Tessa Leoni: Crash And Burn Part 40

We have both come too far for that.

I feel Vero then. She is standing in the back of my mind. Not speaking, not sipping tea, not even sitting in the dollhouse, but more like a lone figure, waiting in a black void. I can't see her face; more like I feel her mood.

Somber. Tired. Sad.

She is not coming to me, I realize, because for the first time in twenty-two years, I am coming to her.

She finally opens her mouth. She utters a single word: "Run."

But we both know it is much too late for that.

Thomas slows the car. For the first time, I see it. A dirt road has appeared on the right. Nearly overgrown, it would be difficult enough to spot during the day, and almost impossible at night. Except, of course, that Thomas already knows that's it there.

"Run!" Vero whispers again.

But there's no place to go. I'm trapped in this car now, just as surely as I was trapped in my Audi three nights ago.

As my husband takes the turn, headlights slashing across a tangle of shrubs, tiny car heaving up the first divot.

"All I ever wanted," Thomas repeats, "was for you to be happy."

As he forces the four-wheel-drive vehicle up the rutted road.

Returning to the dollhouse.

Thomas's childhood home.

Chapter 36.

THEY STRUCK OUT on the green Subaru. Kevin was able to trace the partial license plate to a vehicle that had been listed as stolen the day before. Being an older model, it didn't carry such modern-day amenities as GPS for tracking, and they had no hits on sightings of the vehicle.

Two A.M., Wyatt sat back in frustration, scrubbing his face with the palm of his hand. "We're still reacting. Thomas runs, we give chase. Nicky taunts us with half a puzzle, we batter our brains trying to deduce the missing pieces. Just once, I'd like to be ahead in this game."

"As in knowing where Nicky and Thomas went?" Tessa asked him.

"Oh, I know where they went. Can't find it on a map, of course, but I know where they went."

"The dollhouse."

"Who's in the second vehicle?" he barked impatiently. They were still in the back hotel office, surrounded by the security video they'd watched again and again. Wyatt had sent Brittany out of the room, ostensibly because they no longer required her a.s.sistance, but mostly because it was never good to appear stuck in front of an adoring member of the public. "What the h.e.l.l happened way back when, what the h.e.l.l is going on now and who did we miss? Because if Nicky is with Thomas, and according to my deputy, Marlene Bilek was returned safely home three hours ago, who's left to follow our favorite two suspects in a separate vehicle?"

They'd tried zooming in on the security footage of the second car, but that vehicle had stuck to the dimly lit edges of the parking lot. They had a recording of a small, dark compact. Not even a blur of the driver's face, let alone something truly helpful, such as a glimpse of the license plate. "Madame Sade?" Tessa guessed now.

Wyatt nearly growled in frustration. He'd gone almost forty-eight hours without sleep. Combined with a sense of his own stupidity, the night was wearing on him.

He picked up Tessa's sketch of the woman, held it up. "We take this picture to the press, we gotta tell them why."

"Police have some questions for her regarding the disappearance of a child thirty years ago," Tessa provided immediately. "Don't call her a suspect, but imply she's a witness. People feel better about ratting out their neighbors when it won't get them in trouble."

"Excellent plan for the morning news cycle. Problem is, we need answers now, and press conferences don't work well at two A.M. Mostly because the target audience is asleep."

"Maybe you should take a nap," Tessa informed him.

He nearly growled again. "I want the dollhouse. Thomas, Nicky, our answers. All at the dollhouse."

"We have that sketch."

"Fed it to local Realtors this afternoon. No hits. Kevin ran specs through a New Hampshire property tax database, too many hits. Historic homes, even grand old Victorians, are lousy in these hills."

"What about Marlene's hubby?" Tessa asked now. "If Marlene's safe at home, what about him, because I bet he has opinions about a long-lost daughter appearing from the dead."

"Except Nicky's not Vero. No threat to him or the new family order."

Tessa frowned, plopped down in the office chair across from Wyatt.

"Nicky and Thomas are both connected to the dollhouse," Tessa stated. "We can't prove it, but that makes the most sense."

"Agreed."

"Meaning their relationship didn't start in New Orleans, but here. Meaning both of them most likely know things about a former brothel that plenty of people wouldn't want known."

"Agree times three," Wyatt a.s.sured her. "Unfortunately, it leads us back to the same conundrum. Dollhouse holds the key. Except we can't find the dollhouse."

"Track down Nicky-slash-Chelsea's real ident.i.ty?" Tessa asked him.

"No hits off her fingerprints as of yet. a.s.suming Chelsea is a runaway or was sold to Madame Sade, it's possible her prints aren't in the system at all, meaning we may never get that answer."

"Thomas Frank's real ident.i.ty?"

"No prints to run. The fire destroyed such evidence from his home. Latent prints attempted to work his car, hotel room, et cetera, but recovered nothing usable. Guy's either that lucky or that good. You can guess my vote." Wyatt expelled heavily, wrapped his knuckles against the top of the office desk. "Case is starting to p.i.s.s me off."

"Not your fault," Tessa said mildly. "You started with a single-car accident. Who would've guessed it would lead to an old child abduction case and Victorian brothel?"

"November is the saddest month," he muttered. Then paused. Repeated the phrase out loud: "November is the saddest month. That's when Nicky escaped. Must've been. November. The saddest month. When she had to kill Vero in order to save herself."

"Okay . . ."

He looked up at Tessa, feeling the first traces of excitement. "That's a variable. We're not just looking twenty-two years ago. We're looking for something that happened in November twenty-two years ago."

"Would Madame Sade have filed a missing persons report?" Tessa asked. "I mean, if she was pretending they were family, or even needed to keep up pretenses with the neighbors after her teenage 'daughter' disappeared . . ."

"I doubt she'd want the police on her property, especially given another girl had just died." Wyatt paused, reconsidered the matter. "That's a good question, though. One night in November, two girls from the same home vanish. One dies; one ostensibly runs away."

"Maybe three kids disappeared," Tessa prodded. "What about Thomas? a.s.suming he was part of it, maybe he bolted with Nicky."

They regarded each other thoughtfully.

"Madame Sade would have to smooth it over somehow," Wyatt mused. "Explain the new world order to her neighbors, maybe even local authorities. Otherwise people would get suspicious."

"She could declare them runaways."

"Three kids. From the same house." Wyatt gave her a look. "Speaking as a former officer, wouldn't you definitely check that out?"

"Definitely."

"But no one did." He said it with more certainty now. "Because if she had filed a report, D.D. would've run across it as part of her search, right? She just explored all missing-kids cases from the past thirty years. No way three teenagers from New Hampshire wouldn't have made her radar screen. It's too odd a case not to call attention."

Tessa picked up his train of thought. "Madame Sade never said a word. Maybe the situation spooked her. I mean, first she thinks Vero is dead and buried in the woods. Except, of course, eventually she must've figured out it wasn't Vero's body that was carried out, but the roommate's instead. Now she has at least one missing girl, not to mention one dead girl. Maybe that was too much. She bolted herself. Makes some sense."

Wyatt agreed. Given the intensity of that night, the fear and uncertainty for all concerned, it made sense the madam might have panicked and shut down operations. It came to him, the new variable to search: "What about the house? Girls are gone, owner has bolted, what happens to the house?"

"Depends on if the owner continues to pay mortgage, property taxes, that sort of thing."

Wyatt raised a brow. "If you were running from past sins, would you continue to mail in your property taxes?" He sat up straight, tapped the desk top. "That's our search requirement. Tax lien. On a historic Victorian, going back to November, twenty-two years ago. Why not?"

"I'm on it."

"You're on it?"

"Sure." Tessa was already digging out her computer. "What do you think us private investigators do? Death and taxes. Only two things no one can avoid, making them the best source of records."

Her fingers started humming across the keyboard. Wyatt watched her work without asking any more questions. His job was biased toward search warrants. He didn't want to know about hers.

"Most towns give you at least a year before they get too antsy," Tessa informed him now. "Costs money to file a lien, so they opt for mailing out overdue notices for a bit. Not having an exact town makes it harder, of course, which is why search engines are worth their weight in gold . . ." She tapped more, frowned, tapped more. "I got homes, all right. Old homes, rich homes, valuable homes. But I'm not seeing any Victorians. Okay, let's try twenty years ago. Nineteen. Eighteen."

Fingers still tapping, face still frowning. "s.h.i.t." Tessa paused, glanced up. "I'm not seeing anything. And yet . . . we have to be on to something. November, twenty-two years ago, Vero dies, Nicky disappears, maybe even a young man named Thomas takes off. It had to have affected operations at the dollhouse. It had to have sparked some sort of reaction by Madame Sade."

Wyatt shrugged. "Search that. November, twenty-two years ago, historic Victorian. What the h.e.l.l. Someone had to be called out for something, maybe even a report of a runaway?"

Tessa, typing away again. "Holy . . . No way. You've got to be kidding me!"

"What?" Wyatt was up, out of his chair, leaning over her shoulder in the cramped s.p.a.ce. She gestured to her screen and he got it. Headline article. Not of a missing teen or a dead girl.

But a fire.

A hundred-year-old Victorian, one of the last grand summer cottages in the area, burning to the ground. November. Twenty-two years ago. With an unidentified body pulled from the smoldering ruins.

"The dollhouse," Tessa murmured. "Gotta be."

"You know what this means, don't you?"

"We're heading forty miles north."

Wyatt already had his keys in his hand. "Absolutely, but that's not what I meant. Thomas. A husband who burned down his own home two nights ago. A man clearly experienced with gas cans."

She got it. "He was definitely at the dollhouse all those years ago. He's the one who burned it to the ground." Tessa hesitated. "And now he's taking Nicky back there? But if it's gone, totally demolished, what's left for them?"

"I don't know. But I have a feeling for Nicky's own sake, she'd better start remembering."

Chapter 37.

BY THE TIME the car crests the washed-out drive, my stomach is heaving and my head is on fire. Motion sickness, I try to tell myself. But of course it's more than that. It's dread and nerves and sadness and fear. It's every dark emotion rolled into one, and my hands are shaking so badly, I can't open the car door. I fumble with the latch again and again.

I swear I smell smoke, though I know that's impossible. And I'm terrified that the moment I step out of the car, it will start to rain. I don't think I could handle that. I don't think I can handle this.

Thomas climbs out of the driver's side. He fiddles for a minute with the rear pa.s.senger door, extracting something from the backseat. When I don't immediately exit the vehicle, he comes around to a.s.sist me. I have to hold his arm to stand. I don't look up, can't bring myself to see his face. Instead, I keep my gaze on the sleeve of my husband's coat; I am shaking uncontrollably.

I can feel them already. The shadows in the back of my mind. Slippery shapes and chilling whispers that scare me even more than Vero. I would have her back, grinning skull and all.

But she is quiet now. She gave me her best advice and I ignored it.

Or maybe, faced with this place once again, she is also too terrified to talk.

For just one moment, I wish love really did heal all wounds. I wish Thomas's genuine care and nurturing had been enough to heal me. Somehow, he'd found the ability to move forward.

But I never have. He's right; I was losing my mind even before I suffered three blows to the head.

Thomas takes the first step, my hand tucked beneath his arm. Slowly, I force myself to follow. I realize for the first time that he's holding something in his left hand. A shovel, which he'd pulled from the backseat. Thomas is carrying a shovel.

I don't speak. I march with this man who is my husband. It occurs to me we never had a formal wedding, never walked side by side down church steps, officially p.r.o.nounced man and wife.

But now we have this.

A man. His wife. And our shared secret.

These grounds had been beautiful once. In the back of my mind, I know this. I could see the rolling green lawn from the house, especially from the tower bedroom, which had offered a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree view. I'd spent hours alone, gazing at the vast grounds in back, not to mention a sweeping circular drive in the front, punctuated by a gurgling fountain. Rosebushes in the summer, mounds of rust-colored autumn sedum in the fall. The carriage house had stood to the left, already converted by that time to a three-bay garage. Another outbuilding had been slightly behind it. Caretaker's cottage, or maybe a playhouse for the privileged kids of the family who'd first built the home a hundred years ago.

I used to picture a boy and girl, bouncing blond curls, a stiff blue playsuit for him, a flouncy pink dress for her, as they chased an old-fashioned leather ball across the lawn. There was a pond in the back as well, a swimming hole for those hot summer days.

I never walked to it. Never stuck a toe in the stagnant water. I simply watched the rippling green surface from the third-story window, trying to imagine the family who had once built this summer home. Wondering what they'd think if they'd lived to see what it had become.

Thomas has a flashlight. He lets go of my arm to illuminate the circular drive, but it's gone, nothing but more weeds and brambles. He searches for the center fountain next, but it's either collapsed or lost under more vegetative growth.