Author: Christina Dodd
Category: Thriller
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/christina-dodd/page,17,485077-strangers_she_knows.html
Max’s grim face lightened. “That would make me feel better about leaving you alone. Let me get the key. I’ll bring you the Ruger?”
“Yes. The Ruger would be good.”
He headed for Gerard Morgade’s study.
Kellen sat beside Rae and put her arm around her. A firearm would give them security during Max’s absence. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to use it; she hoped Mara was nowhere around. Surely Dylan had poisoned himself with one of his homemade brews. That made sense, didn’t it?
She smoothed Rae’s hair. But no matter what, a pistol would make her feel as if she could protect her daughter from harm.
Before Kellen expected him, Max had returned, pale and empty-handed. He gestured Kellen toward the door.
Kellen came to her feet and met him. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly.
Just as softly, he said, “The gun safe is empty.”
“What do you mean, it’s empty?” Stupid question, and too loud, but…what?
“The safe was unlocked. The door was slightly open. The guns are gone. The rifles. The pistols. Gone.” Spacing his words, he said, “The safe is empty.”
They stared at each other, trying to understand the import.
“Olympia?” Kellen asked.
“I guess. Who else? Not the Conkles. Jamie might not have approved of firearms, but she mostly avoided the house—”
“I caught her inside once. She was defensive when I confronted her about it.”
“She was always defensive, but she wasn’t a thief.” Already Max spoke of Jamie in the past tense. “Dylan might have taken them, but even if he had access to the household keys, and I don’t believe that, when he was drunk, he could find the key or fit it into the lock.”
“Right. Olympia had keys, so I suppose she could have had a key to the gun safe.” Kellen rubbed her forehead. “But why?”
“I didn’t inspect her luggage, so she might have gotten away with the pistols, but she wasn’t carrying a bag long enough for the rifles.”
The library looked so normal, so safe, except for the small, shivering figure of her daughter. And now she had no way to protect Rae in case of trouble? More trouble? “Max, we have to consider this could be Mara. Remember how she manipulates men? How violence always followed in her wake? Add Dylan together with the missing firearms, and we have to consider that Mara is here. Somewhere. Somehow.”
“I know. I agree. But then I ask how she got here and why she hasn’t openly revealed herself—”
“Because she’s crazy!”
Max lightly placed his fingers on Kellen’s lips. “Shh. Yes, true. But so was Olympia. She was afraid to be here, and it stands to reason she might have taken the firearms to protect herself.”
“So don’t jump to conclusions.”
“We can jump, but cautiously, and we’ve got to look at every possibility. I did a fast search of the study and of Olympia’s bedroom.” He moved closer. “But, Kellen, think. If Olympia hid the guns in this house, with all the rooms, the drawers, the cupboards… How can we ever find them?”
Hopeless. It was hopeless. “What was she thinking?”
“The isolation of this island makes people lose their minds.”
“I’m just fine, thank you!”
“You really are.” Smiling faintly, he put his arm around her and together they walked over to Rae. He spoke to his daughter. “Are you two going to be okay here alone?”
“Of course we will,” Kellen said. “Right, Rae?”
Rae looked up. “What?” She looked into Max’s face as if just now noticing he was there. “What?”
Kellen said, “We’ll be okay alone on the island while Daddy takes Dylan in, right?”
“Sure.” Rae swallowed. “But we’re not alone on the island.”
“We aren’t?” Kellen mentally jumped to her imminent fear. Mara. “Who else is here?” Mara?
“Jamie! Just Jamie.” Rae glanced away, off to the side, out the window as if expecting to see a face there.
Kellen knelt on the other side of Rae. Between her and Max, they would surround their daughter with love. They would push away the darkness.
Rae looked up at her mother, then at her father. “Jamie’s here somewhere, and we’ve got to find her. She might still be alive.”
“No,” Max said.
“Daddy, she might be hurt!”
“Sweetheart…” Max faltered.
Kellen intervened. “Your father is convinced Jamie is dead, but if she has somehow survived, I’ll find her.”
“We have to search. Just in case.” Rae pulled the throw around herself like a shawl. “Mommy, I need to help you search.”
Kellen gazed into Rae’s eyes, afraid, distressed, yet clear and concerned. “You are the best kid I ever met.”
“Does that mean I can come with you rather than sneak after you?”
Kellen didn’t think it was possible given the circumstances, but she smiled. “Mostly a good kid. Sometimes you’re sort of snotty.”
“Runs in the family.” Rae’s spirit shone through her anguish.
“I guess it does.”
Max began, “I don’t think that Rae—”
Kellen interrupted him. “Rae is right. A search needs to be done.”
“And Mommy needs my help.”
Max looked between his wife and his daughter, and Kellen could see it; he badly wanted to say they couldn’t go.
She put her hand over his mouth to stop any unwise exclamations. “I don’t want to leave Rae here by herself to fret and worry. We’ll stick together, and for protection, we’ll keep Luna with us.”
“Luna’s paws—” he said.
“I’m going to put socks on her feet.” Kellen was determined. “She isn’t going to like it, but we need her with us.”
For the first time since the morning, Rae giggled. “Poor Luna.” She hugged her dog, then sobered. “Poor Jamie. I’m so afraid of what we’re going to find.”
Sometimes, the child was ten years old going on a hundred.
“Me, too,” Kellen told her. “Me, too.”
30
Kellen and Rae—and Luna, clad in four of Rae’s socks—stood in the yard and watched the helicopter rise off the ground. It hovered for a moment.
They waved.
Max waved back.
Then he flew a low zigzag pattern over the island and around the coast.
“What’s Daddy doing?” Rae sounded far too anxious.
“He’s searching.”
In a small voice, Rae said, “Oh. For Jamie.”
“Right. For Jamie.” Kellen stroked Rae’s head.
And for Mara. Before he left them alone on the island, he wanted to be sure Mara was nowhere to be found.
At last, after making a complete circuit, he roared toward the mainland.
“I guess he didn’t see her,” Rae said.
“No.” Not Jamie, and most definitely not the cold-hearted bitch who haunted their nightmares. He wouldn’t have left if he’d seen evidence of Mara. The tight knot in Kellen’s stomach eased ever so slightly. “Let’s go.”
They started for the garage and Kellen’s bike.
Luna ran clumsily, stopping to shake a foot occasionally, trying to get the socks off. But in the chest of drawers in Mrs. Morgade’s room, Kellen had found the garters early-twentieth-century women had used to secure their silk stockings. She secured Rae’s socks with those garters, and now, despite the trauma Rae had suffered, she had to laugh at her puzzled, overdressed dog. She pushed her bike, and stopped occasionally to pet and comfort Luna.
Poor dog. But this was the price she paid for sensitive paws, and for wanting to come with them—which she did. Now, especially, after the encounter with Dylan, Luna took her job as their protector very seriously.
; “I thought we’d start at the Conkles’ home. That seems the likeliest place to find Jamie.” Kellen glanced at Rae.
The sunshine and fresh air worked to revive her; she had color in her cheeks, but she stayed uncharacteristically quiet.
“After that, if we’re unsuccessful, we’ll check the beaches on the south end of the island.” Kellen didn’t believe there would be an after that, but she wanted to speak, to keep Rae distracted from sorrow.
Rae proved she was listening. “Yes. He might have put her there for the waves to wash away.” Her voice contained a sharp, bitter note. “What made him do that?”
Kellen reminded herself that Dylan’s problems started long before they arrived, and said, “Daddy and I think he poisoned himself with his homemade liquors. Maybe he ate a poisonous mushroom, or smoked bad weed.”
“What is it about some people? Why do they hurt the ones they should love?”
Great. The big interrogation, and of course Max was gone. Wouldn’t you know when the questions got tough, he’d be flying in the opposite direction? Kellen tried to dig down to the basics, and didn’t try to pretend she knew the answers. “Some say people are all the same. But they’re not. There’s a big fight called, ‘Nature versus nurture,’ and that means, ‘Are we born the way we are, or does the way we’re raised form us?’”
“And?” Rae had crossed from torment into belligerence.
That was fair; Kellen was pretty peeved herself. “There’s no answer, but I know what I think.”
Rae trudged along, pushing her bicycle. “What?”
“I think it’s a little of both.” Kellen stopped outside the garage door. “‘The flame that melts the butter, tempers the steel.’ Can you figure out what that means?”
“No!”
“If you want to melt butter, you put it over a fire. If you want to temper iron, make it hard, like the steel on the body of that pickup—” Kellen gestured into the garage “—you put it over a fire. It’s the same fire, but completely different reactions because the material you start with is different.”
“So everything depends on how we are when we’re born?”
“And how we’re treated as we grow and live. Some people have an easy life. Some people walk through hellfire to get where they’re going. None of us ever knows what goes on in another person’s head and heart and life.” Kellen went inside, got her bike, came back out into the sun and found Rae standing mulishly still.
“Mommy, you didn’t answer my question.”
No, she supposed she hadn’t. “I guess I don’t know the answer.”
Rae shouted, “That’s not funny!”
Overwhelmed with a surge of love and empathy, Kellen caught Rae in a sudden fierce hug.
Rae resisted, then hugged her back, her face pushed hard into Kellen’s chest. “I don’t want to see it anymore—Dylan and all that blood.” Her voice was muffled. “Every time I let my mind drift, it’s there. I don’t want to see it. I want to know why it happened. I want Jamie to be alive. I want to be safe.”
Kellen understood that, all right. “You want it to be last year.”
“Yes!”
She stroked her daughter’s tangled hair. “Yes. Things were simpler last year. Except they weren’t. I was in rehab and I used to wonder if I could ever fight enough to get better. Your dad was working too hard and being too good, acting as both parents to you and providing all the support you needed. You were being brave for me; you never allowed yourself to have problems because I had so many. Even with all the challenges we have now, I still like today better, where I can be your mother and you can be the child. Right?” She shook Rae a little. “Right?”
Rae took three deep breaths and lifted her head. “If this is what growing up is, I don’t like it!”
Almost comical—but so not. “Growing up isn’t always bad. Sometimes it’s finding a good man like your father. Sometimes it’s seeing your little girl be brave and kind even though she’s scared.”
“I am scared.” Admitting it seemed to help her. “What if we find Jamie and she is dead?”
“Then we’ll treat her remains with respect and when your daddy returns, we’ll take her to the mainland to be buried.”
“If she’s dead, she should be buried on the island. She loved it here.”
This smart girl was Kellen’s reward for years of trouble and pain. “You’re right. There’s the Morgade family cemetery. We’ll see that she’s placed there.” Kellen took Rae by the shoulders and stepped away. “Let’s go look for her.”
31
The Conkles’ house looked small, neat, surrounded by herbs, yet closed up, an enigma. In other words, exactly as it always had.
Kellen leaned her bike against the oak in the yard. She pressed her hand on Rae’s shoulder. “Let me go in first.”
“Take Luna,” Rae instructed. “She’ll protect you.”
“I don’t think there’s anything in there that will hurt me,” Kellen said.
“Have you never seen Dead Like Me?” Rae asked in exasperation.
Kellen hadn’t, so she whistled for Luna.
Luna came, nose to the ground, a low growl rumbling through her chest. She was no longer concerned with her socks and garters. She cared only about the smells that to her meant pain and trouble.
Kellen went to the door, latched firmly and with no indication of tampering. Somehow, she felt as if she should knock. So she did.
No answer.
She turned the knob and with the flat of her palm, she pressed open the door.
It didn’t creak.
The smell of heat, blood and pain rolled out.
Kellen’s head swam. She caught the side of the casement.
Rae noticed. “Mommy? Are you okay?”
“I will be. In a minute.” In battle and war, Kellen had smelled death. She hadn’t missed it, but she knew one thing—Jamie was not alive.
The curtains were open. The sun shone in. Even from the doorway she could see blood in spatters on the wall, trails across the floor, and a pool under the table.
As a contrast, the living room and kitchen were almost untouched. The living room was tidy, and only a little bit of blood had made it to the kitchen, splattered across the floor and three cupcakes on a cooling rack. And…and Kellen had to walk across that floor to check the bedroom and bathroom.
The years of being in the military, of seeing death, hadn’t hardened her to the dread she felt now. With each step, she took care where she placed her shoe. She breathed carefully, through her nose, not wanting to taste the odors that pervaded the house. She peeked into the bedroom first.
It was empty of people and of blood.
Nevertheless, she found herself stepping with care as she made her way to the bathroom.
No blood. No Jamie. Thank God.
She retraced her footsteps to the main room, and jumped when she saw Rae by the stove. “What are you doing?”
Calm and prosaic, Rae said, “Jamie forgot to turn off the oven.”
“I suppose she did.” Kellen held out her hand, needing Rae’s touch as much as Rae might need hers. “She’s not here.” Nor had the missing firearms been anywhere in sight. “We’ll have to look over more of the island.”
They left the house together and shut the door.
“We should feed Jamie’s chickens,” Rae said, so they did, and changed their water.
Then they rode west, checking every beach and overlook as they went. Birds of prey and carrion birds wheeled overhead, carefree and uninterested, congregating in the trees and sailing on the winds. Luna barked at them, but on the beaches, the waves roared and crashed, and Kellen and Rae saw nothing, not a trace of blood or the stain of a body.
Kellen and Rae rode through the redwood grove. As always before, the silence was deep and old, filled with secret rustles of branches and
the sudden flutter of birds’ wings. But where it had been peaceful before, now the shadows seemed sinister, threatening. Their mission had them spooked, justifiably so, and they rode quickly, eyes straight ahead into the bright sunshine.
The cemetery rested at the high end of the island. Although it wasn’t visible from the house, it wasn’t far, a half mile over a knoll. It had been placed on the incline so the graves overlooked the ocean and caught the breeze. A short rusty iron fence surrounded the consecrated ground. A single California blue oak, forty feet tall, wide-branched and tormented by the prevailing winds, stood at the far end. Between them and the oak were a dozen headstones, grass that needed to be trimmed, and a massive mausoleum engraved MORGADE.
“Should we go in?” Rae looked around as if unsure. “I never have before. It always seemed…impolite.”
“Let me. You wait out here.”
“No.” Rae was most emphatic. “I’m coming with you.”
Kellen headed toward the mausoleum, Rae and Luna on her heels. The glass and iron door hung open, swinging and creaking in the breeze. Kellen stopped Rae and the dog a few feet back and murmured, “Let me look first.” She peered cautiously inside.
A great, tall marble slab stood in the middle of the space, waiting for the arrival of a coffin. That was all.
“She’s not here. Jamie’s not here.” Kellen had truly thought she must be in here. But no. It was empty. So empty.
Jamie had disappeared from the island.
Rae joined her and looked inside. “This room, what’s it for?”
“I would think Mr. Morgade intended to be interred here.”
Rae stated the obvious. “He’s not. Where do you suppose he is?”
“Isn’t that a good question.” Such a splendid resting place that he had designed for himself, and yet—he wasn’t here.
A dozen headstones were placed as far away as possible from the splendid edifice. The two oldest were inscribed with Jones, Asa and Sarah, married. Both died in 1918.
“The Spanish flu probably did them in.” Kellen looked around at the isolated, windswept island. “I didn’t know anyone lived here so long ago.”
Two more graves: Alice Blacker and Doris Comden, “Served faithfully and well.” One died 1938, another 1946.