Читать книгу Up Close and Personal - Fern Michaels - Страница 12

Sarabess Windsor, dressed in beige linen and sensible heels, walked through her garden’s early-summer flowers. While she appeared to be admiring the colorful blooms, her thoughts were far away. Then she looked down at the begonias, which were huge and healthy-looking. There were no yellow leaves on the geraniums. The borders of impatiens were more vibrant than in any other year in her memory. Maybe she should think about giving the gardener a raise. She realized the improbability of that. She sniffed as she strolled along the cobbled garden path. She loved the sweet scent of the Confederate jasmine that was carried throughout the garden by the warm June breeze. Emily had always loved the scent of jasmine.

Sarabess plucked one of the small white blooms and brought it to her nose. She threw it on the ground immediately because it brought back too many memories of Emily. As she hurried down the old path, the sweet scent chased her relentlessly.

Sarabess stood at the split rail fencing that afforded her a spectacular view of the entire town of Crestwood. From where she was standing she could see the gravel road that led uphill to her front door. She took a deep breath when she saw Rifkin’s car. She stomped her foot in irritation when she saw there was only one person in the vehicle. Yet, in truth, she wasn’t all that surprised that Rifkin’s son wasn’t with him. Perhaps he would come to the Hill later in the day. If not, she’d just have to go into town to his office. He wouldn’t dare refuse to see her. Then again, he might just do that because he was just like his crazy Aunt Mitzi, who marched to some unseen drummer, according to Rifkin. Only God and Rifkin Forrest knew how much she hated Mitzi Granger.

Sarabess’s heartbeat quickened as she watched Rifkin get out of his car. For some reason her pulse always quickened at the first sight of the man walking toward her. He looked incredibly handsome in his business suit, pristine white shirt, and power tie, a tie she’d given him not too long ago. She adored his tallness, his long-legged stride, and the smile that was just for her. She smiled in return even though she knew he wasn’t bringing good news.

“It’s all right, Rif. I think we both knew he wouldn’t come up here. I appreciate your coming to the Hill to tell me as opposed to calling me. I can always go into town. Don’t look so stricken, it’s all right.”

Rifkin reached for Sarabess’s hand. She gave a gentle squeeze in return. No one but servants were there to see, and they couldn’t care less what the mistress of Windsor Hill did or didn’t do.

“I did my best, but my best wasn’t good enough. Jake is…he’s incredibly stubborn. He’s also bitter where I’m concerned. It eats at me, but there’s nothing I can do about that, either.”

“What you wanted, Rif, was a chip off the old block. Your son is his own person, and that’s admirable. I’ll think on the matter and go into town when it’s time. I know you’re running late, so go along. Dinner this evening?”

“Absolutely.” Rifkin exerted some of his own gentle pressure on Sarabess’s hand before he turned to go back to his car. The car door open, Rifkin looked over his shoulder, and said, “Jake has a cat!”

Sarabess laughed. “Really!”

Rifkin grinned as he climbed into the car and turned on the engine. He laughed all the way downhill and into town. He had no idea why he was laughing.

Sarabess waited until she could no longer see Rifkin’s car before she walked back into the mansion. She walked through the rooms, touching this, looking at that. She was upset. For the first time since Rifkin Forrest came into her life, he hadn’t been able to give her what she asked for. No one had ever said no to her before. She didn’t like the feeling. Not one little bit. She corrected the thought. Mitzi Granger said no to her on a regular basis.

Sarabess continued to walk through her impeccably decorated house. She’d lost count of how many times she’d redone the entire house. Just to have something to do so she wouldn’t think. Choosing fabrics, looking at paint swatches required one’s undivided attention. She’d striven for hominess, but it was an impossible task. The house simply didn’t allow for a home-and-hearth décor. Once she’d gone the antique route, and Rifkin had laughed his head off. The next day everything had been carted off. She rarely made a mistake, but when she did, it was what Rifkin called a doozy.

Always, when she got upset like this, Sarabess wished she had a hobby instead of the obsession that haunted her day and night. If you believed what you read in the slick magazines, everyone had a hobby of some kind, but she imagined few people were obsessed. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Nothing in the world interested her except Rifkin, and she lived for his visits. How in the world had her life come to this?

She was at the door with no memory of walking down the hall to get here. She never just opened the door. Oh, no, that was too easy. She had to go through the painful ritual of casting her mind back in time, back to when her beautiful little girl inhabited the fairy princess room.

Sarabess squeezed her eyes shut so the burning tears wouldn’t roll down her cheeks. She inserted the little gold key she wore around her neck. She turned the knob, her eyes open now. For some reason she always gasped at the beautiful room. It truly was fit for a princess. Her little princess. The canopy bed had sheer pink netting gathered at each of the four posts with sparkling white ribbon. The bedspread was pale pink, with appliquéd ballerinas dancing across it. Even the pillows were covered with miniature ballerinas. A crystal lamp with a frilly pink shade stood on each night table.

Sarabess sat down on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could detect the faint scent of Confederate jasmine, or maybe it was a gardenia scent. Emily had loved having her bedding sprayed with the scent. When the delicate little flowers were in bloom there was always a vase of them on the nightstand. She got up and looked around the enormous room—which was part bedroom, part playroom, part schoolroom—surprised that after all these years the carpet was just as white as the day when it was installed.

So many books. Books that hadn’t interested Emily. Every toy known to a child sat in the playroom. And yet, Emily had rarely played with anything. The schoolroom section of the room was relatively bare except for the white desk, the white chair with a pink cushion, the blackboard with pink chalk, the pink Princess telephone. A pity there had been no friends to call. The rambunctious youngsters Emily’s age, even those younger or older, had no time for a semi-invalid. They wanted to play ball, climb trees, chase each other, go swimming in the pond, ride their bikes. All Emily could do was watch from her window on the Hill. The princess in the tower.

Sarabess walked over to one of the diamond-pane windows and opened it. The warm summer air swooshed inward, the sheer organza curtains billowing in the breeze. She closed her eyes, remembering other times she’d done the same thing. The scent of jasmine invading the room was almost overpowering. With shaking hands, Sarabess closed the window and straightened out the crisp white curtain.

She took one last look around. Did she have the guts to dismantle this room? Could she donate all these things to some worthy cause? What would she do then? Just paint the room, change the carpeting and curtains, then walk out and lock the door?

Sarabess walked down the hall to her own bedroom and picked up the phone. She punched in the numbers she knew from memory. “This is Julia Barrows, and I’d like to make an appointment with Mr. Forrest. The young Mr. Forrest.” Five minutes later, Sarabess hung up the phone. She had an appointment for eleven o’clock the next morning with Jacob Forrest.

It was midafternoon when Jake Forrest turned away from his computer. He’d searched for hours for something that would lead him to Trinity Henderson, with no results. It was as though she’d dropped off the face of the earth the day she’d run away. LexisNexis offered nothing, no Social Security number, no driver’s license in her name. Mitzi might be right. The girl could be married with a new name. Still, he should have been able to come up with a Social Security number. Maybe she had been smart enough to get herself a new identity. For all he knew, his old playmate could live on the other side of the country or maybe in another country altogether. He wondered if there was any point in hiring a private detective. He’d read in an article not too long ago that modern-day private eyes never left their offices. They had the ways and the means to do everything by computer.

Jake looked at the pile of work on his desk. Nothing that couldn’t wait for a day or so. Clara Ashwood’s updated will was complete, all she had to do was sign it. He looked down at his watch before reaching for his jacket. He waved good-bye to Stacy, waved again to the receptionist, and was out of the building in three minutes. His destination: Trinity Henderson’s family. Why the hell not, he thought as he climbed behind the wheel. He pressed the power button to lower the windows. The car was stifling with the early-summer heat.

Jake didn’t see his father watching him from his office window. Even if he had, he would have ignored him.

The ride out to the Henderson farm took barely ten minutes. He used to make it on his bike in five minutes, with all the bike paths he’d taken. There were no traffic lights on bike paths. He smiled to himself as he recalled those long-ago days when he’d pedaled out to the farm like a bat out of hell, trying to beat his own time.

The Henderson farm wasn’t really the Hendersons’ farm. It belonged to Windsor Hill and Sarabess Windsor. John Henderson managed the farm, and Mrs. Henderson cooked for all the farmhands. Back then, he’d just assumed Trinity’s parents owned the farm. Mrs. Henderson had on more than one occasion looked the other way when he and the other kids tried to outwit Sarabess so they wouldn’t have to play with or entertain Emily. It was Trinity who knew the best hiding places, places where Sarabess Windsor would not trample in her high-heeled shoes and fancy dresses.

Jake parked his car and waited for the golden retriever to sniff him before he made his way to the back door where Mrs. Henderson was shelling peas. “It’s Jake Forrest, Mrs. Henderson. May I come in?”

“Lord have mercy, is it really you, Jake? I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. What in the world are you doing out here? Would you like some sweet tea? Mercy, that was three questions.”

Jake laughed. “It’s okay. I’d love a glass of tea. It’s going to be a hot summer, I think.”

Lillian Henderson was what his mother would have called a plain lady. She wore a simple cotton dress with a sparkling white apron. He’d never seen her without an apron. Her hair was as white as the apron she wore and was pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck. She wore wire-rimmed glasses that appeared to be trifocals. She handed him the glass of iced tea. Jake couldn’t help but notice that her hands were rough and red, the nails clipped short.

“Sit down, Jake. Imagine you being a lawyer! John and I were talking not too long ago about coming to see you about making out a will. I don’t know why we keep putting it off. For the same reason we haven’t bought cemetery plots, I guess. Would you like some gingerbread? I just made it this morning.”

“No thanks, the tea is fine. I guess you’re wondering why I came out here.”

Lillian Henderson smiled. “I figured you’d get around to telling me.”

Jake decided to make it up as he went along. “I’ve been delegated to get in touch with all the kids we used to pal around with. We want to hold a reunion of sorts over…over the Fourth of July. We want to include Trinity. Do you know how we can reach her?”

Lillian’s head jerked upright. The emerald green pea pod she was shelling fell to the floor. It was obvious to Jake that whatever she had thought he was here for, Trinity was not it.

“I’m sorry, Jake, John and I never…Trinity never…What I mean is when she lit out, she didn’t look back. We’ve never heard a word from her. I’m afraid she won’t be attending your reunion.”

“Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Did she have cousins, friends of yours, anyone she might have gone to? What did the police say?”

Lillian looked away. She folded her hands in her lap. “There was no one that we knew of. She helped herself to the grocery money and left an IOU for the three hundred dollars. She might have had about sixty dollars of her own money. She took a few of her clothes and her gym bag. She made her bed and tidied her room before she left.”

“Did she leave a note?” Jake asked.

“No, she didn’t. Unless you count the IOU. She sent a money order for the three hundred about two years later. The envelope had a Pennsylvania postmark. You couldn’t make out the town, it was kind of pink and blurry.”

“Do you know anyone in Pennsylvania?”

“Not a soul.”

“What did the police say?”

Lillian bit down on her bottom lip. “Mrs. Windsor said we weren’t to call the police. She said Trinity was going on sixteen and capable of taking care of herself. She said she wouldn’t have run away without a reason, and she didn’t want the police crawling all over Windsor Hill. John said we should do what she said since we worked for her. I didn’t want to do it, but…John can be very convincing, as can Mrs. Windsor. I cried for months. Every time the phone rang I’d get so nervous I could hardly talk.”

Jake didn’t know what to say. He knew his mother would have been out beating the bushes with her bare hands to find him if he’d run away. She wouldn’t have stopped crying after a few months, either. “Did Trinity have a Social Security number?”

“What a strange question. Not that I know of. You being a lawyer and all, do you think you could find her? I have a little money saved up. It’s not much, and I don’t know how much something like that would cost.”

“I can’t take your money, Mrs. Henderson. I will keep trying to find her, though. Is there anything you can tell me that might help in the search?”

The shock over, Lillian went back to shelling the peas into the bowl in her lap. “Trinity was a good girl. She was a hard worker. Anything she did, she did well. She was an honor student, but then you know that. She wasn’t into fancy things or frilly dresses. Sometimes when she’d come back down the hill after visiting Miss Emily, she’d tell me about all the fancy things that little girl had. Now, don’t you be telling Mrs. Windsor I said this, but Trinity always called Miss Emily ‘the mean little princess who had evil eyes.’”

Jake laughed. “I grant you that wasn’t very nice, but we all called Emily the mean little princess. She was a spiteful, whiny little girl. We probably didn’t understand back then that she was as ill as she was. If we had, maybe we would have been kinder. At least I hope we would have. I’ve thought about those days over the years, and I think it was Mrs. Windsor we didn’t like. As kids we resented being told we had to entertain Emily.”

Lillian’s mouth straightened out to a thin, tight line. “Miss Emily was very unkind to Trinity. She would taunt her and say unkind things. One time she called her ugly. Poor Trinity kept staring in the mirror for hours hoping she’d magically change into a beautiful swan. I did my best to explain that Miss Emily was jealous, but Trinity didn’t believe it for a minute. She really changed after that. But before that happened she told John and me one night at supper that she would never ever go up to the Hill again, and she wanted us to tell Mrs. Windsor why. No amount of punishment could make that girl change her mind, either.”

Jake sucked in his breath. “Did you?”

Lillian shook her head. “John wouldn’t do it. He told me to mind my own business, it was a child thing, kids being kids. I don’t think Trinity ever forgave either of us. She simply endured her punishments. I’m sorry, Jake. I know I haven’t been much help. Will you let me know if you have any luck finding Trinity? Tell her…Tell her we miss her terribly.”

Jake wondered. For some reason Lillian’s statement didn’t ring true to his ears. “Yes, of course. Well, Mrs. Henderson, thanks for the tea. I’ll stay in touch.”

Jake’s only thought as he drove home was how bizarre the whole thing was.

What kind of parents would listen to someone else tell them what to do where their only child was concerned? Then again, Sarabess Windsor wasn’t exactly someone else.