Last Seen Alive

by Carlene Thompson

  Abruptly the pulling stopped. Deirdre struggled to free herself from the strong arms, but almost immediately she heard a grunt, then something that sounded like a macabre snicker before a sweet-smelling cloth completely covered her mouth and nose. She tried not to breathe but couldn’t help herself, her need for air even greater because of her struggle. Her lungs filled with the sweet scent of what she recognized from science class as chloroform.

  Dizzy after one breath, she tried not to inhale again, but she’d fought so hard she was starved for oxygen. Don’t breathe, she thought. Don’t breathe! But her need for air was too great. She tried to take as small a breath as possible, but even that was too much. She managed one last twist of her head, feeling a searing pain in her earlobe. The cloth held firm, though, and she was forced to take another breath. The fight slowly draining out of her, she caught one quick glimpse of a face before the cool, star-studded world went spinning into darkness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1

  Scott’s heart thundered in his ears. He clutched at the wheel as the plane bucked and shuddered. He tried to turn right. Nothing. He tried the brakes. Nothing. He looked out the window and saw flatlands—no city, no mountains, no ocean, only flatlands. Thank God, because they were losing altitude fast, diving unfalteringly nose first to the ground, where he was sure the plane would explode. What would it feel like to have flames consume his living body?

  Scott slammed facedown against the floor and a woman shouted, “Scott, Scott! Wake up! It’s just a nightmare! Wake up!”

  Scott opened his eyes. He didn’t see dirt and grass or feel his own body bathed in sweat and stinging from a dozen cuts or a throbbing dislocated leg lying unnaturally at a right angle from his pelvis. He didn’t hear the grinding of metal against metal, fuel exploding followed by vicious, crackling flames, the screams of people in agony. Then he felt someone bending over him, pulling on his shoulders, chattering in a shrill voice.

  “My land, you nearly scared me to death when I came in this morning and heard you up here shouting something about hydraulics. By the time I got to your room you were flying out of that bed onto the floor and—Scott Kendrick, don’t you own

  a pair of pajamas?—and I heard your head hit and if you didn’t give yourself a concussion it’ll be a miracle!”

  Scott groaned and focused on the face that shot words at him like a machine gun. Irma Vogel. She’d used her own key. Last night he’d forgotten that this was one of Irma’s days to clean but mostly to follow him around talking, singing, hovering, and generally making his life miserable. Oh God, he thought almost desperately, closing his eyes again. Please make her go away.

  “Get up. No, don’t get up until I can help you. You might have broken something. Where’s your robe? Don’t you have a robe, either? Why are you in bed so late? It’s ten o’clock. You never sleep this late. Here, wrap up in the blanket and I’ll call the Emergency Service.”

  “I don’t want the Emergency Service,” Scott growled, sitting on the edge of the bed while Irma draped a blanket over him. “You don’t have to fuss, Irma. I’m not hurt.”

  “Tell that to the lump on your head, young man. And your nose is bleeding.”

  Scott touched his forehead and indeed found the beginnings of a fine bump. He ran his finger under his nose. A tiny trickle of blood, no gushing.

  “Put that phone down, Irma,” he said. “I don’t need the emergency squad. I just fell out of bed.”

  “And if you were a well man, that wouldn’t be dangerous. But you, with all your injuries—”

  “My injuries are almost healed. I’m fine. I just need a cold cloth for my nose and some,” he’d started to say “peace,” but that would hurt her feelings, “coffee. Please fix me a cup of that wonderful coffee of yours, Irma. If I don’t feel better after I have that, I’ll go to the hospital. Deal?”

  “I’ll take you to the hospital.” Irma, five foot eight, broad shouldered, and thirty-five pounds overweight, probably because she worked at L’Etoile and frequently sampled the cuisine, rushed into the bathroom, came back with a dripping washcloth that she tried to hold beneath his nose before he snatched it away from her. “Irma, coffee, please,” he said, sounding as if he had a bad cold. She leaped up with all the

  grace of a buffalo and thundered down the stairs so fast, Scott feared she would plunge headfirst.

  After a minute, Scott held the cloth away from his nose, took a deep breath, ran his hands through his thick, black hair, and looked at the sun streaming through one of his bedroom windows. Usually he woke up early. But this morning he’d slept late and badly. He hurt everywhere and all he wanted was a hot shower, because he felt dirty, almost grimy. He remembered walking through the cold night— exhausted, shaken, afraid someone had seen him.

  Abruptly he forced the memory from his mind. He whipped off the blanket Irma had wrapped around him like a shroud and hoped he could shower and put on a robe before she arrived with coffee.

  He stepped behind the shower curtain to a cloud of steam, moaned, and turned his back to the showerhead. Hot water rushed over his rigid neck and shoulders. As he lathered, the soap stung dozens of scratches on his arms. He’d taken off all the Band-Aids and Steri-Strips yesterday because some of them itched and some were already coming off. The lacerations and scratches beneath them were mostly healed, anyway. All except for a few.

  “I’m back with the coffee!” Irma trilled. Scott jumped, almost sliding to the slippery wet floor of the tub. Through the shower curtain, he could see Irma’s sturdy form standing in the doorway.

  “Thanks, Irma. Would you just set it beside the bed for me?”

  “Sure.” He listened to the clatter of cups on a tray but no thump of steps going back down the stairs. Great. Irma intended to stay in the bedroom along with the coffee. He thought she’d had that look this morning, the look that usually meant she had important information to divulge.

  Scott stepped from the shower, toweled his body and hair, and slipped into his heavy terry cloth robe. When he came out of the bathroom, he cringed to see Irma sitting on the delicate chair accompanying an ornate desk that supposedly once belonged to Prince Albert. Scott’s mother cherished

  the antique set and insisted on placing it in front of the French doors in Scott’s room. She also insisted he never sit at the desk. She would prefer he not even look at it for fear of damaging it. Scott sighed. This was just one of the joys of having a mother who had once been a museum curator.

  Irma began pouring coffee into dainty china cups—Scott preferred insulated mugs—and he couldn’t help noticing that in the sunlight her thin, naturally whitish-blond hair looked like a wispy cobweb covering her scalp and her bluish-red lipstick was smeared. Aside from the lipstick, she wore no makeup, a first in his experience. She was also pale, her light blue eyes red-rimmed and seeming to bulge even more than usual. She obviously had a bad-news bombshell to deliver.

  “What’s wrong this morning, Irma?” he asked.

  “I guess you haven’t heard what’s happened.”

  “I just woke up, remember?”

  “Well, brace yourself.”

  Scott set down the silly china cup with a bang. “Is something wrong with my parents?”

  “Your parents?”

  “Are they all right? They’re supposed to be back in three days. Dad has a heart murmur… Mom exercises too much. Are they hurt? Sick?” Scott demanded loudly.

  Irma looked alarmed enough to jump up and flee the room. “No, Scott, your parents are fine. My land, if I’d known you were going to get so upset… It must be that post-traumatic stress syndrome or something….”

  Irma was exactly right. Six months ago he would have heard her out instead of immediately imagining disasters. But six months ago, before the plane crash, he’d been a different man. “I’m sorry, Irma, but will you just tell me what the hell is wrong?”

  Irma’s hand had flown to the area of her heart, which Scott imagined was beating as fast as a hummingbi
rd’s. “It’s Deirdre, Scott. Deirdre Mayhew.”

  “Deirdre? What’s wrong with her?”

  “She went to a Halloween party last night. Ben didn’t

  want her to go, but I…” Irma’s big, pale eyes began to fill with tears. “I told him she worked hard and a girl should be allowed to have a good time once in a while. So he agreed. I talked him into it!”

  Scott’s breath began to calm. This was probably nothing more than Deirdre drinking too much beer, Ben blowing his top and firing Irma, whom he would rehire next week, to her vast relief. Scott was certain Irma had her eye on Ben as a potential husband. “So whose party did Deirdre go to?”

  “Her best friend, Lynette Monroe’s.”

  “I don’t know Lynette.”

  Irma’s expression turned sour. “She’s Deirdre’s age. I’ve heard people say she’s pretty, but I think she’s just a lot of bleached blond hair and makeup and tight clothes—you know, the trashy type,” Irma said with disdain. “If I were Ben, I wouldn’t let Deirdre hang around with her. I’ve told him she’s trouble, but he doesn’t listen.”

  Scott doubted that Ben listened to any of Irma’s character judgments but said nothing. Irma continued. “Anyway, the party was supposed to start at eight and I heard Ben tell Deirdre to be home by eleven. At twelve-thirty, my phone rang and woke me up. It was Ben looking for Deirdre. I said, ’Well, what in the world do you think she’d be here for?’ And he said, ’Because she’s not here and I thought she might have drunk liquor when I told her not to and came to your house to sleep it off.’ Imagine that! Like I take in drunken teenagers all the time!” Irma demanded indignantly. “I told him to call where they were having the party….”

  Irma seemed to drift away for a moment and the tears that had been gathering for so long finally made it over the slopes of her fat cheeks. “He did and she wasn’t there, Scott. Nobody saw her leave. The kids that were left at the party started looking for her. At last, the parents came home—Ben nearly had a stroke when he realized there’d been no parents around—and then neighbors came and finally … finally….”

  Scott was on his feet, fully aware that his robe hung open and just as aware that he was on the verge of strangling the information out of Irma. “Finally what?”

  “At the back of the yard there’s a rhododendron hedge and beside one of the shrubs they found signs of a struggle. There were broken branches, the ground was scuffed up, and …” Irma took a deep breath. “And they found just one of Deirdre’s shoes!”

  Irma abruptly burst into full-fledged crying. Scott slowly pulled his robe around him and sat down on the bed, his hand automatically going to the new scratches on his wrist as Deirdre Mayhew’s pretty amber-eyed, dimpled face flashed in front of him.

  “It’s always the same,” Irma sniffled. “I’ve already talked it over with some people and they agree with me.”

  Scott felt as if he were slowly returning to the reality of the sun-filled bedroom. “You told people that Deirdre was missing and you talked what over with them, Irma?”

  “That Deirdre’s disappeared just like all those other teenage girls throughout the years. We never saw them again and we’ll never see Deirdre again.” Her red-rimmed eyes looked directly into Scott’s. “And I know whose fault it is! Every time Chyna Greer comes to town, a girl goes missing. Zoey Simms, Heather Phelps, Edie Larson, now little Deirdre Mayhew.”

  Scott drew back, his gaze hardening, but Irma didn’t seem to notice. Her voice rising, she leaned forward, her ugly eyes filled with malice. “I’m telling you, Scott, Chyna Greer is bad news. She’s worse than bad news, because nothing on this earth can convince me, and a whole lot of other people, that there is not a connection between her and all those poor, lost girls.”

  2

  “I used to babysit for Deirdre Mayhew,” Beverly said as she sat in the big, sunny kitchen of the Greer home. Ned had brought her and the children for a visit with Rex, but anyone could tell Beverly was more concerned with discussing Deirdre’s disappearance with Chyna, and Rex had kindly

  taken Ian, Kate, and Michelle into the backyard, where the children threw a Frisbee for the dog.

  “When Irma Vogel called this morning with the news that Deirdre had been taken, I just couldn’t believe it,” Beverly went on. Her brown eyes were red and she held a tissue damp with tears in her hand. “I’d hardly gotten any sleep last night because of Kate, and then I heard Deirdre was gone and I just lost control. I love Deirdre, and the Mayhews have had such a hard time of it the last couple of years. Now this. Ned helped me get hold of myself so I wouldn’t scare the children. I know you’re exhausted after last night, too, but he suggested I come over here. I told him I was too nervous to drive, so he dropped us off while he goes on the search for Deirdre.”

  “Good lord,” Chyna murmured, a strange, sinking feeling in her stomach. “She’s only been gone since last night, though. There could be a lot of reasons why she didn’t come home….”

  “Such as? Chyna, she’s devoted to Ben. She’d never scare him by staying out all night without calling. I just hope the police can find her.”

  “The police? Deirdre hasn’t even been missing for twenty-four hours. Are they looking for her anyway?”

  “Unofficially. After all the missing girls we’ve had around here, no one is taking lightly another one going missing, especially a mature, responsible girl like Deirdre.”

  Chyna slowly nodded. Her hands felt icy although she had them wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee. She’d had a bad night but not for the same reason as Beverly. Chyna’s experience in the hospital waiting room had deeply upset her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it—not the flash of white, not the feel of something scratching her arms, not the sweet scent that had sent her into oblivion. Or rather, sent someone else into oblivion. Could Deirdre’s experience have been what she felt last night? She’d wanted to believe time had changed things for her, that she would never again live someone else’s life if only for an instant, and she still wasn’t quick to embrace the possibility that she could exist in another person’s reality.

  “We don’t know Deirdre has disappeared like the other girls,” Chyna said determinedly, as much to herself as to Beverly.

  “Then what’s happened to her?” Beverly demanded.

  Chyna immediately felt herself placed on the defensive. Beverly clearly thought her formerly clairvoyant sister-in-law was holding back information, and Chyna flushed although her hands remained oddly cold. “I don’t know any more than you do,” she said, feeling as if she were telling a half-truth. “Deirdre was at a party. You said she’d stepped outside, but there were over a dozen people just a few feet away. She wasn’t alone.”

  “Heather Phelps, the second girl who disappeared, wasn’t alone, either. She was downtown,” Beverly argued almost aggressively.

  “But it was bitterly cold that evening and town was nearly deserted. Besides, Heather was in a large space. She could have gone north on Main and then somewhere else. Or south on Main, or across the street to Elm….” Chyna raised her shoulders in bewilderment. “What I’m saying is, she wasn’t confined. From the little bit you’ve told me, the backyard from where Deirdre seems to have vanished is small. The party was downstairs, where there are sliding glass doors leading into the yard. If someone took Deirdre, he would have stood a good chance of being seen by at least one of the teenagers looking out the doors.”

  Beverly fired back, “It was lighted inside and dark outside. Besides, I doubt if a bunch of drunken teenagers at the party were gazing out at a starlit lawn. And what about the broken branches of the hedge? Or the scraped ground? Or her shoe? Did she leave on a cold night wearing one shoe, for God’s sake?” Beverly glared for a moment, then ran her hand across her forehead. “Oh, Chyna, I’m yelling at you like this is your fault. I’m so sorry. I’m worried about Deirdre.”

  “I know—”

  “Mostly, though, I’m scared because I have a daughter who’ll be a teenager som
eday and this kind of thing just

  keeps happening!” Beverly rushed on, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “What if this happens to Kate?”

  “Don’t even think such a thing!” Chyna shot back, surprising herself. Beverly jumped, startled, and Chyna closed her eyes. “Now it’s my turn to apologize for snapping, but here you are, working yourself into a fit because you’re certain something terrible has happened to Deirdre and anticipating an awful fate for Kate when maybe nothing bad has happened to Deirdre at all. For heaven’s sake, Bev, Deirdre was last seen at the party at about ten o’clock last night. It’s not quite noon today. There could be a lot of reasons why no one has seen her for fourteen hours.”

  “Such as?”

  “She went off with a boyfriend.”

  “That’s what everyone said about Edie Larson. They thought she’d run off with Gage Ridgeway, but she hadn’t.” Beverly had been slowly shedding her tissue and now grabbed up all the damp pieces in a bunch. “But Deirdre wasn’t the type to go off with a boyfriend even if she had one, which I don’t think she did. Her father depends on her so much since her mother died. She’s his whole world.”

  “Maybe that’s why she would run away, with a boyfriend or all alone,” Chyna suggested, struggling not to sound as agitated as she felt. “I met Deirdre yesterday. She’s pretty and obviously smart. I could tell she was disappointed that she wasn’t going to college this year, although she downplayed her feelings. I believe the girl has a lot of dreams she’s terrified she won’t get to live out, either this year or any other.”