Vanish in Plain Sight (14 page)

“Thank you.” Impulsively she put her arms around Elizabeth, hugging her. “Thank you.”

Elizabeth squeezed her, and her cheek was wet when she pressed it against Marisa’s. “Denke. I am glad you have come back at last.”

The back door banged, loud in the quiet.

“Ach, those kinder,” Mary Ann muttered, leading the way back to the kitchen.

But it wasn’t the children who’d come in. It was a man.

Marisa hesitated, not sure that was the right word. He had a man’s height and breadth, but no beard, and his round face was unlined, as smooth and innocent as a child’s. He stopped at the sight of her, clearly disconcerted at a stranger in the house.

Mary Ann smiled at him. “Ephraim, have you komm for something to drink for the men?”

He nodded, still looking at Marisa. It was the wide, unabashed stare of a young child, and she realized that he really was like a child. She’d heard that genetic illnesses and retardation affected the Amish in larger numbers than the general population, due to their small pool of ancestors.

Mary Ann began filling an insulated jug with lemonade. Elizabeth touched Ephraim’s arm, urging him a step or two closer to Marisa. “Komm, here is someone you must meet. Marisa, this is my youngest brother, Ephraim. Ephraim, this is Cousin Barbara’s daughter, Marisa. You remember Barbara, don’t you?”

His eyes widened even more, if that was possible. His mouth opened in a chasm of what might have been horror. He uttered a harsh, guttural cry, tears spurting from his eyes.

Before anyone could move, he turned and blundered out of the room, knocking over a chair in his blind rush.

L
INK RAN HIS HAND
along the banister he’d been sanding. Smooth as silk. Once he’d finished, he’d put on a coat of stain and then varnish.

Painting would have been faster, but somehow that would have felt wrong. The craftsmen who had built this place, probably a hundred and fifty years ago, had taken pride in their work. He could surely spare the time to do the same.

Being back at work on the house, satisfying as it was, didn’t entirely ease the tension that was riding him. He hadn’t told Marisa his feelings about Tom Sylvester’s mention of Uncle Allen’s visitors. He’d let her believe that the only thing they’d come away with was the lead to the one man left who’d been working on the house that afternoon.

His feelings about Tom’s reaction weren’t facts, he told himself. Unfortunately, his conscience wasn’t buying that excuse. He hadn’t said anything to Marisa about it because it pointed right back at Allen again.

He stopped, hand on the railing, listening to the silence in the old house. If these walls could talk—what a cliché that was. But in this situation it was only too true. Something had happened here that day twenty-some years ago. Something that might answer the question of Barbara Angelo’s disappearance. And they might never know what that something was.

Certainly not if you keep withholding things.
The voice of his conscience spoke tartly, sounding rather like his mother.

Before he could pursue that, he heard something else—a real sound this time, not one in his head. A vehicle pulling into the driveway.

He walked back the center hallway and reached the family room door just as his brother approached the porch.

Trey raised a hand in greeting. “Hey. Glad you’re here. Back at work again?”

“Trying.”

Trey let the screen door bang behind him. “I thought maybe you’d be out following clues again today.”

“Don’t remind me. Marisa and I are supposed to catch up with Brad Metzger at the inn tomorrow. Seems like he’s the only one left to see.”

Trey nodded, opening the refrigerator door and helping himself to a can of soda. “Mom told me about your talk with Sylvester. At least it wasn’t a total dead end.”

“No.” He hesitated. Easy enough to let it go at that, but he was beginning to think he had to talk to someone about his suspicions. And Trey was safe. Trey’s interests and his were identical in this case.

He blew out an exasperated breath. “There is something more. I didn’t mention it to Mom. Or to Marisa.”

“Marisa was there, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah. But she hasn’t known Tom for the better part of a lifetime, like I have.” He paused, marshaling his thoughts. “He was grousing about Allen…about
his being too particular, complaining about the noise and the dirt, all that kind of thing. And he mentioned that sometime that week, Allen had been worse than usual, making them clean everything up before they left because he was expecting guests.”

Trey’s eyebrows lifted. “Allen? Guests?”

“That was my reaction, too. Funny thing was that Tom seemed to back away from that topic in a hurry. And when I asked him if he knew who any of Allen’s guests were, he got defensive. Claimed he had no idea.”

“You thought he was lying.” Trey frowned.

“I thought something didn’t ring true. But what would be the big secret about somebody coming here? Allan never entertained, as far as I know, unless it was somebody who had an old book he wanted. But Tom mentioned a meeting.” Now that he’d put it into words, he could hear how feeble it sounded. “It’s nothing, I guess. Tom probably just wanted us to go away so he could put his steaks on the grill.”

Trey’s frown deepened. “Maybe. But maybe not.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out. That old journal of Uncle Allen’s. “Mom found something in here that bothered her.”

He took the journal from his brother’s hand. “What? This wasn’t from the time Barbara disappeared, was it?”

“A year or so later,” Trey said. He nodded toward the book. “Check what he says on the first page that’s marked.”

The journal, he now saw, was decorated with some of the pink sticky notes Mom put as reminders on anything and everything. He flipped it open to the first one.

“Left-hand page,” Trey said.

“September 1,” he read aloud. “Didn’t sleep again last night. I should have known better. I never should have gotten involved with them.”

He looked up, his gaze questioning. “Them?”

Trey shrugged. “I don’t know who. He doesn’t name names, but there’s a lot more in that vein—complaints about sleepless nights and bad dreams, vague references to people who caused trouble for him.”

“Sounds like the old boy was getting paranoid.” He’d rather think that than assume this had anything to do with Barbara’s disappearance.

“Not so old then. He was a year younger than Dad.” Trey rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d like to believe it’s nothing, but I can’t dismiss it, especially—well, go to the last reference Mom has marked.”

Link flipped through the diary reluctantly. He didn’t want this—didn’t want any part of it. Closing around him, keeping him here. Maybe he was the one who was paranoid. He found the page. The writing straggled, the words uneven.

“I hate the very thought of that cursed bird. It’s led to nothing but grief.” The line trailed off, as if the pen had gone slack in Allen’s hand.

Link slapped the book closed. “That makes no sense at all.”

“Unfortunately, it does.” Trey stopped, shook his head. “You never heard the full story of what happened back in June, when the Esch boy was accused of murder. Mom didn’t want us telling you anything upsetting.”

That nettled him. “Like I’m such a fragile plant. I know Bobby Stephens turned out to be a nutcase and almost incinerated you in the process of confessing to killing Dad. What could be worse that than?”

“Not worse, necessarily.” Trey grinned. “All right, so Mom was being overprotective. She kept saying you didn’t need all the details to give you nightmares.”

“I had plenty of my own nightmares,” he said shortly. “Give. What details? And what does that have to do with Barbara Angelo’s disappearance?”

Trey’s face tightened. “There was a lot of ugliness surrounding the Esch kid’s arrest. Jessica came here to defend him, hired by Mom. She started getting threats, marked with a black bird. A raven, to be exact.”

“Sounds like something out of a comic book.” But something stirred in the recesses of his mind, like a monster slowly surfacing and then sinking back into the mud.

“That’s what we thought. But in the process of trying to figure out if it meant anything, Leo Frost
finally traced the symbol to a secret society that flourished around here back in the 1700s.”

Leo Frost, the attorney who’d taken Trey’s finacée into his practice was also an old family friend.

He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Get serious.”

“I know. It sounds screwy. But Bobby…” Trey stopped, his face twisting as if he tried to hold back pain.

The sight jolted Link. Trey was the big brother, the strong one, the responsible one. He never showed weakness.

“Bobby was raving there at the end. He kept talking about how he shouldn’t have used the sign to try and scare Jessica. That
they
wouldn’t like it.”

“
They
again.”

“Right. Bobby apparently believed that the secret society existed, ready to punish him for screwing up.”

Link’s mind reeled. “You can’t seriously expect me to accept that there’s some secret society running rampant in bucolic Lancaster County, can you? What do they do—skulk around at night in white robes?”

“Nothing so crude. And no, I don’t believe it, not really. But Bobby did. And now that.” He gestured to the book in Link’s hands. “I can’t ignore the possibility.”

Link felt like his head was about to explode. “Why haven’t I heard about this? Did it become public knowledge?”

“The symbol was briefly in the news, but Bobby’s efforts to kill me kind of eclipsed that. The rest of the story was bizarre enough without dragging in a secret society.”

“I still don’t believe it, but… Well, what do you propose to do?”

“See if there are any more diaries, for one thing. That’s why I came over. And then…maybe we ought to sit down and talk this over. All of us.”

“Including Marisa?”

“She’s involved, isn’t she?”

His gut tightened at the thought of bringing Marisa in on something so potentially damaging to his family. But did he have the right to keep her out?

He took a breath, trying to ease the tension. “Let’s check for any more diaries first. And see what we come up with when we talk to Metzger. Then… Well, maybe you’re right. But let’s make sure we have all the ammo we can find first.”

I
T HAD BEGUN TO RAIN
shortly after Marisa left Cousin Elizabeth’s farm—a steady, relentless downpour that turned the fallen leaves to a spongy mass on the ground. The gray atmosphere unfortunately matched her mood. She had a quick supper at the local cafe and headed back to her room.

She was alone in the bed-and-breakfast again. Two retired couples had come in for a couple of days, but left this morning. She must be getting used to it. The silence no longer felt vaguely threatening, and
she didn’t even bother looking out the window at the willow tree.

Once again she checked her cell phone for messages. One from her agent, saying she had an expression of interest in the Amish illustrations; nothing from her father. She flipped quickly to check emails. Nothing from him there, either, though she hadn’t really expected that.

She put the cell phone on the bedside table and looked longingly at the bed. At the moment, her body felt as if she’d been flattened by a steamroller, but her mind jumped restlessly from one subject to another. She’d never sleep, and it would be useless to try.

Piling pillows against the headboard for comfort, Marisa pulled out her sketch pad. That would settle her mind.

She lingered at the drawing of her mother, walking away toward a misty wood. Marisa touched the figure lightly with her finger. Odd, now that she thought of it, that her imagination had pictured her mother in Amish dress even before she’d seen that Amish kapp in the suitcase.

Frowning, she tried to trace the image back to its origins. Useless. It had always been there, it seemed, in her dreams if not in her waking thoughts. Mammi, walking away.

Sometimes the dreams turned to nightmares. She’d see her small self running after the vanishing figure, crying out. But her mother never turned,
never acknowledged the cries, and the child was left, a crumpled figure beside the road, sobbing.

What was she doing, letting herself think of that? Now her throat was tight with unshed tears, and her mind still would not settle.

Well, what did she expect? The talk with Cousin Elizabeth would have been enough to disturb her balance, even without the letter she’d produced.

Marisa had slipped it into the pocket inside the back cover of the sketch pad, and she felt with her fingers to be sure it was still there.
Don’t get it out,
her sensible side insisted.
If you start puzzling over that, you’ll never sleep.

Unfortunately, she didn’t need to look at it. She’d long since memorized the contents. She pulled her robe more tightly around her despite the room’s warmth. Maybe the cold was in her soul.

What had her mother been afraid of that she couldn’t talk to her husband about? And more to the point, what was Marisa going to do with the letter?

It was evidence. She ought to hand it over to the police or the DA. But as soon as they saw that reference to not confiding in Dad, they’d assume that he was the one Barbara feared.

She pressed her palms against her eyes, as if she could blot out the image of that page, but it was useless. She’d have to decide.

If her father was here, it would be simple. She’d show him—they’d puzzle it out together, wouldn’t
they? But he’d never talked about her mother in the past. What made her so sure he would now?

He’d have to, that was all.
Where are you, Dad? Why don’t you call?

She glanced down at the sketch pad, and the pencil dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers. Without thinking, she’d drawn a scene from a nightmare— Elizabeth’s brother’s face, distorted by the cry that came from his mouth when he heard who she was.

Elizabeth had tried to explain it away, saying that Ephraim sometimes reacted badly to strangers. But Marisa had seen how shaken Elizabeth had been. And there was no doubt in Marisa’s mind that Ephraim’s reaction had been because of who she was and not the fact of finding a stranger in his sister’s kitchen.