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

  Miss Sorrel had never been a particularly warm or physically affectionate mother to Lis, but she’d made up for that with the care and attention she’d lavished on Vanessa. Vanessa had been desperately upset, bewildered at having to leave their nice split-level suburban home in New Jersey and her friends. Lis hadn’t been able to see beyond her own anger at Brad. Child support dried up barely a year after the divorce, so Lis had had no choice but to come home. Tail between her legs, she’d crawled back to Bonsecours. She’d told herself it was temporary.

  Miss Sorrel had thrown herself into taking care of Vanessa. Maybe it was because having Vanessa and Lis there helped her feel less alone after Woody’s death. Or maybe it was Miss Sorrel’s second chance—Vanessa had been the same age as Janey when she’d disappeared. With her fine fair hair and pale complexion, Vanessa resembled Janey. Whatever the reason, Miss Sorrel went to every one of Vanessa’s dance recitals, school plays, track meets, and softball games. Came with Lis to Augusta to cheer Vanessa on as she pitched her team to a Dixie League district championship.

  She’s no trouble at all, Miss Sorrel used to say of Vanessa, even when Vanessa was a surly, hormone-riddled teen. It’s as if God sent her to me.

  Of course God had nothing to do with the reason Lis had had to move home. It was Brad who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Lis still stung with humiliation remembering the phone call that ended her marriage. She couldn’t even recall why she’d called Brad at work that day. The receptionist had answered. Brad was on the phone. Did Lis want to wait? They’d gotten to chatting, as they often did. Brad’s job had him frequently tied up on the phone.

  “You always sound so nice, Mrs. Strenger.” Then there’d been a long pause. Later Lis wondered if the woman had stopped to consider what she was about to do, the thing that put a hairpin turn in Vanessa’s life. “I can connect you now,” she’d said with a little too much forced cheer, or so it seemed in retrospect. Click.

  Then “Mmmmm, that sounds . . . interesting.” A woman’s soft, warm voice. “We’ll have to try it that way.” Lis had felt herself flush and she almost hung up, thinking there’d been a mistake.

  But the chuckling she heard in response was oh so familiar. Then the voice she knew by heart said, “Think about it. Maybe sometime this weekend? I’ll call you if I can escape.”

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too, Honey Buns.”

  Honey Buns? Lis had stared openmouthed at the receiver. Honey Buns was Brad’s pet name for Lis. Later she laughed about it—she’d always known the guy hadn’t an original thought in his pea brain. But at the time, she’d found herself on her knees, doubled over and silently sobbing, the receiver on the floor beside her.

  Weeks later she was in the kitchen of the house she and Brad had already put on the market, her hands coated in newsprint as she bubble-wrapped martini glasses that she’d much rather have been smashing into their faux fireplace, packing for the move into a smaller house that soon she wouldn’t be able to afford.

  She still couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. Never questioned the long runs Brad took. Never suspected something was up when he’d come home after an hour and a half looking flushed but barely winded and proclaiming himself too sweaty and stinky for her to get near him. Heading straight for the shower.

  A week after that fatal phone call, she’d followed Brad when he went out for his run. Six blocks from the house, he ducked into a phone booth. Made a call. Came out and waited until a red Mustang pulled up.

  He was so damned sure of himself, so focused on smoothing his hair and sucking in his gut as he waited, he didn’t notice Lis standing out in the open, brazenly watching him from under a tree across the street. When the door of the Mustang had opened, Crystal Gayle’s torchy voice pulsed from inside. After Brad got in and the car took off, Lis was stuck with “the sound of good-bye” in her head.

  And that was the beginning of the end, or the beginning of a new beginning as Miss Sorrel tried to reassure her. But then, her mother had always been at best lukewarm about Brad. All I want is for you to be happy.

  Well, Lis hadn’t been particularly happy with Brad. But was she any happier without him? She glanced back at the house where she’d lived with her mother for the last twenty years. Lis was grateful for the home her mother had opened up to them, grateful for the job she’d been able to step into when Miss Sorrel gave up managing Woody’s Charters. She was even more grateful that her mother never once rubbed her nose in her own neediness. It was only lately that she felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if her mother and this house with a hole in it that would never heal over were suction-cupped to her chest.

  Binty hoisted herself and scratched at the ground. Gazed up at Lis with those soulful eyes and wagged her tail. A dog’s life seemed a much more straightforward affair, Lis thought. She bent over, scratched Binty’s chin, and nuzzled the dog’s forehead.

  Just then there was a cry from the house and Miss Richards burst out onto the porch, her long hair flying.

  Miss Sorrel pressed up against the screen door. “Come back here, you . . . you . . . this very instant. Please”—her voice turned plaintive—“come back.”

  As Miss Richards blew past Lis, the woman tripped over her own feet and went sprawling. Binty came at her, snapping and snarling as she scrambled upright. Binty, who’d never so much as snapped at a squirrel. Lis grabbed the dog’s collar and held her back.

  Miss Sorrel came out and stood on the porch. She was holding the doll. “You have to tell me. Where did you get this?”

  “I told you. I found it.”

  “Where? When? Please. You have to—” Miss Sorrel started down the stairs.

  “Keep away.” The woman backed away.

  Within arm’s reach now, Miss Sorrel held the doll out to her. Pleading. “Who gave it to you?”

  “No one.”

  “Then who sent you here?” Miss Sorrel shoved the doll into the woman’s chest.

  “No one sent me!” The woman jerked the doll free from Miss Sorrel’s hands. “Leave me alone.” She raised the doll and threw it against a brick porch step. It landed face-first with a sickening crack.

  The woman pushed past Miss Sorrel, ran for her car, got in, and slammed the door. Miss Sorrel went over and beat on the side window. “Where did you get it? Please. I have to know.”

  Tires squealed and smoke poured from the tailpipe as the car roared off, leaving behind the smell of burning rubber and spent fuel. Miss Sorrel just stood there staring down the street, trembling and breathing heavily, her mouth set in a grimace of fury and frustration.

  Lis picked up the doll and sat on the front steps. She lifted its gown, the fabric brittle with age. The smell of mold and camphor rose from the doll’s soft body as it stared with blank eyes up at the sky-blue porch ceiling. Its forehead now had a hole in the center, with cracks radiating out, but its one bisque arm and both legs were intact.

  Miss Sorrel sank down on the step beside Lis. She reached across and turned over one of the doll’s feet. Lis felt a frisson of recognition when she saw the mark impressed in the heel: a leaf, oval in shape, smooth edged with a vein running down the center. A sorrel leaf.

  “It’s one of yours,” Lis said.

  “Not just one of mine. Don’t you recognize it?”

  “I . . .” Lis fingered the stained christening gown. Was there something familiar about the doll? Its porcelain head was coated with greasy dirt, but Lis could see how subtly it was modeled and painted so that the flesh looked soft and plump, dimpled like a real child’s. A narrow pink satin ribbon was tied in what was left of the fine hair in its fair wig.

  Miss Sorrel took the doll from Lis and marched, shoulders first, up the steps with only slight hesitations to accommodate her weak knee. Lis followed her into the workroom where she laid the doll on the table and turned on the overhead light.

  Miss Sorrel pulled from a drawer one of the soft cloth diapers she used for cleaning dolls. She dipped the diaper in wa
ter and a bit of Ivory soap and gently removed greasy dirt from the doll’s face. Then she stood back.

  The cracked head and milky eyes distorted the doll’s face. Was this Janey’s doll?

  Lis went and got the framed picture taken of the family Christmas morning two years before Janey disappeared. The boys held their prized gifts: a dump truck for Davey, a radio for Sam, and a guitar for Michael. Standing beside five-year-old Lis was Janey, a sturdy toddler wearing a blanket sleeper. Lis compared the doll that Janey hugged to her chest to the doll Miss Richards had smashed against their front steps.

  Blond curls. Half smile and dimple in her chin. And something you could barely see in the photograph—underneath the doll’s unnerving, sightless eyes were the faintest of shadows. Lis’s grandmother had had them. All the women in her family did, smudges under their eyes that grew darker with age and couldn’t be washed away.

  Still, Lis wasn’t convinced that it was the same doll. But Miss Sorrel seemed to harbor no doubts. She cradled the doll and stroked its fair hair. “I always knew one day she’d come home.”

  3

  Vanessa Strenger barely noticed the porcelain doll that sat on top of her bureau as she got ready to head into her night job. The doll had been her mother’s, and it sat in whatever bedroom in whatever apartment Vanessa had lived since she’d left home for college, prying herself loose from her mother’s protective grasp. She thought of the doll as her mother’s avatar, a benign if suffocating spirit who watched over Vanessa, fueled by anxiety and the best of intentions.

  Tonight, nine years and four moves since Vanessa had left home, if that simpering porcelain-faced doll’s eyes had blinked open and she’d started bawling, Vanessa would not have noticed. She was that exhausted. She’d kept herself awake until late the night before and gotten up early that morning so she’d be thoroughly sleep-deprived by the time she arrived for her shift at the sleep study center. Sleep deprivation, in particular a lack of REM sleep, was a surefire way to induce vivid dreams, and vivid dreams were her bread and butter.

  She tied the waist of her soft blue scrubs that doubled as comfy pajamas. Nuked a slice of frozen pizza and scarfed it down with a few swallows of tap water. Ran a brush through her long hair and fastened it back with a banana clip. More out of habit than vanity, she dabbed concealer under her eyes to mask the dark circles she had even when she wasn’t wasted.

  Ten minutes later she was in the car and on her way. She hummed to herself as she drove, determined to stay awake as she kept up with sparse I-95 traffic. She’d hooked up a camera sensor over her rearview mirror and rigged it to an alarm that would beep if her head bobbed or her eyelids closed for more than a blink or two. The alarm didn’t go off, but only because she dug nail-shaped dents in her arm to keep herself awake. By the time she pulled into the parking lot behind the Melbourne Inn and parked under the lone streetlight, it was just shy of midnight.

  The vast, nearly empty parking lot and the four-story brick building felt a lot more like your average anonymous motel off the interstate than it did a country inn. Vanessa scooped her cell phone off the passenger seat. No more messages from her mother. When Vanessa was little, her mother used to creep into her bedroom in the dead of night and poke her to make sure she was alive.

  Vanessa dropped the phone into her purse and got out of the car. Mist had settled over a few forlorn piles of snow plowed into the far corners of a lot that had been optimistically cleared for crowds that were a memory only, now that a massive conference center had been built in the heart of downtown Providence.

  Zipping her fleece vest, Vanessa crossed the parking lot. The soles of her clogs echoed on the macadam. She knew she was in no danger, but the empty darkness, clammy cold, and silence felt eerie. Her heart pounded as she ran the final fifty feet and up the back steps. She pressed the intercom button and waited for the security guard to buzz her in.

  The door didn’t unlock. Vanessa rang again. Still nothing. If the guard had fallen asleep again, she’d have to walk all the way around and bang on the front door. She pressed the button one more time, waved and grinned like an idiot at the security camera that pointed down at her from over the door. Finally, there was a buzz and the lock clicked open.

  Vanessa’s glasses fogged as she stepped inside. Beyond the small vestibule, the elevator stood open. It had been a year since University Sleep Study Institute had taken over the lower floor of the inn and still the landlord hadn’t installed the promised engraved brass sign by the elevator. Instead, a hand-lettered card taped to the wall barely assured visitors that they’d come to the right place. Made the Institute feel like an outpost of Amateur Hour. Fortunately, dealing with the Institute’s landlord or its image wasn’t part of her job description.

  Vanessa stepped in and pressed B. The elevator doors slid shut and the car descended. She leaned against the wall and rolled her head back. The vertebrae and tendons in her neck creaked. Her shoulders ached. She was beyond tired. Survey data shows, intoned the academician’s voice in her head, that the sleep-deprived are far more likely to experience vivid dreams.

  Far more likely? What did that mean, anyway? It was the kind of squishy analysis that dream researchers could have gotten away with once upon a time, back when dream research dwelled in the borderland between real and parascience and when the word dream in a research proposal more or less guaranteed rejection. Now dream research was hot and legit.

  The elevator stopped, bounced, and the door started to slide open, then stopped, as if undecided. Vanessa wedged her hand in the opening and tried to nudge the door along, impatient. If she pressed too hard an alarm would go off, waking up patients who’d managed to get to sleep and ruining that night’s data. She eased up and the door opened of its own accord.

  Vanessa stepped into the hall. The cooler moist air smelled faintly of mildew. Beyond an artificial rubber tree growing out of fake sphagnum moss, doors lined the corridor. A housekeeping cart laden with towels and sundries stood at the far end.

  The Institute’s office, a suite next to the elevator, had a sliding window to the hall. patients check in here read a sign. Through the window, Vanessa could see Gary Corrigan, the sleep center’s administrator, leaning back in a chair with his feet up on his desk. If that camera alarm in her car were watching him, it would be going off. He was out cold.

  Vanessa rapped lightly on the glass. Gary scrambled upright and stared blankly in her direction. He stood and groped on the desk for his wire-rimmed glasses, put them on, and looked again. Gave a weary wave and let her in.

  The office was furnished with two desks and chairs and some file cabinets. Oversized video monitors mounted on the wall were lit up, each with a bank of video feeds and readouts tracing brain waves, heartbeats, and eye movements. The air smelled of stale popcorn and burned coffee.

  “Hey, Doc,” Gary said, taking a step back. He looked at her, his head tilted. “You okay? You look—”

  “Wiped. I know.”

  “You working or sleeping tonight?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Vanessa nonanswered. She grabbed a blank intake form and started to fill it out. name. Vanessa Strenger. referring physician. She skipped that field, because there was no way to code self. Besides, she wasn’t that kind of doctor.

  She skipped over the rest of the questions because she didn’t have symptoms or a clinical issue to be addressed. Then signed her name at the bottom, giving her consent to be wired up, plugged in, and monitored for the next eight hours. She handed the form to Gary. “I’m so tired, I can barely see straight. Hoping to conk right out.”

  He rubbed his face and gave a weak smile. Under black stubble, his skin was as pasty as the underbelly of a flounder.

  “You don’t look too great yourself,” she said. “Baby keeping you guys up?”

  Gary straightened, tucked in his shirttail, and adjusted his belt below a growing paunch. He had a good excuse. He had a five-month-old colicky baby at home and he was working nights here, all while struggling to
finish his dissertation. Meanwhile, his wife, Kathleen, a state cop, had exhausted her maternity leave and returned to work. Vanessa had filled in for Gary numerous times because Kathleen was tied up at work and he had to go home and take care of the baby. I owe you big-time, he’d say. And now he was turning a blind eye to how she was using the sleep lab.

  He looked at her form. Frowned. Any doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient. She knew how that went. But she wasn’t treating herself. She was also using the lab’s resources to develop a technique for directed dreaming, ammunition for a grant proposal that would support another year of research.

  Vanessa avoided Gary’s gaze as she dropped her purse and overnight bag on her desk and pulled a clipboard from its slot on the wall. “So what’ve we got?” She flipped through the intake sheets. Five patients were booked for sleep study that night, all of them signed in and bedded down. She’d make six.

  Polysomnography testing had come a long way. Instead of patients having to spend the night pinned on their backs with the suction cups of a Holter monitor adhered to their chests and wires monitoring brain waves spackled to their scalps, they could sleep more or less normally with just a belt clipped around the chest and a finger guard measuring blood oxygen. An electrode at the outer edge of each eye tracked eye movement. A breath sensor hooked over the ears and taped beneath the nose like Hitler’s mustache completed the picture. Wires from all the devices plugged into a small, cell-phone-like computer strapped to the patient’s arm. If the patient turned over, everything turned over with him.

  Still, it was amazing that anyone actually fell asleep with all that rigging. A glance at the video feeds and sine-wave readouts of tonight’s guests showed that most of them already had.

  In room 102, right next door, was George Cleveland. Age sixty-seven. Height five eleven, two hundred ten pounds. Truck driver. Insomnia could be a lethal problem in his line of work. The video feed showed him lying on his back, his eyes closed. His EEG tracings were jagged. Asleep, but not deeply asleep.