Yet if someone had attacked Sammi, I was sure it would have been a sexual predator. That meant he wouldn't have a corpse to dispose of. He'd have a live teenager and baby to deal with. Sammi would put up a fight and it would take more than three minutes to get her into the woods.
There were no signs of struggle in the gravel, no broken bushes to suggest that anyone had been dragged into the forest.
The more I thought about it, the more I suspected that Meredith, and everyone else, was right. Sammi had run off. There was only one thing I needed to do to set my mind at rest. Break into Janie's place and search for proof that Sammi had packed and left.
Chapter Six
I returned to the lodge ten minutes late for a scheduled shooting lesson. That wouldn't do. While the disappearance of a teen and a baby might seem more important than explaining basic gun safety to four guys who just wanted to shoot something, I made my living by my reputation, and my reputation was that of a conscientious hostess who put her guests first.
After the lesson and some target practice, I sent the men in to dinner while I stayed behind, ostensibly to lock up. In my experience, putting guns in the hands of new-bies has a strange effect on hormones. I'd warded off more wandering hands postshooting than after the most beer-drenched bonfires.
I took the shortcut back to the lodge, avoiding the men, and slipped in the kitchen door. The wail of an electric carving knife greeted me. Emma looked up from her chicken and motioned to the message pad by the phone. On the top sheet was a note that my aunt Evie had called.
Aunt Evie?
It had to be Evelyn. She'd never contacted me here before because Jack forbade it. The only excuse she'd have was if Jack wasn't around to pass along a message.
I told Emma to start serving dinner without me, then I hurried upstairs.
"It's about Jack," Evelyn said, skipping any pleasantries. As I lowered myself to the edge of the bed, she bitched about his rule against calling me. I could picture her, in her designer shirt and slacks, white hair cut in a sleek bob, cussing like a sailor as she chewed out her favorite student. Evelyn was probably closing in on seventy, if not past it, and was supposed to be retired, but she still lived and breathed the business, pulling strings, manipulating players, delighting in watching them dance.
"Is he okay?" I asked finally, cutting her rant short.
"He's an idiot, that's what he is. Acts like he's still twenty, like he can still do the things he did at twenty, then gets himself hurt - "
"Hurt?" My fingers clenched the plastic tighter. I should have called. Goddamn it, I should have called when that first month passed without any word -
"He broke his ankle."
"Ankle?" I said. "Is that... it?"
"Other than cuts and bruises, and wounded pride, which, let me tell you, is stinging worst of all. Serves him right. The fucking stubborn Mick. I told him - "
"When did it happen?"
"A couple of weeks ago."
Only a couple of weeks? So much for "that explains everything."
"I'm sorry to hear it," I said. "I hope he's on the mend and I appreciate you telling me - "
"I'm not calling so you can send him a get-well card, Nadia."
I tensed at the use of my real name. With Evelyn, it was always a dig - reminding me how much she knew. But I suppose I wouldn't want her calling me "Dee" on my personal line, either.
"He's holed up in Buffalo," Evelyn continued.
"Holed up?"
"There was a problem. Nothing critical, but with his ankle, he's not in any condition to jaunt off to Europe until things cool down. He needs a place to stay, and someone to watch his back - such as a friend who lives in a backwoods cabin in the middle of nowhere."
"He wants to come here?"
Silence, so long I thought we'd lost the connection.
"You know Jack, Nadia. He never wants anything. Never admits to it, anyway. Goddamned - "
"So this is your idea."
"Only because he's too stubborn to ask. God forbid he should ask for help. Gotta be fair and square, all debts paid up. Thirty years I've known him, and you saw the shit he pulled last fall, when he wanted my help. Dangled the fucking case in front of my nose until I jumped, then hemmed and hawed about letting me join, when the whole goddamned reason he came to my house - "
"He doesn't even know you're asking me, does he?"
More silence as she tried to figure out another way to bluster and divert. After a moment, she sighed. "This is how you have to deal with Jack, Nadia. You go to him, make the offer, listen to him mutter about how he doesn't need help, doesn't want to inconvenience you, but the minute you turn to walk away, he'll be on your tail, following you home. Just so long as it's your idea."
"I don't think he's going to follow me anywhere."
She snorted. "How much you betting, girl? Name your wager, because surer odds I've never - "
"I haven't heard from him in four months."
"What?" The word came sharp with genuine surprise. "Did you two have another fight? I told you the last time, you have to go to him. You know what it's like getting him to talk, one fucking word at a time, dragged out like teeth, but - "
"There wasn't a fight. He called in January, we chatted, and that was the last I heard from him."
"So call him! The man has zero people skills, Nadia, in case that somehow escaped your notice. He once went six months without contacting me and when I lit into him for nearly giving me a heart attack, he acted like - "
"He didn't just forget to call. I could feel the cold front moving in for months. He doesn't want to see me, and I'm not driving to Buffalo so he can give me the brush-off in person."
"You owe him."
"I repaid him last fall. Now, apparently, we're square. He made sure of that before he - "
"For God's sake, stop sulking, Nadia. Jack's hurt your feelings - "
"I'm not hurt; I'm pissed off."
"Then tell him to his face. It's the Blue Sky motel, room 18, off the - "
I hung up.
From what Tess had said, Janie would be dead drunk by ten, meaning I could safely enter at midnight. Tess had also mentioned that the back door was usually unlocked. If there had ever been anything of value in the place, it was long gone. One could argue that having a beautiful teenage daughter meant you did have something to protect, but Janie would see the price sticker on even a cheap deadbolt and decide the money was better spent on a bottle of rye.
I arrived at eleven-thirty, parked behind the grocery store, and waited. I tried to plan my break-in, but there wasn't much strategy involved with an open door. That meant I had nothing to think about except the one topic I'd been avoiding.
Evelyn was right. I was hurt. What pissed me off was the implication that, in being hurt, I was acting immature. That I had no right to be upset.
Three years ago, Jack had come to me. He'd appeared one night, sent - as I now knew - by Evelyn to assess my suitability as a new student. He'd returned and told her I wouldn't do, then kept coming himself.
At first, I thought he was taking my measure as a security risk, deciding whether to kill me. Maybe he had been. Whatever tests he'd applied, though, I must have passed. Eventually he considered me not only a colleague worthy of continued existence, but one worth his interest.
I won't flatter myself into thinking he was impressed by my skills. I was nowhere near Jack's league and had no intention of applying for membership. Maybe that was part of the attraction. I wasn't competition.
Whatever the reason, that attraction was purely pla-tonic - another aspect that made it easy to let my guard down. Still I'd resisted. Jack was no vigilante or Mafia thug killer. He was a hitman. You paid him, he killed. While I got the feeling it wasn't that simple these days, he was motivated more by economics than by ethics.
He'd said once that if I'd known him years ago, I'd have sooner shot him than talked to him. But talk we did, long nights in the woods behind the lodge. Admittedly I carried most of th
e conversation - Jack wasn't the chatty type - but he'd seemed to enjoy those visits, passing on tips and tricks to me, listening to me chatter about the lodge. He'd kept coming back, so it couldn't have been too painful.
I hadn't known how important those nights were to me until they stopped. With Jack, I had something I didn't get these days: an honest relationship. He knew who I was - both sides of my life. On the job last fall, I'd realized he'd even seen the parts I'd congratulated myself on keeping hidden. At this point in my life, no one knew me better than Jack.
Now, apparently, he'd decided he didn't care to know me at all.
And it hurt like I'd never imagined it could.
At the stroke of midnight, I was creeping around Janie's home. The back door was indeed open and, as expected, she was asleep on the couch. From the rough rise and fall of her chest, she was snoring loud enough to bring down the rotted rafters, but the sound was drowned out by the booming television. That was a problem.
One might think I'd appreciate loud noise to cover my own sounds, but I've learned to open doors, windows, drawers, even shuffle through papers in silence. If a house is quiet, I can work with confidence, knowing that a key in the front door lock or the creak of bedsprings will resonate like thunder, giving me time to clean up and clear out.
The blaring television meant I wouldn't hear Janie if she woke. I considered turning it off, but even if Janie somehow did wake and catch me, the only thing she could do was call the police, who hated her as much as they hated me. By the time an officer bothered to stop by, I'd be home in bed, having left not so much as a shoe print to support her story.
To be safe, I unplugged the old rotary phone. That'd give me a few extra minutes. Hell, she'd probably spend an hour pounding on the plunger before realizing it was disconnected.
I looked down at Janie. If I wanted information, my best source was lying right here, drunk and helpless. I fingered the gun under my jacket, and thought of how easy it would be to make Janie talk to me. Throw her onto the carpet, pin her down, let her sputter in a puddle of her own vomit for a few minutes, and she'd decide maybe she could spare the time to answer my questions after all.
Don Riley would love to have me up on an assault charge, but not if it meant dealing with Janie. And he'd be setting the word of the town drunk against that of a hardworking member of the business community.
I could put Janie Ernst into a six-foot hole and most people would say exactly the same thing she'd said about Sammi's disappearance: good riddance. In the end, that's why I didn't do it. If I asked Janie about her daughter and granddaughter, and saw that sneer of hers again, heard her say she didn't give a damn what had happened to them, as long as they didn't come back, I'm not sure I could stop with a beating.
I found Sammi's bedroom. Not exactly a feat of brilliant deduction when there were two bedrooms and only one held a crib. Sammi's room was half the size of her mother's with a twin bed pushed against the wall, crates stacked for storage, a crib, and nothing more. The walls were covered with what might once have been rose-dotted wallpaper, but now was a dingy yellow backdrop with pinkish-brown splotches.
The only decorations were pages ripped from parenting magazines - checklists for infant development, tips on breast-feeding, ads for baby gear. I imagined Sammi in here, ripping down all the signs of her teenage years and putting up all these symbols of motherhood, then surveying the results, not with regret but with satisfaction, the knowledge that she was recentering her world in a worthy direction.
I found their clothing in two crates, one for Sammi and one for Destiny. Having seen them wear the same outfits several times a week, I knew they hadn't owned much, and it all seemed to be there.
There was very little else to search. No diary, no journal. There were no novels or textbooks in which she might have hidden a letter. As Tess said, Sammi was barely literate. The only books I found were a baby memory book, a dog-eared copy of What to Expect the First Year, and a few back issues of parenting magazines with the local doctor's name on the mailing label.
Under the bed was an empty cigarette carton stuffed with photographs of Sammi, Tess, and Kira growing up. Under the pictures lay Destiny's hospital bracelet. Sammi's treasures. Her friends and her baby. That was all she had, all she cared about. If she had run away, would she have left these things behind?
I flashed my light around the rest of the room. A baby carrier and folded playpen were stacked in the corner, both things that could be replaced once Sammi resettled. Wait. I shone the light back at the carrier. It doubled as a car seat, and fit on top of the stroller.
Sammi always walked to the lodge with the stroller and the car seat attached, in case the weather turned ugly and she needed a lift home. One gorgeous cloud-free day, she'd decided to leave the seat at home. Then, just before she was to leave work, it started pouring. I'd offered her a lift, saying she could hold Destiny on her lap and I'd drive slow. She'd freaked. Her baby did not travel in a car without a proper infant seat. She'd sat in the lodge for two hours until the weather cleared enough for her to walk.
So now, when Sammi had supposedly run off and stolen a car or met someone, she'd taken Destiny in the stroller without the car-seat attachment? Never. When Sammi left for her walk that evening, she'd been planning to come home.
Chapter Seven
By 3 a.m. I was on the 401 heading toward Toronto and, ultimately, Buffalo. I figured I could make it back before lunch, so I'd call Emma around eight and claim I'd zipped out early to get the ATV parts Owen needed from Peterborough. All of our guests were leaving in the morning, meaning there were no activities scheduled and no one had signed up for the morning jog.
I had a long night of driving ahead, but if I went home, I'd only lie awake waiting for morning so I could resume the hunt for Sammi. Since I had no idea where to resume that hunt, I might as well spend the time driving and thinking, while accomplishing another task.
Evelyn was right. I had to look Jack in the eye and hear him tell me that he wasn't coming around anymore. A reason would be even better, but probably too much to hope for.
My first thought on arriving at the Blue Sky motel was that Janie Ernst would feel right at home. The sign was the only thing visible from the highway, probably hoping to lure in tired travelers who'd round the bend into the driveway, see the building, and be unable to muster up the energy to escape. I parked between two cars so rusted that I opened my door with extreme caution, afraid a bump would reduce them to a pile of scrap metal. For the first time in years, I locked my old pickup's doors.
I tried to find a front walk, gave up, and cut across the grass. The motel was long and squat. Robin's-egg-blue paint peeled from the stucco... in the places where the stucco was still affixed to the backboard. I stayed on the grass, to avoid walking under the eaves. Portions were held on with duct tape; the remainder crackled in the wind, threatening to fall. In the distance I could see the shiny new sign by the highway, promising "clean, affordable rooms," the vacancy sign blinking with a note of desperation.
No doubt the Blue Sky qualified as affordable, though Jack could afford better - much better. At his tier, he was probably pulling in a hundred grand a hit, tax free, with no dependents and no bad habits to spend it on. His tastes were utilitarian. Working class, Evelyn sniffed. But it meant he had money - lots of it, I was sure - and while the Hilton really wasn't his style, this was well below it. Still, this was the kind of place where you could plunk down cash for a week and no one would ask for a name, much less ID, which was likely its chief attraction.
For the last half hour, I'd been rehearsing these next few minutes. Walking to his door, knocking... "Hey, Jack, sorry to bother you, but Evelyn was concerned. She seemed to think you need a place to hunker down, maybe the lodge - That's what I thought. No, that's fine. I had to go into Toronto today, so this wasn't that far out of my way. Just thought I'd check - No, I understand. Believe me, I'm not here to drag you anywhere you don't want to go. Just making the offer. So I'll be o
n my way. Oh, and I know you haven't been coming around - No, no, that's okay. Time to move on, for both of us. I just wanted to say thanks, and if you ever need anything..."
I still wasn't sure about the last part. I wanted to end on a civil note, but when I heard myself saying that, it sounded as quietly desperate as that blinking vacancy sign.
I stepped around a tower of beer cases - empties. Room fifteen, sixteen... eighteen must be on the end. That would be Jack's choice - easiest to escape.
As for my parting words, I shouldn't leave them so open-ended. Close the relationship door gently but firmly.
"Don't worry about me calling you up for anything, Jack. Better to cut ties completely."
Too defiant? Angry? Hurt?
Shit, I didn't want to sound hurt. Maybe I should stick with open-ended.
The last door was number eighteen, the eight sleeping on its side. I circled wide around the window, so he wouldn't see my shadow pass the drawn drapes, though I doubted Jack was sitting up at 5 a.m. watching for trouble.
I checked the end of the unit. No window or other escape route. Not that Jack would run. If he thought he'd been cornered, he'd greet his guest with a gun to the skull. I'd prefer to avoid that kind of drama so early in the morning.
I returned to the door and took one last survey of my surroundings. The only noise came from the highway.
I knocked, counted to five, and knocked again. The first would wake him. The second would confirm he really had heard a knock. I listened, heard nothing, but didn't knock again. He'd be up. Sitting on the edge of the bed now, listening as he pulled out his gun. Then making his way across the room as silently as he could with his injured foot. A peek through the curtain crack. A whispered curse when he couldn't see who was at the door. Circling around to the other side of that door, so he could watch the window at the same time. Reaching for the dead-bolt...
"It's me, Jack."
A muffled "Fuck" from exactly where I'd pictured him. The chain rattled, but when the door opened, it stopped short, the anchor still in place. The aura of calm I'd spent four hours gathering slipped away.