Hand Me Down Evil (Hand Me Down Trilogy) (9 page)

Stone silence settled upon the small kitchen table.

This whole issue with Edgar and his female personality was making my head pound. I wondered what Mark thought of all of that. He and I had not talked much about Edgar.

Ken glanced down at his watch and said, “I better get going. Henry is waiting outside to give me a lift to the hospital. We’re going to see what’s happening with Catherine. The other detectives are already there.”

W
hen Ken left, I asked Mark what he thought about Edgar.

“I’m not sure that he is the one who is doing all of this. He might be somehow unwittingly involved, but not quite, that’s my guess,” he said. “It’s just a hunch.”

I gave an audible sigh. What did that comment mean? How could a person be involved in a kidnapping, but not quite? Better yet, how could a person be unwittingly involved? Mark never made any sense. I was beginning to feel confused. I wished that Mark would just come out and say exactly what was on his mind. He was holding back too much.

“You talk in riddles,” I said. “I think Edgar is the one who kidnapped Amber, and he probably had something to do with my mother’s disappearance, as well. Edgar was probably the person who shot the bb gun at Cuddy Boy and at me and then chased me into the woods.”

Mark sat at the table across from me with his hands folded across his chest. He looked awfully handsome with his curious brown eyes gazing at me as I talked. His brown hair was combed back away from his perfect face.

“You know what I think we need to do?” Mark asked.

“What?”

“We need to find Sylvester, Catherine’s former husband.”

“You mean Peter’s father?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

Mark tilted his head back in silent reflection, pressed his lips into a thin line, and raised an eyebrow. “Well, we can’t actually question Catherine. She’s in a coma and is in the hospital. We can’t question Edgar. He is a lunatic and is on the run. Besides, one of his personalities does not know what the other personality is doing. So we will have to settle for the next best thing. We need to go and pay Sylvester Singleton a visit. He might be able to shed some light on what occurred in Ohio. If we can gather some information from him about the incident involving his other son Brandon, perhaps we might be a step closer to finding out what’s going on. I have a hunch that all of the incidents are related, even the events from decades ago that resulted in Brandon’s death.”

“Sure,” I said “That makes sense. Anything beats sitting at home waiting to hear from the police. Brandon was only a child when he was murdered, and Edgar happened to have been at Catherine’s house in Ohio the night of the tragedy. And Edgar located Catherine in Michigan years ago and has been stalking her, and now someone tries to hurt her. Yes, I see a connection,” I said, nodding my head.

Mark rose from his chair.

“But how do the incidents involving Brandon’s death and Catherine’s injury relate to Amber’s disappearance?” I asked.

Mark scratched his head. “I feel that they are connected somehow, especially because we learned that when Catherine regained slight consciousness, she said, ‘run, Amber, run.’ Catherine was an eyewitness to whatever happened to Amber. And don’t forget that in this small town, crimes rarely occur. It’s very bizarre that Amber is abducted and Catherine is left for dead at the stream only a few hours later.”

I nodded unconsciously.

I was beginning to feel embarrassed about having doubted Mark and for having thought that he could have had something to do with any of the episodes. Actually, I wanted desperately to believe that Mark did not have anything to do with the incidents. I was just perplexed about how he seemed to know so much about the events.

His knowledge about my exact whereabouts in the woods behind Catherine’s house baffled me to no end. But perhaps I was too suspicious, too distrustful. Maybe I needed to loosen up a bit and let Mark lead the way in the search for Amber. Possibly I was too close to the situation to make intelligent decisions since Amber, after all, was my sister, my flesh and blood. All sorts of thoughts bounced around in my mind.

Mark had a very gentle side to him. He had driven me home the night that Amber disappeared and brought me doughnuts the following morning. He had just made me toast and poured me orange juice. When I was cold and distraught in the woods, it was he who rescued me, wrapped his jacket around my shoulders, and led me to safety.

Above all, I had secretly admired him all year long at school from afar, and now he was standing in my house on the other side of the kitchen table.

Should I just ignore all of my bizarre doubts? Maybe Mark was really trying to help me. If he was up to no good, then why would he tell me that he did not think that Edgar was directly involved in Amber’s kidnapping? If Mark was up to no good, he would want to detract attention away from himself by blaming Edgar, whether or not Edgar was the culprit.

But if Mark knew I was suspicious of him, then the more that he blamed Edgar, the more suspicious he would look. I shook my head. I was so perplexed. And yet, deep down, I trusted Mark. Perhaps my being attracted to him clouded my judgment, though. With Mom having disappeared, Amber missing, and Phyllis in the hospital, Mark was the only person who I could really talk to.

I glanced at the clock on the wall above the sink. It was already two o’clock in the afternoon. So much time had already passed, and I had not accomplished anything. In a few hours, it would be almost a full day since Amber disappeared. I was no closer to finding my sister now than I had been immediately after she was kidnapped. I did not know how much longer my nerves would hold up.

A
s I set my plate and beverage glass in the sink, Mark browsed the telephone book.

“Do you recall which nursing home Sylvester Singleton is in?” Mark asked. “I thought the officers said he was in a place in Gaylord, but I want to be sure.”

“Yeah, I recall them saying that Peter admitted his father into a nursing home in Gaylord so that he could be close to him,” I said.

Mark flipped through the pages of the book, jotted down a few digits, snatched the telephone, and punched in a number.

“Hello, may I find out if you have a resident there by the name of Sylvester Singleton?” Mark asked, holding the receiver tightly to his ear. His eyes opened wide as he listened to the speaker at the other end. “Do you have that telephone number?” he asked and then began scribbling down some numbers.

“What’s going on?” I asked after Mark hung up.

“Sylvester Singleton is not at the Grand Gaylord Nursing Home anymore. They have moved him to a hospice.”

“He’s dying?” I asked.

“I suppose so. Or else why would he be in a hospice?”

“Did they say what medical ailment he has?” I asked.

“No. Besides, I don’t think they can reveal that because of privacy concerns.”

“Did they say that he is in a condition to talk?”

“No, I didn’t ask.”

I glanced at Mark in frustration. “Well, I hope he is not too far away. Let’s go see him,” I said.

“The hospice is only a mile farther from the nursing home,” Mark said. “But the nurse told me that visiting hours don’t start there for the evening until five. It’s about two o’clock now. It’ll take us roughly forty minutes to get there.”

“Oh, I think the anticipation is going to get to me more than anything else. I keep expecting the police to call and tell us they have found something, but that has not happened, of course,” I said.

Mark smiled, rose from his chair, and told me that his family owned a beach house right on the lake in Grayling where we could spend some time before heading to Gaylord.

I gave a crooked smile. “I don’t think I need to take a mini vacation right now when my life is such a mess. I don’t know if I will ever see Amber again, or Mom, for that matter,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” Mark pleaded. “I go there when I need to think and get a fresh perspective on things. Sometimes just being at a different location helps me to sort things in my mind,” he said.

“Is that why you have such good intuition?” I asked, not expecting a reply.

“Possibly,” he said with a smirk on his face.

I hesitated for a moment and then decided to go to the beach house with Mark. I was so depressed that I felt that things could not get any worse. Boy was I wrong.

A
fter Eleanor agreed to stay at the house to keep an eye on Tally for a few hours, Mark and I slipped into his pickup and headed for the beach house in the neighboring town. I could tell that he was trying to cheer me up, take my mind off of things. He told a few jokes, and when that did not brighten my mood, he started chatting about school and about how he intended to major in biology.

“I would love to eventually work for a pharmaceutical company developing vaccines and drugs,” Mark said, glancing over at me.

“Actually, I enjoy the study of genetics,” I said. “I’m not exactly sure about my future plans, but I would like to do genetic research like my mother had done.”

Mark roared with laughter.

“Like mother, like daughter. I can see the headlines now,” he said. “Celia Kristine Lawrence inherits Victoria Lawrence’s predisposition to enjoy genetics research. The mother and daughter scientists are immersed in test tubes in the laboratory.”

I threw my head back and chuckled without intending to do so.

“Hey, where did your mother attend college?”

“Wayne State University in Detroit.”

“I heard that university has a great reputation for its science program.”

“It does. Mom graduated from there twenty years ago, but the science program now is better than ever.”

“I heard that, too.” he said.

As we passed through a heavily wooded area, Mark appeared to be deep in thought.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked in a curious tone.

“Oh, I’d be interested in knowing what type of research your mother was working on right before she, I mean, when she moved away,” Mark said.

I gave a weary sigh. Mark did not have to try to hide the fact that my mother either abandoned us or was kidnapped. He did not have to put things in nice terms to make me feel better.

“Mark, you shouldn’t worry about offending me because of what happened to my mother. She did not leave me and my sisters. I refuse to believe that she would ever do that. I personally believe foul play was involved regardless of what the police think. Now that Amber has vanished, I am beginning to feel that there is a connection between Mom’s disappearance and Amber’s.”

He pursed his lips, tightened his grip on the wheel, and tapped the right turn signal. “You don’t have to pitch that theory to me, Celia,” he said in a quiet tone. “Ever since I read the article in the Crawford Daily News about your mother’s disappearance a year ago, I felt that we were not getting the whole story. I did not know your mother, but something about her abandoning her children simply did not ring true back then, and it still does not ring true, especially now in light of what’s happened to Amber.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and smiled to myself. At least Mark believed me. It was refreshing to know that he had not bought the story about Mom abandoning me and Amber and Tally so that she could skip town with a fellow scientist.

Mark put his hand on my shoulder, pulled me toward him. “And now that I have gotten to know you, I refuse to believe that your mother would just abandon you. She raised a wonderful daughter, and I bet that the apple does not fall too far from the tree,” he said.

I grinned widely and my eyes welled up with tears. This was the first time since Mom left that someone who did not even know her had said something nice about her.

Besides Eleanor, who had been Mom’s friend for over twenty years, I did not feel that anyone would understand. Phyllis, Mom’s own sister, did not comprehend that Mom was a sensitive individual whose children meant more to her than anything in the world. Phyllis was always making snide remarks about Mom taking off with her
scientist lover to God knows where
. But now Mark understood, or at least he said that he did.

“Thanks. That’s the first time that someone has come to my mother’s defense since she left,” I said.

“I don’t think your mother left on her own accord!” he said, matter of fact. “There is a world of difference between someone having to depart suddenly and someone leaving because she wants to take off. And for some reason, I always felt that your mother would never leave unless there was a darn good reason.”

“So you think she actually left versus being kidnapped?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

He paused for a moment and appeared to be mulling over what to say. “Well, the newspaper article that I had read said that your mother added Phyllis as a joint account holder on all of her bank accounts just a couple of days before she left,” he said. “That would lead me to believe that she knew she would be leaving and wanted Phyllis to be able to take care of you and your sisters financially.”

I cupped my hand over my mouth, and my eyes opened wide. “Oh, my. I can’t believe that the newspaper had printed that in an article. No wonder everyone thinks that Mom abandoned her children. I could not bring myself to read every article the papers printed,” I said.

“See, that’s why I say that your mother probably knew she was leaving, but I believe that she had to go away. She was forced to move away suddenly. For some strange reason, I think she moved away to protect you and your sisters. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, that’s just my hunch,” Mark said.

I nodded in agreement. “Mom was behaving strangely ever since she started working on human germ line experiments. I don’t know quite what was going on in the laboratory, but she was very stressed out. She was worried all the time since she took on that project,” I explained.

“When you say human germ line experiments, are you talking about modifying human genes?”

“Yes.”

“You mean modifications at the zygote level?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. I read an article about that in a national magazine,” Mark said. “I think the article was entitled ‘Select Your Offspring’s Eye Color’ or something like that. It was about people in the future being able to select the physical attributes of their children. If you want a baby with blue eyes, you just put in your order to the geneticist. If you want a baby with athletic abilities or extraordinary intelligence, just pay a fee and place an order. And wham! That is so cool.” Mark brightened and sat up straight as he drove.