by Deirdre Dore
“Cops are such snobs.”
A smile tickled the corner of Raquel’s mouth in spite of her worry over Tavey. “I’ll see you over there, sugar.”
“Sounds good. Bye, Quelly.”
“Bye.”
Raquel pressed the button to hang up the phone and walked over to her antique cedar chest of drawers. On the top were three photographs in fancy enamel frames dotted with crystals. One was a candid shot of Summer, Chris, Tavey, and Raquel as girls; they were playing in the grass while white sheets hanging out on the line to dry blew in the breeze behind them. Raquel’s grandmother had taken the picture, though she’d been yelling at them all afternoon not to pull down her sheets. The other two photographs were formal portraits, one of Raquel’s mother, the other of her grandmother. Her mother looked as lovely and fabulous as she did on the covers of her albums in a dark purple dress with a flower in her hair. Her grandmother’s portrait was even older, yellowed around the edges, with a fireplace in the background. Raquel recognized it as the fireplace in the main room at the Collins house. Her grandmother was wearing a uniform, a black dress with a white collar, and her hair was pulled into a tidy bun.
Raquel slid open the top drawer of her dresser and pulled out a small field kit with evidence collection bags, a camera, an extra cell phone, and first aid supplies. She doubted very much that anything was going to come of this day’s findings, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.
She glanced at the full-length mirror next to the dresser and saw neither her mother nor her grandmother, but a woman stuck somewhere in between, not all black, not all white, beautiful but not talented, hardworking but not content.
“At least you’re not like your mother,” she told her reflection with a small grimace. Her grandmother loved to tell her that, not seeing it as a backhanded compliment.
Turning away from the mirror, she picked up the field kit and her cell phone, scrolling through her contact list as she walked down the hall to the front of the house. She found Tyler’s name and pressed the button to call him.
“Downs.”
“Tyler, it’s Raquel.”
10
CIRCE MANAGED TO keep her husband busy in bed most of the week, distracting him from thoughts of searching for it just yet, but now he was getting impatient. He wanted her to come with him this afternoon, hike through the woods out to the mill.
She didn’t want to hike through the woods, but she understood his worry. Driving over to the mill wasn’t a smart move. The old service road that ran to it wasn’t used often, but there was enough traffic that someone might notice, or it was entirely possible that someone could be watching . . . FBI, police, or even the gang, if Mark was right about them not forgetting.
She supposed that much money was hard to forget.
Old Ninny was eyeing her suspiciously, her gaze narrowed in the passenger seat of the car.
“What is that husband of yours up to, Jane?”
Circe realized that she’d been chewing on her lower lip as she drove, and she scowled. “He isn’t up to anything; he just wants a little privacy.”
“He tell you where he’s been yet?” Ninny folded her arms over her chest as if she’d made her point.
“Yes,” Circe snarled, “but it’s none of your business.”
Robert was waiting in the alley behind Aspect when Circe pulled into the parking space. His shoulders were hunched again, as if he was cold, and his hands were curled.
Circe handed over the keys to the store. “Ninny, go open the store for me. I need to talk to Robert.”
Ninny took the keys, muttering the whole time, but Circe ignored her, waiting until the old woman had disappeared from sight before stepping closer to Robert and hissing, “Have you found it?”
“No, I haven’t found shit,” he cursed. “Are you sure that’s where it was?”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, it’s not there now.”
“What about Charlie’s body? Did you see that?”
He laughed bitterly. “No, animals must have dragged it off if no one’s found it.”
“Well, the only other person who knew where the money was buried was Gloria Belle. Maybe the old man. Who knows what he saw? It’s been so long.”
“I’ll keep looking. Can you keep Mark away another week?”
Circe thought about the impatient look in her husband’s eyes. She wasn’t sure she could keep him distracted in the house much longer, and the girls and Ninny were suspicious, their eyes following her around whenever she was alone with them.
“Maybe. Text me if you find it.” She handed him a cell phone. “My number is already in there. Just say something like, ‘I have that package you ordered.’”
He took it with hands that were encrusted with dirt, the palms raw and reddened. “Yeah, sure, Circe. Think you could loan me a few bucks as well?”
Circe took in his red eyes and pale skin. He was using again. She supposed it was no surprise. People didn’t change, not really.
“Sure.” She handed him a twenty. “How are you getting back and forth to the property?”
“Hitching.”
Circe felt her eyebrows go up. “Someone let you in their car?”
He smiled mockingly at her. “Some people are still decent.”
Circe stared at him, wondering briefly if maybe he was working for someone else, but he didn’t blink, or look away, and she let it go.
“I guess. He wants to hike there, avoid notice.”
Rob nodded. “Mark never wanted to take cars. I think he liked scaring the shit out of us, making us walk through the woods.”
“It’s safer that way, no one can catch us on camera, see our cars pull into the road.”
Robert shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll let you know, but I don’t think we’re going to find it. Not after all this time.”
He walked away, his gait awkward, as if he’d been hurt.
Circe watched him go, the small hidden part that was Jane hoping he was right.
11
TYLER WAS on his way to his uncle’s house with a bag of sausage biscuits from McDonald’s and had just taken a huge bite when his phone rang.
He cursed and finished chewing before answering it, hoping he wasn’t getting called in for some emergency. He’d spent a good part of the evening worrying about his uncle and poring over Summer’s case, and he was dead tired and not in the mood to deal with the usual idiocy that occurred on Sundays.
He was both surprised and wary that Raquel was calling him. She was a good cop and they’d known each other since high school, but it wasn’t as if they talked on a regular basis.
“Raquel? Somethin’ wrong?”
“Well, you could say that. Tavey thinks she’s found something Summer was wearing the day she disappeared.”
“Found it where?”
“One of the dogs found it, actually. Tavey recognized it.”
“How does she know she was wearing it that day?”
Raquel sighed. “You know how it is. Tavey is as human as the rest of us. She swears Summer was wearing it, but Chris remembers something different.”
“It was definitely Summer’s, though?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Tyler sighed. “No offense, Raquel, but Summer could have dropped that ribbon walking home one day; there’s no reason to suspect that this is evidence of anything.”
“Well, Tyler,” she replied patiently, “I know that and so does Tavey, but you know how we all get about Summer.”
He knew. Boy, did he know.
He sighed. “She won’t like it if I come out there, Raquel, and it doesn’t sound like it’s necessary.” He heard the sound of a powerful engine and figured she must be getting on her bike. It was a good day for it, sunny and warm.
“It’s not,” Raquel agreed. “But on the chance
that it’s something, I wanted you to know about it.”
Tyler could think of only one reason why he in particular would need to know. “You think that if it does turn out to be something, she’ll go after Abraham again?”
“It doesn’t take much. She’s already convinced because of that book. You’re lucky she hasn’t gone over there already.”
Tyler mentally cursed. He knew why she hadn’t gone over there. He’d promised to talk to his uncle himself.
“All right,” Tyler muttered. “Consider me warned. I’m headed over to my uncle’s place anyway. Let me know what you find out.”
“You got it.”
Tyler scowled. This was just perfect . . . now she would be even more determined to find evidence that his uncle was guilty. She was like a dog with a damn bone.
He glanced at the file sitting on the front seat of his truck. He’d called his uncle to tell him he was stopping by, but the old man hadn’t answered. Nothing unusual about that—Abraham didn’t care much for phones—but Tyler itched to get over to the property nonetheless. He pressed his foot a little harder on the accelerator as he drove northwest out of town and into the foothills, hoping his gut was wrong.
HE PULLED ONTO the winding dirt road that led up to his uncle’s property, glad he’d had the gravel repoured earlier in the spring. When the cabin came into sight, Tyler let out the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding; on some level he’d been expecting to see that nothing remained but charred rubble.
He parked his truck on the side of the house, where he’d had additional gravel poured, and stepped out.
“Uncle,” he shouted, “it’s Tyler.” Uncle Abraham liked plenty of warning.
His uncle’s raspy voice scratched its way through an open window in the kitchen. “Get in here, son. These girls are drivin’ me crazy.”
“What girls?” Tyler shouted back, hurrying around the house to the front door. The cabin had a big porch with a rocking chair and a hooked rug. Tyler snatched open the screen door and stepped inside.
Something immediately struck Tyler as wrong, though he couldn’t put his finger on it at first. He made his way through his grandfather’s dimly lit living room, which was a tribute to the fashion of the late 1970s: gold velvet armchairs flanked by round piecrust tables and topped with enormous lamps dripping with tassels.
Tyler followed the sound of female voices to the right through the living room and into the kitchen, where he stopped, astonished.
“What the hell?”
His uncle, wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves torn out, sat hunched over a cup of coffee at the small round kitchen table he’d built himself.
“They showed up this mornin’ and started cleanin’ the place.” The old man scowled into his coffee.
Tyler blinked at the three identical teenagers cleaning his uncle’s kitchen. He recognized them—the Triplets, who had been kidnapped by the serial killer last year. They were the youngest members of Summer’s family, the witch family that lived on the land to the east of his uncle.
One of them was wearing a kerchief and scrubbing his uncle’s ancient mustard-colored double oven while another swept and the third wiped down the small square window above the sink. The dingy white curtain that usually covered it had been taken down.
Tyler realized that the strange something-out-of-place feeling he’d had earlier had been the smell of lemony cleaner and oil soap. His uncle’s cabin had smelled of dust, cigarettes, and fried food for as long as he could remember.
“Hey, Investigator Downs,” the girl who was sweeping the floor greeted him. He thought it was Ro or Red or something. She was the one that usually spoke while the other two remained silent.
“Hey . . . Ro?”
She smiled. “Yep.” She pointed at her neck, just below her right ear, at a heart-shaped birthmark. “Short for Yarrow.”
“Got it.” Tyler stared at her and waited, hoping some explanation as to why she was cleaning his uncle’s kitchen would be forthcoming.
“How are you today?” She set her broom against the counter and linked her fingers together in front of her, tilting her head curiously.
Tyler flattened his eyebrows at her and gave her his best don’t-play-stupid stare.
She smiled mildly, unperturbed by the stare, which was weird for a teenager, but then all three of the girls were fairly strange, even for teenagers.
Tyler caved. “Girls, it’s not that I don’t appreciate your efforts, but what are you doing here?”
The girl cleaning the window set aside the wad of paper towels she was holding. Her birthmark looked like a bird in flight. He thought they called her Tira or something, but that wasn’t her real name.
“We heard Mr. Abraham was dying, so we came to help.”
Tyler glanced at his uncle, who was scowling for all he was worth. “You call the papers, son?”
“You know I didn’t.” Tyler shook his head and looked back at the girls. “Just how did you girls hear that?”
Yarrow smirked at him. “Haven’t you heard? We’re witches . . . whoooo.” She waved all ten of her fingers at him as if she was casting a spell.
Now she was acting like a teenager. “Don’t be a smart-ass. How did you hear?”
“Whispers. You know how town is. We overheard his doctor talking to Mrs. Cooley.”
“There’s no privacy anymore in this damn town,” Abraham muttered. “Man can’t even die in peace.”
Tyler didn’t even bother getting annoyed at the idea that his uncle’s doctor had been sharing privileged information with the librarian. Mrs. Cooley had been his uncle’s girlfriend before he’d gone off to Vietnam. Tyler thought the woman had never gotten over losing him to what Tyler considered PTSD, though he’d never been diagnosed.
“All right. Well, thanks, I guess, but I need to have a private chat with my uncle.”
“Okay,” they agreed in unison, making the hair stand up on his forearms. The girls were weird—no doubt. “We’ll go see Tavey and come back later.” They moved as if to put away the supplies.
“Tavey?” Tyler growled and they froze. “Why are you going over there?”
Three identical sets of blue eyes stared owlishly at him, but after a moment Yarrow shrugged and explained. “We’re going to ask her if we can have one of the dogs she’s rescued and if she’ll help us train it to search.”
Tyler didn’t believe in coincidence. Why this sudden interest in search-and-rescue dogs? First his stepdaughter and now these three?
“Why?”
“We think it’s pretty cool. She came to our school a few weeks ago and did a demonstration.”
“Did she?” He wondered if she’d ventured over to Canton High School as well.
“Yep.”
Tyler folded his arms over his chest. “She’s probably in church,” he tossed out. Tavey was always in church on Sunday mornings. He didn’t see how these girls could know that she was home this particular Sunday.
Yarrow smirked again and mimicked him, folding her arms over her chest. “Then I guess we’ll leave a message with Atohi.”
Tyler had a discomfiting feeling, like he was trying to shoot a target in the dark. The girl knew Tavey was home, all right, but she wasn’t going to tell him how she knew. Figured.
“Don’t bother coming back,” his uncle chimed in. “I don’t want ya here.”
The girls gave the old man equally mulish glares in return. “We’re coming back. Don’t try to shoot us again.”
Tyler’s head whipped around to his uncle. “You tried to shoot them?”
His uncle’s shoulders hunched over again. “Thought they were coming back,” he muttered. “Should just let ’em get me. Dyin’ anyway.”
Tyler knew what he was referring to—the time those men had pulled him from his house and beaten him, but he doubted the girls knew about
the incident. It had been before their time. They seemed to take pity on him anyway, or at least Yarrow did, the other two still looked displeased.
“It’s okay, Mr. Abraham.” To Tyler, she elaborated. “He shot in the air, but he shouldn’t have.”
“Yeah,” Tyler agreed. “I’m aware of that.”
“Well . . .” She smiled and motioned to her sisters. “We better go. Feel better, Mr. Abraham.”
“I’ll feel better when I’m dead.”
She pursed her lips in consideration. “Well, don’t feel better, then.”
The old man chuckled, but it soon deteriorated into a long, hacking cough that made Tyler painfully aware of his uncle’s condition. Abraham fumbled for the plastic tubing wrapped around the oxygen tank next to where he sat, coughing the whole time.
Tyler stayed where he was, as did the girls. His uncle hated to have anyone touch him.
Abraham slid the small nosepiece into his nostrils and fought to breathe in and out. Tyler found himself breathing deeply, consciously aware of the stretch in his lungs, the lemon-scented air filling them. The girls’ faces were scrunched into distressed scowls, their chubby cheeks flushed.
When his uncle finally drew a full breath, the girls’ shoulders relaxed and they moved from where they’d been standing frozen with their attention focused on his uncle’s struggles. They began putting away the cleaning supplies in silent harmony.
“How are you getting over to Tavey’s?” Tyler asked suddenly. It had just occurred to him that he hadn’t seen a car, wasn’t even sure the girls could drive yet.
Datura looked at him like he was an idiot while the other two girls closed their eyes and grimaced, as if they’d been hoping he wouldn’t ask that question.
“We’re walking,” Tira informed him. “It’s not that far.”
“It’s far enough. And it’s through the woods,” Tyler muttered, thinking of Summer, the pretty girl with the tail of blond hair. He wondered what she would look like today if she hadn’t disappeared so long ago.
“Where’s your aunt? Or your mom, for that matter?”
