“Calm down. You’re okay now, safe with me,” he said, gripping her knee with his hand. “It’s still a stab in the dark, but maybe one that will find its mark. Dr. Stevens said Dane had easy access to and sold vet drugs, which do not need the property of amnesia, but who knows what else he had access to?”
He put his hand back on the steering wheel, then thumped it with one fist while he spoke. “Tess, as long as I’m here in Chillicothe, I still need to check into something else.”
“And this is about someone other than Dane, right?”
“When Mayor Owens talked to you at the police station, how did he seem to you? Glad to see you? Upset?”
“In a hurry to get me out of town. At first he acted kind of creepy, almost like he wanted to scare me away. Is this something about Reese Owens?”
“He is alleged to have molested a young girl years ago when he was a teenager and the girl was five.”
Tess gasped. “And when he started walking toward me in your conference room, I felt so...so oppressed. In danger. But how could he run for public office, even in such a small town?”
“Well, here’s the strange part. As far as Vic Reingold can tell, the records for the crime have disappeared, except for one he found that someone had missed expunging. But I need to get corroborating evidence of what happened years ago before I question him on this. I’m heading to the neighborhood where he grew up. I’m going to ask around, see what people recall.”
“Well, he did marry the former governor’s granddaughter, so that might be why it was erased, not just so he could run for mayor. Friends in high places—at least as high as that hill near Lake Azure with the mayor’s beautiful house on it,” she said.
“My thoughts exactly.”
He pulled onto a side street in an area that had seen better times, where the houses were night and day from the Owens mansion outside Cold Creek. In the distance the big paper mill loomed with its smokestacks stabbing the sky. The yards were small, the buildings close together. No garages, cars parked on the street. A couple of places had Halloween decorations, ghosts or a black cat cutout. A few garbage cans sat on the curb. Near dinnertime, it was almost deserted except for a couple of boys shooting baskets at a bare metal hoop attached to a pole. The moment the boys spotted the police cruiser, they disappeared.
“You weren’t going to bring me with you here at first, or even tell me you were checking into Mayor Owens, were you?” she asked.
He was leaning forward over the steering wheel, reading house numbers as he slowed even more, then parallel parked under a ghost tied to an old tree. It was made of a dirty sheet with a noose around his neck to make its head.
“I didn’t want to spook you,” Gabe said, “though I hate to put it that way, considering what’s hanging over us. It reminds me of the gift shop where Sandy was taken.”
He leaned toward her and looked at the dark green house out her side window. “Hard to believe Reese Owens grew up here,” he muttered, and turned off the engine. “As much as his wife’s a snob, I’m surprised he didn’t have someone erase records of this old address too. Sit tight. I’m going to see if anyone’s at his boyhood home, ask if there’s someone in the neighborhood who’s lived here a long time. Lock yourself in.”
Tess watched as he went up to the door, rang the bell, then talked to a young woman whose face was obscured behind the torn screen. He came back out to the car, unlocked and opened her door. Arms on the roof of the car, he leaned down toward her.
“Maybe things are finally going our way,” he said. “Mrs. Bowes, who lives right across the street, has been here for thirty years. The problem is, this woman says she’s a bit of a gossip, so isn’t that too bad?”
“I have a feeling I should not go with you,” she said.
“Be right back. And I’m not sure it’s a good thing you’re reading my mind,” he said, and winked at her. He closed the door, then motioned that she should lock herself in again.
It was a good thing, she thought, he wasn’t reading her mind. No man had ever gotten to her the way he did. His glance, his voice, his touch, made her tingle and tremble and in the most delicious way—even when things were supposed to be strictly business, maybe life-and-death business.
* * *
The two-story, gray house had tired-looking lace curtains in the windows, upstairs and down. The narrow sidewalk was sunken and cracked, and the porch boards creaked under Gabe’s feet. The two-seat swing on chains was atilt and moving slightly in the breeze as if ghosts sat there.
When he rang the bell, he saw the curtains twitch as someone looked out. He could hear a TV program blaring from inside. A short, elderly lady with some of her white hair on end and some matted down opened the door. The TV got louder. It sounded like some game show with a lot of applause. She must be hard of hearing. Gabe raised his voice.
“Mrs. Bowes, I’m Sheriff McCord from over in Falls County, just checking up on someone who grew up in this neighborhood. I understand you’ve lived here for years.”
“Thirty-five with my husband, Bob, who worked at the paper mill, but he passed. My daughter says I’m getting forgetful, but not about the past, no, sir. Want to come in? I’m watchin’ a rerun of Family Feud, but I can turn it down.”
He didn’t want to leave Tess alone, even locked in a police car. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just ask you a question or two from here. It concerns the Owens family, and the boy was named Reese.”
“Oh, him. Did real well for hisself, married up, he did. He’s even a mayor now in some little town down yonder.”
Gabe heard applause from the TV in the dim room behind her. It hit him that Reese might resent having to run such a small town, but in a way, he might be hiding out there. If Reese was mayor of a big town, that would bring more media attention, maybe a check of his past, hidden records or not. Maybe that’s why he ate too much, taking out his frustrations that way. And maybe Reese took little girls to prove he was clever, or to feed his sick fantasies that had started here in his teens. There were no doubt plenty of places in that huge house on the hill to hide a child. The Owenses were childless. Maybe they wanted a compliant, sweet little girl—several of them.
“Yes, that’s the man,” Gabe said. “Mrs. Bowes, do you recall anything about Reese Owens getting in trouble with the law?”
“Well,” she said, drawling her words and rolling her eyes. “They tried to cover it up then and after.”
“Who did?”
“His family at first. Then I’ll bet his wife’s people. You know who her granddaddy was, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. What sort of trouble was he in years ago?”
“I’ll tell you, young man, but I don’t want what I say showin’ up in the papers or on TV. My Bob took good money for promisin’ to keep quiet ’bout it once, though I was shopping at Kmart that day and never promised a thing. Just don’t you go getting poor little Reese in trouble for something bad he did long ago. People change, you know.”
“I won’t get him in trouble for that. This is about something that happened more recently.”
“Well,” she said, leaning closer to the screen and glancing past him as if there might be others hovering. “He got hisself accused of lewd acts on a minor, a kindergarten girl lived over on the next block back then, Ginger Pickett. I remember her name, all right. The evidence was iffy, least we thought so. At first we heard he could be sentenced up to two years in juvie prison. Then we heard eighteen months. Then he got nothing for it, but they moved away. And that’s the last we heard of him till his marriage—oh, not countin’ when a man came here to talk to Bob and the neighbors to keep quiet and handed out good money for it too. We spent it on fixin’ up things around the house here. You sure you don’t want to come in? I’ll turn the sound down.”
“I really can’t, Mrs. Bowes, but you’ve been very helpful.”
“And what you’re askin’, I’ll bet you couldn’t look it up in the old court records, right? I mean, if they’re gonna spend good money on the neighbors keeping a tight lip, they prob’ly wiped the record clean.”
“Please tell your daughter that I think you are sharp not only about the past but about the present,” Gabe said, touching his hand to his hat. She waved and smiled, showing one prominent gold tooth before the door closed behind her and the voices shouting on the TV stopped.
This was a good little field trip, he told himself as he walked toward the cruiser. Although he now had enough information to confront Reese Owens, he was going to target Dane again after all these years, just as his dad had done, but with new evidence. The drug connection was tenuous, what his father would have called “a blind hog finding an acorn.” It was sheer, dumb luck. He’d like to believe it was a gift from God, but anyway, he was going to run with it.
As for Reese, if the powerful, political family he’d married into could wipe out court records, who knew what else they could hide? Vic would be pleased they now had two persons of more than interest to pursue.
* * *
It was dark when Gabe dropped Tess off at her house, so he went in with her and looked all over, including the attic and basement, before walking around the perimeter of the place, especially the backyard. Tess could tell he was anxious to see Agent Reingold, whom he’d called from the car to set up a meeting at the police station in town.
“I’ll be home later,” he told her at the back door. “Lock up. Get a good night’s sleep, take it easy tomorrow, and I’ll see you at the farmers’ market on Saturday. Meanwhile, I’m going to serve Dane with the search warrant as soon as I can get my hands on it.”
She looked at his strong, big hands on the doorknob. Feeling awkward, wanting to kiss him goodbye, she just nodded and closed the door after his quick exit.
Missing him already, feeling drained, she poured herself a predinner, calm-down glass of wine from the new bottle she’d purchased with some other supplies at the Kwik Shop. She sipped the wine as she walked through the house, checking again to see that the curtains were tightly closed. The glass of Chardonnay went down well, so she poured a second. It had been quite a day, not only turning up information Gabe could use but helping him, being with him for several hours. Even if it was strictly business, she loved just breathing the same air he did.
She grabbed a few crackers and cut some skinny slices of the cheese Gracie had left for her. She figured she needed some food with the wine because it was going to her head. She was starting to feel funny. Not dizzy but floaty, and it was more than infatuation with Gabe. She’d better fix some proper food.
When she bent to look in the small refrigerator to get more food, a wave of dizziness slammed into her. How strange! Even though the refrigerator was fairly empty, it seemed to be full of corn leaves.
She knew something was wrong. Should she call Gabe? No, she’d better call her mother. She must be upstairs. “Mom? Mom!” a woman’s voice called nearby. Then she remembered her mother was dead. She’d seen her last alive sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital, waving after Tess had spent the afternoon with her.
Tess staggered against the wall, slid to the floor. The door to the cornfield was still open, wafting out cold air. She had to hide, had to hide or they’d find her, take her back to the house, smack her with Mr. Mean.
Tess sprawled flat on the floor, moving her hands from her eyes to over her ears. She heard the howl of a train coming closer. A monster roaring. She screamed and cried. She could not breathe. She saw bodies in graves, tear-streaked, muddy faces staring up at her, gesturing with their dirty hands.
“Help us. Find us,” they cried.
When the soil covered her face, Tess cried too.
18
Tess heard glass shatter. Shards clattered in the sink and flew across the kitchen floor to where she huddled under the table.
“Tess! Tess, are you all right?”
Dad was home. She’d meant to call him.
A man climbed through the broken window over the sink, stepped right in the sink! He moved the chair by her head, bent down and touched the side of her neck with two fingers. He kicked broken glass away, then gently lifted her out from under the table. It was Gabe. Why did he break her window? She would have let him in.
He sat on a kitchen chair and pulled her into his lap. She clung to him.
“Tess, what happened? Was someone here?”
He’d closed the refrigerator door, but the ceiling light was on. It was bright and hurt her eyes, but she was so glad to see him.
“I’ve got to get you to the doctor. I’m calling him,” he said. He suddenly had a phone and started punching in numbers. She remembered that Gabe—no, it was his father then—had called for the doctor to look her over when she was found. But that wasn’t now. She didn’t recall anything except nightmares, wasn’t sure why she was here on the floor. She must have fallen and hit her head.
He talked into the phone while she cuddled against him. He steadied her with his free arm. “Yeah, no, not poison, Jeff. She’s conscious, looking a little better than she did a minute ago. It would take too long to get a squad out here to take her into the Chillicothe E.R. I know it’s nearly ten, but can you meet us at your office? Yeah, her pupils are dilated. Keep her alert, right, okay. Listen, we’ll need blood and urine samples, because there’s an open bottle of wine on the counter, and she might have been drugged by something. Yeah, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes. She can’t just be drunk.”
“I’m not drunk,” she protested, but he ignored her as he called Vic and told him to get Mike over to take prints in the kitchen. She was able to concentrate a little better as he spoke. “No, I’ll bag the bottle, take it with me, and we’ll have the contents checked later. Can’t let it out of my sight or someone could get in here before Mike does, try to remove the evidence. I know tox tests take a lot of time, but it’s important we know what’s in her since we might be dealing with Dane’s drugs now.”
It’s important we know what’s in her. The words floated through her brain as he kept talking. Tess thought about what was in her. Sadness and regret. Memories that would not shake loose. Fear because someone had done this to her. And the need and desire for this man was in her. She might have been back here only five days, but had she cared for Gabe for years? Wanted his attention even when she was little? Felt sorry he was blamed when she was taken? But taken where? Would she ever remember who did this to her?
“Okay, Tess, we’re going to take another ride in my cruiser,” Gabe said. “Talk to me, sweetheart. Stay awake,” he insisted, rubbing her hands, one at a time, then lightly slapping her cheeks.
“The sheriff broke into a house,” she said suddenly with the urge to giggle. “And now I’m going in his police car, under arrest, under duress...I don’t know.”
“How much wine did you drink or what else?” he asked, getting them both up, then sitting her in the chair while he found the top for the bottle, put a paper napkin over it and screwed it on. Still touching the bottle only with the napkin, he put it on the table. She didn’t want to look at it, only at him.
“I can’t exactly remember,” she said, slurring her words. “I think I had bad dreams. So, what’s new, right?”
“I want you to tell me every one of your dreams.”
She felt giddy. “It means a lot when a gentleman caller asks a lady to share her dreams with him.”
“Keep talking.”
“Gabe, don’t leave me!” she cried when he walked out of the room, but he came right back with her jacket and helped her put it on.
“Don’t nod off,” he ordered when she yawned. “Did you get the door locks changed when you took this place over from Lee and Grace?”
She tried to remember. She felt spaced out. Her thought
s were all gummy. “No,” she managed to say, “but Mom changed them all after I was taken and then again after Dad left. I didn’t think to do it.”
“My fault not to ask earlier. You should have. Who knows who had keys when Lee and Grace were living here, including their dictator Monson? I’ll have to ask them.”
“If you can get near them. They have guards at Hear Ye.” She was pleased her thoughts were clearing, but it almost hurt to think.
“I know. But they’ll probably be at the farmer’s market uptown Saturday. Okay, now hang on to me. Upsa-daisy,” he said as he lifted her to her feet and steadied her with his hands on her waist.
Upsa-daisy? Why did he say that? She didn’t like that. It made her think she was a kid again and...and she did not want to remember that, even though she knew she had to.
“What good will it do to lock the door?” she asked as he made her take steps while he propped her up. He took the bottle along too. Maybe she should give up wine, at least in Cold Creek. Her legs were a little wobbly, but she was walking. “Someone could come in that window,” she added as if he didn’t get what she meant.
“I’ll put police tape over it, and we’ll get it fixed—and your locks changed—first thing in the morning. We’re going to Dr. Nelson’s. Then you’ll stay with me again.”
That sounded good to her. Though her head was clearing, her thoughts were dark. Whoever had done this wanted to scare and hurt her, maybe even worse than that.
* * *
Tess woke with a jolt. It was light. She saw an unfamiliar ceiling and room. She realized she was under a quilt on Gabe’s couch, and he was slumped in a chair he’d pulled up close. She had no shoes on but was dressed in her clothes, which must be a wrinkled mess. She started to remember. She’d been to the doctor last night after...after she’d blacked out and then Gabe came. He wasn’t dressed in his uniform now but jeans and a sweatshirt.
Shattered Secrets Page 17
