You'll Never Know Dear: A Novel of Suspense Page 7

  As they drove along the river’s edge, the smell of low tide nearly did her in again. It was one of those smells you got used to when you lived with it, and Lord knew she’d lived with it most of her life. But somehow the stay in the hospital had reset her scent detector. She sat rigid, her arm gripping the door, trying not to gag, grateful that Vanessa didn’t pepper her with questions on the ride home.

  As soon as they pulled up in front of the house, Lis noticed the broken window alongside the front door. Their rescuers must have had to break in, though she wasn’t sure why. The door hadn’t been locked. Never have, not fixing to start doing it now, was Miss Sorrel’s position on that subject.

  Vanessa turned off the engine. “Before we go in,” she said, turning to face Lis, “I need to tell you something.”

  Please, not Binty, Lis thought.

  “It’s about the dolls,” Vanessa said. “Someone broke in and stole them.”

  Lis stared at the front door. At the broken window. Not a firefighter, but a burglar had done that? Assumed the door would be locked because that was what people did.

  “All of them?” Lis said, even though that was ridiculous. Someone would have had to back a U-Haul up to the house and it would have taken most of the night to load them all.

  Vanessa swallowed. “They took all the dolls from the china cabinets in the dining room.”

  Lis’s stomach dropped. It occurred to her that before going to bed, Miss Sorrel might have put Janey’s doll in a coveted spot in one of those cabinets. Could it have gotten scooped up by burglars who’d only known enough to target the dolls that were on display behind glass? The other dolls were rare and valuable, for sure. But Janey’s doll, which was of no value to anyone but Miss Sorrel, was irreplaceable and priceless for the promise it held.

  Determined to find out for herself, Lis opened the car door, got out, and started up the walk, reluctantly taking the arm Vanessa offered her as she climbed the front steps. She noticed the charred smell the moment she stepped onto the front porch. Through the front door. Through the living room and into the dining room.

  Lis went limp with relief when she found the doll Miss Richards had brought them sitting on a shelf in one of the china cabinets. Thank God. Beside the damaged doll sat another Miss Sorrel doll, this one in good condition. Lis recognized her own Miss Sorrel doll. She pulled it from the shelf.

  “Whatever made you bring this home?” she asked Vanessa.

  “Don’t laugh. Grandma Sorrel came to me in a dream.”

  Lis laughed. Knowing how Vanessa dismissed anything that smacked of parapsychology, this seemed highly unlikely.

  “Really,” Vanessa said. “I just didn’t know why. Now I get it.”

  “Well, I’m glad you packed it. It will make all this”—Lis gestured to the empty shelves—“a tiny bit less painful.”

  Lis closed her eyes. She could see Alice in Wonderland. Judy Garland. The baby Dionne Quints. The Cherokee rag dolls. And more, different forms from different decades and centuries even, each of them one of the very best examples of its kind. And, of course, Miss Sorrel’s collection of dolls she’d crafted herself.

  Vanessa said, “How are we going to tell her? She’ll be devastated.”

  “We’ll just tell her. She’s a lot stronger than she looks.” Lis’s gaze traveled through the doorway into the kitchen. She was relieved that the high shelves were still packed with dolls.

  “Evelyn doesn’t think any of the other dolls were taken,” Vanessa said.

  “There’s that at least,” Lis said.

  “She told me about the other doll.” She gestured toward the broken doll, now sitting alone on its shelf. “And the ads Grandma’s been posting.”

  “That’s the first doll anyone’s brought us that’s remotely—” A lump formed in Lis’s throat and her vision blurred. “Your grandmother always insisted that somehow she’d know if Janey was dead.”

  Lis had given up long ago on finding Janey, though from time to time she’d see a fellow customer at the BI-LO or a pedestrian walking a dog along the river walk, feel a tremor of recognition and wonder—could that be her lost sister?

  Vanessa waited a moment before she asked, “Do you think this is Janey’s doll?”

  Lis sighed. “Your grandma’s the expert, and she thinks it is. She was sure of it.”

  Vanessa didn’t say anything. Lis realized she was giving her an odd look. “What?”

  “Evelyn says she thought at first that it was Janey’s doll,” Vanessa said. “Now she’s not sure. She—”

  Lis cut her off. “Whose instincts do you trust on this? Your grandmother’s or Evelyn’s?”

  Vanessa paused for a moment. “Honestly? I’d have to say Evelyn’s. Grandma Sorrel desperately wants it to be Janey’s doll. Whose do you trust?”

  “Your grandmother’s. Absolutely.” Lis pulled the damaged doll from the shelf. She didn’t need her glasses to see that the doll was in even worse shape than she remembered. Its wig was threadbare and the soiled pink hair ribbon had fallen down around its neck. The spiderweb of cracks starting in the doll’s forehead now extended across the nose to split its upper lip. “And Evelyn’s. For sure.”

  “They can’t both be right.”

  “No,” Lis said. She put both dolls back in the cabinet and pressed the doors shut. “Which means we need to find the woman who brought the doll. Before Grandma Sorrel comes home, we need to find out whatever we can about how she got that doll.” Lis narrowed her eyes. Thirtyish. Long dark hair. “She had a tattoo. Right here.” Lis touched the small of her back. “Harley wings.”

  “You saw her tattoo?”

  “Don’t give me that look. Her shirt rode up when she bent over.”

  “So we’ll just ride around town and ask anyone about my age with long hair to bend over and lift her top,” Vanessa said with a wink. “A name would help.”

  “Miss Richards.”

  Vanessa rolled her eyes. “First name?”

  “She didn’t say . . .” Then it occurred to Lis that the woman had called for directions and Miss Sorrel had called her back. “I don’t know her first name, but her number should still be in the phone.”

  12

  It should have been easy. Vanessa left her mother, wrapped up in a crocheted afghan and napping on the couch, and picked up the kitchen phone. When she pressed caller ID, the first number that came up had a local area code. That was probably it. She pressed redial and waited. The call connected, but after six rings the line went dead. Miss Richards wasn’t answering. Apparently she wasn’t taking messages, either. Vanessa tried calling the number from her cell phone, thinking maybe Miss Richards was screening her calls. Still no answer.

  Vanessa got her grandmother’s laptop from the pantry. Grandma Sorrel had never been old school about business matters. Hers had been one of the very first small businesses to set up a storefront on Etsy.

  It took a few minutes for the computer to wake up and connect to Wi-Fi. Vanessa pulled up a reverse phone lookup and typed in the number from caller ID.

  We did not find a match came back.

  Vanessa typed “Richards” and “Bonsecours” in the White Pages website search bar. Back came sixty matches. When she widened the search to the entire state, back came more than two thousand matches. And it wasn’t inconceivable that Miss Richards, despite her local area code, had driven there from Georgia where there were five thousand more.

  “Why don’t you run the plate?” Lis’s voice over her shoulder startled Vanessa. She turned around. Her mother’s face was creased with sleep.

  “You got her license plate?”

  “She was driving a junker. That’s why I noticed the plate. P-O-J-N-K.” Lis pulled up a chair next to Vanessa as she brought up South Carolina’s DMV website. But “running the plate” was not the slam dunk they made it seem on TV. Vanessa found the car registration database but couldn’t get past the opening screens. No, she was not police or an insurer or a tow company or an officer of
the court, and hard as she tried she could find no sign-in for nosy citizen. Something called the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act—apparently an analog to health care’s HIPAA—barred the curious public from snooping through their fellow citizens’ data. She supposed she should be grateful for that, but right now it was damned inconvenient.

  “Can’t you hack into it?” Lis said.

  Vanessa laughed. “Not even in my dreams.”

  Just then there was a tap at the kitchen window. Vanessa looked up to see Evelyn standing outside and peering in at them.

  Vanessa waved at her and a moment later Evelyn was backing into the kitchen carrying a napkin-covered basket. Smelled like freshly baked corn bread. Binty followed Evelyn in. Vanessa crouched to pet Binty and accept kisses all over her face.

  “What are you two up to?” Evelyn asked as she prepared three plates, loading them with ham and coleslaw and corn bread from the basket.

  “We’re trying to track down that woman who brought over the doll,” Lis said. “Find out how she got it. Before Miss Sorrel gets home and we have to tell her about the robbery.”

  Evelyn looked down her nose at the computer. Vanessa gave Binty one last pat and sat down. DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES was emblazoned across the top of the computer screen. “You’re using that to find her?” Evelyn asked.

  “Trying to,” Vanessa said.

  “You know, you can’t just run a license plate.” Evelyn’s steely gaze passed from Lis to Vanessa to the computer. “Only someone in law enforcement can do that.”

  “A police official?” Vanessa said, glancing over at her mother. “I wonder where we could find one of those.”

  “A police officer won’t help you break the law,” Evelyn said.

  Lis sighed. “You’re probably right. Frank’s a pretty straight arrow. But if we can’t look up the plate, we can at least look for the car. I’ll recognize it. And it had a USC parking sticker.”

  “What you’re talking about,” Evelyn said, “is stalking.” She folded her arms across her bosom. “Chasing after a complete stranger who answered a want ad because she thought she was going to cash in with a doll she picked up in some garbage heap.” Evelyn’s gaze traveled from Lis to Vanessa. “It’s not your call. Let Miss Sorrel be the one who decides what to do next.”

  “But—” Vanessa started to protest, but Lis shushed her.

  Lis said, “Evelyn, I appreciate your concern, but we’re not going to wait. Miss Sorrel thought it was Janey’s doll.”

  “Sorrel thought?” With a clatter, Evelyn put the plates on the kitchen table. “When I talked to her, she wasn’t sure at all.”

  “Well, when I talked to her—” Lis started.

  Evelyn put up a hand. “Before you go haring off on some wild-goose chase, at least find out if it’s Janey’s doll. Run a DNA test.”

  “On the doll?” Vanessa said.

  “On the wig,” Evelyn said.

  “Evelyn, you’re brilliant,” Lis said. Spots of pink appeared on Evelyn’s pale cheeks. “Of course. Miss Sorrel made all her dolls’ wigs out of real hair. So if that’s Janey’s doll, that’s Janey’s hair. Hair has DNA.”

  If you can’t go over, go under, around, or through. That had always been Grandma Sorrel’s advice to Vanessa whenever she was discouraged. If they couldn’t look up the address in the DMV database, and Officer Frank wasn’t about to bend the rules, there might still be another way to track down Miss Richards.

  Vanessa excused herself to go wash her hands before eating, something of which she knew Evelyn would approve. She turned on the water in the bathroom and took out her cell phone. It was after six and Gary’s shift started at eight. He’d be at home having dinner.

  Gary’s wife, Kathleen, answered. Vanessa could hear the baby crying in the background. “Kathleen, I need a huge favor. Can you run a South Carolina license plate for me?” Before Kathleen could tell her no, she added, “I know you’re not supposed to, and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I need to track down someone who might know what happened to my mother’s sister who disappeared forty years ago. She’d just turned four.” Vanessa paused, hoping Kathleen would think about what rules she’d be willing to bend if her own little girl disappeared. “If you can’t, you can’t. I completely understand.”

  “Have you asked the local—” Kathleen started.

  “I can’t get them to take it seriously.” Vanessa felt a small pang of guilt, since this was a bald-faced lie.

  “I really shouldn’t.” There was a long pause before Kathleen added, “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  When Vanessa got back to the kitchen, Lis was at the table eating and Evelyn was sitting across from her, expounding. “Nursing. Psssh. It’s not like the old days.” This was a rant Vanessa had heard before. “We wore starched white uniform dresses, white hose, and a cap. Clickety-clack, up and down the hallways in white clinic shoes, not sneakers.” Evelyn picked a piece of corn bread from her plate and nibbled on it. “Now they show up to work in pink and purple pajamas. Wear their caps only on Halloween, and even then they don’t know how to pin them to keep them from falling off their heads.”

  Vanessa settled at the table to enjoy her dinner.

  After Evelyn left, Vanessa dried the dishes that her mother was washing. “Why’s she so dead set against us looking for the woman who brought the doll?”

  “Because she’d rather stir butter than eat it,” Lis said.

  “Seriously?”

  Lis turned off the water, wrung out the dishcloth, turned and leaned her back against the sink. “Giving her the benefit of the doubt? She and your grandma have been so close for so many years. She’s seen what’s happened every time there’s a flicker of hope. The crushing disappointment after. She doesn’t want to see her hurt again.”

  “Suppose I can find out where that woman lives. What do you think Grandma would want us to do?”

  “Reckon she’d . . .” Lis balled up the dishcloth and threw it into the sink. “Doesn’t what I want matter? Ever?”

  That took Vanessa aback. Lis usually left making choices to Grandma Sorrel and Vanessa herself. But Lis had been Janey’s sister. She’d been the one saddled with responsibility for watching her.

  “Fair enough,” Vanessa said. “What do you want?”

  “I want to find that bitch and make her tell us where she got that doll.” Bitch? Vanessa had never, ever heard her mother use that word. “And then I want to find out where those people got it. And then—” Lis hiccupped. “I want to find out what happened to Janey.”

  Vanessa tried to put her arms around her but Lis pushed her away.

  “USC,” Lis said, brushing away tears with the back of her hand. “The heck with waiting for an address. Let’s start there.”

  13

  The next morning, Lis woke up to find that Vanessa was already up and had hot oatmeal waiting for her. She’d printed out a map of the local USC campus and highlighted all the parking areas.

  Before they left, Vanessa called the hospital to check on Miss Sorrel. She was out of intensive care and in a private room, and Evelyn was already there in the room with her. “We’ll come over at around one to spell you,” Lis told Evelyn.

  Evelyn said that would be fine, adding, “You won’t be out there looking for that—”

  Lis interrupted with, “See you soon, and thanks again for the delicious supper.” She hung up quickly. She would have hated to have had to lie.

  While Vanessa dealt with the contractor who came to measure new windows for the workroom, Lis washed and blow-dried her hair, penciled her eyebrows, brushed on some blush, and applied concealer under her eyes. Looking normal would take her a few steps closer to feeling normal.

  Before she came downstairs, she checked her e-mail. She hadn’t checked it since Monday, and it had been four days since she’d checked messages for Woody’s Charters. Cap’n Jack had called to offer his help and to reassure her that he had everything under control. Fortunately, January was not th
eir busy time of year, and Cap’n Jack had been doing his job far longer than she’d been doing hers. He’d been the first employee Woody and Miss Sorrel had hired. He knew his way, better than anyone, around every nearby waterway. After Woody died of a heart attack in his fifties, Cap’n Jack took over managing the back office, too, until Miss Sorrel was strong enough to step back in. Lis had been in college, and Woody’s death had rocked both her and Miss Sorrel’s worlds.

  “You look rested,” Vanessa told Lis when she came back downstairs.

  Still, Lis’s hand shook a little as she poured herself some coffee. “Amazing what a good night’s sleep will do. It helps, knowing you’re here.”

  Vanessa planted a loud wet kiss on Lis’s face. “Hey, you were there for me when I had the measles and mumps and mono.”

  The drive to the compact local outpost of the sprawling university took fifteen minutes in what passed for rush-hour traffic in Bonsecours. Just after the street took a hard right at the river, a sign marked the start of the USC satellite campus. A hodgepodge of modern brick, cinder block, and historic buildings was set back from the street across from a neighborhood of modest, decades-old houses. Lis had driven past many times but had never actually been on USC’s grounds.

  Vanessa pulled into the first driveway. Friday morning classes must have been in session because the parking lot was full. Slowly they wove their way through the dirt-packed lot, looking for the car.

  “Dirty white sedan with its trunk held down with a bungee cord,” Lis reminded Vanessa.

  But no cars with jerry-rigged trunks were parked in the first lot. Or in the lots that surrounded the adjacent complex of institutionally bland buildings. Vanessa drove through a narrow alley between buildings and back out onto the street. There was just one more parking entrance, but instead of pulling into it Vanessa pulled over to the curb. “Oh sh— . . . sugar.”

  Lis turned to see the blue lights of a police car stopped close behind them. What was that all about? Vanessa hadn’t run a red light. Hadn’t been speeding. If anything she’d been driving too slow.