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

  “The doll?” The woman went still. She turned to look at Vanessa’s car where Lis sat at the wheel. “You’re not from Social Services?”

  Vanessa shook her head.

  “Then you really have no business here. Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Vanessa Strenger. I’m Sorrel Woodham’s granddaughter.” Vanessa paused to see if the name meant anything to her. It didn’t seem to. “My mother is Elisabeth Woodham Strenger.” She pointed to the car. “We came to ask you about the doll you brought to our house a few days ago.”

  The woman took a step back, her gaze wary. “What doll?”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t answer an ad in the paper and bring a doll over to my grandmother’s house two days ago?”

  Lis stepped out of the car and slammed the door. “Remember me?” She started walking toward them.

  “We’re not trying to hurt you or get in your face,” Vanessa said. “But that doll you brought over to my grandmother’s house? You didn’t stay long enough to collect the reward.”

  Maggie Richards folded her arms. She wasn’t buying it. Vanessa wished they’d stopped at the bank on the way over so she could flash some hundred-dollar bills in Maggie’s face to show good faith.

  “It’s yours,” Vanessa said. “I promise. Five thousand dollars. Just as soon as you tell us where you found the doll.”

  “The ad didn’t say that.”

  “The doll belonged to my sister, Janey,” Lis said. “She disappeared forty years ago, when she was four years old. That doll disappeared with her. So you can understand why we’re willing to pay so much to find out where you got it.”

  The woman chewed on her bottom lip. “I just answered the ad. It didn’t say anything about a little girl. And I gave you and that old lady the damned doll.”

  “That old lady is my mother,” Lis said. “Every year she places that ad even though everyone tells her it’s futile. For forty years she’s never given up hope. And now you turn up with her doll. You can understand why we’re desperate for you to tell us how you got it.”

  “Found it.” Maggie Richards gave an uneasy look over Vanessa’s shoulder toward the door to the home. Then back at Lis. “I don’t know where it came from and she doesn’t either.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  Lis said, “There’s someone in the house? Was it her doll?” Vanessa could hear the hope and desperation in her mother’s voice.

  “She won’t talk to you. She doesn’t trust strangers. You go near her and so help me, I’ll call the police.” Maggie Richards narrowed her eyes at Lis. “Besides, I don’t believe you. If it’s so important, why didn’t your mother come here herself?”

  “Because she’s in the hospital,” Lis shot back. “The night after you came to us with the doll, our house was robbed and we had a gas leak. She’s being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning and a heart attack.”

  Maggie blinked. “I’m real sorry about your mother,” she said, her tone softening. “And I’m real sorry about your sister, too. I saw the ad in the paper. It looked like an old doll my mother had from when she was a kid. Even when we were living on the street, she hung on to it. We kept it in the trunk when we were living in the car.” It was quite the hard luck story. Something about it felt rehearsed. Vanessa resisted the urge to mime playing a tiny violin. “Then we got a rent subsidy so we could move into this.” Maggie gestured toward the mobile home. “And my mother left the doll in the car, like she forgot about it. So I thought, well, if there was a reward, we could sure use the money. But the last thing she needs”—her voice rose, revving again with outrage—“is for you people to come here and harass—”

  The door to the mobile home swung open. In the doorway stood an older woman, her dark hair short and curled tight around her head, her cheeks sallow. She wore tight jeans and a hot-pink tube top that made her look even more skeletal than she was. “Maggie?” the woman said in a hoarse voice. She coughed. Puffed on a cigarette. “I thought you said they wouldn’t come sniffin’ around.”

  “It’s okay, Momma. They’re not from Social Services. And they’re leaving.” Maggie Richards turned to Vanessa and Lis. “Right now.”

  15

  “I’m Lissie,” Lis said to the woman standing outside the door of the trailer. “Lissie” was the name Janey used to call her. She looked for a flicker of recognition in the woman’s expression as her brow creased.

  Could this be Janey? The woman, whose hand shook as she took another drag from a cigarette she held between stubby fingers, was about the right age. But nothing else about her stirred in Lis a memory of her sister. Her hair wasn’t fair and fine, it was dark and short and permed into a tight frizz around her head. Yes, there were shadows under her eyes, but this woman radiated raw nerves. She probably didn’t get enough sleep. Her eyes were light, but were they that spooky blue that Lis remembered, so pale that the color seemed to leach into the white surrounding her irises? Lis wasn’t close enough to tell.

  The woman dropped the cigarette on the top step, mashed it out, and kicked it into the dirt with the toe of a sneaker spattered with gold paint. Her eyes narrowed. “Not from Social Services?”

  “They’re not,” Maggie said.

  “From the church?” The woman looked down at Lis with contempt. “Take your preaching somewhere else. We’re not interested.”

  “They’re not from the church, either, Momma. And they’re leaving.” Maggie turned to Vanessa. “Please go now. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know anyone and she doesn’t want to know anyone.”

  The woman’s gaze shifted and she stared off down the street. With her head turned toward the sun, the shadows under her eyes disappeared and her eyes telegraphed growing agitation. Lis followed her gaze to a police cruiser that was rolling slowly toward them.

  “Police?” She spat out the word. “What the hell do they want with us now? Did you call them?” she said to Lis.

  “Momma,” Maggie said. Then louder, “Mom!” The woman looked across at her. “Don’t freak out. I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with us.”

  “Then why is he stopping here?”

  “He’s not.”

  But the cruiser pulled up and parked right behind Vanessa’s rental car. bonsecours police. Frank Ames got out and stood there, hanging on the open car door. He tipped his cap back with the heel of his hand and squinted across at Lis and Vanessa. “What in Sam Hill are you two doing here?” he said. “I thought I told you to back off and let me . . .”

  I thought I . . . Lis blocked out the rest of his words, suddenly furious. That was the tone of voice Brad used to take with her, instructing her on what she could and couldn’t do, what she should have made for dinner after something else was already cooked, what opinion she should have held instead of the patently stupid one she’d just expressed.

  “So this is the car?” Frank said with a granite scowl. Lis could almost hear the gears shift in his head as he moved closer to Maggie’s car, stooped to look at the license plate, and inspected the battered rear. Then he crossed the lawn to where Maggie stood. “Are you Maggie Richards? I’m Deputy Chief Frank Ames, Bonsecours Police. Is that your car?”

  Maggie barely glanced at the ID he showed her, her anxious attention tethered to her mother.

  When she didn’t answer, Frank said, “Ma’am?”

  Maggie stuck her chin out. “Yes, sir. Yes, it is.”

  “Broken taillight. Detached bumper. Condition it’s in, that car is a menace.”

  Maggie looked from Lis to Frank and back again. “He’s a friend of yours? Thanks a lot.”

  Frank said, “Then there’s the matter of some overnight parking tickets you never bothered to pay. A few dozen, in fact.”

  Maggie faced Frank. “We were living in the car. All right? And I had to park somewhere, didn’t I? They don’t bother to tell you where you can and can’t park overnight. It’s like some closely held secret, like where they hide the public toilets. And if we’d had the money to
pay the tickets we wouldn’t have been sleepin’ in the car.”

  Frank barely blinked. “Expired registration, too.”

  Maggie swallowed hard. “Please,” she said. “I just started a new job, and as soon as I’ve saved up some money, I promise I’ll—”

  “That’s enough. Clear off!” That came from Maggie’s mother. She must have gone back into the house because now she was standing on the top step holding a gun. The double-barreled, break-action shotgun looked a lot like one Lis’s father loaded with shells filled with rock salt to keep squirrels and rabbits from plundering their kitchen garden. Old-fashioned but effective.

  “I don’t care who you are,” she said, jerking the butt upright so the barrel clicked shut. “You got no business marching in here and threatening us. We waited for years to get this place with no help from your kind. My daughter paid for that car with money she saved. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to.”

  “Mom, it’s okay. Please,” Maggie said. “I can pay the parking tickets and register the car. You’re just making things worse. Put that old thing away. I don’t mind answering his questions.”

  “Well, I mind. I don’t want any policemen here. Git.” Her mother waved the gun. “Clear. Out. All a you all. This is private property and you got no business here.”

  “Ma’am,” Frank said, making a placating gesture, “I know you don’t want to shoot anyone. So please, put the gun down.” He paused. “If you don’t, I’m going to have to call for backup. Then I’ll have to have you arrested and your daughter’s car towed away. Or you can put down the gun and we can have a nice, calm—”

  Slowly, deliberately Frank reached into his pocket. At the same time, there was a click. Maggie’s mother had pulled back the hammer and cocked the gun.

  Frank said, “Put. The gun. Down.”

  “I know that song and dance,” Maggie’s mother said. “Then you round us up and get us thrown out of here. I know what you’re up to. Hiding behind that badge. You sent those women to soften us up?”

  “Mom, they just want to know about that old doll of yours,” Maggie said.

  Her mother went still. “Doll?”

  “The doll of yours that was in the trunk of our car? I answered an ad. They wanted to buy it for five thousand dollars.”

  “Five thousand dollars?” Maggie’s mother laughed. “They must think we just fell off the turnip truck.”

  “Really,” Lis said. “All we want to know is where you got the doll. There really is a five-thousand-dollar reward, and it’s yours if—”

  “If what?” The gun wavered. “Who really sent you?” She swung the gun around and aimed at Lis.

  In the instant before Lis dropped to the ground, something flew past her. Maggie’s mother’s head jerked back and she went down like she’d been kicked by a mule, banging her chin on a railing on the way down. The gun fell into the grass.

  Frank was up the steps in two leaps with Maggie right behind. The woman was out cold. Blood flowed from her mouth where it looked like she’d bitten her lip. More blood coursed across her forehead and pooled on the floor. Lis had to look away.

  Frank checked the woman’s pulse, then dashed over to the cruiser and pulled a first aid kit from the front seat. He raced back. Punched in a number on his phone. Cradling his phone between his face and his shoulder, he opened the first aid kit. Found latex gloves, which he snapped on. Then got out a packet and opened it with his teeth, pulling out a gauze pad that he pressed to Maggie’s mother’s face.

  “I need an ambulance,” he said. “Twenty-five Palmetto Court. Female. Knocked unconscious by a rock a minute ago. Pulse one ten. Bleeding from the forehead and lower lip.” He turned to Maggie. “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Jenny,” Maggie said. “Jenny Richards.”

  Frank repeated that information for the dispatcher. Moments later he pocketed the phone. “They’re on their way. They said not to move her until they get here.”

  16

  Frank stayed hunkered down beside Jenny Richards on the steps of the trailer waiting for the ambulance. Maggie stood motionless at the foot of the steps, as if in shock. All the shouting, followed by a siren, had brought neighbors out onto their lawns.

  Lis crept over to Maggie. “I’m so sorry this is happening. We had no idea the police would come, or that he’d threaten you and your mother like that.”

  “When you’re homeless, that’s what they do. They make you feel like shit,” Maggie said as she watched the ambulance pull to a halt behind the police cruiser. The siren went mute and the passenger-side door burst open.

  Lis and Maggie backed away as an EMT, a burly guy with a close-cropped beard, burst from the ambulance, dashed up the trailer steps, and crouched by Jenny’s side. He wore dark blue trousers and a shirt with an official shield-shaped patch on his shoulder. He took her pulse and shined a penlight in each of her eyes.

  “And we’ve been homeless off and on my whole life,” Maggie added under her breath. “You can’t blame us for not trusting police.”

  The EMT conferred with Frank, and Frank came over to Maggie. “They need to know if your mother has health insurance,” Frank said.

  “She has Medicaid. I’ll get the card,” Maggie said and ran inside.

  “This is your fault,” Lis said to Frank.

  “I told you to let me follow up.”

  “I might have if you’d told me you were going to track her down and come right over here.”

  “I’d have told you that if you’d told me you were coming here. You could have gotten yourself killed.” There he went again, like she was the little woman who didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain.

  “You could have gotten us killed. Stomping in like a storm trooper. Threatening them.”

  Maggie came back out with her mother’s health insurance card. The EMT took it and keyed the information into a tablet.

  “May I see?” Frank said.

  Grudgingly, Maggie nodded. Frank took the card and copied information into his notebook before handing it back to Maggie. Casually Frank flipped his notebook around so Lis could read. JENNY RICHARDS DOB SEPTEMBER 9, 1972.

  He pointed to the year. Nineteen seventy-two was a year after Lis was born. Two years before Janey had been born.

  The EMTs were loading Jenny on a stretcher. In a minute she’d be gone. Alone, one-on-one, that was the only shot Lis had of getting Jenny to tell her where she’d gotten Janey’s doll.

  “You’d better pack her a bag,” Lis said to Maggie. “Whatever you think she’ll need if they have to keep her overnight. Glasses. Medication. A toothbrush.”

  Maggie ran into the house and Lis went over to the ambulance driver. “Where are you taking her?”

  “Coastal Memorial.”

  “Coastal Memorial,” Lis relayed to Vanessa. “Meet me there.” She climbed into the back of the ambulance with Jenny Richards.

  “Hey!” The driver came around and motioned for her to get out. “No passengers back there.”

  “I need to be here if she wakes up.” Lis scootched back on the cushioned bench. “She’s phobic, afraid of men in uniforms, and she’s got PTSD. You’ll have your hands full if she comes to and freaks out when all she sees is your friend here.” She indicated the burly bearded EMT who was about to climb in.

  “It’s against regulations. No one rides in back except—”

  Lis slid farther in and took Jenny’s hand. “You’re not going to stand around arguing with me, are you? She needs to get to the hospital.”

  “Ma’am, you have to get out. Now.”

  “If she were four years old, you’d let a relative ride in back with her, wouldn’t you?”

  “She’s not four,” he said, but Lis could feel him wavering, probably weighing how much trouble it would be to climb in and wedge her out of there versus how much trouble he’d be in if he didn’t.

  Frank came over and pulled him aside. Lis watched as they talked, the driver pointing in her directi
on and getting more exasperated by the moment. Frank shaking his head. Looking at his watch. Gesturing with open hands, like what could he do.

  The driver trudged back alone, avoiding eye contact with Lis. The bearded EMT got in the back with her, closed the doors, and showed Lis how to buckle herself in. She waited until the ambulance was on its way, the siren blaring, before she indulged in a fist pump.

  17

  Vanessa had been stunned to see Lis climb brazenly into the back of the ambulance. Even more so that no one extracted her. The ambulance kicked up a cloud of dust as it screamed out of the trailer park.

  “Heads up,” Officer Frank said, tossing Vanessa an angel paperweight he picked up from the ground near the steps to the trailer. She caught it. “Lucky shot?”

  “Girls’ fast-pitch softball. Three-season state champs.”

  “Thanks. I owe you.”

  Vanessa dropped the angel paperweight into her pocket. “No, you don’t. I had to do something. I was afraid you were going to make her shoot someone.”

  “She wasn’t about to do that.” Officer Frank picked up the shotgun from the grass. He broke it open. “Not loaded.” He turned and eyed the mobile home. “Soon as I get back to the office, I’ll run a background check on both of them and see what I can find out. Promise me you’ll bring me the doll. There could be some forensic evidence, even now, that will help us tell if it was Janey’s doll.”

  “I will.”

  “Today.”

  Vanessa gave him a little salute.

  “I know Miss Sorrel thinks that doll is Janey’s,” Officer Frank went on, “but she hasn’t seen it in forty years. Wishful thinking can cloud judgment. It’s like eyewitness testimony; these days we take it with a grain of salt and corroborate with hard evidence.”

  He was right. More than anything Vanessa wanted her mother and grandmother to find some kind of resolution to the mystery of Janey’s disappearance, but that didn’t warrant jumping to conclusions. Still, if—big if—the doll turned out to be Janey’s, it might lead them to finding her bones.