Shattered Secrets (27 page)

28

T
ess felt groggy, but she was finally getting a good night’s sleep. Still, the bed was so hard, and now someone was moving her, dragging her out of bed. Was it Gabe? Was she at his house? She wanted to stretch her sore arms and legs, but they didn’t move. The cut on her wrist hurt so much, she was afraid she was back in the meth lab, tied up again. She tried to cry out, but there was something in her mouth, and all that came out was a choking sound.

“Almost there now,” a woman’s voice said. “Home again, home again, jiggetty jig.”

A nursery rhyme about the five little piggies. Oh, she was back at the day care center in Michigan, home again. But no, wasn’t Cold Creek home?

She knew that voice, but whose was it? Was there an emergency? Had something bitten her, and she needed shots for rabies?

“You should never have run away, you bad girl. And you owe me for that broken window all those years ago. Broke it out with Mr. Mean, then stacked books to get high enough to crawl out, didn’t you? That’s no way to treat books! Mama Sybil was so angry when you were gone she hit
me
with Mr. Mean.”

Then Tess knew. Jumping out of the dark doors of her mind, pictures poured at her. She remembered Mama Sybil in her wheelchair. She was the one who was mean. She said she loved Tess, but she beat her, scared her every time she cried for home, every time she didn’t cuddle up to be read to. Tess breathed slowly and deeply and her gaze cleared. Miss Etta was dragging her from the bookmobile into a building and room she remembered well. Miss Etta had called it the book barn. Yes, that’s where she’d broken a window to escape and was found wandering on a road several miles away because she didn’t know how to get home.

Tess tried to talk again, hoping Miss Etta would pull the gag from her mouth. It was hard not only to swallow but to breathe because her nose ran and she was starting to cry. She forced herself to continue listening to the woman.

“All I’d done was run to the bathroom the day you got away, but you were so quick, both in movement and in thought. Surprising, since you didn’t like to read as your sisters did, but I know you learned a lot hearing books read to you while you were on Mama Sybil’s lap. I was hoping to improve your reading. That’s partly why I chose you when I drove the bookmobile past your house that day and saw you running wild in your backyard by the cornfield, you naughty girl. Believe me, it was a long trek through that corn to fetch you and get you past that big mower making its passes. I had to carry you clear to the bookmobile parked on the road!”

Gabe!
Tess screamed inside her head.
Come find me and maybe you’ll find Sandy and Jill before it’s too late for all of us.

Miss Etta left her on the floor in the middle of a big, worn, hooked rug. The window she’d escaped through was boarded up, as were the others, but the place was lit by four bare bulbs hanging from electrical cords. Fury cleared Tess’s mind even more. This was the place, lined with books, where she’d been allowed to play, to draw pictures. And they’d said over and over they were being kind to her! But Mr. Mean lived here as well as in the house attic, where she’d slept. Miss Etta had moved her from place to place after dark. And in the house, Mama Sybil ruled with an iron fist.

Tess blinked back tears and shook her head to force her way through the haze of memories and emotions. Fearful, forsaken. She had to halt the tumble of thoughts right now. Concentrate. Listen and plan.

“Coming alert, Teresa?” Miss Etta asked. “I wasn’t sure how much of that drug went into you when you fought like that. Since you’re an adult, I’ll up the dose later when we go inside to see Mama Sybil. I’ll take that gag out for a minute or two, but I have to head back to town, be seen around before I return here. Got to get you all tied up nice and tight until I get back. And they won’t find Sandy on their cornfield searches, because you’ll both be here, snug as bugs in a rug.”

Sandy is here and alive!

It had never occurred to Tess that Etta Falls might be crazy. But she was the one. A librarian. One who was so helpful. One who seemed to be everywhere so no one noticed she had buzzed about in that bookmobile and had taken prisoners.

The minute Miss Etta pulled the gag out, Tess almost dry-heaved. Trying to stay calm, she copied the woman’s preachy, almost singsong tone, as if she were talking to a child.

“Miss Etta, you can’t keep people prisoner like this. You’ll have to let me go, and we won’t say another thing about it.”

“Oh, we only keep you girls until you get too big for cuddling and commanding. And you’re entirely too big and the only one who got away, Teresa. But we can correct that now. Besides, we can’t allow your talking to young Sheriff McCord any more than to his father. Oh, we were worried you’d recall things then, just like now, but you cooperated beautifully. That’s why I tried to warn you to leave town and keep your mouth shut with the drugged wine and your old drawing, but you didn’t cooperate, did you? So you’ll have to pay the price. Mama Sybil’s rules, not mine, so we all have to obey her.”

Tess started to shake. After feeling elated that Sandy was alive, she was so scared she broke into a sweat despite the fact that she felt icy cold. The two old women were disposing of their victims when they grew too big? Then Jill—

“Miss Etta, you know this is wrong.”

“People must obey their mothers. Besides, Teresa, some things are only wrong in this big bad world when you get caught. Don’t you think we would have been stopped by now if what we are doing is wrong? Mama Sybil loves little girls, just like she loves me. Now let’s see about getting you more tightly tied.”

“So Jill Stillwell is...gone?”

“Why, yes. She’s out back. I told her she should be honored to lie among the pioneer Falls family, but she didn’t know what I meant. So I put her to sleep and buried her between two graves.”

Oh, dear Lord in heaven,
Tess prayed,
please don’t let Jill be dead.
But this crazy woman had buried her in that pioneer graveyard Tess recalled seeing from an attic window upstairs. But recalled much too late...

Miss Etta continued to speak as if all was normal. “She would have been entirely too heavy and large for Mama Sybil’s lap by now anyway. But Sandy’s upstairs in the attic, where I’ll take you until we can settle everything, and I can make the final preparations. Oh, dear, you’ve got blood on your neck from where you moved when I gave you that shot. Here, let me get that off with this handkerchief.”

With the saliva-soaked cloth, she dabbed at Tess’s neck, then wiped her hands. “Oh, blood on my hands, just like Lady Macbeth, but then I’ll bet you don’t know about her, do you?”

She pulled a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her sweater pocket and washed her hands. “This does wonders for erasing fingerprints on bottles and doorknobs, though it’s not as good as wearing gloves. You know, in the fifties and early sixties we wore white gloves to shop in a nice store, to church, so much more ladylike and sanitary than all that hand shaking and hugging these days.”

Miss Etta efficiently tied Tess’s wrists and legs right over her earlier bonds, then took tape from a box labeled Book Cover Repair and wound it around Tess and one of the supporting roof beams. She ignored Tess’s pleas as she worked, dumping Tess’s cell phone on the floor with the other things from her purse. Positioning the phone, she went into a back corner and returned with another version of the Mr. Mean scarecrow and smashed the phone to bits.

“There!” she declared, clapping her hands free of dust, then digging out the sanitizer again. “It would give me great pleasure to get rid of all of those. You know, people were much better off when they spoke face-to-face. For example, when we chatted at the church service the other night, you told me that you were recalling too much. That’s why I left a version of Mr. Mean when I took Sandy, to see if it would jog your memory at all. Then I would know if I had to get rid of you fast, but now will do. I was trying to plan how, and here you came into the library alone.”

“How did you get in the house to drug my wine?”

“With a key, of course. I took it from your cousin Grace’s coat pocket at the library when she was still living in the Lockwood house, the very day she told me you were coming back to town. You see, I’ve been buying sleepy-time drugs from Dane for years, but he wanted to charge me more. I said that was immoral and outrageous, but I was afraid he’d tell someone I was using them—I told him I needed them to keep my ill mother calm.”

“So you...you shot him?”

“I had to. I left a so-called suicide note, which was really an old excuse he’d penned to me—tongue-in-cheek, obviously—about some overdue books on new dog breeds he’d borrowed from the library. My, he had a big fine for those books. The day he left this world, I had him bring his own antique pistol. I told him I’d buy it for an exorbitant price. But the thing is, I’m not certain that the last batch of sleeping potions he gave me are full strength, and I never was good with an intravenous needle, so sorry about that jab on your neck.”

Tess wanted to break down in sobs, but she had the strangest urge to laugh hysterically. Etta Falls should have been committed to the Falls County Insane Asylum in town before it was closed. And her mother must be just as mad.

“Now, Teresa, I can’t move you into the big house until after dark, but I’ll be back sooner than that,” she announced with a pat on Tess’s shoulder. “My, you were such a pretty little girl. Mama Sybil’s favorite, I really think so, and then you had to sneak away. But not this time. Not this time.”

She produced another neatly ironed and sweetly scented handkerchief and pushed it into Tess’s mouth. Tess fought to keep from gagging and hyperventilating. While, humming, Miss Etta swept up what had been Tess’s phone into a dustpan. She put the other items spilled from her purse back inside it. Then she went out and locked the book-barn door. The sound of the bookmobile driving away faded, but the hushed roar of the waterfall and the piercing shriek of a distant train hovered heavy in the air.

* * *

“What do you mean she stepped out and never came back?” Gabe shouted at Peggy.

“She got a cup of coffee. I gave her a little break. I was on the phone with a medical emergency call, and she just stepped out, that’s all. You didn’t tell me to tie her to her chair!”

“I know, I know. Vic, will you take my gear and stow it? I’m going to call Tess, tell her to get the heck back here.” He punched in her number as he went back to his office.

Nothing. He got nothing but voice mail when he knew she kept her phone on during the day. His gut twisted tighter. He rushed back out into the hall.

“She’s not answering. I’m going to look for her.”

“Look where?” Vic said, still holding both vests and rifles.

“I don’t know! I obviously don’t know where to look for anyone missing!”

“Calm down. She’s probably just at the church helping to set up the search and hasn’t recharged her phone or forgot to turn it on. Call Jace.”

“I’ll walk down there myself.”

Gabe strode outside, furious at Peggy, Tess, himself, the world. He scanned the street and sidewalks toward New Town, then walked toward Old Town. Only a few people were on the street, none of them Tess.
Man, I should have locked her up,
he thought. Part of the reason he was having Peggy train her was so he’d know where she was during the day and she’d be at his place at night.

According to Peggy, she’d been gone over an hour. Horrible memories hit him hard. Little Teresa missing in the cornfield. “Well, where is she?” her mother was screaming. “She can’t just disappear! You were supposed to be watching her!” His own mother was on the phone, calling his dad to come home. Gabe’s panic soared.

He ran across the street and into the Kwik Shop, walked the ends of the aisles. No Tess. He called Jace.

“No, she’s not here, Sheriff. I’ll keep an eye out. We’ve got the team leaders set for the search for Sandy....”

Gabe said a fast goodbye. If he didn’t spot Tess soon, there’d be a double search to organize.

Creekside Gifts had reopened, but he was pretty sure it was being staffed by friends of the Kentons right now. Still, he went across the street again. Lindell Kenton and Tess seemed to have bonded over Tess’s agreeing to read from the Bible at the service. They’d had a long talk on the phone and another at the church. Yeah, she could be here. But when he stuck his head in the door, they told her they hadn’t seen Tess.

As he walked toward the library, it hit him. She’d probably come down here to get that book for him. And when talking to Miss Etta, it could be hard to get away. As he reached for the door, he saw a hand turn the Closed sign around to Open. When he opened the door, it almost hit Miss Etta.

“Oh, Sheriff. I just got back from an early lunch. Did you decide you need that book on stress?”

His hopes fell. “I thought maybe Tess Lockwood came down to get it for me.”

“Oh, she was here but just to ask if she could keep the books I gave her longer. Just as you had told me, she said they were of some help to her, but she didn’t stay long. I got the impression she was going for a walk.”

“Thanks, Miss Etta,” he said, and ignored her suggestion for the second time to take the book about stress from her desk. He hurried outside.

His phone rang. Thank God. But it was Vic’s phone. Tess was really going to hear it from him when he found her. It sobered him to think how much he cared for her, not just as the first victim, not just because both he and his father had lived and breathed these kidnap cases.... He really wanted her, loved her.

“Sheriff McCord here.”

“Gabe, it’s Vic. Haven’t seen Tess, but Pastor Snell tracked down that woman who counseled Tess after she was returned to her family. Melanie Parkinson. She lives in Columbus, but I have her contact info if you want to call her. She works late hours but will be at this number after nine this evening.”

“Yeah, I want to call her. You know my motto—any clue will do. Anything. Vic, Tess has vanished into thin air.”