Gathering Lies Read online

  I was so taken aback by his coldness, I wanted to slap him again. Not out of anger but to shake it out of him. I felt that the only way I might find the old Luke again was somehow to break through that stony barrier.

  At the same time, I knew that no matter what I did, it wouldn’t make a difference. Luke had never been easy that way. When he made up his mind on something, he stuck to it, no matter what. If you were his friend, that meant dogged loyalty. If not—

  I unlocked the door and walked out. In my arms, I held my manuscript and disk. Behind me, I left any number of dreams—dreams I’d only half known I had. Luke had brought them all back—and now he’d crushed them for all time. I would never again feel I knew him.

  I would, however, find out what was going on with my mother.

  “How’s that for a promise, Luke?” I said softly, looking back once from the edge of the forest to say goodbye.

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” I remembered from the Frost poem. Too dark, and not at all lovely that night. I virtually flew back to the main path, the way I’d remembered running in dreams—as if my feet barely touched the ground. If someone followed, I didn’t know it, because I didn’t stop once to listen. I just kept running, and if anyone had tried to grab me, I would have swung at them so hard it might easily have killed them. That’s how high my adrenaline was.

  When I got back to Ransford, I took the middle, shorter path to Thornberry and ran even faster now that I was more sure of the way. Halfway there a huge figure loomed before me, arms outstretched. My heart leapt into my throat and my limbs went weak. I heard a howl and felt a breath on my cheek.

  The breath was only a breeze, the “howl” an owl’s hoot, and the figure turned out to be a tree. I’d forgotten about the Ghost Tree, as Luke and I had called it years before. The full moon illuminated it just as the darkness had hidden it the other night when I was here. Its outstretched limbs seemed to reach for me, and I almost saw it as a sign…a sign that something on this island, at least, was trying to protect me.

  I was so out of breath that my lungs hurt, and I stopped for a moment to rest in the hollow of the Ghost Tree—an opening the shape of a triangle in the trunk, and just large enough to squeeze into.

  It was then I heard the sound. It came from that part of the path I’d already traversed, and it was definite, now—the snapping of twigs that told of a footfall. I crouched farther back into the tree and tried to still my breath. As the footsteps grew closer, I wondered if I would be seen. My clothing, a gray T-shirt and jeans, was drab; the red-and-black lumberman’s jacket I’d been wearing in bad weather had been left behind this night. But the moon was so full, it might, if the shadows weren’t just right, reveal me.

  A comic book I’d read as a kid came to mind—the hero closing his eyes when he hid so that he wouldn’t be seen. It was an old myth, and some say a true one: if you look at your enemy, he’ll just naturally, by some strange energy, be drawn to look at you.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my face. But when the footsteps sounded just before me and stopped, I couldn’t help risking a peek. My eyes focused first on hiking boots, then upward at jeans, and finally the shirt and the face.

  It was Grace. I saw her features clearly in the moonlight. For a moment her head turned toward me, and I was certain she saw me, as well. But then Grace murmured, “Damn tree! Scared the wits out of me!” She took a smack at it with her fist and moved on.

  I felt my nerves and muscles collapse, and couldn’t have gotten up out of the tree’s hollow then if my life depended on it. I stayed there a good fifteen minutes after that, long after I heard Grace’s footsteps move farther and farther away through the woods toward Thornberry. When I could trust myself to move without making too much noise, I crawled out onto the path again. Standing there a minute, I thought about the manuscript and disk I was holding, and turned around, going back to the tree. Shoving them into the far recesses of the hollow, I covered them with piles of dry leaves from around the base of the tree.

  Satisfied they were hidden as well as they could possibly be—certainly better than in any hiding place I might find at Thornberry—I walked the rest of the way back to the farmhouse.

  I hadn’t the strength to run, and if anyone had wanted me, they could have had me that night. I was easy prey.

  The rest of my trip back to Thornberry, however, proved uneventful, and when I walked into the farmhouse I saw that everyone was there, except for Luke. Grace sat at the table with her arms crossed, listening to the others talk. The stones had been put away, and in as normal a voice as possible I asked who had won.

  “Timmy did,” Dana said. “Where did you go, Sarah? We were worried about you.”

  “I just felt like walking. There’s a wonderful full moon. Have any of you seen it?”

  I waited for Grace to say she’d been out walking, too, but she said nothing.

  “Are you kidding?” Dana said. “All you have to do is look up.”

  I did, and there it was, shining through the opening in the roof. The full moon—a friend again.

  “We don’t even need lamps tonight, hardly,” Dana said.

  Amelia, who had found knitting needles and yarn somewhere, was hard at work on something long and green that looked like a scarf. She agreed. “It’s warm enough to go without a fire, too, don’t you think?”

  “It might be a good idea to do that, anyway,” Dana said. “In case there’s another quake.”

  “Well, don’t wish that on us,” Amelia said. “Knit one, purl two,” she murmured.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” Dana answered. “But statistically, there are more quakes around the time of the full moon. And some full moons are worse than others that way.”

  “Oh?” Kim said. “Why?”

  “I don’t remember. I just know they are.”

  “What about this one?” Amelia asked

  “I’m not sure. I just think we should be prepared. In case.”

  Grace didn’t say anything, but I did catch her looking at me now and then. I stared her down finally, and she looked away.

  “Where’s Luke?” I asked of no one in particular, though I was curious to hear Grace’s answer.

  “He went for a walk, too,” Timmy said. “I’m surprised you didn’t run into him out there.”

  “Well, it’s a big island.” My glance at Grace told me she was no longer looking at me, and apparently not going to answer.

  “We thought maybe you two had planned to go out for a walk at the same time,” Dana said.

  “Not at all,” I answered.

  “Now, come on,” she teased. “Weren’t you and Luke more than friends when you knew each other before?”

  This did elicit a quick glance from Grace. So quick it was barely noticeable. “Oh, just teenage stuff,” I said, brushing off Dana’s comment. “It’s been a long time since then.”

  “This place has a way of bringing out strange emotions, though,” Kim said.

  I looked at her and wondered if she was talking about herself and Gabe. I realized suddenly that Gabe wasn’t here. I hadn’t been accustomed to including him in the group, and hadn’t noticed his absence till then.

  “What about Gabe?” I asked. “Where is he?”

  “He went to bed early,” Kim answered. “Said he wanted to read for a while.”

  “He’s out in the hallway?”

  “With a lantern.” Dana grinned. “Just like John Boy.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Amelia said wryly, “if I’d ever compare Gabe Rossi to John Boy.”

  “More like Peck’s Bad Boy,” Kim agreed.

  “Who’s that?” Dana asked.

  “It was an old movie with Jackie Coogan,” Kim answered. “‘Peck’s Bad Boy’ became a label for someone who was an embarrassment or an annoyance. A rascal, some might say.”

  “It was a book, first, by George Wilbur Peck,” Amelia added. “Peck’s Bad Boy and his Pa. And believe it or not, it was even before my time. I’m su
rprised you know about that movie, Kim.”

  “Well, I did go to film school,” Kim said.

  “Really?” Amelia looked at her, I thought, with a blend of surprise and new respect. Then, flushing, she said, “I’m sorry, I guess I assumed you had just—” She stopped, bit her lip and went silent.

  “Just what?” Dana asked, still in a teasing mode. “Sprung from a film canister full-blown?”

  Amelia shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  Kim looked uneasy, and busied herself with folding napkins that we’d washed earlier and hung on a line.

  “So you won the game, Timmy?” I said, changing the subject.

  “Oh, it wasn’t anything,” she answered, shrugging it off. “I’m an old hand at games, remember? When you and your parents came here, we always played games at night after dinner. There wasn’t much else to do.”

  “That’s right, I’d forgotten that. You always won at Scrabble and Monopoly, too. In fact, as I remember, Ms. Timothea Walsh, you were always the smartest of us all.”

  She blushed at the compliment and patted her hair. “Well, I don’t know about smart. But after all those summer nights, year after year, I would hope I had developed some skill, at least, for board games.”

  Timmy was being self-deprecating, but now that my memory had been jogged, I recalled that I had always thought of her as a pretty sharp cookie. In fact, I remembered my mother saying as much.

  “You can’t slip anything over on Timothea,” she said one day when I’d accidentally dropped a cut-crystal glass here in this very room, and broken it. My mother caught me trying to hide the evidence in the trash, and told me I’d be better off ’fessing up. “Timothea is one person you don’t want to play games with—not in any way. She will always find you out somehow.”

  Until I remembered that, I had been thinking of Timmy as a bit of an airhead—a woman who’d always had it easy, always had more than enough money, at least until recently, and didn’t make very good use of her seemingly good brain. It occurred to me now that this was an impression she gave, with the fluttery voice, the nicely coiffed hair, the diamonds and the overall wispy personality.

  But was that only an impression? A carefully constructed image?

  If my mother had been right about Timmy, if she really was all that sharp, how had she allowed herself to fall upon hard times?

  And once fallen, wouldn’t she get right back up and fight? In any way she could—and to whatever lengths necessary?

  I thought back on Amelia’s story about Timmy’s potential bankruptcy and the way she had found an investor. An investor she wouldn’t talk to Amelia—her best friend—about.

  I also thought of the way I had been invited here, through Bill Farley at Seattle Mystery Bookshop. Certainly he’d always been friendly enough, supportive, always finding just the right books for my research.

  But had I told him more than I really should have by letting him in on the topics I was researching?

  My mind was running a mile a minute, and part of me believed what I was thinking while the other part told me I was simply grasping at straws. Surely there wasn’t any sinister connection between Timmy and Bill Farley, or—assuming Bill knew nothing about any of this, and had been used by someone with a hidden agenda—between Timmy and the Seattle Five.

  But Thornberry had always been Timmy’s first love. Even when her husband was alive, Thornberry had consumed her every waking moment. She loved her home, loved the guests, loved even the work involved. She had been a small tornado dashing around the place, keeping things in order, seeing to everyone’s needs.

  She must have done the same when Thornberry became a writer’s colony. In fact, the first week we were here, I’d seen her acting much like the old Timmy, adding all those extra touches such as flowers and candles on the table, and not stinting on the food or other luxury items. The bathhouse always had fresh linens and scented lotions and, for anyone who wanted to bathe at night, a multitude of scented candles. There were even rose petals to scatter in our baths, and fresh rosemary, as well.

  All these things cost money—even the ones that came from the Thornberry gardens. Timmy must have found herself a very well-to-do investor.

  But what interest was he charging for his loan? What did Timmy have to do to repay the debt?

  “Where did you walk to?” I heard Dana ask.

  “Hmm? Oh, sorry. Just around the woods, taking in the night sounds and the moon. I think I might have heard some deer.”

  “But you didn’t run into Luke? I wonder what he’s up to.”

  She didn’t mean it as anything more than casual interest, I was sure. But I wondered why I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone what I’d discovered about Luke. Surely they had every right to know that he had a cell phone, and every right to know, as well, that help wasn’t coming anytime soon.

  It wasn’t so much a loathing to reveal his betrayal, I told myself, as not wanting anyone here to know I was on to Luke till I knew what he was really up to. After all, he had let me go. He hadn’t done me any harm, when he easily might have. I felt safe keeping my suspicions to myself for a while longer. And this way I had the upper hand. I could blow his cover any time.

  It didn’t turn out that way, of course. Things seldom turn out precisely as we plan. Seldom, however, do they turn out quite so badly.

  Kim and I remained at the table after everyone else turned in. We spoke softly so as not to disturb the others, who were sleeping on the floor around the stove as they did every night.

  “Kim,” I said, “why did you call Gabe ‘Peck’s Bad Boy’? I thought you liked him.”

  “I do,” she said. “It’s just that he’s impossible.”

  “You said he was an annoyance.”

  “I meant that as a joke. Just when I think I’ve hauled him in, he wiggles off the line.”

  “Are you serious about him, then?” I asked.

  “Oh…probably not. It’s just real easy to get bored here.” Laughing softly, she added, “I thought I was starting to hate L.A. Now I miss it so much…” She gave a shrug.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t mean to be hurtful, honestly. But doesn’t it occur to you that Gabe is playing all of us?”

  “Sure,” Kim said. “In fact, he reminds me of any one of a number of young men I know in Hollywood—conning and scamming to get close to someone they want something from. But so far, I haven’t figured out what it is Gabe wants.”

  “Well, he’s a man,” I said, smiling.

  “True. I just thought…”

  “That he actually cared about you and not the others?”

  “I guess. That’s the way he’s been acting—at least, when he’s with me.”

  “And don’t they all,” I said.

  Kim shook her head. “Girl, you sure have been bitten by some venomous snake. Who did that to you?”

  “A rattler,” I said. “The kind that coils itself up and waits for just the right moment to strike.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you talking about Luke?”

  I shrugged. “If you’d asked me that yesterday, I’d have said no. My snake in the grass was in Seattle. Now, I’m not so sure they aren’t all over the place.”

  “Well, that guy in Seattle sure did a number on you. Is it over?”

  “Dead, cold and buried,” I said without thinking.

  But as the words left my mouth, feelings rose up that surprised me. Was Ian dead? Was he buried beneath tons of concrete in Seattle?

  At the thought that I might never see him again, I felt a deep, painful loss. We can leave a lover, it seems, and even be apart, with no contact for years. But he’s always there. Always someone who might show up again, someone we might run into on the street, someone at the other end of a telephone line. We always know we can pick up that phone and find him there—even if it’s different and there’s nothing left of the old relationship at all. At least the person we’ve put so much energy and time into loving is still there.

  With
Ian, I might not know for weeks. And a world without him seemed less, somehow. Not a world I looked forward to going back to as much as I might have if he were there.

  I pulled on my jacket and went outside to stand by Lucy’s grave. The moon had dipped lower in the sky, and clouds hovered over the horizon to the west. A breeze had come up, whipping my hair in every direction, and I shivered, wrapping my arms about myself.

  I should have told them, I thought. I should have told everyone what I found in the woods and what I suspected about Jane. If she was murdered because of something she knew, something she might have run across by accident…that meant anyone here could do the same, and be in just as much danger.

  Luke’s cabin, for instance. Had Jane found that? And his cell phone? That would have seemed like a miracle to her, one she wouldn’t give up on easily. She would demand to use the phone to call her children.

  And if Luke had denied her access to the phone, as he had me? What might she have done?

  Put up a fight, certainly. And Jane, in the state she was in, would have been a formidable foe.

  Was Luke unable to fend her off? Would he have gone so far as to kill her, if he couldn’t dissuade her?

  He could easily have done that at the cabin, then carried her to the ravine to make it look as if she’d had an accident. Gabe said he had seen Luke brushing dirt from his hands. And if Jane was already dead when she fell—

  That would explain why no one heard her scream.

  This was something none of us had thought of, or at least discussed. If Jane fell, or was pushed, into the gorge, why didn’t anyone hear her scream?

  Still deep in thought, I heard the scrape of a foot behind me. Every nerve went on alert, and I almost swung around to defend myself against whoever it was. That’s how on edge I felt.

  “Hey, hey,” Gabe said, as I raised my arm. “Easy, now! It’s only me.”

  I relaxed only a little. “That doesn’t necessarily reassure me,” I said.

  “Oh, glory be,” he said, grinning. “Sounds like I’m falling under that famous ‘umbrella of suspicion’ I’ve heard so much about in the news over the past few years.”