Castle Rock (20 page)

Peter's tone was proprietary. He was so much the duke of the manor speaking to an underling.

Serena drew her breath in sharply. Dear God, Peter already saw himself as the owner of Castle Rock.

“The sheriff has done an excellent job,” she said forcefully.

Peter turned toward her, arched an eyebrow. “Has he? Where's Danny?”

“We'll find him,” the sheriff said grimly. “And Joe Walkingstick. Alive or dead. I'll make myself clear, Carey, I'm not fooled. Not by anyone here. And I'm not afraid of any of you. I don't care how big and powerful you are. Nobody broke in and took that boy. It was an inside job. I'd stake my reputation on it.”

“If you make that claim, you just may have to do that, Sheriff,” Peter answered angrily. “Now, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. My wife and I are decided on it. We are going to call in the finest private investigator in the state. We'll get to the bottom of this.”

“That's not necessary,” Serena said loudly. “The sheriff is doing all that anyone can.”

Peter lifted his chin and Serena wondered why she had never before realized what an arrogant look he had. “You may not be making the decisions here, Serena.”

“What do you mean, Peter?”

“You aren't an heir.”

“Why don't you say it straight out, Peter?” she asked angrily.

“Say what?”

“That you think Danny is dead. And if he's dead, you can kick me off the ranch and run it yourself.”

A very slight smile touched Peter's face.

She would have liked to scratch that arrogant face, dig nails deep into his cheeks.

“You've put it well enough, Serena,” he said coolly. “It's time we all faced facts.”

“No,” she said huskily. “Danny isn't dead. He isn't, do you hear me?”

Thunder rumbled like boulders crashing down a mountainside.

Peter turned and looked out the window. “Do you think he's out in that somewhere? If he's on the ranch, why didn't he call out when one of the search parties passed by?”

Serena too looked toward the window and the ghostly radiance of lightning. There wasn't any answer to make. If Danny were alive, he would have shouted for help.

“I'll tell you, Sheriff,” Peter continued brusquely, “it's time some real thought was given to this.”

For the first time, a tinge of red touched the sheriffs face.

“For instance,” Peter demanded, “how does Joe Walkingstick figure in all this?”

“I guess I don't know,” the sheriff drawled. “Maybe you can explain it to me.”

“Maybe I can. Maybe the answers are pretty simple after all.”

“What are you saying, Carey?” Jed asked bluntly.

Peter's eyes narrowed and she knew he didn't like being addressed by his last name by one of the help.

“Yeah, what do you mean, Peter?” Will asked.

Peter ignored Jed and turned to Will. “Look at it. We have a missing kid and a missing Indian. Who knows, maybe Joe had a seizure somewhere or something, but maybe he likes little boys—”

The room erupted as Millie flew straight for Peter, her voice high and eerie like an eagle's cry. Peter stumbled back, bloody furrows marking his cheeks. Serena exulted in the attack even as she jumped up to gather Millie in her arms.

“Don't, Millie, he isn't worth it. We know that's a lie. We'd never believe that kind of thing about Joe, never in a million years.”

Behind them voices rose, Peter swearing, Julie crying out. Serena ignored the uproar and tried to soothe the furious old woman as she pulled her from the room.

“Just ignore him, Millie. He's a gringo.”

“My Joe.” Tears slipped down her wrinkled face. “They have hurt my Joe.”

Serena kept her arm around Millie's shoulders as they walked down the hall. “Don't be frightened, Millie,” she said reassuring. “Maybe Joe had some better idea where Danny might be. Maybe he's still looking.”

Millie was shaking her head. “He was coming back to talk to you and he never came. Now he will never come.”

The pain in her voice tore at Serena's heart, and she felt a dreadful sense of foreboding.

They were walking into the kitchen when Jed came up behind them. “Millie,” he said abruptly, “I want you to stay in my room tonight. It has a good lock on the door.”

Serena looked at him, fear in her eyes. “Why should Millie be in danger?”

“Somebody may not believe she didn't know everything Joe knew.”

Everything Joe knew. The past tense. Serena swallowed hard. “All right. Millie, perhaps you'd better.”

“You lock your door tonight,” Jed ordered Serena.

“I will. You don't have to worry about that.” She asked sharply, “What are you going to do tonight?”

“I don't know. I'll be here and there.”

“Do you think you carry a magic circle with you?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Why should you be safe if the rest of us aren't?”

His mouth twisted. “I'm going to be damn careful, lady, that's why.”

He left then, taking Millie with him.

Serena stood in the empty kitchen, then wearily started work on dinner.

Julie burst through the door. “Where is that old witch?”

Serena turned around from the stove. “As long as I am manager of this ranch, and I will be until a court order says differently, Millie is cook here and no one is to give her any trouble.”

Julie's lovely face quivered. “Serena, don't be mad at me. I can't help what Peter does—and sometimes I don't like him very much.” Tears trembled in her violet eyes.

Serena felt a rush of compassion. She started to speak, then stopped. Peter was Julie's husband. That was a fact, hard and unpalatable, and it made all the difference. Finally, she said, “Look Julie, why don't you give me a hand. Millie has gone to her room and I have to get dinner ready.”

Jed came back in a few minutes. He didn't say anything, but he nodded and Serena knew Millie was safely in his room. She wished they could talk. Maybe he could make some sense of all of it, but Julie had brightened at his entrance and was smiling up at him.

“Oh Jed, you'll carry this heavy old tray, won't you? I don't think I can budge it.”

Somehow Serena got dinner ready for those in the big house and prepared hampers for the dudes to take to their cabins. The storm was obviously going to break at any minute and they didn't want to be caught up at the hacienda.

Dinner at the main table came down to Serena, Julie, Jed, Peter, and Will. Peter glared when Jed joined them but he said nothing.

As they ate, Jed spoke to Serena. “The sheriff told me to tell you he's gone back into town. He says they can't do anything else here tonight. He left a deputy to stay the night.”

“Who said he could do that?” Peter demanded.

“I did,” Jed answered shortly.

“That's good,” Serena said approvingly.

Peter started to speak, frowned, and began to eat, his face sullen.

Will toyed with his food. “Joe must be dead,” he blurted out.

Everyone looked at him uneasily.

His eyes looked wild. His red hair was rumpled, his face unshaven. “That's right,” he said loudly. “Somebody's killed Joe.”

“Will, you are such a fool,” his sister cried. “Why would anyone kill Joe?”

“Because he knew what happened to Danny. That's right,” and he rushed ahead, drowning out her response, “I've been thinking about it. Nobody would bother Joe. That doesn't make any sense. It's all tied up with Danny.” Will's face twisted, “I'll tell you, if somebody's hurt Danny and Joe, I'm going to kill the son of a bitch.” He pushed his chair back and stumbled out of the room.

As they looked after him, the lights in the dining room wavered, blinked off, came on again. Sheet lightning seared the sky, streak after brilliant streak. Thunder rolled like a cannonade and the storm broke, rain sweeping against the house in sheets.

The wildness of the storm made conversation impossible. They finished eating in silence. Serena and Julie cleared the table and put the dishes in the washer. Neither of them spoke. There wasn't any more to say. No one knew what was happening. Too much had been said, or too little.

As soon as they finished, Serena said goodnight and started upstairs. The sounds of the storm raged against the house. Outside, the noise would be terrifying.

Could Danny and Joe hear the storm?

Serena ran the final few steps to her room. It seemed another lifetime when she had left the hacienda to go to Santa Fe, trying to escape the brooding nemesis at Castle Rock.

She couldn't escape.

She reached out for her door handle. At least she could bathe and change. Perhaps that would make her feel a little better. She was still wearing the skirt and blouse she had pulled on so quickly that morning in Santa Fe after Will's call came. She felt frowsy and crumpled.

She opened her door and turned on the light. Once again lightning flashed, thunder roared, the lights wavered, then came back on.

Serena stood stone-still in her doorway, staring in shock at her room.

Someone hated her, hated her very much. Why else this pointless violence?

The whole long row of Kachinas had been knocked from the shelf into a brilliantly colored jumble on the floor. Just inside the door lay the remnants of her very favorite doll, the Ongchoma, ripped and twisted into bits. Serena knelt and began to pick up the pieces of painted cottonwood root, her hands trembling.

Ongchoma was the compassionate Kachina who looks out for children and tries to protect them when they are going to be whipped, touching them so they will feel no pain. Serena held the colored bits of wood in her hand. Her favorite Kachina. Who could have known that?

Sick at heart, she lay the pieces on her bedside table, began to pick up the other dolls. None of these, she realized gratefully, has been vandalized, though the Butterfly Maiden Kachina's feathered headdress was bent and the staff of the Black Ogre Kachina was broken. They could easily be repaired.

When they were all back in place, Serena walked back to the table to look down at the crumpled remains of her favorite doll.

It was a deliberate choice. How could it be otherwise? There were sixty-four Kachinas. It was too much to ask that she believe her very favorite had been destroyed by chance. Entirely too much to ask.

Serena shivered. Who could have known how much that particular doll meant to her?

She held the fragments and remembered the day Joe Walkingstick had given Ongchoma to her. She had been in the hospital in Santa Fe, thirteen years old and frightened, her throat a fury of pain. She had cried to come home to Castle Rock, certain she would feel better there. She had lain in her bed, her throat a burning agony, and looked up to see Joe in the doorway, holding Ongchoma in his hands. He brought the doll to her and explained how Ongchoma made little children feel better, saved them from pain. When he left, the doll rested in her arm and she felt better and no one could persuade her to let go of it.

Only Joe would know what that doll meant to her. Only Joe . . . Through the years, no matter what happened, a twisted ankle, a broken date, an unkind slight, she had managed to smile at Joe—well, Ongchoma will make it feel better.

Now the little doll was destroyed and couldn't be put together again. Just like her world at Castle Rock.

She sighed. Only Joe knew . . . Then she stood very still, looking at the pale peach spread on her bed. There on the be . . . Yes, it was a piece of the fox skin ruff Ongchoma wore around his neck.

Why would the Kachina have been on her bed?

If Joe wanted to leave a message for her, what better place to secret it than in the doll he knew to be her favorite? If she had come to her room this morning when she arrived from Santa Fe and seen the doll on her bed, she would have known it meant something and she would have looked until she found the message.

But she hadn't come upstairs.

Who had come to her room?

What could Joe's message have been? Why hadn't he come back from where he was on the ranch and talked to her?

Could it be that he was afraid to come. That he didn't want to see a particular person?

So he left her a message.

Hours ago.

Serena looked toward the rain-flooded window. The storm assailed the foot-thick adobe walls. The wind howled, a high eerie keening like witches wailing.

Hours ago someone slipped into her room, saw the Kachina, guessed at its purpose. Hours ago. The message read, the intruder ripped the Kachina apart, pulled down the rest of the dolls to hide what had happened.

Now she was left with broken bits of a doll and no hope of learning the message it had held.

Serena's fingers tightened onto the pieces of painted root. What could Joe have wanted to tell her? Where would he have told her to come to meet with him privately?

Think, she told herself angrily.