Читать книгу Heart of Ice - Gregg Olsen - Страница 13

“Sheriff Kenyon,” she said, holding the phone to her ear. Outside her office door, she could hear Gloria chatting with Jason about something—judging by their laughter, it had nothing to do with the case at hand. There was nothing to laugh about there. Just the uneasy feeling that Mandy Crawford’s vanishing act might not have been her own doing.

The person on the other line gasped. A crackle. Then, silence.

“Are you there?” Emily asked.

Another crackle.

“Hello?”

“Sheriff Kenyon? This is Hillary Layton. Mandy’s mother.” There was anguish in every syllable.

Emily had been expecting the call. She both dreaded and longed for such calls. They were always enveloped in worry, regret, and heartache, but they were necessary to move any investigation forward. She’d left messages at Luke and Hillary Layton’s Spokane home. The answering machine indicated that they’d be “in and out” but would be checking messages. Mitch Crawford had told Emily that Mandy’s parents were vacationing in Mexico and he had no way of knowing how to reach them.

“Mrs. Layton,” Emily said, “I’m so sorry.”

It wasn’t much, but it was heartfelt, and really, all she could say. Right then, they had not a scintilla of evidence pointing to Mandy’s whereabouts. The rest of the conversation would be driven by the mother of a missing young woman.

“Any sign of my daughter?”

Emily could tell that the woman, so far from the snowy Northwest, was about to shatter into a million pieces. “Nothing. But we’re working every lead we can. Where are you?”

“Puerto Vallarta. Mandy and Mitch sent us down here for a week—they have points in a timeshare. I didn’t want to go, because she’s so close to her due date. But she wanted us to go. She was so insistent. I can’t believe that she’s left him. She never told me anything.” Mrs. Layton took a deep breath. “Just a minute.”

Emily heard Mandy’s mother put her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone and say something to someone standing nearby. The break in the conversation gave Emily a split second to collect her thoughts. She wondered why Hillary Layton would leave her daughter with her first grandchild due any day. It seemed peculiar.

“That was my husband,” Hillary said, getting back on the line. “He wants me to tell you that he doesn’t trust Mitch as far as he can throw him.”

A man’s voice could be heard in the background. It was the heavy growl of a big man. An angry man.

“The guy’s a self-centered sack of crap!”

“Shhh! Luke. That’s not helping!”

Emily tried to defuse the anger, with a calming tone. “Mrs. Layton—”

“Hillary, please.”

“Hillary, then, where do you think Mandy might have gone? Are you close?”

“I don’t know where she is. And yes, we are extremely close. I saw her once a week and we talked on the phone almost every day. We’re as close as a mother and daughter can be, yet still have our own lives. After I got your message, I called her girlfriends, Sammy, Dee, Caroline, and Sierra. No one knows anything.”

One name caught Emily’s attention. “Who’s Sammy?”

“Samantha Phillips, her best friend. She lives on West Highland Drive. Married to a dentist.”

Emily knew who Dr. Dan Phillips was. He’d taken over Dr. Cassidy’s dental practice—the one that had seen half of Cherrystone through their first cavities in grade school to the trauma of impacted wisdom teeth in college. Cherrystone was more than a six-degrees-of-separation type of town, she thought. More like three degrees. Emily seized on Samantha’s name because she never heard it mentioned before. When Mitch gave Deputy Howard a list of those with the tightest bonds to his missing wife, Sammy’s name hadn’t been among them.

Emily’s eyes landed on the photo of Mandy that the women from the county clerk’s office had brought in for a missing persons poster they’d made. She wondered when the photo had been taken.

“When are you coming back?” she asked.

“Tonight. We’re leaving PV tonight. First flight we could get seats on. Alaska Airlines through LAX.”

“All right. We’re doing everything we can to find her. I want you and Mr. Layton to come to my office when you get back home.”

Hillary Layton finally lost her fractured composure and started to cry. “Sheriff, do you think she sent us away because she wanted to leave Mitch? Or maybe…you know, something really bad happened to her.”

Emily had worked missing persons cases in Seattle. She knew that the first hours were crucial, and in the absence of any reason for Amanda to flee, chances were that she was either abducted or injured somewhere. Or dead. Few people went missing longer than a day without one of those reasons accounting for their disappearance.

Yet to the mother on the phone, hope was essential just then.

“Hillary, please, don’t think the worst. Right now, we have to turn every stone. We need to focus our energies on finding your daughter. That’s what we’re doing. We’re rolling on this at one hundred miles an hour.”

Hillary stopped crying. “Thank you, Sheriff. My husband and I will see you tomorrow.”

Emily hung up and picked up the photo. She felt a small surge of hope. If Mitch Crawford was, in fact, involved with Mandy’s disappearance, then he’d made his first mistake. He’d lied when he said he didn’t know exactly where to reach his in-laws. Even if there was some reason that he didn’t know which timeshare unit they’d been sent to, he surely could have tracked them with a call to the resort company’s customer service center. After all, Mr. and Mrs. Layton were using his resort points for their stay.

It was a stupid lapse, all right, but it made Emily smile.

There was also the matter of Sammy Phillips, Mandy’s closest friend, another oversight on Mitch’s part. He’d never mentioned her.

The Phillips residence was everything Mitch Crawford’s house could never be. It wasn’t in a gated community, with the pretentious accoutrements of a wannabe estate. It was grand and authentic, a vintage home decked out in holiday finery that was subtle and respectful for the season. The two-story white colonial had an oversize gilded eucalyptus wreath on each of the double doors. Tiny faux candlelights were set in each of the fourteen windows on the street side of the house.

It was dusk when Emily arrived. She parked on the street, slick with melted snow. She’d never been inside the house; however, she knew its history. No matter how long the Phillipses would live there, Cherrystone old-timers would always call it the Justin House. It was named for Herbert Justin, a banker who’d had it built and lived there with his wife, Matilda, until he died at eighty-one and she was shuttled off to a rest home in Portland to be near her kids.

It was sold three weeks after the old lady was sent packing “for her own good.”

Samantha Phillips was a stunning blonde with green eyes. She stood in the doorway as Emily made her way up the steps, wrapping her arms around her black-cashmere-clad torso and shuddered at the cool air.

“Come inside, it’s getting a little more than brisk out here again,” Samantha said, looking out across the sky, which was dark with the threat of rain or snow.

Emily followed her into the two-story entryway, across blue Persian rugs with a pile so deep that it nearly sucked the heels off her shoes. Samantha had a teapot on a tray with some of the delicate rolled cookies that Emily knew were krumkake, the same that her mother had made for the holidays. The room was dominated by a ten-foot-tall tree that, by fragrance alone, indicated that it was a real Balsam fir.

“I see you’re Norwegian,” she said, looking at the cookies.

A warm smile came over Samantha’s face. “The krumkake. Have one, please. My great-grandmother’s family was from Oslo, and these cookies are about the only Norwegian tradition that I have.” Samantha motioned for Emily to sit. They faced each other in matching mohair love seats, obviously real and perfectly at home in the grand old house, stuffed with tasteful antiques and paintings.

“Your home is lovely,” Emily said, taking it all in.

“Thank you, but I take no credit for it. My husband had the guts to buy it when we really didn’t have the money. We do now, of course,” she said, catching herself in a flutter of weakness that she didn’t like to share with strangers. “The practice is thriving, I mean.”

There was a kind of awkwardness in the air. Emily knew that Samantha was chattering on to fill up as much time as possible, so as not to have to talk about what was really on her mind.

“I voted for you,” Samantha said, as odd a non sequitur as Emily had ever heard.

Emily smiled graciously. “Thank you. I appreciate your vote. We need to talk about Mandy, Samantha. This is very important. Her mother tells me that you’re her best friend. Is that right?”

Samantha poured tea, a cup for each of them. She motioned to the sugar. Emily declined.

“We knew each other in college,” Samantha said, swirling sugar into the steaming amber liquid. “We were freshman roommates. We were that strange pairing of girls that actually clicked. Most of the girls who were paired off with high school friends ended up hating each other by Christmas. Not us.”

“You’re not from here, are you?” Emily asked, already knowing the answer. She knew everyone with deep roots in Cherrystone, because she had them herself.

She shook her head, and Emily noticed for the first time that the diamonds on Samantha Phillips’s earlobes had to be at least two carats each.

“No, but I’m here because of Mandy. I was out here visiting her and Mitch, and I met Dan at a party.”

“Did you know Mitch well?”

“Well enough to hate him, if that’s what you want to know.”

Emily set down her cup. “How come?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I hated him because Mandy could have done so much better. She always dated decent guys in school. Mitch was such a jerk. He never let her do anything that went against whatever he thought best. It was like the second she married him, I had to make appointments to see her.”

“So he’s controlling,” Emily said. “But what else? Was he abusive?”

“Not that I know of,” she said. “I mean, he didn’t hit her. I know she’d never put up with that and I know she would have told me.”

Emily searched Samantha’s worried eyes. “You’re holding back on something.”

“I know you’re here for some big revelation, something that will give you a clue about what happened to her, where she might be. I just can’t help you.”

“Was she happy?”

“She hadn’t been for a long time, but when she became pregnant, Mandy changed. She seemed to be her old self again. There was some joy in her voice. She’d wanted to have a baby for so long, but Mitch kept telling her the time wasn’t right.”

“So last year, the time was right?”

“I think so. I really don’t know. One time when we were having coffee at her house—which, by the way, she hated the place—she told me that if she didn’t start a family with Mitch she’d leave him. She said, ‘I don’t care about the things he cares about. I want to be a mom. I will be a mom.’”

“So, she must have convinced him it was time?”

“Or tricked him,” Samantha said, looking like she’d spoken ill of the dead.

“Tricked him?” Emily prodded.

“I’m overstating, I think. You know what I mean, she just wanted a baby so much. She’d skip her pills and make things happen. She wouldn’t have been the first woman to do that.”

Emily could no longer resist the cookie. The buttery crunch reminded her instantly of her own childhood, of holidays with her family, and later with Jenna and David. There was a bittersweetness to the memory.

“Mitch was looking forward to the baby, too?”

“I think so. I think it took awhile. Dan and I went out to dinner with them in late October and they both seemed excited that they’d be parents by Christmas. Mitch was bragging about how he’d have a son to follow in his footsteps at the dealership.”

“But it wasn’t a son.”

Samantha looked across the room then back at Emily. “I know. I almost dropped my fork. I nudged Dan to keep his mouth shut. I knew it was a girl, but it was clear that Mandy hadn’t told Mitch. You could have knocked me over with a puff of air.”

“I’ll bet. Did you ask her about it?”

When Samantha started to answer, her cell phone rang. The ringtone was “Jingle Bells.” She looked at the number and let it go to voice mail.

“My husband’s late,” she said. “And, to answer your question, I did ask her about it a week or so later.”

Samantha Phillips had been out running errands. She made a trip to the bank, the cleaner’s to drop off her husband’s shirts, and she picked up two bags of Halloween candy because the old Justin House had been rumored to be haunted; every year, it got more trick-or-treaters than probably any other residence in Cherrystone. She knew that Saturdays were Mitch’s biggest day at the dealership and that Mandy would be home. She parked behind a dark blue Lexus on the street in front of the house.

When she rang the bell, Mandy met her at the door.

“Oh, hi, Sam,” she said.

“Hi, honey, I thought I’d stop by for coffee. I tried your cell, but it must be off.”

Mandy lingered in the doorway, not really opening it for Samantha to come inside. “I guess I forgot to recharge it again.”

There was a beat of uncharacteristic awkwardness.

“Can I come in?” Samantha asked.

Mandy stood still. Her hair was clipped back, as if she hadn’t had time to brush it out. It looked like she was getting a late start on the day. “Not a good time.”

A flicker of worry came over her. “Are you all right? Is the baby all right?”

“The baby’s fine. I’m just trying to take it easy.”

The excuse seemed so hollow, so completely unlike her friend.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. Let’s get together later. I’ll call you.”

“But I wanted to talk about last night. What you said about the baby…I thought Mitch knew it was a girl.”

“I can’t go there right now,” she said, narrowing the opening of the doorway. “I’m sorry.”

“Can I come in? We need to talk.”

“Not now. Now isn’t a good time.”

Before Samantha could change the subject and offer to go to the store or run an errand to help out, the door snapped shut. It was as if she was selling magazine subscriptions door to door or maybe handing out pamphlets for a fundamentalist religious group.

She stood there and looked at the grand front door.

What just happened here? What’s going on?

Two days later, Samantha got Mandy on the phone at her job at the county clerk’s office.

At first, she thought that Mandy’s cell phone had died and that had been the reason why she hadn’t called back, despite several messages.

“Are you mad at me?” Samantha asked.

“Not mad,” Mandy said, keeping her voice office-low. “I’m going through some things.”

“With Mitch?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Is he being an asshole again?”

“Listen,” Mandy said, “I know you’re worried about me.” Her voice grew curt and now, very final. “I’m not going to talk about this. I need you to back off. OK?”

Then she hung up.

That was the last time they ever spoke about it.

Jenna Kenyon’s cell phone vibrated somewhere in the depths of her purse. She’d been dispatched to the basement bedroom that her stepmother Dani had said was built with her in mind.

“You father wants you to feel you have a home here, too,” Dani Kenyon said as she first revealed the unfinished bedroom, more than a year ago. “I want you to help pick out paint colors and fabrics. I’m thinking of chocolate with mango accents.”

“That sounds yummy,” Jenna said, knowing that Dani wouldn’t get the irony of her pun, nor the literal distaste she had for orange and brown. The colors reminded her of the design scheme used by her junior high.

“Having you happy here is a big, big priority,” Dani said.

The passage of time proved that. The room hadn’t changed a bit, save for a few more items shoved inside the space. Jenna knew where she stood with Dani, and by extension, where she stood with her father.

She found her cell phone and let out an audible sigh.

It was Amber Manley.

She let it go to voice mail and turned on her laptop, waiting for it to whirl into life.

Amber Manley was a sister from the Beta Zeta House at Cascade University, Jenna’s old chapter. Amber had stumbled onto a cache of food and clothes that had been squirreled away by Pepper Raynor. The problem was that while Pepper was a thief—stealing food from the kitchen and ripping off bits of every size two in the house—Amber had become the target of disciplinary action because she opened Pepper’s closet.

Jenna started typing.

Dear Amber,

I know you’ve been trying to reach me. As much as I’d like to help you, I’m afraid I can’t. The chapter rules are very specific. Despite the odor coming from Pepper’s closet, you had no right to open it…

More than a thousand miles away, he stirred as she came online. His computer know-how came in part from the endless loneliness that draws a boy into the insidious depths of a computer screen, searching for connections to people, and for his own place in the world. He liked how the keyboard felt; cool at first, then hot as he pounded the keys to take him to places he thought he’d never go. His screensaver had been an image of the jade-colored waters around the sandy edges of Oahu, a place he thought he’d never see. But he had. He’d been all over the country, and to Europe. No place he visited, however, made him feel better about himself.

Nothing could.

And just when he thought it could be different, it was all snatched from him.

She was to blame, because she’d stolen from him all that mattered.

He’d e-mailed from a dummy e-mail account a seemingly innocuous message that he cleverly outfitted with a Trojan horse—spyware that allowed him to capture every word she typed on her laptop. If he was logged on to his computer at the same time, he’d actually see her words in real time. She wasn’t a stupid girl, he knew. She wasn’t weak. She handled those self-absorbed and dimwitted girls with an impressive toughness and logic. There were things about her he might have admired, had he not blamed her for the darkest tragedy of a life that had been marked by so many.

As he formed his plan, created his list, he learned to loathe her over the others. Of the three, she’d been the one in charge. She could have changed the course of her own destiny. She was responsible for everything that was coming to her. Jenna Kenyon could have kept her name off the list.

The first two had no choice. No voice. They would be the disposable practice dolls that he’d once tossed in a fire pit behind his foster family’s house. They were trash. Not even human.

Jenna would be the prize. He’d save the most-deserving for last.