Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(85)
Gabe! Tess screamed inside her head. Come find me and maybe you’ll find Sandy and Jill before it’s too late for all of us.
Miss Etta left her on the floor in the middle of a big, worn, hooked rug. The window she’d escaped through was boarded up, as were the others, but the place was lit by four bare bulbs hanging from electrical cords. Fury cleared Tess’s mind even more. This was the place, lined with books, where she’d been allowed to play, to draw pictures. And they’d said over and over they were being kind to her! But Mr. Mean lived here as well as in the house attic, where she’d slept. Miss Etta had moved her from place to place after dark. And in the house, Mama Sybil ruled with an iron fist.
Tess blinked back tears and shook her head to force her way through the haze of memories and emotions. Fearful, forsaken. She had to halt the tumble of thoughts right now. Concentrate. Listen and plan.
“Coming alert, Teresa?” Miss Etta asked. “I wasn’t sure how much of that drug went into you when you fought like that. Since you’re an adult, I’ll up the dose later when we go inside to see Mama Sybil. I’ll take that gag out for a minute or two, but I have to head back to town, be seen around before I return here. Got to get you all tied up nice and tight until I get back. And they won’t find Sandy on their cornfield searches, because you’ll both be here, snug as bugs in a rug.”
Sandy is here and alive!
It had never occurred to Tess that Etta Falls might be crazy. But she was the one. A librarian. One who was so helpful. One who seemed to be everywhere so no one noticed she had buzzed about in that bookmobile and had taken prisoners.
The minute Miss Etta pulled the gag out, Tess almost dry-heaved. Trying to stay calm, she copied the woman’s preachy, almost singsong tone, as if she were talking to a child.
“Miss Etta, you can’t keep people prisoner like this. You’ll have to let me go, and we won’t say another thing about it.”
“Oh, we only keep you girls until you get too big for cuddling and commanding. And you’re entirely too big and the only one who got away, Teresa. But we can correct that now. Besides, we can’t allow your talking to young Sheriff McCord any more than to his father. Oh, we were worried you’d recall things then, just like now, but you cooperated beautifully. That’s why I tried to warn you to leave town and keep your mouth shut with the drugged wine and your old drawing, but you didn’t cooperate, did you? So you’ll have to pay the price. Mama Sybil’s rules, not mine, so we all have to obey her.”
Tess started to shake. After feeling elated that Sandy was alive, she was so scared she broke into a sweat despite the fact that she felt icy cold. The two old women were disposing of their victims when they grew too big? Then Jill—
“Miss Etta, you know this is wrong.”
“People must obey their mothers. Besides, Teresa, some things are only wrong in this big bad world when you get caught. Don’t you think we would have been stopped by now if what we are doing is wrong? Mama Sybil loves little girls, just like she loves me. Now let’s see about getting you more tightly tied.”
“So Jill Stillwell is...gone?”
“Why, yes. She’s out back. I told her she should be honored to lie among the pioneer Falls family, but she didn’t know what I meant. So I put her to sleep and buried her between two graves.”
Oh, dear Lord in heaven, Tess prayed, please don’t let Jill be dead. But this crazy woman had buried her in that pioneer graveyard Tess recalled seeing from an attic window upstairs. But recalled much too late...
Miss Etta continued to speak as if all was normal. “She would have been entirely too heavy and large for Mama Sybil’s lap by now anyway. But Sandy’s upstairs in the attic, where I’ll take you until we can settle everything, and I can make the final preparations. Oh, dear, you’ve got blood on your neck from where you moved when I gave you that shot. Here, let me get that off with this handkerchief.”
With the saliva-soaked cloth, she dabbed at Tess’s neck, then wiped her hands. “Oh, blood on my hands, just like Lady Macbeth, but then I’ll bet you don’t know about her, do you?”
She pulled a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her sweater pocket and washed her hands. “This does wonders for erasing fingerprints on bottles and doorknobs, though it’s not as good as wearing gloves. You know, in the fifties and early sixties we wore white gloves to shop in a nice store, to church, so much more ladylike and sanitary than all that hand shaking and hugging these days.”
Miss Etta efficiently tied Tess’s wrists and legs right over her earlier bonds, then took tape from a box labeled Book Cover Repair and wound it around Tess and one of the supporting roof beams. She ignored Tess’s pleas as she worked, dumping Tess’s cell phone on the floor with the other things from her purse. Positioning the phone, she went into a back corner and returned with another version of the Mr. Mean scarecrow and smashed the phone to bits.
“There!” she declared, clapping her hands free of dust, then digging out the sanitizer again. “It would give me great pleasure to get rid of all of those. You know, people were much better off when they spoke face-to-face. For example, when we chatted at the church service the other night, you told me that you were recalling too much. That’s why I left a version of Mr. Mean when I took Sandy, to see if it would jog your memory at all. Then I would know if I had to get rid of you fast, but now will do. I was trying to plan how, and here you came into the library alone.”