But if you can find a couple of mops and pails, then lock that door, I’ll help you clean up this mess. Or paint over it, if we need to.”
“Don’t you want to take a picture, get a sample, or dust for—”
“It’s kids!” Jared snapped. “Yeah, it’s six years tomorrow, but that’s no secret. You’ve heard the talk around town. People always remember what they should forget and forget what they should remember.” He turned back to the wall. “No, this is a juvenile prank meant to shock us, and why should we be surprised? Local gossip reflects what’s on TV and in the movies these days. People are being desensitized right and left, and the kids are the first to be affected. Apparently, one or two of them thought it would be fun to spook you. Don’t give him, or them, the satisfaction. We’ll wash it off and forget it. When they see this didn’t get a rise out of you, they’ll lose interest and move on to using keys to scratch car paint or something equally lamebrained.”
“She was my sister-in-law, Jared. How can I forget?”
“Damn you, Garth. She was my fiancée! I say, let her rest in peace.”
Garth looked as though he wanted to continue arguing the point, but after several seconds, although red-faced, he stormed out of the rest room. As soon as the door shut behind him, Jared reached for his pocketknife and pulled a paper towel from the wall dispenser. The procedure wasn’t as pure as using the collection gear in his trunk, but he couldn’t afford to take the time to get it. If Garth got so much as an inkling of how deeply troubled Jared was by this, the guy would need a tranquilizer to get any sleep tonight, and that would mean bringing Jessica into the picture. Sandy’s older sister didn’t deserve this, either.
Acutely aware of the risks he was taking, he used the knife to scrape at the driest corner of the first letter.
4
6:06 p.m.
Michaele didn’t bother trying to rouse her father after locking up. It wasn’t the first time she’d left him snoring in his chair, and she doubted it would be the last. In any case, she didn’t have the energy to put up with the wrestling match and verbal abuse it would take just to get him into the truck; what would she do with him at home? Besides, with the police station directly across the street, he was perfectly safe, and she would have the time alone that she needed with Faith…once her sister showed up.
Preoccupied, Michaele drove badly through the intersection, and the wrecker shuddered in protest to her delay in downshifting. But she finally got the 454 big-block engine smoothened out and continued north on Dogwood, then turned west on Cypress and across Little Blackberry Creek.
Convinced she would find her sister at the house soaking in the tub, as Faith was apt to do on afternoons when she was feeling particularly lazy, Michaele was disappointed to reach their place and find only the family’s aging pickup truck in the dirt driveway. The irony of her reaction didn’t escape her. How often had she pulled in here hoping there would be no one at the two-story frame house?
So be it, she decided. If this was to be her moment, she would celebrate. There was more to be grateful for than peace and quiet; there was also the acquisition of the Cameo. This called for a pan-fried steak, and later maybe one of Faith’s luxurious, long baths. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d taken the time to pamper herself.
But once inside the house—dark and stuffy from being shut up all day—she felt like a stranger. It was the unusual quiet, she supposed, so unnatural considering her volatile family. The mess was the same, though. There were dishes in the sink, newspapers and magazines everywhere, laundry waiting for someone to shove it into the washing machine or dryer.
“Gross,” she muttered.
She supposed she could keep the house in better shape if she did everything herself; however, working herself into an early grave the way her mother had wasn’t on Michaele’s list of goals. Bad enough her father and sister let her support them.
She loaded the washing machine, adding the shirt and jeans she’d been wearing. Then, stripped down to her cotton panties, she ran upstairs for a shower.
It was a rather quick shower. Thanks to her line of work, she could scrub herself raw daily and still fail to get off every last trace of the day’s grime. That was also part of why Jared had upset her so.
It had been unfair of him to accuse her of being a tease. She had never tried to be anything but what she was—a damn good mechanic, who would never have clean nails or Faith’s flawless skin. Michaele dug around in too many engine manifolds, had wrestled with too many stubborn nuts and bolts to win those kinds of compliments. So where did that big lug get off thinking she was interested in provoking him? She needed a man about as much as she needed an earring pierced through her tongue.
When she returned downstairs, there was still no sign of Faith.
Determined to wait up for her no matter what, Michaele fried the steak and nuked a potato in the microwave, then ate the simple meal, balancing the plate on her knees as she sat outside on the stoop to escape the stale house smells.
For as long as she could remember, they’d lived on this wooded dead-end street in the middle of a cleared pasture that a tornado hadn’t yet found. Thirteen acres of sandy loam that liked yucca cactus, nut grass and every other variety of weed, but resisted her sporadic attempts to grow vegetables without pesticides or heavy doses of chemical nutrients. The garden had been her mother’s idea, as had been the E tacked on to Michaele, after Buck—disappointed that he wasn’t getting the son he’d wanted—insisted on keeping the male name, anyway.
By the time she returned inside, it was nearly dusk. After cleaning up in the kitchen, she threw the washed clothes into the dryer and added another load to the washing machine. Then she stretched out on the couch with a mystery novel she’d been meaning to get to since buying it for herself as a Christmas present.
By ten o’clock she gave up trying to pretend she was concentrating and accepted that something was seriously wrong. Faith had never been this late, not from classes; and if she’d had plans, she would have stopped at the house first to change.
Michaele’s concern grew after she called her sister’s closest friends. All of them—with the exception of Harold, whose mother had answered and informed her he wasn’t home yet, either—said they hadn’t heard from her today.
Could Faith be with Harold Bean? They hadn’t dated in some time, but both attended Northeast Texas Community College and remained friends.
Frowning at the clock, Michaele decided to give her sister until midnight, simply because she dreaded the thought of calling the police station. It didn’t matter that Jared wouldn’t be there; he would be told, and she didn’t want to be accused of playing another game. Surely Faith would wander in before then.
Michaele returned to the front room, turned off the lights and settled in the rocker by the picture window. It looked so much darker out there tonight. The driveway seemed longer, and the woods across the street appeared downright ominous. For the first time since those early days after her mother’s death, she regretted that their neighbors were acres away, hidden by trees and thick brush.
She closed her eyes against the view and tried to think pleasant thoughts. What came was an ugly scene this morning with Faith, the way her sister had stormed out of the house…the taunting image of her lying bloody and crying for help in a crushed car somewhere…her father telling the police, “It’s Mike’s fault! She drove my poor baby to her grave!”
The ringing phone made her jerk upright. Disoriented, in her rush to get to it she almost knocked the whole thing to the floor before successfully bringing the handset to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Is Faith there?”
She didn’t recognize the voice, wasn’t even alert enough to know if it was a man or a woman calling. “Um…no. Who’s this, please?”
“You