Second Child (41 page)

“Maybe,” Cora said, her eyes still on Teri. “And maybe not.” This time she was almost certain she saw a flicker of apprehension in the girl’s eyes, but then Teri smiled warmly.

“Where’s Melissa? Is she up yet?”

Cora shook her head. “Her papa told her she could stay in bed, and I guess she’s doin’ it. I haven’t seen her since I took her breakfast up this morning.” She nodded toward the dishes that were still stacked on the sink. “Some people,” she added pointedly, “at least help me tidy this place up sometimes.”

But Teri was already on her way out of the kitchen. “I’ll
go up and see if she’s awake,” she called back over her shoulder.

Upstairs, Teri tapped at Melissa’s door, then let herself into the room. Melissa lay on her bed, her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. And then Teri saw the straps.

Frowning, she stepped into the room and went to the bed, knowing the instant she looked into Melissa’s eyes that she was seeing D’Arcy.

“D’Arcy?” she whispered. “Is that you?”

Melissa’s eyes shifted, focusing on Teri’s face.

“She went out to the pottingshed, didn’t she?”

Melissa’s head moved in a barely perceptible nod.

“Do you know what happened?”

Silence.

And then, from the open window, Teri heard the sound of tires crunching on the gravel drive. She turned away from the bed and hurried to the window.

A black-and-white police car was coming up the drive, disappearing a moment later as it pulled around to the front of the house. Teri’s mind raced.

She had to find out what D’Arcy remembered; how much she knew of what had happened in the pottingshed. And after she found out, she had to turn D’Arcy’s knowledge against Melissa herself.

She hurried back to the bed and looked down once more into her half sister’s strangely vacant eyes. “You want to help Melissa, don’t you?”

Again, that almost imperceptible nod.

Working quickly, Teri began removing the cuffs from Melissa’s left arm and her legs. Then, grasping her arm, she pulled her half sister up. “Come on,” she said. “If you really want to help Melissa, I know how you can do it.”

A few seconds later, in the attic, Teri began helping Melissa into the dress once more.

“You have to tell them what you did,” she whispered softly. “If you don’t, they’ll blame Melissa. You don’t want them to blame Melissa, do you?”

Melissa shook her head slightly.

“Then you know what you have to do, don’t you?” Teri crooned, fastening the last of the long row of buttons on
the back of the dress. “You have to take the punishment, so they won’t blame Melissa.”

She heard Phyllis’s voice calling up the stairs to her, and pulled the wig from its hiding place in the steamer trunk. Placing it on Melissa’s head, she smiled softly.

“Wait,” she said. “Just wait here, until I come for you.”

Leaving Melissa standing silent and motionless in the attic, Teri hurried down the stairs.

“Is this going to take much longer?” Teri asked. She was in the library, sitting on the sofa next to her stepmother, the nail of her right forefinger picking nervously at a crack in the red leather with which the couch was covered.

Tom Mallory glanced up from his notebook. Over the last half hour, as he’d talked with both Phyllis Holloway and Teri MacIver, he’d had a hard time making up his mind which of them he disliked more.

Phyllis had been barely civil to him, making it eminently clear that as far as she was concerned, his visit was an invasion of her home and her privacy. “I really can’t understand why you want to talk to us at all,” she’d said after keeping him waiting in the library for more than ten minutes before finally appearing. “I have a great deal to do today.”

“I’m sure this won’t take much of your time, Mrs. Holloway,” he’d broken in. “But the fact of the matter is that Tag Peterson is missing.”

Phyllis’s brows rose skeptically. “Don’t you think Cora
is overreacting to all this? The boy hasn’t even been gone twenty-four hours.”

Mallory had shaken his head. “There’re quite a few kids I can think of that I wouldn’t worry about if they took off for a day or two. But Tag’s not one of them, Mrs. Holloway. Now, if you could just try to tell me when the last time you saw him was …”

Phyllis shrugged helplessly. “Well, I really don’t know, Lieutenant.”

“Sergeant,” Mallory automatically corrected.

Phyllis’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Sergeant,” she repeated as if the word were distasteful to her. “Of course. At any rate, I’m not sure I could tell you the last time I saw Tag. He’s just simply around, you know. We pay him for odd jobs he does, of course, but he’s Cora’s responsibility, not ours.”

“If you’d just tell me when you last remember
seeing
him, Mrs. Holloway?”

Phyllis had sighed heavily. “Well, I suppose it was after the funeral yesterday. I seem to recall he might have been working on the lawn, but I can’t be certain. Yesterday,” she added pointedly, “was a difficult day for all of us, you know.”

A few minutes later Teri MacIver had come in, and when he’d posed the same question to her, she’d simply shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “I’m not sure, really.” She’d paused, and then frowned as if trying to remember something. “Actually,” she went on, “I was in here most of the time Daddy and Phyllis were gone. But it seems to me I remember hearing him calling Melissa.”

“Melissa?” Phyllis repeated. “But she was in her room, sound asleep.”

Teri had shrugged once more. “Well, I didn’t really see him, and I might be wrong. But I’d almost swear he was calling her. I thought they might be talking through the window, or something.”

Cora Peterson, who had been listening silently from the doorway, eyed Teri suspiciously. “Seems to me you might have gone to take a look,” she observed. “I mean, knowing Melissa was supposed to be asleep and all.”

“Where is Melissa?” Mallory had asked then, shooting
Cora a look that clearly said he could take care of the questions himself.

“She’s asleep,” Phyllis replied a little too quickly, giving the policeman the distinct impression she didn’t want him to talk to her daughter. Sensing her mistake, she did her best to recover. “She had a very bad day yesterday. I’m afraid she became a bit hysterical at Jeff Barnstable’s funeral. The doctor’s recommended that she get a lot of rest.”

“But she’s not ill?” Mallory pressed.

“W-Well, no, not exactly,” Phyllis stammered.

“Then if you don’t mind, I’d like you to wake her up, Mrs. Holloway. It won’t take but a minute or two, but if she
did
talk to Tag, I’d like to know what was said.”

Phyllis had vacillated, as if weighing her options, but finally left the room. The moment she was gone, Teri’s attitude had changed drastically. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” she had complained. “I mean, so Tag’s gone. So what? Kids take off all the time, don’t they? And it’s not like Tag had any friends here. All he ever did was mow the lawn and trim the hedges, and he didn’t even do that very well. He probably just got fed up with it.”

“Now you see here, young lady—” Cora began, but Mallory silenced her with an upheld hand.

“Now let’s all just take it easy, okay?”

That was when Teri had fixed him with angry eyes and demanded to know how much longer the interviews were going to take. “I have a couple of friends coming over to go swimming.”

Cora’s eyes narrowed. “Today?” she demanded. “It seems to me you might have thought about how your sister’s feeling.”

Teri smiled at her with exaggerated sweetness. “Maybe I did,” she said. “And maybe I thought it might be nice for her to have some company.”

“And maybe you didn’t think at all,” Cora grumbled, but before she could go on, Phyllis appeared in the library door.

“She’s not in her room.”

“But she has to be,” Teri replied, her insolent smile instantly replaced with a look of grave concern. “I was just
up there and she was sound asleep—” She cut her own words off and her hand flew to her mouth, but then she quickly dropped her hand to her side.

“What?” Phyllis demanded. “She
was
there, wasn’t she?”

“Y-Yes,” Teri said. Then, as if repeating a thought that had just popped into her mind that instant, she went on, “But—Well, she came into my room last night. She—She said she’d been sleepwalking.” She turned to Cora. “She said you found her going up to the attic.”

Cora licked her lips nervously, her mind working quickly. “Yes,” she said. “That’s true. But what—”

“Well, maybe she did it again,” Teri suggested. Her eyes went to Phyllis. “I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”

An expression of grim anger came into Phyllis’s eyes as she realized her daughter’s problems were about to be aired in public. Cora, at least, had never talked about Melissa to outsiders. But now, she felt dizzy as she imagined the field day this policeman would have with the story: “The kid’s crazy as a bedbug—wanders around the house in the middle of the night—hallucinates—the whole ball of wax. They shoulda locked her up years ago.”

And he’d be right, too, Phyllis reflected darkly. It made her furious the way Burt Andrews had simply brushed aside her suggestion that Melissa be sent away. But if he’d only listened—and if Charles had only listened, too—Melissa wouldn’t even be here now.

“I—Well, I suppose …” she floundered.

“Why don’t we go up and take a look around, Mrs. Holloway,” Tom Mallory suggested, then firmly took Phyllis’s arm and led her out into the hallway.

Less than a minute later the four of them were gathered at the foot of the stairs to the attic. “But this is ridiculous,” Phyllis protested. “It’s the middle of the day. She’s never—”

Her words were cut off by a sound from above.

It was a footstep. A second later, it was followed by another.

And then, as the four people gazed up toward the door at the top of the stair, the door itself opened and a figure appeared.

It was Melissa, clad in the white dress, her eyes glazed over.

She paused for a moment, and then her head moved slightly and her vacant eyes stared down at them.

“I did it,” she said, her voice hollow. “It wasn’t her fault. I did it.”

She started down the stairs, and as the light from below finally fell on the folds of white material, they saw the bloodstains for the first time.

From the bodice to the hem the dress was stained a dark reddish brown.

Phyllis gasped as she stared at her daughter in shocked horror, and her hand instinctively grasped Teri MacIver’s arm.

Cora, her eyes fixed numbly on the grotesque figure descending the stairs, felt her knees give way and would have collapsed to the floor except for Tom Mallory’s quick movement to support her.

Teri MacIver simply smiled quietly to herself.

“I still don’t see why Teri wanted me to come, too,” Kent Fielding said. The two of them were on the beach, heading up toward the Holloways’ house. “You’re the one she likes.”

Brett Van Arsdale grinned mischievously at his friend. “Maybe she’s decided to set you up with Melissa,” he replied. But then his smile faded as he remembered Jeff Barnstable. “What do you suppose really happened the other night?” he asked. “I mean, how could Melissa have walked all the way from Maplecrest and not even remember?”

Kent shrugged. “She’s nuts, that’s why.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Hey, remember after the bonfire, when Cyndi and Ellen claimed they saw D’Arcy wandering around in the woods?”

Brett nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. But she acted so scared when I was telling the story.”

“Yeah, but she was really pissed off when Teri spilled the beans about her thinking she’s friends with D’Arcy. Man, that’s just too weird. But maybe she went home and put on that old dress, then went out trying to scare people.”

Brett chuckled. “Well, if she did, it sure worked. Or maybe,” he went on, “Ellen and Cyndi weren’t lying. Maybe they really did see D’Arcy.”

Kent glanced at Brett out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, come on. Nobody actually believes that old story. And after what happened to Jeff, you know it had to be Melissa the girls saw.”

“Wouldn’t you think they’d finally figure out she’s a nut case and lock her up?” Brett mused. “I mean, even if she didn’t remember what happened, she looked so scary, you can’t blame Jeff for going off the road. Shit, I would’ve lost it myself.”

They turned away from the beach and started up toward the big shingled house. “You sure you want to come?” Brett asked, turning to snap his beach towel at Kent, then backing quickly away before the other boy could retaliate. “I mean, what if Melissa gets a crush on you like she did on Jeff?”

Kent’s brow furrowed into a dark scowl. “Jesus, Brett, that’s really gross. I mean, whatever happened, I just can’t believe she meant for him to—” And then his voice trailed off as his eyes, looking beyond Brett, caught a glimpse of a strange figure coming out the back door of the Holloways’ house. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “What the hell’s going on?”

Startled by the sudden change in Kent’s voice, Brett turned around to see what his friend was staring at.

Even from where he stood he knew immediately that the figure in white, with long blond hair streaming down over her shoulders, was Melissa.

“What the hell’s she doing?” he whispered. “She’s got that stupid costume on again.”

Both boys broke into a trot, hurrying across the lawn toward the house. But they stopped short when they suddenly saw that Melissa wasn’t alone. Behind her, watching her silently, were Tom Mallory and Phyllis Holloway. And behind them, emerging from the house just as they came to the steps to the terrace, they saw Cora Peterson and Teri MacIver. The boys froze where they were, uncertain what to do. And then Kent saw the stains on the front of the dress and nudged Brett.

“Look at that,” he whispered. “It—It looks like blood.”

Tom Mallory was the first to spot them. Instantly, he left Phyllis’s side and hurried over to them. “Get out of here,” he told them, his voice low but carrying an unmistakable
note of authority. “Right now. Don’t say anything, and don’t move fast. Just back away.”