“I can’t believe it’s been five days already,” he said.
“It seems like five weeks to me,” Paula said.
“Did you hear them say something about ending the search on Sunday?” Joe thought he had overheard Valerie mention something to that effect, but he had not wanted it to be the truth and so had not pressed her.
“I think that’s what Valerie said,” Paula said.
“And then we’ll never know what really happened.”
“They’ll still be looking tomorrow, hon,” she said.
“She could be anywhere,” Joe said. “And when I look at that topographical map in the trailer…I’m overwhelmed by how much land is out there. How much territory there is to cover.”
Joe’s cell phone rang, and he grabbed it from the console. He doubted he would ever be able to answer a phone dispassionately again.
“Hello?” he said, as he opened the mouthpiece.
“Is this Joe Donohue?” It was a woman’s voice, and he thought immediately of Valerie Boykin. He steeled himself for what she might tell him.
“Yes,” he answered. He was aware of Paula leaning closer to him, as if trying to hear what the caller had to say.
“This is Catherine Maitland, from Monticello,” the woman said. “I understand you needed some information on one of our former employees.”
“Oh, yes.” Joe had nearly forgotten about the call he’d made to Monticello that morning. It seemed so long ago.
“The name they gave me was Lucas Trowell,” she said. “T-r-o-w-e-ll. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I think there’s been a mistake,” she said. “We have no record of anyone by that name working here.”
“He wouldn’t be working there now,” Joe said. “He’s a former employee.”
“We have no record of him ever working here,” she said.
This was not what Joe had expected. He thought he might hear that Lucas had been an irresponsible worker at Monticello, as he was at Ayr Creek. He even thought he might hear something regarding Lucas’s abnormal interest in young girls. But he had certainly not expected to hear that Lucas had never worked there.
“Uh, he would have worked there in the late nineties,” Joe said. “He was a gardener. A horticulturist.”
“I’ve been the human resources director here for fifteen years,” the woman told him. “I could tell you the names of all of the gardeners, landscape architects, et cetera, who worked here during that time. Lucas Trowell is not one of them.”
“But someone there gave him a glowing reference when he was applying for his job at the Ayr Creek estate in northern Virginia,” Joe said.
The woman was quiet for a moment. “Are you sure he didn’t work at Mount Vernon or one of the other historical properties?” she asked.
“I’m sure.” Joe felt his jaw tighten, and his head was beginning to ache. He let go of the steering wheel for a moment to rub his temple. “Listen,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”
“I don’t think I was really much help,” the woman said.
“Yes, actually, you were.”
He closed the phone and laid it back on the console, then glanced at Paula. She was studying him intently.
“Well?” she asked. “What was that all about?”
Joe tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “Something’s rotten in the tree house,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, it appears that Lucas never worked at Monticello.”
“What made you think he had?” Paula asked.
“He told the Ayr Creek Foundation that he’d worked there. Frank told me that they gave him a very high recommendation.”
“I don’t understand. Who were you just talking to?”
“The woman who’s the head of the human resources office at Monticello. She said no one by that name has ever worked there.”
“Why would she call you about it?”
“Because I called her. I wanted to find out the real scoop on what sort of employee he’d been. There’s something not right about that guy.” He looked at her again. “I spied on him a bit last night.” This seemed to be his evening for confessions.
“You what?”
“I wanted to know why, if he cares about Janine so damn much, he refused to go back to West Virginia with her last night. So, I went to his house. I expected to find him with another woman.”
“And?”
“I could see him inside the tree house, working at the computer.”
“Ooh.” Paula’s voice was teasing. “How very incriminating.”
“Right. And who knows, maybe I was too early—or too late—to catch him with another woman. But then I looked through his recycling at the curb and I—”
“Joe!”
“Don’t give me a hard time, okay?” He was in no mood for Paula’s moralizing.
Paula sighed. “So, what did you find in his recycling?” she asked.
“Kiddy porn.”
“Oh, God. Ugh!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Are you kidding?”
“I wish I were,” he said, although the truth was, he was beginning to take a sadistic delight in getting the goods on Lucas Trowell.
“You mean, you found magazines or what?”
“I only saw one. It fell open to a picture of a nude child. A girl. That’s all I needed to see. I called Monticello, because I wanted to know if he’d left there of his own accord, or if maybe he was actually fired. I never expected to find out that he hadn’t worked there at all. I have to tell Janine.” He would call her the second he got home.
Paula was quiet a moment. “I don’t think you should tell her,” she said.
He looked at her in surprise. “Don’t you think she has a right to know?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you want to know that the guy you’re sleeping with is a liar at best, and a pedophile at worst?”
“Right now, though, Lucas isn’t hurting anyone,” Paula said. As always, she was the voice of reason. “And Janine gets a lot of comfort from him. Even if he is everything you say, now is not the time to dump all of that on her. You’d be ripping her support system right out from under her.”
Joe scowled. “I don’t want her with him any longer. Sleeping with him any longer.” He shuddered. “It makes me sick to think about her being with someone like him.”
“Joe…” Paula adjusted her seat belt to turn toward him. “You know I love you, hon, right?”
He nodded.
“Sometimes you can be pretty selfish.”
It wasn’t the first time someone had told him that, but he didn’t like to hear those words from Paula. He could always count on her to tell him the truth, and this was one truth he didn’t feel like hearing.
“So, if I tell Janine that her boyfriend might be a criminal, I’m being selfish?”
“If you told her right now, then, yes. I’d say you were.”
He didn’t get it. Her rationale made no sense to him. But he trusted her in a way he trusted no one else.
“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll hold off until this whole mess blows over.”
Paula smiled as she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “That’s my boy,” she said. “You’re not so bad, after all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lucas did not know where to look. He sat next to Janine in a pew near the center of the chapel, clutching her hand to comfort her, although he needed the comfort every bit as much as she did. Possibly more. Two rows ahead of them, Joe and Paula sat next to Donna and Frank. Joe had acknowledged Janine with an embrace and a kiss on the cheek, but Donna and Frank had ignored their daughter, and Lucas hoped that he was not entirely the cause of their cruelty. It was not like him to ignore their wrath—anyone’s wrath—without addressing it, putting it on the table, trying to fix it. But Lucas was not himself these days
The small chapel in Vienna was filled with people, both adults and children, and the sorrow in their faces was nearly too much for him. A large photograph of Hol
ly Kraft rested on an easel near the pulpit, and he’d looked at the picture without meaning to, his gaze slipping in that direction before he’d realized what he was doing. He’d only looked for a moment, but that had been enough for the little girl’s smile to burn itself into his brain, and he wished he could think of another image to take its place.
He kept his eyes averted from the front pew, where Rebecca and Steve were sitting with the rest of their children. He couldn’t look at the minister, either, nor could he give any attention to Holly’s other relatives, who, one after another, came up to the microphone at the front of the chapel to talk about Holly’s life and her spirit and her future cut short. Some of them attempted to tell funny stories about Holly, and had it been an adult being eulogized, the anecdotes might have provided some relief, some gentle reminiscence. But there was nothing funny to be said about a child struck down before she’d truly had a chance to live.
Before today, Lucas had been to only one other funeral for a child, and that had been one too many. He’d made a promise to himself that he would never attend another funeral like it. Yet, there was no way he could turn Janine down when she asked him to come with her today. Now, he tried to focus on her, to forget about himself. He glued his gaze to her hand where it rested locked in his own. Her nails were short and a bit ragged after a week’s worth of neglect. Her skin was lightly tanned, and he was keenly aware of the yellowish cast his own skin had next to hers. The sight gave him a jolt; he had not realized that his skin had taken on that unhealthy hue. Seeing it made him feel panicky, and he must have squeezed Janine’s hand involuntarily, because she looked at him briefly before facing the front of the chapel again.
He’d shift his focus to Joe, Lucas decided. He would shut out the rest of the chapel, and sure enough, the harder he stared at the back of Joe’s head, the blurrier, the blacker the edges of his vision became. Joe’s dark hair looked as though it would never turn gray or grow thin. His neck was tan above the collar of his shirt, and his shoulders were broad. Lucas did not need to see Joe’s eyes to remember how they looked; the moment he’d first met Joe, those eyes had held him fast with their familiarity. It was as if he’d known Joe all his life.
Paula had her arm around Joe, and her thumb stroked his back just below the shoulder seam of his jacket. She was so obviously in love with him. And Joe was so obviously in love with Janine.
The soft, yearning sound of a violin began wafting down from the balcony above their heads. The music was poignant, excruciating in its subtlety, and Lucas wanted to run from the chapel, just as he’d wanted to escape from that last funeral. He could run out of the chapel and keep on running, until his mind was numb to the pain.
But he did as he had done before: he remained seated, holding the hand of the woman he loved, praying for this long exercise in remembering to come to an end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Zoe wasn’t certain if Sophie was truly sick or simply depressed, but the little girl hadn’t gotten out of bed at all that morning. At noon, Zoe finally went into the bedroom to check on her. Carrying the wobbly chair from the living room into the bedroom, she sat on it next to Sophie’s sleeping palette. Sophie was lying on her back. Her eyes were open, and the skin around them looked swollen, as though she’d been crying for hours.
“Are you all right?” Zoe asked.
Sophie rocked her head back and forth on the pillow. “I’m getting sick,” she said.
“What kind of sick?” Zoe asked. “Is it your kidney problem?”
Sophie nodded. “I can tell. I feel like I used to feel when I didn’t get enough dialysis. Before Herbalina.” She held up one of her arms. “My hand is puffy,” she said.
It was puffy, and Zoe knew that her little stash of antibiotics would never be able to touch what was wrong with this child. She realized, then, that the swollen look of Sophie’s eyes was not from tears so much as from the disease. Sophie had not been crying at all. Instead, she was stoic and resigned to her fate, and that broke Zoe’s heart in two.
She found Marti in the clearing, sitting on one of the rocks, flicking her cigarette lighter on and off as she stared into the flame. She turned toward Zoe as she approached.
“Why, oh, why didn’t I think to buy about a hundred cartons of cigarettes before I came out here?” Marti asked.
“You would have had to carry them through the woods,” Zoe said, as she sat down on another rock. Sophie’s penknife lay open next to her, and Zoe closed it and slipped it into her shorts pocket.
“That’s true.” Marti nodded.
“I need to talk to you about Sophie, Mart,” Zoe said. “I have to find a way to get her some medical—”
“Mother—”
“I have to, Marti. Let’s talk about this, all right? Let’s find a solution instead of simply saying we can’t do it. She’s very, very ill. I think I should go and get help for her.”
“And then what?”
“And then we’ll have to face the music, whatever that may be.” She made it sound easy; she knew it would be anything but. “I promise you, honey, I will find the best criminal lawyers in the land this time. We’ll appeal. We’ll get you off.”
“I have to tell you something.” Marti stared into the flame of her lighter again.
“What?”
Marti glanced at her, then returned her gaze to the lighter. “I killed Angelo,” she said. “I killed the warden.”
“Marti…I don’t understand.” She didn’t want to.
“I had to do it. I got him the money from the barn, and once he had it, his attitude completely changed. Up until then, we’d agreed that he would drive off and leave me there. But all of a sudden, he changed his tune. He was going to kill me, Mom.” She looked at Zoe, those long-lashed blue eyes as innocent as a child’s. “He was afraid that, if I got caught, I’d talk, and they’d come looking for him. I think he planned to kill me and bury me in the woods someplace.”
“Did he tell you this?” Zoe asked.
“No, but he got real nervous after he had the money, and I noticed he had his gun out of the glove compartment, where he usually kept it. I figured out what he was going to do. I should have realized it earlier. He would never just let me go once he had the money. So I grabbed the gun before he could. I shot him before he could shoot me.”
Zoe swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Marti’s delivery of the details was flat and cool, and that was as frightening to her as the information itself. It reminded her of the conversation she’d just had with Sophie, when the little girl had spoken about her illness with such stoicism. Was Zoe the only person in these woods capable of emotion right now? Or did Marti and Sophie know something she did not about coping with feelings that were too raw, too dangerous, to be brought into the light of day?
“So…” Zoe tried to think this through. “They would have found the warden dead and figured you did it.”
“Bingo.”
No wonder Marti had seemed so distant, so disturbed and so desperate since arriving at the shanty. She had murdered someone. Had she shot him in the chest? In the head? Zoe couldn’t bear to think about it. She thought of the ease with which Marti had dispatched the turtle.
“What happened to the money?” she asked.
“I took it,” Marti said. “I put it back in the barn, so we’ll know where it is if we want to get it before we go to South America.”
“Oh,” Zoe said. It upset her to know that Marti could have been so calculating and calm after murdering the warden that she’d thought to put the money back in its hiding place.
“So.” Marti slapped her hands down on her thighs. “Now you know. Now I do have murder on my hands. You wouldn’t be able to get me off, Mom, even if we could get a jury to believe me about Tara Ashton.”
“But it was really self-defense,” Zoe said, although she wasn’t quite sure. “You had no choice.”
“Thanks for believing that, Mom.” Marti smiled and got to her feet. “But I’m afraid you’re t
he only person in the world who would.”
Zoe watched her daughter walk around the shanty toward the outhouse. Marti was being brave, she thought. Here, she’d been carrying the weight of the murder around with her for the past few days. She was probably having nightmares, flashbacks to the incident, and she’d kept them all to herself. But Zoe knew she was imagining how she, herself, would react to having placed a bullet into the body of another human being. She was not certain Marti would react the same way.
She remembered a time, long ago, when Marti was in boarding school. Zoe had received a call from the school, telling her that Marti had stabbed another student with a Swiss Army knife. Zoe had driven up to the Santa Barbara school, refusing to believe her daughter had been capable of such an act. Sure enough, by the time she reached the school, the other student had recanted the accusations, saying she had accidentally stabbed herself while using the knife to carve a jack-o’-lantern. Zoe had left the school in relief, and she’d been able to ignore the fact that, as she was being questioned by the authorities, Marti’s demeanor had been almost scary in its calm detachment. And that Zoe’s personal checking account had plummeted by several thousand dollars right around the time of the stabbing.
She hadn’t thought of that incident in many years. She hadn’t wanted to. It had been easier to ignore it, to forget about it. But now, as she waited for Marti’s return from the outhouse, she feared that she might have two sick people on her hands: one with an illness of the body, the other with an ailment of the mind and heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Janine and Lucas drove to West Virginia late Saturday night. Joe, Paula and her parents planned to arrive the following day, but Janine was anxious to get back. The funeral had been painful and emotional, but she’d found herself growing quietly excited as she sat in the grief-filled chapel, the image of the log cabin she and Lucas had spotted from the helicopter planted firmly in her mind. It teased her while the minister spoke. She could see the deserted clearing. The fire pit. The crevice in the rock. The hint of quartz.