by Lisa Gardner
“You mean Detective Chenney has some questions.”
“Sure, you can wait for Chenney, but he's gonna be in your room for at least an hour. By then it'll be six, your mom could be home anytime . . . I don't think you want to have this discussion then.”
“Oh.”
David pushed the advantage, not wanting to give her time to think. He strode forward brusquely. “We'll start with the standard drill. Get through it all in a jiffy.”
Melanie still looked hesitant, but in the face of his curt determination, she finally nodded.
“We got a pretty good idea how the person got into the house,” David stated. “Now we need to know why and we need to know who.”
Melanie shook her head. “Other than Larry Digger, I have no idea who would connect my family with Russell Lee Holmes after all these years. My parents don't discuss Texas much.”
“Why not?”
She gave him an exasperated look. “I imagine because it hurts like hell.”
“Twenty years later?”
“Hey, Mr. Reese, when your daughter is kidnapped and murdered, you can get over it in twenty years. My parents haven't.”
David grunted, sufficiently chastised. “Fine. Let's start with the altar, then—it tells us a few things. For starters, this was an intimate act. Not just in your house, but in your bedroom. Not just in your bedroom, but at the foot of your bed. Then there are the items themselves. The pony and scrap of fabric that appear to be from Meagan Stokes, the first daughter. That seems to be a very deliberate slight against you, the second daughter. Then there is the use of scented candles. Do you know much about the olfactory senses, Melanie?”
“You mean other than to smell?”
“There's more to it than that. The sense of smell is directly wired to the limbic system, which is one of the oldest parts of the brain. An important part of the brain too. It's the part that helps you love and helps you hate. And”—he looked her in the eye—“it helps you remember. Exposing someone to a strong fragrance linked with a certain time or place is one of the most effective ways to evoke a memory.”
He saw that Melanie grasped his meaning immediately, because she sat down hard on her brother's bed. “The gardenias, the flashbacks. It was planned, wasn't it? Shit. It was exactly what the person wanted.” She suddenly sounded furious. “I will not be manipulated in my own house. I will not!”
David regarded her curiously. “Did you say flashbacks? As in more than one?”
She looked cornered. “Fine, fine, I'd been starting to see little things. Not much. A black void, a little girl's voice. Nothing substantial.”
“Uh-huh. When did it start?”
“I don't know. Six months ago.”
“Six months ago. Of course.”
“Of course?” Now she was scowling. “What do you mean, of course?”
“I mean six months ago was right about when your brother announced he was gay. Six months ago was right about when Boston's most perfect family started to fall apart.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Caterers gossip,” David said offhandedly. “Think about it. The Stokeses move to Boston, adopt a new daughter, and for the next twenty years life is just grand, right? Then comes Brian's announcement and things around here start to fall apart. Your father isn't speaking to him, right? Your mom is distraught over the situation and starts drinking again. And you suddenly start having flashbacks.”
“It's not like that,” Melanie protested. “One son coming out of the closet doesn't cause all that.”
“Maybe not in most families,” David said matter-of-factly, “but in a family with the Stokeses' history? Come on. You're a bright person, you can put this together. Your mom and dad have already lost one child. You have already lost a whole family. When your father practically disowned your brother, don't you think it hit all the same triggers? Didn't you and your mom and probably your dear old dad start to feel like everything was falling apart again? Old insecurities, old fears . . .”
Melanie looked haggard. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “Why don't you just fucking cut out my heart?”
“I'm not trying to cut out your heart. But someone is trying to get you to remember.”
“But why? Who?”
“Someone who knows what happened to Meagan,” David said. “Someone who could recover the toy she had with her the day she died. Someone who knows enough about you, Melanie, to realize that the scent of gardenias would trigger a memory of Meagan.”
Slowly Melanie nodded, following his train of thought. “Larry Digger,” she said savagely.
“No. Larry Digger doesn't know shit. If he had proof, he'd already have written his story and sold it to the highest bidder. He wouldn't be messing around with votive candles.”
“Russell Lee Holmes?”
“Executed and buried. Come on, you know who I'm talking about.”
She was immediately defensive. “No, I don't! My family has nothing to do with this!”
“Larry Digger alleged that there was more to them than met the eye—”
“Larry Digger is a drunk!”
“Larry Digger knew them in Texas, which is more than you can say. Why was your father in the ER the night you were found? How is it that you can remember Meagan Stokes? You gotta have some connection with Russell Lee Holmes, and according to Larry Digger, your parents know that. Your parents didn't adopt a random little girl, but the daughter of Russell Lee Holmes.”
“That makes no sense!” She'd risen off the bed. She was nearly nose to nose with him now, and neither one of them backed down. “My parents loved Meagan! They would not adopt the daughter of her killer!”
“How do you know? How do you know?”
He thought she was going to hit him. Maybe she thought she would too. The air had gotten too hot and too tense. Then her gaze dropped to his lips, and the air became tangled with other, unwanted emotions. Her lips thinned. She drew back furiously.
She said in a cold voice, “All right, David. Let's do it your way. My beloved parents really conspired to adopt Russell Lee Holmes's daughter. Maybe in a sick and twisted way they felt he owed them a child. I was drugged so I wouldn't remember where I had come from, and my father stayed in the ER, and voilà, everything went as planned. I got my new family, they got a new daughter. Everyone's happy. Right?”
“Yeah?” David was suspicious. He didn't think for a moment that she believed any of this.
“Then,” she continued relentlessly, “twenty years later, they magically do what? Suddenly announce the truth? Or even more outlandish, plant an altar in my room in the dim hope that I'll remember and figure out who I am and what they did? Come on! First you're saying they conspired to adopt a killer's daughter, then you're saying they conspired to reveal their conspiracy. Give me a break.”
David frowned. He said grudgingly, “That doesn't make much sense.”
“No kidding.”
“Unless—”
“No!”
“Unless it's just one person trying to reveal the truth. Think about it. Six months ago this whole family was turned upside down. There's a rift between your father and brother, a rift between your mother and father, and even tension between you and Brian. It seems to me that family loyalties and dynamics are shifting as we speak. Maybe that's the key. Maybe the last six months finally gave someone incentive to come forward with the truth of what happened all those years ago. It gave someone incentive to call Larry Digger. How about that?”
Melanie looked mutinous, she didn't have a quick retort. The last six months had changed everything, and she knew it.
“We should run through all your family members,” David said.
“No.”
“You do it with me or you do it with Chenney. Your mom could come home at any time.”
“You know, you can be a real son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, but I'm the son of a bitch who noticed when you were being dragged out of your own house by a seedy-looking
stranger. And I'm the son of a bitch who came running when you passed out in your hallway. Not too bad for a son of a bitch.”
His voice sounded more belligerent than he'd intended, and Melanie turned away, looking troubled.
“No,” she said at last. “You're not bad.”
He shifted from foot to foot, slightly mollified but also self-conscious. Popularity wasn't in his job description. Results were.
“We're a very private family,” Melanie said after a moment. “My parents have suffered enough. I don't want you to think of them as criminals.”
“I know, I promise to bear that in mind. Now let's start with your father and brother. It's common knowledge that your father has cut your brother from his will. Maybe that made your brother angry, gave him an ax to grind?”
“Brian would not do this. I won't pretend that he and my father have an easy relationship, but if Brian wanted to hurt Dad, he wouldn't use Meagan Stokes—it hurts him too much. You saw Brian when he walked into my room. He's even more shaken up than I am. For God's sake, he just saw his little sister's toy from twenty-five years ago. The little sister I know he thinks he failed.”
“He's an intense guy.”
“David, his younger sister was kidnapped and murdered. He was nine when it happened, which is old enough to understand what's going on but not old enough to do anything about it. Meagan's murder was a traumatic chapter for this family, okay? If they were all perfectly well adjusted after that, then they would be odd.”
David didn't comment. Personally he thought the Stokeses were a little beyond odd.
“What about your mom? Sounds like she didn't care for Harper's dismissal of her son. She resumed drinking—”
“Yes, which is a problem that started when Meagan was kidnapped! Meagan's murder hurt her worst of all, David. She's still trying to get her life together. There are nights I find her downstairs, touching that oil painting as if she can feel her daughter's cheek. There are weeks you can just see it in her eyes, that endless wondering of what she could've done differently or how she could've been a better mother. I know there are times she looks at Brian and me and is simply terrified. Don't pin this on my mother, David. She's already paid her dues.”
“Seems the whole family's always looking out for her, a grown woman.”
“We love her! We worry about her!”
“And you don't love your dad?”
“That's different. My father is capable of taking care of himself. My mom—”
“Is troubled,” David supplied flatly. “Depression, drinking. Anxiety attacks. Patricia Stokes may be a great mom, even a loving mom, but she's not going to win a most stable person of the year award.”
“My mom is a good woman, David. She loves us very much. She just . . . she just misses Meagan.”
David arched a brow, holding Melanie's stare for a long time. So she meant what she said about her mom. David continued down the list.
“And your father? How does he feel about all this?”
“Oh, Dad is Dad.” For the first time, Melanie relaxed. “He's a man's man, laughs when he feels like crying and would never go to the hospital himself unless the bone was protruding from the skin. Takes his role as a family provider very seriously and is positively intense about looking after our welfare—you know, the man's turf. You probably understand him better than I do.”
“Does that include him disinheriting his own son?”
Melanie grimaced. “Dad's not good at admitting he's wrong.” Then in a level voice, she said, “My father is a fixer, David. He fixes people, he fixes problems. Unfortunately, it's hard to fix emotions like grief and remorse and guilt. I know there are many things about my mom he just doesn't get, and Brian's announcement caught him totally off guard. In my father's world, your firstborn son does not announce he's gay. He just needs time to accept it. He really is a good father.”
“He prides himself on his income.”
“He does very well.”
“Does he support the family too well?”
Melanie frowned. “I don't know what you mean.”
David made a show of shrugging. “What does a Beacon Street town house like this cost? One million? Two million? And then there are the furnishings, the cars, the vacation homes. The artwork, the antiques, the silk curtains. Awfully nice life even for a doctor.”
Melanie's guard was up now, her face shuttering. “I don't think my family's finances are relevant.”
“Most crimes are committed for love or money. And Larry Digger commented that in Texas, your parents lived better than they should've.”
“Larry Digger is jealous,” Melanie said firmly. “That's all.”
David waited, let the silence drag out. She didn't budge. Who knew what the Stokeses were really like? But David decided they had a helluva daughter in Melanie.
Or was that toughness courtesy of Russell Lee Holmes?
Shit. David had just given himself the chills.
He returned to the Stokes family members and friends. “What about William Sheffield? How did you two meet?”
“He works with my father. Dad brought him home for dinner.” Her lips curved dryly. “Oh, the conspiracy.”
“I heard him talk last night,” David commented. “Sounded like he was from Texas, which makes a lot of former Texans in this house.”
“Sure. That's why he and Dad originally started talking. Two expatriate Texans in a Boston hospital. If you ever moved to Texas, you'd probably befriend the first Bostonian you met.”
“Yeah, but would I marry him off to my daughter?”
Melanie stiffened. “That's ancient history.”
“Does that mean he ended it and not you?”
“The ending,” she said in a steely voice, “was mutual.”
“How mutual?”
“I found him in bed with another woman, David. That pretty much seemed a hint.”
David was startled. Weasely William Sheffield cheating on Melanie Stokes? Christ, he was even dumber than he looked.
“Bitter?” he asked more intently than he'd wanted.
“Nope. The ending was inevitable. We never should have become engaged to begin with.”
“Then why did you?”
She shrugged. “He was an orphan too. I thought that gave us something in common. Or maybe it was simply because he asked, and if you've been abandoned once, having someone say they want to spend the rest of their life with you is irresistible. We both realized our mistake soon enough, particularly once he started telling me I didn't count as an orphan.”
“Huh?”
“I had been adopted,” Melanie said dryly. “I had been given a family, a rich family. After a while it became clear that that ate away at William. Of the two of us, he'd been more wronged by life, so life, and especially me, owed him something. Let's just say I'm not very good at owing anyone anything.”
David almost smiled. Yeah, he couldn't see her answering to William Sheffield's beck and call. The stupid little prick. He cleared his throat, struggling once more to get back to business.
“Did anything seem off to you with William last night? Did he seem pale? Preoccupied?”
“He works hard.”
“Any harder than usual lately?”
Melanie took a minute to answer. “I don't think so. Generally he's assisting my dad and my dad's workload hasn't been heavier than usual. But I did think William looked as if something was bothering him.”
“Then maybe we should check into it.”
“He doesn't have anything to do with Meagan—”
“He's involved with your family now. He spends time in your house. Maybe he learned something from your father and hopes to capitalize on it.”
Melanie sighed, but she didn't argue. He could tell that doubts were beginning to wear her down.
“What about the Irishman who was here? Jamie . . . Jamie . . .”
“Jamie O'Donnell. He's my godfather. He wouldn't have anything to do with this.”
“
What's his connection to the family?”
“He and my parents go way back in Texas. They've known each other for forty years. He was best man at their wedding.”
“He's business partners with your father?”
“They do some deals every now and then. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure how Dad and Jamie first met. I know Dad's parents lived in the suburbs, whereas Jamie pretty much grew up alone—in cardboard houses, he likes to say. They both built themselves up, Jamie as a businessman, my father as a surgeon. I think they respect that about each other.”
“And O'Donnell knew Meagan?”
Melanie's gaze softened. She clearly had a soft spot for her godfather. “The situation with Meagan broke Jamie's heart. You want to know why my parents love him so much? Because he viewed the bodies for them, David. He told me about it once. When a child is missing, someone in the family must take responsibility for viewing bodies that match the age and general description of the child. That was Jamie's job. He went from morgue to morgue all over the South, viewing remains of four-year-old girls that fit the description of Meagan Stokes.
“He told me once that he still sometimes dreams of all those little girls, wondering if they ever did find a home, ever ended up buried by people who loved them. Or if they all just ended up in potter's field with only a number for identification. Sometimes I think losing Meagan affected him even more than my father. Most likely they just show it differently.”
“And the other woman?” David pressed. “She came up with him, wearing nurses' whites.”
“Oh, that's Ann Margaret.”
“She spent last night here too, you thought.”
“Yes. She's my boss at the Dedham Red Cross Donor Center. I've been volunteering there for ten years now, so she's come to know all of us.”
“Sounded to me like she had a Texas drawl too.”
Melanie rolled her eyes. “Yes, she lived there decades ago. She's been in Boston forever now. And that's totally random. She wouldn't even have been in the house if I hadn't started volunteering at the Red Cross Center.”
“Huh. I kind of thought there was something between her and your godfather.”
Melanie faltered. “Actually I kind of thought there might be something too. They've seen each other many times at the various functions I've organized. They could be involved, I guess. I don't see how it's anyone's business but theirs.”
