses.

  Damn, what was the matter with him? Had he fallen this fast for a woman he hardly knew? And yet, he felt he knew Tara as deeply as he’d ever known another woman. And needed her much more, not only to be with Claire but with him.

  Continuing to pace, he made a second call to Marcie. She still hadn’t seen Tara; he could hear the rain and thunder over the phone, so it might even be worse near Evergreen than it was here.

  “Where are you?” he asked. “I can hear the storm really loud.”

  “Sitting outside in my car, with my laptop. It’s wireless, and I paid a bundle for it, can’t get it wet. I got it back faster by picking it up instead of waiting for the cops to bring it back. I’m going inside the apartment, but I have to psych myself up for going in. Can’t stand to go into the bathroom where I found him, and it’s the only one in the place. I’m moving out as soon as I can. Rick’s funeral is Thursday morning at ten at the Corbett Funeral Home in Evergreen. It won’t be much, unless we get some gawkers, but I’m hoping you and Tara will come.”

  “Sure. Of course we will.”

  “When I called Clay at the prison to tell him, he was real shook. Blamed everyone but himself for Rick’s depression. Don’t tell Tara, but he said not to trust her. I do, though. She’s been great.”

  “Did Clay actually threaten Tara?”

  “Just said he bet she was going to be extremely sorry. That’s what he said, ‘extremely sorry.’ And then he said something kind of strange. He said he’d heard she was an extreme risk fan—something like that.”

  Bingo! Nick thought. Not only was Rick off the list of those who still might be spying on Tara, but Clay must be ultimately to b
lame. Somehow he must have contacted Dietmar ‘Whacker’ Getz, or vice versa. Maybe they’d made a deal that, when he wasn’t doing extreme mountain biking, Getz would watch or harass Tara. So that meant Marv Seymour, computer tech and online guru extraordinaire—despite his “I’ll be seeing you” gift of thirteen red roses—was probably in the clear. But had Seymour or Getz ripped up the roses and stuck the thorny stems between the deck boards in some sort of perverted warning?

  “You’re sure Clay didn’t say anything else about what he meant by ‘extreme risk fan’?” Nick asked.

  “No, but it’s pretty obvious. She took a risk that day she went after your sister at Clay’s place. He probably meant she’d do something again to get herself in trouble. But don’t worry about Clay, because he’s not going anywhere to get anyone in trouble ever again.”

  Maybe not, Nick thought, but Whacker Getz was still out there somewhere, and who knew what Clay had paid him to do. Had those two men, ex-husbands of women Tara had helped, sworn some sort of mutual vendetta against Tara? And, if she wasn’t careful, could she soon have her own ex on her tail?

  Near the front of the church, when she almost had a side view of the three women, Tara rose to peek at them. As the music swelled and soared, Elin and the nurse seemed entranced, but Veronica looked transported. Her eyes closed, she swayed slightly as her hands skimmed the keys. Her feet flew over the wooden pedals as if she danced. Music engulfed the room, reverberating from the banks of silver organ pipes pointing skyward at the back of the chancel.

  Tara realized she’d need to be almost on top of Veronica to get her attention, but the other two women would see and stop her by then. She didn’t want to alarm Veronica; she was here to be helped, not to receive any sort of shock treatment.

  Tara decided to wait where she was, crouched on the dark blue carpet, until Veronica paused or looked up. Besides, this beautiful chapel calmed and strengthened her. She must face up to losing her child, but she had to know what had happened.