You Can't Escape (37 page)

Jordanna nodded, but a cold feeling had settled in her gut. A sense of impending doom. Everything was happening too fast, and she was powerless to change anything. As they walked out of the restaurant in a group, she forced herself to swallow back her fears and misgivings.

“I guess this is it,” she said, then was surprised, gratified, and half embarrassed when Dance suddenly gathered her close and gave her a long kiss by the hitching post outside the Longhorn’s entryway.

“Don’t sound so final,” he told her. “See you tomorrow. . . .”

He watched the kiss from across the street, feeling both disgusted and sexually thrilled in a way he knew he shouldn’t. Temptation. That’s what the Treadwell women were. Satan’s little joke. But he wasn’t going to give in again. With curiosity, he watched the two men climb into a Jeep and head one way, and Jordanna move to her own vehicle and go the other. The Jeep was aimed north, but Jordanna was heading south, the same direction as the Treadwell homestead. She and her lover were separating? Now what was this about?

Opportunity, he realized.

He eased his truck onto the main street and began following her. Had to be careful. Couldn’t let anyone see. God loved the patient man.

Jordanna was halfway back to the house, her energy on a slow downward spiral, when she concluded she needed to go back to town. She’d put off talking to her father for most of her adult life, and now that she’d told Dance she was going to speak with him, she wanted it done. She wanted closure on her past.

She turned around, her face set. The truth was, she’d balked about facing her father because deep down, she felt guilty. Guilty about firing at him, blaming him for everything, including her mother’s death. After all this time, she didn’t know what she’d really seen between Emily and her father. Maybe in truth she’d just wanted someone to blame for everything bad that had happened in those years.

Wasn’t that what Dr. Eggers tried to tell you? Transference, she said. Shifting blame to someone or something unrelated because you can’t blame the responsible party.

She was heading down Rock Springs’s main street, toward the housing development where she knew her father and Jennie had moved, but when she passed the Garrett Hotel, she spied her father himself, his hand on the small of Jennie’s back, holding the door open for his bride. They were undoubtedly having lunch at the hotel restaurant.

Well, okay. She’d meet them there. She took a left at the next intersection, which put her on the street that ran right in front of the offices of the
Pioneer.
Turning through their lot, she drove back to the center of town, sliding into a parking spot across from the hotel. The street was near empty, as most of the shops on either side of the street were closed on Sunday.

She was conscious of the fact that her father had been in slacks, a dress shirt, and a navy blazer while Jennie had been put together in a white dress with a matching bolero, piped in scarlet, her heels the exact shade of red as the piping. She glanced down at her own jeans, sweater, and boots. What the hell. This was a cowboy town, right?

“Welcome to the Garrett Hotel,” a young woman with a ponytail and perfect white teeth greeted her from the maître d’ stand. In her arms was a stack of leather-bound menus, the little tassels sticking out from their bottom edges swinging jauntily. “Do you have a reservation?”

“Um, no, I’m joining Dr. Winters’s party,” Jordanna said.

That threw her. “We have Dr. and Mrs. Winters at a table for two, but we could move them to that one?” She pointed to a table nestled in the bowed space created by three windows.

“Sounds great.”

The Garrett Hotel was modeled after the original structure, which was built circa 1890-ish. It had been demolished nearly a century ago and rebuilt at least twice since. Jordanna had been inside the main-floor restaurant several times, and though she suspected the brown short-pile carpet was new, the white gauzy curtains, the bell-shaped light fixtures, the gatherings of oak tables and chairs, and the cabbage rose mauve wallpaper were just as she remembered.

She followed after the maître d’ to the rear corner of the room, where her father and Jennie had just been served champagne glasses filled with orange juice. Knowing their tastes, she doubted there was any champagne involved.

“Jordanna,” her father said in surprise, half rising from his seat.

The girl with the menus said, “We have a table for three in the front, if that’s okay?”

Her father blinked once, and Jennie’s mouth dropped open in silent query.

“Sorry I’m late,” Jordanna put in.

“Thank you,” Dayton said to the girl, recovering quickly. He held out a hand to his wife, who gathered up her glass of orange juice and his, and then moved ahead of them to the new table, shooting an anxious look back at Jordanna.

Once they were all seated and the girl had deposited new menus, Jennie asked, “Where’s your friend, Mr. Danziger?”

“Dance was called back to Portland,” Jordanna said.

Jennie looked from Jordanna to Dayton, clearly thrown by Jordanna barging in, but she said, “I’m so glad you joined us.”

“Yes,” her father said, his blue eyes a bit careful, as if he was afraid of what might be coming next. She could hardly blame him.

“We just came from church,” Jennie said, trying hard not to stare too pointedly at Jordanna’s clothes.

“I figured.” Now that she was here, Jordanna hardly knew where to start.

Her father took the reins. “I talked to Greer at church this morning. He said you found a woman’s body in the old Benchley Cemetery, but that the body was later missing.”

Greer Markum. Jennie’s father. “That’s true, but he didn’t believe me.” Jordanna was curt.

Jennie fussed with her napkin, and her father said, “He questions your judgment, Jordanna. But he did say something had been buried there that was removed.”

“Well, goody.”

“Daddy’s very thorough,” Jennie murmured.

Jordanna addressed her father. “Did he also tell you I think it might be Bernadette Fread, and that she had an upside-down cross branded onto her buttock, just like the ‘homeless’ victim three years ago?”

Lines formed between her father’s brows. “Branded?”

“Oh, that’s right. The chief kept that little tidbit back, although it’s an open secret, so I’m surprised you haven’t heard. I went out to Summit Ridge to find where the first victim was located, and I practically stumbled on the cemetery. You call it the old Benchley Cemetery. Virginia Fowler, whose property it’s on, said it was for the Benchleys too.”

“You met with Virginia?” he asked.

“Dance and I talked to her this morning. Here’s the thing. She said she’s never heard of the Treadwell Curse. She blamed Mom’s disease on the Benchleys. Pretty much blamed everything on the Benchleys, as a matter of fact.”

In a whisper, Jennie said, “Could we talk a little softer?”

Jordanna gritted her teeth. She didn’t really give a damn who heard, but she dropped her volume. “I feel like people are talking in circles. I can’t get a straight answer out of anyone.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of the Treadwell Curse, either,” her father admitted. “I know the Benchleys have had their share of physical ailments, in what acts like a genetic disease, though it’s never been proven. Sometimes mental illness is inexplicable.”

Jordanna stared at him. “You’ve never heard of the Treadwell Curse.”

“No.”

“Mom’s disease,” she said again.

“Your mother had seizures from a car accident when she was young. Her father always blamed himself, but it was really the other driver’s fault. Gayle didn’t have what the Benchleys had. You knew this,” he reminded her, looking at her as if he wasn’t certain she was all there.

“No, I didn’t. I’ve never heard this.” Jordanna was flabbergasted.

“Well, I’ve never heard of this Treadwell Curse.” He regarded her patiently. “Where did you hear that?”

“From practically everyone. It’s . . . a saying,” Jordanna insisted.

“Who’s everyone?” he asked.

Jordanna looked to Jennie, who was staring at Dayton, as if mesmerized. “You know it,” Jordanna accused. “When we were in high school, I got teased about it. People would talk behind my back.”

“I don’t know,” she murmured, tucking in her shoulders as if she were going to fold in on herself.

Jordanna felt a flash of anger. The little liar. “We all talked about it,” Jordanna said. “I just talked to Rusty Long about it. And Kara knows. Emily knew,” she added flatly.

Her father glanced around, his expression pained. He leaned closer to her. “I’ve got something to say, that I’ve wanted to say for a long time. This isn’t the place for this conversation, but since you’ve chosen the venue, I’m going to take my opportunity.”

All of a sudden Jordanna wanted to bolt. If he was going to talk about Emily . . .

“Don’t look at me that way,” her father said heavily. “You’re a reporter now. You look for facts, right?” When she didn’t respond, he went on, “Something I’ve never told you, something your mother and I didn’t want advertised, is that Emily was part Benchley. She was abandoned, and we adopted her. We didn’t sincerely believe the Benchleys had this debilitating disease, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She was a beautiful baby, a beautiful girl. Gayle and I didn’t think we could have children, but after Emily, we had both you and Kara.”

“You’re saying Emily was adopted?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” He drew a breath. “I know what you think happened between us, but it’s not the truth. That night wasn’t the first time Emily had come into my bedroom. She was always a sleepwalker. She climbed in bed with us all the time when your mother was alive. It wasn’t anything . . . inappropriate.”

“I don’t believe you,” Jordanna said tonelessly.

He lifted a hand, silently asking her to wait until he was finished. “It’s true that Emily became more sexual as she got older. I don’t think she could help herself. I wasn’t paying enough attention after your mother died. We were all grieving for her. You, especially,” he said, shooting her a quick look. “Emily’s deterioration got away from me. She was having hallucinations, acting out. I prescribed her antipsychotics, but she wouldn’t take them regularly.” He hesitated. “I told you all this before, but you wouldn’t hear me.”

Transference.
“I heard you. I just didn’t believe you.”

“I don’t know where this Treadwell Curse came from. Maybe because of Emily? It was clear something was wrong those last few months before she died.”

This was too much information. A shift in perception that was almost too hard to make. No Treadwell Curse? How could that be? She’d lived with the term most of her life. But where had she heard it first? Emily . . .? Kara . . . ? Rusty? Nate Calverson? Martin Lourde? She realized distantly that everyone she was naming had been a high school kid at the time, open to suggestion and innuendo, ready to believe the worst of their fellow man in a way that adulthood generally washes away. Had she completely misunderstood?
How could that be?

“I’ve got to go,” she said, jumping to her feet just as the waiter came by to take their order.

Her father waved the girl away and said urgently to Jordanna, “Stay,” reaching out a hand to her.

She pulled back slowly until he was forced to let her go. “No, thank you.” She was being inordinately polite. Sick with guilt and unsure in a way that made her feel nauseous. Was this the truth, then? There was no Treadwell Curse? No sexual abuse against her sister? Had she shot her father in error?

“Dayton!” Emily had screamed. Was that because she’d been shocked awake from her sleepwalking? As surprised as Jordanna had been to find herself in her father’s bed?

Jennie said, “Oh, don’t run off.”

But Jordanna needed to leave, time to process. She turned abruptly, nearly knocking over Jennie’s almost-empty glass of orange juice. “I’ve got to go.”

“Jordanna . . .” Her father’s resigned voice reached her ears, but she was already to the vestibule, her lungs feeling as though they would burst if she didn’t get air. She ran outside into late-May sunshine and half stumbled down the front steps.

Chapter Twenty-Three

She caught herself on the porch rail before she fell onto the sidewalk. She felt as if she were sinking, like those few seconds when an elevator drops before your body catches up. She’d prided herself for so long on being right in a world that was wrong. It was dizzying. It was like having an out-of-body experience, she was so inwardly focused.

Drawing a breath, she managed to look both ways before crossing the street. Her RAV was directly across from her. She took two steps forward before it came to her in a rush.

Immediately, she stumbled back up the steps, grabbing the rail, telling herself to calm down, get a grip. Then she headed back inside and swept past the smiling and surprised menu-girl and back to the table where her father and Jennie were staring glumly at one another.

“Aunt Evelyn,” Jordanna said, when her father saw her, his eyes brightening.

Instantly, his expression grew wary. “Evelyn?”