In Dark Waters (7 page)

Kelsey shrugged, forcing herself to breathe deeply and relax. She reminded herself that she'd met Mitch two years after Donna had left. She was grateful he'd not been in town to witness that terrible time in her life.

"Boyd and I crossed paths when I first came back to town," she said. "I'd just started working at the scuba center when he decided to take up the sport. For a few months, he was in and out of the shop a lot. He was always asking me questions about Donna. I never had any answers to give and finally he stopped coming by the shop. Frankly, he gives me the creeps."

Mitch sighed. "Why did he care about Donna?"

"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a thing at one time. She did get around."

She dropped her gaze and stared at the speckled tabletop. Why couldn't she have had a normal mother who baked cookies and drove her to soccer practice?

"You ready to leave?" Mitch said softly.

"Yeah, I've had just about all the fun I can take."

Mitch paid the bill and escorted Kelsey to his Suburban. As she settled into the sun-warmed seat, the energy suddenly drained from her body. She could barely lift an arm.

Mitch's aviators glinted in the sun as he slid into the driver's side, started the car, and pulled out into traffic. "I'll take you to Yancey's. You look like you could sleep."

"Should you check in with your office and see if they've found out anything?"

He shook his head. "There won't be anything this early. As much as I'd like to rush the autopsy for you, these things just take time." He stopped at a red light and put on his right blinker.

"Could you drop me off at Ruth's?" She could hardly believe she'd asked the question.

"What for?"

"Who knows? I might stumble across something that belonged to Donna that could tell me more about her last few days in town."

He frowned. "You're better off at Yancey's Motel getting rest. Clues can wait until tomorrow, Nancy Drew."

She lifted an eyebrow. "You keep mistaking me for a reasonable person, Mitch. I'm not."

"Go to the motel."

She sat a little straighter. "Look, I don't have the energy to argue. If you drop me at the hotel, I'll just walk to Ruth's. So do me a favor and save me the five-block walk."

He glanced at her, his firm jaw set like granite. The light turned green but instead of turning right, he glanced in the rearview mirror to check traffic and, when it was clear, turned left toward Ruth's.

He drove down Second Street past the older buildings toward the town's oldest residential neighborhood. Thick oaks lined the curbed streets flanked by neat lawns and large blooming pink, white and red azaleas.

"So where did you and your mother live while you were away from Grant's Forge?"

"We traveled a lot. We never stayed in one place for more than a year."

"What'd she do for a living?" When they'd worked together, he'd asked about her mother, but she'd always dodged the questions.

Kelsey shoved her hand through her hair. "Whatever suited her. There was a time when she wanted to be an actress. I was real little then. So we moved to L. A. But she spent most of her time waiting tables so we headed north to Seattle. She worked in a bakery and for a while we had all the day-old cookies and bread we could eat. I liked the school there, but the rain depressed Donna. She got into drugs and I ended up in foster care for a while."

Mitch tightened his hands on the steering wheel, but he said nothing. People often got very uncomfortable when she talked about her childhood. If they'd grown up in a happy home, her stories made them feel guilty. If they'd had a bad time, she was a tangible reminder. So she'd stopped talking about herself.

"Anyway, to make a long story short, we jumped around the country until we landed here when I was fifteen."

"Your mother ever make any enemies?"

"Lots. She had a knack for pissing people off."

He turned onto Mulberry Street—her aunt's street—and she found herself tensing. The trees were a little larger, but other than that, the row houses were exactly as she remembered.

Mitch pulled up in front of Ruth's house without having to ask the address. His familiarity with her life irked her.

She reached for her duffel bag and pulled out her camera. She popped a disk from the camera. "These are the pictures of the car. They might help you." She was grateful to get rid of the images.

Mitch tucked the disk in his pocket. "I'll get this copied and returned."

She closed up her camera and replaced it in the duffel. "Great. Thanks for the lift."

He shut off the engine. "Do you have a key?"

"Ruth always hid one under the flowerpot on the front porch. My guess is that it's still there." She opened her door and, to her surprise, he also got out. "I can take it from here."

He didn't miss a step. "Just making sure you get in all right."

His overprotectiveness should have irritated her, but she found it oddly comforting. There was something rock-solid-solid about Mitch that comforted her more than words ever could.

Fishing for, but not coming up with, a smart remark, she settled on silence and walked up the cracked sidewalk up to the covered front porch that stretched the length of the house. The black front door had been freshly painted and the brass mail slot in the center of the door and kick plate glistened in the afternoon sun. A lime-green metal glider sat to her right, and to her left a white wicker chair and a large clay pot that held wilted red geraniums.

She tipped back the geranium pot and easily found the front door key. "Ruth didn't change a thing."

"Older folks don't usually."

She slid the key into the lock. "She's been old forever."

"Eighty-seven when she died."

The news surprised Kelsey. She'd never known how old Ruth was. The woman would have been in her mid-seventies when she'd taken Kelsey in. Few women of that age would have taken on a surly teen, and Kelsey couldn't help but admire her aunt.

She turned the key and opened the door. A week's worth of mail had piled in the darkened entryway, forcing Kelsey to kneel down and pick it up. As always, the house smelled of overcooked green beans and bacon grease. Her stomach soured.

As she stood with the mail, Mitch switched on the light. Two of the three bulbs in the ceiling light fixture were blown and the remaining one cast eerie shadows down the long center hallway. Dust floated in the air and coated the side table. A smudged mirror hung to her right. Floor-to-ceiling newspapers and shoe boxes lined the hallway.

Mitch yanked off his glasses. He scanned the clutter and dust. "What happened here?"

"Home sweet home."

"The place had always looked like this?"

Kelsey remembered the first time she'd seen the inside of the house. She'd half expected Herman and Lily Munster to walk down the stairs. "Yep."

"I had no idea."

"Most people didn't. Ruth was always good about keeping the exterior and the front hallway clean. The other rooms must really be full if her mess was moved out here."

"Damn."

She shrugged. "Look on the bright side. If there was ever any clue about Donna, Ruth has it tucked away somewhere. It's just a matter of finding it."

Mitch followed Kelsey down the hallway through the maze of rooms filled with more papers and boxes. As he stepped over crate after crate, he had a new appreciation for Kelsey. She'd not only survived Donna but this insanity as well. And to top it off, she'd gotten out and made something of herself. He stared at the long dining room table piled high with rows and rows of mismatched socks. "I can't believe you lived in this mess."

"Two glorious years." She wandered toward the hallway and the carpeted center staircase. "She let me keep my room clean."

He followed Kelsey up the stairs to a door at the end of the hallway. She pushed it open and stepped inside.

The room was unlike any other in the house. It was very neat. The double bed and dresser and mirror were simply made and not very expensive, but other than a coating of dust they were clean. Teen posters, along with snapshots taken by Kelsey, still covered the walls. The photos were of cats, dogs, birds and a circus elephant. No people, he noted wryly. The bedspread and curtains were a deep purple and covered with large yellow flowers.

Kelsey opened the curtains and let the sunlight stream in, catching the blond streaks in her hair. His gut tightened as he looked at her and he wanted to pull her into his arms, protect her and, yes, see if she still felt as soft as she once had.

"When I first moved in, it took me a solid week of cleaning to clear out this room. It drove Ruth nuts and she wouldn't let me throw anything out. I had to move everything to the attic, but I insisted on an organized room. Since I was a little kid, I've always been a stickler for organization and neatness."

A clean room was about the only thing she could control in her life. He remembered how precisely her dive equipment had been arranged on the tarp by the quarry. "Do you really think you can find anything about Donna in this place?"

"If anything, I am persistent. And if the medical examiner takes as long as you say he will, it will give me something to do."

"I've got a truck you can borrow."

"How about a forklift?"

He laughed. "It could be arranged."

"I might take you up on it." She set her cloth sack purse on the bed and headed downstairs.

"You're not really going to stay here, are you?" He hated the idea of leaving her here.

She shrugged. "I might as well. I'll save money and have more time to work on this place."

He studied her a moment. "All right. I'll bring your car by in a few hours. At least you'll be able to get around town."

"Thanks."

A mouse scurried behind a stack of papers. Mitch hesitated a moment. "Take care."

She followed him to the front door. The debris in the house seemed to press in around him like a wraith. When he jerked the front door open, sunlight flooded into the dreariness.

He got in his car. As he drove down the street, he glanced in his rearview mirror at her standing and watching him leave. Sadness seemed to settle on her slumped shoulders. There'd been a time when he'd made her so happy. And now, like everything else in this town, he only conjured up sad memories.

Mitch expected the protective urge he felt for Kelsey to fade, but he couldn't shake the image of her standing in the doorway. He didn't like leaving her there one bit. The damn place gave him the creeps.

Instead of heading north toward his home in the hills outside of town, he turned south toward the office. He wanted to poke through the department's old files and see if there was anything on Donna Warren.

He parked in front of the one-story square building. Unlike the buildings in the historic district, the police department was housed in a simple modular structure. It had no character and few windows. The lack of windows bothered him. Often he'd said he'd take a pay cut for a large window he could open and close.

Mitch walked up the concrete sidewalk to the double glass doors. Mabel Riley sat at the dispatcher's desk. She'd worked at the station for a good twenty years and she knew everyone in town. She'd tied her gray hair back and wore her customary white collared shirt and khaki pants. She wasn't a cop, but she'd always liked the idea of having a uniform.

"There's no word on the body yet," she said, reading his mind. "It's on its way to Richmond."

"I didn't figure there'd be news. I just thought I'd look in some of the old files and see what I could find."

"So you think the body is Donna?"

Mitch lifted a brow. "Do you know everything that goes on in this town?"

"And then some." Her voice rumbled like raw whiskey. "So is the body Donna Warren?"

He moved to the front desk and hitched his hip up on the edge. "I don't know. Kelsey Warren sure thinks it is."

"Why?"

"A bracelet found on the body. She said she gave it to Donna for Mother's Day."

Mabel shrugged. "Donna could have hocked it. She'd have sold anything for money."

"You knew Donna?"

"Went to high school with her. We weren't friends but knew of each other."

"So she as wild as they say?"

"Oh, yeah. She discovered men when she was fifteen and never looked back. Ran through them like tissue paper. She was a real user."

The bitterness in Mabel's voice surprised him. "How did Kelsey figure into all this?"

"I don't know much about the kid. I'd joined the army right after high school and by the time I got back, Donna had left town."

"Any files on Donna?"

"I'm a step ahead of you there, boss." A smug smile curved the edges of her thin lips as she pulled out a stack of yellowed files. "I went down to the records department and pulled what I could find on Donna. There's not much. Mostly petty stuff."

Mitch accepted the files. "Mabel, you scare me sometimes."

She grinned. "Part of the job, baby."

Mitch retreated down the hallway to his office in the back. The room was simply furnished with a large desk, a computer and file cabinets. There was a small round conference table, covered with piles of files, across the room. He liked keeping the active files in sight so they weren't forgotten. But after seeing Ruth's house, he resolved to clean it up when he got the chance.

Though he'd held the office for two years, he'd not gotten around to hanging pictures on the walls. He did have a browning plant his mother had given him and a picture on the wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains that had come with the office.

He sat down in the rolling chair and slid under his desk. He flipped open the first picture.

Stapled on the left inside flap was a mug shot of Donna Warren taken when she was about eighteen. For a moment, Mitch stared at her, dumbstruck. At first glance, she was the spitting image of Kelsey. Substitute Donna's Farrah Fawcett hairdo for Kelsey's sleek straight cut and they could have been twins.

But the more he stared at the picture, the more he saw differences. Even as young as she had been, Donna possessed a hardness in her eyes. And her eyes were brown, not the deep rich blue of Kelsey's.