Shattered (7 page)

"So, where is he?"

"At his house. Scott got out there. There was some problem with his father." No need to tell anyone about the police being at the house. That was Scott's business, to disclose or not as he chose. "He'll walk down to pick up his car later."

"What's the old bastard up to now?"

He was referring to Mr. Buchanan, whose proclivities were common knowledge.

"The usual. Drunk and mean."

"Cracker." Uttered in a contemptuous undertone, the term was beyond derogatory. Lisa didn't reply but instead turned the conversation in another direction.

"Andy, do you remember hearing about a family that disappeared around here about, oh, thirty years ago? Their name was Garcia. A couple and two children."

He frowned, then slowly shook his head. "Can't say that I do. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. Just a case I came across at work. I was curious, that's all. Listen, I'm probably going to have to take the truck into work tomorrow. Can you manage without it?"

"Sure. You know where the keys are kept." On the hook in the kitchen beside the refrigerator, which was where all the keys to all the vehicles were always kept. Andy's face creased in a smile. "That's going to be something to see, you in your fancy clothes driving into your fancy office in that old truck."

"Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do." Lisa smiled in turn, though the idea of driving the mud-spattered farm truck to work was a little ego-deflating. She only hoped that no one would be around to see her park and get out.

With Lisa in front, they'd reached the kitchen door by this time. Opening the creaky screen door and then pushing the wooden door open, she gestured for him to precede her inside, enjoying the spicy fragrance as he carried the flowers past her into the kitchen. It was a large, old-fashioned, sunny room with white cabinets, white tile countertops, and a well-worn hardwood floor. A large oak table occupied the center of the room. Except for the color of the paint on the walls, which were currently a soft blue, and the appliances, nothing had changed in it for as long as Lisa could remember.

"Those for me?"

Having acknowledged Lisa's arrival with a quick smile, Robin addressed the question to Andy. Square-faced and stocky at sixty-four, with chin-length hair dyed a defiant red, clad in a flowered smock and bright pink polyester pants, Robin was now her mother's near-constant companion. She was still nominally the housekeeper, a position she had held for longer than Lisa was old. As Martha's health had declined, Robin's primary task had become taking care of her, although she still did some housekeeping and cooking as well. A nurse had started coming in to relieve her and Lisa, who'd been trading off sleeping in Martha's room until her breathing had gotten so bad six weeks ago. At the moment, Robin was stirring something in a tall stockpot on the stove. From the smell, Lisa guessed a significant ingredient was chicken.

"That for me?" he countered, glancing significantly at the pot as he carried the flowers over to the counter beside the sink. Robin made a face at him.

"Who'd want your ugly mug at their supper table? Not me, that's for sure," Robin retorted, then smiled at Lisa. "Miss Martha's in the TV room. Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Painter are with her."

They were two of her mother's legion of friends. Lisa nodded and headed upstairs to change clothes without interrupting. Martha had so few diversions now that visits from friends were highly prized. Lisa was only glad that they hadn't forgotten her mother.

By the time she had discarded her suit in favor of conservative, mid-thigh-length khaki shorts, a white tee, and slip-on Keds--now that she was home again, she eschewed anything too short, too tight, or too trendy out of deference to her mother's sensibilities--most of the day's tension had left her. This beloved house where she had grown up always had a calming effect on her, and even the muffled hammering that accompanied the ongoing repairs--and the worry of paying for them later--couldn't change that. Everything about the house, from the rich wood paneling in the reception rooms on the first floor, to the beautiful stained-glass windows that shed prisms of colored light into the most unexpected places, to the hand-carved, winding main staircase that curved up from the center hall, to the leaded glass dome that was a central feature of the roof, was a reminder of a bygone age. She felt almost as though she were a part of the house, as if living there was something that had been bred in her bones, which she supposed, since it had been in her mother's family for generations, it had been. Her own large bedroom was located at the back of the newer (having been constructed in 1894) north wing, not far from her mother's. Or at least not far from her mother's old room. Since her illness had progressed to the point that she had to be carried up the stairs, Martha had had the library, which was on the ground floor of the main wing, converted into a bedroom for her use, both for ease of access and because the halls in that section of the house were consistently wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. That meant Lisa was all alone in the north wing. Not that she minded. To tell the truth, she relished the privacy, which had been in short supply since she moved back home. Plus, she loved her bedroom. The walls were real plaster, painted a creamy yellow, and a cheerful and ruinously expensive floral chintz in yellow and pink and green that she had chosen herself at age sixteen had been custom-made into draperies and a matching bedspread. A Tabriz carpet in faded shades of rose and blue covered the floor. The room had twelve-foot ceilings, a rarely used fireplace with an elegant Adam mantle, and tall windows overlooking the swimming pool and the Baby's Garden, which was a brick-walled explosion of roses in gorgeous peaches and pinks and reds surrounding a small bronze fountain in the shape of a winged baby-boy cherub, from which the garden took its name. Her furniture was antique except for the bed, a queen-size four-poster, and the soft-green easy chair and ottoman in one corner. An en suite bathroom and a room-size closet had been fashioned out of the bedroom next door at about the same time she had chosen the chintz. The bathroom stood between the bedroom and the closet, with a door opening into each. Walking into the bathroom, Lisa washed her hands and face and touched up her makeup. As she stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing her hair back into a ponytail in a concession to the heat, she realized she'd left the door to her closet open. She was able to see, through the mirror, both the rack where she had hung her discarded suit among her other clothes and the collection of dolls that lined the shelves. Growing up, she hadn't exactly been a girly girl, but she had loved her dozens of dolls, and even when she'd stopped playing with them she'd carefully kept her favorites.

Now, as she secured the elastic around her hair, her gaze ran over them absently, only to stop with an arrested expression on Katrina, as she had named the nearly life-size toddler girl doll that now stood all but forgotten in a corner. Katrina had shoulder-length black hair, deep bangs, and was dressed in a blue velvet dress. With a lace collar and smocking on the bodice.

Looking at her, Lisa drew in her breath.

The little girl. The missing family.

The doll's coloring. Her hairstyle. Her dress. It all made her look eerily similar to the picture of the young daughter of the Garcia family. What was her name?

Marisa.

The name seemed to whisper through her mind.

Arrested, her gaze still fixed on the doll, Lisa felt her heartbeat quicken and her pulse kick up a notch.

"Don't be stupid. Of course it 's a coincidence," she scolded herself aloud, just to break the tension that had held her momentarily spell-bound. Making a face at herself, she turned away from the mirror and stepped into the closet, which despite having had the bathroom carved out of it was as large as most bedrooms. The windows that still remained were covered with heavy closed curtains. As ridiculous as she knew it was, the deep gloom made her uneasy. Quickly she snapped on the overhead light, then knelt in front of the doll that she 'd happily played with for years and was now, suddenly, embarrassingly, just the tiniest bit afraid of.

You're being a complete idiot here.

She knew that, of course, but knowing it didn't help. She 'd had Katrina for as long as she could remember, for so long that she couldn't even remember getting her. Katrina had just always existed in the background of her life. Lisa's mouth went dry and her pulse began to race as she looked the doll over. Designed to depict a child of perhaps four or five, Katrina was pink-cheeked and sturdy, with wide blue eyes that stared sightlessly forward beneath a sweep of bristly black lashes. Warily, with what she knew were ridiculous visions of the evil doll Chucky dancing in her head, Lisa touched Katrina's face. The reassuring smoothness of cool, hard plastic eliminated the wildest flight of her imagination; this was not little Marisa Garcia's somehow amazingly well-preserved body, hidden all these years in plain sight in her closet. It was, instead, simply her own familiar, well-loved doll.

Whew.

Lisa let out a breath she hadn't realized she 'd been holding. She didn't even know what she'd been thinking precisely, but it was a relief to discover that whatever it was was wrong.

But if her memory served her correctly, the outfit at least was, indeed, strikingly similar to the one worn by the little girl in the picture.

Trying not to be unnerved by the blank stare of the china eyes, Lisa slid a questing finger along one blue velvet sleeve, rubbed the skirt between her thumb and forefinger, then touched the smocking on the bodice. The velvet was smooth and thick, obviously of good quality. The smocking seemed to have been done by hand and was adorned with real embroidery. Glad now that she had brought the Garcia file home with her, Lisa quickly got to her feet and went into her bedroom to retrieve it from her briefcase, which she had dropped on the floor beside her bed. Opening the folder even as she returned to crouch in front of Katrina, Lisa looked from the little girl in the picture to the doll with widening eyes.

5

Wow, Lisa thought.
The dresses each wore were so similar as to appear identical. In fact, the child and the doll looked so much alike that it was eerie.

It was, of course, impossible to tell much from the small, slightly blurry photograph, but the resemblance couldn't be as uncanny as it seemed. There was no way to know, for example, if Marisa's eyes were blue or if the embroidery on the child 's dress depicted tiny pale blue and white flowers with green leaves, as the doll's did, but it seemed unlikely. Marisa's skin tone was certainly darker than the doll's creamy complexion, and the exact shade of blue of her dress also seemed darker in the picture. But both the child 's dress and the doll's dress were long-sleeved and full beneath the smocking, were of approximately the same length, and had white-lace Peter Pan collars edged in a tiny ruffle.

Lisa realized her heart was thumping.

Get a grip,
she told herself.
There is no way that this is anything but a coincidence.

Obviously, the doll had been dressed like a real little girl. Blue velvet smocked dresses must have been popular among the preschool set back about the time she 'd acquired Katrina. Which, since she didn't remember getting her, must have been when she herself was of preschool age. The doll was supposed to mimic a real child. Therefore, it made sense that she would be dressed like one. There were probably thousands of dolls that were dressed just like this, that looked just like this, scattered all across the country.

As logical as that argument was, Lisa still picked up Katrina and was turning her over to check for a label on the dress or some identifying mark on the doll itself when her cell phone rang. The unexpected burst of Beethoven's Fifth made her jump.

Her phone was in her purse, which was in the bedroom. Putting Katrina down, Lisa got to her feet and hurried to answer it.

"I'm going to have to cancel our lunch on Friday."

The voice was her father's. C. Bartlett Grant was an esteemed federal judge who now lived some seventy miles away in the exclusive Glenview section of Kentucky's largest city, Louisville. Tall, fit, and still strikingly handsome at sixty-eight, he was a former congressman who had once had far loftier political aspirations. But a losing Senate bid had soured him on personally pursuing public office, and he'd embraced the role of party elder instead. Still a local mover and shaker and, thanks to his two wives, both of whom were or (in her mother's case) had been heiresses, a wealthy man, he was highly thought of by almost everyone, his daughter and former wife excepted. Though Lisa was his only natural child--he had acquired three stepsons upon his second marriage--their relationship had been rocky since the extremely contentious divorce from her mother, which had taken place when Lisa was six. In fact, they'd had practically no relationship until Lisa had returned home to Grayson Springs the previous autumn. Since then, always at Barty's (he hated it when she called him that, so Lisa invariably did) instigation, they'd met occasionally for a meal. She figured that since she was now a lawyer like himself, he was afraid that their circles might start to overlap and wanted to do what he could to head off anything unflattering she might say about him.

Barty had always hated being made to look like the bad guy. And of course he didn't know her well enough to know that she had enough family loyalty to keep her unflattering opinion of him to herself.

"Family obligations?" Lisa asked sweetly, knowing that he put on a great show of being a devoted husband and father.

"As a matter of fact, the trial I'm presiding over looks like it's going to run long. I won't be able to get away."

"I saw in the paper that Todd"--his youngest stepson, who was a seventeen-year-old senior in high school--"was competing in a track meet on Friday." Her tone was carefully neutral.

He let out a sigh.

"Okay, you got me. Yes, I'm going to watch Todd run. Jill"--his wife--"doesn't want to go alone."