Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(47)

“Okay,” he says. “How about two? That okay for you?”

“I’ll give you a call,” I tell him. “I just need to find Gwen first.”

We end it politely, and I find a note from Gwen with two lawyers’ phone numbers that Kez had texted her sitting on the bedside table. I call the first one, and I get a recording by what sounds like an ancient man who says he’s out of the office.

The second one gets a pickup and a crisp greeting. “Hector Sparks’s office. This is Mrs. Pall. May I help you?”

There’s something about it that sets me back a little, and it takes a second for me to identify what it is. Mrs. Pall. Not many women answer the phone with that form of address in the office anymore. They normally use their first names. “Hi, I was wondering if Mr. Sparks might be having a meeting with a woman named Gwen Proctor? She was heading over to talk with him. Is she there?”

“May I ask who’s calling, please?” She sounds very uptight.

“Sam Cade,” I say.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Cade, but Mr. Sparks’s meetings are strictly private, and I won’t be able to confirm that for you.”

“Then can I speak to him?”

“I’m afraid not,” she says. “He’s asked not to be disturbed. But I will give him a message that you called.”

“And if Gwen is there, please ask her to call me,” I say. She doesn’t acknowledge that at all. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, but not in any way that makes me feel it, and hangs up the call.

I open up the connecting door again. Lanny’s lying on her bed, headphones on, looking miserable. When she sees me, she turns her back. I don’t push it. “Connor,” I say, “can you look somebody up? Get a little background?”

“Sure!”

“Hector Sparks,” I say. “He’s an attorney here in town. I just want to know a little more before . . .” Before what, exactly? There’s no real reason for it, but something about that conversation set me on edge. Just like the one with Ben Fairweather. Maybe it’s this town. Missing women. A dead mother and a jailed daughter. Wolfhunter just doesn’t seem safe for Gwen. And I feel like having her out there on her own is dangerous.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m on it.”

It takes him about fifteen minutes to report back that Hector Sparks is an attorney who lives in town—he gives me the address—and his father was a lawyer too. Connor’s found a couple of local newspaper articles he shows me—old ones, since the local newspaper expired years ago—and it all seems normal enough. One of the articles has a picture of a surprisingly nice, large house that seems like far better construction than the normal Wolfhunter real estate. Old, too—maybe built in the early 1900s. A family posing in front: an old man in a wheelchair, a son standing tall next to him. A mother and daughter are also in the photo, but they’re off to the side, definitely just bystanders to the men’s special moment. The mother’s expression is blank. The daughter’s looking away. It’s an odd photo to put into a newspaper, even one as amateurish as this publication obviously was. The write-up is clumsy, but it’s apparently celebrating the retirement of the father—Donald—and the takeover of the attorney business by the son, Hector.

The women aren’t even mentioned in the caption beyond “accompanied by wife and daughter.” The dateline is 1992, but the sentiment is pure 1950s.

But the point is, Hector Sparks is legit, and I shouldn’t be worrying about Gwen.

Yet I am.

I text her. Even if she has her phone on silent, she usually answers within a few minutes.

Then I sit straight up, staring, because I have a voice mail that’s come in while I was on the phone.

I know that number from memory. It’s Miranda Nelson Tidewell, and immediately on seeing it on my screen, I’m plunging off a cliff into an abyss.

“Hey,” I say to Connor, “got to make a call, okay? I’ll be right next door.”

He nods, not even taking his eyes from the page, but I think he looks when I turn away. He probably notices my tension.

I leave quickly and take some deep breaths standing in the room I’m sharing with Gwen. The connecting door is shut. I realize it feels warm in here, so I get the air-conditioning going again.

Then I place the call that will send me straight to hell.

Miranda doesn’t say hello. She never does. “Sam. Did you even listen to my message?”

“No,” I tell her. My voice sounds different when I talk to this woman. I can’t remember if that’s always been true. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I think the real question is, what do you think you’re doing, Sam? You’re living in her house. In her bed. That is, without any question at all, the most monstrously perverted thing I’ve heard in years, and my God, that’s quite saying something.”

Her voice. It’s both honey and ice. A hint of huskiness, still; while she was being treated for a breakdown after her daughter’s murder, she screamed so much she permanently altered it. Her damage starts there, but it’s just a hint of the chasm underneath.

Miranda is rich. A multimillionaire, the ex-wife of a hedge fund manager. A former Junior Leaguer who’d had life handed to her on a succession of silver platters . . . until the day her daughter, Vivian, disappeared at the mall. The second of Melvin Royal’s known victims.