Obsession Falls (22 page)

This drawing … this drawing held particular meaning for her. This scene was the beginning of her descent into hell.

With Kateri and Rainbow’s help, and utilizing the skills she’d learned as a decorator—and as a housebreaker—she was making a life for herself. But there was not one moment when she wasn’t afraid.

Placing her left hand on the table, she stared at her little finger, pale pink and mutilated.

If only she could see the way out.

As she had done so many times in so many other houses, she started the Thackers’ Wi-Fi and computer, connected her iPad and uploaded the scan of her drawing, and attached it to an e-mail on their account. She typed in a message, to Mr. Joshua Brothers, thanking him for his help all those months ago, expressing her sympathy on the loss of Mrs. Brothers, and asking for a favor. If he knew Kennedy McManus, would he forward the attachment, unopened, to him?

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she pushed
Send
.

The answer came back almost at once. Mr. Brothers thanked her for her condolences, said he was glad they had helped her, and that he would be delighted to pass this on to his pal Kennedy McManus.

She noticed he did not promise to leave it unopened.

Ah, well. It wasn’t like she’d had any other choice. She had tried to contact Kennedy McManus herself; he was wealthy, a corporate head, and guarded by a legion of assistants. Sending the drawing through Mr. Brothers was a chance she had had to take.

She stood. She didn’t want to be late for tonight’s quilting session at the Virtue Falls library. She was a lousy quilter, but she liked to go. She listened to the stories, to the gossip, to the mumbled pleas for advice. She helped Kateri with refreshments. After all those months in the mountains, she had learned how to make friends again, and those friends were precious to her.

And now that her message was sent, she needed distraction.

For all she could do was wait.

*   *   *

Mr. Brothers stared at the attachment. “Well, dear, what do you think? Should I do as she asks and pass this on to McManus without looking at it? Or should I go ahead and open it?” When no one answered, he glanced around.

He would never get used to having Lorena gone.

He enjoyed few pleasures these days. Might as well indulge his curiosity. He had no one to tell about it, anyway.

Popping the attachment open, he stared. His eyes widened. “Damn, Lorena. The shit is going to hit the fan.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A hot summer at Gracie Vineyards in southern Idaho had ripened the grapes early. For the field workers, the workday started in the predawn hours. They cut grapes until the heat of the day changed the sugars in the fruit. Then they rested. For Pete Donaldson, the Gracie Vineyards vintner, the hours were longer, harder. Harvest was his busiest time of year.

Yet here he was, in the third week of September, on a raised platform in Michael Gracie’s wine cellar in Wildrose Valley, praising Michael’s palate, his decorating, and his method for storing wines in his own home. The vintner had taken time personally to supervise the transfer of older barrels from Michael’s cellar to Gracie Vineyards, where the wines would be bottled, as well as the transfer of this year’s vintages into Michael’s cellar. And to fill the time, Donaldson was sucking up.

Michael was fine with that. He enjoyed being complimented. Brazen flattery was but another way to tell that people were afraid of him.

Bodyguards Barry and Norm, both tall, both brawny, watched as a dozen winery workers fastened chains around a barrel and, with a lot of grunts, rolled it off the supports and onto the pallet. The forklift picked up the pallet and headed out the broad double doors and toward the ramp that led up to the truck.

“As soon as the wines settle down, I’ll get them bottled with the Gracie label,” Donaldson said. “I personally picked out wines I think will be the top of our line when they are bottled.”

“Gold medal winners, I expect.” Michael had hired Pete for his inborn talent and his exclusive UC-Davis Viticulture and Enology degree. He paid him well, and in return, he expected awards and high ratings for each bottle of Gracie Wines.

“It’s been a difficult growing year. I don’t know…”

Michael turned his head and stared at Donaldson.

Donaldson hastily added, “The wine you store in your cellar will be award-winners.”

“Yes,” Michael said.

The vintner feared losing his lucrative and prestigious position.

Yet, in the cellar’s cool atmosphere, the workers were sweating, probably because they speculated about the one barrel kept empty for Michael’s use. Maybe they recognized the bloodstains that never quite came out of the flagstones.

Pete Donaldson did not comprehend how fragile life could be.

The workers did. Brutal reality held no surprises for them.

They fastened a chain around the last barrel to be replaced and hoisted it onto the pallet, then high-fived each other. All the old barrels were on their way to the truck; half the job was done. Now they had only to place the new barrels onto the empty barrel stands. Two workers stretched and groaned. One held his pack of cigarettes and glanced Michael’s way, as if wondering if he dared light up. One leaned a hand on the barrel support to lower himself to the floor. He grimaced, snatched his hand back, and looked down.

Then he screamed, shrill and high. He wiped his palm against his pants, then screamed again.

Men gathered around him, exclaiming in wonder and then horror.

“What in the world?” Donaldson hurried down the stairs.

Michael gestured to Barry, who intercepted him, spoke quickly, directed him back toward Michael.

Michael opened the door and gestured Donaldson out. Cold with rage and a lurking fear, he said, “We’ve had problems with an infestation of rats.”
One big rat named Dash.
“We’ve had them exterminated, but I’m afraid that worker might have found a rotting carcass.”

Donaldson glanced back. “But these fellows are used to filth and vermin. Certainly Cesare is—he’s from a poor section of Panama City!”

Michael grasped Donaldson’s arm and firmly guided him into the corridor. “Poor devil.”

The door closed behind them.

Donaldson glanced at Michael’s face, and seemed to quake. “I should return to the winery and to work. Crush is ongoing.”

“You’ll join me for dinner.” Michael put his arm around Donaldson’s shoulders. “After we have thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company, my helicopter will take you back.” For whatever the worker had found, there was no covering it up now. Michael would remind Donaldson who paid his salary, would deliver a warning to keep his mouth shut, and gently explain that once a man went to work for Michael Gracie, he quit only when Michael said he could quit.

One dinner and a helicopter ride should do the trick.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Kennedy McManus sat on a folding chair in the small auditorium in St. Francis Catholic School in Bella Terra, California, and watched Miles perform his lines for the grade-school version of
Pirates of Penzance.
Like his mother and his uncle, Miles had an appalling voice, off-key and unsteady, and his part was mercifully short. But deep beneath the pain of listening to the boy screech like a tortured violin—
really
deep beneath that pain—Kennedy felt an uncle’s pride.

In the year since Miles had been kidnapped, he had grown taller, of course, but he was measurably more mature. For a kid, he was thoughtful, and viewed the world around him with an adult’s perception.

Tabitha hated that Miles had lost his innocent trust in people.

Kennedy figured better now than during his teenage years, when he would be a total screwup anyway.

Reaching over to take his sister’s hand, Kennedy squeezed it until she uncurled her fingers from the tightly held fist and squeezed in return, and when Miles finished and left the stage, Tabitha turned to him and smiled. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank
you,
” he responded. “If not for you and Miles, I would have no one.”

She nodded. “Yes, and then you’d be … alone.”

Alone
was not the word she had been going to use
. Alienated,
maybe. Probably she was thinking that he would be even more divorced from the human race than he already was. Probably that was true.

In a distant way, he worried about it sometimes. He felt few of the emotions that roiled through the people around him, setting them alight or depressing them or giving them strength or taking it from them. At the same time, he didn’t understand why his sister thought him deprived. He said what he thought; people listened. He focused on a goal; nothing distracted him. He spent time with his friends, lovers, and colleagues, evaluated their needs versus their abilities; he always got their best efforts in any endeavor. To him, life was not a heated mishmash of whims and desires, but a well-balanced and forward mobility.

Only Miles’s kidnapping had yanked him from his calm contemplation of life and into a welter of unwelcome reactions. Not only had the emotional turmoil interrupted his work, but he had not enjoyed himself at all. Clearly, the whole feelings thing was oversold. Although it created clever musicals performed by children’s off-key squeaky voices, emotion was not fulfillment, it was agony.

And it left ashes in its wake … because every day he wondered how Taylor Summers had slipped past his team and vanished. Where was she today? Hiding in a city? Married to a country bumpkin who asked no questions? In some foreign country living under an assumed name? Or rotting in some deep valley in the Idaho mountains?

Logically, the last scenario was the most likely. But he didn’t believe it. The man who computed probabilities for every situation believed that if Taylor Summers, was dead, he would intuitively know.

Irrational and embarrassing. He did not admit it to anyone.

The play ended. The kids took their bows. The parents, grandparents, and relatives stood up, talking and laughing, and headed into the cafeteria for refreshments.

St. Francis was a good school for Miles, not because the McManuses were Catholic—they were, but neither he nor Tabitha were active—but because Jesuits ran St. Francis and they were strict and suspicious of outsiders. Kennedy believed the brothers would keep Miles safe. In turn, Kennedy paid the absurdly high tuition and tithed the same amount again to the parish church.

Hey, whatever worked.

Now he stood, holding a cup of punch and listening as Miles’s math teacher told Tabitha what she needed to do to help him sharpen his skills. Kennedy smiled as he listened; Tabitha’s brain, like his, was razor-sharp and analytical, and for all that she had never graduated from high school, she had a clearer understanding of higher mathematics than most Nobel prize winners.

When Kennedy’s phone vibrated in the pocket of his jacket, he excused himself and stepped to the side. He opened it to an e-mail from Joshua Brothers … how very odd. He hadn’t heard from the old man since he’d sent his condolences on the sudden death of Mrs. Brothers. Kennedy read:

Hi, son,

I’m the conduit here, passing this on to you.

Hope it helps.

JB.

Hmm. Enigmatic. Kennedy hoped the attachment wasn’t a chain letter. He opened it, and even before he recognized the scene, he recognized the style.

Taylor Summers had drawn this sketch.

Driven by a gust of that despised emotion, his hand shook briefly, violently.
She
was
alive.

He didn’t want anyone else to see this. Not until he’d had the chance to examine it himself. So although it hurt to do so, he shut the attachment. He looked to see if anyone was paying attention to him—in fact, several single mothers viewed him as if they were starving carnivores and he was an untasted pâté of fatherhood. He sidled away and returned to the empty auditorium. He once again opened the attachment.

In the spare strokes of a black pencil on a white background, Taylor had reimagined the moment when the kidnappers pulled Miles out of the trunk. The passion with which Taylor re-created her memories made the sketch painful to view. The meadow, the road, the trees, the Mercedes, the steep slope Miles had scrambled up in his escape, were nothing more than a backdrop for Miles’s terror, the kidnappers’ indifference, and unseen, but still pervasive, the horror of the innocent onlooker. This drawing had been conceived and generated by the woman who had seen everything and moved to take action.

Yet … where had she been for the last year? Why was she contacting him now?

What did she want?

He called Mr. Brothers, heard his quavering voice, and felt a pang. Mr. Brothers had always been loud, brash, impatient, and now, since the death of his wife, he sounded old. But he was still amused. “You called to see what I knew about Taylor Summers, huh, boy?”

“I did, sir.”

“I don’t know a goddamn thing. She was up here for a while, working for a caterer. Lorena and I met her at our party a couple of months after your brouhaha … Girl called herself Summer—”

Kennedy filed that away in his mind.

“—and she looked rough. Life had not been good to her.” Mr. Brothers sounded sad. “It’s only because I knew her family that I figured out who she was. Then she disappeared.”

“No communication until now?”

“None. I figured she was dead.”

“No. I knew she wasn’t dead.” Kennedy looked again at the drawing. “You think she was living in the woods all that time?”