Читать книгу Last Resort - Hannah Alexander - Страница 11

Pearl Cooper’s tall, rawboned figure emerged from the woods along one of the wildlife trails that intersected the lane. Her hand patted her chest in a long-familiar gesture—Aunt Pearl had claimed heart palpitations for as long as Noelle could remember. The family affectionately accused her of using sympathy to get what she wanted. She never denied it. Aunt Pearl could always charm people into giving in to her, and when she couldn’t charm them, she pulled rank—though Cecil and Jill had incorporated the business to save on taxes, Pearl owned the property and everything on it. It had passed to her through the Cooper family trust.

Pearl’s iron-gray hair stuck out in haphazard tufts, straggling over her forehead to frame deep-blue eyes—Cooper eyes that saw more, sometimes, than one wanted them to see. She seldom wore anything other than jeans and old plaid flannel shirts, even in summer, and now she had the legs of her jeans tucked into a pair of well-used hiking shoes—she’d been the one to teach Noelle this practical trick for warding off tiny, biting varmints.

“Can’t swear to it,” she said as she neared them, “but I think the geese running free and the pennyroyal I planted did the trick. No ticks in the yard or this part of the woods all summer. Of course, you’ve gotta watch close or you’ll be ankle-deep in goose poop, but it’s better than ticks, to my notion. The backwoods are another problem, though. That where you’re headed?” Without pausing, she grabbed Noelle in a fierce hug, wrapping her in the pungent aroma of rosemary that always clung to Pearl from her herb garden.

Noelle’s great-aunt Pearl lived in the same house she’d been born in, a sturdy, sprawling rock dwelling that had changed little since it had been built in the early nineteen-hundreds. For as long as anyone in the area could remember, Pearl Cooper had gathered herbs and made her old-time medicines, distributing them to anyone who needed them. She’d protested loudly when the general store in Hideaway had opened a pharmacy, and she’d been only slightly mollified when she discovered Nathan would be the pharmacist.

“Good to see you, girl,” she said to Noelle now. “I’ve been expecting you. Come to search for Carissa?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what I’ll find that others haven’t.” Noelle gave Nathan a look of caution over Pearl’s shoulder, and was reassured by his small nod of understanding.

“I thought since Carissa and Noelle are such good friends,” Nathan said, “that Noelle might have some fresh insight.”

Pearl was frowning when she stepped back from Noelle’s embrace. “All those searchers probably turned up the same rocks and looked behind the same trees two or three times. Seems this holler’s been scoured from top to bottom and end to end. If she’s any where near here, a feller’d think we’d’ve found something.”

“It seems that way, Aunt Pearl,” Noelle said. “You haven’t seen any strangers hanging around out on the property lately, have you?”

Pearl shook her head. “There’s strangers and tourists swelling the town to three or four times its normal size, but nobody ever wanders this far from the fun.”

Noelle nodded. It was unlikely that any stranger would have ventured this far into the wilderness on the off chance of happening across a twelve-year-old girl to abduct in the dead of night—if Carissa had been abducted. Noelle prayed it wasn’t so, but she couldn’t dismiss the conviction—Nathan might call it a message from God—that someone with sinister motives was involved in Carissa’s disappearance.

Pearl gestured with a loose-jointed shrug. “Seems like the loggers, mill workers and farmhands are here all the time.” She hesitated, her eyes narrowing at Noelle. “Did you hear about poor Harvey Sand? Died from that fall he took last week. I heard tell Greg’s investigating foul play there.”

Noelle shifted impatiently. Pearl could be a talker when she was in the mood, and this wasn’t the time to stand around making idle conversation.

“I don’t know what’s come of Hideaway lately,” Pearl continued, “what with all the new folks moving in and taking over. Mind you, there was no love lost between Harvey and me—heaven knows we went round and round about the price he charged for a couple hours of work every month—but the guy was just a kid, still in his forties. Such a tragic loss.” She shook her head. “That new secretary of his had all our files delivered to the shop at the sawmill on Monday. Can you believe it? Fifteen years’ worth of tax records she just dumped on us, without even offering to help us find another accountant.”

Noelle rubbed her tightening neck muscles and rolled her shoulders.

Pearl noticed at last. She patted Noelle on the shoulder and nodded at Nathan. “You two can look as far and as long as you want. I’m going back out myself after I rest up a bit and give my heart some time to catch up with the rest of me. Melva should be back to the house by now after her latest foray into the woods.” She grunted. “Surprised me to see her scrambling through brush so much. She’s not exactly the outdoorsy type, if you know what I mean.”

“Aunt Pearl, give Melva a break.” Noelle kept her chiding voice gentle. Sparks had flown between Pearl and Melva in the past—Melva had taken over the bookkeeping for Cooper Enterprises from Pearl several years ago, and Pearl was not an easy person to please when it came to the family business. “She loves Carissa. I hope you’ve been nice to her.”

“I’ve been nice as I had to be,” Pearl replied grumpily. “Guess you know Jill’s here, too. She’s been searchin’ all night. We all have. I told her to take a break.”

“Thanks, Pearl.” Nathan took Noelle’s arm and stepped along the road. “We’re headed in that direction, so we might see them.”

“When all this craziness settles down,” Pearl called after them, once more tapping her fingers against her chest, as if the rhythm of her heart would regulate better that way, “you come by my house for some iced sassafras tea. Been too long since we visited last, Noelle.”

“I know, Aunt Pearl. I will.” Noelle fell into step beside Nathan. Pearl returned to the trail through the trees, taking the shortcut to her own house nestled at the foot of the hills that formed Cedar Hollow.

“I should get down here more often,” Noelle said. “Last time I saw Aunt Pearl was at Jill’s a few months ago. I haven’t been to the hollow for a couple of years.”

“Why is that?” Nathan asked.

“Too busy, I guess.” She broke off a twig from a nearby branch and rubbed it between her fingers, deep in thought.

“Or still avoiding it for some reason?”

“Could be. Pearl implied she thought I was still stuck in the past.”

“I disagree,” Nathan said. “You wallow in guilt over the past, but I don’t think you’re stuck there.”

Noelle gave him a look of aggravation.

“So what did she say?” he asked.

“She said, ‘Noelle, you’ve got a lot goin’ for you now, kiddo. Just keep on lookin’ forward, and don’t look back so much. The past can’t hurt us if we stay away from it.’”

Nathan walked beside her in silence. The crunch of their boots against gravel matched, as if they were marching in cadence toward the house where Cecil and Melva lived with Cecil’s children, seventeen-year-old Justin and twelve-year-old Carissa.

Whenever Noelle returned to this hollow, she felt as if she were stepping back in time. She also felt as if she were returning to old, dysfunctional family dynamics. Maybe, deep down, she feared she would once again become the rebellious teenager who’d made so many wrong choices. She knew better, of course. She had a tendency to be oversensitive.

Pearl was right. The past couldn’t hurt her if she stayed away from it.

She navigated around a puddle the circumference of a small car, in which the mud had been churned up into a slick mess with tire tracks. Obviously, there had been dozens of cars in and out of this place since last night, and Noelle glimpsed several vehicles still parked out in the cleared hayfield behind the house.

In addition to the number of automobiles that she and Nathan had seen parked at the sawmill, she judged there might be as many as sixty or eighty people currently searching the place. In the field she counted three pale-green Jeeps with ranger insignias, and seven white police cruisers, all splattered with mud.

“I don’t suppose there was a chance to check for strange footprints before the searchers arrived?” she asked, gesturing toward the mud puddle.

“The police looked, but they found nothing out of the ordinary.” Nathan skirted the puddle on the other side. “Cecil needs to get some gravel in here before someone loses a car.”

Noelle’s steps slowed as they drew near the white picket fence that encircled the house and yard. There was a rumble of growls, and two black and white Australian sheepdogs came running from the backyard, barking as if a herd of cattle had suddenly descended on them.

Noelle groaned. “Just great. I’d hoped to slip past the house without stopping.”

“Not with Butch and Sundance on high alert. You haven’t been around often enough for them to be familiar with your scent or the sound of your voice. They only bark at strangers.”

“We can visit later, after we’ve found Carissa.”

Nathan tapped her on the shoulder and she looked up at him. “Relax, grumpy. It’ll only take a few minutes. Your family needs you.”

“Sorry,” she muttered.

The racket of the dogs set off the geese at the pond below the house, and the honking commenced.

Noelle gave Nathan a look of exasperation. “And I thought we’d sneak in? What could I have been thinking?”

He grinned at her.

“Speaking of dogs, is the search-and-rescue unit bringing any search dogs in?” she asked.

“They’ve got three already out in the field, more on the way, but the ones they’ve got are new, not very experienced.”

They reached the white fence that circled the yard around a big, two-story white house. The dogs finally recognized her, and their barking turned to excited whines of welcome. Noelle reached through the slats of fence to pet the animals and quiet them.

The front screen door opened, and Jill, eight years older than Noelle, stepped out onto the broad concrete porch. Jill was a couple of inches taller than Noelle, with stronger features and a more voluptuous figure—and a familiar, piercing blue gaze.

“Noelle Cooper, what on earth?”

“Hi, sis.”

Jill glanced at Nathan, disapproval—annoyance? irritation?—sharpening her gaze.

“I came to help search.” Noelle followed Nathan through the front gate and braced herself for the rambunctious dogs as they leapt forward in welcome. “Any more word about Carissa?”

Jill shook her head, shading her eyes from the warm October sun. Her thick brown brows almost met in the middle as she squinted, and Noelle noticed the shadows of fatigue around Jill’s eyes as she stepped into her sister’s tight embrace.

Jill held her for a long moment. “This is like a nightmare, sis. I didn’t want to drag you down here. You’ve already got so much on your plate right now.”

“I didn’t come down here to cause you worry, I came to help with the search.”

Unfamiliar voices spilled from the house as Jill released Noelle. The aroma of frying bacon drifted through the screen door. Apparently some of the weary searchers were taking a much-needed break.

“So tell me,” Noelle said, “what have they found?”

“One of the sheriff’s deputies found fresh horseshoe prints in the mud at the edge of the lane,” Jill said.

“Maybe one of the horses jumped the fence,” Nathan said.

“None of the horses are even on the front forty right now,” Jill said. “They’re pastured half a mile in the other direction. That means someone may have come onto the property last night, because we had a lot of rain yesterday, and the print would’ve been washed away if they’d come earlier.”

“Surely they can’t think someone carried Carissa away by horse,” Nathan exclaimed.

“Can you think of a better way to carry someone through miles of wilderness trails without making a lot of noise?” Jill asked. “The fact that the dogs haven’t found Carissa yet probably means she was taken elsewhere, and it’s unlikely she walked there herself. They could have followed her scent.”

“What else did the searchers find?” Noelle asked.

Jill closed her eyes for half a second, then opened them and held Noelle’s gaze. Sorrowful. Suddenly gentle. “Taylor Jackson, one of the rangers, he found blood on the sawmill floor. Looks like someone was injured.”

“Maybe one of the employees was injured yesterday,” Noelle said.

“Taylor asked all of them, and no one was.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t automatically mean it was Carissa,” Noelle said.

“We’ll find out before long.” Jill lifted her hair from her neck and stretched her muscles. “I know we can’t go jumping to conclusions.” She said the words quickly, as if she’d been repeating them over and over to the others. “We can’t let ourselves get discouraged and stop searching.”

“Speaking of which,” Noelle said, “that’s what I came here to do. I’d better get to it.”

“Okay, but first will you let Melva know you’re here?” Jill asked. “She’s been wanting to call you since last night—as if one more person searching would make any difference.” The lines around Jill’s shadowed blue eyes deepened with concern. She touched Noelle’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. I just wish you’d called me last night.”

“We kept thinking we’d find her quickly. I didn’t want to upset you over nothing.” Jill frowned and pushed at her short brown hair—which had grown out a couple of inches, and no longer resembled a hard hat as much as it did a lion’s mane. “Cecil’s still blaming himself for sending her out for the ledger. Silly, I know, but I’ve struggled with the same problem. We let her go out there after dark.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Noelle said. “Nathan told me she was going out there anyway. She’s twelve years old, not a little child. Where were you when she disappeared?”

“I’d gone up to our old house to find some other ledgers upstairs.” Jill glanced over her shoulder through the screen door, lowering her voice. “We’ve been entering this year’s records on computer and trying to justify them with the records from the accountant—you knew he died, didn’t you? Anyway, there’s a discrepancy of fifteen thousand dollars, and we can’t seem to find it. That’s why we asked Carissa to get the ledger from the office at the sawmill. Turns out she had the wrong one, anyway. It was from ten years ago.”

“I’ll go have a word with Melva, then hit the trail.” Noelle gave her sister’s shoulder another squeeze, then opened the screen door and stepped inside.

Nathan leaned against the porch railing, arms folded across his chest in an automatic gesture of self-protection as he watched Jill pace the length of the porch. The chilled morning air hung heavy and thick in the sunlight that gleamed on her dark hair.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to get Noelle,” she said at last.

He glanced toward the Coopers’ open front door. “I wasn’t sure she could get away from the store, but I felt she needed to know about Carissa.”

Jill’s boots made little noise on the concrete porch. She turned to face Nathan across the half width of the house. “I had reasons for not wanting her here. She had a bad time right after the accident.”

“Of course she did. The whole family did. Why single out Noelle?” Nathan had to struggle to keep his voice low. “She’s a grown woman, and she needs to be treated like one.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, I know that, but why should she have to trudge all the way down here when half of Hideaway’s already out looking for the child?”

“Noelle is family. She needs to be treated like family, or you’ll be wasting your time trying to get her to move back here and work at the clinic.”

Jill paused, gazing down the lane again. “Maybe she shouldn’t come back here,” she said slowly.

This was a drastic about-face. “But I thought you were trying to—”

“Never mind what I was trying to do.” Jill stepped to the end of the porch, away from the screen door, and gestured, with a jerk of her head for him to join her.

He obeyed.

“After the sawmill accident, the grief almost killed her,” Jill said softly.

“Of course it did. We were all stricken.”

“But it was worse for Noelle. She went into a deep depression, had awful nightmares, told me she woke up screaming every night for the first month after the funerals.”

“She had a lot of other things on her mind at the time, and besides, she’s not the same person she was ten years ago.” He hesitated. “Did she say what the dreams were about?”

“She kept reliving the accident, as if she were one of the victims watching the logs tumble onto her. She had to quit her job, which really threw that ex-husband of hers into a tizzy, because at the time they were dependent on her income to support them—and his drug habit.” Jill’s voice dripped with disdain.

“Did she get professional help?”

“Oh, she went to her family doctor, and he prescribed an antidepressant. She took it for three weeks, then flushed the rest down the toilet. She said it made her ears ring. You know how independent she can be.”

“She takes after her sister.”

Jill gave him a half-hearted scowl.

“Did the antidepressant help her at all?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? After just three weeks?” Jill snorted. “I even got some of that herbal stuff Pearl’s always trying to push off on everyone. Noelle still had the nightmares for a long time afterward.”

“She told me a little about that time,” Nathan said.

“Now it’ll start all over. What’s she going to do when she wakes up in the middle of the night and finds herself alone?”

“Jill, Noelle is a big girl. She can take care of herself.” He studied Jill’s expression for a moment. She didn’t look at him, but kept her gaze focused on the trees across the road.

There was something about her behavior that caught his attention. She stood with her shoulders hunched forward, arms crossed, head bowed slightly. What wasn’t she telling him? He knew better than to ask.

“You can’t shield her from pain by building a wall around her,” he said.

“I’m not building a wall, I’m just—”

“You’re still trying to be her mother. Stop it, or you’ll smother her completely. Let her handle her own problems.”

She sighed and shook her head, then turned away from him. “Fine, then you be there for her when her nightmares return.”

“She’s told me a little about Joel and her marriage.”

“Yes, but how much did she tell you? She has a tendency to downplay certain aspects of her life so no one will worry.”

“Maybe that’s because she knows we tend to worry too much,” he said gently. “Jill, you knew Joel a lot better than I did. Do you think his return could in any way be connected to Carissa’s disappearance?”

She didn’t react, which meant she’d already considered the possibility. “I don’t know. As crazy as he got sometimes, I wouldn’t put it past him.” She turned and looked up at Nathan, arms still folded over her chest. “Maybe we should tell the sheriff to check him out.”

“Maybe we should.”