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You'll Never Know Dear: A Novel of Suspense Page 12
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“You have Janey’s DNA? But she disappeared so long ago.”
“I told you, we never gave up. About thirty years ago, when the state started DNA testing, Miss Sorrel gave us a sample. I think it might have been Janey’s toothbrush. Then ten years ago NamUs, the national missing persons database, opened. We sent them Janey’s DNA to see if it matched any unidentified persons they had. They’ll analyze Jenny’s DNA. Sadly, that’s not going to happen overnight. State lab’s backlogged months. In the meanwhile, we do what we can here.”
Vanessa entered the roomy lab. Officer Frank was right that the in-house team was small. The forensics lab had much more space than equipment and just two white-coated technicians who barely looked up from their work. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Walls were lined with shelves loaded with beakers, racks of test tubes, and labeled bottles. One of the technicians, in a white lab coat and blue rubber gloves, stood at an orange countertop. He (or she?) had on an industrial-strength breathing mask and was peering into a plastic bag. Officer Frank put out his arm to keep Vanessa back. “Jean?” he said. “You got a minute?”
Vanessa held her breath as the technician glanced across at them, nodded, and sealed the baggie. She removed her mask, set it on the counter, and put the baggie into a small refrigerator. Peeled off her gloves and tossed them in the trash.
Vanessa inhaled. It turned out that the room had no smell other than cleaning fluid and bleach.
“Jean, this is Vanessa Strenger. Vanessa, may I introduce Dr. Hunter, our resident forensics specialist.”
“What can I do for you?” Dr. Hunter’s eyes widened as she looked at Vanessa, perhaps realizing that Vanessa was related to Lis who was dating Frank. Or maybe Vanessa was being paranoid.
“Can you take a look at this for us?” Officer Frank opened the envelope and showed her the doll’s hair. “Unofficially, what’ve we got.”
Dr. Hunter walked over to the counter on which sat a large microscope, easily twice as big as the ones Vanessa had used in her college chem lab. She pulled down a box of glass slides, fixed a slide with what looked like a drop of glue, and set the hair onto it. Set the slide onto the bed of the microscope, turned on the light, switched lenses, and looked through the eyepiece. She lingered for a moment before looking up. “What do you want to know?”
“Is it human?”
“No.” She looked again through the eyepiece. “Definitely not human.” She adjusted a knob. “I’d say most likely it’s dog.”
“You can tell just by looking?” Vanessa asked.
Still looking through the eyepiece, Dr. Hunter said, “I can’t tell you what breed, and it could be a wolf, but we don’t have a lot of those around here so I’m guessing not. But it’s definitely not human. I’ll show you.” She removed the slide, broke off a single strand of her own hair, and glued it onto the slide alongside the hair that was already there. Put the slide back into the microscope and looked, again adjusting the focus, then stepped away. “See for yourself.”
Vanessa looked through the eyepiece. Even she could see right away that structurally, the two hairs looked nothing alike.
Dr. Hunter said, “Dog hair has a continuous medulla in the center. In the microscope, it presents as a solid line.”
Medulla. That must have been what looked like a strand of licorice, plainly visible, running all the way through the middle of one of the hairs. The other hair was more of a solid mottled brown with a few dark flecks.
Dr. Hunter turned off the microscope light and removed the slide. “We could run a bunch more fancy tests, but it’s only going to confirm. That hair’s not human.”
Officer Frank turned to Vanessa, his look somber. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s a huge disappointment.”
But Vanessa wasn’t disappointed. Something about Jenny’s story had struck her as a little too pat, and the last thing Grandma Sorrel needed was to be led on, only to be let down. There was no way to spin this result: Janey’s doll would have Janey’s hair. Not a dog’s.
23
It wasn’t until Lis got out to the hospital parking lot, intending to drive to the DNA testing lab, that she remembered she’d left home in Vanessa’s car all those hours ago. Her car was at home.
Lis sat on a bench by the main entrance of the hospital and called Vanessa, hoping to get her to come by and give her a lift. No answer. She texted. Still nothing.
Finally Lis called a cab. She had the cabbie take her home, and from there she drove herself to Laurel Bay Testing Services. The address turned out to be a nondescript storefront in a strip mall. A receptionist wearing a telephone headset sat behind a sliding glass window that had a row of stickers on it. MasterCard. Visa. American Express. And a sign: no personal checks. Beneath that in smaller lettering: no refunds. Lis could imagine that they had to deal with plenty of cases of buyer’s remorse, customers who weren’t pleased with what they found out.
Less than thirty minutes later, Lis had filled out the forms, submitted the samples, had her cheek swabbed, and charged $550 to her credit card. She drove home feeling a strange combination of queasy and elated. Laurel Bay’s advertised “results in three business days” meant she’d have an answer Wednesday, at the earliest. More likely next Thursday. But compared to forty years, that wait seemed like a spit in the ocean.
Back at home, Lis parked her car in the driveway. She climbed the front steps, noticing that the front window had been repaired. She’d have to find out who to thank, Vanessa or Evelyn or Frank. Behind her, she heard a car pulling up and turned to see Vanessa’s rental car. The rear tires still looked fine.
Vanessa got out of the car, carrying a shopping bag and a pizza box. Lis realized she was ravenous as she unlocked the front door.
“How’s Grandma Sorrel?” Vanessa asked.
“I left her sleeping. The nurse on duty said she should be fine overnight, and Evelyn promised to come down and check on her later.”
Lis followed Vanessa through the house and into the kitchen. Vanessa set the pizza on the counter and Lis helped herself to a slice, wolfed it down standing. She started on a second slice before she’d even snagged a napkin.
Vanessa sat down at the table and helped herself to a slice of pizza. Took a bite and pulled a face.
“What? It’s good,” Lis said.
“It’s mediocre. Next time you come to Rhode Island, I’ll show you pizza.” Vanessa set the slice down on a napkin. “Frank says he’ll be sending Jenny’s DNA to the state lab to see if it’s a match for the sample they have from Janey. He said it’s likely to take a while.”
“You talked to Frank?”
Vanessa took the doll from the bag. “He asked me to bring this over, and I did.”
Lis touched the doll’s poor sweet battered face. “Your grandma’s convinced it’s Janey’s doll.”
“It’s not,” Vanessa said. “They looked at the hair. It isn’t human.”
Lis picked up the doll and examined its hair. The fine blond hair looked and felt like the real thing, though mohair, often used in doll wigs, was hard to tell from human hair.
“It’s from a dog,” Vanessa said.
Lis had often seen Miss Sorrel brush their dog’s coat—Binty and the golden retriever, Sierra, that they’d had before—and save the hair to use for repairing doll’s wigs. But dog’s hair would never have been used in one of Miss Sorrel’s portrait dolls.
So what were they looking at? Lis turned over the doll’s foot. There was the mark of the sorrel leaf, but that wasn’t hard to fake. The doll’s face, though the features were distorted by the damage it had sustained, was subtly modeled and painted. That was the hallmark of Miss Sorrel’s dolls, and a lot harder to duplicate. The arm, the one it still had, seemed right, though the legs seemed slightly mismatched. Maybe one had been replaced. The doll could be a fake, or it could be a genuine Miss Sorrel doll with a replacement wig.
The glass eyes in Janey’s doll would have been blue. These eyes were so cloudy that it was impossible to tell w
hat color they’d been. But Lis had learned a few tricks over the years helping Miss Sorrel repair dolls, and clearing cloudy eyes was one of them.
Lis went into the workroom where she found a bottle of white vinegar and a handful of Q-tips. She returned and got out a dish towel and laid the doll down on it. Its milky eyes clicked shut. She forced open one of the lids and started to swab the eye with vinegar. But even as she was removing a skim of grease and dirt, she realized the cloudiness wasn’t only on the surface. Vinegar alone wasn’t going to do it.
“Vanessa, honey, would you run up and get me the hair dryer?”
Vanessa ran upstairs and came back with Lis’s blow-dryer, plugged it in, and handed it to Lis. Lis turned it on and blew hot air directly into one of the doll’s eyes. As she held the doll’s face into the heat, the tangy smell of vinegar with undercurrents of mold filled the air. When she turned off the hair dryer, the eye had cleared enough to see what color it was.
Brown.
Lis tilted the doll’s face up to Vanessa. “Brown eyes and a wig made of dog hair. That clinches it. This can’t be Janey’s doll.”
24
Lis was embarrassed to tell Vanessa about the DNA test she’d bought and paid for. Not only were the police running their own DNA test, but on top of that, the doll Maggie Richards had brought them couldn’t have been Janey’s. Now, looking at all the anomalies, it must have taken a mighty powerful dose of wishful thinking to convince Miss Sorrel that it was.
Over the weekend, Lis and Vanessa took turns sitting with Miss Sorrel. By Saturday evening she was complaining about the food. The next morning, she wanted her own bathrobe and nightgown and shampoo. Sunday she was walking—make that pacing—up and down the hall. Ready to be at home, she told anyone who’d listen. But her doctor said her heart rate and blood pressure were still stabilizing. Another day wasn’t going to kill her.
The word from Evelyn was that Jenny Richards had come through withdrawal and emerged conscious and lucid. Now she was ready to be discharged. According to Frank, a background check on Jenny Richards had turned up tickets for loitering, the kind that police award for being homeless, followed by missed court appearances. Subsequent arrests for the no-shows and fines that she couldn’t pay. No drug charges. No theft. No check kiting. No criminal charges of any kind. But there was the matter of her juvenile record. It had been expunged. Even Frank couldn’t find out what charges had been brought against her before she turned eighteen, only that there had been some. Lis didn’t know what to make of that, but Evelyn had weighed in. According to her, there could have been anything in that sealed record. Even criminal charges.
Monday morning Lis got to the hospital early and shampooed Miss Sorrel’s hair and manicured her nails a translucent pink. Later that morning, wearing a fresh nightgown with a white lace collar, her hair pulled back in a ribbon at her neck, Miss Sorrel sat up in bed looking as if she were holding court with Lis, Vanessa, and Frank in attendance.
Miss Sorrel surveyed them with a jaundiced eye. “So which of you all is going to tell me what this is all about? It couldn’t wait? I’m going home tomorrow, for goodness’ sake.” Her look turned anxious. “I am going home, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are,” Lis said. “That’s what the doctor promised. But there’s something you need to know now. Before you get home.”
“Who died?”
“No one died,” Lis said.
“And it takes three of you to tell me?” When none of them answered, Miss Sorrel rolled her eyes in a gesture Lis knew well and added, “Is this going to be a short story or War and Peace? And why are you here?” She addressed the final question to Frank.
“To listen,” Frank said. He was out of uniform in chinos and a dark blue polo shirt, but he stood like a cop. “In case you remember something that will help us with our investigation.” He raised his eyebrows at Lis, who gestured for him to continue. “In addition to the carbon monoxide leak and kiln explosion, you were robbed.”
“Robbed.” Miss Sorrel took that in. “Well, that explains why you were here the other day asking me if I heard anything when I was downstairs in the middle of the night. What did they take?”
This was the moment Lis had been dreading. “Dolls,” she said.
Miss Sorrel’s eyes narrowed. “Which ones?”
“The ones in the china cabinets in the dining room.”
“Oh, no.” Miss Sorrel blinked. “All of them?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“My dolls?”
Lis knew Miss Sorrel meant the dolls she’d made herself. “All of them, except . . .” Lis nodded to Vanessa, who showed Miss Sorrel the two dolls she’d brought with her—Lis’s doll that Vanessa had brought home in her suitcase and the doll Maggie Richards had brought them. Vanessa sat them side by side on the bed, and as if in character the one in pristine condition sat stiff and upright while the other one, battered and soiled, flopped forward onto its face.
Miss Sorrel reached for Lis’s doll. “My first.” She could have been referring to Lis or to the doll. “I was pregnant with Janey when Evelyn and I took a class in ceramics. It’s an ancient art form, porcelain. The Chinese were making it thousands of years ago. So delicate”—she ran her fingertips over the doll’s face—“and responsive to the touch. I made four different heads before it felt right.”
“Three.” The voice from the doorway was Evelyn’s. She didn’t hesitate but marched right in. She was dressed in her nurse’s uniform. “Don’t you remember how frustrated you were at first, trying to capture Lissie’s essence?”
“Was I?” Miss Sorrel said.
“When you did Janey, you got it on the first go. You never needed another do-over, right up until the end when we stopped making them.”
“No, I never did,” Miss Sorrel said. “Lis has been telling me about the robbery.”
Evelyn gave a somber nod. “All those years we’ve been collecting. It’s a devastating loss.”
“I know,” Miss Sorrel said. “You and I handpicked every one of those dolls, didn’t we, dear? I think they mean even more to you than they do to me. And then there are the dolls we made.”
“Irreplaceable,” Evelyn said.
Vanessa asked, “Why did you stop making dolls?”
“Well,” Miss Sorrel said. She and Evelyn exchanged a look.
Lis realized that she had no idea, either, when or why Miss Sorrel and Evelyn had stopped making dolls. She knew she’d been a spectacularly moody teen, preoccupied with her own angst and feeling like the perpetual odd girl out at school. Her brothers had left for college and her father spent all day at the marina playing poker and drinking, if you’d asked Miss Sorrel. If you’d asked him, he’d have said he was running Woody’s Charters. Schmoozing was an essential part of doing business.
Most afternoons Lis would come home from school, slam her way into the house, grab a snack, and race upstairs to her room where she’d turn up some music, preferably something Miss Sorrel found horrifying, open the window, and smoke. At the time, it never would have occurred to her that her mother did anything that wasn’t motivated by a firm determination to prevent Lis from doing exactly what she wanted.
“After Janey disappeared,” Miss Sorrel said, “they ran pictures in the paper of her and her doll. A reporter wrote a feature story about us. Local interest or some nonsense. We started to get calls. I needed to keep busy, and it felt like a blessing to at least be able to make dolls that made little girls happy. Before we knew it we had more orders than we could handle. We were even talking about renting studio space and getting a second kiln and hiring, and then—”
Evelyn interrupted. “It was really a business decision. Too much of a good thing, I reckon you could say that. We just weren’t prepared for any kind of volume. We were getting orders, but it was too much for the two of us to manage, and, well . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“But that’s not why we stopped,” Miss Sorrel said.
“Sorrel,” Evelyn said, a not
e of warning in her voice.
“Evelyn. You know as well as I do that it was not a business decision. Good heavens, it’s past time to bring it into the open.”
The room fell silent as Evelyn and Miss Sorrel stared across the room at each other. Evelyn stood with her hands on her hips, Miss Sorrel with her arms folded across her chest. Lis had rarely seen them so much as disagree, and when they did, Miss Sorrel was usually the one to cave. So she was surprised when it was Evelyn who said, “All right then. If you must. You never could be talked out of a thing once you set your mind to it.”
Miss Sorrel said, “One of the last dolls we worked on was for a darling, rambunctious little three-year-old.” Her gaze traveled from Evelyn to Lis to Vanessa, stopping at Frank. “Her name was Abigail Verner.”
Abby Verner. Of course Lis recognized the name. Everyone who’d lived in the area in the late ’80s would have known it. There’d been signs hanging all over town: find abby, with the police hotline number. Abby herself stared down from the posters, her dark haunting eyes shadowed by a fringe of bangs. There had been buttons and bumper stickers. All through town, yellow ribbons hung in store windows, on front doors, on lampposts, on car antennas.
“Her family lived on Lady’s Island,” Miss Sorrel went on. “They had five little boys, and her parents had been over the moon when they had a little girl.”
Lis knew that. A picture of Abby’s family had run in the paper. Lis had stared at Abby’s older siblings and wondered if one of them had been charged with watching Abby.
“But by the time we’d finished the doll,” Miss Sorrel said, her voice breaking, “there was no little girl to give her to.”
Evelyn said, “Abby vanished. Right out from under their noses.”
“Just like Janey, she was taken from her own yard.” Miss Sorrel gazed up at the ceiling, her eyes filled with tears. Evelyn handed her a tissue and she dabbed at the corners of her eyes.