You Don't Want To Know

But inside, in her room, Austin Dern smelled of autumn, rain, and earth with an underlying maleness that she found comforting. Reliable. Steady. If she thought of it, she knew little about this man, but she didn’t care. She buried her face in his shoulder, wanting to wrap her arms around his neck, to feel the brush of his warm lips over hers. She remembered the dream, the passionate lovemaking, and should have felt embarrassment. Instead, she experienced longing.

  It was foolish, she knew, and dangerous, thinking she could trust a stranger, a man of whom she knew so very little. Yet her family, the people she had known all of her life, seemed to be the unknowns, the ones against her—the enemy. She knew that sounded so paranoid. No wonder everyone thought she was out of her mind.

  The truth was simple: She was losing touch with reality, was having trouble distinguishing between fact and fiction. A new drip of fear, icy and cold, slid down her back. There was a chance Jewel-Anne was right.

  Could it be that she was so emotionally distressed, so insane, that she was gaslighting herself?

  A door opened and closed. The front door. Dern stiffened. “Someone’s here,” he said, and for a split second she thought he might kiss the top of her head as he released her.

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs as Dern stepped away from her.

  A quick, insistent rap, then the bedroom door was flung open.

  Wyatt stood on the other side, in the hallway, water running from his raincoat. His hair was wet and plastered to his head, his face red, as if raw from the wind, his mouth a line of displeasure. “What’s going on here?” he demanded, and his features, already drawn into concern, darkened with a quiet rage. “Dern?” Wyatt said, his lips barely moving. “What the hell are you doing with my wife?”

  CHAPTER 29

  Ava wasn’t about to be bullied by her husband. “Mr. Dern helped me, even when he thought I was nuts to be digging in the garden.”

  “Digging in the garden,” he repeated tautly. “And you ended up in the bedroom.”

  “He was trying to talk me down. I was pretty hot, making a lot of accusations at Jewel-Anne, and he tried to defuse the situation.”

  “It’s not his fight.” Wyatt shot the rancher a look.

  “You know, I’ve had a pretty rough night,” Ava said wearily. She didn’t have the energy for another go-around with Wyatt.

  Some of his agitation evaporated. “I heard. Jacob called. He told me about the box with the doll in it.”

  “Wait a second! Did you say ‘the box with the doll in it’?” she repeated. She bent down and grabbed the rag doll to hold it in front of Wyatt’s face. “This is what we dug up.” She shook the doll, causing its good eye to open and close rapidly, its arms and legs wiggling as if in some macabre dance.

  “Jesus!” Wyatt actually took a step back. His eyes were fixed on the effigy, and repulsion contorted his face.

  “It’s supposed to look like Noah!” Ava’s voice rose, and she realized that she was starting to sound as if she were raving again. Maybe she was. Who cared?

  Wyatt’s gaze shifted to Dern, then settled on his wife again. A bit of the self-righteous starch in his spine seemed to evaporate, though he was still wary. “Fine,” he finally said, folding his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “I had an epiphany, I guess you’d call it. I’ve been seeing Jewel-Anne alone in the garden . . .” She told both Wyatt and Dern what had just transpired. “I had to know,” she defended herself, rubbing her arms and feeling the weight of both Dern’s and Wyatt’s gazes upon her. “Jewel-Anne’s behind all this, Wyatt. I know it,” Ava finished. “She’s intent on making my life a living hell. I think it’s because of Kelvin. She blames me for her handicap and thinks I’m responsible for my brother’s death. And she’s using Noah as a way to really get to me.”

  “I can’t believe she’d do that,” Wyatt said, but his words lacked conviction. His raincoat was dripping on the floor, and as if he recognized it for the first time, he shed himself of the wet garment and tossed it over his arm.

  “Someone is,” Dern said.

  Wyatt’s lips thinned. To Ava, he said, “All right. I believe someone’s messing with you.” He hitched his chin toward the doll, lines of concentration appearing between his eyebrows. “I don’t think it’s Jewel-Anne. For one thing, it’s a physical impossibility.”

  “Unless she had an accomplice,” Ava suggested.

  Wyatt looked up quickly, his gaze centering on Dern, to see if he was on board with this. “So now it’s a conspiracy?”

  “Maybe.” Ava held her ground. Dern didn’t say anything, and they both kept their gazes on Wyatt as he tried to wrap his brain around her theory.

  “Even if Jewel-Anne was behind this,” Wyatt said slowly, “even if she had some sort of secret agenda—not that I believe it for a second—if she blamed you and was out to get you, why would anyone else go along with her?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, trying to piece it together herself. Frustrated that she was so close to understanding but still at a loss, she threw up her hands. “It could be that she’s in cahoots with Jacob. He’s against everything. Or maybe with her father? Uncle Crispin was never happy that he lost his share of Neptune’s Gate. He took all the blame for Lester Reece escaping from Sea Cliff, and then the hospital closed on his watch and he was forced to sell his share of the estate. That couldn’t have sat well with him.”

  “So Uncle Crispin, along with Jewel-Anne, buried a doll dressed in Noah’s clothes in our yard?”

  Even to her own ears, the theory sounded lame. Far-fetched. As if she were grasping at straws.

  “I don’t know why, Wyatt, but someone did it. And if not Crispin, then someone else who is in league with Jewel-Anne.”

  “Ava,” he said in a despairing voice, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Dern’s lips tighten. “Don’t make this worse than it is.”

  “I don’t think I can,” she said angrily.

  “You agree?” he threw out at Dern.

  The ranch hand lifted a shoulder. “I do think someone’s deliberately terrorizing your wife.” It seemed hard for him to get out those words, and he took a deep breath, then exhaled. “Look, maybe I should go. You two work this out.”

  And then he left, the sound of his boot heels softened by the runner on the stairs.

  Wyatt closed the door and they were alone, husband and wife. “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

  “How about ‘Now I get it, Ava’ or, ‘Wow, you were right—someone is out to get you!’ Or even, ‘I’m glad that it wasn’t Noah’s body in that tiny coffin, so, come on, let’s go find him.’ ”

  He stared at her. As if she were a stranger rather than the woman he’d chosen years before as his bride. How long ago that seemed. Anger warred with distrust on his face. “Okay.” He pushed his wet hair from his forehead. “Let’s do just that. Find our son.” Her heart lifted for a second as he said, “But first let’s clear something up. Tell me you’re not in love with Austin Dern.”

  “What?” She almost laughed. “No!” she declared quickly. “I barely know the man.” That much was true enough. Her husband arched a wary brow. “I’m married to you, Wyatt.”

  “But you were going to divorce me.”

  She nodded slowly, the piece of that time in her life not completely clear.

  “I was wondering where we stood on that?”

  “I wish I knew,” she said honestly.

  “I heard you fired Evelyn.”

  “She quit,” Ava corrected. “Referred me to another doctor.”

  “She felt forced. Ethically. Because of your ridiculous accusations.”

  “She told you this?”

  “She called me. As I was the one who hired her, she thought it was only fair. She’s downstairs now.”

  “You brought her here?” Ava asked in surprise.

  “Yes.”

  “But—”

  Betrayal burned through her, but before she could sp
eak, Wyatt went on: “When Jacob called me and told me what you were doing, digging up the garden like a maniac, I phoned Evelyn—er, Dr. McPherson—and convinced her to come out here so that she could talk with you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to her.”

  “Not even after this?” he said, and picked up the doll dressed to look like their son. It dangled limply from his fingers. “God, I feel like I need therapy now.”

  “Then go talk to her yourself.” Ava was sick of being pushed around, sick of this sham of a marriage, and sick to death of being toyed with. “And take that”—she pointed at the doll with its weird eye—“with you!”

  “Ava—”

  “Don’t placate me, Wyatt. Don’t.”

  All tenderness she’d seen in him, any sign of the love they’d once shared, disappeared.

  “This is a mistake, Ava,” her husband warned as he walked to the door and yanked it open.

  “Probably. But it’s not the first, Wyatt, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last.”

  “You know, Ava, this doesn’t have to be so difficult.”

  “Doesn’t it?” She met his gaze levelly, despite the roil of emotions tearing through her, and when he left, she walked to the door and locked it behind him.

  Snyder balanced the pizza box in one hand, unlocked his apartment door with the other, and swore when his cell phone, tucked deep into his pocket, began to ring.

  Once inside his unit, he slid the wide box onto the kitchen counter and saw his partner’s name flash on the screen of his cell phone. “You’re making a habit of this,” he said as he answered. “People are gonna get the wrong idea.”

  Lyons laughed, that deep chortle that he kind of liked. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “On what?” He’d left the station a few hours before, took a detour to the gym, then stopped at Captain Awesome’s Bar, two blocks down, where he downed two beers while waiting for his pizza.

  “Probably nothing, but Biggs called me. You know, he’s related to some of the people who live out on the island.”

  “Yeah.” Snyder flipped open the top of the box, saw the tangy pieces of pepperoni and sausage swimming in mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce. “Biggs is like an ex-brother-in-law of the cook or something, so he’s still considered the uncle of Virginia Zanders’s kids.”

  “Well, she called to relate some bizarre story about a mannequin being buried in a plot at the house, a doll of some kind that was dressed up to look like the missing kid.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no crime and no one expects us to go out there,” she went on, “but it’s one more strange thing happening out on Weirdo Island.”

  Snyder didn’t like it. “So what was it? A prank? The remains of some freaky ritual?”

  “Don’t know, but according to Biggs, the mother of the kid did the digging and discovered the mannequin in a makeshift coffin. She went off on her cousin, the one in the wheelchair, who freaked and claimed she didn’t do whatever it was Ava Garrison accused her of. Again, no crime. Bunch of freaks out there, if you ask me. More than one off a rocker or two.”

  Snyder agreed, his pizza momentarily forgotten. “You think this is somehow connected to Cheryl Reynolds’s homicide?”

  “Don’t see how, but it could be connected to the missing kid’s case.”

  “Biggs want someone to check it out?”

  “Not yet, but who knows?”

  They both were frustrated with their boss, a sheriff with far too little practical experience and a lot of name recognition who kept getting reelected. Biggs’s main attribute was that he hired the right people and knew how to glad-hand. And he’d been lucky. Aside from Lester Reece’s escape from Sea Cliff, there hadn’t been a lot of violent crime in the area.

  Unfortunately, it looked like all that was about to change.

  “Anything new on the Reynolds’s homicide?” she asked.

  “Since I last saw you? No.”

  Snyder felt the clock ticking. They were waiting for the autopsy report, a few callbacks from friends and family, and insurance information. It looked like Cheryl might have died without a will, and she only had enough life insurance, it seemed, to bury her. Aside from the house and its sizeable mortgage, she didn’t have much, less than five thousand in savings.

  Worth killing for? Maybe . . . He’d seen victims offed for a lot less. He hung up and picked up a slice of pizza, watching as the cheese strings lengthened. Yeah, this was a heart attack in the making.

  Tonight, he didn’t much care.

  Ava heard the voices again. Soft. In the outer hallway.

  She blinked her eyes open and slid from the bed. Her head was pounding, as if she’d drunk far too much wine, though she hadn’t had a drop.

  Her bare feet hit the floor and she was dizzy for a second, as if she were drunk.

  Holding on to the bedpost, she steadied herself until she was thinking clearly again. She knew she’d been dreaming, could feel the remnants hiding in the corners of her mind but couldn’t gather the images.

  Now, though, she blinked awake, realizing she was alone. Her fight with Wyatt had assured her that they wouldn’t share the same bed. That pretense was long over. It had been since their child’s death.

  Tiptoeing across the room in her nightgown, she hardly dared breathe as the sounds filtered through the door.

  No baby crying tonight.

  No soft sobs whispering, Mama.

  Tonight the voices were adult, and she was nearly certain Wyatt’s was one of them. The other was that of a woman, but the dialogue was off-kilter, out of sync, almost as if there were two separate conversations going at once, both filtering up the main staircase, perhaps from different areas on the floor below.

  She glanced at the clock by the bed; the red numbers glowed that it was midnight, and, as if on cue, she heard the dulcet tones of her great-grandfather’s clock striking off the hours.

  Bong!

  “It won’t be long now,” a woman said with a smile in her voice.

  Bong!

  “. . . odd that, don’t know what to think of it.” The woman again? No, another woman.

  “. . . remember what she used to be like?” This person was speaking over the first and second.

  “Wish I could help, but it’s hopeless.” A third woman? Dr. McPherson? This late?

  Bong!

  “You’ve done the best you can.” Male. Wyatt. He must’ve been talking to the psychologist. Who else?

  “. . . only a matter of time . . .” This from the second woman’s voice, the one she couldn’t quite place.

  Bong!

  Each time the clock struck, her head pounded a little and the conversations became garbled, all mixed up. She cracked open the door and, seeing no one in the darkened hallway, stepped out of her room.

  The air here was colder, causing goose bumps to rise.

  Bong!

  She nearly gasped, as the clock was so much louder in the hallway that rimmed the staircase.

  “. . . have to be careful . . . she’s getting suspicious.” A whispered voice barely audible over the resonate strikes of the clock—the third woman? Or a person speaking so softly it was impossible to figure out his or her gender.

  “Just be careful.” Wyatt again?

  Click! A lock sprang. Creeeeeak. The front door opened.

  Biting her lip, her hand on the railing, Ava hurried down to the first floor to the living area of the house.

  Bong!

  She nearly tripped as the clock struck again and the front door closed with a thud. In the foyer, a single lamp glowed, but the cool air, laced with the scent of rain, still lingered.

  The foyer was empty, the clock finishing its loud message, and Ava stepped to the narrow windows flanking the door. Through the glass, she was certain she saw two figures escaping. A tall man—Wyatt, she thought—with his hand on the small of a smaller figure’s back. He was with a woman, probably Evelyn McPherson, and they were heading to the
dock.

  Despite both of their denials, it was obvious they were romantically involved. And they’d been discussing Ava. God this was so screwed up!

  “. . . almost off the rails,” a woman’s voice whispered through the empty foyer, and Ava’s heart turned to ice. The second conversation. Of course. But where was the speaker? The house was dark aside from a few strategically placed night-lights that gave enough illumination so that she could see shapes and doorways. But with the clock resonating, counting off the hours, she couldn’t distinguish the location of the conversation.

  Bong!

  That had to be the final strike of the clock, she thought. But the voices had stilled as well, almost as if it had been planned for the conversation to be disguised by the noise.

  Slowly she crept toward the den. Telling herself that this was her house and she had every right to be in whatever room she chose, regardless of the time of day or night, she was still nervous, her heart beating rapidly, her nerves strung tight. Despite the earlier murmur of the conversation, she now felt as if she were alone, the only person up at this hour.

  And yet . . .

  Palms sweating, she slipped through the half-open door of her husband’s retreat. The voices had come from around this area . . . right? She took two steps and saw a shadow, a flit of movement near the bookcase.

  Her heart nearly stopped.

  With a growl, something leaped out at her and she gasped, stepping backward as she recognized Mr. T. The cat, twice his usual size, hissed viciously, then scurried through the open door.

  Ava sagged against the corner of the desk.

  It was just Virginia’s cat, nothing more.

  Except that Mr. T isn’t capable of sounding like someone whispering and creating a conversation. Nor could he cry like a baby . . .

  In the distance, she heard a boat’s engine roar to life. So Wyatt and Dr. McPherson were gone. Good riddance, she thought, then heard the first muffled baby’s cry. Oh, no!

  “Mama,” the tiny voice whispered, and her insides turned to mush.

  “Baby?” Her answer was involuntary. Of course Noah wasn’t in the house. She knew that, but there was something . . .