You Don't Want To Know

Chapter 14


“I swear I had a Diet Coke in here,” Virginia muttered to herself, her shoulders deep into the refrigerator. No one else was in the kitchen, at least not that Ava could see.

Hearing footsteps, Virginia straightened and slammed the door shut. “Guess I’ll just have to restock.”

The dinner dishes were still piled in the sink, the dishwasher half emptied, the smell of clams, garlic, and tomato sauce heavy in the air. Three filled plates were covered with Saran Wrap, and two plastic containers were packed with the extra red clam sauce, the leftovers from a meal that Ava had devoured. For the first time in days, she’d had an appetite, and the warm bread, Caesar salad, and spicy pasta had been delicious. Enough so that she’d managed to get through dinner without getting furious with Jewel-Anne or perturbed with Demetria. She hadn’t even bristled at Ian’s remarks about her being “lucky” enough to own so much of the island even though he’d sold his share to her long ago. His resentment was usually masked, but once in a while he couldn’t help reminding her that she’d “played her cards right.” He’d always made his statements as if they were a joke and he was just teasing her, but she knew beneath his smile was the grim belief that somehow she’d taken advantage of him and the rest of the family by buying them out.

Tonight she’d ignored him.

“Are these for Khloe and Simon?” she asked, indicating the covered plates.

“Mmm. And the new man . . . Dern.” Virginia was walking into the pantry where she scrounged around the shelves and returned carrying three cans of soda. “I thought he might appreciate it.” She opened the refrigerator door again and slipped the Diet Coke onto the shelves. “Bachelors, you know.” As the door shut, she gave Ava a knowing stare. “Never cook for themselves.”

“Let me run it down to him,” Ava offered, and when Virginia seemed about to object, she added, “Payback. He found my cell phone earlier and returned it to me.”

Virginia shrugged. “One less trip for me.”

After sliding into a jacket, Ava grabbed the plate and headed for Dern’s apartment. It had been her plan all along, to find some excuse to talk to the man again, find out a little more about him. As she walked swiftly along the path to his quarters, she tried to convince herself that she needed more information on the man because he was her employee, someone who had shown up rather abruptly, and she just had the feeling that there was more to him than met the eye. It wasn’t because he was attractive, for God’s sake, and even if he was, she was a married woman . . . maybe not happily married, maybe even a hair’s breadth from separating and even divorcing her husband, but married just the same.

The fog was hanging low tonight, the security lamps shrouded in a fine mist, and the sound of the sea was a muted rush in her ears. Closer to the stable, the smell of horses filtered through the briny smell of the salt water from the bay and she noted the patches of light from the window of Dern’s quarters.

Her boots rang up the old steps, and she heard Rover give a sharp bark as she climbed the stairs to his apartment. Before she was on the landing, the door opened and Dern, backlit by an interior lamp, filled the doorway.

Upon seeing Ava, Rover went nuts, barking and spinning in circles behind Dern’s jean-clad legs.

“Built-in security system,” she said, hitching her chin toward the excited shepherd as she handed the new man the plate. “This is from Virginia. She has this thing about making way more food than anyone could ever eat.”

“Really?”

“Consider it a perk of being hired at Neptune’s Gate. Trust me, Virginia won’t let anyone starve while they’re here.”

Rover was whining and sitting on the floor, his nose in the air, his tail sweeping the old oak planks.

“Looks like someone misses you,” Dern said, stepping out of the doorway and allowing Rover to shoot past to whine pathetically as Ava leaned down to pet him.

“Yeah, well, he’s a traitor.” Smiling, she ruffled the dog behind his ears. “Any port in a storm.” She glanced up. “He was a stray who landed here, and Ned took him in, so he kind of comes with the apartment. Virginia puts food out for him on the back porch of the main house, and there’s even a dog door cut into the panels of a door off the back porch. I bought a bed and tucked it near the back stairs, but he prefers it here or in the stable or even outside. Isn’t that right, boy?” she said to the dog, and his tail thumped faster against the decking. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“He seems to like you.”

She laughed. “He even trusts me. Now, that’s unique on this island.”

Dern raised a dark eyebrow.

“I know, I’m suffering from some kind of persecution complex or something.” She straightened and Rover slipped down the stairs, past her to the outdoors.

“Persecution complex?”

“Or something,” she reminded. “The diagnosis changes weekly. But you probably know that.” She watched the dog sniff around the closest fence post, then relieve himself against it. “I’m sure Wyatt told you all about me when you were hired.”

“He only said you’d had a hard time with the loss of your son. Come on in. I need to set this down.” He carried the plate inside, and Ava followed him into the apartment as Rover squeezed inside again by her legs. She hadn’t been over the threshold of these living quarters over the stable in a long while, but little had changed since the last time she’d visited. The same pictures hung on the walls, the rag rug was just as she remembered, and the furniture, worn the last time she’d seen it, was a little more tired than it had been. There were a few things belonging to Dern in the unit, but nothing that suggested he intended to stay for a long while.

“Is there anything more you need here?” she asked, but he shook his head and held up the plate.

“This’ll do.”

“Well, let me know if you find you need something.”

He nodded. “I will.”

“Good. I’d better get back. The spaghetti probably needs to be heated up in the microwave as it is.” Leaning down, she gave the dog one last pet. “Oh, and by the way, ‘Rover’ was Ned’s idea. He showed up without tags and no one in Monroe claimed him, so Ned dubbed him Rover.” She straightened. “You know Ned, right? Isn’t that what Wyatt said?”

“Never met the guy. I worked for a guy who knows your husband. Donnelly found out his son, Rand, wasn’t cut out to run a ranch, so he sold it out from under him. Left me out of work. Donnelly hooked me up with Wyatt.” One side of his mouth lifted into a crooked smile. “It’s really no big mystery. Ask your husband.” Before she could respond, he added, “Let me guess. You already have.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he said, “As I said, contrary to what you seem to believe, I wasn’t hired to keep an eye on you.”

She nodded but hesitated at the door. “So why is it I have a feeling we’ve met before?”

“I must just have one of those faces.”

“No. That’s not it.”

He raised a shoulder. “Well, I can’t explain it, because I’m sure if we’d met before, I would remember you. You’re not the kind of woman I’d be likely to forget.”

She felt a little tingle zing through her bloodstream, then told herself she was treading in dangerous waters. “I’d better go. Let you get to your meal. Bye, Rover,” and then she was out the door. Not that he tried to stop her.

She wondered if he was watching her, peering through a slit in the curtains or the blinds, then shook off the idea. It was dark, even with the few security lights shining, so if he was watching, he’d only note that she was making a beeline for the back of the house.

As soon as she was out of the pool of eerie light cast by the lamp nearest the house, she turned and walked through the garden, to the memory stone that Wyatt had placed for Noah a year after his disappearance.

“Get rid of it,” Ava had insisted at the time. “It’s like a gravestone and he’s not dead.”

“It’s just a memory plaque. When he returns, we’ll make note of the date or remove it altogether.”

She’d been furious at the time, but once the smooth stone, etched with Noah’s name was placed in the garden, near a climbing rosebush that wound upon a trellis, she’d found surprising comfort in running her finger over her son’s name or just kneeling near the rock and remembering holding him, feeling his warm arms around her neck, hearing his high-pitched laugh. God, she missed him . . .

She passed by the stone tonight, slowing and reaching down to touch the tiny memorial. “I will find you,” she promised. “Wherever you are, honey, Mommy will find you.” Her throat tightened, but she didn’t break down, wouldn’t let herself.

Straightening, she walked through the back door to the old staircase that wound its way from the basement, up three flights, and past the attic to the widow’s walk at the top of the house. The stairs had originally been built for the staff, but there was no hard-and-fast rule. Still, most of the time everyone who lived or worked at Neptune’s Gate used the elevator or main staircase, and as she creaked open the door, she smelled the dusty, musty odor of disuse.

Her stomach clenched as she realized the last time she’d climbed down these stairs to the basement was the week of Noah’s disappearance. She, along with dozens of others, including the police, had searched the house from top to bottom, and she’d clambered down the old staircase at least a dozen times, her hope dwindling with each search.

Now, heart beating with the memory, she slapped the light switch and headed down the heavy plank steps. At the bottom of the staircase, she found another light switch, hit it, and suddenly the labyrinth of unfinished rooms was partially illuminated by five or six bare, dusty bulbs, one of which flickered out while the rest gave off a dim, feeble light that washed over the junk that was stored down here: shelves of empty jars, broken picture frames, and old sports equipment, even a slot machine that no longer worked.

Aside from Jacob’s bachelor apartment with its own exterior access and a wine cellar that Wyatt had insisted be built five years ago, the area was unfinished and had been so for nearly a century. She passed the glass door to her husband’s wine room with its perfect blend of temperature and humidity, and out of a sense of due diligence, she tried the mysterious key in the door, which was just plain silly. The room was new, its lock shiny and large. The key she’d found was old and the wrong shape. Of course it didn’t work, but as she tried to force the key into the lock, she looked through the glass door and noticed the labels on a few bottles before giving up.

She turned her attention to the main area of the cellar, a space that had been dug out and created with the rest of Neptune’s Gate.

The ceiling was low, and several times she was hit in the face by cobwebs that clung to her hair, leaving a sticky residue that couldn’t be brushed off. “Yuck,” she muttered, wiping her hands quickly over her face.

As she passed through aisles of clutter, she saw her grandmother’s sewing machine draped with its cover next to a pile of out-of-date textbooks from half a century earlier. Her uncle’s bow and arrows were hanging near a pair of hip waders and crab pots complete with floats. Nearby, next to the NordicTrack, she nearly tripped on a set of dumbbells and weights.

She’d always hated it down here.

If the dampness and the smell of mold wasn’t enough, the knowledge that this space was shared by mice, rats, wasps, and God only knew what else was unnerving.

But she felt compelled to check it out.

Her heart clenched when she spied a plastic tub of baby clothes, marked and labeled with Noah’s name. Next to the container were a few of his toys. She spied a fire truck with a broken wheel and a set of blocks, still in their box. Fondly, she touched the hemp-like mane of a rocking horse he’d never really used.

Her knees nearly gave way as she pried off the plastic lid and almost reverently dug through the sleepers, layette blankets, and jackets, clothes she’d boxed up before he’d turned two. She’d stored them on the shelf of the closet of one of the guest rooms, but obviously someone had taken it upon themselves to bring them down here. Her throat was thick as she fingered a tiny little pajama set made to look like a tuxedo, and she had to blink away tears when she remembered propping him under the Christmas tree that first year and taking twenty or thirty pictures with the new camera they’d bought just for the occasion. She opened one of the plastic bags and smelled the scent of the special baby soap she’d used to wash his clothes.

“I miss you,” she said, then, hearing footsteps overhead, refolded the tux, slipped it into its plastic sleeve, and returned it to the tub. Clearing her throat, she crammed the lid onto the plastic bin and returned it to its shelf.

She couldn’t spend much more time down here or she’d be missed, and she didn’t want to explain herself.

Reaching into her pocket, she grabbed the key again and began searching for old lockboxes or desks or drawers, anything with a lock. It seemed a nearly impossible task, as a hundred years of broken, forgotten, or outgrown clutter surrounded her. Generation after generation of Churches had stored unused items between the old walls of the basement.

Starting at the far end near the ancient furnace with its huge ducts, she searched through the discarded junk and uncovered one lock after another.

First, she slipped the key into the lock of a rolltop desk.

No go.

Next, two trunks from another century.

Uh-uh, but there was evidence of mice or rats on the clothes from a long-ago era that smelled vaguely of mothballs.

Shuddering, she reminded herself to have this place cleaned.

She uncovered an attaché case and diary, both locked, but their keyholes were much too small, and as she walked through the dingy place, she became more and more creeped out. It was like picking her way through the ghosts of her ancestors, and a chill crawled up her spine, a chill that had nothing to do with the cool temperature within.

Don’t let your nerves get the better of you.

Spying a dusty secretary desk in the corner of a room that had only been framed in, she threaded the key into the lock. For a second she felt triumph, but the key wouldn’t budge one iota. “Useless,” she told herself. She’d been in the basement nearly an hour, and she still had no idea where the damned key belonged. Maybe it had nothing to do with Neptune’s Gate at all.

She stood in the middle of the room and tried to concentrate, to come up with a logical idea for what the key was used for.

“Nothing,” she said, the musty smell of the low-ceilinged room heavy in her nostrils. The damned key is probably just part of a prank. Right up Jewel-Anne’s alley.

“But why?” she wondered. Was the girl bored, or just mean-spirited?

Shaking her head, Ava moved on. She found a vanity with a mirror that folded out into three sections. Her image in the dusty, speckled glass appeared worried and wan, on edge. “Well, duh,” she whispered to the woman in the reflection. In her mind’s eye, she saw her grandmother, seated on this faded, padded bench in her bedroom on the second floor—the same bench where Wyatt had been known to crash—and looking at herself in the mirror. Grannie always wore her hair wound into a knot, a perfect twist of snow-white hair, but at night, she’d let it down and stroke it in front of the mirror, her white locks still thick as they curled past her bony shoulders. Ava had been allowed inside the room that smelled of Joy, an expensive jasmine and rose fragrance rumored to have been favored by Jacqueline Onassis, or so Grannie had bragged as she’d turned her head in the mirror to view her profile, then push up the bit of a sag beneath her chin. She’d also been allowed to brush Grannie’s hair, a privilege that wasn’t bestowed upon any of her other grandchildren.

A cool breath of stale air touched the back of her neck and Ava shivered. She could almost hear her grandmother whispering, Don’t give up, Ava. You’re a Church, a fighter. And don’t be played for a fool . . . oh, no, that would never do . . .

BANG!

Ava gave an involuntary cry and jumped from the bench at the sound. Something hard had fallen onto the concrete floor. Banging her knee on the vanity, shaking the mirror in the process, she dropped the key as she whipped around, looking through the shadowy, draped clusters of furniture.

“Who’s there?” she said, her heart thumping, her nerves as taut as bowstrings.

But nothing moved.

Everything was still.

Aside from her wild, galumphing heart.

“Show yourself!”

Her throat was dry as she squinted through the two-by-fours of the unfinished wall and past the odd shapes of discarded furniture.

No one appeared.

No sound or smell indicated she wasn’t alone.

But she had the distinct feeling that someone was hiding in the shadows. Watching.

She strained to hear and thought, just briefly, that she heard the sound of music, an ancient Elvis hit, probably whispering through the dirty air ducts overhead.

She forced her breathing back to normal levels.

She hadn’t imagined the sound.

Something definitely had fallen.

And not on its own.

Still eyeing the shadowy room, she bent her knees and felt along the cracked floor for the key. When she didn’t immediately find it, she used the flashlight app on her cell to illuminate the area and found that the key had slipped beneath the vanity. She grabbed the tiny piece of metal and straightened, her face turned toward the dusty mirror.

An image moved in the reflection, a dark shadow that quickly darted across all three mirrors.

Whirling, her skin crawling, Ava forced her eyes in the direction of the movement, reversing it in her head as it would move opposite of what she’d seen. Toward the stairs. “Who are you?” she demanded, straining to hear footsteps.

Nothing.

Oh, God.

Maybe it was her imagination, her sick mind playing tricks on her. No. She’d seen something! She had!

Her throat dry with dread, she moved forward, shining the beam of her phone flashlight into all the hidden corners where someone could hide.

What if he’s got a weapon? A knife? Or a gun?

A cold fear settled in the pit of her stomach, and her entire body broke into a cold, damp sweat as she edged her way through the shadows and dust, following her flashlight’s tiny beam, ready to jump out of her skin if the light caught in someone, or something’s, eyes.

Dear God, she was really freaking herself out. She made her way toward the stairs but stopped when she saw Noah’s toys. The rocking horse was moving, back and forth.

Her heart pounded and she looked over her shoulder, half expecting someone to jump out at her.

Someone was in the basement.

“I know you’re here,” she warned. “What is this?”

But no one answered. All she heard over her own shallow breathing was the creak of the floor overhead.

There was nothing more she could do down here, and truth be told, she wasn’t in the mood to sit in the semidark trying to coax some sicko from his—or her—hiding spot.

“Fine. Sit down here if you want. But I’m locking the door!” Heart beating a frightened tattoo, she mounted the stairs, and only when she’d reached the top, did she take a breath.

She closed the door to the stairs and was about to make good on her promise to lock the door when she heard the distinctive whine of Jewel-Anne’s wheelchair. A second later, her cousin, earbuds in place, buzzed around the corner. Upon spying Ava, Jewel-Anne appeared surprised for just an instant, then smiled slyly and shook her head. “You were in the basement?” She pulled a face as she stared at Ava’s shoulders and hair, popping out one of her earbuds, the soft notes of Elvis’s “Suspicious Minds” sounding tinny and faint. “What for?” Jewel-Anne wrinkled her nose. “It’s nasty down there.”

Ava tried again to flick the cobwebs from her mussed hair. “How would you know?”

“What?” Jewel-Anne whispered, stricken for an instant. Wounded. Her fingers clenched over the wheel of her chair and she blinked hard against tears. “Low blow, Ava,” she said roughly.

Ava felt like a bit of a heel.

“We’re caught in a trap . . .” Elvis warbled almost inaudibly.

Then her cousin’s lips pursed self-righteously and she lifted her little chin defiantly. “You know, Ava, I haven’t always been in this chair. If you hadn’t insisted we go out boating that day, Kelvin would still be alive and I’d be able to walk!”

“You’ve got to stop laying the blame on me,” she shot back, sick of Jewel-Anne’s warped view. “The accident wasn’t my fault.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Jewel-Anne said before reversing her electric contraption and calling over her shoulder as she rolled out of sight, “Maybe someday you’ll convince yourself.”

Torn between fury and, yes, guilt, Ava sagged against the door frame. Intellectually she knew that Jewel-Anne was completely wrong, but sometimes it sure felt like someone was to blame. That emotion she totally understood.