Ripples

  Chapter 27

  Isn’t life a series of images that change

  as they repeat themselves? ~ Andy Warhol

  Taylor walked a step behind her husband as they moved about the century-old villa high in the mountains of Austria. It had taken them too long to find it—too much time. Their inability to find all the pieces had worked to Dexter Smithers’s advantage.

  The problem they encountered was that the name on the long-ago deed wasn’t Smithers. Dexter’s wealth originating from his father wasn’t only from the investments his father made with the money Anthony Rawlings paid him for his half of CSR Corporation. Jonas Smithers, Dexter’s father, had once been married to a Becker. The Beckers were an established wealthy family living in Austria, in this villa. Due to a string of unfortunate events, his first wife lived here with her extended family when she was young.

  When Solana Smithers died, she and Jonas had no children. The rest of her family was gone.

  Her family tree was warped and convoluted and had finally died out. No wonder it took Phil and Taylor time to untwist the branches.

  Generations before Jonas’s wife was born, there were two Becker brothers who had a falling out, according to stories Phil and Taylor had uncovered. One brother stayed in Austria and claimed the family name and wealth. The other moved to the States and began his entrepreneurial endeavors dealing in the sale of cars. At the time, there was a bright future in the world of auto sales in America. Never able to have children, Hans Becker was elated to marry a woman with one son. His wife’s son and he worked side by side. Though his stepson never took the Becker name, he carried on the business of the only man to ever be his father.

  By all accounts, Richard London, Hans Becker’s stepson, was a proud and honest man. It wasn’t until a series of misfortunes in the mid-1980s that his dreams of prosperity were torn to shreds. His wife’s brother moved into their home. As an addict, her brother eventually ended up in prison. Drugs fuel a need that the body can’t do without, even enticing the addict to commit crimes for the next hit. The family fell into further disgrace when Richard’s oldest daughter became pregnant.

  Very little is known about that time in Richard London’s life. Some say his oldest daughter died. Others say she was shunned. Even her first name has been stricken from the family records. Only the initial M remains. The few leads have come up with multiple possibilities of this woman’s identity.

  Taylor and Phil planned to do more digging. Currently, their focus had been on Natalie and Jonas Dexter Smithers.

  It was nearly five years after Richard’s daughter’s disappearance—or death, depending on the source—when Richard’s auto business in upstate New York failed. Even that was suspicious. The seemingly thriving business fell into bankruptcy. Richard’s life was in a tailspin. His wife left him without warning. His health was suffering. All Richard had left was his youngest daughter. Out of desperation for her welfare, he contacted the family he’d only heard about in Europe.

  Richard wanted more for his only remaining child than he could provide.

  Thankfully, his distant relatives welcomed the girl. To them it was a blessing. They welcomed her into their home and lives as the daughter they never had. After Richard’s death, they adopted her, making her a Becker by law.

  Solana Becker and Jonas married many years later. Some say that she was the reason CSR Corporation was divided. Though Anthony and Jonas remained cordial, apparently, Solana Smithers and Anthony Rawlings didn’t get along.

  Six years after Jonas and Anthony mutually agreed to part ways, Solana was taken by an aggressive form of brain cancer. Though Jonas wasn’t interested in the villa and wealth Solana had inherited, it became his. Jonas also wasn’t interested in remarrying, not until he met Serena Bower.

  Younger than Jonas, Serena gave him what he’d never imagined he’d have, a son—Jonas Dexter Smithers.

  As the leaves of the Smithers family tree fluttered to the ground around Taylor and Phil’s feet, a sickening sense of déjà vu came to Phil. The sidebar of the London connection made his skin crawl. He hadn’t taken the story of Dexter’s family history to Rawlings yet. First, Phil needed to do more research. The name London was rather common and as of yet, the M standing for the name Marie had not been confirmed or discounted.

  Nevertheless, as they untangled the history of Dexter’s family, Phil and Taylor discovered the villa in the mountains of Austria.

  A few euros to the right staff member and now they were walking the halls of the home where they were certain Natalie had been living. The Becker and later Smithers wealth was evident. The villa was luxurious, lovely, and secluded. As Frau Schmitt recalled stories of a quiet, beautiful young girl, Phil’s fears waned.

  It wasn’t until they went to the lower level that Phil’s gut told him there were secrets to learn. He was good at watching people, reading their nonverbal cues. As they entered the large library and media room in the lower level, Frau Schmitt’s eyes had grown wide.

  He scanned the layout. The room was more modern than most of the house. The trim at the far end of the room, while ornate, was newer, of a different aged wood than the rest of the villa.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked in broken German.

  She shook her head. “Nein.”

  Step by step, he and Taylor inspected the room. With each passing minute, Frau Schmitt seemed to grow more and more agitated, repeating her request for them to go.

  The hinges on the panel within the far wall were barely visible. Yet they were there. And neatly hidden along the trim was a small keyhole.

  “Where’s the key?” Phil asked Frau Schmitt.

  “I don’t know. We aren’t even supposed to be down here. I’m not.” Her newfound ability to speak English was difficult to decipher. She’d initially appeared to understand only German. “I didn’t know there was a door,” she added.

  “Why aren’t you supposed to be here?” Taylor asked.

  “Herr Smithers doesn’t allow it. This is his space.”

  Despite Frau Schmitt’s protests, Taylor searched the bookcases and cabinets as Phil continued to inspect the door. He wasn’t sure, but with such a small keyhole, he wondered if the locking mechanism wasn’t more involved.

  And if it was, why?

  Only slightly out of alignment with the other books on the shelf, Taylor removed what appeared to be a ragged copy of an old classic. The book was lighter than it should have been, merely a case disguised as a book. Within it, she found a key ring with what appeared to be a car fob attached.

  When she handed it to Phil, he asked, “Why would Herr Smithers keep his car keys down here and hidden?”

  Frau Schmitt shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen those before.”

  Slowly, Phil stepped to the panel and inserted the key. It fit.

  A series of clicks told him that he’d been right. The one key opened more than one deadbolt hidden within the thick door, working together to keep the panel locked in place. Pulling on the key, the wood barrier opened toward him, into the room and away from a dark hallway. Reaching inside he noticed the decrease in temperature as he found a light switch.

  Though Frau Schmitt refused to go any farther, Taylor was now beside her husband as they stepped into the cool tunnel, a stark contrast to the rest of the house. A musty aroma hung in the air. Everything blended—very plain, stark gray, both sides of the hall having been constructed of cement blocks with a concrete floor.

  Within the hallway were two doors. Phil opened the first. Switching on the light he found a narrow utility closet. There was a small round folding table and two chairs. There was a cabinet, also locked. The key in his hand didn’t open the doors.

  He and Taylor moved to the other door. It was a door, but it wasn’t. It was more like a piece of heavy wood, painted white that didn’t have a handle.

  Phil pushed against the new barrier. Once, twice, his body’s weight did nothing to budge it.

  “Phil, the fob,” T
aylor said.

  Phil’s eyes closed. He didn’t want to open this door. It was the same way he felt reading Meredith’s book My Life as It Didn’t Appear. Once he opened the cover, he couldn’t stop reading and learning the secrets behind Claire and Mr. Rawlings’s relationship. That book forever altered his opinions. If this door opened, he’d always know the secrets that might be better left buried.

  “Phil?” Taylor laid her hand on his arm. “I’ll do it.”

  This was his job. No. This was his family. He shook his head as he pushed the button.

  A beep echoed through the hallway.

  The door creaked opened on its own.

  “Oh my God,” Taylor gasped as Phil pushed it farther. “You don’t think...?”

  He couldn’t pull his eyes away from the only piece of furniture within the room. It was a bed, more the size of a cot, with a thin mattress. The room was tall, extending up to a narrow window. Another button on the fob turned on lights hidden near the ceiling.

  The illumination did little to enhance the room. Everything was white, except the concrete gray floor.

  “There’s a bathroom over here,” Taylor said. She turned back to her husband. “Why do you think this place is here? You don’t think...Natalie?”

  Phil shook his head. “I don’t want to.”

  “She looked healthy and content at the airport. That’s why I didn’t intervene.”

  Phil agreed. “I saw her when they came to the estate. The surveillance we have set up outside Smithers’s place in Vermont shows her coming and going.”

  Taylor touched his arm again. “She always looks happy. This can’t be what we’re thinking.”

  “Please, come out,” Frau Schmitt called from the finished area outside this...prison cell. “Herr Smithers will not be pleased.”

  Phil removed his phone and began snapping pictures.

  “Are we going to tell Mr. Rawlings and Claire?”

  “I can’t imagine what this would do to them,” Phil answered. “What it would do to her.”

  “Then let’s be sure before we say anything.”

  Phil nodded.

  The room was bare. Everything had been cleaned or removed. There were no towels in the bathroom or sheets on the cot.

  Taylor reached down to the drain of the bathtub. There wasn’t much and it was dry, having been there for a while. She held out her hand.

  Strands of long brown hair.

  “It might not be hers,” Taylor offered.

  Phil’s lips came together as he shook his head. “Keep it. We’ll have a DNA test run.”

  Taylor pulled a small evidence bag from her tote.

  “Why Natalie?” Taylor asked Phil later in their hotel suite, though they still didn’t know for certain.

  His stomach was in knots. Another Rawlings woman he’d failed. “I can’t even venture to surmise. But as we learn more about Dexter Smithers’s family, it seems like ripples on a pond, the circle keeps going on and on. We just need to learn who threw the first stone.”

  “We’ll learn. We won’t give up.”

  Chapter 28

  You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  Claire shook her head in disbelief as Tony’s fingers blanched, his grip tightening on the arms of the chair. The story Phil was telling them was too contrived to be real and yet too unbelievable to be fiction.

  “I never remember her mentioning a sister. But then again, she never spoke about her family, not to me. Did Dexter even know Marie? She died almost ten years ago,” Tony said.

  It wasn’t that they made a point of following Marie London’s prison sentence; however, each time she came up for parole, the Rawlingses were there. The first time it happened, Tony insisted on going alone. He said he didn’t want Claire to have to face her. Claire disagreed. Marie played a significant role in her life as well as Tony’s. She stated her case. In the end, she went. At each subsequent hearing, they went together. Their legal teams constructed letters appealing for the denial of her parole. Even when she became ill, the Rawlingses petitioned for her to remain in prison, where she belonged.

  There may have been other factors at work to keep Marie incarcerated. Tony had a knack for getting his way. Claire didn’t want to know. She simply wanted justice. The day they received the message that she had passed away within a federal penitentiary hospital was the day Claire finally let go of the fear that someday Marie would find a way to harm her family.

  Had she done it? Had Marie somehow had influence over Dexter? Were his motives something other than they appeared?

  “He would have been so young,” Claire said.

  “We can’t make a connection,” Phil said. “That’s why this has been so elusive. We’ve scoured the visitor records at the penitentiary. He never visited. Not under his own name. She had very few visitors over the years.

  “The most obvious connection between Jonas Dexter Smithers and the Rawlings family, besides now Natalie, is with his father and you.”

  Tony reached for a pencil resting upon his desk and snapped it in two. “Me. I brought that man into our daughter’s life. The man who calls her bug. What the hell kind of name is that?”

  It was a rhetorical question, one Tony had voiced more than once since Dexter and Natalie’s visit.

  “Mrs. Rawlings,” Taylor said. “May we talk for a minute?”

  Claire nodded.

  “No, outside the office.”

  Claire looked about the room, her green eyes scanning Taylor, Phil, and finally Tony. “No. We can talk here.”

  “Claire,” Phil said, “I’d like to show something to Mr. Rawlings.”

  Her pulse quickened and stomach twisted. “If this has to do with Nat, I want to see it.”

  “Maybe...” Tony began.

  She could barely hear her husband over the rush of blood in her ears. The mother’s intuition she’d felt the day they received the first text message, the day Natalie had not made it to Nice, was back. “I’m going to say this one time: if you have anything to say about my daughter, you’ll say it in front of me.”

  Taylor walked closer to Claire. “It’s not going to be easy to see. Maybe if Mr. Rawlings saw it first, he could help you.”

  “I’m not sure how fragile you think I am, but I can tell you that I’ve survived more than what you can show me.”

  “Yes, Claire, you have,” Phil said, “but this is Nat.”

  “And she’s alive and well in Vermont. I wish she were here, but I know she’s safe. If you were going to show me something and I didn’t know that she was safe, then I could understand the concern. She’s safe.”

  Tony’s head shook as he muttered, “In Vermont, but safe?”

  Phil nodded. “That’s what we need to discuss.”

  “Listen, I may not agree with everything that happens, but I will support my daughter no matter what. I’ve said it before: I will not lose her.”

  After Phil and Taylor exchanged glances, Phil opened his iPad and pulled up pictures. Tony and Claire stood and moved closer. No one spoke as the first picture came into view. It was of a large, lovely villa, almost castle-like, surrounded by pine trees.

  “Is this where she was?” Tony asked, his jaw clenched.

  “Yes, we confirmed it with a staff member,” Taylor answered. “She identified Natalie in pictures.”

  “It’s big.” It was the only thing Claire could think to say. It seemed as though she’d been in a lovely place. Claire wanted to believe that. However, Tony’s original home had been beautiful too. Though it had been leveled decades ago, there were still pictures. For some reason, the picture from the article about them in Vanity Fair came to her mind.

  “It is large,” Phil said. “One of the things that caught our attention was that the staff member informed us that Natalie had been with Herr Smithers for just over a month.”

  Claire stood taller as her lips came together.

  “A month?” Tony asked. “Where was she before
that? You said it was Diane, not Nat traveling. Where was Nat?”

  Phil swiped the screen to the next picture.

  Claire gasped, her knees going weak as a wave of nausea washed through her.

  Tony reached for her arm, steadying her, yet unable to look away from the screen. He pulled his wife closer. “He’s going to die.”

  Claire shook her head. “No, this isn’t what we’re thinking.”

  “The room had been cleaned, but we found a hair in the drain of the tub.”

  “A long brown hair,” Taylor emphasized, confirming what Phil had just said. “We had it tested. It was Natalie’s.”

  As Tony swore under his breath, Claire reached for the iPad and walked back to the sofa. Her nausea wouldn’t allow her to stand any longer. Yet she couldn’t look away, not now that she’d seen.

  She swiped the screen, over and over, taking in the small room from different angles. There were pictures of the stark bathroom with an old clawfoot bathtub. “In this drain?”

  “Yes,” Taylor confirmed. “The room is now empty, as you can see. There are no sheets, blankets, or towels...or clothes. There were also no clothes in the master bedroom. There really is no way to know exactly what happened.”

  “She was taken. We were right,” Claire said, looking to Tony, her voice cracking. “But why like this? Why?”

  “We’re going to Vermont and bringing her home.”

  “I want to see her again, to know she’s safe. I think I already knew how their relationship was, but I never...I can’t imagine...” Her green eyes overflowed with tears. “...how could I even fathom?”

  “How much are you willing to spend to change the playing field?” Phil asked.

  “As much as it takes,” Tony replied.

  Claire blinked away the tears. “What are you talking about?”

  “Dexter Smithers thinks he can hide behind his fortune. If it’s gone, he can’t hide.”

  Claire thought back, memories she hadn’t entertained in decades coming to the surface. “He can’t know it’s you. If he does, she’ll be the one to pay.”