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

  Vanessa reached into the backseat for her purse and pulled out her wallet. Reached across Lis into the glove box for the rental company’s plastic pouch of documents.

  A tap on the window. Vanessa rolled it down and handed out her license.

  “Vanessa?” Frank Ames said, bending over and looking across at Lis. He tapped his cap. “Elisabeth.”

  “Hey, Frank,” Lis said. “What’d we do?”

  “It’s your rear tires.” He handed Vanessa back her driver’s license.

  Lis and Vanessa both got out and walked around to see. Sure enough, both rear tires were nearly flat. Passersby slowed to gawk.

  “It’s a rental car,” Vanessa said.

  “Those tires will just about get you to the gas station. There’s one a little ways up the road.” Frank turned to Lis, giving her a concerned look. “How’s your momma doing this morning? Everything okay? I’m sure she’ll come through this in one piece, sharp as new.”

  Lis had been fine until that moment, but something about that sympathy-laden look of his unraveled her. Her eyes filled with tears. “Better. She’s out of intensive care. But I’m not looking forward to telling her about the burglary.”

  “Evelyn brought me a list of dolls that were taken,” Frank said. “And photographs. That’s much more than we usually have when there’s a burglary.”

  Evelyn was amazing. She must have gone to the police early that morning before she went to the hospital.

  Frank went on. “We’ve issued a crime alert to antique stores and pawnshops and police departments. If anyone tries to move them locally, we’ll know.”

  Lis tried to say I hope so, but the words stuck in her throat. Frank pulled her into a bear hug. He was a full head taller than she, and she burrowed into his chest, inhaling the smell of coffee and pencil shavings. When a passing car tooted, Frank let her go. Lis brushed away a tear and tried to ignore the stare that Vanessa was giving her.

  “I thought you were on desk duty this week,” Lis said. “What are you doing working this side of town?”

  He straightened his tie. “I was fixin’ to ask you ladies the same question. You thinking about goin’ back to school?”

  Lis and Vanessa exchanged a look. Lis could hear Evelyn’s smug voice, A police officer won’t help you break the law. She broke into a cold sweat, even though they weren’t doing anything illegal.

  “We’re on our way to visit Miss Sorrel,” Vanessa said, filling the momentary silence. Not a lie exactly.

  “Hospital’s in the other direction,” Frank said. “And I know you’ve been driving in and out of the parking lots here because I’ve been watching you.”

  “You followed us?” Vanessa said.

  “Of course he didn’t follow us.” Lis paused, looking at Frank for confirmation.

  “I did wonder what you were up to,” Frank said. “Why didn’t you tell me about the doll?”

  Lis knew he was referring to the doll Miss Richards had brought them. Evelyn must have told Frank about that, too. “Miss Sorrel ran her ad, as usual,” Lis explained. “We get one or two dolls, every year.” She folded her arms and stared down at Frank’s always shiny boots. “It was the same. As usual.”

  “Only not as usual,” Frank said. “Because this time your mother thought it was Janey’s doll.”

  “How do you know that?” Lis said, though she knew that had to have come from the same source.

  “I want the crime lab to examine it. If it’s the one, this is the first piece of tangible evidence we’ve ever had.” Frank frowned. “Who brought it? Who is she? Where is she? And how did she—”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Lis said. “Her car had a USC parking sticker on it. So we thought—”

  “Whoa.” Frank’s frown deepened. “So you two thought you’d play detective and drive around the campus looking for her car?”

  “I’ll recognize the car. And I wrote down her plate number.”

  “I’m impressed.” Frank took off his hat and scratched his head. He watched as a few cars meandered past. He took out a spiral notebook and a pen and handed it to Lis. “Write it down for me, would you please?”

  Lis wrote down the number and handed the notebook back to him. From inside the car Vanessa’s phone chirped. “Are you going to bring her in?” Lis asked.

  “You bring in the doll,” he said. “I’ll follow up on this.” He closed the notebook. “You need to let the police do their job, Elisabeth. I want to find out where that doll’s been all these years as much as you do.”

  As much as Lis did? That was easy for him to say. Yes, he’d helped with the search from day one, but he’d never actually met Janey. Hadn’t grown up feeling her absence every minute. Hadn’t been afraid to look in a closet or under a bed, terrified of finding her body or the bogeyman who’d come back to grab the other sister, the one that maybe he’d meant to take the first time around. Hadn’t had to endure the curious, often hostile stares Lis had received from strangers who thought they knew better than the police and were convinced that Janey hadn’t been taken. That she’d been killed by someone in the family and then tossed off one of Woody’s sportfishing boats.

  “Maybe it’s time you grew a backbone,” Vanessa said as she started the car and pulled into traffic, heading for the gas station. “He can be awfully patronizing.”

  “Frank?” Lis said, though she knew that was what Vanessa meant.

  Vanessa lowered her voice to a gravelly imitation of Frank’s. “You ladies do need yo-wa protectin’.”

  Lis smiled.

  “You like that about him,” Vanessa said.

  “I find it amusing that you find it so annoying. And yes, I do like it. Because that’s not what all men do.”

  Lis knew Vanessa caught her meaning. Vanessa’s father’s number one priority had been himself.

  “Are you thinking about marrying him?”

  “And you’re always telling me not to ask personal questions.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Maybe. If he ever gets around to asking me. And I’ll appreciate it if you don’t go putting your oar in. Bad enough I have Miss Sorrel’s and Evelyn’s two cents to deal with.”

  “They want you to get married?”

  Lis thought about that for a moment. “Actually, sometimes I think Evelyn wants him for herself.”

  That made Vanessa laugh.

  Lis’s friendship with Frank had grown, simmering and cooling by turns over the years. He’d been a rookie cop when she was seven and Janey disappeared. While Evelyn’s husband, Chief of Police Buck Dumont, tall and barrel-chested with a swagger that proclaimed himself in charge, had come to the house many times, asking her questions, the person she remembered most was newly minted police “Officer Frank.”

  Miss Sorrel had hovered nearby as he asked Lis gently probing questions. What did Janey like to do? Was there anywhere special she liked to hide? What had she been wearing? Had she been crying? Did she have any bruises or Band-Aids? Was she often afraid? Were there any grown-ups who’d taken a special interest in her?

  Officer Frank kept coming by long after the house had been searched attic to cellar, after crews of police officers and volunteers carrying long walking sticks combed the woods behind the house and scoured the river and its many nearby inlets for any sign of Janey or the denim overalls and pink-and-purple-striped top she’d been wearing when she disappeared. Frank had always had a smile for Lis and a lollipop tucked in his pocket, and he gave her a tin deputy badge that she still kept in her jewelry box.

  After Officer Frank ran out of questions and Janey’s trail had gone cold, he’d swing by and talk to Miss Sorrel and Woody, the three of them keeping their voices hushed so Lis couldn’t hear. Eventually those visits dropped off until at last the ripples of Janey’s absence were felt only in their house. In the empty bedroom. In the chair at the dining room table where no one sat. In the photographs that her parents stopped taking.

  Some time after Lis moved back
home after her divorce, Frank started coming around again. Deputy chief of police, though everyone knew Chief Buck Dumont had been grooming him to be his successor. But when Buck died, Frank hadn’t stepped up to apply for the position. If you asked him, and Lis did, he’d say he just didn’t have the stomach for all the bullshit you had to deal with when you rose to the top of that particular fiefdom. He’d rather just keep his head down, do his job, and one day retire and collect his pension, now just a few years away.

  Frank may not have been a world beater, but he was solid and sweet and dependable, everything that Brad was not. And, as he often told her, he’d never given up on finding Janey.

  “Here we are,” Vanessa said, interrupting Lis’s thoughts. She’d pulled into a gas station and parked at the pump. Then she leaned across and showed Lis a message that had come in on her cell. It read:

  MAGGIE RICHARDS 25 PALMETTO COURT BONSECOURS SC.

  “You found Miss Richards?” Lis said. Vanessa nodded. “How?”

  “Don’t ask,” Vanessa said.

  Lis watched as Vanessa pasted the address into her map app and brought up a location about fifteen or twenty minutes west of them. Lis checked her watch. They had plenty of time to deal with the tires, drive over to check out Maggie Richards, and still be at the hospital before Evelyn was expecting them.

  Vanessa got out and went around to the back of the car. Lis got out and joined her. Both rear tires were nearly flat.

  A man in coveralls came over to them. “Can I help you ladies?”

  “The tires,” Vanessa said. “I’m not sure if they need to be repaired or what.”

  He dropped down to have a look. “New tires,” he said, “by the look of them.”

  “It’s a rental,” Vanessa said.

  Lis watched as he had Vanessa roll the car a few feet up and back as he crouched alongside and inspected one tire, then the other. He got back to his feet, wiped his hands with a cloth, and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  “Don’t see any obvious reason why they’d go flat. Better air ’em up, then keep an eye on them. Prob’ly someone let the air out is all.”

  “How can you tell that?” Vanessa asked.

  “Both tires? No obvious puncture? Hard to figure otherwise.”

  Both tires. Lis thought about that a few minutes later as she screwed the cap back on the valve of the second tire she’d finished filling. Was it a random gotcha, a burp in the universe? Or was it someone expressing an opinion? The car did have New Jersey plates and this was South Carolina.

  Lis got back in the car and Vanessa started it up. A few minutes later they were on the highway heading to the address at which Maggie Richards’s car was registered.

  “Mom,” Vanessa said, “can I ask you something?”

  Lis looked across as Vanessa shot her a sideways glance.

  “You never talk about Janey, but you once told me that things weren’t the same after she disappeared.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Not in so many words, but yes.”

  “Janey.” Lis sighed and looked out the window. Usually she left the room whenever her sister’s name came up. Riding in the car, she was trapped. “Before. After. Yeah, things changed. The obvious, of course, like police watching the house and people always looking at me. After all I was the sister. But beyond that, your grandma changed. Before, we used to pile into her lap in the big rocking chair and she’d sing, You are my sunshine.” Lis began to hum the tune. “After, she stopped singing. Stopped rocking. It felt like she closed up, tight as an oyster. Daddy would go to hug her and she’d just stand there with arms stiff at her sides.

  “She didn’t get mad. She didn’t cry. She didn’t . . . anything but what absolutely had to be done. Kept us clean and fed, the house neat as a pin. Barely noticed when the boys used her good sheets to dress up as Sand People and turned her flower bed into a Tatooine battlefield. She even closed down to Evelyn for a while. But Evelyn was persistent. Wouldn’t take no. She’d stop by every few days. An angel food cake. A banana bread. A casserole. Your grandma would take it and then talk to her through the screen door. Drove Evelyn nuts.

  “I think their friendship survived because of the dolls. They kept making them. I realize now how hard it was for my mother. She was doing what she needed to do to get through the day. But she was more like a scarecrow than a person.

  “So, to answer your question, yes, things changed. She changed. Then she changed again when you came along, didn’t she?” Lis reached across and squeezed Vanessa’s arm. “She thawed. Got her heart back.”

  Vanessa said, “You know, it’s an amazing thing. The resilience of the human psyche. How pain can be tamped down and hidden for a lifetime. Grandma Sorrel couldn’t bear the possibility of losing you, too.”

  That simple truth was one that Lis hadn’t understood herself until she’d had Vanessa.

  14

  Palmetto Court turned out to be a mobile home park off bucolic-sounding Meadowlake Drive. Vanessa could smell the “lake,” a swampy affair across the street from a gas station and liquor store. A few scraggly palmettos, their trunks surrounded by whitewashed stones, flanked the entrance to the park.

  Vanessa turned into the narrow lane that ran between rows of single-wides set on concrete slabs. She hit the first speed bump too fast and slowed to the posted speed limit, fifteen miles an hour, as she drove past lots that barely accommodated a mobile home and a driveway. One front yard was planted with a pair of trees, pruned into perfect rounds with plaster bunny rabbits frolicking at their bases. Next door, a red Ford pickup with a bashed-in tailgate sat on tireless rims in a barren yard alongside a nearly windowless mobile home with a massive TV satellite dish hanging off the back. Through the front window you could see a torn shade pulled over a collapsed venetian blind.

  Near the end of the second block, number 25 sat on a tidy barren lot. Vanessa parked in front. The home was basic, not much more than a flatbed shipping container with windows and a door punched in.

  “This place is creepy,” Lis said, giving a shudder. “We could easily have ended up living somewhere like this if it hadn’t been for your grandmother.”

  “Looks as if our Miss Richards isn’t home,” Vanessa said. No car in the driveway. Curtains drawn. “Shall we go see?”

  “Not we. You. If she’s home, she’ll recognize me, and I’m not sure she’d even open the door. Your grandma and I didn’t part with her on the coziest of terms. Binty near tore her to pieces.”

  “Binty?”

  “Surprised me, too.”

  Vanessa opened the car door. The street felt sad, not dangerous. Still, Vanessa had to push herself to get out of the car, and once out she felt extremely exposed. “Mom, get in the driver’s seat, would you?” she said to Lis. “And keep the engine running.”

  Lis came around and took Vanessa’s place at the wheel, cell phone at the ready.

  Pebbles crunched under Vanessa’s feet as she walked up the driveway and across a footpath to wooden steps that led to a side entrance. Alongside the door was a vigorous geranium, a splash of red against the dingy putty-colored siding. She climbed the steps. The window by the front door was open, and from inside she could hear voices. Laughter. Applause. Music. A TV was going.

  At the door, Vanessa hesitated. Her neck prickled as a car drove slowly by and parked in front of the trailer two doors down. A man in a baseball cap, hoodie, and dark glasses got out, stared at her for a few moments, and went inside. Vanessa glanced back at her rental car. Lis, sitting at the wheel, motioned for her to ring the bell.

  Vanessa never opened the door to someone she didn’t know. She took a deep breath and pushed the doorbell. Then she forced an innocuous smile.

  The TV sound continued. She didn’t hear footsteps. She knocked and waited some more. When no one came, she leaned past the railing so she could look in through the narrow opening between the curtains in the window. She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, but all she could make out was a dark
empty kitchen.

  She knocked again. There was a pile of about a half-dozen brightly painted stones surrounding the potted geranium. She picked one up. Turned out they weren’t stones but mounds of glazed pottery, each one just big enough to fit in the palm of your hand. The background was painted burnt umber. Over that, in gold, was a round, cherubic smiling face surrounded by curls and a pair of wings. The image reminded her of angels she’d seen in cemeteries incised into very old stones that marked the graves of children. Memento mori. But those angels had skulls, not faces, floating between their wings. Still, even with this simple sweet face, the image of these angels felt tinged with loss.

  Vanessa remembered her mother’s description of the tattoo she’d glimpsed on the small of the woman’s back. Had it been Harley eagle wings or this: a sweet-faced cherub?

  She was about to knock again when she heard a hollow tinny blast that took her a moment to place as a car horn. Vanessa turned away from the door to see a car roll up behind hers. Dinged, dirty, belching exhaust, the off-white car parked behind hers. Vanessa couldn’t see, but she guessed that its trunk was held down with a bungee cord. A woman about her age got out.

  “Get away from there!” The woman charged at Vanessa, shaking her fist, her long hair streaming behind her. Had to be Miss Richards.

  Vanessa came down the steps. The woman stopped just a few feet away, breathing hard, her face red. “They promised me no one would come to the house.” What Vanessa had taken to be rage and anger at first, up close looked more like fear or anxiety. “Go away. I told them—”

  “I’m sorry!” Vanessa put her hands up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. It’s just that—”

  “What don’t you people get about leave us alone?” The woman pulled herself up. She tugged down her dark blazer and smoothed her skirt. “I told them we don’t need your damned help.”

  We? Did she have family living in that trailer with her? “I don’t know who you think I am. My mother and I just came to ask a few questions about the doll.”