Hide Yourself Away (5 page)

It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. Tommy had heard the detectives mention that there was a diary, a journal the woman had kept before she vanished. And here it was, or at least photocopies of the pages written in a long, flowing, feminine hand.

Tommy read the notation on the cover page of the stack of papers: “Original returned to Agatha Wagstaff, sister.”

He took the pile and nonchalantly made his way to the copying machine. As he fed the sheets into the tray, his heart beat faster. In part because he knew he was doing something wrong, very wrong. In part because he knew he would be seeing Joss in just an
hour. He had missed her so, and she’d said she’d been thinking about him nonstop. He was thrilled that she might be his again.

Ever since he met her, the summer before she started college, he had been smitten with Joss. He knew it was a long shot. A girl like that, from a family like hers, wasn’t going to be attracted to a basic guy like him. A guy from a working-class background who had to work his way through the University of Rhode Island, a guy whose highest aspiration was to become a detective on his hometown police force. Though he was six years older than she was, a sizable gap at their stage of the game, Joss was much more sophisticated than the local girls her age. She had seen and been exposed to things and places that the year-round Newport girls didn’t even know existed.

Miraculously, though, as far as Tommy was concerned, Jocelyn Vickers had been at his side all that magical summer. Lying on the beach, dancing on the wharves, holding hands on long strolls in the moonlight on the Cliff Walk. The memory of the evenings spent making out on the bench at the top of the Forty Steps as the waves crashed below them was still so vivid. Even now, he had dreams about it.

But the summer came to an end and Joss went off to college down south. For a while, she returned his lovesick letters and spent time with him on the telephone, but at Thanksgiving she told him it was better that they be only friends. She had immersed herself in her new life at Vanderbilt. Strange how that Vanderbilt family had not only made its mark in his hometown but played a role in taking away the girl he adored.

These past summers, Tommy had nevertheless waited for Joss to come back up north, hoping their paths would cross. And they did meet up, from time to time, at the bars and clubs that hopped during the vacation season. He suspected Joss was playing him when she flirted and pouted if he told her he had been dating other girls. He’d try to play it cool, but he’d quickly melt, confessing that no matter who he went out with, he always wished he was with her instead. He consoled himself with the fact that Joss never came out and told him there was absolutely no chance.

Tommy fed the last sheet into the copier and lifted the still warm pages from the side of the machine.

This would show Joss how much he loved her. He was risking his career for her.

  CHAPTER  
8

It didn’t matter that the official results weren’t back yet. The bones in the tunnel were Charlotte’s. There was no question about it.

How Charlotte got there was a long-ago, yet still painfully clear, memory. Everything had gone so utterly wrong. What
started out as a desire to make things right had turned into the worst possible nightmare.

Charlotte had been distraught but still breathtakingly beautiful as she’d agreed to go to the playhouse and talk away from the mansion, away from the chance that little Madeleine would overhear their conversation. As they’d talked, Charlotte accepted the handkerchief offered to wipe her tears, but there was no comforting her.

If only she’d been more receptive. If only she’d offered some small solution to the problem. Instead, she had wept as she studied the photograph taken just hours before at the country club, unable to focus on anything else. She hadn’t seen the need in the eyes of her playhouse companion, hadn’t considered how their conversation would determine whether the future would be worth living.

The rage at the idea of a dream shattered had been crushing. Even now, fourteen years later, it was hard to accept the blind fury that had led to grabbing the iron tool from the fireplace and smashing it against Charlotte’s head.

SATURDAY

—— JULY 17 ——

  CHAPTER  
9

The dentist had long since retired, but before he closed his practice he had sent his records on Charlotte Wagstaff Sloane to the Newport Police Department. For years the X-rays of Charlotte’s molars and bicuspids had gathered dust in the “cold case” file. The dental records, filed with the State Medical Examiner’s Office now, should be enough to identify the remains if they were those of her mother, but twenty-year-old Madeleine Sloane had given a blood sample in case DNA testing was necessary.

As she drove her yellow Mustang convertible along Ocean Avenue, Madeleine took one hand off the steering wheel and ripped the Band-Aid off the inside of her elbow, not wanting to be reminded of any of it. Not the loss of her mother when Madeleine was six years old, not the years of living alone with her broken father, not the constant awareness that people still whispered and gossiped about what had happened.

Under a clear sky and a blazing yellow sun, the sparkling deep blue waters of Rhode Island Sound glimmered to her left.

On the horizon, white sails billowed in the breeze, giving their boat owners pure pleasure. On the other side of the road, kite enthusiasts flew their creations at Brenton Point State Park. Along with the traditional flat and box kites, brightly colored plastic frogs and whales and whirligigs danced in the ocean air, celebrating summer vacation, freedom, life.

Envious, Madeleine wondered what it was like to be as carefree as the kite fliers were, as the sailors must be. What was it like to simply enjoy the moment without always having a sad tug of memory?

Steering the car around the bend, the wind whipping through her short, sun-streaked blond hair, Madeleine tried to remember a time when she hadn’t felt torn. Vaguely, she could recall going to kindergarten, her pretty mother holding her firmly by the hand, both of her parents smiling and making a fuss as their little girl went off to school. She could remember them picking her up at the end of that first session and taking her for a banana split at La Forge, Charlotte and Oliver Sloane praising their daughter for her important accomplishment. She had felt very special, very secure, very loved.

But by the time she went to first grade, things were different. Madeleine would often hear her mother and father’s fights, ending with maternal tears and paternal trips to the study and the solace of the amber liquid that filled the crystal decanters on the butler’s table.

And then, just after school got out for the summer, Mommy
was gone. Just like that. After another day of Mommy and Daddy fighting.

Fourteen years. Through most of grammar school, all of high school, and now her first two years at Salve Regina. Madeleine had ached for her mother, telling herself that her mother would never have left her if she could have helped it. Madeleine would never allow herself to think that her mother would have gone away willingly. Something or someone had taken her mother from her.

But, even more than not entertaining the notion that her mother could have abandoned her, Madeleine could not for a minute let herself think that her father had anything to do with her mother’s disappearance. Madeleine knew she was in a minority. Most Newporters thought Oliver Sloane had killed his wife.

In the fall, when it was time to go back to class, the second-graders in the school yard had been eager to repeat for Madeleine’s benefit the conversations they had heard at family dinner tables all over town.

“Your father never really loved your mother.”

“Your father drinks too much.”

“Your father killed your mother.”

At first she had been wounded and embarrassed, then she became defiant, finally she pushed everyone away. Except for her father and Aunt Agatha. They both needed her.

But those relationships were problematic as well. After Charlotte disappeared, neither of her closest relatives liked or trusted the other.

The convertible turned into the entrance and rode straight through the peeling gates. Massive rhododendrons and topiary bushes which had long ago lost their expertly carved animal shapes lined the long gravel road that led to Aunt Agatha’s rambling, twenty-eight-room Victorian “cottage.” Madeleine counted eleven cats sunning themselves on the overgrown lawn.

Parking her car beneath the porte cochere, Madeleine saw Finola standing at the front doorway.

“Who’s that?” Finola called, squinting to see.

“It’s me, Finola. Madeleine. What are you doing there, waiting like a spider?”

“I’m guarding your aunt. There are reporters and such trying to muscle their way in here.”

Madeleine knew that the housekeeper had to be exaggerating about the “muscling,” but she was relieved that Aunt Agatha had Finola to run interference for her. The local newspaper and television people had been trying to get to Madeleine and her father, too.

Finola stood aside as Madeleine climbed the steps that led to the grand entry foyer. The young woman’s nostrils flared at the smell of cat urine wafting from the once plush, royal red carpeting.

“Your aunt is in the deck room.”

The frayed shades were pulled down tight, forbidding any of the glorious sun to come streaming through the many glass doors and windows designed for enjoying the sweeping views of the water. The heat in the room would be stifling by the afternoon. There was no such thing as central air-conditioning at Shepherd’s Point, and Aunt Agatha wouldn’t have the extra money to run it even if there were.

As Madeleine’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she spotted the diminutive figure sitting on one of the two sofas beside the Italian-tile fireplace.

“Aunt Agatha, it’s me.” Madeleine bent to kiss the clammy cheek.

“Ah, Madeleine. My Madeleine. How are you, my dearest?” Without waiting for a response, she called, “Finola, please get Madeleine some lemonade.”

“No, thanks, Auntie. I’m not thirsty.”

“You’re sure? All right then. Never mind, Finola.” A clawlike hand patted the worn velvet. “Come. Sit here beside me, my Madeleine.”

Madeleine obediently took her place.

“I want to see it again.”

“See what, dear?” Agatha asked.

“You know.”

“Oh, Madeleine, why do you tear yourself up this way?” the older woman implored.

“Please, Aunt Agatha, I have to see it.”

Agatha rose and slowly walked across the room to the antique mahogany desk in the corner. She took the key from under the blotter and slid it into the brass lock. Pulling the bottom drawer open, Agatha lifted out the yellow leather-bound journal.

Fool. Why am I so naïve? People lie and cheat all the time. I can’t let this go on one more minute. Tonight’s disappointment at the country club was enough.

The handwriting was strong and clear, so unlike the more youthful scrawl in the rest of the diary. In her childhood bedroom, Charlotte had pulled out her old diary to unburden herself that last night of her life.