Just as I bit into a piece of toast, the doorbell rang. Mark went to see who it was and then reappeared with Officer Ken.
“Here are your keys,” Ken said, plopping them down on the table. “Your car is in the driveway. I suggest you get the car in the garage as soon as possible. The storm apparently missed us last night, but another one is heading our way. You don’t want rain getting into that busted out window,” he cautioned.
As I explained to Ken what had happened to me at Catherine’s house, Eleanor grabbed the keys and headed outside to drive the Lincoln into the garage. When she left, Kenneth told us that the officers did not find anything at Catherine’s house except for a lot of bb gun pellets on the driveway and in the garage.
“We’ve called the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department for assistance,” Ken said. “Just before I came to drop off the Lincoln, our headquarters received a call from the hospital indicating that someone had apparently paid Catherine a visit a few minutes ago and had tried to suffocate her with a pillow. This person must have heard a nurse coming and fled in a hurry because whoever it was left the pillow right on Catherine’s face!”
Chapter 25
“Do you have any idea who it is?” I asked.
“The detectives are scanning the television monitors and planning to investigate every person who entered the hospital at that time,” Ken replied. “The problem is that monitors are only placed at the hospital entrance door, not on every floor. Many people go to Grayling Hospital on a given day. It’s going to be rough. But since this is a small town, we may have some luck. We’re particularly trying to see if Edgar Humphries entered the hospital today. That crazy man won’t leave Catherine alone, but we can’t find any evidence to pin anything on him. And he is so elusive that we don’t know where he stays. Mostly, I think he goes from homeless shelter to shelter. During the day, he stays in bars or walks the streets and alleyways. He manages to make ends meet with his little Social Security disability check.”
“What does he look like?” I asked.
“Grubby,” Ken said, with a look of disgust on his face. “He’s up there in years but looks younger than his age. He’s got brown and gray hair and sometimes sports a beard. Believe me, you would notice him with that unkempt beard. Edgar’s got small dark beady eyes and bushy brown eyebrows. You could pick him out easily in a crowd. The problem is he never stays in one place. He is always on the move, searching for who knows what. And when he walks around, he talks to himself. It seems like he has to think out loud. And you know what’s the scary part?” Ken asked.
“What?” Mark asked.
“Sometimes when Edgar is in his female personality mode, all dressed in female clothing, Edgar doesn’t even know what the female personality is doing or thinking. It’s like the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing,” Ken responded.
“Really,” I chimed in.
“Yeah, we caught him numerous times outside Catherine’s house snooping around, and we have arrested him for trespassing when he actually goes onto her property,” Ken explained. “But he never has any recollection of what he did when he was dressed that way. I personally don’t dislike the guy. He’s just strange, that’s all. And if his other personality is doing these terrible things, then we’ve got a real psychotic on our hands.”
“Why don’t you just arrest Edgar?” I asked.
Ken chuckled. “I’m afraid that’s not how it works. We have to have evidence that he has done something wrong. Just because we believe that a man dressed as a woman is peeping through your window at Amber and Tally does not mean that it is Edgar. We need to catch him in the act. We would never be able to get a conviction unless we had something concrete against him. Right now, all we have is speculation,” Ken said.
“And what about Catherine’s house?” I asked. “I thought I saw a shadow of a person wearing a hat in the upstairs bedroom window looking down at me when Mark and I were driving away from Catherine’s house this afternoon.”
“I saw the same shadow, Celia, when I was outside walking the perimeter of the yard. But when we went to investigate upstairs, all we found in the window was a hat rack with one of Catherine’s hats on it. That’s what could have been the shadow you thought you saw.”
“Oh,” I said. I was not convinced.
Ken moved toward the sink, glanced out the window and said, “Anyway, we are looking for Edgar at this moment, not to arrest him, but to question him. Of course, if his other personality was the one lurking around Catherine’s house, he won’t know anything about that. If Edgar’s other personality had shot at you with a bb gun, Edgar would not know about that either. The only thing we can hope to find is that Edgar’s fingerprints match those that we lifted off the window panes at your house earlier and on the Lincoln. Every police officer in Crawford County is on high alert for Edgar. We have circulated his photo around the entire department. The Crawford County Sheriff’s Department is helping out as well.”
Stone silence settled upon the small kitchen table.
This whole issue with Edgar and his female personality was making my head pound. I wondered what Mark thought of all of that. He and I had not talked much about Edgar.
Ken glanced down at his watch and said, “I better get going. Henry is waiting outside to give me a lift to the hospital. We’re going to see what’s happening with Catherine. The other detectives are already there.”
Chapter 26
When Ken left, I asked Mark what he thought about Edgar.
“I’m not sure that he is the one who is doing all of this. He might be somehow unwittingly involved, but not quite, that’s my guess,” he said. “It’s just a hunch.”
I gave an audible sigh. What did that comment mean? How could a person be involved in a kidnapping, but not quite? Better yet, how could a person be unwittingly involved? Mark never made any sense. I was beginning to feel confused. I wished that Mark would just come out and say exactly what was on his mind. He was holding back too much.
“You talk in riddles,” I said. “I think Edgar is the one who kidnapped Amber, and he probably had something to do with my mother’s disappearance, as well. Edgar was probably the person who shot the bb gun at Cuddy Boy and at me and then chased me into the woods.”
Mark sat at the table across from me with his hands folded across his chest. He looked awfully handsome with his curious brown eyes gazing at me as I talked. His brown hair was combed back away from his perfect face.
“You know what I think we need to do?” Mark asked.
“What?”
“We need to find Sylvester, Catherine’s former husband.”
“You mean Peter’s father?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
Mark tilted his head back in silent reflection, pressed his lips into a thin line, and raised an eyebrow. “Well, we can’t actually question Catherine. She’s in a coma and is in the hospital. We can’t question Edgar. He is a lunatic and is on the run. Besides, one of his personalities does not know what the other personality is doing. So we will have to settle for the next best thing. We need to go and pay Sylvester Singleton a visit. He might be able to shed some light on what occurred in Ohio. If we can gather some information from him about the incident involving his other son Brandon, perhaps we might be a step closer to finding out what’s going on. I have a hunch that all of the incidents are related, even the events from decades ago that resulted in Brandon’s death.”
“Sure,” I said “That makes sense. Anything beats sitting at home waiting to hear from the police. Brandon was only a child when he was murdered, and Edgar happened to have been at Catherine’s house in Ohio the night of the tragedy. And Edgar located Catherine in Michigan years ago and has been stalking her, and now someone tries to hurt her. Yes, I see a connection,” I said, nodding my head.
Mark rose from his chair.
“But how do the incidents involving Brandon’s death and Catherine’s injury relate to Amber’s disappearance?” I asked.
> Mark scratched his head. “I feel that they are connected somehow, especially because we learned that when Catherine regained slight consciousness, she said, ‘run, Amber, run.’ Catherine was an eyewitness to whatever happened to Amber. And don’t forget that in this small town, crimes rarely occur. It’s very bizarre that Amber is abducted and Catherine is left for dead at the stream only a few hours later.”
I nodded unconsciously.
I was beginning to feel embarrassed about having doubted Mark and for having thought that he could have had something to do with any of the episodes. Actually, I wanted desperately to believe that Mark did not have anything to do with the incidents. I was just perplexed about how he seemed to know so much about the events.
His knowledge about my exact whereabouts in the woods behind Catherine’s house baffled me to no end. But perhaps I was too suspicious, too distrustful. Maybe I needed to loosen up a bit and let Mark lead the way in the search for Amber. Possibly I was too close to the situation to make intelligent decisions since Amber, after all, was my sister, my flesh and blood. All sorts of thoughts bounced around in my mind.
Mark had a very gentle side to him. He had driven me home the night that Amber disappeared and brought me doughnuts the following morning. He had just made me toast and poured me orange juice. When I was cold and distraught in the woods, it was he who rescued me, wrapped his jacket around my shoulders, and led me to safety.
Above all, I had secretly admired him all year long at school from afar, and now he was standing in my house on the other side of the kitchen table.
Should I just ignore all of my bizarre doubts? Maybe Mark was really trying to help me. If he was up to no good, then why would he tell me that he did not think that Edgar was directly involved in Amber’s kidnapping? If Mark was up to no good, he would want to detract attention away from himself by blaming Edgar, whether or not Edgar was the culprit.
But if Mark knew I was suspicious of him, then the more that he blamed Edgar, the more suspicious he would look. I shook my head. I was so perplexed. And yet, deep down, I trusted Mark. Perhaps my being attracted to him clouded my judgment, though. With Mom having disappeared, Amber missing, and Phyllis in the hospital, Mark was the only person who I could really talk to.
I glanced at the clock on the wall above the sink. It was already two o’clock in the afternoon. So much time had already passed, and I had not accomplished anything. In a few hours, it would be almost a full day since Amber disappeared. I was no closer to finding my sister now than I had been immediately after she was kidnapped. I did not know how much longer my nerves would hold up.
Chapter 27
As I set my plate and beverage glass in the sink, Mark browsed the telephone book.
“Do you recall which nursing home Sylvester Singleton is in?” Mark asked. “I thought the officers said he was in a place in Gaylord, but I want to be sure.”
“Yeah, I recall them saying that Peter admitted his father into a nursing home in Gaylord so that he could be close to him,” I said.
Mark flipped through the pages of the book, jotted down a few digits, snatched the telephone, and punched in a number.
“Hello, may I find out if you have a resident there by the name of Sylvester Singleton?” Mark asked, holding the receiver tightly to his ear. His eyes opened wide as he listened to the speaker at the other end. “Do you have that telephone number?” he asked and then began scribbling down some numbers.
“What’s going on?” I asked after Mark hung up.
“Sylvester Singleton is not at the Grand Gaylord Nursing Home anymore. They have moved him to a hospice.”
“He’s dying?” I asked.
“I suppose so. Or else why would he be in a hospice?”
“Did they say what medical ailment he has?” I asked.
“No. Besides, I don’t think they can reveal that because of privacy concerns.”
“Did they say that he is in a condition to talk?”
“No, I didn’t ask.”
I glanced at Mark in frustration. “Well, I hope he is not too far away. Let’s go see him,” I said.
“The hospice is only a mile farther from the nursing home,” Mark said. “But the nurse told me that visiting hours don’t start there for the evening until five. It’s about two o’clock now. It’ll take us roughly forty minutes to get there.”
“Oh, I think the anticipation is going to get to me more than anything else. I keep expecting the police to call and tell us they have found something, but that has not happened, of course,” I said.
Mark smiled, rose from his chair, and told me that his family owned a beach house right on the lake in Grayling where we could spend some time before heading to Gaylord.
I gave a crooked smile. “I don’t think I need to take a mini vacation right now when my life is such a mess. I don’t know if I will ever see Amber again, or Mom, for that matter,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Mark pleaded. “I go there when I need to think and get a fresh perspective on things. Sometimes just being at a different location helps me to sort things in my mind,” he said.
“Is that why you have such good intuition?” I asked, not expecting a reply.
“Possibly,” he said with a smirk on his face.
I hesitated for a moment and then decided to go to the beach house with Mark. I was so depressed that I felt that things could not get any worse. Boy was I wrong.
Chapter 28
After Eleanor agreed to stay at the house to keep an eye on Tally for a few hours, Mark and I slipped into his pickup and headed for the beach house in the neighboring town. I could tell that he was trying to cheer me up, take my mind off of things. He told a few jokes, and when that did not brighten my mood, he started chatting about school and about how he intended to major in biology.
“I would love to eventually work for a pharmaceutical company developing vaccines and drugs,” Mark said, glancing over at me.
“Actually, I enjoy the study of genetics,” I said. “I’m not exactly sure about my future plans, but I would like to do genetic research like my mother had done.”
Mark roared with laughter.
“Like mother, like daughter. I can see the headlines now,” he said. “Celia Kristine Lawrence inherits Victoria Lawrence’s predisposition to enjoy genetics research. The mother and daughter scientists are immersed in test tubes in the laboratory.”
I threw my head back and chuckled without intending to do so.
“Hey, where did your mother attend college?”
“Wayne State University in Detroit.”
“I heard that university has a great reputation for its science program.”
“It does. Mom graduated from there twenty years ago, but the science program now is better than ever.”
“I heard that, too.” he said.
As we passed through a heavily wooded area, Mark appeared to be deep in thought.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked in a curious tone.
“Oh, I’d be interested in knowing what type of research your mother was working on right before she, I mean, when she moved away,” Mark said.
I gave a weary sigh. Mark did not have to try to hide the fact that my mother either abandoned us or was kidnapped. He did not have to put things in nice terms to make me feel better.
“Mark, you shouldn’t worry about offending me because of what happened to my mother. She did not leave me and my sisters. I refuse to believe that she would ever do that. I personally believe foul play was involved regardless of what the police think. Now that Amber has vanished, I am beginning to feel that there is a connection between Mom’s disappearance and Amber’s.”
He pursed his lips, tightened his grip on the wheel, and tapped the right turn signal. “You don’t have to pitch that theory to me, Celia,” he said in a quiet tone. “Ever since I read the article in the Crawford Daily News about your mother’s disappearance a year ago, I felt that we were not getting the whole story. I did not know
your mother, but something about her abandoning her children simply did not ring true back then, and it still does not ring true, especially now in light of what’s happened to Amber.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled to myself. At least Mark believed me. It was refreshing to know that he had not bought the story about Mom abandoning me and Amber and Tally so that she could skip town with a fellow scientist.
Mark put his hand on my shoulder, pulled me toward him. “And now that I have gotten to know you, I refuse to believe that your mother would just abandon you. She raised a wonderful daughter, and I bet that the apple does not fall too far from the tree,” he said.
I grinned widely and my eyes welled up with tears. This was the first time since Mom left that someone who did not even know her had said something nice about her.
Besides Eleanor, who had been Mom’s friend for over twenty years, I did not feel that anyone would understand. Phyllis, Mom’s own sister, did not comprehend that Mom was a sensitive individual whose children meant more to her than anything in the world. Phyllis was always making snide remarks about Mom taking off with her scientist lover to God knows where. But now Mark understood, or at least he said that he did.
“Thanks. That’s the first time that someone has come to my mother’s defense since she left,” I said.
“I don’t think your mother left on her own accord!” he said, matter of fact. “There is a world of difference between someone having to depart suddenly and someone leaving because she wants to take off. And for some reason, I always felt that your mother would never leave unless there was a darn good reason.”
“So you think she actually left versus being kidnapped?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
He paused for a moment and appeared to be mulling over what to say. “Well, the newspaper article that I had read said that your mother added Phyllis as a joint account holder on all of her bank accounts just a couple of days before she left,” he said. “That would lead me to believe that she knew she would be leaving and wanted Phyllis to be able to take care of you and your sisters financially.”
Hand Me Down Evil (Hand Me Down Trilogy) Page 7
