Glow (Glimmer and Glow #2)

by BETH KERY

  He was sitting forward now, his elbows resting on his spread knees. He looked down at his clasped hands.

  “Alice . . . I don’t think Stout and Cunningham actually masterminded the kidnapping.”

  “You think someone else planned it? That they were hired to do it?”

  He met her stare. “Yes,” he said with quiet conviction.

  She chafed her hands over the roughened skin of her arms.

  “I’ve always thought that Cunningham and Stout had been fed information about Addie’s habits and activities. They chose the ideal circumstances to snatch her. Someone would have had to hole up in the woods for days on end in order to observe and understand the moment when Addie was most vulnerable and when their escape would be easiest.”

  “But that’s what they did, right? Staked out the area in order to determine the prime moment?”

  “That’s what they would have had to do, but there’s no evidence to show they actually did that. If they had, they would have left traces . . . evidence of their presence while they spied for days, maybe even weeks, in the woods and on the grounds. It had been a dry hot summer before the kidnapping. There was no rain or wind that would make evidence vanish. The FBI combed the woods and grounds on the estate following the kidnapping. They never found anything to indicate that Stout and Cunningham had been hiding out repeatedly to discover the best moment for the kidnapping, they just suspected they must have. Somehow. The agents did locate where they thought the escape vehicle had most likely been parked on a side road just past the bluff, but there was no indication of several trips, no multiple tire tracks. There was a single trip on the day they successfully took her. Plus, the riding lesson I planned for Addie that day wasn’t our typical routine. Someone must have told Stout and Cunningham when and where the ideal moment presented itself.”

  “Who?”

  He shook his head, his mouth clamped together. Alice sensed his profound frustration at his inability to answer her. “Any number of people could have informed them from the camp—employees and campers who were frequently at the stables, anyone that the Durands conversed with about Addie and her activities, like Alan’s and Lynn’s friends and confidants. Personally? I always had my suspicions about Kehoe, but never had anything solid to go on. I never said anything to the agents, because my suspicion seemed pretty groundless. I told Jim Sheridan about my concerns, but Jim has never really been on board with that. The problem is, I can’t figure out a motive. Whoever did it not only had the means to hire Cunningham and Stout, they must have anticipated the outcome of the whole thing. As Jim has always reminded me, Kehoe couldn’t benefit in any way from Addie being taken.”

  “So why do you suspect him?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dylan admitted uneasily. “It’s just a feeling I have about him.”

  “Well, he certainly doesn’t like you much.” Dylan glanced over at her. “It’s kind of hard not to notice. He was running the camp back then, wasn’t he?”

  He nodded. “I was a camper here for the first time during the second year the camp ran, and Kehoe was already the head guy. It was because of all the good work he did here that he was promoted to VP of human resources in that time period.”

  “What did Kehoe think of you back then?”

  “What did he think of me when I was twelve, thirteen . . . fourteen years old? Very little, I’d guess. I don’t remember many personal interactions with him at all. He was decent not only to me, but all the kids, as I recall it.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids and shook his head. “Maybe it’s just paranoia on my part when it comes to Kehoe, and the bad vibes I get from him are solely due to his dislike of me. Like Jim always tells me, Kehoe would have absolutely no motive for kidnapping Addie.”

  “Who did benefit monetarily from Addie being taken out of the picture? Who was the Durand’s heir before Addie was born?” Alice asked.

  “Lynn and Alan were both only children. Their parents were all dead. Alan’s mom and dad died in a small plane crash when he was twenty-four. Lynn’s mother died when she was twelve of breast cancer, and her father had a heart attack a few years before she had Addie. They had made a few personal bequeathals in their original will to friends and distant cousins, but they weren’t considerable amounts, given the worth of the entire estate. Certainly not enough money that someone would take such an extreme risk of going to jail, at least in my opinion. Every one of that handful of original beneficiaries was wealthy in their own right, and couldn’t have thought the bequeathals much of anything aside from a kind remembrance from Alan and Lynn. The FBI did do a cursory investigation of each beneficiary, but found nothing connecting them to the kidnapping. Before Addie was born, Alan and Lynn had planned for Durand to go public when the last of them died, and for the bulk of their personal wealth and the proceeds from the stock sale to be donated to charity.”

  So . . . Addie had no close living relatives. Alice squashed down with effort the feeling of loneliness that descended upon her. She forced her brain to focus.

  “What about the charities Alan and Lynn favored? Isn’t it possible that somebody was angling to get more money for their cause by taking Addie out of the picture?”

  “The FBI considered that, too. But nothing ever panned out as a significant connection or motivation in that direction, either. Besides, although Alan’s plans were for Lynn and him to give the bulk of their estate to charity, he hadn’t promised the money to specific organizations at the time of Addie’s kidnapping. He didn’t specifically designate charitable beneficiaries until he rewrote his will after Addie’s kidnapping.”

  “But the kidnappers planned to ransom Addie. Isn’t money motive enough?”

  “Maybe,” he said quietly. “But personally, I think there was never any plan to actually send a ransom note. Cunningham and Stout might have thought that was the intention when they kidnapped Addie Durand. But at some point after the kidnapping, I believe whoever hired them told them the plan had changed. I think they—or possibly just Cunningham alone—were given orders to murder Addie . . . to make her disappear forever.”

  “So it really wasn’t a matter of accidental death from an overdose of the sedative they gave her?”

  “I don’t think so. Given Stout’s confession about Cunningham accidentally over-sedating Addie, and his insistence that he wasn’t responsible, he might not have been involved in the murder. Then again, he might have just been pointing the finger before Cunningham fingered him.”

  Her entire body seemed to pulse with the beat of her heart. It was so strange, talking about these cruel facts so rationally.

  “Why?” she asked. “What makes you think that another person was involved, and an order was given to murder her?”

  He shook his head, and she once again felt his restrained frustration. “It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. It’s hard to explain what it was like talking to Cunningham. The guy was a sociopath. He’d mix up facts with straight-up lies, but he’d also twist the facts. I’m not even sure he was aware of doing it sometimes. He’d just automatically try to recast himself and his actions in a more positive light.”

  “Like the fact that he claims the reason he saved Addie from the creek and turned her over to Sissy was because he was suddenly a saved man.”

  “Right. Don’t get me wrong. There might have been a tiny sliver of truth to that. I remember Addie’s eyes. She was such a pretty little girl. She practically glowed with life. If any human being could spark a redemption, it was Addie,” he said, his voice going hoarse. Alice held her breath when he paused, his focus clearly in the past. Suddenly, his gaze sharpened on her. “It wouldn’t shock me to find out there was a bit of fact to Cunningham’s story, enough for him to fabricate a lie around that kernel of truth, anyway. But Cunningham was a manipulator at heart, so when he pulled Addie out of that creek, he was planning for the future. That’s the bottom line. He’d probably considered it before, but his scheme kicked in when he realized that Addie was miraculously
alive and amnesiac to his crime. Fate nudged him in that direction. He might have gotten a sweet deal in payment from whomever hired him to kidnap and kill Addie, but how much sweeter would it be if he threatened whomever had hired him with the knowledge that Adelaide Durand was still alive and stashed away in a place only Cunningham knew? What kind of blackmail money might he be able to get, dangling the threat of an anonymous tip to the police? With Addie alive and in his possession, there was always the chance of a future ransom, too. Plus, although Alan hadn’t yet put up a reward for useful clues that would lead to his daughter, Cunningham must have realized Alan eventually would.”

  “Alan put up reward money?”

  “Yeah. He offered half a million dollars to anyone who provided information that would lead to Addie’s recovery. When Addie was still missing after . . . after ten months, he raised the award money price to one million.”

  She stared at him, mute with disbelief and confusion. A million dollars of reward money, and no one stepped forward? And . . .

  “Why ten months?” she demanded.

  His gaze bounced off her.

  “Dylan? What’s the significance of ten months? Why did Alan raise the reward to a million then?” she repeated, thinking he hadn’t understood her query.

  “It was ten months after Addie was kidnapped that Jim Stout was arrested and made the drunk confession he later recanted. Before that, the FBI assumed Addie was most likely dead, given simple crime statistics and the amount of time that had passed without a ransom request. After Stout confessed that she was accidentally killed, they were even more certain. Despite the fact that Stout recanted once he was sober, that incident altered the flavor of the investigation. Almost no one held any hope after that point that Addie was still alive.”

  “Oh,” Alice whispered, imagining the horrible scene when the Durands received the news that Stout had claimed Addie had been accidentally killed.

  “Alan flat-out refused to believe Stout, though. He never stopped believing Addie could be alive, even on his death bed,” Dylan said quietly. She was glad he didn’t comment when she looked away and furtively wiped at a tear. For a moment, they didn’t speak as Alice struggled to calm herself.

  “My whole point is,” Dylan continued somberly after a moment, “why should Avery Cunningham go along with the moneyman’s plan to get rid of Addie? Between potential blackmail, ransom, and reward money, she was a precious commodity.”

  “But Cunningham never admitted he was hired by someone, did he?”

  “No. He denied it, but in the same sly way he used to deny that he had anything to do with the kidnapping for all those years. I started to recognize when he was lying.”

  “If it were true that they were hired for the job, why wouldn’t Cunningham just confess? He was dying and admitted to the kidnapping. What would it matter to him at that point?”

  “Again, I don’t know exactly. It could be any number of things. It’s possible whoever hired him had some kind of hold on Cunningham or a family member. We’ll never know for sure. I think it was some combination of the fact that Cunningham wanted to see himself as a misunderstood hero—a sort of scoundrel with a heart of gold—and that he actually did feel some twisted sense of liking or loyalty toward Sissy, Addie, or both. He was a convicted murderer. He was going to die in prison, and knew it. Exposing who had hired him for the kidnapping and possibly murder wouldn’t get him anything substantial. Plus, if he confessed that he’d been hired by someone, it might bring into question his motives for keeping Addie alive. Had he kept Addie alive to blackmail whomever hired him? If people questioned his motives, then how could Cunningham continue to tell himself that he’d been a decent man, even a hero, for one brief flashing moment in his life? How could he claim any worth when he met his maker? People lie to others and the world for much less motivation,” he finished grimly.

  Alice leaned back on the couch. “You really did get to know Cunningham,” she said, stunned by his concise knowledge of the psychological workings of the criminal’s mind.

  He grimaced. “It wasn’t pleasant, listening to that asshole go on about himself. I had to make myself what he needed: an avid listener to his bravado. He was a slimy, dangerous braggart,” Dylan muttered, his mouth pressed into a hard line.

  “And yet you went like clockwork to visit him in prison,” Alice said softly. “Thank you.”

  He rubbed the side of his head distractedly, brushing off her praise. “I was worried about telling you all this. I know it must come as a shock, that Cunningham knew Sissy.” He exhaled heavily and leaned back next to her, their shoulders touching.

  “It does and it doesn’t,” she said hollowly. “Does it surprise me that Sissy would associate with scum like Avery Cunningham or that she would take me in under such . . . sleazy circumstances? No. Not really. She collected people all the time. She liked having all those people addicted to her product, pulling up to her trailer day and night, knocking on her door. Needy people. Desperate. Sissy didn’t do relationships in the classic sense of give and take, but she loved having people seek her out. Dependent on her. She was a born drug dealer. She probably thought she’d hit the jackpot taking in a child, having something so completely at her mercy. Another human being who would be”—her voice cracked, and she took a deep breath—“utterly dependent on her to survive.”

  Dylan winced and shut his eyes.

  ELEVEN

  For a moment, they sat in silence. It took Alice a moment to comprehend what she was feeling. Everything she’d said to Dylan was true, but it didn’t stop the hurt that went through her: a terrible, cringing shame. This had been the reason she hadn’t allowed herself to question how she’d ended up with Sissy. She’d been unconsciously fending off this pain.

  If one of Sissy’s whacked-out “friends” had asked her to keep a puppy as a favor, she probably would have. Sissy could be loud, outgoing, and friendly when she wanted to be and when her latest batch of meth was particularly good. She’d have fed that puppy sporadically, bragged about how much the puppy loved her, and kicked it when it got in her way. For days on end, she’d forget the puppy even existed until it suddenly showed up in front of her blurry-eyed stare.

  That’s what Alice had been all these years: a puppy dropped on the front door of a drug addict. At least previously, she’d lived under the misperception that she’d come from Sissy’s body, that she shared some kind of primal link with her. But no. She and Sissy were strangers that fate had tossed together into a trailer for fourteen years of Alice’s life. Sissy didn’t belong to her any more than Alice belonged to Sissy.

  It was an awful truth . . . a severing one. What Dylan had told her sickened her . . . but it had liberated her, too.

  “Why didn’t they turn me in for the reward money? That seems out of character for the Reed clan,” Alice said darkly.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe Sissy didn’t have all the details as to your identity at first, but as time went on, she started to put two and two together, given the news reports and what she knew about Cunningham’s character. She certainly knew what she was doing, disguising your hair color all those years. Either way, she had to realize from the beginning you belonged to someone else, and that she was keeping you illegally. Maybe Cunningham threatened to implicate her in the kidnapping and held that over her head.”

  “Sissy definitely wouldn’t want the police nosing around our trailer.”

  “Even if any of your uncles were like Al, and they came to suspect the truth, they must have realized they could very easily be implicated or even blamed for the crime. From what I understand about the Reed brothers, I doubt the police would have any trouble believing they were either involved, or actually the main perpetrators.”

  “I can believe Sissy would do it. But Al. That he never told me the truth for all of those years, that he played along. That . . . sucks.”

  Hurts.

  “I thought he cared about me, even if it was just a little,” she finished.

&nbs
p; “Well, he didn’t sell you out for the reward money. Maybe he really did consider you family. That must mean something. People are strange. Complicated,” Dylan added, reaching for her hand. He grasped it in his encompassing, warm hold and settled it on his thigh. “That’s one lesson life has taught both you and me. People can be cruel, petty, self-involved, and yet they can suddenly do something that makes you see their humanity. Sometimes I think it’d be better if they didn’t, because it would be easier just to straight up hate them that way.”

  Alice turned her head, staring into his eyes. She knew he was ambivalent about his mother, who had been a prostitute. His mom hadn’t planned for or wanted Dylan, and typically treated him with disgusted anger, or merely discounted and ignored him. Dylan had been left to fend for himself in a cold mean world.

  Yet Dylan had loved his mother, too, and wanted to be loved by her. It was human nature, to crave connection, nurturance and approval from a mother or father figure. Alice knew that lesson all too well.

  She released her hand from his, leaned toward him and pressed her palm to his heart.

  “I hate Sissy for what she’s done to me,” she said shakily, staring at Dylan’s chest. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her. But I don’t hate Uncle Al. Sissy was the worst among them. She was always the instigator. She’d whine and complain and manipulate until they finally did whatever it was she wanted, just to shut her up. As weak and ineffective as she seemed on the surface, she was the leader of them. She was the Queen of Passive-Aggressive Land. Al’s and my other uncles’ worst fault was weakness, but Al stood up to her the most. Almost every time he did stand up to her, he’d do it for my sake.” She grimaced, lost in painful memories for a moment. “At least if Sissy were in prison, she’d be away from the drugs. She might live a few years longer away from the poison. Same for most of my uncles. But I don’t want to see Al locked up,” she admitted miserably. She was suddenly having trouble meeting Dylan’s stare. “That makes me weak, too, doesn’t it?”