She laid a suntanned hand on her grandmother’s arm. ‘‘Gramma, if you would just tell me what this is about. Is it because we have relatives who have been in prison? You can’t be ashamed of things you can’t control. Look at how many people around here claim to be related to Blackbeard,’’ she said.
Carley’s effort to get her grandmother to smile failed. Gramma looked at Carley.
‘‘Ashamed? Oh, child, you just don’t know. Why do you have to be so stubborn?’’
‘‘She gets it from you, Mother,’’ said Ellen. She straightened up and tried to put on a smile. ‘‘Where are my manners? This is my mother, Sarah Wallace. Mamma, this is Diane Fallon and Agent Kingsley,’’ she said.
Diane and Kingsley took out their badges again and showed them to the grandmother.
‘‘FBI?’’ she said.
‘‘How did you find out I had company coming to talk about our family tree?’’ said Carley.
‘‘You told your friend Jenny and she told her mother, who told me,’’ her grandmother said. ‘‘Does it matter?’’
‘‘It does if I want to plug up the leak,’’ said Carley.
‘‘Carley,’’ chided her mother gently. She looked at Diane and Kingsley. ‘‘I can’t imagine what you must think of us.’’
They smiled at her.
‘‘Mrs. Wallace,’’ said Diane. ‘‘We’re looking for a woman who has escaped from prison. She was there for killing her husband and she has killed others. We don’t know her real name, but we think she is a cousin of your daughter. That would make her your niece, wouldn’t it?’’
Sarah Wallace sat without saying anything, looking less frightened and more angry.
‘‘Mamma, is this about your sister?’’ said Ellen Volker.
‘‘Don’t you mention her name,’’ said Mrs. Wallace.
‘‘It’s been so long I’m not sure I remember,’’ said Ellen Volker. ‘‘Mamma has a sister she hasn’t spoken to in over thirty years.’’
‘‘Shh!’’ she spat to her daughter. ‘‘Do the two of you have to have such big mouths?’’
‘‘Mamma!’’ said her daughter. ‘‘I’ve never seen you like this, least ways, not in front of strangers.’’
‘‘Mrs. Wallace,’’ said Kingsley. ‘‘This is very important. We have to find this woman. The United States Marshals already know that you are a relative, and they will be coming here too.’’
‘‘Marshals?’’ said Carley and Ellen together.
‘‘Gramma, you’d better talk,’’ said Carley.
‘‘Look what you’ve done,’’ said Sarah Wallace. ‘‘I’m trying to protect you and look what you’ve done.’’
‘‘Mother! Maybe if you hadn’t been so secretive and told us why you were so set against her genealogy research, Carley would have understood. She’s an adult now and you can’t treat her, or me, like a child and keep secrets that you say are for our protection. If we’re in danger, we need to know so we can do something. For heaven’s sake, don’t tell us we’re in danger and then not tell us what we’re supposed to look out for. You are being ridiculous and mean about this. Talk to these people.’’
Sarah stared at her daughter. Diane got the idea that it took a lot to get Ellen Volker mad, but when she got mad, her family paid attention. The grandmother shook her head. ‘‘Maybe you’re right.’’
She poured herself a glass of tea and took a drink as if it were whisky.
‘‘I have a sister, Jerusha, who’s nine years younger than me. I don’t know if you remember her, Ellen.’’
‘‘Yes, I remember. I was a teenager when you two had the falling out,’’ she said.
‘‘Falling out? Is that what you would call it? I suppose I should have told you the story a long time ago. If I had, we wouldn’t be here arguing.’’
‘‘Well, tell us now, Mamma.’’
‘‘Jerusha married a man named Alain Delaflote. Our parents didn’t like him or his family, and neither did I. But Alain had good looks and money, and that was all that mattered to my sister. Of course, she was beautiful too, all blond curls and Scarlett O’Hara waist. She married him in a big wedding—long gown, doves. Lavish does not begin to describe it. I thought it was embarrassing.’’
‘‘Do you have pictures?’’ asked Carley.
‘‘I have nothing to remind me of her,’’ said her grandmother. ‘‘She is dead to me.’’
Carley looked wide-eyed at her grandmother. ‘‘What happened?’’ she whispered.
‘‘If you’ll be patient, I’ll tell you,’’ said her grandmother.
Diane wanted her to hurry and get it out, but she could see Kingsley leaning forward, hanging on every word.
‘‘Alain was in the shipping business, as was his father before him and his father before him. They have been around these parts forever and most people think they are some of the most respectable people on the Outer Banks. Little do they know what they have living among them.
‘‘My husband lost his job one time—he was an accountant before he retired—and Alain offered him a position in his office doing bookkeeping. My sister never let me forget their largesse, as she called it. I can hear her now, the way she pronounced it, always more accented than the rest of the words in the sentence, as if she were stuck on one sheet of her worda-day calendar.’’
Gramma took a sip of tea and grabbed a chocolate chip cookie. She ate all of it before she resumed her story.
‘‘My sister got pregnant. It wasn’t easy for her. She had triplets.’’ Sarah smiled. ‘‘Cutest little things you have ever seen and just as identical as you could imagine. She had to keep colored ribbons tied to their wrists to tell them apart. I helped her with them. That was about the only time we got along was taking care of those babies. Alain was indifferent to them. He would pat their heads, smile when someone complimented them, but I didn’t see any real love. Not like your daddies loved you two.’’
‘‘Were their names Iris, Lily, and Rose?’’ asked Diane.
Sarah nodded. ‘‘Yes, they were. Iris, Rose, and Lily Delaflote.’’
The sun went behind a cloud and it got a little cool. Diane noticed that a few mosquitoes were flying about.
‘‘One day by accident my husband saw one of the transactions and found out what kind of cargo Alain Delaflote dealt in,’’ said Sarah. ‘‘That knowledge changed our lives.’’
Chapter 47
Sarah eyed her granddaughter for several seconds. Finally Gramma reached out a hand and touched Carley’s smooth, tanned arm and rubbed it.
‘‘That’s why I was trying to protect you,’’ she said. ‘‘I didn’t want you to ever be kidnapped and sold into slavery.’’
Carley clearly wasn’t expecting that. Her laugh was almost a musical giggle. ‘‘Oh, Gramma, they don’t have slavery anymore. This is the twenty-first century,’’ she said.
Sarah Wallace’s gaze lingered on her granddaughter a moment longer. She frowned. ‘‘You ask those two if there’s still such a thing as slaves,’’ she said.
Carley looked over at Diane and Kingsley with an indulgent smile. The kind arrogance of youth, thought Diane as she took a breath.
‘‘Twelve point three million people are enslaved around the world in forced labor, forced military service, or forced sexual servitude. The largest category is sexual enslavement,’’ said Diane.
She paused as Carley and her mother, Ellen, stared at her. The grandmother quietly sipped her tea.
‘‘I used to be a human rights investigator,’’ Diane added.
Diane watched Carley’s face change from a smile to that openmouthed, round-eyed expression she often saw when she gave those statistics to people who were unaware of some of the very bad things in the world. Diane hated that she was taking away a little piece of Carley’s innocent idealism.
‘‘Is that true?’’ Carley whispered. ‘‘Really, there are slaves in the world? Not in the United States, though?’’
Here goes another piece of
idealism, thought Diane.
‘‘There are about ten thousand people enslaved today in the United States. About forty-nine percent are in sexual servitude; the rest are in some form of forced labor.’’
‘‘That’s what Alain dealt in,’’ said Gramma, setting her iced tea down with a clunk on the glass-topped table. ‘‘The community around the Outer Banks thought he was a public-spirited man. They gave him awards for his community service.’’ She snorted.
‘‘Public service. What the man did was sell teenage girls. He would have these extravagant parties for girls from orphanages and homes for delinquent girls. He would always have teenagers, nothing else, strictly teenagers. His official line was that they were harder to place than younger children and needed the extra help. Sometimes these parties would host parents looking for children to adopt. But you see, these prospective parents were really people shopping for slaves. They would pick out what they wanted, place the order with him, and he would fill it—with the help of some corrupt officials, of course. Sometimes the places he got the girls didn’t have the kind of girl somebody wanted, and local girls would disappear after some of these parties. Not right away—he knew that would attract attention—but in a few weeks or a few months. Sometimes it was a young tourist who would go missing. Officially, the parents were told their daughters drowned in the ocean or ran away. I know now that just about every one that went missing was kidnapped by my brother-in-law.
‘‘Like an idiot, when my husband told me what he discovered, I told my sister what Alain was doing. I told her she had to take her children and leave. She just laughed at me and said, ‘He wouldn’t sell his own children, silly.’ I just stared at her. I couldn’t believe she knew about it. I thought she misunderstood what I said. I said, ‘Jerusha, he’s selling the kids he’s supposed to be helping.’ She got that look she got when she disagreed with me. She would put her head down and glare at me. Then she told me if God had blessed these children, He wouldn’t have taken their parents. I couldn’t believe she said it. I didn’t know how to respond.
‘‘The next day, Alain came to my house. I remember it like yesterday. Ellen was fifteen. It was summer—1975. Ellen and her friend Laney had just got back from seeing Jaws. They were wearing shorts and sun tops, sitting in the grass talking and giggling. I was on the porch reading a magazine. Alain came up on the porch all friendly. He didn’t threaten or anything like that; he just looked over at the two of them and said how nubile Ellen and Laney were, how they were almost ready for plucking.
‘‘A chill went up my spine like I’ve never felt before. I couldn’t say anything. All I could do was sit there staring at him. He just turned and walked away. That evening my husband was late, and I was scared to death. Scared that they killed him. When he finally did come in, I told him we were leaving the Outer Banks, I didn’t care if we had to wash toilets or panhandle for the rest of our lives, I wasn’t staying here. He agreed to go and we moved to Tennessee. It was a good move. We did well there. Earl and me both found good jobs. After a while he opened his own office. I have never again to this day laid eyes on my sister,’’ said Sarah.
They all sat in silence for several moments. Carley looked at the thin, gold chain bracelet on her arm and back up at her grandmother. She put a hand over hers. It was Ellen who spoke first.
‘‘I remember moving that summer. I was so mad at you and Dad for taking me away from school and my friends. Why didn’t you tell me? I never understood why we up and moved with no warning.’’
‘‘You were just fifteen, Ellen. What was I going to tell you?’’ Sarah said. She looked at Diane and Kingsley. ‘‘You said a woman escaped from prison. Is this her?’’ She picked up the photograph and looked at it. ‘‘She looks kind of like my sister. Is she one of the triplets?’’
‘‘We believe it’s Iris,’’ said Diane.
‘‘You said she is a murderer?’’ she said.
‘‘She was convicted of murder in Georgia, sent to prison, and recently escaped,’’ said Kingsley. ‘‘We believe she was sold by her father when she was about fifteen. We think what she went through turned her into a serial killer.’’
The grandmother looked shocked. Frankly, Diane found it hard to believe that anything about her sister’s family would shock her at this point.
‘‘Poor little Iris.’’ She shook her head. ‘‘I told my sister. I told her. She wouldn’t listen. Stupid, stupid woman. They were the cutest little girls, just like three little peas in a pod.’’
‘‘Do you know what happened to any of the family?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘I never tried to find out. I never wanted to be in their crosshairs again. I was afraid to move back to this area, but Earl wanted to retire here and Ellen had married a boy from here. I just prayed they’d forgot about us and we would never run across them. We never have.’’
‘‘How old would Alain Delaflote be now?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘Let’s see, he was five years older than my sister; that would make him about sixty-five. Young enough to still be in business,’’ Sarah said. ‘‘Can you arrest him? I wouldn’t want him coming after Carley. She’s a little older than he likes, but...’’
‘‘We will certainly take a careful look at them,’’ said Kingsley. ‘‘We will not tell him you talked to us. We won’t mention you or your family.’’
‘‘Thank you for that,’’ Sarah said.
‘‘Do you know where they live?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘Like I said, I have never tried to find them. They used to live out on Mosshazel Island. Back when they moved out there it was the only privately owned island on the coast. You follow Highway 70 about thirty miles beyond Beaufort to a little village called Croker. They had their own private ferry used to run from there to the island. It might still be there. They had one of those big white-columned houses in the middle of the island. There was a little village on the island called East Croker. Not much to it.’’
Kingsley rose as if to leave. ‘‘Thank you for speaking with us,’’ he said. ‘‘I can see it wasn’t easy, but we really need to find Iris. We’ll investigate the whole Delaflote family and look into the lost children.’’
‘‘Do you think you can find any of them?’’ she asked.
There was so much hope in her eyes that Diane hated to say no, I doubt we have a chance in hell. She didn’t know what to say.
Kingsley spoke first. ‘‘I don’t know. But Iris escaped from her captors. There is always hope.’’
They left Carley’s house, thanking the three women and taking cookies Carley’s mother wrapped up for them.
‘‘Carley’s life changed today,’’ said Diane.
‘‘It did, didn’t it? I think things are better out in the open. At least now she knows to avoid anyone named Delaflote,’’ said Kingsley. ‘‘So, do you want to ride out to the island?’’
‘‘Not without backup,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Are you nuts?’’
Kingsley laughed. ‘‘I guess you’re right. It’s exciting to be so close. Let’s look for a motel near this place— what did she say, Croker? We’ll call the marshals. Maybe they’re finished with chasing their wild goose and will hurry out here.’’
Diane followed Highway 70 south to Morehead City and on to Beaufort. It was a little over fifty miles. She wanted to find a motel in Beaufort. According to her GPS maps it was the last large city they would pass near. But Kingsley wanted to get closer.
‘‘Why?’’ asked Diane. ‘‘We aren’t going over to the island. You heard what she said; you have to take a ferry. That means there’s no quick getaway in case of emergency.’’
‘‘I know, but there are other tourist towns beyond Beaufort. They will have motels,’’ said Kingsley.
Diane threw up her hands and agreed. Beaufort was a little more than an hour’s drive from New Bern. She drove about twelve miles beyond Beaufort. It wasn’t a straight drive. This part of North Carolina was a water world. They crossed large rivers and small
creeks and passed through many small tourist towns.
Many places Diane would have liked to stop and just look at the scenery—the water, the boats, the ships. The low green landscape was less lush than the vegetation she was used to in Rosewood; the trees weren’t as tall. Nor was it as subtropical as the barrier islands of Georgia. It was beautiful away from the towns, very peaceful looking. She would have stopped to look, but she was tired from their long trip. Maybe they could find a good place to watch the sun set over the sound. Sunsets here were supposed to be pretty spectacular.
‘‘You can pull in at this convenience store ahead and we can stock up,’’ said Kingsley.
‘‘You don’t want to find a restaurant?’’ said Diane.
‘‘Not really. Do you? I’d rather just get some snacks and find a place to stay.’’
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