Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(45)
“I see the repair truck in my driveway.”
“Good. Jace is on his way to take paint scrapings from the telephone pole for Mike—he’s coming back here today—before the repairmen handle it or climb it if they put it back up.”
“Gabe, I think I should go with you to see those three men. If not, I’ll drive to their places on my own, just to see if anything jogs my memory.”
“What? No way you’re heading alone to their properties! Tess, I’m not going for a good-time chat. I’m checking to see if they have alibis, at least for the time you were harassed last night, not to mention when Sandy was taken.”
“Well, if I shouldn’t go alone, I should go with you. We’ll tell Sam Jeffers that I just learned he tried to track me with whatever dog he had twenty years ago and wanted to thank him. I assume you’re going to show John Hillman the stuffed dog that was on my property, so I’d have a natural stake in that.”
“Tess, I don’t—”
“Of course, you’re probably right that I shouldn’t go with you to see Dane, so we can compromise on that, and I’ll just go on the first two visits with you.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe and—”
“But last night shows I’m really not safe, not until we find whoever took me, Jill, Sandy—maybe Amanda. It’s hardly some high school kids, even if they are the ones who put graffiti on the rocks near the waterfall. And I don’t think my lights out and a dead dog are just someone’s sick idea of an early Halloween prank.”
She heard him muttering something. To himself? To Vic?
To Vic, she realized, as she heard his voice in the background. “Then let her go. Something’s got to unlock her memory. She’s still the best chance we’ve got.”
Gabe sounded really mad—but controlled—as he spoke again. “I’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes. We’ll stop to talk to the electrical guys, then head for Jeffers’s place so you can ‘thank him,’ and we’ll see how that goes. Then maybe you’ll go with me to Hillman’s taxidermy shop, his little house of horrors. You won’t like it there, Tess.”
“I may not recall where I was held when I was kidnapped, but it was a house of horrors. I’m sure it was, but I’m desperate to remember it—and I will! I’ll be waiting for you here.”
He didn’t even say goodbye. He was angry with her, trapped into letting her help today, probably because of Vic rather than her arguments, but she thought she’d done okay standing up to him.
She got her things together in case he just dropped her at her house later, went to the bathroom, then paced in big circles again, waiting for him. Despite having her warm jacket on, Tess shivered. Had Gabe’s mother paced just like this, right here, waiting for her husband? This house, any one where the family had loneliness and conflict, could be a house of horrors.
*
“About Sam Jeffers’s place,” Gabe said. They were heading out of town toward the southeastern foothills after confirming that her power would be back on line soon. “Other than his cell phone, the guy lives like the early settlers. His Appalachian roots run deep. He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere around, has several small, old lean-to-type cabins in the woods, where he camps and hunts.”
“I’m pretty sure I was kept in a house, not at some campsite,” Tess said.
“We’ll look at his main place, where he breeds and trains his hounds. He’ll be there, I think, because, according to Marva, he, Hillman and Dane just got back from the woods, where they were looking at a wounded stag Sam had cornered but not killed.”
“Cornered but not killed,” she repeated. “I...I hope Sandy Kenton’s being kept alive like I was. Jill too, of course—and Amanda, if she was kidnapped instead of snatched by her father. But why would someone take a third child if Jill was still...”
“Yeah. Assuming, of course, that whoever took Sandy out of the shop uptown in broad daylight is the same person who took you and Jill. But a copycat crime like this seems unlikely. I think we’re still after one person, maybe with an accomplice. So far, no real leads from Jace’s questioning folks who were in and out of that back alley when Sandy disappeared. Even our all-seeing, all-knowing veteran librarian didn’t see anything unusual. It’s almost like Sandy vanished into thin air.”
“And, in exchange, someone left that scarecrow.”
Gabe turned the cruiser into a narrow lane lined by buckeye trees. They always dropped their leaves early, so the bright autumn colors of the hills were muted to dry, brown foliage here. Some of the trees were even stripped of leaves, so it seemed their naked, crooked arms reached out. The narrow dirt lane twisted, climbed a bit.
“Oh, perfect,” Tess said. “Like a scene in a scary movie. A mailman comes up here every day?”
“No, there’s a box we passed down on the road. And, I’m surprised to see, a place for the Chillicothe newspaper. Can’t believe a loner and wanderer like Sam keeps up with the news.”
“Unless he likes to read about his handiwork.”
“You know, you and Vic would get along real well. He suspects everyone, probably even the mailman and paperboy.”
A one-story house with peeling paint came into view. It had a long side section that looked added on and was painted such a clean, new white it made the house itself look even dingier.