Sound of Secrets (27 page)

When she reached the fifth house on the block, she had her answer. Something about the house was naggingly familiar. No grander than its neighbors, the house had an interesting layout that boasted two floors and a widow’s walk atop the roof. The stucco siding was an unusual shade of deep rose and the porch wrapped around three sides of the house.

Cara walked up the paved driveway, compelled to get closer to the house. The tiny hairs on her arm stood up and the wind that blew over her felt cool despite the warmth of the day. Something about this house struck a note inside her both familiar and discordant at once.

She rang the doorbell and waited for long moments. She debated with herself briefly before walking to the rear of the house. Thick hedges, adorned with tiny red flowers and stretching at least ten feet to the sky, bordered the house on all sides.

The scent of freshly mowed grass filled her nostrils, but the groomed look didn’t seem right. The grass should be taller, with weeds tickling her ankles and making it hard to walk. The back yard should be bigger, the storage shed that was nestled in one corner of it more menacing.

The old shed, with its weathered aluminum siding and slightly slanted roof, looked out of place in the pricey neighborhood. Cara walked toward it, knowing in advance about the small window she'd find along its right side.

Taking the palm of her hand, she wiped dirt from the grimy window and peered inside. The floor was a slab of cement, and the interior contained what might be expected of a storage shed. A riding lawnmower, a shovel, some rakes.

A chill snaked down her spine. She'd seen this place before, the night she’d dreamed of the eagle and awakened to find Skippy weeping in the corner of her hotel room.

Except Skippy hadn’t been in her hotel room at all. He’d been here, inside this shed.

What did it mean? What possible connection could this shed have with Skippy? How had Cara known it was here? How had she known what she’d see when she looked inside?

The questions crowded her mind, demanding answers, momentarily shutting out the present so that the soft sound of footsteps registered too late.

A shadow crossed over her, and she spun to see who was behind her. Something hard and solid connected with the side of her head before she could complete the rotation. Waves of pain crashed along her skull. Her eyes filled with tiny white stars. Then she was falling, with only the ground to catch her. Everything went black.

Cara couldn't be sure if she lay alongside the shed for a minute or an hour before an insistent shaking started on her upper arm. She batted at the hand weakly. The shaking wouldn’t stop. Keeping her eyes closed, she tried to ignore the pounding in her head, wanting desperately to slip back into unconsciousness.

The shaking went on and on. Surrendering, she opened her eyes, her vision as blurred as the reception on an old television set. She blinked, trying to focus.

The fuzzy image gradually became the figure of a man. He bent over her, and something about him seemed familiar. When she gazed up into his face, she knew why.

The man was Curtis Rhett.

Gray burst through the double doors of the emergency room, moving at such speed that he nearly clipped the edge of the door as it reacted to the automatic sensor.

The room had a standard-issue hospital flavor with stark white walls, threadbare carpeting and orange plastic furniture, all of which made lengthy waits even more interminable.

Gray had been inside the waiting room when it was packed with people who were told their complaints could wait and their worried friends and relatives. The only person present today was none of those.

Curtis Rhett sat with his legs crossed at the ankles, his arms resting lightly over his chest, his eyes unreadable.

"Where is she?" Gray demanded.

Curtis shook his head. His lips curved upward but he didn't smile. "A doctor’s looking at her now. I doubt they’ll let you see her until he’s through."

Gray ignored him and strode to the admissions desk, wondering how this could have happened. Miles Dunleavy said Cara had been out of his sight for barely fifteen minutes while he checked on his grandchildren. Cara should have been fine. Except she hadn't been.

Gray almost groaned when he saw the identity of the clerk. He had a good relationship with nearly everyone on staff in the Secret Sound Hospital emergency room except Betty Rowlands, who in a previous incarnation had been a high school social studies teacher. She’d once told Gray’s father the reasons she'd changed careers were Gray’s smart mouth and disruptive antics.

"What examination room is Cara Donnelly in?" he asked, too agitated to sugar-coat the question. "I need to check on her."

"You most certainly will not check on her." Mrs. Rowlands used her best schoolteacher glare. "You’ll wait until the doctor’s through examining her like a civilized person, which, by the way, I’m still not convinced you are."

He sighed. "Tenth grade was a long time ago, Mrs. Rowlands."

She smacked her hand smartly on the counter. "Not long enough that I’ve forgotten what a nuisance you were. I suggest you work harder on your manners, young man."

Gray sighed, realizing a dead end when he crashed into one. If he tried to get past, Mrs. Rowlands would throw herself in front of him like a human barricade.

"Could you at least tell me her condition?" he asked.

"Now how would I know that when the doctor isn’t done examining her yet?"

Instead of answering, Gray turned his back and headed for somebody who could provide answers. Curtis didn’t make any secret of the fact that he’d been watching. He inclined his chin when Gray stood in front of him once again.

"I want to know exactly what happened,” Gray said.

"I already told you on the phone," Curtis said in calm, measured tones at odds with his customary rapid-fire delivery.

"Tell me again."

His eyes linked with Gray’s. "I came back home because I’d forgotten some papers in my den. I happened to look out the window and saw Miss Donnelly lying beside the shed. I helped her come to and asked her what happened. She said somebody hit her on the head, she didn’t know who, she didn't know with what. I drove her to the ER. I called you. End of story."

"What kind of papers?"

Curtis shook his head as though he couldn't believe Gray had asked the question. "Evaluation forms."

"I thought those were done on the computer."

"They are." Curtis uncrossed his arms and sat up straighter. "I’d printed them out so I could look over them at home where I wouldn’t be interrupted. Is that answer good enough for you?"

"Did you see anybody else when you looked out the window?"

"Not a soul,” Curtis said.

"Why do you think we couldn’t find the object she’d been hit over the head with?"

Curtis uncrossed his legs before answering. "I don’t know. Perhaps the person who hit her took it with him."

"Don’t you think that’s odd? That somebody came into your back yard with a weapon, hit Cara and left without you seeing anything?"

"Taking into consideration that I have no idea how long she was lying there, no. What I find odd is that you’re questioning me like I’m a suspect."

"It happened in your back yard."

"To a woman who was trespassing! I should be questioning her about what she was doing back there." Curtis got to his feet and moved past Gray.

"Hey, where are you going?" Gray asked.

"I’ve had enough of this," he said and exited the double doors.
 

Gray followed. "I’m not done asking you questions."

An ambulance idled at the front of the hospital, empty despite the doors standing wide open. The sun had burned off all of the clouds except one, which cast a shadow over them.

Curtis whirled to face him, his face pinched, his eyes flinty. "How 'bout I ask you some questions. If I were trying to hurt your Miss Donnelly, why did I bring her to the hospital? Why didn't I finish off the job? You’ve seen my back yard. Nobody can see what goes on back there."

Curtis's fierce expression wasn’t much different than the one he wore when stating his position on global warming or graft in the mayor’s office or any of the hundred other issues he dealt with as the town’s premier journalist.

That very passion had won Gray’s respect and, ultimately, his friendship. Curtis wasn’t a killer. Gray knew that as surely as he knew the Secret Sound Sun would come out on schedule the next day.

If Curtis had kidnapped his nephew, he hadn’t meant for him to die. If he were intercepting the community-center donations, he didn’t fully realize he stole from the teenagers of Secret Sound.

"I don’t believe you're a killer, and I don’t want to believe you kidnapped your nephew." Before the relief in Curtis's face could bloom, Gray continued, "But if you had, I do think you'd try to frighten anybody who got too close to the truth."

Curtis stared at him for a moment. "My poor Suzy."

"What?"

"It was never her, was it, Gray?"

"You’re not making sense."

"Neither are you, son,” Curtis said. “You’re a hell of a cop but you’re listening to your heart instead of your head. Think, Gray. If I'd gotten away with kidnapping Skippy, why would I be worried about Miss Donnelly and her questions now? God knows I don’t care what people think of me. And I’m smart enough to realize that nothing less than eyewitness testimony could convict me. After all these years, even that would be suspect.

"Then look deep inside and ask yourself a question. What kind of man do you really believe I am?"

Cara felt as though her head had barely survived a bout with a sledgehammer. She shifted her position and settled back against the pillows of the hospital bed. Even that slight movement caused her head to ache. She literally didn’t know what had hit her.

When she’d advanced the sledgehammer theory in the examining room, the doctor had quickly discounted it. She had a raised lump that was tender to the touch. The skin hadn’t been broken, though. His diagnosis was a mild concussion, which made it much more likely that she had been hit by something with decidedly less oomph. Or by someone who wasn’t very strong.

She would have protested the doctor’s recommendation that she be kept in the hospital overnight for observation if a wave of nausea hadn’t changed her mind. A hospital bed and a night of rest suddenly seemed like a good idea. She closed her eyes, giving herself a respite from the double vision the doctor warned might last another hour.

"Cara?" True to form, Gray didn’t wait for permission to enter the room. When he spoke again, it was from her bedside. "How do you feel?"

She opened her eyes and saw two of him, each better looking than the other. The images wore twin looks of concern. He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. Immediately, her cold fingers began to warm.

"I’ve been better," she said weakly, trying to smooth her hair with her free hand. "I must look a mess."

He shook his head, his eyes so intent they seemed to give off heat. "You look beautiful."

She didn’t believe him but she didn’t have the strength to protest. She stopped fussing with her hair, convinced it didn’t matter anyway. He wouldn't suddenly fall in love with her hair looked nice.

"I came to see you as soon as they let me. The doctor thinks you were lucky. You took a glancing blow instead of a full whack. He says you won’t have any lasting effects if you take it easy for a couple days."

She didn’t answer. He sat down uninvited on the bed, touching her cheek and smoothing her hair back from her face. Tears pricked the backs of Cara’s eyes. She dared not let them fall. Somebody was trying to kill her, and all she could think about was that the man comforting her would never love her.

"When I think of what could have happened to you," he said and then trailed off. "Why didn't you go with Miles when he checked on his grandkids? Why did you let him leave you there alone?"

She looked down at their joined hands, feeling weak because she couldn’t muster the resolve to pull hers away. "I don’t feel up to a lecture."

"Of course you don’t." He pressed his lips together. "You’re right. I’m sorry. I know your head hurts so I’ll keep this short. Can you tell me anything that might help me find out who did this?"

"No." She shook her head and winced at the movement. When the pain subsided, she reconsidered his question. "Wait a minute. That’s not true. About an hour before I got hit, I saw Sam Peckenbush drive by. He could easily have come back."

She waited for him to jump to Peckenbush’s defense but he merely nodded. "Okay, I’ll check it out. Did you see anything or anyone else who looked suspicious? Like maybe Stoney Gillick?"

She was smarter this time and answered verbally instead of shaking her head. "No."

"Then can you tell me what you were doing in Curtis's back yard?"

When she’d first regained consciousness and seen Curtis Rhett bent over her, she hadn’t remembered where she was or what she was doing there. Gradually, bits and pieces of her memory had returned until the entire scenario snapped into place.

"Does it matter?"

"It might." He squeezed her hand and again she felt that odd connection that had been there from the first. His gaze was intent, focused only on her.

"Something about the house seemed familiar so I went around back," Cara said. "I knew the shed would be there before I saw it. I knew what the interior looked like before I peeked through the window."

He waited for her to continue. She took a deep breath. "I’d seen it all before, Gray. I woke up from a bad dream and I saw Skippy in the corner of my hotel room. Only it wasn’t a hotel room anymore. It was the inside of that shed, and Skippy was sitting on the cement floor, crying, with rakes and shovels all around him."

She was breathing hard when she finished the story, her exhalations audible in the quiet hotel room. He hadn’t released her hand, and her fingers clung as she waited for his response. It was vitally important that he didn’t ridicule her, that he believe the impossible.

"What do you think that means?" he asked.