A Stillness of Chimes (38 page)

“Please, God,” he whispered. “If it’s somebody’s day to die … make it the cat.”

But even if he found Mikey alive, how could he corral a tough old critter that wanted to remain free?

Or if he found Elliott … what then?

The prospect of seeing him again gave Sean a rush of that desperate old need for a father. If Elliott came back, though, he’d be the needy one.

Sean thought he heard someone speak, somewhere behind the church. He held still and listened.

Nothing but a cardinal’s shrill, repetitive whistle now, but he wanted to make sure.

He leaned around the corner of the church and surveyed the expanse of kudzu-covered trees and bushes. It went on for acres, interrupted by an occasional stand of pines that hadn’t yet been conquered.

He walked farther into the wild vines. He was dwarfed by the green towers that had once been living trees. They made a weird, alien landscape where a man could hide, silent as a deer, and wait.

Downtown, bluegrass blared from the PA system, reminding him of Elliott and his upstart, part-time, ragtag band. Every year, they’d earned standing ovations. They were that good.

Bile rose in Sean’s throat. His mentor, a talented man who’d crafted fine musical instruments and furniture, was living in the wild like an animal. He’d abandoned his family and friends, his business, his responsibilities. All because his wife might have cheated on him? Laura had paid the price too, although she wasn’t to blame. She’d been paying the price for years.

Fury boiled up inside Sean. He’d had enough of Elliott’s game.

“Elliott!” he yelled. “Where are you?”

The dense vegetation swallowed his voice. It produced no movement, no sign of life, no sound except a jay squawking as it flew over.

No planes marred the blue, blue sky overhead. Nothing came between him and the eyes of God, who knew exactly where Elliott Gantt was. No, Sean would never have a father on earth, and if there was a Father in heaven, he wasn’t talking.

He opened his mouth to scream at the Almighty but heard familiar laughter and whirled around.

Dale stood there, raising a clenched fist like a prizefighter who’d just won the big one. Beside him, in the grip of his other hand, stood a stoop-shouldered man with terror-stricken eyes in a gaunt, bearded face.

Elliott Gantt, in the flesh. Emaciated flesh.

His filthy gray shirt reeked of wood smoke and sweat. He rolled the tattered hem of it between bony, contorted fingers that must have been pounded with a sledgehammer, the bones left to set any which way. His bedraggled beard ruffled in the wind, gray as his shirt but streaked with white.

“I nabbed him out by the old cabin,” Dale said, grinning. “I was takin’ him to town, but the old geezer jumped right out of the truck, just up the road. I had to slam on the brakes and chase him down.”

“Laura’s in trouble,” Elliott said in a rusty voice. “We have to hurry.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to find her.” Dale winked at Sean. “Before it’s too late.”

Sean read the fear in Elliott’s moist eyes and knew what Dale had done. “Laura’s fine,” Sean said. “I don’t care what he told you, Elliott, but it’s a lie. She’s safe.”

Confusion played across Elliott’s features. “She’s in danger.” With a crippled finger, he pointed across his sunken chest toward Dale. “He told me so.”

“Shut up,” Dale mouthed silently to Sean.

“Dale lied,” Sean said. “He just wanted to lure you out. Laura’s fine, Elliott. I talked to her a few minutes ago.”

Dale smiled, pretending innocence, and tugged Elliott’s elbow. “Let’s go
downtown, then. Wouldn’t you like to be onstage one more time? Waving to the crowds?”

So Dale wanted to make a spectacle of Elliott. Even in the opening hours of the festival, there’d be more people than he’d seen in more than a decade. He would freak out. And he’d get a free ride to a psych ward.

“There’s no need to go into town,” Sean said.

The old man’s breath came in hard, fast rasps. “I don’t care about the town. Where … where’s Laura?”

He didn’t look like he could harm anybody. He seemed to slide in and out of the present, his eyes clear one moment and foggy with confusion the next, but always glistening with tears.

Sean hesitated, remembering that Laura had mentioned Alzheimer’s. “Have you been trying to see her?”

“Yes, but she was so afraid. It made me sad. I want to see her, but I don’t want to scare her.” He let out a dry sob from deep inside his bony chest. “And I’m … so grubby.”

“Come with me, then. I’m grubby too. I need a haircut and a shave.” Sean patted his own whiskered mug. “Laura will want to clean us up, both of us.”

“She won’t run from me?”

“No sir. If she knows it’s you, she won’t run. She just wants to know you’re okay.”

Elliott’s lips moved, but he said nothing, like a child trying to work out an adult-sized problem. Dale still gripped Elliott’s elbow, and Sean took his other arm.

Dale let Sean win the tug-of-war. “Plan B,” he said. “Don’t lose ’im, boy.” He moved a few feet away and pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Hey,” Sean said. “Who are you calling and why?”

“It’s my turn to call the cops. I want this freak hauled in.”

“Elliott hasn’t committed a crime.”

“It was a crime all right, what he did.” Dale turned and walked toward the church.

“Come on.” Sean steered Elliott away from Dale. Toward home. “But there’s something you need to know, if you don’t know already. About Jess.”

The faded blue eyes sparkled brighter. “I know, son. She’s gone. It’s grievous to my heart, as death ought to be.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

They moved a few feet closer to home, Elliott moving as lightly as a cat. A weak and wobbly cat.

“How did you hear about Jess?” Sean asked.

“Ruby Pearl kept me up on the news, especially these last weeks since I came down from the mountains.”

“Ruby Pearl? Who’s that?”

Elliott held a mangled fist upright, like a flag bearer holding an imaginary flagpole. “Old girl with the fee-faddle. The—the rain thing.”

“Granny Colfax? With an umbrella? Parasol?”

“That’s it. Ruby Pearl Colfax. She’s a good one for keepin’ secrets. Brings me news and necessities out to the home place when I stay there.” He smiled. “Ruby Pearl was a killdeer to me. She lured folks away from my nest, a time or two.”

So, Granny Colfax had toted more than news and necessities. She’d carried a big secret, all this time. No wonder she walked the country roads, rain or shine.

Elliott sighed. “Now, son, you want to know why I left my family. I can see you do. It’s hard to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain a thing.”

“I was afraid. I’d killed before, so I knew I could kill again.”

Sad for the old soldier, Sean shook his head. “It was part of your job.”

Elliott coughed, his shoulders shaking. “But I wanted Gary dead.”

“Gary? Don’t you mean—”

“When it was over, Jessamyn was carrying Gary’s baby.”

Sean’s mind reeled. Gary?
Laura?
The timing was all wrong. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Elliott drew a raspy breath. “I didn’t know for years. When I found out, well, I entertained murderous thoughts toward him. Like a friend ought not to do.”

“You don’t act like you’d want to murder anybody.”

Elliott laughed softly and raised his ruined hands. “I did that. Did it to myself.”

“Why?”

“So I wouldn’t be able to hold a gun. I couldn’t trust myself not to harm a friend or … the woman I loved.”

Sean’s skin crawled, first at the thought of Elliott firing at Jess, then at the thought of a man deliberately ruining his own flesh and then suffering alone in the wilderness. It wasn’t normal. How could he even bait a fishhook with claws like that? There’d be no fiddle lessons now, that was certain.

“And I dropped my guns in the lake,” Elliott said. “Lest I should use them for evil. Then I took myself far away, just to be sure. But when I found out Jess was gone, I knew Laura would come. I had to see her.”

“I’m starting to understand,” Sean said, looking ahead. One more
curtain of kudzu to wade through, and they’d be back on the weedy grass within view of the house. “What matters now is you’re back, and I’m glad.”

“I thank you kindly, son.”

Sean looked behind them. Still on his cell phone, Dale lurked at the corner of the church building. He flashed a phony smile.

Sean ignored him. “Elliott, are you ready to see Laura?”

Elliott’s eyes widened as if he’d forgotten her existence. His chapped lips curved into a genuine smile. “Ready. Yes sir, I’m ready.”

As they crossed the rough lawn, he stumbled on a tuft of grass that the mower had missed. Sean tightened his grip, holding him upright.

Elliott wore ancient brown moccasins, slick with wear. His big toes were poking out, the toenails black and ragged. And all those good shoes had been going to waste in his closet.

They were only a minute or two from Laura—who wasn’t his child?

But there might still be some joy at the end of his strange journey. At least he could enjoy food and a bath and a clean, soft bed. Simple comforts. Elliott was a wreck of a man, though. Laura would go into shock if she were to see him with no warning.

“I’ll give Laura a call,” Sean told him. “You can’t just walk in, unannounced. You’d give her a heart attack. Like you nearly did when you were on her porch. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“It was. I had a late start. I had to sneak away slow-like in the wrong direction. I’ve had too many visitors, coming too close to my shed.”

There was a shed at the cabin? It must have been buried in the kudzu. Sean shook his head. He’d have to tell Keith they’d been so close.

He pulled out his phone and called Laura’s number. She answered after one ring, sounding sad and scared.

“Laura, honey, I have good news.”

“What is it?”

Down on the road, nobody was driving by. Nobody was watching as Elliott Gantt’s frail legs carried him home from the wilderness.

“Brace yourself,” Sean told Laura, his eye on the house. “I want you to look out the window. We’ll be walking across the road. Coming home.”

“Home?” Her voice quavered. “Who’s coming home?”

“Your two favorite men in the whole, wide world.”

A stunned silence. A long, slow inhalation of air, like she’d been starved for oxygen and she’d finally found some.

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, louder now. “Sean Halloran, don’t you dare. Don’t say it unless it’s true.”

“He’s not like he used to be, but I’m walking your dad home.”

He waited, expecting the wild, joyful scream of a girl who’s beating a boy at a green-plum war. Any second now, she’d yell “I told you so!” at the top of her lungs.

A crash hit his ear. She’d dropped her phone. Fainted, maybe. And he’d thought he was doing such a good job of breaking it gently.

With a gentle tug to Elliott’s arm, Sean encouraged him a bit closer to the road in case Laura’s view was blocked somehow. “Over this way, partner,” Sean said. “You okay?”

Elliott nodded, trembling. Sean was shaking too.

Across the road, the front door banged open. Laura, Cassie, and Gary spilled through the doorway, but only Laura ran to the edge of the porch. She stopped there at the top of the steps. The sun glinted on something metallic dangling from her hands when she pressed them together as if in
prayer, fingertips touching her lips. Then she raised her hands like an old-time Pentecostal grandma praising Jesus.

That metallic something flew into the air and landed somewhere with a faint tinkle. Laura hurtled down the steps. Barefoot, with her red hair flying behind that snug bandanna, she raced toward the road.

Sean patted Elliott’s shoulder. “Here she comes. She’s a sweetheart, isn’t she?”

“There’s my Laura.” Elliott stretched his broken hands toward her. “She’s my girl.”

Glancing at Gary, who stood motionless on the porch, Sean could only wonder.

Laura could hardly believe her eyes. They stood together, two tall, lean figures with wild-man hair. One was dark, with a barely started beard; one was gray, his feathery beard ruffling in the wind. He bore no resemblance to the strong, strapping man who’d once saved a skinny boy from a beating.