The Abduction of Mary Rose (16 page)

"You were all about fairness, Mom. You were," she whispered. Then she touched her fingertips to her lips and transferred the kiss to her mother's gravestone. Sighing, she rose to her feet. The knees of her jeans were damp from the wet, bits of dirt and grass clinging to them. She brushed them off and looked around, scanning the rows of tombstones of varying sizes and religious statues stretching before her toward the hill and beyond. Frank had said Mary Rose was buried not far from here and gave her directions. "Lili took care of it," he said.

The grave was only a few yards away, the gravestone facing the road, marked with a small ivy-etched white stone bearing only her name, Mary Rose Francis, and the dates of her living and dying. As she set the second bouquet of forget-me-nots on the grave, propping it against the stone, she wondered what her favourite flowers had been. She would never know.

With a prickling at the back of her neck, Naomi stood up and looked off to her right, half expecting to see someone standing there, another mourner perhaps, coming to visit a loved one's grave. But there was no one there. A fleeting shadow, come and gone in an instant. Someone crouched behind a gravestone? Kids playing? She stared at the spot for several seconds before she gave a mental shrug and looked away. Maybe a bird or a small animal. But the sensation of someone watching her remained.

She turned full circle, slowly, and was about to look away from where she'd seen or imagined the shadow when she caught a flicker of movement up on the hill, by the looming marble statue of Jesus on the cross. She stared at the place where she had caught the movement, but again saw no one. The flicker of motion had come and gone in an instant. But the feeling that she was being watched stayed with her, clinging to her skin like cobwebs in a dank cellar, and she knew it had nothing to do with simply being in a cemetery. She had no aversion to cemeteries. On the contrary, Naomi had always found walking through a cemetery a quiet, serene experience. Reading the names and dates on old grave markers, imagining the lives of the people buried there, wondering about their dreams and sadnesses, their triumphs, brought her a sense of peace and continuity to her own life.

Gazing toward the hill, she remembered that this was the same graveyard where Charles Seaton had once worked as a caretaker. It would have been right about there, near the statue of Jesus when he heard her screams, saw the men force her into the car. He would have been walking along the path, unprepared by what he saw, the full reality of what was happening not registering until it was too late.
Maybe if the man had yelled out … if …
She stopped herself. You can't change the past with
what-ifs
.

But knowing the past, you can carve out a future. She had come into this life for a reason, to make sure the crime didn't go unpunished. She didn't necessarily think that was her only purpose for being on the earth, but it was an important one. She believed that. She also believed someone wanted to make sure she failed at her mission.

Naomi made her way down the slight slope of wet, slippery grass toward her car, and was glad to see a maroon Buick pull in behind hers and an elderly man and woman get out. The man had his arm draped around the woman's shoulders. The woman smiled at Naomi as she passed. "Lovely day after all the rain," she said, and there was a small sadness in her voice. The man merely nodded, his attention on the woman.

Naomi could see the bus stop from here, glassed-in now. There was no one waiting on this warm, peaceful day. A light breeze came up and stirred her hair. Within its soft sigh, she imagined she heard the cries of a young girl.
Cries that once rose from this very place, and now echoed across the vast plains of time to me, her child.

I hear you.

Chapter Twenty-Three

In the hallway, Naomi's took off her wet sneakers and socks and left them on the mat. She then went on into the kitchen and plugged the kettle in, some part of her already sensing something wrong in the house. Nothing she could identify. There were the usual sounds, the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the clock: normally familiar, welcoming sounds.

But as she stood there idly watching the steam escape the kettle's spout, something darker began to eclipse the welcoming of home. The knowledge of what it was came suddenly, like a blow to the midsection. During the time she was at the cemetery, someone was here, in her house. The temperature in the room seemed to drop, and the clammy hand of fear crept up between her shoulder blades as she realized something else: Molly hadn't come padding out to greet her as she always did. Molly! Where was Molly? A cold dread tightened around her heart.

I've drawn a terrible darkness into my life, she thought.

Chapter Twenty-Four

"He was letting me know he can get to me any time he chooses," she told Sergeant Nelson the following morning. "Even in broad daylight … he's telling me to back off."

After listening to what she had to say, Sergeant Nelson sat thoughtfully, twirling a pen in his hand. He hadn't seemed altogether pleased to have her show up unannounced, but was pleasant enough to her, even sympathetic, she thought.

"He could have killed her," she said adamantly.

"You don't know that it was...." He drew a scrap of paper to him, and began jotting down notes with the pen in his hand. Or he might have been just doodling for all she knew, waiting for her to give it up and go home.

"Yes, I do know. She was upset. I think she's okay now." Molly mewed loudly from her travel carrier at Naomi's feet, as if to disagree with her diagnosis of her emotional state.

Naomi had been beside herself when she couldn't find her. Then she heard her cries. Upstairs in her room, the dresser drawer open a couple of inches, and she had been afraid to look, to cross the room, afraid of what she would see. Molly's glowing green eyes had peered up at her from her dark interior of the drawer, and Naomi's relief that she was okay had been overwhelming.

"No way I was going to leave her alone again."

"Apparently," he said, frowning down at Molly who was in her carrier at Naomi's feet.

"Well, you wanted evidence. I think he also came into my house the other night. A friend rang the front doorbell and scared him off."

"Did you actually see him running away?" he said with maddening calm.

"No. But the back door was unlocked, open. I always lock it." She wasn't positive, but after what happened with Molly, she'd bet on it.

He put the pen down, looked at her with something between pity and annoyance. She thought he looked flushed, despite his calm demeanor.

"This is mere speculation on your part. I can't launch a manhunt, Miss Waters, based on this kind of non-evidence. As for this latest incident, if there was one, no one was killed or even hurt. Not even the cat," he added, with a wry grin down at Molly. At the look that must have been on Naomi's face, the grin vanished.

"Not this time," she said, not missing that he had gone from calling her Naomi to addressing her as Miss Waters.

"I think you're overreacting. Topsy probably jumped into—"

"Molly," she corrected.

"Molly probably jumped into the drawer on her own. Crawled up the back of the dresser and into the drawer. I've had cats, they do that. Or maybe you've got a mouse you don't know about and she was chasing it. Look, I'm not surprised you're feeling a little jumpy. Who knows what kind of lowlife that story in the paper might have scared up. But I doubt they've been in your house while you weren't home and put the cat in a dresser drawer. What would be the point of that?"

"A warning. What else? And if she got into that drawer on her own, why didn't she come out on her own?"

"Why should she? She heard you calling to her. She was waiting for you come and get her."

He had an answer for everything. But she had to admit that what he said made sense. Regardless, she had no intention of leaving her alone in the house again.

Through the large window behind Sergeant Nelson, Naomi could see a man standing on a ladder working on a sign over the door of Aiken's Print Shop across the street. Above him, the sky was enamel blue, marred only by a few fluffy clouds. A beautiful day. She barely noticed the weather these days.

The sergeant sighed. "Look, I know you're upset and Kitty is probably sensing that. The thing is, you opened this can of worms yourself. You mentioned someone coming into your house the other night. Did they break the lock?"

"No. The door was ajar when I went out to the kitchen."

"You've been a little distracted. You've probably forgot to lock it."

"There's not a doubt in my mind that it was him. He's running scared, worried I might find out who he is and send him to prison where he belongs. Where he would have been a long time ago if the police had done their job."

He started to argue but she cut him off. "You have the tape I gave you. Couldn't you check out some of the local bars and listen for a similar voice?" She heard the plea in her voice. "I could go with you. I...."

"And which bar did you have in mind? We've got half a dozen in River's End. You could hang around for a month and get nothing. Your caller might have been home with the radio playing. Or sitting in his car. Look, if you get any more calls, note the date and time. Record them. We'll go from there. In the meantime, be careful. Maybe there's someone who could stay with you until...."

She stood up, her sigh of 'What's the use?' audible even to her.

She picked up the carrier by the handle. It seemed heavier somehow. "Thanks for your time, Sergeant Nelson."

"If you want my advice," he said to her back, "you'd put all this nasty business in the past where it belongs and move on with your life."

"I can't do that," she told him, without looking back. Suddenly more tired than she could ever remember being, hot tears pressing against her lids, she opened the door. She had her hand on the knob when he called her back. He had come out from behind the desk. "Please, Naomi. Hold on a second."

She could see him weighing his words carefully. Finally, he said, "Do you know a Norman Banks, by any chance?"

The name rang a bell, but no face came to mind. "No. Why?"
Where was this going?
she wondered. Norman Banks. She had had the feeling the entire time she was here that he was mulling over some something in his mind. Not quite listening to what she was saying.

"Well, it probably means nothing. You want to put Fluffy down. I've something to show you."

She set the carrier on the floor. "Molly."

"Yeah, I know."

Naomi studied the man in the photo the sergeant showed her. He was tall and thin with fair hair and he was smiling at the person taking the picture. His wife? She'd noticed a breeze had caught a lick of light hair in front and blew it off his forehead. Captured there for all eternity. He was gone now, murdered, the sergeant told her. "Look familiar?"

"Yes. This is the man who was found near Fisher Wharf, isn't it. This picture was in the paper. Why? What has he got to do with me?"

And then he told her the police had found a copy of the interview she did for the paper folded up in the victim's pants' pocket. "It was wrinkled and dirty, he'd been carrying it around for awhile."

"Why would...?" She took a closer look at the photo, heard him in her mind speaking the words left on her machine. Sometimes when you hear someone's voice on a radio or phone and you imagine how they might look in person, what you imagined is so often way off from the reality. But not in this case here, she was certain. The voice and the picture matched. The voice on the tape and the picture she was presently holding, matched.

She looked squarely at the sergeant. "I'd bet money this is the man on the tape. The man who called me and said he was sorry about what happened to Mary Rose, and warned me about her killer. And now he's dead."