You Can Run... (26 page)

She came up with the most basic information: Cavanaugh’s date and place of birth; parents, Morgan and Cornelia Webster Cavanaugh; first wife, Yvette DuPrés, death ten years previous ruled a suicide; marriage three years later to Penelope Ann O’Keefe. None of the articles mentioned Penny’s disappearance. Cavanaugh had received an MBA from Harvard and had become head of Cavanaugh and Wentworth real estate developing company at age thirty, after his father had been murdered. Police had never apprehended Morgan Cavanaugh’s killer.

Most articles remarked on how the shy, reclusive Cavanaugh had proved himself a master of finance, doubling the worth of Cavanaugh and Wentworth by the time he was thirty-five, and assuming the title of chief executive officer after taking the business public. That same year, Blake Wentworth, son of Morgan Cavanaugh’s late partner, Charles Wentworth, became chief operating officer of the business. Because Cavanaugh had recently started a small aeronautics company, some effusive articles referred to Cavanaugh as a twenty-first-century Howard Hughes.

Diana knew if she searched further, she would find more information, but she couldn’t concentrate. She kept seeing Jeffrey in the park, facing her with his fists clenched, and the flash of tears in his eyes. She thought about Blake telling them of Penny’s horrific awakening and the announcement that she was two months’ pregnant. And she thought about Nan. Homely, ungracious, seemingly impassive Nan sitting in the kitchen drenched in nervous perspiration, her usually detached gaze filled with anxiety.

And I just walked off and left her,
Diana thought. True, Blake had said he couldn’t stay long and he seemed to have something important to say, but so had Nan. Diana didn’t like Nan, but then she didn’t really know Nan. There had to be more to the girl than she’d seen during the months Nan had worked in this house. Even if there wasn’t, Nan was the daughter of Martha Murphy, who’d been a loyal and beloved employee of Simon’s for twelve years. Diana knew
she owed Nan more consideration if for no other reason than just because she was Martha’s daughter.

Guilt descended on Diana. She tried to fight it off by making excuses for her cavalier treatment of Nan that afternoon, but nothing worked. Aside from the guilt, she felt a twinge of concern. Nan had said that she wanted to start her story at the beginning, and her involvement with Glen had been the beginning, which meant she had more to say—and it involved Penny.

Maybe Nan meant to tell Diana only that Penny, too, had been involved with Glen, but while that would have caused Nan pain, it couldn’t have been responsible for her look of apprehension. And hearing that Penny was pregnant had caused the girl to drop her glass. Diana could see how learning of the pregnancy might have been a surprise, but not enough to make Nan send a glass shattering to the floor and then flee at top speed. No, only fear could be responsible. But fear of what?

Diana abandoned her Internet search and went up to her room. She looked up Nan’s cell phone number in her address book and called three times, only to be sent to voice mail. Nan still lived with her mother, so Diana looked up Martha’s home phone number in the telephone directory and called. After seven rings, she hung up. Even Martha’s answering machine had apparently been turned off.

By eight o’clock, Willow had begun to yawn, and Romeo could not open his eyes beyond slits. They went through the ritual of carrying him up in the elevator, putting him to bed where he immediately fell into unconsciousness, and dressing Willow in her pink pajamas. She crawled under the covers of her bed and said in a regretful voice, “I’m sorry, Diana, but I’m too sleepy for a bedtime story.”

“That’s all right, honey.” Diana hoped that Willow didn’t hear the relief in her voice. She was too preoccupied to come up with any kind of story that might entertain the
little girl. “Do you want me to just sit with you until you go to sleep?”

Willow nodded and Diana took her place in the comfortable chair where Clarice had spent so much time watching movies made for the younger set. Tonight Diana had vowed to free Clarice to do what she pleased, which seemed to be spending her time with Simon discussing current events. She and Willow had left the two in a lively discussion of the situation in the Middle East.

Within fifteen minutes, Willow had drifted into a deep sleep. Diana tiptoed out of the room, leaving the door cracked so they could hear Willow if she called out. The night owl Christabel followed Diana downstairs and into the kitchen, where, out of habit, Diana opened the refrigerator door and looked for a snack. She settled on a glass of Coke then paced back upstairs to her room and tried Nan’s phone number again. No answer.

Diana tried to read the latest murder mystery she’d bought, but she couldn’t concentrate well enough to follow the plot. She decided to straighten out her closet and managed to group all of her summer tops together before she tired of that task. She closed the doors to the bathroom connecting her room to Willow’s and put on a CD. She lay down on her bed to listen to Evanescence, waiting for “My Immortal,” to which she usually sang out her heart. Tonight, though, she kept mixing up the words and finally stopped the CD at the end of the song.

At nine o’clock she tried Nan’s phone again. Still no answer. Diana knew that worrying about a nineteen-year-old not answering her cell phone was ridiculous, but she worried nevertheless. She couldn’t forget Nan’s anxiety, her frightened eyes, the glass she’d broken in spite of her carefully maintained air of unconcern about the world in general. The girl had been desperate to open her heart, and Diana might as well have turned her away at the door. She’d put Nan on hold while she listened to a more important visitor—someone she barely knew—and she felt shame as well as a sense of neglected duty. She’d already
let down Penny; and she didn’t want to let down another woman who seemed to need her help.

Diana grabbed a light jacket and her tote bag, which she’d never gotten around to cleaning out after her trip last week. She casually descended the stairs and walked into the library, where Simon and Clarice now were watching a mystery show on the gigantic high-definition television that Simon had bought the previous year. They both looked up when they heard Diana’s keys rattle.

“Going somewhere?” Simon asked.

Diana didn’t intend to tell them that she was worried about Nan. If they thought there was cause for worry, they would immediately begin trying to talk her out of going to the Murphy home. Simon would suggest asking the police to check on Nan, although Diana knew that the police would not find the fact that a young woman wasn’t answering her cell phone a little after nine o’clock reason enough for sending a patrol car to her house. Diana hated lying to them, but if she told the truth, then overcame their objections and left for Nan’s, their enjoyment of the television show would be ruined by their concern for her, and for the first time in forty-eight hours, they both looked relaxed and almost happy.

“I have a sudden craving for ice cream,” Diana lied blithely. “Also, a tabloid. Maybe two. I’m woefully behind on what all of my Hollywood friends are up to these days. I think I’ll go to the convenience store and do a little shopping. I’m also restless, so I might ride around for a while before I stop at the store. Is there anything I can get for you two?”

Clarice immediately turned worried eyes to her. “Are you sure you should go out alone, dear?”

“I can’t let fear of Jeffrey Cavanaugh make me a prisoner, Clarice. Besides, I don’t think he’ll try anything else tonight. Even
he
knows better than to push his luck.”

“Is your cell phone charged?” Simon asked.

Diana smiled. “Charged and located in a convenient pocket in the lining of my bag.”

“Well, all right. What kind of ice cream are you craving?”

“Uh, cherry swirl. Clarice, do you like cherry swirl?”

“I rarely eat ice cream, but tonight cherry swirl sounds delicious.”

“Get a gallon,” Simon ordered. “And none of the cheap stuff.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Diana smiled. “Be back soon.”

The night air was warm but lacking the humidity of Friday evening. Diana took a deep breath. Although it was late August, she thought she could smell the coming autumn. She loved fall, when the leaves changed colors and the mornings became crisp without being cold. Tonight the stars were so bright they almost twinkled, and the iridescent three-quarter moon glowed. Neither the warm air nor the panoply of light could ease Diana’s sense of dread, though. She had a dark feeling that the Nan she had seen today—the Nan she had never seen before—might do something to herself.
And all because of Glen,
Diana thought furiously. All because of the unprincipled, deceitful man whom Diana had been seeing for months. How glad she was she’d never let the relationship become intimate, but that’s probably what had sent him looking for sex in an easy target like Nan.

And Penny?
She wasn’t an easy target,
Diana thought as she swept down the narrow, curvy road through Ritter Park. Why had Penny become involved with him? Clarice had said she’d first seen Glen come to Penny’s house about two months ago. And how old was the baby that Penny carried in her wreck of a body? Two months. Was the baby the reason she was running away? Diana had no idea how Penny felt about abortion, but she was certain that if Penny decided to have one, it would not be something she could do without guilt. Maybe she couldn’t do it at all.

The Murphy house sat on an acre of land west of Huntington on a knoll overlooking Interstate 64. The house and land had belonged to Nan’s paternal grandparents, who’d bequeathed both to their son and made him promise not to
sell so much as a foot of the land. After Nan’s father died when she was seven, Mrs. Murphy had told Simon that she wished she could sell half the land for money she desperately needed, but she’d made the same promise to her husband that he’d made to his father.

Diana turned onto the short, neglected lane leading to the house Nan shared with her mother. She passed two houses with lights burning in the windows, another one that sat in darkness, and finally reached the Murphy house at the end of the lane. Two lights shone in the house that wasn’t much larger than Penny’s—one light in what Diana guessed to be a bedroom, and another filtering dimly from farther back in the house. Diana pulled in the driveway behind Nan’s old Pontiac, took a deep breath, and walked up the two steps leading to the front door of the ugly yellowish-green house.

She knocked. No one came to the door, but Diana heard music playing loudly inside. Perhaps Nan hadn’t heard her, she thought, and knocked again. Still no answer, but Diana knew Nan must be inside. So why wouldn’t she come to the door?

Diana glanced around. The moon and the stars did not seem to shine as brightly on this drab little lane, and the other two occupied houses looked far away. Diana felt her palms grow wet, and suddenly she knew that she should not have come alone to this relatively isolated spot at night, but she’d had no choice. After Jeffrey’s demonstration this afternoon, she couldn’t ask Simon to leave Clarice alone in the house with Willow. Her only real friend lay dying in the burn unit at the hospital and her “boyfriend” was not an option.

Leaving wasn’t an option, either, she told herself, even though she wanted to make a run for her car and get away from this place. When had Nan become a priority with her? After what happened to Penny, Diana mentally answered herself. She hadn’t taken Penny’s anxious tone seriously enough Thursday night on the phone. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake with Nan.

Diana twisted the doorknob. To her surprise, the front door swung open. Music washed over her. Barry White sang “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up” in his fathomless, seductive voice as Diana stepped into the small living room dimly lit by a hall light. To her right, a long, sagging couch huddled beneath a wildly flowered slipcover, and beside it was a well-worn recliner. The coffee table looked as if it might tumble over with its load of magazines, tabloid newspapers, dirty cups and glasses, a couple of bodice-ripper romance novels, and two heaping ashtrays. No doubt before Nan’s mother left for Portland the previous week, the room had been spotless.

She called out loudly, “Nan!” but received no answer. Diana felt like an intruder, and hesitated actually searching the house for Nan, but she thought if she’d come this far, she should make an all-out effort to find the girl before returning home.

Diana glanced at the front door and decided to leave it open. Somehow, the open door made her feel less like a trespasser. It also made her feel less cut off from the rest of the world, she admitted to herself, although that world was oddly dark and quiet. She called for Nan again then decided to check out the room with the light—the room she was certain was a bedroom.

She left the living room and started down the hall, noticing the pull-down stairs that led to the attic. The attic light funneled through a narrow hole in the ceiling and down the stairs, and a dusty suitcase sat in the hall. Perhaps Nan had retrieved it from the attic and made a second trip up those stairs.

Diana stuck her head into each of the small bedrooms and found them empty. She called for Nan again but still received no answer, and sighing in frustration, she decided to check out the attic. As she grasped the side of the stairs, she felt as if a raindrop hit the top of her head. Diana reached up and touched the side part in her hair. Wet. She pulled her hand away and looked at it. Red. Then another
drop landed on her temple and rolled lazily down her face. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and looked up to see more drops falling, faster and faster.

Diana’s heart beat harder. Her first instinct was to run out of the house, get in her car, and leave as fast as possible, but she couldn’t. Nan was hurt—maybe fatally, maybe not. If she wasn’t dead, Diana could not run away from an injured girl who could bleed to death.

Diana began to climb the steps, dread settling over her like a heavy cloak. She thought about calling 911, but she could not tell them anything except that someone—or something—was bleeding in an attic. She needed more information. She wouldn’t linger. She wouldn’t actually go into the attic. If she could just peep over the edge of the flooring . . .