The couch sank again.
If one more person offered their condolences as though Peter was already—
Chandler was lifted from her seat and pulled into a hard body. Hank might be a man with a questionable past. An abandoned foster kid who’d dealt drugs and vandalized properties. He might have tattoos and long hair and look like a Sasquatch, but . . . Chandler buried her face in his chest. Hank saw her as no one else did. She didn’t need to be spoken to—she needed someone to share with. To share the pain. To be seen.
He didn’t say anything, but his lips moved against her temple. Not kisses or caresses, but as if he was praying . . . silently.
She should do that too, but she hadn’t the strength. Maybe this was the gift God was giving her. Someone else’s strength, when she simply had no more left within her.
She’d never done well with asking for or receiving help.
Soft footsteps and then Lottie returned and whispered to Hank over Chandler’s form, “Margie ran home to let her dog out. She’ll be back soon with something to eat. I picked up Peter’s toys. That way Chandler won’t trip over them when she heads to bed.”
Bed? Chandler kept her eyes squeezed shut, yet the idea of sleep was laughable.
“Thanks.” Hank’s word vibrated in her chest.
“Tell her I put his superhero costume in the closet and his zebra toy in the toy bin.”
“Okay,” Hank said.
Chandler popped her head up. Instantly aware. “Zebra toy?”
Lottie seemed surprised at Chandler’s sudden attention. She nodded hesitantly. “Yes. A vintage wooden one on wheels?”
Chandler shivered. “Peter doesn’t have a zebra toy. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
Lottie pulled back.
Hank stiffened. “A zebra toy?”
“Yes,” Lottie nodded.
Chandler was very close to Hank’s face. She could see his mind calculating in his eyes. “What is it?” She pulled away from him.
His brows created a deep V between his eyes. There was a fierceness in his expression. He didn’t mince words. “Denny’s grandfather—the Watchman—he was known to have left a zebra toy with the Ripleys’ daughter. Shortly before Patty Luchent was killed. Almost like a taunt.”
Chandler stilled. “You’re saying the Watchman took Peter?”
“Even I don’t believe that.” Lottie lowered herself onto the sofa on the other side of Chandler and rested a comforting hand on Chandler’s knee.
“No. But there’s a connection.” Hank half pushed Chandler off his lap toward Lottie. He surged to his feet and grabbed for his phone and keys. “We found Linda in the Watchman’s hideaway for all his sick souvenirs. Now a zebra toy is left behind, and Peter has disappeared? It’s all connected. And someone is sending a message.”
Lottie nodded. “Connected maybe, but still, it makes no sense.”
“I’ll be back.” Hank charged from the room.
Chandler turned toward Lottie, helpless. She didn’t know what to do, or say, or even how to calculate how all of this was interrelated—or if it even was.
“We will find Peter,” Lottie attempted to reassure Chandler. But all Chandler could see, looking into her not-very-distant future, was the image of herself, alone, with only the memories of her sweet baby boy, and a very dead Linda Pike.
Chapter Thirty-Two
PIPPA
Georgiana Farnsworth can rot in—”
“Richard, please.” Victoria Ripley bit off the end of her plea, choosing instead to bite into a forkful of her dinner. She cast her gaze toward her plate and looked surprised at her own speaking up.
Pippa forked at the boiled trout on her plate and nudged an asparagus stalk out of the way. Glancing up, she caught her own future husband’s eye. His narrowed. He was suspicious of her, and she was of him. They’d not shared words alone since a few nights before in the carriage house. Pippa’s feelings toward Forrest, while always platonic, now waffled between wary and wondering. Wary of his controlling declarations and wondering if he’d meant them with good or bad intentions. Regardless, she’d wasted time since searching for the elusive zebra toy. There were moments Pippa questioned whether even the Watchman was being honest with her regarding its importance. Or were they all merely playing games with her affections and emotions, devious and self-serving men that they all were?
Richard Ripley chewed and swallowed. He pointed his fork at his wife, unaffected by her blushed porcelain skin, upswept blue-black hair, and brilliant sapphire eyes. Equally as unaffected by her subservient role in their household.
“I will say as I please about Georgiana Farnsworth and her pathetic little band of plebeian females. The circus is my livelihood. It is my pride. I’ve no intention of letting her yellow-ribbon renegades spread more untruths.”
“What has she done now?” Victoria Ripley’s tone was long-suffering as she asked the very obviously required question in response.
Ripley’s fork clanked against his plate as he reached for his wineglass. “She picketed my office outside the train depot. All afternoon she traipsed up and down the platform chanting lies. She’s finally got her wish and rallied Bluff River on her side.”
“Her supporters are growing.” Forrest dabbed his upper lip with a napkin.
Pippa looked away. Any other man with different character traits and she’d find him handsome with an air of confident sophistication.
“I counted sixty-three people.” Ripley spoke around a mouthful of potatoes.
Pippa noticed her mother wince at his manners, or lack thereof.
“And eighteen of them were men. If that woman somehow garners support from the empty-headed voting members of this community, I’ll serve up Jake Chapman’s head on a platter. And Ernie’s. And, for that matter, my own!”
Pippa found her tongue, even as her mother cast her a warning look to stay silent. “Women have the vote now.”
The following pause was thick with held-breath expectancy. Victoria’s fork stopped, lofted midway to her mouth. Forrest’s eyebrow rose, and he stared across the table at Pippa as though she’d taken leave of her senses.
Richard Ripley’s sigh of controlled derision was audible. He set his wine goblet down and made exaggerated pretense of gripping the edge of the table. Looking down his aquiline nose, he addressed Pippa. “Our nation’s most recent and most obvious error in judgment.”
Pippa squirmed under his scrutiny. He held her stare for so long, the ensuing silence grew painfully uncomfortable. She finally nodded, even though her implied agreement was insincere. Once she’d acquiesced, Ripley continued to fixate on her, the superiority of his expression so poignant, so oppressive, it took everything in her not to flee the room.
Forrest cleared his throat, effectively rescuing her and breaking the awkward stillness. “Miss Farnsworth is aggravating, to be sure. However, Bonaventure Circus stands on years of good rapport. Especially since we’re sponsoring the Autumn Bluff River Formal.” He took a sip of his wine.
Ripley sneered at Forrest, as though his dead partner’s son was foolishly not seeing something that he should. “It is a step we shouldn’t be required to take to preserve our name. We shouldn’t need to preserve our name at all.”
Pippa didn’t understand the look Forrest shot her before he focused again on his dinner.
Ripley continued, directing his attention to his wife. “As it stands, Victoria, your niece had better be finished with Georgiana Farnsworth. Pippa, since you’re so devoted to the welfare of the circus and the elephant, I’ll expect you at the Formal as well.”
“But . . .” Dread coursed through Pippa. She hated the community’s formal dance every autumn. Despised that she had to sit at the edge of the ballroom like an old-fashioned wallflower. Her leg forbade her to dance smoothly. And her social inadequacies made small talk and interaction uncomfortable at best.
She met her father’s shrewd gaze. He was punishing her. Her presence at the Formal would do lit
tle to assist the reputation of the circus. It was something she didn’t want to do, and Ripley simply wished her to suffer. Pippa avoided casting a pleading glance to her fiancé. She knew Forrest would do nothing to aid her cause.
“Must she, Richard?” Victoria interceded meekly on behalf of her daughter.
“She has to attend the Formal.” Ripley’s look communicated he’d brook no further argument. “It would look ridiculous not to have us all in attendance. It would undermine the picture of family unity as we support the circus and renew favor toward it. I will regale the community with stories from our summer tours, and Forrest?” He redirected his sternness. “You will as well. I realize you weren’t with the circus during the bulk of the summer, but expect you to have many astounding tales to tell and leave our community spellbound with the representation we give to Bluff River as we travel throughout the nation.”
“Of course.” Forrest nodded.
A bang from the front foyer of the Ripley house made Pippa jump, and her hand hit the edge of the table, upsetting the water in her glass. She twisted in her chair as a bedraggled man burst into the dining room, followed by a visibly upset butler.
Ripley lunged to his feet. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry, sir. The man here just pushed past me . . .” Their butler heaved an affronted chest while he grappled for his next breath.
Pippa recognized the man, who twisted his cap in nervous energy. His face was mottled, white with dark patches of skin and a nose offset from his eyes. Benard the blacksmith offered a small smile of recognition, but she noted the urgency that oozed from his posture.
Forrest stood from the table, following Ripley’s suit but at a much more controlled pace. “What’s the matter, Benard?”
“It’s one of the tents, sir—at the circus.” Benard pointed out the window as if they could all look and see. “Someone tampered with the ropes. It collapsed!”
“Was anyone injured?” Victoria Ripley pressed her fingers to her lips.
“The lion trainer,” Benard replied. “Not seriously, but he’s cut up. He didn’t have the cats in the tent. They’re fine.”
“It’s that blasted Miss Farnsworth.” Ripley threw his napkin on his plate.
His wife drew back. “Georgiana?”
Ripley leveled her with a glare. “Yes. Georgiana.”
“You really think she would stoop to sabotage?” Forrest was the only one who dared challenge Ripley now.
“Anyone is capable of anything.” Ripley stormed from the room, a dreadful silence remaining in his wake.
Pippa stole a look at her betrothed. The steel set to Forrest’s jaw and the lack of emotion or surprise on his face sent needling fingers of doubt through her. The unbidden question fluttered through her mind and collided with the doubts she’d been harboring since the night at the carriage house. He wouldn’t possibly have orchestrated the collapse of the circus tent to cast blame on Georgiana, would he? It was evident he neither liked nor respected the woman, but to go to such devious lengths . . . Still, he had indicated his intention to protect the circus. To protect her. The idea that Forrest could perhaps be responsible suddenly didn’t seem so preposterous. It would devastate Forrest just as much as her father if the circus was ruined because of one woman’s fancy. Pippa was loath to think such things, even of Forrest, but somehow his connections and protectiveness toward the circus made it believable.
It was all spiraling, and Pippa nudged past Penn as the dog nosed behind her heels, loyal to a fault and unwilling to let her mistress creep through Ripley’s study alone. It had to be here somewhere. Moonlight shafted through the window of her father’s study and made the leather of his desk chair shine. He had yet to return from the catastrophe at the circus, while Forrest had already come and gone, weary and soiled from the mess. Someone had singed the ropes, he’d explained, perhaps using a hot blade. Either way, the tent had collapsed, and they were lucky no one had been seriously injured.
Such sabotage would keep her father away most of the night, she was sure of it.
Pippa ran her fingers along the inside of his desk drawers. A false bottom? A secret switch? Something that would trigger a reactionary door to reveal the hiding place of this elusive toy. Nothing. The drawers were organized and uncluttered. Her father’s letter opener lay perpendicular to the drawer’s sides, next to his ink pen and notepaper, also neatly arranged. Pippa shut the door with careful precision. If the articles inside were off-kilter, Richard Ripley would know someone had been snooping.
Every drawer, every nook, and every cranny in the study had been searched. Pippa flopped onto the leather chair, and Penn mimicked her actions by dropping to the floor with a grunt. Frustration stimulated Pippa’s antsy leap back to her feet, slowed only by the weakness in her crippled leg that served to remind her of her own insecurities. She hobbled to the window in her father’s study, positioned directly below her bedroom window, pushed back its curtain and swept her gaze over the back lawn of the Ripley house. This place, it was her home, and it was also her prison. Though the stately house should represent security, instead it made her restless.
The carriage house was the size of a two-story farmhouse but square like the manor with no gables or turrets. Its yellow siding dimmed in the night shadows, empty now as her father and driver had taken the motorcar to the circus. The brick driveway rounded between the buildings, creating an avenue, and curled beneath the covered archway where carriages could pick up and drop off worthy visitors.
Movement at the right-side pillar of the arch startled Pippa. She pushed the curtain back further and pressed her forehead against the windowpane. Pippa’s breath caught in her throat. The shadow that stretched across the ground both slaughtered her worries and revived new ones.
The Watchman emerged from the darkness. He stood, legs apart, hands at his sides, head tilted back, fixated on the window. On her. She couldn’t move. It was as if he drew her into the gaping dark holes in place of eyes in the burlap sack that cloaked his head. His hand lifted in a slight wave, as if in a worrying air of someone who watched her. Knew her. Waited for her.
Hesitation marked her breaths. They came quick but stuttered. Previously, Pippa would have rushed to meet him. Begged for him to stay. He had always been elusive, but now he stood there, waiting. Now her hesitation was marred by mistrust, by stories of Jake’s murdered sister, and by the doubts that anyone was trustworthy.
If God would only speak. Speak aloud. Simply announce to her what she should do as He had the men of old. But He was silent. In His guidance. In His direction. In His caution.
Hang it all. Pippa whirled from the window. If she stayed under the arch, if she didn’t come close, certainly she would be safe. She was at home. She would not leave her doorway.
Pippa closed the study door behind her as softly as she could so as not to send its echo up the stairs to awaken her mother. Her footsteps were muffled on the cream-and-navy carpet runner that raced ahead of her down the hallway toward the front entry. She reached the front door, her fingers fumbling with the locks. Penn panted next to her, anticipation of adventure in her eyes. With the door open, Penn slipped through first, but Pippa didn’t follow. She watched Penn, who halted in the drive, sniffing the air. Her hackles weren’t raised. She seemed calm and unworried.
Crickets chirruped in the nighttime silence. A breeze lifted her hair from her face. Pippa squinted into the night, into the archway.
“Hello?” Her whisper was hoarse. The crickets fell silent. All she could hear were the trees with their brittle and dying leaves blowing in the light wind.
“Hello?”
Nothing. Pippa wrapped her arms around her torso as a shiver from the autumn chill reached her bones. She looked to Penn. The dog was uninterested in the archway, the bushes, the pillar, or any of the surrounding structures. Penn padded to the edge of the drive and sniffed at the ground, then shook her body as if shaking off drops of water before trotting back to Pippa an
d the entry.
Pippa bit her lip. The Watchman was gone. Again.
She moved to retreat into the house when something caught her eye, something in the bushes. White. Fluttering. Pippa hurried forward and squinted her eyes to see through the darkness. She reached into the shrubbery, and her fingers closed around a handkerchief. Its edges were bordered in the same tatting as the blanket she had been wrapped in as a baby. A red flower was embroidered in the corner. The crunch of paper pinned to its back made Pippa turn the handkerchief over.
This was your mother’s. Before she died, she wiped tears from her eyes. Tears for you. But she wasn’t the only one who loved you. Have you found it yet? It will reveal my truth—will you bear it once you know?
Pippa ripped the note from its pin and held the handkerchief to her nose as she clenched the missive into a ball. Tears burned her eyes. Tears of anger that time had stolen away her mother, the woman who loved her. Tears of frustration that as much as she ached to know who her guardian was—truly was—she was also terrified of what he might imply. The vengeance in Jake’s eyes as he spoke of his sister, the idea of a man willing to take the life of an innocent young woman while masked behind a veil of cowardice. And yet, here too was the one who had communicated with her for months now. Who she had seen in the shadows, asked after, worried her mother because of . . . and now he too revealed his own fear.
Will you bear it once you know?
Know what? And what must she bear? That he was a murderer? That he had slaughtered Jake’s sister and yet harbored protection and love for Pippa? Or was he unrelated to Bridgette’s death and simply Pippa’s guardian? The one who knew more of who Pippa was than it seemed anyone else was willing to say. The one who knew her as a . . .
Pippa stopped, knowing where her heart of hearts was taking her. She shouldn’t go there again. Shouldn’t entertain the deepest dream that she’d protected for years. Her mother was dead. This she knew. This was clear from the moment she was able to conceptualize her unorthodox adoption. But her father? The one who should have protected her and stepped in to care for her. Where had he gone? What force of life had ripped him from her and, in his stead, entrusted Pippa to a man who clearly cared not for a daughter, but for an act of charity? For his livelihood, and perhaps for his childless wife.
The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus Page 27
