Shattered (18 page)

You're being ridiculous,
she scolded herself.

"Rival horse farm owners?" Detective Watson continued inexorably, his eyes keen on her face. "A suitor you've recently broken up with? Anyone less than reputable you owe money to?"

Consciously but, she hoped, unobtrusively, she relaxed her clenched hands.

"Not that I know of. A definite 'no' to the suitor. And the money lender. And I don't see any reason why any of the farms around here would want to try to burn us out. We don't even own any racehorses anymore, and they're probably well aware that Grayson Springs will be put on the market eventually."

"Hmm."
The sound Detective Watson made was noncommittal. Lisa wasn't sure whether he actually suspected her of something or not.

"Mrs. Baker said the old drunk lives up the road was on a bender yesterday." Ms. McCoy looked up from her notebook, where, pen in hand, she seemed to be adding up some scribbled figures. "She said he doesn't like you all."

"He couldn't have done it. He was in jail last night. Anyway, he'd be more likely to shoot our house up than burn it."

Lisa suddenly remembered the kids Scott had said he'd caught partying in his father's house last night. Could they maybe have done something like this out of pure teenage idiocy? But setting a house on fire went far beyond idiocy, and anyway, she didn't intend to make any accusations against anybody without some kind of compelling evidence. Let Detective Watson conduct his own investigation.

"I've got a check here to cover your immediate living expenses." Ms. McCoy pulled a rectangle of pale blue paper out of a pocket in the notebook, closed the pad, then handed the paper over. Lisa saw at a glance that it was a check for two thousand five hundred dollars. Fortunately, they were very old and valued clients of the insurance agency. "Temporary housing, food, any clothing or personal items that need to be replaced. Just keep your receipts. If you need more, you just call me. My number's right here on my card." She handed over her business card, which Lisa accepted with thanks. "If you want to call me tomorrow, I can give you a list of contractors we routinely work with. Or you can use anyone you prefer, of course."

"Where are you staying?" Detective Watson asked as, after a farewell handshake, Ms. McCoy started walking away. "In case I need to reach you."

"I'm staying at the hospital with my mother for the time being." Robin was going to be sharing the manager's house with Andy when the two of them weren't taking shifts at the hospital, and Lisa guessed she'd better be thinking about coming up with her own temporary digs. So far, she hadn't had time. "Beyond that, I've made no plans. You can always reach me on my cell phone."

A uniformed deputy called to Detective Watson from the far side of the house, and with a murmured "Excuse me," he left her. Her business done, Lisa headed for the Jaguar, which the dealership had dropped off at the hospital earlier, while assuring her amid copious apologies that the vehicle was in tip-top shape now that the loose cap that had led to the transmission fluid inadvertently leaking out had been tightened and the fluid replaced. To say that she no longer had complete confidence in her wheels was an understatement, but the car had brought her to Grayson Springs and would, she hoped, convey her back to the hospital without mishap.

But first she meant to make a quick side trip.

A little before five she'd called Rinko. Her stated purpose was to check on how the wayward lambs, as she now thought of them, were holding up in Siberia. He'd been upbeat and openly enthusiastic about the help, which she attributed largely to her happy notion of asking Jantzen to escort the kids down to the basement and provide Rinko with what help she could to get the new junior pretrial diversion program going. Then, as casually as possible, she'd asked Rinko to call up the Garcia file on the computer and give her the address of the house from which the family had disappeared.

"You planning to go check it out or something?" Rinko wasn't stupid.

Lisa had sighed. So much for keeping things on the down-low.

"Maybe. I have to meet an insurance adjuster at Grayson Springs tonight at seven, so I thought I might just drive by the house while I'm out. Unless I'm way confused about where it is, it's on the way, and . . . and . . . well, I just thought I'd go look it over. It's an interesting case."

She ended on a faintly defensive note.

"
Interesting
's the word for it, all right." Lisa could hear Rinko tapping away at the computer keys as he spoke. "Hey, no worries, though: If I looked that much like some chick who'd disappeared thirty years ago, I'd want to eyeball the house she vanished from, too." Then he paused and seemed to consider it, although Lisa could still hear the tapping of keys. "Actually, if I looked that much like some chick, I'd have bigger problems than the fact that she'd disappeared. Like tits, to start with."

Chortling at what he clearly considered his own sparkling wit, he then gave her the information she'd asked for. Thanking him, she disconnected.

The house she sought was just inside the county line. Lisa had had a vague idea of where it was located from her quick perusal of the file before she'd gone down to supper, and it turned out she'd been right. Just as she'd thought, it was--sort of, kind of--on the way back into the city from Grayson Springs. But as she drove west along the narrow ribbon of rural blacktop that was home to a succession of trailers and small ranch-style houses set well back from the road on five- or ten-acre lots, the route started to seem eerily familiar.

What is this, deja vu?

Glancing up at the canopy of ragged branches overhanging the road, looking sideways at the weed-choked ditches on either side, taking in the sagging wire fences and the scraggly yards and the unmistakable lack of prosperity of the area, she thought,
I've been here before,
with utter conviction.

Teetering on the verge of freaking out, she suddenly realized that the road seemed familiar because she--Lisa Grant, not the shade of Angela Garcia as she'd found herself half fearing--had indeed been this way before, and more than once. The road led to Carmody Landing, an old, under-the-radar tavern that wasn't too particular about carding its patrons. For that reason it was a favorite with the underage drinkers in the area, and she'd driven there with carloads of her friends several times when she'd been in high school.

Making the connection was such a relief that she blew out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

Idiot,
she scolded herself.

Still, when she reached the small brick house, all she meant to do was just drive past and take a quick, anonymous look. If there hadn't been a For Sale sign stuck out in the yard, she probably would have kept going just as she had intended. But seeing that the place looked empty, she couldn't resist: She turned the Jag around and went back, pulling slowly off the road and bumping up the long gravel drive that led to the house. Dingy-looking red brick, a low black roof with a couple of shingles missing, a tiny front porch huddled under a peaked overhang: Nothing seemed to have changed appreciably from the photograph.

There was an attached two-car garage, she saw, as she stopped opposite the walk that led to the concrete steps where the Garcias had sat for the picture in the file. The garage door, which was white and needed painting, was closed. The front door was also white and closed, with a flimsy plastic bag apparently left by some kind of door-to-door salesman hanging from the knob. A big picture window with drapes drawn marked the location of the living room, she was sure. There were two other windows, smaller, double-hung ones, which she guessed belonged to a bedroom or bedrooms.

There was no sign of life anywhere around the place. Turning off the ignition, Lisa got out of the car. The thick heat actually felt good after the air-conditioning. Long shadows from the strip of woods crowding close beside the driveway and running the length of the narrow, looked-to-be-five-acre property lay across the house and yard. Leafy foliage formed a dense wall at least fifty feet high, blocking all view of the setting sun, though orange and purple streamers streaked across the darkening sky. The height and size of the trees told her that they had almost certainly been there when the Garcias had lived in the house. Another similarly sized strip of woods on the far side of the house isolated the place from its neighbors, which made it reasonable that no one living nearby had heard or seen a thing the night the Garcias had disappeared.

Though a breeze had been blowing when she'd left Grayson Springs, now the air had gone perfectly still. Not so much as a blade of grass stirred as she headed down the walk toward the front door. Except for a high-pitched cicada chorus, there was no sound other than her own soft footfalls on the concrete pavers. Nothing passed by on the road. Not even a bird soared overhead. The sense of being cut off from the rest of the world was strong, and increasingly oppressive. As she neared the front steps, Lisa gave in to a sudden urge to cast a quick glance over her shoulder toward the woods behind her. A tingle along her spine, a prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck, made her feel as though someone was there among the trees, watching her every move.

Overimaginative.
She could almost hear Barty saying it.

Nothing but a stockade of brown trunks standing tall amid the undergrowth met her searching gaze. No one was there.
Of course
no one was there.

You're being an idiot.

But still the feeling of being watched was strong.

Why she didn't just turn around, get back in her car and leave, she couldn't have said. Certainly she did not expect to find anything that would tell her what had happened to the Garcias. Too many years had passed, and anyway, any number of families had probably lived in the house since, most of them in happy ignorance of the Garcias' existence. It was extremely unlikely that any trace of the missing family would remain. But still, she couldn't help herself. She felt almost irresistibly drawn to the house.

It bothered her that her heart was thumping and her pulse was racing as she reached the steps and stopped.

Get real. It's an empty house, that's all.

But that didn't keep her from studying the steps, from picturing the family perched on them as they had been in the photo: Angela here, her husband--what was his name again?--beside her, Tony here, little Marisa here. And the dog, Lucy.

Lisa froze as the dog's name popped into her mind.

How do I know that?
Her mouth went dry even as she mentally grabbed for the most reasonable explanation with both hands.
Of course I read it in the file.

And never mind that she didn't actually remember doing so.

The small, thirsty-looking bushes beside the steps were of recent vintage. She barely glanced at them as she went up the steps and, yes, tried the doorknob. It was locked.

Facing the fact that she wasn't going to be able to get inside the house without breaking and entering, which she wasn't prepared to do, flooded her with relief.

I can't get in.
She tried to pacify the tiny voice in her head that seemed to be urging her to go inside.

Going back down the steps, she glanced almost longingly toward the Jag. It waited, solid and reassuring, its hunter-green paint gleaming faintly in the fading light. But instead of heading toward it, she went the other way, around the side of the house, toward the back. The kitchen would be in the back. There would be a back door.

I can try to get in there.

She could argue with herself all she wanted, she realized. Some part of her really, really wanted to go inside that house. Walking around the far corner so that she lost sight of the Jag, she found herself enveloped by the house's shadow, and shivered.

Call the Realtor, make an appointment, and come back another time with another human being.

That was the rational solution, and she absolutely intended to take her own advice. But first she just wanted to finish walking around the house, to get a sense of it without anyone else's presence interfering with her impressions. It was as if she could feel an invisible force drawing her on, like the pull of a magnet. Uneasy but persevering, she glanced at the double-hung windows. Two, one on each side, with a smaller window perfectly spaced in between: two bedrooms and a bathroom, probably. Judging from the size of the house and its age, she was guessing that it was the standard-for-the-era three bedrooms and one bath. The windows had pull-down shades that blocked her from seeing inside.

The backyard, she saw as she reached it, ended in a cornfield. No fence, just an acre or so of dusty crabgrass fading into row upon row of bright green cornstalks that were already stretching higher than her head. With the woods on either side, the result was that the backyard felt closed in. Oppressive, even. As if it harbored secrets.

The thought gave her the willies.

Okay, I'm leaving,
she promised herself as her gaze ran along the back of the house: two double-hung windows, a pair of smaller side-by-side windows that were higher set--the kitchen?--and a jalousied door that opened onto a small wooden deck. The deck had almost certainly been added since the Garcias' time.

Something--a flash of movement?--caught her eye as she stepped up onto the deck. Quickly she turned her head to scan the section of the woods where she 'd seen it. It was the same approximate spot where she'd thought she'd felt someone watching her before.

Is someone in the woods?
Lisa caught her breath. She felt the prickle of cold sweat along her hairline.

But there was nothing. No face, pale among the shadows. No eyes shining through the foliage. There was no movement, not even the quiver of a leaf. Nothing at all. Just utter stillness and the same solid wall of trees that had been there all along.

See? No one's there.

But no matter how she sought to convince herself of that, her body didn't seem to be getting the message. Her heart thumped. Her pulse raced. Her stomach tightened. If her hand hadn't already been reaching for the doorknob by that time, she would have abandoned her mission there and then. But her fingers closed around the smooth brass knob almost of their own volition and turned it--
turned it!--
even as the impulse to hightail it for the Jag grew ever more urgent.