You'll Never Know Dear: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  Maggie backed out the front door of the mobile home. She set down a canvas bag, locked the door, turned around, and blinked toward the empty spot on the street where the ambulance had been parked. “They’re gone?” She glared at Vanessa. “She’s alone?”

  “Not alone. My mother went with her.”

  “Your mother? I’m her daughter. She needs me.” Maggie hurried over to her car. She opened the front passenger door and was about to toss her bag in when Officer Frank stopped her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t let you drive that. Not until it’s properly registered.”

  “But—”

  “Let me drive you,” Vanessa said. “It’s the least I can do. And I’ll drive you back here later, too.”

  Maggie held her bag to her chest and squinted at Vanessa. “Why are you doing this? Any of this? Chasing me down. Making my mother go crazy. And now, acting like my new best friend?”

  “I feel responsible. If my grandmother hadn’t posted that ad, if we hadn’t shown up here out of the blue—”

  “If he hadn’t shown up,” Maggie said. “Nothing freaks my mother out more than an officer in uniform.”

  Vanessa popped open the trunk of her car. Maggie hung there, uncertain. Vanessa gently pried the canvas bag from her arms, set it in the trunk, and pressed the lid shut. Opened the passenger door of the rental car.

  Maggie’s gaze traveled from Vanessa, to Officer Frank, and then down the street where the ambulance had driven off. Finally she closed her own car door and got in Vanessa’s car.

  Vanessa slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. “You want the windows open?”

  Maggie sat stiff in the passenger seat. She shook her head.

  Vanessa drove slowly out of the mobile home park and onto Meadowlake Drive. When they were stopped at a red light, Vanessa said, “So you’re a student?”

  “That cop tell you that?”

  The light turned green and Vanessa accelerated. “Parking sticker on your car. I’m a student, too.”

  Maggie slid Vanessa an appraising look. “I’m finishing my degree. Probably was finishing it, now that I have this to deal with.” She gazed out the window as they passed a sign in front of a Baptist church: in the dark? come in. “And I thought things were finally turning around for us. We really could have used that reward.” She shook her head. “Shoulda known. Sounded too good to be true. Now it’s all gone to shit.”

  “It hasn’t,” Vanessa said. “That cop is going to run some tests. If the doll turns out to be Janey’s, you’ll get the reward.” And if not? Vanessa had to stop herself from offering to help Maggie and her mother if the doll turned out not to be Janey’s. She was wary of getting too involved with such hyperbolic personalities. Besides, even if the doll turned out to be Janey’s, these women might be scam artists. “Why did you run off after you brought over the doll?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” Maggie folded her arms across her chest.

  Right, Vanessa thought. Assume the worst and shut down. “You have no clue what I would or wouldn’t understand.”

  Maggie stared out the window for a long time. “I freaked out. I don’t know how my mother got the doll, and it’s entirely possible that it was stolen, and that’s all we needed. Felony charges. You’d stir things up, the cops would show up, and Mom would go ballistic . . . just like she did. And we’d be back to square one. Which is exactly where we are.”

  “You said you and your mom have been in and out of homeless shelters?”

  “You wouldn’t know anything about what that’s like, would you?” Maggie said with a bitter laugh.

  Vanessa didn’t take the bait, though she knew full well that she and Lis could easily have found themselves homeless if Grandma Sorrel hadn’t come to the rescue when they’d hit bottom. “But you’re not in a homeless shelter now.”

  “I have no illusions about where we’re living.” Maggie gave a tiny smile. “It’s a trailer. Not even an apartment. But it beats a shelter. We qualified for a rent subsidy. Finally. I’m starting a job, or I was. I still can’t afford to get my car fixed or pay off my parking tickets, but we’ve got a place to live and health insurance, and Mom really is much more stable now that she’s taking something. No more nightmares, thank God for that.” Maggie bit her thumbnail. “As you can see, she is still traumatized. But she’d never have shot anyone.”

  “Not deliberately, I’m sure,” Vanessa said. Still, Jenny’s waving around that gun had been scary as hell. “Has she always been like that?”

  “Hair-trigger temper? Paranoid? On the edge of a nervous breakdown? Superprotective and private is what it boils down to. But you would be too if you’d been through what she has.”

  “Where did she grow up?” Vanessa held her breath as she waited for an answer.

  “Somewhere near Charleston.”

  Feeling as if she were taking a tiny step out onto thin ice, Vanessa asked, “Do you know if she was adopted?”

  “Adopted?” Maggie seemed surprised. “No. Though she never talks about her childhood. Just that her parents were religious and strict. She ran away from home when she was fifteen. Lived on the streets, did drugs, made money the only way she could.” Maggie kneaded her hands together. “Even she doesn’t know who my father is, and frankly I don’t care. Because after she had me, she changed. Stopped doing drugs. Worked wherever she could find a job. Made sure we had somewhere to sleep, even if it was a tent or a homeless shelter. Most important thing, she used to say, was to keep me in school. It was a promise she made to me and to herself.”

  “You make her sound pretty heroic.”

  “Too good to be true, is that what you’re saying?” Maggie said.

  Vanessa felt herself flush. Was she that transparent?

  “She is,” Maggie went on. “And now I’m trying to pay her back, best I can. Anyway, all’s I know about that doll is that she kept it. When we were living in the car, the doll was in the trunk. When she didn’t bring it into the trailer, I didn’t say anything because I was relieved that she wouldn’t drag that dirty old thing into our nice clean house. So when I saw your ad, I thought it would be okay to bring it to you. Holy cow, five thousand dollars.” She whistled. “We all know how well that went.”

  Vanessa hesitated before asking one more prying question. “You never met your grandparents?”

  “Are you kidding? My mother is still afraid that they’ll show up on our doorstep. Come after me. She swears that if she had to go back to that place, she’d kill herself. That’s what I grew up being afraid of. That she would.”

  18

  Lis had to hang on to a strap as the ambulance accelerated up the main road, but her attention was focused on the woman lying unconscious on the stretcher next to her. In the harsh light in the ambulance, Jenny Richards’s face seemed deathly pale against the fresh bandaging the EMT was applying to the gash in her head. The blood-soaked gauze pad that Frank had pressed to the wound had been discarded in a waste receptacle mounted to the ambulance wall.

  The EMT raised one of Jenny’s eyelids and flashed a light into her eye. Then he did the same to the other eye. Up close, Lis could see that Jenny’s eyes were blue. A very pale blue.

  This could be Janey.

  Lis snaked her hand under the blanket, found Jenny’s hand, and held it. Just as Miss Sorrel had lived in a bubble, believing that Jenny couldn’t be dead, Lis had never let herself seriously consider that Janey could be alive. The Janey Lis had imagined for so long was wearing a pale blue nightgown, angel wings sprouting from her back, and a golden halo overhead, a far cry from this. If Jenny Richards was Janey, did she even remember that she’d once lived in a cozy white house near the water? That wisteria bloomed outside her window? That she’d had a sister and three brothers? Did she have any idea that her older sister had left her vulnerable to being scooped up? How had she ended up so clearly traumatized, and how much of her past was buried in her subconscious?

  And the doll. Had she held on to th
at doll all these years because it was the one tenuous link she had to a past she could barely remember, or one that she was trying to forget? Those were all questions Lis couldn’t answer. Maybe Vanessa, with her fancy Ph.D. and psychology experience, would have a theory.

  A simple DNA test would answer the big question: Was Jenny Janey?

  The ambulance stopped and the back doors opened. Attendants pulled Jenny’s stretcher out and the bearded attendant who’d ridden inside followed. Just before Lis crawled out, she pulled a latex glove from a box dispenser, put it on, grabbed the blood-soaked gauze from the trash, and peeled the glove off inside out around the gauze. Just like the plastic bags she used to pick up Binty’s poops, the glove became a makeshift pouch to protect the blood sample.

  She was no expert, but she was pretty sure that fresh blood made a more suitable sample for DNA testing than a few strands of hair that had been cut twenty years ago.

  Nothing about the emergency receiving area looked remotely familiar to Lis, though she and Miss Sorrel most certainly had been wheeled through there after they’d been pulled unconscious from the house. All she remembered was waking up alone. Feeling so sick that she could barely lift her head and not knowing where she was or what had happened to her. Lis was determined that when Jenny woke up, someone would be there to tell her what hit her.

  Lis tried to trail behind as Jenny’s stretcher was pushed through double doors and into the treatment area, but a woman wearing scrubs and a name tag stopped her. “Sorry, you need to wait out here.”

  “But she needs someone to stay with her,” Lis said. “She’ll freak out.”

  “She needs to be assessed and treated. If she needs you, we’ll come get you. Promise. Please take a seat.” The woman pulled the door closed.

  Lis turned and took in the waiting area. Metal chairs with orange plastic seats were lined up under the windows along two walls. About a half-dozen people were waiting, several staring like zombies at a television monitor where thick red liquid was pouring into a glass. Lis’s stomach turned over before she realized it was a commercial for V8 juice. Then Wheel of Fortune resumed.

  Lis sat down where she couldn’t see the screen, but the snare drums, trumpet sounds, and Pat Sajak’s voice were impossible to ignore. Ten minutes later, Wheel was over and Dr. Oz was going on about the virtues of bean burgers. Reduce blood sugar! Burn off fat! Lis wouldn’t have been surprised if next he claimed bean burgers were a cure for impotence and an antiaging elixir. She wished she had earplugs.

  Just then, Vanessa and Maggie rushed in. “Where is she?” Maggie said. “Is she all right? Did she ask for me?”

  “She was still unconscious when they wheeled her in,” Lis said.

  “I need to be with her,” Maggie said.

  “Good luck with that,” Lis said. “I tried. They said they’d be out to tell us once she’s been assessed.”

  “Oh, God,” Maggie said. “She’s going to flip out when she comes to and she’s surrounded by strangers. Isn’t there any way I can get in there?” She gave Lis a long, pleading look. “Don’t you know anyone who can pull strings?”

  Of course Lis did. Why hadn’t it occurred to her earlier? Evelyn had worked at the hospital for years. According to her, she’d practically run the place. She’d still be with Miss Sorrel, waiting for Lis and Vanessa to take over.

  Lis didn’t want to get Maggie’s hopes up. She excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and, instead, made her way to her mother’s room.

  Another favor from Evelyn. Lis groaned as she rode up in the elevator. She’d long ago recognized how Evelyn wielded her generosity as a form of control. For every jelly donut or slice of pecan pie or basket of fried chicken that she brought over, Lis had to endure a smothering hug, always laden with reminders that Evelyn was Lis’s godmother and her mother’s best friend. But strings attached or not, Evelyn could elbow her way around rules like nobody’s business.

  She found Evelyn standing in the hallway outside Miss Sorrel’s room. When she saw Lis, she pointedly looked at her watch, as if Lis didn’t realize that it was well past the time when she’d promised to be there.

  “I’m sorry we got delayed,” Lis said, “but I have a good excuse.” Quickly she told Evelyn about the flat tires, then about going to find the woman who’d brought them Janey’s doll. “She lives with her mother. In a trailer.”

  Evelyn sniffed. “Of course she does.”

  Ignoring that, Lis continued, “Frank followed us to the trailer. Turns out the mother’s terrified of police. She brought out a gun and Vanessa hit her with a rock and knocked her out. And now she’s in the ER. Alone. And I know you can get them to bend the rules so her daughter can go in and sit with her.”

  Evelyn considered that for a moment. “I probably could. But I’m not sure why I would.”

  Evelyn was going to make her grovel. Lis lowered her eyes and gritted her teeth. “Of course you were right. We shouldn’t have gone looking for her. But it seemed worth the risk. If she’ll tell us where she got the doll, then we’re one step closer than we’ve ever been to finding out what happened to Janey.”

  Evelyn narrowed her eyes, then drew herself up. “You leave it to me, Lissie. Stay here with your mother and I’ll see what I can do.”

  19

  A half hour after they’d arrived at the hospital, Vanessa and Maggie were still waiting for someone to update them on Jenny Richards’s condition and Lis was nowhere to be found. Vanessa had tried texting her mother and was about to go searching for her when Evelyn marched through the double doors wearing a starched white nurse’s uniform, a cap pinned to her hair, and a stethoscope wrapped around her neck. She barely glanced in Vanessa’s direction as she sailed past, not checking in with anyone as she swiped her badge through a reader and pushed her way through double doors and into the treatment area.

  “That’s our friend,” Vanessa said. “My mother probably got her to come down. If anyone can get a rule bent around here, she can.”

  Maggie folded her arms tight across her chest and paced back and forth in front of the doors through which Evelyn had disappeared. She strained to see through the small panes of glass.

  After a few minutes, Evelyn reappeared. Maggie rushed up to her. “How is she?”

  “You must be the daughter,” Evelyn said, stone-faced. She glanced at Vanessa, then turned to Maggie and pursed her lips. “You’d best tell me the truth. What’s your mother on?”

  “On?” Maggie said.

  “There’s obviously something more going on than a head bump and a split lip. What is your mother taking?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” Maggie looked stricken. “Something for anxiety.” She opened the canvas bag she’d packed with her mother’s things, rummaged around, and came up with a zippered cosmetic bag.

  Evelyn took it from her and dumped the contents out into the seat of a chair. At first glance, it looked to Vanessa like the typical innocuous assortment that anyone would grab on the way out of the house for an overnight. Aspirin and Advil. Calcium chews and eyedrops. Toothbrush and toothpaste. A couple of vials of pills.

  Evelyn singled out an amber vial. Opened it and shook some white, lozenge-shaped pills into her palm. “How long’s she been taking these?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never seen them before.”

  “This,” Evelyn said, picking up one of the pills and pulling a face, “is Endocet. A painkiller.”

  “Painkiller?” Maggie thought a moment. “Her doctor must have prescribed that after the car accident. About a month ago. Mom wrenched her neck. Like I said, all I know about is Ativan. She’s been taking that for a few months. It’s supposed to make her less anxious.”

  “Well, this is not Ativan,” Evelyn said, “and no one would prescribe it for anxiety. You’ve heard of the painkiller oxycodone? Endocet is one of the brand names for that narcotic, with the same active ingredient. It’s highly addictive. When they brought your mother in, her blood levels were through the roof. And from t
he looks of it”—she held up the vial—“she didn’t get it from a pharmacist.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Maggie said.

  “There’s no label. No script.”

  “I don’t believe it. Where else would she get a prescription drug? She rarely leaves the house and never alone. Plus she hates drugs. Even convincing her to take Ativan was hard. She used to be—” Maggie stopped herself.

  “I know.” Evelyn gave a smug smile. “A drug addict. So she’d know how to get drugs.”

  “She’d know, but she wouldn’t. She hasn’t been down that road, not for years. Why would she start using now? I’m telling you, I’ve never, ever seen her take a single one of those pills.”

  “Right, because she was taking them when no one was looking because she knew what they were. She’s been taking a lot. Much more than is safe.” Evelyn put the pills back in the container, snapped it shut, and dropped it into her pocket. “Maybe it started innocently. Her doctor prescribed a painkiller and before she knew it she needed more and more to get the same relief. And if she has a history of drug usage, well, she’s more prone to overmedicating herself. And she has the contacts she needs to get more.”

  “No way. This is crazy,” Maggie said.

  “Endocet has a short half-life,” Evelyn said, “and I’m afraid she’s already in withdrawal. If she goes cold turkey . . .” Evelyn raised her eyebrows and shook her head.

  “What?” Maggie asked.

  “Days of vomiting. Cramps. Night sweats. Acute anxiety. Depression. Insomnia. Paranoia and delusional thinking. She’ll feel as if she’s going to jump out of her skin. You can’t just take her home. She shouldn’t be left alone.”

  Maggie dropped onto a bench and put her head in her hands. “It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it? When am I going to catch a break?”

  “I’m afraid this isn’t about you, dear,” Evelyn said.

  Evelyn could be so damned officious and tone-deaf. Vanessa wanted to slap her.