A Stillness of Chimes (35 page)

“Of course I went over there sometimes. I missed going over to feed Mikey. I liked walking into the house. Sometimes I could almost believe Jess was still alive. I could pretend she’d walk in and start a pot of coffee and we’d have a nice, long talk.”

“That’s a little weird, Mom.”

“Don’t be rude, Cassandra Jane. Yes, I might have done more than Laura asked me to do, but stop accusing me of things.”

“Ardie,” Gary said softly. “I’ve smelled a new scent on you lately. Like the one Laura described to Cassie. The one that’s missing.”

“Stop it!” Ardelle stood up, her chest heaving. “I’ll be scrapping. Leave me alone.” She walked out of the room.

Cassie rubbed her eyes and peered at her dad. He looked like a guy who’d been on a bender. Bleary eyes, messy hair, his shirttails hanging out. It was so unlike him.

Moving like an old man, he heaved himself out of his chair. Then he stood motionless. The mover and shaker didn’t know what to do next.

“Mom needs help,” Cassie said. “She needs counseling.”

“Of course she does. I’ll ask Doc for some recommendations.” He hung his head. “She’ll be so embarrassed.”

“She shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t be embarrassed if she needs meds either. We’ll get through this. Together. All of us.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Cassie had never seen him so sorrowful. So lost. She crossed the room, kissed his cheek, and felt tears on his skin. “Oh, Dad. It’ll be okay.”

“I hope so. We’ll just have to start looking for that perfume. Cologne. Whatever it is.”

“Why is it so important to find it?”

“If we find it, she’ll have to admit she took it. She’ll have to admit she’s been lying—about all of it, probably. That might be the first step.”

Cassie didn’t like his theory, but she didn’t have anything better to offer. “This is a huge house, and it could be anywhere.”

“Then let’s get busy.” Still moving like an old man, he left her there.

Shaken by the condition of her parents’ marriage, Cassie was suddenly terrified for her own.

Late in Georgia was still a decent hour in California. She sank into the cushy chair again and pulled out her phone. Searching for cologne
could wait until she’d tried one more time to snag Drew’s undivided attention.

Voice mail. She groaned.

Waiting for the tone, she gave herself permission to be brutally honest. To say whatever came to her mind, no matter how bad it sounded. The tone came.

“Drew Cutler, I love you,” she said, good and loud. “But I’m tired of sharing you with your mistress. Your business. And I’m tired of being broke and far away from my family and your family, and I want to have your babies before I’m too old and I want them to look just like you because I love you so much, but if you decide you’d rather be married to your business instead, then you can have little business-babies someday with your business-mistress but I’m not sharing you anymore. Do you understand?”

She slapped at the tears wetting her cheeks. “If you love me, you’ll call me back this instant, and we won’t stop talking until we’ve worked things out, and the stupid cologne hunt can just wait. Call me back
now
.”

Closing her phone, she started crying in earnest. He would think she’d gone crazy. Maybe she had.

In the middle of a horrible, ugly sob, she jumped out of her skin. That was Drew’s ringtone. Afraid to answer, afraid not to answer, she stared at the screen.

Sean and Keith had parked their trucks at a construction site down the road and walked to the cabin. Now they were hiding high on the hill above it. Dale’s truck was gone before they got there, and if Elliott was near, he wasn’t making himself obvious.

They’d caught no scent of wood smoke, no motion, no light except the stars and the moonlight and the occasional airplane cruising across the sky. Most of the long, uncomfortable night still stretched out before them. Hunkered down on a small tarp atop the springy leaves, Sean wondered how many snakes might be annoyed with the intruders and how many ticks and kudzu bugs might be impervious to bug spray. Best not to think about it.

Before night fell, he’d taken a good look around. The cabin, nestled in a shallow valley, was nearly covered with kudzu. One look at the fallen roof and vine-choked floor had told him no sane person would try to live there.

Therefore Elliott might.

Sean checked his phone to make sure it was on. Laura probably wouldn’t call, but he wanted to be available if she needed him.

He leaned back on his folded jacket, watching the lights of a jet bound south for Atlanta. Even up in the mountains, miles into the wilderness, a man wouldn’t be able to escape civilization completely. Every few minutes, another plane flew over.

He thought of a September morning when four planes screamed down from a blue sky and changed America forever. He wasn’t a military man, but the video clip that had moved him the most had shown a mob of people racing down the sidewalks of DC. He’d thought they were running away, but then the camera had panned out, showing the truth. Those people were running
toward
the Pentagon. Bent on rescuing friends and strangers, they’d run straight into death and destruction.

Elliott, if he’d been there and in his right mind, would have been in the thick of it too. But he probably hadn’t been in his right mind for years. Probably wouldn’t be, ever again, unless God worked a major miracle. A miracle on a par with restoring lost limbs.

Sean had never seen even a minor miracle. Not one. And he lived in the Bible Belt.

The lights of another plane drifted into view, reminding him of those few, eerie days when no planes flew. The sky had been empty. Nothing came between the earth and heaven. Nothing came between humanity and the eyes of God.

The brothers stayed silent, watching lights glide across the black sky, watching the changeless darkness in the direction of the cabin. Sean fought to keep his eyes open.

The tarp rustled as Keith shifted his weight. “I still say it’s past time to get a little help from law enforcement,” he whispered.

Sean drew a slow breath. “Maybe. But the sheriff thinks the rumors are bogus, and he doesn’t understand some of the underlying issues. I’d rather leave him out of it.”

“Okay, but we should at least track down all the sightings and plot them on a map. Who saw him, and when and where. It might help narrow it down.”

“We might not have time for a scientific approach.”

A faint, metallic ping charged the air. Sean froze, electrified. Keith caught his breath and held it.

They sat in complete stillness, listening, but it didn’t happen again. The sound, so brief and unexpected, could have been a small noise nearby or a loud noise made faint by distance. The hair rose in prickles on the back of Sean’s neck like it did when he was hunting and a deer was nearby.

“Could’ve been Dale,” Keith said, barely audible.

But Sean thought of the missing wind chimes. When he cocked his head, listening, he thought he heard a soft, faraway laugh.

Although it was nearly three in the morning, Laura hadn’t even been tempted to nod off. The journals scattered across the floor would have kept her thinking even if she hadn’t been watching for her dad’s return.

If she didn’t connect with him soon, she might miss her chance forever. And there had to be at least one person who would give Elliott Gantt a chance to prove he was harmless. She had to welcome him home with open arms.

She’d spent hours browsing her mother’s writing. Most of it was shallow, self-absorbed nonsense, but the earliest journals had been different. They’d bubbled with life and love. Now Laura wasn’t even sure where to find them. She’d made a mess of Ardelle’s chronological order—on purpose, maybe.

Laura stood up and walked among the stacks and spills of the slender volumes. She found half a dozen of the cheap, spiral-bound notebooks from the early years. Taking them back to the couch, she curled up with the quilt.

She started with the one that opened with Jess Gantt as a young, pregnant wife.
E. worries about Agent O.
, she’d written.
Such a pessimist. I keep telling him the baby will be absolutely perfect
.

Tears sprang to Laura’s eyes. She’d never given much thought to it, but it made sense that he would have been exposed to Agent Orange. Of course he would have worried about birth defects, not to mention health issues for himself.

She opened three more notebooks, checking their dates, before she found the one that covered her birth. There was nothing for the day she was born, but on the next day her mother had written:
No time to journal yesterday. Laura Lillian made her appearance at 4:48 p.m. My baby girl is perfect. E. said she looks just like me, and he added with a grin:
“
Thank God!
”
I am SO thankful
.

Laura shook her head. Early in their marriage, her parents must have been happy. They must have been in love.

A faint meow brought Laura back to the present. Two frail old souls were out there tonight: her dad and Mikey, who’d slipped between her feet hours before when she went out to get the mail. The cat had made himself scarce, but now he was yowling at the door.

Pathetic old thing. He wanted his independence, but he was too elderly, too frail to live in a world filled with fast cars and mean dogs and coyotes.

In warm sweats, Laura left the quilt on the couch and walked into the kitchen, dimly lit by reflections from the outdoor security lights. She breathed faster, remembering the bearded man who’d watched her from the window. She still wasn’t absolutely certain it had been her father.

But it would only take a few seconds to let Mikey in and lock the door again. The chances of someone being out there at that particular moment were minuscule. She would be fine.

The cat meowed again. In the distance, a dog barked.

“Hang on a second, Mikey.”

Aware that the glaring lights might make her visible too, she felt for the switch and shut them off. The instantaneous blackness provided a new sense of concealment. She unlocked the door and opened it a few inches, just wide enough to admit a skinny cat.

Mikey hurtled between her feet like a small, furry rocket.

Through the crack, she saw a dark figure approaching from the far corner of the porch. She screamed, slammed the door and slapped the deadbolt
home, her fingers like ice. Footsteps whispered unevenly but swiftly across the planks and down the steps.

She leaned on the door, holding her breath. Listening. Her pulse hammered in her ears.

“Dad,” she called with her mouth to the door. “Dad, is that you?”

A tree branch creaked.

“Daddy?”

There was no sound but the wind and the fierce pounding of her pulse.

She could almost believe she’d imagined seeing someone, but she knew she hadn’t imagined the footsteps. Limping footsteps.

Dale didn’t limp. Her dad had never limped before, but maybe he did now. Maybe he cut down wind chimes and prowled church camps and visited porches in the middle of the night. Maybe he didn’t want a reunion with her.

What did he want, then?

“God, help me,” she said softly. “I don’t know what to do.”

Chilled all over, she pushed a chair under the doorknob then retreated to the den, where she opened her phone. Trying to decide whether to call 911 or Sean, she hesitated.

If he knew someone had been on her porch, he would make the 911 call himself. The sheriff and his deputies would show up with their cars and searchlights, with guns and dogs. They would go after her dad like they’d go after a common criminal.

Laura shut her phone. She wasn’t calling anybody. He deserved a chance. And if the man on the porch wasn’t her dad … she still had his guns, and she knew how to use them.