Even In Darkness--An American Murder Mystery Thriller (11 page)

‘Until I could pay it back.'

‘Yes. Until you could make it up.'

‘And I paid every last cent of it back, didn't I, Marsha?'

‘Of course you did.'

I take a breath. ‘I can't believe how stupid I was.
You
helped him take the money in the first place, didn't you? You probably wrote the checks yourself.'

Marsha is shaking her head, twisting the end of her turquoise blouse in her hands. ‘No, no, no, it wasn't like that. He took the money out himself and he forged your signature on three different checks.'

I have to sit down right away, but I don't want to sit on the couch any more than she does. I wind up on the ottoman at her feet.

Marsha inhales and exhales, and stifles a shuddering sob. ‘Carl had it all set up so that if anybody found out about it, the blame would go on you. But I caught it. I know your signature better than I know my own.
I
told him he'd have to pay it back. I threatened to go to the board over it, and he said if I did he'd tell them about the affair and I'd get fired. I told him to go ahead. I wasn't going to help him embezzle from the foundation. The board might
fire
me but they'd put
him
in jail. He warned me. He said I'd create a scandal that would end the ministries. I could see his point, so I told him I would talk to you and you could decide. That's when he said that you already knew.' She looks up at me. ‘I'm the one who told you the money was missing in the first place, don't you remember?'

‘Of course I remember. What I don't recall is you saying anything about sleeping with my husband.'

‘I was going to tell you. But when you came back to me and asked me to cover it up, and said you'd pay everything back, I figured Carl had told you everything, just like he said.'

‘How long were you having sex with Carl, how long?'

‘A few weeks, that's all.'

‘That's enough. Look, I have to go out of town. You can clean out your desk and get your personal things next week. I'll give you a call when I get back and we can settle up your pay and all that.'

Marsha's face is red, her eyes wide and streaming with tears. ‘Don't you understand that Carl used me to get to the
money
? He thought I'd go along with it,
with him
, but I
didn't
. I'm a
victim
, just the same as you.'

‘Not quite the same.'

‘But where are you going? Have you found out something about the kidnappers? Don't you want me to keep Leo?'

‘No, Leo is going with me.'

‘
Joy.
At least wait till Andee and Caroline come back. You need me.'

I am shaking my head. ‘No. You're exactly what I don't need. You were easy prey, Marsha. It was obvious to Carl, just like it is to anybody with a brain, that whatever I have, you want. So be it. I don't want you near me, ever again.'

Marsha lifts her chin. ‘We're family, Joy. I've worked hard on this ministry a lot of years. You can't just throw me away.'

I say nothing. Waiting for her to leave.

‘You'll change your mind. When you're not so mad, you'll see. This is not who you are.'

I shake my head at her. I don't know who I am anymore, so how can she?

T
he drive from Lexington to Fort Smith is an agony of tedium. I drink coffee and chew gum and listen to NPR until I am suicidal over the state of the world. By midnight I hit Memphis, and it's all I can do to make it off an exit to a hotel.

Leo and I are on the road again by six a.m., and by noon we're rolling into Fort Smith.

It's a smallish town. I frown over the directions I have printed out from MapQuest. It takes me twenty minutes and two wrong turns before I find Caroline's place. Her Jeep Wrangler still sits in the driveway. I never came to visit them. I always meant to.

The flower beds in the front yard are carefully weeded, and next door the grass has been cut so recently I can smell the green. White Impatiens grow thickly in the window boxes. The yard is shaded by old trees, their roots like veins just below the surface, the grass so thin beneath that you can see the sandy soil, the pine needles.

The door is blocked with crime scene tape, an embarrassment in this gentle neighborhood. I have a key Caro sent me three years ago for a visit I never made.

The porch creaks when I walk across the warped wood planks. The beautifully arched front door is painted grey. There is a scratched brass mailbox hanging on the door and it looks empty. I wonder if someone is picking up the mail.

My key works just fine. I break the crime scene tape and walk in slowly, almost on tiptoe, absorbing the silence. There is a brass umbrella stand on the left, just behind the front door. The great room is cavernous, with high ceilings and worn wood floors. The furniture is simple, antique store bargains.

There is mud smeared on the staircase. Left by the intruder, I think.

The great room opens on to an octagonal dining nook, directly off the kitchen. There is a bank of windows, and a drop-leaf cherry table. This is the one she told me about, bought at the bargain rate of one hundred eighty-seven dollars. The surface needs refinishing. It is scratched and cloudy with abuse. A square of lace in the center covers the worst of the wear, and on top of that is an oversized rattan basket with old mail.

I sort through what is there. A car insurance bill, a flier from Lowe's, a bank statement from Arvest Bank. A newspaper lies folded next to the basket, the rubber band that held it tossed to one side. The
Arkansas Democrat
– dated the day Caro and Andee disappeared. I look through the back window and see where Burton Stafford took the privacy fence down between their backyards, giving Caroline and Andee access to the in-ground pool. Since then he had put up a gazebo and a swing set, and re-cemented the basketball hoop and tetherball pole the Stafford kids had used growing up.

The sound of a car horn makes me jump. It sounds very much like my Jeep. I go to the front door and look outside. Leo has scrambled to the driver's side and his front paws are propped on the steering wheel. He sees me looking and plasters himself against the window and whines.

I let him out and he races up and down the front yard, sniffing, moving in random patterns that no doubt make sense to him. A pudgy yellow-tailed squirrel chatters at him from its perch on the fence and he thunders across the yard. I head up the sidewalk to the porch. Leo appears instantly beside me, trying to crowd ahead. I block him until he sits, then I push the door open. Leo follows me in. He is full of curiosity and without inhibition. He circles the couch, runs into the dining nook, stops long enough to prop his front paws on the table and sniff Caroline's boots, then hops down and tears into the kitchen.

Ruby's doggie bowls sit neatly on a small braided rug by the refrigerator. Leo sticks his head in the water and laps loudly. He dives into the stale kibble with rapture.

I walk softly. I would love to have a kitchen like this. The wood floors are in beautiful shape, the walls freshly painted, vanilla cream, and there are white plantation shutters on the windows. The counter tops are tiled, cobalt blue, and the stove is a Jenn-Air gas with a grill. There's a built-in pantry with glass doors, a deep red teapot on the stove, and the cabinets are white and spotless. A wood-burning stove is perched on a small brick hearth. The ceiling is bead board, painted white.

There is a wine bottle on the counter top. Australian Cabernet, Yellow Tail, three quarters full, the cork jammed into the throttle, a dried smear of wine on the tile.

The kitchen table is a small, perfect square. It's old wood, painted yellow, with three matching yellow chairs. A small pot in the center holds brown, crispy irises. I picture myself there, with Caro and Andee, eating toast and jam and eggs.

I have brought in my overnight case, the leather one. Leo has chewed a hole in the top. He is running free in the fenced backyard, finding trails to follow, sniffing at the trees for squirrel. I take my bag upstairs, avoiding the crusts of mud. The Dark Man has left them there like graffiti, marking his territory like a dog.

I pause in the hallway, looking into my granddaughter's room, feeling my breathing quicken and my chest go tight. The bed is unmade. She was sleeping right there, not six feet away, when the Dark Man took her away. I walk in on tiptoe, and sit on the unmade bed. I pick up her pillow, and I can smell the faint scent of her strawberry shampoo and the lingering smell of little girl. My knees begin to tremble; it is good I am sitting down.

Andee's bedspread is lavender with white unicorns. There are books on simple white shelves, the highest no more than three feet tall. The shelves hold the entire collection of Beatrix Potter books I have sent her, and a mishmash of stuffed animals, Barbie dolls, and stacks and stacks of puzzles. A blue plastic writing desk and matching chair are tucked in the corner, and on the inexpensive painted pine dresser is the rabbit lamp I bought when Andee was born. Next to the lamp is a set of Tinkerbell bubble bath, little girl makeup and perfume.

I want it to be her mother who woke her that night.

I stand abruptly, and shut the door. I hesitate in the hallway, then move to the edge of Caro's bedroom.

It's a large room, with a fireplace that for now is merely decorative, the chimney bricks crumbling beneath a thick coat of paint. Caro is saving for a gas insert.

The carpet is off-white Berber, streaked with mud like the stairs. Her bed is unmade. There is a crumpled duvet of white eyelet, sheets white with silvery stripes. There are four oversized pillows at the head of the bed, and at least six small ones, lace, velvet, like a collection. I walk carefully, watching where I step, pausing in front of the nightstand. There is a picture in a silver frame of Caro and Andee, by a lake. I imagine my son in the photograph, his arms around them both.

A wine glass sits by the telephone, the dregs coating the bottom of the glass, dark and crusty, like dried blood. There is a book splayed on the floor, pages bent, jacket askew. I wonder what she was reading. I do not touch.

How long, I wonder? How long after she and I talked on the phone, till the Dark Man came to take her away? Was she asleep? Did she hear him come in? Did she get out of bed to check a noise, and find him waiting outside in the hall?

‘Retribution is coming for you.' That was what the note had said and that was what had come true.

Caroline told me that she used to dream of footsteps – how she could read the whole of Joey's day and, more importantly, the night to come, in the sound of his feet on the stairs. Had she heard the Dark Man's footsteps that night?

I take my overnight bag and put it back in the car.

T
he Moran Memorial Pet Cemetery runs adjacent to the Sebastian County Humane Society in Fort Smith. It is less than four miles from Caro's house, but I spent over forty minutes finding it, even with the MapQuest directions.

I left Leo closed up in the hall bathroom because I did not trust him not to find something interesting to chew. I could not leave him out in the yard. There is not a gate latch on the market that he can't open.

I have his leash in hand, and I lock up the Jeep. Animal shelters upset me. My ministry contributes heavily to no-kill shelters.

From the outside, this one doesn't look too bad – a modern, boxy building, white with a dark roof. The strips of grass out front are neatly mowed. There is a statue of St Francis in the cemetery, and when I walk inside it is clean and open, with blond maple partitions, the counter tops covered in white Formica. You can hear dogs barking. You can see the animals because the walls are glass. Dogs on the left. Cats on the right. Just inside the corridor is the Donor Wall, honoring adoptions.

The girl behind the desk is bent over a computer and she wears the kind of scrubs you see in a vet's office, a sky blue background with pictures of kittens tumbling through the air. A poster lets me know that I can have my pet buried in the cemetery next door for two hundred and fifty dollars, which includes a funeral service, pet casket and small grey headstone. Cremation costs extra.

‘Excuse me,' I say.

The young woman holds one finger up, absorbed in whatever it is she is doing with the computer. Her fingernails are trimmed short, and she has small, white hands. Her hair is pulled up high and tight in a ponytail, and no doubt the stack of textbooks near the computer are hers. Her nametag says ‘Sharon'. She is much too young to be the woman I talked to on the phone.

‘Is Melissa Hunter here? My name is Joy Miller, and I talked to her about picking up my daughter-in-law's dog.'

The girl turns away from the computer screen, eyes cloudy with other matters. She takes a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘Mrs Hunter had a board meeting this afternoon, and she won't be back until tomorrow. Can
I
help you?'

‘Yes. You have a dog here named Ruby who belongs to Caroline Miller, and there are instructions in the file for you to hold the dog for me to pick up.'

‘Are you adopting the dog?' Sharon chewed on the edge of her thumb. She'd either been eating a cherry popsicle or was wearing lip gloss. Otherwise her face was sadly free of makeup.

‘No, I'm family, I'm picking her up.'

Sharon returned to the computer, tapped on the keyboard, frowned, and tapped some more. ‘I don't have any record of this. What kind of dog is it again?'

‘Golden retriever, Irish setter mix. Elderly. She's big, probably over ninety pounds.'

More tapping, then a shake of the head. ‘Sorry.'

My palms were sweating. ‘Look. Mrs Hunter called me the day before yesterday. She said the dog was here. I've driven over fourteen hours to pick her up.'

Sharon squinted her eyes at me. ‘You drove fourteen hours to get here? Where in the heck in Arkansas do you live?'