Stolen in the Night

by MacDonald, Patricia

  “Put him…? What are you talking about? Now you think that Rusty Bosworth killed Nelson? And took Erny? Did you tell that to the police?” Julie asked.

  Tess looked at her balefully. “Sure,” she said. “Tell them I suspect the chief.”

  Julie shook her head. “I don’t know, Tess. I can’t picture Rusty Bosworth doing something like that.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure you can’t…” Tess said dismissively.

  “I mean, the last I knew, you were blaming it all on Nelson Abbott,” said Julie.

  Tess turned on her sister-in-law. “I wasn’t blaming him. I had information.”

  “Well, it couldn’t have been very good information.”

  “It was incomplete,” Tess snapped.

  “Wrong, you mean,” said Julie. “Just like with Lazarus.”

  Tess gasped, as if she had been slapped. “Thanks, Julie. Thanks a lot. You’re a big help.” She turned on her heel and left the apartment, slamming the French doors behind her. She felt cornered, with nowhere to turn. The police were still camped out down the hall. And outside the reporters were, no doubt, still lurking. Tess went to her room, opened the door, and looked at the two beds. Hers was neatly made while Erny’s was thrown together, the bedspread lumpy, the pillow askew. Tess went over to his bed and sat down on the edge, taking his pillow up and holding it to her heart, burying her face in it, rocking back and forth as the tears she had tried to hold in all day began to fall. Tess felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she couldn’t catch her breath any longer. In her heart she kept saying his name: Erny. Where are you? Are you still alive?

  As a child, she had only told the truth as she knew it. The adults around her had done the rest. But perhaps the perverse order of the universe had ruled that she had not yet suffered enough for her unwitting part in the injustice done to Lazarus Abbott. How much, she wondered, do I have to lose before my debt is paid? Where is my boy? she thought.

  She felt as if Julie had attacked her when she was at her weakest. Attacked her when she didn’t need reminding of her failings. She never forgot, not for one moment, that it was her word that sealed the fate of Lazarus Abbott. She may have ignored those reporters, but she had heard their insinuations.

  They had no idea what was in her heart. None of them. They did not know what it was like to grow up in the aftermath of such a crime. Tess remembered the day of the execution with utter clarity. The family had been told they could attend the actual execution at the prison, but they all declined. Even Jake. When Lazarus was executed, Tess was at college, hiding in a library carel pretending to study, waiting for the news to come that would “end” her family’s suffering.

  But after it was over, long before she learned that Lazarus might not be guilty, Tess learned the sorry truth about vengeance and closure. After the execution was done, Tess realized that she felt no better for it. No less guilty for having stayed quiet as her sister was stolen in the night. No less secretly angry at Jake for having left them alone in the tent that night to go to a dance. Vengeance would not bring back her innocent, lovely sister or spare her father from the anguish that had led to his fatal heart attack. Or heal her family. She understood, too late, that the execution of Lazarus Abbott, even when she believed him to be guilty, had done no good. No good at all.

  The bedroom door opened and Dawn came in wearing her car coat with the collar turned up. “Tess, are you all right?”

  Tess furtively wiped her tears away. She got up from the bed, sniffling, and walked to the door where her mother stood. “Where were you?”

  “Ken and I have been out driving around, looking for Erny. I’ve just come home to change into some rubber boots. We want to walk up the bridle path to the campground. At least as far as they’ll let us go. Maybe I’ll see something they missed. It’s worth a try. I can’t sit here and do nothing. Did you have any luck?”

  Tess shook her head and followed her mother out of the bedroom.

  “All right, let me see if I can find those boots,” said Dawn as she turned down the hall to head for the mudroom. “Tess, go put a sweater on. You’re shaking.”

  Tess didn’t feel like arguing. Obediently, she pulled on a warm sweater and then walked down the hall. She looked into the sitting room. Kenneth Phalen was sitting in the Windsor chair by the fireplace. He seemed to feel Tess’s gaze and looked up.

  “Tess. I’m so sorry about your boy,” said Ken. “I thought I’d help your mother look for him. You have to help in the search at a time like this. Just to keep your sanity.”

  “Yes,” said Tess.

  “I know how it feels when your child is missing. I’ll never forget that sense of helplessness when we couldn’t find Lisa.” He shook his head. “She ran away about a dozen times before…the final time.”

  “Erny did not run away,” said Tess. “That’s what the police want us to believe, but it’s not true. Somebody took him.”

  “Oh, I know. I know. But the feeling is the same. Just the sheer terror that something awful is going to happen to them. I can’t tell you how many nights I went out looking for Lisa, making bargains with God that if I found her and she was all right…. Well, when they get into drugs, it’s a nightmare.”

  Tess crossed her arms over her chest. “Kids don’t just…get into drugs, do they? I mean, aren’t there warning signs that they’re very troubled to begin with?”

  There was a flicker of resentment in Ken’s eyes. And then it subsided. “How old is your son?”

  “Ten,” said Tess.

  Ken shook his head. “Well, that’s what you tell yourself now. You think that you’ll make sure your kid has a happy life and then it won’t ever happen to them.”

  “Isn’t there some truth to that?” said Tess.

  Ken shrugged. “If you’re lucky,” he said.

  Dawn came down the hall wearing her rubber “Wellies.” “Ken, are you ready?”

  Ken rose immediately to his feet. “Sure,” he said. He put on the gray parka that was hanging from a hook by the door. Then he pulled a walking stick from the umbrella stand. “Might need this,” he said.

  “Well,” said Tess stiffly, “I appreciate your…helping out.”

  He grasped her shoulder briefly. “Courage,” he said.

  Tess felt tears spring to her eyes and she avoided his gaze.

  “Let’s go out the front,” said Dawn. “We’ll walk around the inn.”

  “Okay,” said Ken. He led the way out the front door.

  “Tess, walk us out. Get a breath of air,” said Dawn.

  Tess did as she was told, walking arm in arm with her mother out the front. Tess pulled her sweater tight around her and scanned the parking lot.

  “I guess the vultures have scattered for the moment.”

  “They’ll be back,” said Dawn grimly. “Ken has his cell phone with him. We’ll check in with you soon.”

  Tess nodded and breathed in the damp, gray air. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” said Dawn.

  Tess released her mother reluctantly. Dawn stepped off the front step and started down the path where Ken had led. He was using the walking stick to part the grasses as he went along. Dawn turned back to look at Tess. “I won’t be gone long.” Then she frowned. “Now, what’s that doing there?” Dawn asked as she spotted something out of place in the inn’s carefully maintained front yard. She walked back across the gravel and picked up the pole that was propped against the latticework behind the bench.

  Tess looked at the object Dawn was holding. “Oh,” she said, “that’s the fishing pole Erny made. Jake brought it over.”

  Dawn’s expression softened as she looked at the makeshift fishing rod. “Oh,” she said. “That’s wonderful. What a kid.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Tess cried.

  Dawn shook her head and handed the pole to Tess. “Don’t, Tess. Don’t give up. You go put it in the mudroom. He’ll be using it again before you know it,” she said firmly.

  “I will,” said Tes
s.

  “We’ll be back soon,” Dawn promised and then she disappeared around the side of the house.

  Tess nodded and clutched the pole to her chest with both hands. She waved at her mother, though Dawn was already out of sight. Then Tess sank down on the bench, planting the fishing rod on the stone step in front of her and gazed at it. She could picture her son making it. Busily hunting up the elements he needed for the job. The long tomato plant stake. The twine, which had probably been used to secure the vine to the stake. Where did he find this stuff? she thought, smiling through her tears. Jake’s house? Neither Jake nor Julie was much of a gardener. Then she remembered Jake saying that they were out at the Whitman farm. He probably found this stuff in one of their many fields that Nelson Abbott had tended so dutifully over the years. Luckily Nelson would never know that Erny had lifted this pole and twine from his garden to fashion a fishing rod.

  Tess clutched the childish contraption to her, to her heart. He was hoping to catch a big fish and instead…

  Tess pulled the twine through her fingers until she came to the small, rectangular metal lure that he had clumsily secured to the end of the twine through an eye at one end of the rectangle. She took the piece of metal in her fingers and turned it over. Then her heart leaped to her throat.

  Erny’s lure was a silver medallion, worn and scratched by time and dirt. Engraved on it was one word: “Believe.” Tess felt confused and…suddenly frightened, as if she had stepped out of an open door and found herself on a high ledge. Mine? she thought, examining the medal. It had to be. The blood was pounding in her ears as Tess fumbled inside the top of her turtleneck and pulled out her own chain. Her medallion was still there, as it always was. Her hands shook as she put the two medallions together and saw that they were the same, although the one attached to the twine was scratched and battered. She turned the fishing lure/medallion over again and peered at it more closely. Etched faintly into the back, barely visible, were three numbers. Tess’s heart was thudding and there seemed to be a rushing sound in the air around her. The three numbers formed a date. It took her a moment to comprehend it. Her brain felt woolly and it was difficult to make those numbers correspond to a day, a month, a year. To the date they represented. To Phoebe’s date of birth.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Phoebe?” she whispered, squeezing the battered medallion as if it were an amulet and she could summon her long-lost sister by breathing her name over it. “Phoebe…”

  For one moment, she felt suspended in time. Felt as if, somehow, because she was holding this long-missing talisman, she might turn around and everything would be different. Her blonde-haired sister, still thirteen, in sweatpants and braces, would be hovering behind her, close enough to touch. Smiling at her…Phoebe’s face, so long lost, now nearly forgotten, was suddenly vivid in Tess’s mind’s eye. Tess tried to hold on to it, to keep it with her somehow, but the edges began to blur and the image faded. Tess’s heart sank and she felt as if a magic spell had been broken.

  She looked down at the twine laced through her fingers. She had to free the medallion from the knot Erny had made to fasten it to his fishing line. There was no sensation in her fingers. They were white and numb. Somehow she managed to rapidly sort through the childish system of knots until she worked the end free and the twine fell away, coiled like a slinky, and she was able to pull the medallion loose. She pressed it, for a moment, to her lips. Phoebe. Your necklace. You were wearing it that last day….

  The unpleasant tang of metal against her tongue jolted her back to the reality of the present. Her thoughts of Phoebe were replaced by thoughts of her son, who had recovered Phoebe’s necklace. Found it, obviously, in the place where he found the tomato stake and the twine. Found it in the place where Phoebe’s killer had hidden her, so long ago. At the Whitman farm. Where Nelson Abbott, his son, Lazarus, and his nephew had all worked.

  Tess stood up on unsteady legs and ran toward the corner of the house where Ken and her mother had recently disappeared. She looked down the path, but there was no sign of them. “Mother!” she cried out. Tess felt almost dizzy with longing to show this relic of Phoebe’s life and death to Dawn. Oh my God. Mom. Wait until you see what I have found. What Erny found…

  But her shouts dispersed in the air. Dawn and Ken were nowhere in sight nor within shouting distance, apparently. Tess tried to gather her thoughts. Maybe she could call Dawn on her cell phone. But as soon as she thought of it, she knew it was futile. Dawn was from another generation. She never took her cell phone along on a walk. Dawn said that Ken had his, but Tess didn’t know his number.

  Clutching the medallion in her palm, her heart racing, Tess took a deep breath. Maybe I can run after them, she thought. But then she shook her head. It would be possible to find them, of course, but it would take time. And there was no time to lose. She felt certain that wherever Phoebe’s killer had hidden her, that was where he had hidden Erny also. The Whitman farm. Chan Morris’s place. It made perfect sense, now that she thought about it. She had never visited the Whitman farm, but she had passed by it. She assumed it had outbuildings, a barn. Hiding places for a stolen child. Hiding places that Lazarus Abbott would have known about from working there. Hiding places that his cousin, Rusty, who worked there in the summer, would have known about, as well.

  It couldn’t be hard to find, she thought. Her mind was racing in six directions, but she forced herself to concentrate. The Whitman farm. It was off a back road in Stone Hill. She remembered seeing the sign for it when she had driven Erny on other trips, to admire the changing leaves, the mountains. Her eyes narrowed. Harrison Road? she thought. That wasn’t right. Tess squeezed her eyes shut, tried to visualize it. Harriman Road, she thought. That’s it. Harriman Road. Now she had to get there.

  She went back into the inn. She needed her coat, her cell phone, her car keys. She tried to move deliberately, without haste. Officer Virgilio studied her movements and Officer Swain greeted her pleasantly, but to Tess they suddenly resembled occupying soldiers from a foreign army. She forced herself to move slowly and appear calm and circumspect.

  She pulled on her jacket, wrapped a wool scarf around her neck, and picked up her bag. “I have to go out for a few minutes,” she said.

  “Did you get a call or something?” Officer Virgilio asked suspiciously. “Don’t go being a hero, Miss DeGraff. If somebody contacted you with information, you’d better tell us right away.”

  “Nobody contacted me,” said Tess truthfully.

  “I need to be able to reach you if there is a ransom call,” said Officer Virgilio. “I may need your authorization where your son is concerned. In fact, maybe you’d better stay put,” said the officer. “Just in case.”

  Tess hesitated, torn. “I have my cell phone with me,” she murmured.

  “And I’ll be here,” said Julie, closing the door to Dawn’s quarters and coming down the hall, looking like a walking quilt in her colorful patchwork shirt. She glanced at Tess briefly.

  Tess gazed at her sister-in-law’s honest, bespectacled face, her no-nonsense haircut, her pudgy form pulled up to its most erect carriage. Julie did not ask where Tess was going or why. Their recent angry words forgotten, Julie was simply loyal. Ready and willing to do whatever Tess needed her to do. The same comforting, reliable presence she had always been. “Erny’s aunt can speak for me while I’m gone,” said Tess. “I trust her with my son’s life.” She turned to Julie. “You know my cell phone number, right?”

  Julie’s little dumpling of a face took on the sternness of a warrior’s. “By heart,” she said.

  Tess got out of the car and looked up at the large old Colonial house ringed by evergreens, with its pitched roof and rows of shuttered windows. The mountains loomed behind it like a theatrical backdrop. She had tried to call Chan Morris at the paper while she drove to the Whitman farm, but his secretary said he was in a meeting and couldn’t be interrupted. As Tess climbed the front steps to the house, she noted that there was no wheelchair ra
mp up to the porch. How does Chan’s wife get out of here when he’s not home? Tess wondered as she waited for someone to answer her knock.

  Maybe they have servants, Tess thought. A housekeeper or something. Obviously a woman as fragile and handicapped as Sally could not take care of a house this size. Tess rang again. All right, she thought, if nobody answers, I’m going to start searching the grounds and, if they complain about finding me on their property, I’ll just explain it to them. She started to turn away from the door when she heard a voice from inside, faint but distinct, calling out softly, “Come in.”

  Tess realized, when she heard that voice, that she had almost hoped no one would answer so that she could begin her search without explanation, but now that the voice had summoned her, she had to go in and state her purpose. She turned the knob on the front door and found that it opened readily. She stepped into the musty-smelling, dimly lit foyer. The foyer faced a long hallway and staircase with a curving walnut bannister. “Hello,” Tess called out. “Mrs. Morris?”

  “Who is it?” a voice said weakly.

  “It’s Tess DeGraff. Can I talk to you for a moment? Where are you?”

  “Here. Off the hall…” The voice seemed to fade away.

  Tess walked along the central hallway, looking into the rooms on either side. She passed a wheelchair, which was folded up and leaning against the staircase. The sound of her footsteps echoed on the wooden floors. The decor was surprisingly austere for such a large house. Despite its elegant wide moldings and high ceilings, the house’s furnishings were a monument to New England reserve and the house had an air of having seen better days. Tess looked into a living room that had gray-striped wallpaper and a grouping of chairs, a sofa, and a matching love seat with threadbare upholstery. On the wall above the mantel was an imposing oil painting of Chan’s grandmother. Tess recognized the severe features and the snapping black eyes from the photos at the newspaper office. On another wall, above the love seat, was a much less impressive portrait of a pretty, young woman in a white gown. Chan’s mother? Tess wondered. She took a step closer to look at the portrait and jumped when she heard a voice say, “Here.”