Larkspur Cove (14 page)

“A little bit of everything, it looks like,” I said, taking my flashlight and shining it into a dark corner, where more live traps and cages were stacked up. There was a long, gray feather in one of them – probably off a turkey or a hawk, but if that came off an eagle, Len could be in serious trouble. Eagles were federally protected. Stepping over to the cage, I pulled out my pocket camera and snapped a picture. Hay moved into the barn and looked over my shoulder.

It crossed my mind that, if there was going to be an investigation later, I didn’t want Hay mucking up the evidence now. “Let’s go. There’s no one here.” By the house, the dogs were raising Cain again, and I had a feeling Andrea was over there sniffing around. I had to give her credit for guts, but if those dogs found a way through the fence, it wouldn’t be pretty.

I walked out of the barn with Hay behind. Andrea was on the other side of the house with her nose poked into the old school bus and one foot on the step. Glancing back, she motioned us to her, then put her hand over her mouth and backed out of the bus. The horrified look on her face flashed a picture in my mind. Maybe old Len had tipped back one too many pints of sour mash, crawled in there, and expired in the heat . . . or something worse.

Jogging around the front porch, I met Andrea at the bus. “It looks like someone’s been living in there,” she said, and I relaxed a little.

“Wouldn’t surprise me.” Up here, you were likely to find a dozen or more different family members and hangers-on, all squatting on one place, employing any sort of imaginable human habitation.

That did bring up the question of what use Len would have for guest quarters, since everyone agreed he didn’t have any family and didn’t socialize. If he was living in the house, then who’d been staying out here, and where were they now?

Taking a step into the bus, I identified myself and called out Len’s name. I didn’t expect anyone to answer, but procedure is procedure for a reason. You don’t follow the rules, you might muck up a case that needs to be turned over to state troopers, or the county sheriff, or the feds. “Anybody in here?”

Climbing a couple more steps, I took a quick glance around the interior. The seats had been cleared out, and there was a mattress wedged against the back doors. A wood stove squatted near the front, and a lopsided plywood table lounged in the window light along one side. Two Styrofoam bowls and a set of china teacups sat on top of it. Leaning over the handrail, I looked inside the cups. Empty. They were just sitting there, like someone’d planned to sit down to dinner, then decided against it. I couldn’t blame them.You took your dinner in a spot like this, you were liable to end up with
E. coli
. The whole bus was strewn from one end to the other with towels, blankets, and clothes. It smelled of mold, and little piles of dried feces dotted contents here and there, as if coons had moved in, or someone had been keeping puppies in here, or both. A mud-covered set of women’s clothes lay piled near the door – jeans and a faded T-shirt. Modern-day stuff, not old enough to have belonged to Len’s mama, back when. Whose were those? Did Len have himself a woman no one knew about?

The question turned over in my mind as I headed down the stairs. “Reverend Hay, you got any idea whether Len might have a girlfriend?”

“A girlfriend?” Hay coughed. “You’re joking, right?”

“Well, I don’t see any sign of a little girl, but there’s a mud-covered set of women’s clothing piled by the door in there. They look fairly recent. I’d say someone’s been here besides Len.” I stepped off the bus, and one of the dogs stood on its hind legs and tried to crawl over the shipping-pallet fence. Andrea backed away and retreated to the front porch.

“We better let things alone here before that mutt decides to chew his way out,” I told Hay, and we followed Andrea’s lead back toward the porch. “You see anybody else with Len when you ran across him this afternoon?”

Hay shook his head. “Not a soul. Just him and the little girl. Like I said, she was playing up in the cedar brush off the road a ways. I just happened to catch sight of her because she wandered out in the field for a minute. I asked Len who that was, and he said it was his daughter, or daughter-girl. Something like that. He was a little flustered, but you know that’s how Len is when he has to talk to somebody. I don’t imagine he could think on his feet quickly enough to lie, even if he wanted to. I’m still learning who’s related to whom around here, so I just figured he had family I didn’t know about.” Hay pulled off his fishing hat and scratched his head, concern sketching a wrinkle between his eyebrows. “None of this makes sense, Mart.”

“Doesn’t seem to,” I agreed. “But right now, it’s pretty clear he’s either not here, or not coming out.” The best thing to do when you knew something was wrong but couldn’t find the evidence you needed was to get out quietly, then show up unannounced another time or two – see if you couldn’t catch your culprits in the act. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to catch Len at. In my career, I’d assisted in a few kidnapping cases – adults, mostly – and worked with FBI and state troopers in hunts for missing kids, but my mind really didn’t want to go there. After the past few years, I wasn’t ready for any more tragedy. Hopefully, Hay was right about Len, but one thing was for sure: Len knew these woods better than I did. If he got worried and decided to go underground for a while, he could do it.

Hay nodded.“Well, it could be I misunderstood him. Len’s done some work for me down at the church a time or two, weeding and cleaning the flower beds. He gets his words fouled up. Could be he meant to say she was a neighbor girl, or something. There are people up here who would drop their kids off with almost anybody, just to get them off their hands for a little while.”

“True enough.” Hay was right. Chinquapin Peaks was like a trip to a whole other world. On the south side of the lake, kids had all the finest things money could buy. On this side, there was no telling. “I’ll pay another visit up here tomorrow and see if I can catch up with Len. If he’s got something going with a neighbor, or has a girlfriend with a kid, maybe I can pass the information along – get someone to come by and do a welfare check. Anyone who’d be using Len as a baby-sitter probably needs a little monitoring.”

Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, Andrea stepped off the corner of the porch into the scrappy grass below. “There
has
been a child here.” She pointed to the ground, and we crossed the porch to see. Not far from her feet, a patch of bare earth by the downspout was decorated with measuring cups, a broken plate, a few odd pieces of silverware, a margarine tub, and a rust-covered coffee can. The margarine tub had been used to produce a mud cake, complete with dry leaves and pebbles for frosting, and feathery shoots of field grass for candles. No chance Len had made that.

“Adults don’t play in the dirt,” Andrea observed.

I took a look around the woods, wondering if Len had been watching us this whole time.The more we snooped, the less likely he’d be to follow his normal routines tomorrow. “Let’s go for now.”

“We’re just leaving?” Andrea’s eyes flashed wide, her lips hanging open a bit.

I nodded and started walking.

She trotted to catch up with me while Hay lagged behind, listening to an owl hoot in a dead live oak. “We can’t just
leave
. We should wait.” Even as she said it, she glanced at the sun, hovering low over the hills.

“There’s no evidence a crime has been committed here,” I pointed out. Other than the jug lines and possibly the feather in the barn, I didn’t even have a legal reason to come back.

Andrea looked over her shoulder, her lip curling a bit. “But this place . . .” Her eyes, full of worry, begged me to do something – solve the mystery, fix the problem, be a hero. I wanted to tell her she was looking at the wrong guy. I wasn’t anybody’s hero. I didn’t deserve to be.

“You keep working on this side of the lake, you’ll see a lot of places like this,” I said, and she stiffened like I’d insulted her. “The rules are different in Chinquapin Peaks.”

I firmly believe that nature brings solace
in all troubles.

– Anne Frank

(Left by a visiting philosophy student
who read the whole wall)

Chapter 11

Andrea Henderson

As we crossed the lake, my stomach was churning, but not because of motion sickness this time. I couldn’t stop picturing the little girl in the pickup truck, and trying to decide what emotions I’d seen on her face.

Closing my eyes as the boat cut cleanly through the swells, I imagined the scene again. In my mind, her expression was one of fear and need. But was I only imagining what I thought should be there – what a trip through Len Barnes’s camp made me expect to see? The place was like something out of a mission video from the Third World – unfit, unclean, filled with cages and traps, animal skins hanging everywhere, catfish heads strung up to rot in a tree, snarling dogs breeding indiscriminately in a yard filled with junk. Mart hadn’t even given those things a second look, but when I’d noticed the toys in the dirt next to the porch, my emotions had skidded into a tailspin. No child should have to play there. I wanted to find the little girl right then, to confront whoever was responsible for her, to remove her from the environment immediately.

But now, a part of me was questioning the impulse – drawing back to my original gut reaction when I’d seen her in the truck. The truth was that she hadn’t seemed nervous or fearful, only curious as to why I was on the side of the road. The presence of the snarling dog and the looks of the vehicle had worried me, but my first impression of the girl was that she wasn’t afraid. In actuality, I’d had a much more visceral reaction to John and Audrey talking about their kittens and their mother’s boyfriend. When those children looked at me, their trepidation was evident. They wanted to tell me things, but they knew they’d better not. They wanted help, but they were afraid of what it might lead to. I didn’t gather the same feeling from the little girl in the truck.

Then again, how would I know? There were no reference points in my life for places like this, for people like this. As a child, I’d seen the other side of the lake from a distance. We used the swimming beaches on our side, came and went from private boat docks, caught a few rays on sun decks only we had access to. Occasionally, my mother cautioned us to keep away from the public beaches when we were out on the jet skis, because those places
gathered riffraff
. We’d vacationed in the bubble of Larkspur Estates during its glory years and never looked far beyond.

I’d married in the bubble, raised Dustin in it and lived comfortably there, only venturing out for a mission trip with a group of Karl’s university students now and then. It was good public relations for us to go along. We’d taught English for two weeks in China and built houses in Mexico. The poverty there was stark and startling, but it was on the other side of the world, where you expected it to be.

As Mart pulled in to drop Reverend Hay at the dock behind tiny Lakeshore Community Church, I caught myself gazing up the hill at the unimposing brownstone building, watching its white wooden steeple glimmer in filtered pink light. I realized I was talking in my head.
I need to know if I can handle this before I get in any deeper. I need
to know if I’m on the right path. . . .

It was a prayer, I guessed. Nothing so formal as I would have offered in the past – no
Father God
or
Amen
. But even though I didn’t want to admit it, I knew whom those words were addressed to. Perhaps it was the presence of the church nearby, or the monumental challenges of my new job, but I felt the need to tap into something larger than myself. I felt the tug of that cross, silhouetted in the fading daylight.

“Come on up and see the place. I could run you back to your car in a bit.” Reverend Hay’s voice pulled at my thoughts. “We’ve got our greeting card–makers’ meeting tonight.” Checking his watch, he cast a concerned glance toward the parking lot. “Hope they’re not out front beating down the doors already.”

“That’s all right, thanks. I’d better be getting home to my son.” On the far horizon, the sun was a crimson orb, sinking into the treetops. By now, Meg and the twins would be gone and Dustin would be back in the house. Maybe Dustin and I could do something tonight – watch a movie or sit on the screened porch as the lightning bugs came out, the way we used to. I missed those times. I missed him, the way he used to be.

Reverend Hay nodded amiably, then reached down to give us a shove away from the dock. “Ask your boy about the production at the Tin Building. Hard to fill all the roles for this one. We’d love to have him.” He waved as Mart turned the steering wheel, and the boat drifted in a semicircle. “You too, Mart.”

Shaking his head, Mart kicked up the motor without answering, and we sped away. As we zipped across the corner of the lake, the last bands of sunlit water bending around us, I tried to imagine Mart as a budding actor.

“What?” he asked, catching me studying him as we idled down at the
No Wake
sign near the Waterbird, just letting the boat drift in. “Don’t worry about Len, all right? I’ll pay him a surprise visit in the morning and sort this thing out.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that,” I admitted. “I was thinking that you don’t look like a thespian.” An awkward feeling slid over me. I hadn’t meant to indicate that I’d been pondering him. My mind should have been on the little girl.

Cutting the engine, he slid the boat up to the dock and looped the rope over a post. He stopped and looked at me, then leaned on the seat back, one long leg draped casually over it. “You stay here awhile, you’ll learn to watch out for Hay. That bumbling, clueless act is all a facade. The Rev could sell ice to Eskimos. He’ll talk you into things, especially where that theater is concerned. It’s his passion – other than the church.” His lips quirked to one side as the late-day sun slid under his hat, catching his eyes and turning them a soft, earthy green.