No one replied, and she quickly walked to the far end of the garage, where light seeped in around a man-sized door. It opened and she walked outside. To the north was the school building, to the northeast, the kitchen and dormitory. Beyond the wide expanse of lawn in all other directions was the forest, dark and looming, held back by a manicured privet hedge. To her relief, a few hundred feet away, a handful of gardeners were manicuring the hedge with pruning shears.
Sara rapidly traversed the lawn. "Hello," she called as she approached the green-clad men. Several turned to eye her suspiciously, but one stared at her, then lay his shears down and walked forward to meet her, a smile growing on his round, cherubic face. "Sara?" he asked hesitantly, amazement in his eyes.
"Carlos!" she cried. How could she have forgotten Carlos Montoya, senior gardener, and one of her few old friends? Memories flooded her as they hugged. She used to volunteer to do yard work just so she'd have an excuse to talk to him. What did we talk about?
''How are you?" she asked, as they stepped apart and looked one another up and down. He was older and a little heavier, and there was a sadness in his eyes despite his smile.
"I'm fine, Sara. But what are you doing here?''
"You don't sound happy to see me," she responded, remembering now how he'd taught her to prune bushes and roses, how he'd told her stories of growing up in a farming family in Mexico. She'd loved those stories, the warmth and love they carried, and she had loved Carlos's calm assurances that she would have her own family some day. Had that been all? No. She smiled, remembering how he joked about the nuns with her. She'd loved that most of all.
"Of course I'm happy to see you, Sara." He removed a baseball cap and wiped sweat from his brow. His black hair was peppered with gray now. ''But what are you doing here?''
"I'm a teacher. Starting tomorrow."
"But why here?"
''I applied."
His brow furrowed. "But why here?"
"Because of Jenny."
He studied her a long time. "Jenny. Jenny Blaine?"
She nodded.
"We can't talk here," he said, glancing toward the main buildings.
"In the garage?" she asked. "Someone piled fertilizer on my car and I need help moving it."
''On your car?" he asked. He scratched his head, then replaced the cap. "Go back inside. I'll be there in a minute."
He trotted toward the other gardeners and Sara returned to the garage, leaving the door ajar to let the sunlight in. In a moment Carlos joined her.
"Where's the car?"
''This way." She led him to the stall and he stared at it, rubbing his chin. "My boys all swore they didn't do this," he said, as he hefted a manure bag as if it weighed nothing. He repeated the process as Sara moved the long-handled tools.
"I was thinking," Sara began. "Maybe Basil-Bob did this?"
Carlos pushed the Rototiller out of the way before replying with a shrug. He glanced down the garage toward the big, open doors, then picked up the rake and hoe. "Just a minute," he said, then carried the implements with him, looking back and forth into all the stalls until he reached the big doors. There, he disappeared into the first stall, then reappeared without the gardening tools. He peered around just as carefully as he returned and joined Sara by her car. He leaned against the wooden half-wall beside her. ''Be careful what you say, Sara. And where you say it."
''You mean what I said about Basil-Bob?"
"About many things. You shouldn't be here. It's not a good place."
"But you've worked here all these years. If it's so bad, why? There are other jobs."
''None that will pay as well all year long." He paused, then added darkly, ''And the sisters did me a favor a long time ago."
She sensed he didn't want to elaborate. "But why should I leave?"
A rafter creaked and Carlos glanced around nervously. ''You just should. It's not healthy, especially if you're thinking of digging up the past." _
''Carlos," she began, ''I went to see the sheriff, and he couldn't find a record of Jenny Blaine's death. I need a witness. Do you think you could go with me and tell the sheriff it happened? That she died? I need to give him some proof."
"I ... " Montoya stared at her, his dark eyes tortured. "I can't, Sara, and you have to forget about it."
"Why? You know something happened to Jenny."
"She killed herself."
"No, she didn't. She was murdered."
"Who was murdered?" Basil-Bob Boullan appeared out of the shadows so suddenly that Sara jumped. Even in the shadows, she could see that Carlos Montoya's face had drained to chalky whiteness. Basil-Bob turned his grin on the gardener. "Who was murdered?"
''No-nobody," he stammered. ''Miss Hawthorne was just asking about some of our ghost stories." He turned pleading eyes on Sara.
''That's right," she said, forcing herself to smile at the leering old man. "I love a good ghost story, don't you?"
''More than you might imagine," Basil-Bob replied smoothly.
"I've got to get back outside. Several of my men are new and I have to supervise them closely," Carlos announced.
''Thank you for clearing the things off the car for me."
''You're welcome." Carlos stepped forward, opened the Sentra's door for her, and waited while she got in. He stared at her until she realized he wanted her to start the car: he didn't want to leave her alone with Boullan, and gratefully she turned the key in the ignition. Carlos stepped back and she pulled forward a few feet.
"Where are you going?" Basil-Bob asked.
''Into town," she replied calmly. ''To buy an alarm clock."
She pulled forward and headed slowly out of the garage, relieved when she saw a rectangle of light far behind her as Carlos opened the small door to return to his work. She didn't like to think of him alone with Boullan, either.
As she followed the dirt road behind the chapel and graveyard she caught a flash of blue and white clothing and a glimpse of red hair disappearing into the woods beyond. Kelly Reed was on the loose again. Good for you, kid. Just don't get caught ...
Thirty-five
John Lawson's new desk chair was an ergonomic work of art. Hidden in the black upholstered cushions were adjustable back supports and inflatable air bladders called ''posterior regulators." There were levers and knobs to adjust everything from the armrest and seat height to the amount of bounce when one sat down and stood up. Best of all, John thought, as he plunked himself down after a long, long morning, this chair didn't threaten to tip over when he tilted it back to put his feet up.
He did just that. He'd come on duty at five in the morning and now it was going on eleven, and he was tired and hungry. He'd spent the first hour patrolling the town, which was something he liked to do at least once a day: he tried to see every detail from changing sale signs in the store windows to newspapers piling up in driveways. It gave him a sense of control and, more important, made him feel like he was earning his keep.
He'd cruised down Gus's street while it was still dark, only mildly concerned that his grandfather hadn't shown up for pizza the day before. That was nothing new, though; Gus was nothing if not mercurial.
Since the lights weren't on yet, John had decided to phone him later in the day, after church hours, since Gus, like as not, would attend. He kept his religion to himself, just as he had even when he ministered to others, but he was popular with the widows and they were popular with him.
Still, John had hesitated, idling the cruiser briefly in front of his grandfather's home before moving on, telling himself that Gus wouldn't take kindly to being disturbed at this hour of the morning, and that he'd exact his revenge by unmercifully accusing him of being a mother hen. The last time John had checked up on him, about three years ago, when he hadn't heard from him for over a week, he'd had to endure the old man's teasing for the next six months. Gus had never been one to necessarily show up where he said he would- except to deliver sermons before he retired- and he never apologized. He always said
life was too short to stick to plans, and as annoying as his impetuousness was, John grudgingly admired it, the same way he admired Gus's gift for turning emotions on and off.
Though he'd never admit it, his granddad had probably stayed in, nursing a hangover, on Saturday, and he wasn't likely to show his face today, either, since the widows would be vying for his attention with roast chickens and beef stew. Come to think of it, John admired his way with women, too.
He stretched, enjoying the way the new chair moved with him. For a hundred dollars more, he could have had one with a built-in vibrator. He'd sat in it at the clerk's behest, but the vibrations against his back and buttocks were disconcerting and gave him nothing but an urge to urinate. Vibrating chairs, he had discovered, fell into the same category as computers, faxes and E-mail- he didn't trust any of them.
After returning to the office from his rounds, he had spent some time with Bobby at the dispatch desk, watching him input files and learning how to access them. He knew his phobic reactions were silly: it was easy, logical work, but it still made him anxious. What if the machine lost the information? Winter storms knocked out electricity all the time, and no matter how many times Bobby had told him about the battery backups, he absolutely insisted that none of the old police reports would be deep-sixed, and that every new one would be printed out immediately, so that nothing would be lost.
Like the file on Jennifer Blaine? He sat up, troubled by the thought. He'd already searched through the files again. He'd found nothing on Blaine, but he'd ended up reading over Doug Buckman's suicide report, reliving that awful moment when his father had come to him with the news of his friend's death.
Until this morning, he'd rarely allowed himself to think about Doug, but now he had to accept that Doug had never lost the conviction that they had gone to St. Gruesome's the night Greg had drowned. In truth, Buckman's insistence grew as the other boys' disbelief increased.
Although he was a big, outgoing jock on the surface, Doug had had another side, a darker one that, in retrospect, might have been something born of a mystical, or at least philosophical, streak hidden under the bluff friendliness and broad shoulders.
Or are you just finding reasons to turn Doug's suicide into another unsolved murder? Like Gus wants you to? His grandfather's love of drama was one thing he'd inherited, but only in a passive way. John loved conspiracy theories and emotion-charged movies and secretly enjoyed gossip as much as anyone else who clandestinely read the Weekly World News headlines at the checkout counter. Because he was aware of this attraction, he tried to be especially skeptical, particularly of his own impressions, and let Gus do all the reveling in possibilities for the both of them.
He wondered now if Gus's inebriated confessions, especially about John's father's death, had combined with his own visits to the abbey and the appearance of Sara Hawthorne, both at his office and on Dashwood's arm in the infirmary, to stir up all those carefully imprisoned paranoias he harbored about St. Gertrude's and Greg's death.
With a sigh, he sat up and reached for the phone, deciding to call Gus and get the old man off his mind before going out to forage for lunch. He wanted something he could bring back to the office because, to be perfectly honest, he wanted to be around when- if- Sara Hawthorne returned. As his fingers closed around the handset, the intercom buzzed.
He punched the button, glad that Bobby Hasse was on duty, not Dorothy, who'd be in his face by now. "Yeah, Bobby?"
"There's a Miss Hawthorne here to see you, Sheriff. She says you're expecting her?"
"Yes," he said, unconsciously running his hand over his hair. "Send her in."
Thirty-six
"I didn't know it was so big," Pete Parker said in an awestruck voice.
"Me, either." Corey Addams pressed his face against the bars of St. Gruesome's front gate. "What’cha think, Lawson?" he asked, without turning around.
Mark stood a few feet back from the gate, staring past his friends, past the gargoyles leering from the gateposts and the vast swath of lawn, at the Gothic gray fortresses beyond. He could even make out the gargoyles crouched on the buildings, much larger than the ones on the gateposts. There were more of them than were needed to serve as waterspouts; many were obviously only decorative. Off to the right, he could even see one on top of the chapel.
"Wow!" he said finally.
"The gate's not locked," Pete said, his hand working the latch up and down.
"And there's nobody around," Corey added thoughtfully.
"So?" Mark asked. "You think they're not going to see us if we go in? There are windows everywhere." As if to underscore his words, from somewhere behind the buildings a lawn mower roared to life. "Just because we can't see them doesn't mean they can't see us."
Mark knew he should have seen this coming; Pete's sole purpose in life was to go where he wasn't supposed to, to do that which was forbidden. Mark got the creeps just looking at the abbey, and from the little his dad had said about his recent visits to the place, it wasn't worth risking getting grounded over.
The boys had gotten together at seven A.M. at the Parker Ranch and had worked on the Haunted Bam until Caspar, along with Pete's parents, had gone off to church at ten. They'd be gone until about two in the afternoon, since they always went out to eat after services. Usually, Pete had to go, too, but the boys had been careful to look very busy when Pete's mom had come out to the barn to take him away, and she'd relented to his pleading that they had to keep working if they were to have their portion of the barn ready for Halloween.
Yesterday, after the sleepover at Pete's, they'd talked more about how Caspar had seen the lady in white around the orchard, back near the edges of Witch Forest. One thing had led to another and today, as soon as the adults left, they'd set off on foot across the orchard, but had found nothing interesting, so they'd ventured into Witch Forest, pausing to take a quick peek at Minerva's house from behind the trees. Fortunately, neither Pete or Corey had the guts to pull any tricks on Minerva; instead, Pete announced that they should go to Witch Falls to see if there were any bloodstains on the rocks.
It was a beautiful day, with a cold nip of winter lurking behind the warmth of the few rays of sunlight that found their way between the tree limbs. They'd crossed the stream by Minerva's and kept walking, then hiked farther west than they should have to hit the Falls. Instead, they found themselves at the other fork, the one separating Witch Forest from St. Gruesome's land.
From somewhere to the southeast came the roar of the Falls, but the ominous dark forest across the stream captivated them. They had looked at each other, then back at the forbidding woods, and at each other again.
They could see that the trees were thicker on the other side and there were only a few dapples of light on the forest floor. Moss grew more thickly on the tree trunks than in Witch Forest, and ferns had sprouted everywhere. Mark could see some odd gray ones whose fronds resembled cobwebs more than leaves, and he wanted to examine them, maybe even take a sample to Minerva, so when Pete suggested they ford the stream, Mark had readily agreed.
The abbey's woods not only looked different from Witch Forest, they felt different, too. In silent agreement, the boys moved quickly, Mark pausing only to snag a piece of fern and stuff it in his pocket. In the brief seconds that took, Corey and Pete got ahead of him and he had to run to catch up.
Although they didn't talk about it, Mark knew that the other two were hurrying for the same reason he was: he felt as unseen eyes were watching him, as if the trees were leaner down to leer at him. This forest seemed alive in a very different way from the pleasant wood on the other side of the stream this one felt like a living, breathing entity, a dark thing unit itself, with its own awareness. It seemed as if at any moment they would run into the lady in white- and she wouldn't be nice. Several times, they heard raucous screeches from airborne birds, but none of them had made any jokes about gargoyles. It didn't seem so funny on the dark side of the creek.
When they had finally seen daylight up a
head, Mark had been relieved, but when they'd stepped between some over grown hedges onto a narrow gravel road and into the sunshine he'd realized that St. Gruesome's buildings were the reason for the clearing. His stomach knotted. To his left, he'd caught his first glimpse of the chapel, feminine voices singing eerily within, and when Pete pointed right, indicating that he wanted them to follow the hedges and the wall that replaced it twenty yards south, he'd nodded yes.
And now here they were, at the gates. But why? To go in as Pete suddenly wanted to do? Mark hadn't expected that even from Pete. Corey, who pretty much did whatever the majority wanted, was looking pretty distressed as Pete kept wheedling and Mark finally just kept shaking his head no.
Finally, he looked at the sky, saw the autumn sun was no longer directly south of them now. "Look, Pete" he said, pointing. "It's gotta be at least one o'clock. Won't your parents have a cow if we aren't there when they get home?''
Pete studied the angle of the sun. "Yeah, I guess we'd better go." He cast a look at the forest, then peered down the lane that led to Apple Hill Road.
"We'd better go back the same way we came," Mark said. He nodded toward the lane. ''It'd take forever to get home that way."
"You really think so?" Corey asked.
"Yeah, we came as the crow flies, so we'd better go back that way."
"More like as the gargoyles fly," Pete said wryly. "Okay, let's do it."
They walked back toward the chapel, then sprinted across the road just as the doors to the church opened amid a cacophony of bells. Pete dived into the brush, Corey on his heels. Mark hesitated only an instant, but it was long enough for a black-robed nun to step out of the chapel and see him.
"You, boy, come here," she called sternly.
"Move it, Lawson!" Pete yelled. "Get’cher ass in here!"
Mark looked at the nun as she yelled at him again, then he jumped through the hedge, hearing cloth rip as his windbreaker caught on a branch. "Shit," he whispered, trying to get free, but the way it clung, the damn bush must’ve had claws.
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