Forty-nine
Lori opened her eyes to the clean white ceiling of
her own bedroom. A chill seeped through a window cracked open to the
morning air. She looked down and could see the strap of a clean white
negligee on her shoulder. A winter quilt was pulled to her chin.
She turned her face away from the glare of the sun
and tried to identify the sounds of engines growling in the distance.
Memories flooded back into place.
She bolted upright in bed and screamed.
Blood, pain, madness.
Carol rushed into the room, embraced her, and soothed
her with her hands caressing the side of her face. "Hon, lay back.
Everything's okay. It's over. You've been sleeping for hours and hours."
Lori lay back and discovered her body to be a mass of
scraps, contusions and abrasions. She lay still to minimize the pain and
stared at Carol, wide-eyed with confusion and disbelief. How could she
have possibly survived?
She jerked upright again. "My children!"
Amy stuck her head in the door. "Is she all right?"
"She's fine," Carol said. "Just get everyone in here
before she goes off the deep end."
They all poured into the bedroom, Amy and Karen,
Wendy and Leslie. Karen and Gloria Radcliff brought up the rear. And
even Ronnie Bates. They lined up along the inner wall, staring at her
with varying degrees of fear and confusion. Only Carol and Amy and Karen
exchanged knowing, concerned glances, fully aware of everything that was
happening.
What, Lori wondered, did they have to fear to look so
terribly unsettled and nervous? It came to her a moment later. Her
sanity, of course. They feared the hysteria nudging at what remained of
her self-control. Only the bright morning sun and the sight of her
children held it at bay.
Lori focused on Wendy and Leslie. "I suppose you two
skipped another day of school."
Wendy burst into tears. Leslie glanced up at his
older sister and decided to do the same. It was a Saturday, of course.
Given a choice in the matter, she would have preferred the days of the
week to go from Friday directly to Monday and skip the weekends
altogether.
She looked suddenly to Carol. "What happened to
Trent? He was at the house. He wouldn't have gone far."
"Someone hit him on the head," Carol said. "They
found him unconscious by his car this morning. He's at the hospital, but
it's not serious."
Lori glanced over at Karen. "You knew it was Ben."
Karen bobbed her head. "I met Trent in Clayton. He
found out about missing people there. It stopped when Jessica and Nathan
moved to Sorrel, and started again when Laura disappeared, the same time
Nathan got killed and Ben left me. Everything fit like a puzzle. I would
never have suspected. I would never have thought it possible. I didn't
think anybody else would believe me, either. I had to try to stop him
myself. It was the only way."
Carol leaned close. "We told the children about your
accident," she said, measuring her words with care.
Lori gazed at her without comprehension. "My
accident?"
"About getting knocked down by the truck in the
parking lot at the diner," Carol said loud enough for all to hear.
“That’s how you got all black and blue.”
Lori looked between the three women in disbelief.
Only Amy risked a conspiratorial wink and a tentative smile. Lori then
understood their game plan and breathed a sigh of relief. They had the
situation well under control. If the three women had concocted a story to
explain her cuts, bruises and abrasions, the children knew nothing of what
had really happened.
And Gloria? Lori focused on the girl. Karen stepped
protectively closer and put an arm around her shoulder. "Ben gave Gloria
permission to visit her friends for a week,” Karen said, only a hint of
suppressed panic in her tone of voice. “He knows she hasn't been happy,
and we've patched over our differences, Gloria and I."
Lori wondered how Karen had found
and fetched her daughter, but
she wasn’t about to underestimate Karen's resourcefulness. Karen reached for
Ronnie as well. Her tone of voice softened. "Carl Adler didn't open his
store this morning. We can't imagine where he may have gone. Ronnie has
agreed to stay with Gloria and me for as long as necessary. We’ve all had
problems with our anger. We won’t be repeating old mistakes twice."
In the silence that followed, Lori heard the rumbling
of machinery again. "They're filling in the foundation of the old
farmhouse this morning," Carol said, speaking as she would have spoken to
a child. "Do you remember me telling you that Carl Adler had made
arrangements to do that?"
Lori remembered.
"They're gone," Carol said emphatically. "We're
safe. It's over now."
Lori heart began to pound. Panic threatened to
explode, and the women pressed in close, posed on the precipice of panic
of their own. Carol sat on the edge of the bed and embraced her until the
danger passed. "They're gone," whispered harshly. "It's over."
Lori shook her head frantically. They'd get caught.
Sheriff Danielson would figure out what had actually happened and arrest
all of them and put them in jail and the children in foster homes.
"We took care of everything," Karen said loudly.
"We've been up all night, cleaning and straightening everything up spic
and span."
"Honest injun," Amy said, her expression fluttering
between terror and her best attempt at a reassuring smile. She threw her
arms up awkwardly. "Clean as a whistle!"
Lori forced herself to be calm and think things
through. She was their weak link now, not Amy. If just one of them
cracked, their card house of lies would come crashing about their heads.
For the sake of the children, she had to think her way through the
quagmire with extreme care.
She went back through her jumbled memory to put the
pieces of logic together. Karen had killed Benjamin Radcliff and had
saved her life. Ben had shot Carl Adler, and she was certain Carl was
dead as well.
"Where are they?" she said, suspecting, but wanting
confirmation.
Carol jerked her head to one side, a gesture that
meant the answer to her question lay with the rumbling of the bulldozers.
Even as they spoke, the dead were being buried.
"Spic and span," Carol said grimly. "Clean as a
whistle."
It could never work, but Wendy and Gloria were
watching with growing anxiety, suspecting something seriously amiss in the
behavior of the adults in their lives. Only Leslie and Ronnie would
accept the story that was being told to them at face value.
"We explained to the girls how important it is that
things run smoothly over the next few days," Karen said firmly, sensing
her train of thought. "I'm going to need all the help I can get to regain
custody of Gloria and have Ronnie put in my care. With the help of my
friends, I think we can pull it off. We have to get Gloria transferred to
local schools. And with Benjamin missing..." She swallowed hard, but
continued without missing a beat. "…with Benjamin missing, as he is, I
don't anticipate a problem."
Lori studied each of the women in turn. Her gaze
settled upon Karen, a murderess, but only in self-defense. "I'm fine,"
Karen said in a broken voice. "Honest. I even returned Leslie's baseball
bat to him good as new."
"And a new ball to go with it!" the boy said.
They all waited for Lori's reaction.
"I don't believe it," she said to the silence. "This
is all just too incredible."
Wendy blinked back tears. "Please, Mom? Don't let
them take Gloria away from us again. They'll put Ronnie in a group home
in Clayton with strangers, and he'll never be happy there."
"I want to take a shower," Lori announced.
"Everyone, please leave me alone for a few minutes."
They all filed from the bedroom. When she was alone,
Lori rose painfully to her feet and inched her way into the adjoining
bathroom. She shed her silk negligee, something Carol had put on her
during the night, stained now with dried blood, and stood nude before the
full-length mirror.
The worst of her cuts and abrasions had been cleaned
and bandaged. It had been Karen, she was willing to bet, who had put a
stitch in the incision on her lower abdomen Ben had inflicted, the one that would have taken
her life. But she had survived her last nightmare, and the glass eye was
gone forever.
"That video tape had damned well better be burned!"
she cried out.
"Got my word on that, Hon!" Carol called back. "I
snipped it into little pieces and burned it myself, and the camcorder got
accidentally ran over by the new station wagon Greg bought me!"
"And the drawings?"
"What drawings? There are no drawings! Never were!"
Lori showered and dressed and left the bedroom to
smile wanly at the crowd awaiting her in the living room. "Okay, so what
do we have going for the rest of the day?"
"Can I go play?" Leslie wanted to know.
Leslie was turned loose to go and play. Amy returned
home to her husband and babies. Karen left with Gloria and Ronnie in tow,
behaving more openly cheerful and relaxed than Lori had ever seen her.
"Is everything on a level keel?" Carol asked before
leaving. "I've got to get back to the diner before Greg gets suspicious."
Lori stood in the center of her living room with
Wendy at her side and gave a helpless shrug of helplessness. "Sure. Why
not?"
"Are you going to be okay?"
She had to laugh at that one. "No, I don't think
so. How the hell would I know?"
"I won't be far away if you need help. None of us
will."
Lori felt like bawling, but resisted the temptation.
"All of my friends are nearby. All the help I’ll ever need."
"Damn right,” Carol murmured on the way out.
Wendy dipped her head in misery.
"And you?" Lori said gently. "Are you going to be
okay?"
Wendy lifted her dark brown eyes to her mother.
"Calico had her kittens in my bed last night. It was really gross, Mom."
"So were you when you were born."
Wendy let a smile slip loose. "Wanna see? Can we
keep them?"
"Yes, I wanna see. No, I don't think we can keep
them. We'll keep Calico, and maybe a tom kitten we can get fixed before
it starts peeing on walls, but the rest need homes of their own when
they're weaned."
Wendy radiated happiness by slow, intensifying
degrees. "Then everything's okay?"
Lori decided that it was. "As far as I can see,
everything is just fine, and it’s going to get better every day that goes
by.”
Wendy sighed deeply and relaxed, and that more than
anything convinced Lori that she had spoken the truth.
She coped with the balance of the day hour by hour.
She fell asleep on the couch at dusk and awoke near dawn of a Sunday
morning in joy and amazement. The recurring nightmare was gone for good.
She could literally feel its absence, and in its place her old conviction
of a world generally at peace with itself had returned.
The following week, Karen transferred Gloria to the
same junior high Wendy attended, and Lori had three rather than two to
escort to the bus stop each morning. During the same week, Karen placed
Ronnie at a sheltered workshop in Clayton. She drove the boy to work each
morning with her new driver's license and station wagon paid for with
Ben's incipient life insurance payout, adjusting her hours at the mall to pick him up on the way home
in the afternoon.
Karen had consulted an attorney
to confirm Ben's oversight of the beneficiary of his life insurance
policy. It had remained Karen for the past decade. And about gaining legal
custody of Ronnie. "With Benjamin missing," she announced at one of
their evening meetings, "I have no problem with Gloria. As for Ronnie, I
don't have to lie to retain custody. A DNA test will show that Gloria and
Ronnie have the same father. We're the only family he has now, Gloria and
I, so we get custody."
Lori put off visiting Trent at the hospital. She
spent unending hours trying to find a way she could explain her behavior
without risking an unofficial investigation that would bring unwelcomed
secrets to light. Carol informed her toward the end of the week that
Trent had been released from the hospital and was home on medical leave.
"He suspects something terrible happened in Sorrel that night," Carol
said. "People about town heard gunshots and screams, but the deputies saw
nothing when they drove through an hour or two later. Ironic, isn't it?
Men are such useless twits. But he calls every afternoon at the diner to
ask how you're doing. He’s not sure if you want to see him. Personally,
I think you should, that and a whole lot more.”
Lori didn’t know if she could. "I can't look him in
the face and lie about everything that has happened."
Carol sighed in commiseration. "It's over for us,
but it’ll never be over for that poor man. Don’t you dare tell him she’s
gone. You wouldn’t, would you?"
She shook her head emphatically. “Never. I
promise.”
Sheriff Danielson tapped at Lori's front door the day
of the season's first snowfall. He paced the kitchen nervously, sipping
black coffee. "Dead ends," he said. "Everywhere I turn, dead ends.
Lori, you're holding back on me, you and Karen and Carol. I can see it in
your eyes."
Lori remained stubbornly silent. "Whenever in
doubt," Carol had insisted, instructing the group in the fine art of guile
and deception, "stare your opponent down, smile, and keep your mouth
shut."
"Trent uncovered interesting information that may
help resolve some mysteries from before my time. Sheriff Gaines'
investigation of Nathan Bates' death contained a note or two of Benjamin
Radcliff's involvement with Jessica Bates. That was ages ago, nothing you
need to know about, but now that he's so mysteriously dropped out of
sight, it's hard to dismiss the possibility that Benjamin may have been
involved in some way with the deaths of both Jessica Bates and Virginia
Cornell. I had no idea there had been two deaths of that nature in the
county. The circumstances are certainly suspicious."
"Do you still think Karen had something to do with
Virginia's death?" Lori asked cautiously.
He grinned. "Not since she passed her lie detector
test."
Lori's mouth dropped open.
"It was her idea. She offered to pay for the
polygraph examination, but I think I can get the county to reimburse her.
She was awfully damned picky about what questions we could ask her, but
she cleared herself of any direct involvement with either of those
deaths."
Lori pursed her lips and wondered how long it would
take him to broach the mystery of Carl Adler's disappearance.
"How Carl Adler's disappearance ties in with all of
this, I'll be damned if I know," he said cooperatively a moment later.
"Maggie said that Carl Adler
and Nathan Bates were cousins," Lori reminded the man.
Danielson gave a solemn nod. "And
I've been informed of a tie between the Bates and the Cornells, so it may very well be
that Mr. Adler has a few unpleasant family secrets he would prefer not to part
with. His business was going broke, you know, so it's not surprising that
he would make a clean break with our little community in the midst of all
this trouble. One of these days,
I think Sorrel itself is going to fold and vanish into these godforsaken
corn fields. Not that anyone will give a rat’s ass."
He sipped coffee and threw her an unhappy glance.
"And we have Maggie's death still be resolved. We've had to list it as a
homicide. We found two major injuries to the skull. We can account for
only one."
Lori had no concrete evidence that Benjamin Radcliff
had been the prowler in Trent's apartment the night of Maggie's death, but
she suspected that Ben had panicked when he learned that some of his
photographs had gotten away from him. Where else to search but in the
studio of the photographer whose girlfriends he had murdered? Maybe he
had thought that Trent had found a way to turn the tables and reverse his
campaign of blackmail. He had probably seen Maggie at a window and had
eliminated the possibility of being identified in the manner he knew best.
"Has Trent been by to visit?" Danielson asked.
A knot formed in her throat. She shook her head and
cursed the tears that came to her eyes.
"I had hopes for you two. He discovered some old
disappearances in Clayton just before Laura's arrival in Jumer. He thinks
they confirm her death, and it's shaken him badly. If he doesn't snap out
of it, I'm going to loose me a good deputy."
Sheriff Danielson set his coffee cup aside. "Would
you believe I was naďve enough twenty years ago to have taken this job for
the excitement? Most nights, it's so quiet that I can sit by a window at
the office and hear the corn grow. Or the snow fall, depending on the
season."
He quietly headed for the front door. Lori followed,
and he gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and a smile before hunching
his shoulders against the cold and hurrying to his car.
Two weeks passed before she heard from Trent
Scarelli. The phone rang one night long after Wendy and Leslie had gone
to bed. Lori set two or three purring kittens and a romance novel aside
and reached for the phone at the end of the couch.
"Pay me a visit," Trent Scarelli's low voice murmured
in her ear. "Something came in the mail today. You have to see for
yourself. Now. Please? Will you come?"
Tears covered her cheeks. She clutched the phone and
held back her sobs of relief. “I’m coming,” she said. “I’ll be right
over.”
