The Hiding Place (25 page)

Tara’s panicked call to the police surprised her, and not just because they answered immediately and were on their way. With adrenaline pounding through her, and with the house and trees nearby, she suddenly recalled phoning the police for help when Clay had held Claire and killed Alex. The sight of her friend tied to a chair in the kitchen leaped at her. Others had told her about that day, but she saw it now, even as she tore around the house to follow Nick inside.

She rushed in, expecting to see the place vandalized or torn up. But the main room looked normal, untouched. Was this just a warning to them to lay off their search for answers about her baby? But once again, how would anyone know for sure she had been driven to avenge her baby’s death?

She gasped when she came into the kitchen. Nick knelt in shards of glass on the floor with Beamer in his arms, trying to hold him up so his dangling feet hit the floor. The Lab looked limp and lifeless.

Her feet crunched glass; she almost slipped as she ran to them, and then saw blood. “Has he been shot?”

“Cut by glass, drugged. I thought he was gone. Can you help me? He’s got to move.”

“Thank God, he’s alive!”

But Beamer was dead weight at first. Tara moved his legs while Nick held him up. The dog’s tongue lolled from his mouth, and his eyes were dilated. He breathed in shallow rasps.

“Nick, we’ve got to get him to a vet.”

“I know one who makes house calls, but I’ll need the phone book. Maybe I can get him to drop everything and come up here.”

“I’ll get the number,” she said and stood. “Oh—there’s a gnawed bone with icky-looking meat on it over here. Not ours.”

“That must be how they—Marcie, whoever—took Beamer out of commission. I swear, I’m gonna kill somebody.”

“She may be unaccounted for, but she did know we’d be in Evergreen this morning—at her request.”

“Don’t touch stuff. Maybe the police can take fingerprints.”

As Nick dialed the number she read him, Tara could hear the distant wail of a siren. For the first time, she feared for her work in her office and went down the hall to check, peeking first in Claire’s room. Nothing amiss there. But in the bathroom, the medicine cabinet door gaped open and the shelves had been shoved clear. Boxes of bandages and plastic bottles cluttered the floor, as if someone had been madly looking for drugs. Drugs, when they’d drugged poor Beamer?

In her office, things looked intact, her file drawers not jimmied, her PCs in place. She’d have to check her bedroom for the extra cash she kept there. Surely, someone hadn’t broken in just to hurt Beamer.

“You’ll have to let the cops in. I’m not leaving Beamer!” Nick shouted to her as she darted into her bedroom. It also looked normal, but the extra cash she kept in her top drawer under her lingerie was gone. Her small leather jewelry box had been dumped on the bed, but there was nothing of great value there. Maybe it just was a break-in for cash and drugs, not a warning. Living in the mountains used to be so safe, but urban life was intruding. She started out to meet the police, who had shut down their siren just outside. She heard car doors slam.

But she ran back into her bedroom, to the cabinet at the bottom of her bedside table where she’d left the urn with Sarah’s ashes. Shaking, she fell to her knees on the floor by her bed and opened the cabinet doors.

The urn still sat there, but she knew it had been moved. The small, framed baby picture of herself she had placed behind it had been shoved back into the cabinet, and the urn itself had been slightly rotated. She was sure of it.

“Ms. Kinsale!” came a man’s voice from the front with a rapping on the door. “Evergreen Police, Ms. Kinsale!”

She banged the cabinet doors closed and raced to let them in.

That night, after putting Claire to bed in Tara’s room, since she was disturbed by the break-in and didn’t want to sleep alone, Nick and Tara sat on the living room floor with a drowsy Beamer between them. The Lab’s head was heavy in her lap as Tara stroked his silken ears. Nick gently rubbed his back, as if, Tara thought, he were their baby. The vet had come and gone, observing that it was good Beamer had not eaten more of the sedative-tainted meat that must have been heaved through the broken window. Two big cuts on the pads of his feet, which had made the blood in the kitchen, had been bandaged.

“I don’t care if the police say it has all the earmarks of a break and enter for cash and drugs,” Tara said, “I think it was Marcie or a Lohan lackey looking for something about my search for information about Sarah.”

“But you said your office didn’t seem to be disturbed, and no one knows your password to access your online work.”

“I know, but I’m telling you the urn was moved. I don’t put it past Jordan or Laird to be so ticked off I took the urn that they hired someone to switch it with an identical one, so I wouldn’t even have her ashes.”

“Tara—”

“I know, I know. I’m starting to sound over the edge. Well, maybe I am. The police may have fingerprinted some spots, but I didn’t want that black graphite dust all over the urn. Besides, of course, it would have had Jordan’s fingerprints on it anyway.”

“It’s ironic, after all you’ve been through, we end up bringing in the police because of a break-in.”

“I thought of that. I would have loved to be calling them in because we proved something against Marcie, or better yet, the Lohans. But I’ll need to really lay the groundwork for that. I have a lawyer friend in Seattle, a former client. After I traced Carla’s ex and she got her daughter back—Annelise is about Claire’s age—Carla got her law degree and specialized in child advocacy. At least I’d know she’s not tied to Lohan money and power.”

“Okay, a lawyer and law enforcement—I can see we’d need that, which is why it was good we told the police we think Marcie’s been casing the house for days and may have conned us to get inside to look it over. But I don’t want you personally going up against Jordan or, worse, Laird.”

“So far I’ve never been able to stomach researching anything to do with Laird. I couldn’t bear to see his face or even read about him online. I’ve wanted even less to do with him than he evidently does with me. But he’s betrayed me in more ways than one, and I’m at the point I’m going to have to force myself to look into his and Jen’s life, just as I have so many other victims’ exes.”

“Long-distance research or working through that Seattle lawyer, fine.”

“No, maybe more. Nick,” she said, turning to face him, though she slightly jostled Beamer’s head, “I think I’m going to have to go to Seattle to do some on-site, pretext work on Laird and Jen. I’ll see my lawyer friend before I go to the police. Maybe when you and Claire head east, I’ll drive to Seattle and—”

“You’re not facing them up close and personal, and definitely not alone. We can’t be separated. Not yet, not now anyway. Duty may call me, but it’s going to have to wait. I’m with you on this. Whoever is behind everything is willing to hurt those who are innocent, and that’s my definition of real evil. They’ve harmed Beamer, maybe your Sarah. They’ve harmed you, but I still don’t want you taking them on face-to-face. And it’s going to take both of us to protect Claire, so—”

As if that declaration was doomed, from down the hall, Claire shrieked once, then again. Tara started to move the dog’s head off her lap, but Beamer’s body tensed, and he sat up as if on alert.

“Stay. Beamer, stay,” Nick told him. As Tara ran down the hall, she could hear Nick racing behind her. She shoved the bedroom door, which stood ajar, all the way open. Light from the hallway spilled in. The child stared vacantly into the shaft of hall light.

“Claire, I’m here. It’s just a bad dream, sweetheart.”

Claire knelt on the bed, pressed against the headboard, clutching her pillow. “She’s dead with dark eyes!” she cried. “She’s in the hall!”

Tara sat on the bed, pulled Claire to her and held her hard. Nick came in and sat close, rubbing Claire’s back. “No one’s in the hall,” he said, his voice gentle. “We’re both here, and no one is going to hurt you.”

Tara had feared the day’s events might disturb the child, when she’d been doing so well. It had been an entire week since she’d had one of her screaming nightmares, but with the house broken into, police around, reminding her of terrible times, and Beamer harmed…Sometimes, Tara wondered if Claire didn’t just subconsciously absorb her own fears, even when she tried to act steady and strong around her.

Finally, still holding tight to Tara, Claire quieted to sniffles. For once, Tara was not hoping she would simply fall asleep and forget the dream. Tara had learned the hard way—Nick had, too, she thought—that it was better to recall and face nightmares rather than trying to ignore or bury them.

“Claire,” she whispered, “don’t worry about anyone coming back into the house. Robbers don’t return once they’ve hit a place, especially not with people here and the police knowing all about it.”

“But I heard you tell the police it was maybe that lady Marcie.”

“I didn’t know you overheard that.”

“Yes, after I got home from school. They said they would look for her. But she came back a second time after she was in to the hall and your office.”

“No, that was just in your dream,” Tara said. “She was in our bathroom and downstairs, the night she stayed here, but not in the hall or in my office.”

“I saw her,” she insisted, nodding. “She had bad, black marks under her eyes that night. Beamer sat outside the bathroom door, then you called Beamer. Then she went quick and quiet down the hall and in your office. I was peeking out of my door at her.”

Nick scooted even closer on the bed. “Honey, why didn’t you tell us before?”

“I didn’t remember till the dream tonight. If she was the robber today, she came back a second time. I guess in the dream I kind of thought she was Mommy’s ghost come back to find me, crying with dead eyes.”

“No, no,” Tara crooned, rocking her again. “Mommy’s not a ghost, and she’s not coming back that way, but she’ll always be in your mind and heart.” With wide eyes, Tara looked at Nick. So, Tara thought, Marcie wasn’t in the bathroom all the time. But what was she doing in the office? Deciding they had to know more, she said quietly to Claire, “I didn’t know you saw Marcie that night.”

“I guess I forgot. See, I had to go to the bathroom, but I heard someone crying and was scared it was you. So I peeked out and saw a strange lady with dark, dead eyes go in the bathroom. Then, when Beamer went downstairs, she came out of the bathroom and ran down the hall to your office. I didn’t know if it was one of your sad ladies you help or not.”

“No, sweetheart,” Tara cried, squeezing her harder. “Marcie’s not one of my ladies, and her mascara was smearing under her eyes from her crying about losing a friend. What else do you remember? Did she have her pretty jacket on with the gold and silver sequins in a star pattern on her back?”

“No, I think a T-shirt is all.”

“Well, it’s good you remembered now. You were just woken out of a deep sleep that night and saw someone you didn’t know.”

“But since you took her in, you know her, right?”

Nick spoke. “We thought we knew all about her, but we didn’t. Just remember, AuntTara and I are both here to take care of you, so—so nothing else bad is going to happen.”

Tara heard his voice waver. Like her, he was waiting for some other, awful shoe to fall. But what could be worse than losing little Sarah and Nick’s beloved Beamer getting hurt?

“I’m sleeping in Aunt Tara’s bed tonight, and you can, too, if you’re scared,” the child told Nick.

“A great idea,” he said, “but some other time, because I’m going to sit up with Beamer to make sure he keeps getting better.”

“I’m glad you put boards over that kitchen window that got broke,” Claire told him with a big yawn. “You know, even if we had a robber, I still don’t want to leave this house, Uncle Nick. I won’t be afraid to keep living here, really. I like it way better than somewhere called North Carolina and Fort Bragg.”

“You just get some sleep,” he said, his voice tense again. “We’ll be right here so just call out if you want us.”

Tara knew what she was going to do. She was horrified that, as an investigator who was paid to find people, she hadn’t even thought about locating listening devices in her own house. She kissed Claire good-night again, then Nick did, too. At least, she thought, trying to buck herself up, they finally had the answer to how someone had known their every thought and move, even from inside the house, maybe even from inside her computers.

At 9:40 p.m., Veronica jimmied the bathroom window of her clinic cabin with a nail file and climbed out while the shower was running full tilt. The past three nights, she had taken long showers and told her nurse that she thought the heat and steam were helping her. Veronica had taken it as a good sign that Jordan had come back for his cell phone and found it exactly where he had thought it might have fallen out. When she’d said goodbye to him earlier this evening, she had forced herself not to add,
And good riddance.

Still, it really did pain her to leave her old life behind. Thane and Laird might disown her and turn the grandchildren against her. But she was leaving. She had to do this, had to desert not so much Jordan as the old, obedient and weak Veronica. She must find herself again.

It was chilly outside, especially in just a nightgown, robe and slippers, but it felt bracing, she told herself as she hustled along, first down the path and then off it. Her nightclothes would have to do because she dared not take anything else out from under the eagle eye of that nurse. She soon felt warm from exertion and excitement. The tiny, puffy clouds of her breath seemed to lead her on.

She prayed that Rita would be waiting. She thought she would, for Veronica had been in the Lohan lair long enough to know how to put clipped command in her voice. Once she finally escaped, she could become just Veronica Britten again, whatever the cost of her ruined past.

As if standing shoulder to shoulder against her, the pines and firs thickened here, but she pushed on. Yes, outside the fence, someone with a flashlight, playing it upon a ladder! She prayed Jordan had not somehow found out. Surely he had not bugged their home’s phones, the way she’d overheard him boast he had that of a financial rival several years ago. He was good at having people watched and at setting traps, and she could only pray Rita had not betrayed her.