Sound of Secrets (16 page)

"No need to leave." He picked up the phone, entering an animated conversation with the mayor where he vehemently defended that morning’s story. More than once, he pointed out the city manager had been given the opportunity to respond and had declined to comment.

Cara paced the length of his office while he talked. As managing editor, Curtis Rhett held what was arguably the most powerful position at the newspaper. His office, however, was no larger than those of the rest of the Sun’s editors.

The interior of the building was designed so that the offices of the editors formed a semicircle around the desks of the reporters. The offices had glass windows that allowed the editors to see out and reporters to see in. No secrets, Curtis had said.

 
Cara caught a flash of pink out of the corner of her eye and turned to see a stylishly dressed Karen Rhett bent over the desk of a young reporter. They both gazed at glowing words on a computer screen, and the impatience Karen hadn’t bothered to hide when Cara questioned her was nowhere in evidence.

She wished Karen would have told her what she remembered of Skippy. Even though Karen had only been four years old when he died, she was, after all, his sister. Just as Curtis was the boy’s uncle.

An oversized framed photograph to the side of Curtis's desk drew Cara’s attention. She moved closer to it. It pictured generations of what appeared to be family members, and she surmised from the hairstyles of the women that it had been taken sometime in the 1980s.

An old man, his expression severe and his spine rigid, stood at the center of the photograph. He was flanked by two couples in their thirties, but only one of the younger men bore him a strong resemblance. With a start, Cara realized that the man with the thick dark hair and arm slung casually over his smiling wife was Curtis Rhett. The other man, the one who looked like the old man, must be his brother Reginald.

Cara’s eyes dropped to the bottom of the photo, where three smiling children stood in front of the adults with their hands folded in front of them. Two were girls clad in pink, frilly dresses. The third was a boy with a nose heavily sprinkled with freckles and a mop of dark hair. Huge, brown eyes gazed at her out of the cellophane, and Cara's heart froze in mid-beat.

This child was about a year younger than the one who had been crying silently in the corner of her hotel room, but it was undoubtedly Skippy Rhett.

Her hand flew to her mouth. It was one thing to suspect it was Skippy Rhett she saw. It was quite another to have it confirmed.

"I see you found the family photo."

Cara started. She hadn’t heard Curtis Rhett terminate his telephone conversation. He was suddenly behind her, standing too close. She deliberately dropped her hand to her side, not wanting him to know what she'd discovered.

But no. It was a ridiculous thought. Curtis couldn't possibly guess she kept seeing his dead nephew. She swallowed her reaction and tried to appear unaffected by the photo.

"We were a handsome bunch, don’t you think?" Curtis didn't wait for an answer. "You’ve probably already figured out the stern-looking old man in the center is my dour, old dad. He died about six months after this was taken."

He moved past her, nearer the photograph, and pointed at each figure in turn as he talked. "That’s my globe-trotting brother Reginald and his wife Marty, and this, of course, is me before I worried away all my hair. The woman I have my arm around is my ex-wife Janet, who couldn’t stand being married to me. She was good at faking it, don’t you think?"

He paused, and Cara thought his jaw quivered. "The girl on the left is our daughter Suzy, who was sweet and kind and unlucky enough to die of leukemia when she was only twenty-four." He cleared his throat. "The little girl next to her is my niece Karen, who is now the Sun’s features editor."

"And the little boy?" Cara asked softly when he paused in his narrative.

"Why, surely you’ve guessed that’s Skippy. You were asking about him before I got called away to the phone."

"I asked. You didn’t answer," Cara said, amazed at her boldness. "You didn’t tell me why nobody can explain why he was alone when he died."

Curtis turned to her, an odd expression on his face, as though he were seeing her for the first time. She almost thought he looked approving, as though, as a newspaperman, he couldn’t help admiring her persistence at getting an answer to her question.

"Maybe that’s because nobody knows why."

"How could nobody know?" Cara pressed. "He was five years old. He couldn’t have gotten to Sam Peckenbush’s station unless somebody drove him there."

"Very good, Miss Donnelly. Even my best reporter couldn’t’ have put that better." Curtis smiled slightly. "I should have said nobody knows what my nephew was doing there in the middle of the road except, perhaps, the person who kidnapped him."

Cara was still considering the possibility that Curtis Rhett’s resentment toward the terms of his father’s will had something to do with his nephew’s death when she returned to her hotel room later that night.

Curtis certainly hadn’t made a secret of his bitterness, referring to his father as "dour, old dad" and daring her to ask questions about how he dealt with an arrangement he obviously considered unfair.

Maybe Curtis had dealt with it by kidnapping his nephew and demanding a ransom from his brother’s vast stash of cash, half of which should have belonged to him.

Even as she considered the possibility, she rejected it. Despite the strangeness of the interview, it had seemed as though Curtis Rhett had actually relished it. He had been more forthcoming than anyone else she had met in Secret Sound, and she couldn’t help liking him for that.

She also found it hard to believe he could have engineered the kidnapping and death of his own nephew, no matter how wronged he’d been. And would Skippy have run from his uncle?

Cara sat down heavily on the bed and took off her shoes, rubbing at the spots where the sandal straps had cut into her feet. Her problem was that she didn’t have nearly enough information to solve the puzzle of what had happened to Skippy or to cast blame on his uncle.

Curtis Rhett had supplied the previously unknown fact that Skippy had been kidnapped and a ransom had been paid. He hadn’t said anything more.

She’d tried to find out more details after she left the Sun and went about her business in town. However, the mechanic who had repaired her car after she’d had it towed from Peckenbush’s garage hadn’t been born until after the tragedy.

Her luck hadn’t been any better at the diner where she’d eaten dinner. The waitress who’d served her the house specialty of meatloaf and mashed potatoes had only lived in Secret Sound for ten years.

Cara stared at the corner of the room where Skippy had appeared the night before. She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to will the little boy to appear again. When she opened them, all she saw was a Queen Ann armchair flanked by a cherry nightstand.

"Oh, Skippy," she whispered aloud, "what happened to you?"

The answering ring that filled the room was so jarring that for a moment Cara didn’t realize it came from the phone. She covered her mouth with her hand to stop her nervous laugh and reached for the receiver.

Before she picked it up, she had the silly, unwelcome wish that Gray DeBerg would be on the line.

"Hello," she said, and she thought that foolish hope made her sound breathless.

"Cara? Is that you?"

Richard
. Cara was relieved he couldn’t see her face, because she was sure it was flushed with guilt. She had promised to phone him when she reached Miami Beach, but she hadn’t given him a moment’s thought in days. Worse, she’d given Gray DeBerg hours of them.

"Yes, Richard." She fought to make her voice sound normal. "It’s me."

"That’s a relief. I’ve been calling your cell and not getting an answer.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot my charger and haven’t gotten around to picking up a new one yet.”

“Just as long as you’re all right,” he said. “Your Aunt Clarice gave me this number after your friends told me you hadn’t arrived in Miami Beach. You are okay, right?”

It was just like Richard to ask about her without demanding answers for himself, Cara thought with another stab of guilt. She’d detoured from her plans, neglected to phone him and all but forgotten his existence, but he wanted to know whether she was all right. She couldn’t imagine that any man would make a more caring husband.

"Yes. Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t call. It was wrong of me. I stopped in a town on the way to Miami Beach and it was so..." She stopped and groped for a word that wouldn’t be a lie. "...enticing I decided to stay for a while."

"As long as you’re fine." He trailed off. Cara could sense he wanted more answers, but he wouldn’t ask. Richard was gentle, patient and undemanding. Everything she wanted in a husband. Everything Gray DeBerg wasn’t.

The conversation continued in the same harmless vein, with Cara relaying innocuous details of her trip, such as the way the beach looked under a starry sky, and Richard asking her to please keep him furnished with a number where he could reach her.

It wasn’t until Cara hung up that she realized she hadn’t even considered telling him about her strange visions of Skippy Rhett.

The phone rang again, and she reached for it, sure Richard was calling back to tell her something he’d forgotten. The muffled voice that came over the line wasn’t Richard’s. Cara couldn’t even tell if it belonged to a male or female.

"Leave Secret Sound while you still can."

"Who is this?" Cara demanded. All she got for an answer was a dial tone. She stared at the receiver in amazement.

Somebody had threatened her. It was bizarre, especially considering that the person had disguised his or her voice in the amateurish way portrayed in movies and television shows.

It sounded as though somebody had placed a cloth over the phone and deliberately made their voice sound creepy.

Cara slammed the receiver back down on its cradle and immediately picked it up again, punching in the number of the front desk. She recognized the voice that answered the phone as belonging to the woman who had checked her into the hotel three nights before.

"This is Cara Donnelly in room 123. Did you just connect a call to my room?"

"Why, yes, ma’am. It was your second call of the night."

"That’s the one I’m interested in. Did the caller give you my room number or ask for me by name?"

"By name, I think. Is something wrong?"

"Do you have caller ID?"

"Why, no. I don't think so."

Cara swallowed her frustration. "Did you recognize the voice?"

"The voice? No, but now that you mention it, it did sound a little funny. As though the caller was suffering from a cold. Are you sure there isn’t something I can help you with, ma’am?"

"No, there’s nothing," Cara said and rang off. For a moment, she sat on the bed, thinking about what had just happened.

Had Sam Peckenbush resorted to more direct threats? And, if he had, why? Why would her inquisitiveness threaten him? Assuming Sam had kidnapped Skippy Rhett all those years ago, it didn’t make sense that he would then run the boy over with his car and stick around to face the police.

Maybe somebody else wanted her gone from Secret Sound. Maybe. Cara almost laughed. She couldn’t think of anyone who did want her to stick around. Gray had warned her against asking more questions, and Karen Rhett had been openly hostile. Although Curtis Rhett had provided information, he hadn’t been exactly friendly.

It was ludicrous, though, to think any one of those three people had threatened her with an anonymous phone call.

Cara scowled. Somebody had threatened her. Although it could have been Stoney Gillick, a recent addition to her list of non-admirers, she didn't think so. She thought the caller wanted her to stop asking questions about Skippy's death.

Something hot and primal coursed through her, and she was surprised to realize it wasn’t fear. Adrenaline charged her movements as she pulled on her shoes and picked up her purse from the bed.

Somebody was trying their best to keep her from the truth. She wasn’t about to let them scare her off.

Skippy had initially reached out to her from the darkness in front of Sam Peckenbush’s station, and she couldn't shake the feeling that's where she'd find the key to the mystery.

She left the hotel, got in her car and went to see if she could make Skippy appear to her again.

Gray was heading home after a night of basketball and pool when the report of a hit-and-run came over the police radio in his car.

His euphoria dulled over his success in persuading the owner of the Dew Drop Inn to donate his old pool tables to the community center when he purchased new ones next month.

It disappeared completely when he heard the location of the accident: The stretch of road in front of Sam Peckenbush’s service station.

Cara
.

Her name slammed into his mind and robbed him of breath. He had nothing on which to base his terrible hunch of the victim’s identity besides a sick feeling in his gut.

Something odd was going on with Cara, and, somehow, it involved Sam. After the way she’d confronted Sam with her suspicions that morning, it didn’t take much imagination to believe that Cara had been prowling around Sam’s station, trying to figure out whatever it was she needed to know.

It wasn’t much more of a stretch to believe that a car had hurtled out of the night and ended her life.

Barely cutting his speed, Gray executed a reckless U-turn across the double-yellow line of the two-lane road. He pressed down hard on the accelerator and headed for Sam Peckenbush’s place, praying all the while he was wrong about what had happened there.

The flashing red lights atop the police cruiser of the deputy on duty cast an eerie glow over the scene as Gray pulled into the service station. He hazard a glance at the street, expecting the light to provide him with a brief glimpse of a body. It was empty of life.

His gaze ping ponged back to the patrol car, which was pulled alongside another vehicle: Cara’s little green Mazda. The breath stilled in his lungs at the certainty that she had been the victim. He wasn’t able to exhale until he caught sight of her leaning against her car, talking to his deputy.