Courage Tree (10 page)

“What about electricity?” Max had asked her.

“Candles,” she’d replied. “Lanterns.” He would bring a lot of books to read for entertainment. He’d need to find a cabin with a fireplace for warmth.

Max had commented that she sounded almost wistful, and she supposed she had. Their life had grown too complicated.
There were the two houses to take care of, in Malibu and Montana. There was too much money to oversee. Too much of everything in their lives, she’d said, and he’d looked at her with some concern. She’d reassured him she was very happy and grateful for all they had, and turned away from the thick forest and its abandoned homes. Never would she have guessed that she would one day be the fugitive in her imagination.

She was better at living a life on the run than she ever would have guessed. She’d become a real master at hiding cars, for instance. It was remarkably easy. There was a lot of empty space in this country, and if you were willing to walk a bit after leaving your car, you were home free. Before her putative suicide, she’d rented a car at one of those “junkerforrent” places. After performing radical surgery on her hair and covering it with a wig, she’d donned large sunglasses and disguised her voice for the visit to the rental counter. She produced one of the several fake driver’s licenses she’d been able to get through a shady site on the Internet for a grand total of two thousand dollars. The clerk had still looked at her suspiciously, making her heart beat so hard she was afraid it might be visible beneath the tight, trampy-looking jersey she was wearing. But he’d handed her the keys to the car, and she was on her way.

First, she’d hidden her own car deep in the mountains east of Los Angeles, taking the plates off. With the well-paid help of the guy who’d supplied her driver’s licenses, she’d transferred the plates to the rental car, which she ditched in the Texas panhandle after picking up another one. Two more cars had brought her to West Virginia, and she’d left the last rental in a glade that seemed to be a car dumping ground. There were four or five cars there already, none of them as new and shiny as the rental car, but she figured it wouldn’t take long for it to look as though it belonged there. Then, she’d spent a couple of hours in an old, deserted barn, preparing it for Marti’s
eventual arrival in accordance with their plan. From there, she’d hiked nearly a full day through the trailless woods to her new home. She’d had a compass, a map she’d drawn herself and a sense of direction that rarely failed her. She also, unfortunately, had bursitis in her hip, and that night, lying on the air mattress in the shanty, she’d longed for a heating pad in the worst way. It had taken several days of rest for her to be able to walk again without hobbling, but now she was fine. Actually, after a few weeks of toting firewood and hiking through the forest in search of game, she felt stronger than she had in years.

Now, Zoe walked into the shanty to get a bowl for the stew, and when she returned to the clearing, the filthy yellow dog was back, sitting in the open space between the fire pit and the woods. He looked from her to the stew pot and back to her again, and she fought a desire to toss the poor creature a bit of the rabbit. Instead, she carefully lifted the pot from the fire and carried it inside the shanty, shutting the door behind her. No need to invite trouble.

She sat on the couch while she ate, trying to picture the June calendar in her mind. If she was figuring her days correctly, Marti’s escape should have taken place yesterday or the day before. In Zoe’s imagination, the escape was always successful, yet she knew the plan was fraught with difficulty. How the warden would physically get Marti out of Chowchilla was cloudy in her mind, but she trusted that greed would motivate him to operate in a clever and efficient manner. Marti had told her she’d picked the greediest, the least ethical and the most immoral of the wardens to approach with her scheme.

Zoe might no longer have a husband, and she might have lost her daughter to an inept justice system. Her beauty was slipping away from her, and her voice had left long ago. But one thing she still had was money. And she knew from a lifetime of spending, that money could buy anything—or
anyone. Marti had always been good at reading people, and she’d read the warden right. He would need enough money to split three ways with two of the other guards, he’d said, and Marti had simply tripled her offer. It was enough money to tempt the pope, Zoe had thought. She was depending on it. Everything had to go according to plan.

It was torture, though, thinking of Marti having to negotiate with prison guards, just as the thought of her being imprisoned for something she had not done was unbearable. Marti in prison! Zoe blamed herself entirely for the fix her daughter was in. She should have hired different lawyers. She’d gone with Snow, Snow and Berenski because they’d always handled everything for her and Max over the years, but criminal law was not their strong suit. They’d let Marti down. Someone said that a car “just like” Marti Garson’s Audi was parked in front of Tara Ashton’s house the day the actress was killed. Marti didn’t even
know
Tara Ashton, much less have any reason to kill her. Tara had been the hot new actress in Hollywood, with a beautifully exotic face, a stunning body, wavy jet-black hair and an undeniable ability to act, setting her apart from other newcomers who were simply gorgeous. Someone else testified that they had seen a woman who looked “just like” Marti Garson leave Ashton’s house that afternoon. They swore to this, and Zoe could not tell if they truly believed they had seen Marti, or if someone was perhaps paying them to say so. But why on earth would anyone set Marti up?

There had been no fingerprints at the scene; whoever had committed the murder had worn gloves or wiped everything clean. The prosecutor claimed that Marti had a motive: Tara Ashton had recently been given a part in a movie, a part Zoe had been up for. The part had been
written
for Zoe, for a woman Zoe’s age, and then, suddenly, the script was changed to accommodate Ashton. Oh, that had hurt. No one said flat out that Zoe was too old for the part, but who could deny it,
when the front page of the tabloids showed a split image of a time-ravaged Zoe next to the fresh, smiling Ashton?

So, the prosecutor built a strong case against Marti, citing her closeness to Zoe and her desire to protect her mother. The argument was, unfortunately, erroneous. She and Marti were not close in the least, and she doubted that Marti had even known the movie role had been handed to Ashton. But Zoe wasn’t about to deny that bond with her daughter. She relished the idea of Marti caring that much about her; it was a treasured fantasy. And although she was naturally horrified by the murder, she couldn’t help but be touched by the notion of Marti coming to her defense. Yet she knew the explanation for Ashton’s murder lay somewhere other than in Marti’s love for her mother. Besides, someone had bludgeoned Tara Ashton to death with a hammer, for heaven’s sake! Marti was not capable of that sort of violence. But no one seemed interested in looking for another suspect, and that’s where Marti’s lawyers had gone astray, in Zoe’s opinion. They should have dug deeper. Surely Tara Ashton had enemies with more reason to kill her than Marti Garson did.

Marti’s face, at the moment the jury’s verdict was read, would haunt Zoe for the rest of her life. Marti was twenty-eight, but all Zoe could see in her daughter’s huge blue eyes was the baby she’d longed for but didn’t know how to mother, the little girl she’d left in the care of nannies as she pursued her career, the teenager she’d shipped off to boarding school. No wonder Marti had eschewed the Hollywood careers that had so consumed her parents in favor of a quieter life behind a computer screen as a programmer.

The jury saw Marti’s quiet, reserved demeanor as a facade that hid anger and malice and a fierce, protective love for her mother. A love that only Zoe and Marti knew had never existed.

Zoe shifted her thoughts from the miserable trial back to Marti’s escape. Somehow, the warden would have gotten
Marti out of Chowchilla, without alarms going off or anyone noticing for hours, at least. And then, because he was anxious to collect the rest of his payment, he would have driven with Marti as fast as he could from California to West Virginia, taking whatever precautions were necessary to avoid being caught. Surely he had changed cars once or twice on the road. He had to be at least as savvy as Zoe had been in this fugitive business.

In a few days, then, Marti would be here with her. Finally, they would be mother and daughter. She could make up to Marti for all the years of neglect, for all the times she had not known how to be a mother and so had chosen not to mother her at all.

They would hide out here for a year or so, until the search for Marti had lost its steam. Then they would somehow get to South America—or at least, she would make sure that Marti got there—where she could undergo plastic surgery and start a new life. Zoe didn’t care what happened to
her
at that point. She just needed to get Marti to safety.

She had everything ready: the compass, map and money Marti would need were hidden in the barn; the trail from the barn to the shanty was marked with scraps of blue cloth. What she wouldn’t give for one phone call with her daughter, though, just to know where Marti was now, how soon she could expect to see her! But she would have to settle for knowing that Marti was on her way, and that they would be together any day now. Any day now, she could hold her daughter in her arms.

J
anine felt a need to see the camp in daylight, and so, early Monday morning, she and Joe drove once again into West Virginia. She was behind the wheel this time, and their plan was to drive directly up to the camp, then return slowly, stopping to talk with the waitresses, gas station attendants and store clerks they had been unable to meet with the night before. They would check any alternative routes Alison might have taken, as well. That was, if there was no report of Sophie being found by then. Their cell phones were turned on and ready for that message. Over and over again, Janine heard the words in her head:
“We’ve found her! She’s fine!”

But neither of their phones rang on the drive to the camp. Joe called the police himself once and learned that there were still no reports of any accidents involving a blue Honda and no sign of Alison’s car anywhere along the route.

“How hard do you think they’re looking?” Janine asked him, when he hung up the phone. They were only a mile or two from the camp at that point. “Alison has one of the most common cars on the road. Do you think they’re stopping
every blue Honda they see? Peeking inside any blue Honda parked in a parking lot?”

“You’re right,” Joe said, and he hit the redial button on his phone. As soon as he had the sergeant on the line again, he started yelling. “
You
guys should be out here checking the restaurants and the gas stations,” he shouted into the phone. “It shouldn’t be up to the parents to have to take this on.”

Janine cringed at the anger in his voice.

“What the hell are we paying taxes for?” Joe continued. “These are
little girls
who are missing. You guys should be moving faster on this.” He was quiet for a moment, listening, and Janine could hear the sergeant’s deep, calm voice on the phone, although she couldn’t make out what he was saying. The cop was handling Joe’s temper better than she could, she thought. She knew much of the anger Sergeant Loomis was receiving was truly meant for her.

“Yeah, well, it’s not enough,” Joe muttered into the phone, his voice quieter now. He looked at his watch. “Fine. All right. We’ll be there.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

She saw his hand tremble as he rested the phone back on the console.

“They want us and Holly’s parents at the police station at three o’clock for a press conference,” he said. “They’ll have TV cameras there. We’re supposed to make some sort of plea for—”

“They think they’ve been kidnapped, then?”

“Not necessarily. It’s just a plea for people to keep an eye out for them.”

Janine pulled into the large, gravel parking lot of the camp and turned off the ignition. “Do you think it’s weird that Holly’s parents aren’t out here looking, too?” she asked.

“They have other kids to take care of,” Joe said, opening his car door. “And everybody has different ways of coping.”

She felt guilty for thinking of Rebecca and Steve Kraft with suspicion. She’d called Rebecca very early that morning to
see if she and Steve wanted to drive up to the camp with them, and she had the feeling she’d awakened her. Rebecca had been silent for a moment, as if the thought of making that drive had never crossed her mind.

“No,” she’d said. “We’ll just let the police do their job and stay here by the phone. I appreciate your effort, though. Please call us right away if you learn anything.”

As soon as she stepped out of the car, Janine could hear the boisterous sounds of several hundred happy Girl Scouts. The lot was close to the lake, and the girls laughed and shrieked as they played in the water. Sophie would not have been one of those girls, Janine thought. She wouldn’t have been able to swim in the lake because of her catheter. If Janine had been there to clean the tube that protruded from her belly, wrap it in gauze and tape it to her body again, she might have allowed it, but she’d told Sophie not to get it wet at all over the weekend. That and sticking to her diet were Sophie’s end of the deal.

As she listened to the mirthful noise from the girls in the lake, Janine wondered if Sophie was capable of making such joyful sounds. Could she shriek that way, with such complete abandon? Janine had never heard her do so, and the thought weighed heavily on her mind. She wanted to know.

They met briefly with the camp director and the counselors in charge of Sophie’s cabin, the same people they had met with the night before, along with the sheriff. They were patient and sympathetic with Joe and Janine, and they exhibited real concern over the missing Scouts, but they had not been able to remember any new facts that might help to find them.

“Sophie’s a little doll,” one of the counselors said, and the other nodded in agreement.

“She’s much more mature than the other kids, even though she’s so much tinier than they are,” the second counselor added. “She knows when it’s time to play and when it’s time to work, and she does both with equal zeal.”

Janine liked that the counselors spoke about Sophie in the present tense, but the words themselves made her cry. She leaned against the wall of the director’s cedar-smelling office, and Joe put his arm around her. The intimacy in his touch was unfamiliar after three long years, but she felt the sincerity in the gesture and allowed herself to take comfort from it.

“The last three years of her life have been all work,” she said. “I was afraid she wouldn’t know how to play anymore.”

“Oh, she does,” the first counselor assured her.

“Did she shriek at all?” Janine asked.

They looked at her in confusion.

“I mean, the way the girls are doing out in the lake,” she explained. “You know, shrieking and yelling and giggling.”

“I don’t know about shrieking,” the second counselor said, “but she definitely had a great time.”

“She was amazing about not being able to go in the water,” the director said. “She sat on the pier and played ball with the other girls from there. She never complained.”

“She’s not a complainer,” Joe said.

“When I heard she got dialysis, I expected her to have one of those, you know, big veins in her arm,” the first counselor said.

“A fistula,” Janine said.

“Right. That’s what my aunt has. But Sophie told me all about how she gets hooked up to that machine at night through the tube in her stomach. She knew all the terms and everything.”

Janine nodded. “We’ve kept her informed every step of the way.”

“You know, Mrs. Donohue—” the second counselor looked Janine squarely in the eye “—I don’t know where Sophie is, but I know she’s safe. I feel that really strongly.”

Janine felt mesmerized by the young counselor’s gaze.

“She’s sort of psychic.” The first counselor nodded toward her co-worker with a laugh. “She does tarot cards and all, and
I used to think she was full of it, but I think she’s right about Sophie. They just got lost going back or something.”

“Thank you,” Janine said. “I hope you’re right.”

After leaving the director’s office, Janine insisted they walk around the camp before returning to the car. The place was so lively with gleeful girls that it was hard to imagine anything ominous resulting from a stay there. Although she knew she was being ridiculous, she found herself searching the face of every little girl they passed, as though she might find Sophie hidden just beneath that child’s features. It was both eerie and wonderful to be here, where Sophie had played and laughed most recently, and Janine had an almost visceral sense of her daughter’s presence.

“Can you feel her here?” she asked Joe, a bit shyly, since she knew the question would sound absurd to him. “I mean, can you feel that she was here just a day ago? Like there’s still a little bit of Sophie’s spirit in the air?”

He looked at her oddly. “No, not really,” he said.

“That counselor is right about Sophie being safe,” Janine said.

“I hope so.” Joe pointed toward the path that would take them back to the parking lot.

“No, I mean I
know
she’s right.” The feeling was so strong, she was smiling. “She’s alive, Joe. I can sense it.”

“It’s best to think positively, I guess,” Joe said, and she knew he didn’t understand her feeling at all.

Lucas would have. Lucas would have known exactly what she meant.

Back in the car, they studied the map, trying to locate other routes Alison might have taken back to Vienna. They developed a system: once on an alternate route, they peered into the woods as far as their vision allowed, and they stopped at every shop or eatery they could find. Then they backtracked
and followed the same routine on a different road. Two people—one a waitress, the other a customer who’d overheard their query at a produce stand—told them they’d heard about the missing girls on the radio that morning. That was encouraging. At least the word was getting out. But the going was slow and otherwise disheartening.

This would be easier from the air, Janine thought, as they walked back to the car from an unproductive stop at a small restaurant. She couldn’t question people from a helicopter, but she could cover more territory in more time, and she would be able to see more easily off the beaten track.

They were driving down a narrow road, a highly unlikely route for Alison to have taken, when they came to a fork. Janine stopped the car, not even bothering to pull onto the shoulder, since no one else seemed interested in driving on this road.

“Let’s look at the map,” she said. “I don’t know which way to go.”

Joe leaned over and turned off the ignition, but he made no move to look at the map lying on his thighs. Instead he closed his eyes and rested his head against the headrest.

“God,” he said, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Who the hell knows which way she went? I feel like we’re getting farther away from finding them with every damn turn we make.”

She reached out to lightly touch his arm. “We can’t give up,” she said, although she certainly empathized with his frustration. “We can’t just sit home, twiddling our thumbs.”
Nothing could be worse than this,
she thought.
Nothing.
To know that something terrible must have befallen her child, yet have no idea how to help her, or even find her. Or which road to take. A bit of Joe’s helpless panic seeped into her, but she shook free of it. If she gave in to it, she would lose her ability to function. To think clearly. And that would get them nowhere.

“You know what I was thinking?” she said.

He rolled his head on the headrest until he was looking at her. “What?”

“That this would be a lot easier in a helicopter. We wouldn’t be able to talk to people, but we could at least visualize all the roads. It would take us a much shorter time to check out the roads from above.”

He was quiet for a moment, his gaze still on her. “Are you talking about flying it yourself?” he asked finally.

“Yes.”

“When’s the last time you flew?”

“When I left Omega-Flight. Three years ago.” She didn’t say
When Sophie got sick,
or,
When you had an affair.
“I bet I could borrow one of their helicopters.”

“If you flew, I couldn’t be with you,” Joe said quietly.

How could she have forgotten his terror of flying?

“Still, Joe?” she asked gently.

“Still and forever,” he said. “I’m not even willing to fight it anymore. I had to go to California on business last year and I took the train. Three days there, and three days back.”

“I’m sorry.” It hurt to see so much fear in such a tough guy. For as long as she’d known him, Joe could barely watch a plane sail across the sky, much less fly in one. The plane crash that had taken his father’s life had left scars that would never go away.

“Paula had to go to the conference, too,” he said, “and she took the train with me, so it wasn’t that terrible.”

“That was very nice of her.” She was not surprised. She thought that Paula would do just about anything for Joe. “Can I ask you something?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Are you and Paula…?”

“Just friends.” He smiled. “I thought you knew that.”

She had seen Paula and Joe together numerous times these past three years, mostly at Sophie’s bedside or at Joe’s house when she went to pick Sophie up there after a visit. She’d seen
the way Paula looked at Joe, with a gaze that held admiration and yearning. Why was that look so easy for one woman to read in another, yet men could be so blind to it?

“But you drove down to Florida with her after her mother died,” she said.

“She really needed a friend right then.”

“But…” she said, hesitantly, then decided to blurt it out. “I always thought she was the woman you had the affair with.”

He looked truly surprised. “You’re kidding. I had no idea that’s what you thought,” he said. He shook his head with a half smile. “No, it wasn’t Paula. It was someone who worked for us temporarily, and it wasn’t an affair, really. I…slept with her once.” He looked uncomfortable saying those words to her. “I was screwed up, Janine. I wish it had never happened.”

“And all this time I thought it was Paula,” she said.