Heath moved up next to me and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you, Miss Porter.”
She seemed a bit startled by his sudden appearance at her side, but she took his hand and her smile broadened. “What a handsome man you are!” she exclaimed, then with a wink added, “Are you single?”
He laughed and leaned a little against me. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m taken.”
She gave him a mock pout. “Just my luck.”
We all laughed. And then Breslow came forward a little more and I knew it was time to get serious. “Miss Porter, we need to talk to you for a few minutes about something that could be a little distressing. Is that okay?”
“Of course, Beau,” she said, and for emphasis she reached over to the bedside table and lifted a bottle of pills. “They gave me happy pills today.”
I covered my mouth to hide a smile. What a sweet woman. “We need to ask you about your cousin Everett Sellers,” Beau said.
A cloud came over Sarah’s face and her smile vanished. “Oh, that,” she said. “I take it you found him.”
I was a little stunned by her statement. To me it meant she knew what’d happened to him. “We did,” Beau said. “Can you tell us about that day, Sarah? The day he disappeared?”
She stared at her hands for a long time without answering and I wondered if she was going to. At last she lifted her gaze to me, and there were tears in her eyes. “Do you believe in signs?” she asked me.
“I do, Miss Porter,” I said, because that was the truth.
She nodded. “I thought you might. Before she died, your mother came to me, Mary Jane, and she said that she would send me a sign someday. Something lovely. Something special. Something I couldn’t miss. She told me that on the day that my sign came from her, it would be time to tell the truth. And here you are, in the flesh. Something lovely. Something special, and something I couldn’t miss. It’s time to tell the truth about Everett, and I’m prepared to do that, but, Mary Jane, I have to ask you . . . are you quite sure you want to hear it?”
I nearly faltered and my heart pounded in my chest. My mother was there that day. I could see it in Sarah’s eyes. I swallowed hard, shored up my courage, and said, “Yes.”
“Your mother figures into the story,” she added, as if that would make me change my answer.
“I know she does,” I told her. That was the truth, too.
She nodded and went back to focusing on her hands, which continued to tug nervously at the buttons on her sweater. “Everett was an evil, evil young man,” she began in a voice barely above a whisper. “He liked to cause pain in others. Especially me. The first summer he came to visit, I was seven and he was thirteen. He seemed to sense that I was weak and he looked for many ways to taunt me. Torture me. Humiliate me that summer, and as if that weren’t bad enough, he began to touch me in places and force me to touch him in places that I knew were bad. Worst of all, he had my brother watch.”
I balled my hands into fists. The thought of a seven-year-old as small and frail as Sarah Porter must have been, being sexually abused like that while her brother stood by and watched was so horrible, I could hardly stand it.
Sarah paused for a moment, as if the memory were still so close, it hurt her physically to recall it. And then she continued. “It went on like that for weeks, but at last he was sent home and I hoped it was for good, but the next summer he came back, only this time he brought this terrible thing with him. It was a board game, he said, and with it he could control the universe.”
Sarah lifted her chin to look at me. “By that time, Mary Jane, your mother had become my dearest friend. I think she saw how fragile I’d become, and she was such a kind girl, always nurturing sick and injured birds and bunnies back to good health. I think she saw me as an injured little creature too, and certainly I was, because by that time, my brother had taken to touching me in bad places too.”
I sucked in a breath and Heath wrapped an arm around my waist. Sarah must have been so defenseless against the horrors inflicted upon her at such a young age.
“Anyway,” she went on, “DeeDee began spending more and more time at my house. I think she sensed that I was in trouble and she did her best to protect me. And for a while, she did. Although I never told her what was going on, she somehow sensed that my brother was doing things to me, and she threatened him by saying that she’d tell my mother if he didn’t leave me alone, and you knew your mother. Even at eight years old she was a force to be reckoned with.
“Well, Glenn stopped preying on me, but then Everett came to visit again. He’d begged his parents to come back and stay the summer with us, and as they had more money than even we had, my mother obliged.
“At first I thought that maybe things would be okay between us, because he gave me a present on the first day he was here. It was a beautifully painted board with a silver disk that he said was magic. He said he’d show me how to play with it if I was nice to him, and I was nice to him; I got him cookies and milk, and told him how smart he looked in his new summer clothes.
“I was wary, of course, but I wanted so desperately for things to be normal that all I could think to do was please him so that he wouldn’t hurt me again. And for several days and nights things were normal. But then, one afternoon while your mother and I were in my little playroom, having tea, the silver planchette that came with the board began to move.
“Your mother and I sat there, scared to death and too frightened to even breathe! The planchette swirled around, and around, and around on the board, always moving in a particular pattern. First to the S, then to the A, then to the N, and on and on. I don’t know who said the word out loud first, if it was me or your mother, but one of us eventually spoke its name. The second that happened, the room erupted with an energy so intense, it knocked us both over. We were scrambling to our feet when Everett suddenly burst into the room, laughing, and with him was my brother, but it wasn’t my brother. It was something possessed. ‘Hello, kiddos,’ Glenn said, but it wasn’t his voice—it was something else entirely. And then Everett grabbed me, and my brother grabbed your mother, and they raped us both.”
I felt the blood drain from my face, and I tasted bile at the back of my throat while my knees buckled. Heath held me up and attempted to move me over to a chair, but I resisted and forced myself to stay put. If my mother could endure that unspeakable violation, then I could damn well endure hearing about it.
If Sarah noticed my reaction, she gave no indication. She merely continued to stare at her hands and recite what happened. “Afterward, your mother and I were left alone to clean ourselves up. There was blood, you see, and tears. Everett took the board and the planchette with him, and as he left the room, he let me know that he could call up that evil spirit anytime he liked.
“DeeDee told him she was going to tell our parents what he and Glenn had done, but Everett slapped her across the face and said that if either of us ever told anyone, he’d have his evil spirit kill us, and we had no doubt that it would. He also told her that he expected her to come back the next day, because, as he put it, ‘Why should Glenn have all the fun?’”
I shuddered and felt sick to my stomach, and beyond that, an anger so intense it was frightening churned in the middle of my chest, but I dared not move or speak and interrupt the story. I had to know all of it. For myself and for Mama, I had to hear the full story.
Sarah took a deep sad breath then, and continued. “DeeDee helped me clean myself up even before she tended to herself, and then she ran home, and I knew by the way that she hugged me at the door that she never planned on coming back. And for several days she did stay away, but then one morning she came to the door, and I took one look at her and I knew something terrible had been happening.
“She said that the evil spirit, the Sandman, that Everett had called forward had been coming to her at night. He’d nearly killed her twice.”
r /> Tears streamed down my face. I had never imagined my mother had been through something so horrible, and it destroyed me that she’d endured all of that at such a young age.
“That day we hatched a plan,” Sarah said. For the first time since she’d started her story, she looked up at Beau. “We never intended for anyone to get hurt. We simply wanted to get the Ouija board away from Everett and destroy it. So, during my mother’s party, while everyone out in the yard played croquet, DeeDee and I snuck up to Everett’s room and gave it a thorough search. We found the board, but not the planchette, so we brought it down to the playroom and were talking about how to destroy it, but DeeDee said she was worried that destroying the board wouldn’t be enough. We needed the planchette, she said, because she was convinced that it was the true source of Everett’s power over his evil spirit.
“Somehow we needed to trick him into telling us where it was. I told her I knew just how to do it, and I hurried up the stairs to my older brother Jack’s room.
“Jack was Mother’s favorite, but he was hardly a decent young man. He spent most of his short youth addicted to drugs. They would make him loopy and you could ask him anything when he was high and he’d tell you. I thought feeding some of my brother’s drugs to Everett would make him confess where he’d hidden the planchette. I knew that Jack hid his drugs in his room, which we were never allowed to go into, but I risked it on that day because we were desperate, and found a stash of little white pills hidden under his mattress. I brought these down and DeeDee and I then mashed them into a powder and put them in the sugar bowl of my tea set, mixing it with a fair amount of sugar to hide the powder. Then we went to the kitchen and made a batch of very tart lemonade, telling our maid to pass a note to Everett when she saw him. We’d asked Everett to meet us in the playroom, but he had to come alone.
“We then went back to the playroom and hoped that he obeyed the note. DeeDee and I knew we were no match for my brother and Everett—drugs or no drugs, we’d be in real trouble if they both showed up—but to our relief, Everett did arrive alone, wearing a sick smile and toting a croquet mallet.
“We offered him some lemonade and he took a sip. When he made a face, and complained about how sour it was, DeeDee calmly offered him some sugar, which she spooned into his cup. She and I held our breath as Everett drank down the lemonade. It was a hot day outside and he was sweaty from croquet.”
Sarah paused to take a sip of water from a glass at her bedside table. The irony of the cup and its little red rose wasn’t lost on me. “Anyway,” she continued. “I’m sure DeeDee and I expected the drugs to immediately take effect on Everett, but they didn’t, well, at least not in the way we expected. Instead of getting sleepy and dopey, he became agitated and angry. To this day I don’t know what drugs we gave him, but they worked against us, not for us. I’ll never forget the way he turned to the door of the playroom and shut it, locking us in. He then demanded that we take off all our clothes.
“DeeDee refused and told him that she’d scream, and that’s when he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the planchette. He waved it at us and laughed when we cried out and scuttled back. He told us that all he had to do was say the Sandman’s name, which he did three times, and in front of our eyes Everett turned into a demon.”
Sarah shuddered against the memory, and I recalled the face of the demon captured very briefly by Beau’s camera. “He came at us,” Sarah continued, her voice barely audible. “He attacked me first and bit my arm so cruelly, I thought I’d black out from the pain. And then he was choking me . . . and then . . .”
Sarah stopped speaking and I had to work over and over again to hold back a sob. My poor, poor mother. What horrors had she endured that summer?
“And then?” Beau asked gently.
Sarah closed her eyes, whispered, “I’m so sorry, Dee,” and then more clearly she said, “And then DeeDee killed Everett with the croquet mallet.”
Chapter 14
Heath took me from the room and held me as I cried and cried. My tears were bitter, and heartbroken, and angry, and so, so sad. To my knowledge, my mother had never mentioned anything to anyone about what’d happened, because if Daddy had ever learned what Glenn Porter had done to her when she was just a child, he would’ve killed him dead.
Finally Beau came out and told us the rest of the story. “She says that after DeeDee struck Everett with the mallet, she swung the thing again and busted the planchette. The girls then kept their heads enough to pick up some of the evidence, the planchette and the sugar bowl, and DeeDee snuck out of the house with them while Sarah planted the mallet in her brother’s room, then joined everyone outside just in time for lunch, which is why no one noticed her missing. Later, Sarah says she purposely spilled some punch on her dress, and her mother took her to her bedroom to pick out something new to wear, and that’s when they both stumbled on the body of Everett, or at least that’s what Regina Porter thought.
“Sarah told her mother that she’d seen Everett and Glenn fighting earlier in the day, which just by coincidence they had been, and Regina went up the stairs to look for her son, only to find the bloody mallet in his room and assume that Glenn Porter was responsible for murdering Everett.”
“That’s some pretty clever thinking on the part of an eight-year-old,” I said, still feeling weak in the knees.
“It is,” Beau agreed. “But Sarah has always been the brightest of the Porters. She skipped several grades from what I remember and had a full ride to some fancy school up North when she had her first nervous breakdown and became something of an invalid.”
“I wonder if Sarah’s issues had less to do with a weak mind and more to do with the struggle to hold inside all those terrible secrets and memories,” I said.
“What happened to her and DeeDee should never happen to any little girls,” Heath said bitterly. He looked mad enough to kill someone himself.
“So Regina Porter thought her son had killed Everett,” I said, getting back to the story. “Wouldn’t he have just denied it?”
“I’m sure he did, but whatever Regina believed, she never confessed it to Sarah. Instead, she shut closed the door to the playroom, and told Sarah to sit on her bed and not to utter one single word. About twenty minutes later, a worker arrived to board up the door leading to the playroom and cover it in drywall. He worked for several hours, and Sarah watched him from the bed. He never looked at her and he never spoke to her, and he never asked her why he was covering up a door in her room—he just did the job, painted the wall, and left. The next morning, Regina opened the door of Sarah’s room accompanied by Sheriff Maskill—who was sheriff before Kogan—and Regina told the sheriff that her daughter Sarah had the flu and had spent much of the previous day in bed. By this time Sarah was catching on that her mother was telling people Everett had gone missing, not that he’d been killed inside Porter Manor. The sheriff didn’t even ask Sarah if she’d seen Everett; he just nodded to her and they left her alone.
“She says that a day or so later, she overheard Regina talking to DeeDee’s mother. She told her that DeeDee was not allowed to come back to Porter Manor, and she was to have nothing to do with her daughter or the family ever again.
“Sarah isn’t sure if Regina ever knew the real truth. More than likely she didn’t want any of Sarah’s friends in the house where they might smell something foul coming through the wall. The staff was also dismissed under the pretense that Regina thought one of them might be responsible for Everett’s disappearance, and if she couldn’t identify which servant it might’ve been, she was going to fire them all.
“The family existed in that big house for over a year before they hired any new staff. She says that’s how long it took for the smell to finally leave her room.”
I wiped my eyes and sniffled loudly. “She had no choice,” I insisted. I meant my mother and Breslow seemed to know it.
“Of course she didn’t, Mary Jane.”
My lip trembled. “This is gonna kill Daddy.”
Breslow was twirling the brim of his hat between his fingers. “I don’t see any reason it should get back to Mr. Holliday.”
I looked at him hopefully. “You won’t tell him?”
Breslow eyed me sympathetically. “I think it’s like Glenn Porter said: if there’s no body, there’s no crime.” Then he made a point to glance at his phone. “Would you look at that? I forgot to hit the RECORD button, and anyway, I didn’t read Sarah her rights, so her confession wouldn’t be admissible, and anything you two overheard is just hearsay. No, I think that Everett Sellers is gonna remain a missing-persons case from here on out, unless a body shows up, which hopefully it won’t.”
I wanted to hug Breslow, but settled for putting my hand on his arm and mouthing, “Thank you.”
We waited in the hallway for a bit until I had collected myself, and then we slowly made our way down the corridor.
Just when we got outside, my own cell rang. It was Gilley. “Yo!” Gil said. “I think I hit pay dirt.”
I put the phone on speaker and the three of us huddled close. “Go for it,” I told him.
“Okay, so, first I looked into Scoffland. Now, according to tax records, he did a little work for Glenn Porter about five years ago, but it was a small job, and he was paid five grand and that was the end of it. I was hoping for something more current, but there’s nothing. There’re also no phone calls logged between Porter’s phone and Scoffland’s.”
Breslow cocked an eyebrow. “How were you able to get phone records?” he asked sharply.
I waved at him impatiently. “If he tells you, you won’t like it, Deputy, so how about, just for the sake of putting Porter behind bars for Scoffland’s murder, we ignore that for now?”
Breslow frowned but gave a reluctant nod. “Okay, go on,” he said to Gilley.
“I was ready to stop at the small job Scoffland did for Glenn five years ago, but the man kept the best tax records I’ve ever seen, so I went back in history looking for anything that might connect him to the Porters, and wouldn’t you know it? Up until about fifteen years ago, Scoffland submitted annual invoices to them for the exact amount of twenty thousand dollars a year.”