Secrets Rising (14 page)
Authors: Sally Berneathy
"Are you dressed?"
As if that made any difference.
"Yes."
"Then would you let me in?"
A hint of anxiety in his voice reached her, and she rose to open the door.
A cloud of heat, heavy and sultry, rushed in, pushing aside the air conditioning and surrounding them as he stood with one hand on the door frame. The world beyond him was dark and distant, and the heat seemed to come from inside the two of them rather than from that outside world.
His eyes narrowed with recognition of the feeling, but then he stood straight, scowled and compressed his lips.
"Did you take the dress?" he asked.
"What dress?"
"The blue dress. Your mother's dress."
"No, you did. You put it in your briefcase at Doris Jordan's house yesterday."
"After that, I mean. I took it out of my briefcase and put it in one of the drawers in my room last night."
"Then why are you asking me if I took it?"
"Because it isn't in that drawer anymore."
Rebecca shook her head uncomprehendingly. "When would I have taken it? Where is it? What are you saying?"
"It's gone. The blue dress is gone."
Chapter 11
Their only clue was gone.
Rebecca had anticipated another restless night of fluctuating between bad dreams and insomnia. Instead her fatigue had finally caught up with her, and she'd slept soundly, awakening refreshed and in a surprisingly good frame of mind. Her emotional overload had acted in the same way as her physical.
She resolved to enjoy the respite, however brief it might be, and began by dressing in a peach colored scooped neck cotton blouse and matching gathered skirt with a wide white belt and white sandals, the happiest, most capricious outfit she'd brought with her.
She'd just finished dressing when Jake called. "Are you ready to go?" he asked without preliminaries.
"Yes. I'll meet you outside."
She stepped from her motel room into a glorious morning...the sky a wide, cloudless blue, the breeze pleasantly warm and scented with the fragrance of unseen honeysuckle. Taking advantage of the moment, she drew in a deep breath, savoring the clean, innocent essence of the day, knowing soon the temperatures would be scorching, and she and Jake would be embroiled in the nasty little secrets of the town.
Jake's door opened, and he came out wearing another pair of faded blue jeans with a white knit shirt that hugged the muscles of his chest and allowed a few dark hairs to escape from the open V-neck.
"Good morning," she said, but his gaze slid over her to focus on something behind her.
She turned to see what held his attention. The motel maid was rounding the corner with her cart.
"Come on," he said curtly.
Rebecca followed him down the sidewalk, almost running to keep up.
The woman, short and plump with streaks of gray in her shiny black hair smiled as they approached.
"Hi, I'm Jake Thornton in room 103."
Though the woman's expression didn't change, Rebecca thought her smile became stiff. Or perhaps she imagined it, was becoming paranoid.
"Did you clean my room yesterday?"
She hadn't imagined it. The woman's dark eyes widened in fright. She shook her head, the motion jerky. "No hablo inglès."
Jake folded his arms and rocked back on his heels."¿Limpia usted el cuarto de numero cien y tres ayer?" The woman's gaze darted from side to side as if seeking an avenue of escape."¿Ve usted una blusa azul?" Jake continued.
The woman shook her head vehemently and darted away.
"I don't know what you asked her, but she's not being honest," Rebecca said, watching the woman disappear into a room and close the door behind her.
"I asked her if she cleaned my room and if she saw a blue dress. And I agree. She's lying. She knows something about it."
"Why would she take the dress? It's out of style. It's old and faded. It wouldn't even fit her."
The question was rhetorical, but Jake answered it anyway. "Get rid of the evidence. My guess would be that she either owes a favor to good old boy Charles, or he has something on her."
The morning had lost its glory. The air hung languid about them, sticky with grease fumes from the restaurant next door.
"You ready to go to the library and see if we can get rebuffed there, too?" Jake asked.
She nodded, her eyes meeting his, searching for reassurance that they weren't really going to be rebuffed, that this situation wasn't as hopeless as it was beginning to look.
Of course he gave none.
She turned and headed for his car anyway.
***
Jake parked in the small lot behind the Edgewater Public Library. Rebecca stepped out immediately, not giving him the chance to come around and open her door, to remind her of his overwhelmingly male presence.
Jake joined her, squinting into the sun as they walked to the front of the big old stone building. "July in Texas. Every day's a carbon copy of the one before. It'll be a hundred degrees by noon."
"By noon we'll be inside Doris Jordan's cool, comfortable house," she pointed out. She was very much looking forward to that lunch, to being with the older woman who had so much chaos in her life and so much peace in her soul.
"Without the dress she asked to see again," he reminded her.
"Maybe she'll be able to remember something without actually having to see it this time."
He shrugged. "Maybe. At least the fact that somebody stole the dress tells us there's something there to be remembered."
"Did you ever doubt it?"
"Nothing's certain until you have proof, and then sometimes you're still wrong."
She wasn't sure if he was trying to reassure her about the terrible possibility that Charles Morton might be her father or prepare her for the possibility of never finding her heritage.
They turned the corner of the big old building where yesterday they'd found the story of Ben Jordan's death, and she let Jake's comment pass without a reply. He probably didn't expect one anyway. He seemed to think it was part of his job to dispense pessimistic advice.
The front of the library was impressive with wide steps leading up to large double doors of dark, shiny wood. Stone lions on each side guarded the town's collection of reading material. On the surface, Edgewater was an idyllic town, a remnant of a bygone era when life was slower and simpler.
But ugliness seethed just beneath the picturesque surface.
And her search was causing the town's ugly little secrets to rise to the surface. She was bringing up the skeletons of her birth for everybody—herself included—to see.
Jake held the door for her to enter the library.
Wooden card catalogues—no computers for Edgewater—and reading tables spread to the left with an Oxford English Dictionary on a stand in the middle. On the right was the desk where they'd obtained the microfiche the day before, but Eunice wasn't presiding today. Instead, a short woman with pale hair—blond or silver or a mixture—in a medium length nondescript style stood talking to a tall, slender man. From their postures and expressions, the quiet conversation appeared to be intensely personal.
"Excuse me," Jake said, and both people turned to look at him. The man had a pleasant, disinterested expression as anyone, interrupted by strangers, might have. However, Rebecca thought she saw a flicker of something else in the woman's blue eyes...a momentary dilation of the pupils, a flash of sharp darkness...but a curtain of ambiguity descended immediately.
"Can I help you?" the woman asked, looking directly at Jake and ignoring Rebecca. A hollow essence in her low-pitched voice, a translucent overlay on her pale face and in her veiled eyes gave her a quality Rebecca could only define as haunted.
"I'd like to speak to Eunice," Jake said.
"Eunice isn't here today. I'm her assistant."
"I see." Jake tunneled his fingers through his hair, obviously frustrated by this latest hindrance to their investigation. "We were here yesterday, and someone left something in my briefcase. I need to find out who it might have been so I can return the item."
"If you'd care to leave the item with me, I'll try to locate the owner."
"I really need to talk to the person who left it."
"But you don't know who that person is."
"No, I don't."
"Then I don't see how I can help you." The woman gazed up at him, waiting, volunteering nothing. Her small chin jutted forward, the muscle in her jaw knotted.
The tall man beside her regarded them with a confused expression. During the woman's verbal exchange with Jake, he'd shifted his attention from one to the other as if surprised at his companion's reactions to the two strangers.
Jake shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Even he appeared a little disconcerted with the assistant's total lack of cooperation. "I thought you might have a list of everybody who checked out a book or brought back a book yesterday."
"I'm sorry but that information's confidential."
Jake gave her the same smile he'd given Doris Jordan. Rebecca could have told him he was wasting the wattage on this woman.
"I understand," he said. "Were you working here yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Then maybe you could just give me some idea of who might have been downstairs around two or three."
"I'm sorry but that information's confidential," she repeated, more emphatically this time.
Rebecca moved closer to Jake, trying to insert herself into the woman's line of vision. Maybe she'd have more luck than he was having.
And if she did, maybe she could even convince him she needed to be here. She certainly couldn't do any worse than he was doing in this instance.
"Please," she said, "this is very important." The woman didn't look at her, didn't admit by so much as the blink of an eye that she heard. "I'm Rebecca Patterson." Rebecca held out her hand, forcing some kind of acknowledgment.
Slowly, as if with great effort, the assistant turned her veiled gaze toward Rebecca but ignored the outstretched hand.
Haunted
.
The woman was being incredibly rude, but somehow Rebecca couldn't get upset with her. She could almost reach inside the stranger and feel the inconceivable anguish that quivered behind her stony gaze.
"The item was a note," Rebecca explained, "and it's very important that I find out who wrote it."
The woman—Rebecca realized she hadn't even told them her name—shook her head, the movement a series of short, staccato jerks. "I can't help you." She spaced each word out in a staccato rhythm that matched her movements. "Please excuse me. I have work to do." She turned away, heading toward an open office door behind her.
"Please, I'm trying to locate my mother." Rebecca could only assume the entire town knew already, so she might as well use the information if she could.
The woman kept going, disappearing into the office and closing the door as if she hadn't heard...or didn't care.
The man gave them an apologetic smile, shrugged then started after the woman. He was attractive in a quiet, artistic way, tall and thin with curly salt and pepper hair. The woman's husband? Lover? Had he seen a new side to her today?
He pushed the door open and stuck his head inside. "Mary?"
A soft murmur came from the room, and the man entered, closing the door behind him.
"Well," Jake said. "I'd say we need to come back tomorrow and talk to Eunice."
"Apparently." Rebecca stared at the closed door. "He called her Mary. Do you suppose that's Mary Jordan, Ben Jordan's widow?"
"Could be. Like I said, it's a small town. If we stay here long enough, we're bound to run into everybody. On the other hand, Mary's a common name."
"I guess so." Rebecca couldn't seem to tear her gaze away from the door which hid Mary and her friend. "I think it's her, though. She seems so..." She hesitated, reluctant to use such an intangible term as
haunted
in the presence of Jake's pragmatism.
"Rude?" he suggested.
She shook her head and faced him squarely. "Your job may be detective work, but my job is working with people. And that woman has had tragedy in her life."
Jake shrugged. "Whatever. She wasn't much help to us. To you."
Of course he couldn't let the
us
stand. For Jake Thornton, there was no
us
even in the two of them working together.
"Do you think that guy was her husband?" she asked.
"Could be. She was wearing a wedding ring. He wasn't, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Well, there's no point in hanging around here. I doubt if that lady will even give us the trays of microfiche to go through. We'll come tomorrow when Eunice is here. Let's go back to the motel room. I need to make a couple of phone calls."
Reluctantly Rebecca left the library with Jake.
Or, at least, in the company of Jake. She doubted that anyone was ever
with
him.
At the big doors, she turned one more time to see if Mary and her friend had come out of the office.
They hadn't. She could see nothing but the closed, silent door.
