The Marriage at the Rue Morgue (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (30 page)

Something had caught my attention as I was getting in the truck, and now I hung over the side, watching the ground. Finally, Alex said, “Are you all right Noel? You’re not getting sick, are you?”

Without looking up, I said, “What? No.”

“There was scat all over the ground back there,” Lance said. “She’s trying to see if there’s any other sign of the orangutan.”

“Oh, God,” Margie groaned. “I forgot about King Kong.”

Lance said, “Kong was a gorilla.”

Then the truck lurched to a stop, and Rick said, “Do you see that?”

I pulled my head back into the truck and stood up so I could look out over the cab. I rose until, at the bottom of the hill, I saw our new enclosure, domed with black mesh and blended into the forest exactly like Art had surely planned it. “It’s beautiful,” I said. But I was distracted, and I pulled my eyes away quickly to look nearer to the truck for any sign of Chuck.

Instead, my eyes lighted on a corrugated metal shack. “Rick,” I said. “Do you have security cameras here?”

“Yup,” he said. “Mr. Oeschle was kind of paranoid the whole time this place was being built. I guess from what you say, he had some cause.”

Lance asked, “Can we get at the video?”

And I explained, “Art said . . . the last thing he said to us was to watch the security video. We didn’t see anything really helpful on the center’s video. But maybe this . . .”

“It would explain why he went out back,” Lance said.

“After we find that
girl,
” Marguerite said. “We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes to look before the police get here.”

“Right.”

Rick pulled down the hill and we all clambered out. I was unsure whether we should make a lot of noise calling or not, but Marguerite solved that problem. “Natasha!” she shouted. “Natasha honey, come out if you’re here. We’re here to help!”

In the distance, police tape fluttered around a tree. Was this where Art had initially been beaten? What about Stan? The grass was trampled down as if many people had passed through the area. Had the police already come and gone?

And then we all started yelling, even Alex, whose bellow had always had a bull-like quality. We circled the enclosure twice on the outside. “I don’t see her. We can’t help someone we can’t find,” I said.

We walked back toward the truck, an absurd little posse dejected because we had failed without even trying.

“No, we need to go inside,” Marguerite insisted.

“Rick, are there keys?” I called.

He threw down his entire ring by way of answer. “It’s the only padlock key on there,” he said.

Lance, who had caught them, fumbled a little, then walked over to unlock the door. He handed them to Marguerite and she went without being asked back up the hill to give them to Rick. “Go back and check out that security shack,” I said to her on an impulse. “I’ll call if we find her.” I waved my cell phone. As we walked into the enclosure, I heard Rick’s diesel rumble back to life to carry Marguerite back up the hill with him. I felt better with her gone, though I couldn’t say why.

Art had already prepared spaces for the animals, which surely proved he had been expecting them. He had ropes strung throughout and huge branches. The space’s defining feature, though, was a domed center built around an existing tree trunk. The tree spiraled up beyond the top of the mesh, and the wire ended in some kind of metal circlet that kept it from either wounding the tree or being an easily removed obstruction to escape.

“If she’s anyplace, she’s up there,” Lance said. He started up the tree, leaving Alex and I standing below. And then, when he was halfway up the trunk, I heard faint rustling in the imported browse off to my left.

“Shh,” I told Alex.

A quiet voice said, “Don’t go up there. Please, don’t go up there.”

“Natasha?” I said.

Lance stopped climbing.

I strained to see into the foliage, which had, I now realized, been dragged into something of a nest. “Please don’t go up,” she repeated. “You’ll be able to see straight down on me, and I haven’t got . . . I don’t have . . .” She took a loud, shuddering breath. “He took my
clothes,
” she wailed.

“Oh God, Lance, get
down,
” I said. But it wasn’t necessary. He was already descending, dropping branch by branch more rapidly than he had climbed them.

“Where are you?” Alex demanded. I realized he hadn’t found the nest yet, and I pointed.

Natasha didn’t say anything. I had an idea she was crying. “You can have my shirt. Give me a minute,” Alex said. Rapidly, he unbuttoned his shirt, fumbling with the cuffs and jerking loose the central panel so fast he popped a center button. “Is she very tall?” he asked.

Lance said, “No,” and indicated my height. In fact, she was slightly taller than me, but that was something I was more apt to notice than he was, I supposed.

“That ought to cover her up, then,” Alex said. He was probably right. He was as tall as Lance, but a whole lot broader, and I had a sudden memory of sleeping in his shirts, which he wore long. They never quite lost the smell of his cologne and came down to the middle of my thighs.

He stripped his sleeves off, exposing his forearms. He still had my name tattooed across his shoulder. “Oh dear God,” I said. “I would have thought you would have done something about that by now.”

His eyes met mine in silent apology. I had to give him credit. A thing like that would have driven the man I knew a decade ago to glowers and pursed lips, if not outright violence. “The other one says ‘Joyous,’ ” he said. “Most people think it’s a Christmas thing.”

“You can afford to have it taken off,” I said.

“Yeah.” He handed me the shirt. I didn’t think he was really agreeing.

“Go get Marguerite,” I told him. As he left, I said, “Natasha? I’ve got something you can put on.” She didn’t answer. “Can I bring it to you?” Still, she didn’t say anything. I started over to her hiding place holding the shirt out in front of me.

When I got there, I had to negotiate my way across any number of branches. She was a clever builder, and I was reluctant to destroy her sanctuary. Natasha sat in the middle of her circle, in a place she had padded with leaves. She was facing away from me, her knees drawn into her chest, and her face buried between them. A raw rash across her back suggested an allergy to some of the bedding that made up her protection.

Why had I sent Marguerite back up the hill? She had been right about one thing. Natasha needed a mother. I had no idea what to say to a child so badly damaged and obviously suffering. When it came to the deep hurts, my motto had always been to give my nieces and nephew back to my sister. Same thing with my friends’ children. I was good at friendship. I could listen to sadness and offer general comfort. But the closest I could come to a deep connection with this kind of pain was Rachel’s ongoing experience. Maybe that. And as bad as that was, I felt like it paled next to what Natasha was enduring right now.

Her whole body shook with silent tears. I had an idea she never would have revealed herself if Lance hadn’t started up the tree. I opened up Alex’s shirt and wrapped it around her bony shoulders, trying to figure out how I could access her kind of pain.

And then I knew.

I couldn’t connect to Natasha as a child. She probably hadn’t been a child for a long time anyway. I tried to imagine myself at that point in my life when Alex had been my overlord. I tried to consider the words someone could have said to get my attention. But I didn’t think anyone could have said anything. I wouldn’t have believed. So instead of trying to talk to the girl in front of me, which clearly wasn’t working, I sat beside her.

I drew my knees up like Natasha’s and laid my head across them, looking at her. After a long time, she turned to me. Her face was tear-streaked and puffy. I couldn’t tell if the purple on her cheek was smeared mascara or a bruise. I hoped the former. I feared the latter. She was still silently crying, swallowing and breathing in jagged but silent gasps. I wondered how long she had been crying like that. How many years. “He’s coming back,” she whispered. “He put me here to wait for you.”

“No,” I said. “Stan is . . .”

“Not Stan. I don’t know what’s taking him so long.”

I could see that she wasn’t going to leave. That it didn’t matter if she was in danger. She seemed to be in shock. Then I registered the first part of her statement. My stomach suddenly knotted. “Who?”

She shook her head, and I thought at first that she didn’t intend to answer. Then she said, “My cousin—Gary,” in that same whisper and turned her face back to her knees.

“Who?” But even as I spoke, my mind was running through images and names, coming to the conclusion that I only knew one Gary and that, yes, he would have been Linda’s cousin if his mother was Gert’s sister. My mind hadn’t bothered with this before, even though I should have realized it.

“The one that finished his degree,” Natasha said. “I think he maybe went to kill Gran, even though he promised to leave her alone if I came with him. But he never got done killing Stan, and . . .” She drifted into silence.

I thought a little information was in order. “I guess he beat Stan up pretty badly,” I said. “But your gran is OK . . .”

“You’re lying.” She said it in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she was making an observation about the weather.
It’s sunny. You’re lying.
All the same. And she went on crying. She looked back at me. “And I bet you think it’s all Stan’s fault anyhow . . .”

“Well, he
did . . .
”

“He’s my
grandfather
! Or the closest thing to one I’ll get. He wouldn’t do that. Gary and Aunt Gretchen are spreading around that he had something to do with this, but it’s because they’re caught.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s too bad you don’t know. Then he’d at least have a
reason
to lure you out here.”

“Know
what
?”

“Those two volunteers of yours.”

“Which two . . .”

“Trudy and Darnell.”

“What?” Had we left Art’s killers in
charge
of the sanctuary?

“They’re some kind of federal agents.”

I stared at Natasha, opening my mouth and closing it again.

“When Uncle Gary’s passport was blocked, it didn’t take him long to figure out they were behind it, but he figured you, and Granddad, and Mr. Art had to be involved. He’s been hiding with Aunt Gretchen ever since she fell.”

I had visions of the dozens of interns Art had brought through the center over the years. “Natasha, how long . . .?” I wanted to ask her how long this had been going on, how deep it went, but I wasn’t sure she knew, or that I wanted to know even if she could tell me.

“Mom brought me into the films when I was ten. She was aging out. And then she went and OD’d, so it was only me. I guess Gary’s been using your monkeys ever since Granddad bought into his sob story and got him into the graduate program at the school. It made a good cover, and Art’s such a putz. He never thought his best buddy’s nephew would be anything but perfect.” My heart flared in defense of my friend. But Art’s focus
was
almost entirely on the monkeys. It wouldn’t have crossed his mind to ask why Stan’s nephew wanted to study primates. It certainly hadn’t crossed
my
mind. I hadn’t even thought to find out how closely the two of them were related.

Now that she was talking, Natasha didn’t seem able to stop. She showed no urgency to leave, and I didn’t know how to break into her trance to get her out. She said, “But Gary thought Stan would give him his own monkey house. And when Stan found all those pictures . . .” Natasha strangled a sob.

“Wait . . . Stan found the pictures? Not Art?”

“Yes! Weeks ago. He’s been after Gary to turn himself in, and he wanted to call the police, and I should have let him, but I don’t want the kids in school to find out I’m
that
kind of girl. And now he’s killed Gran because I couldn’t get her out of the hospital. He’ll get in there and finish poisoning her.”

“Your grandmother’s not in the hospital,” I said.

“No I guess not, now. She’s dead,” Natasha responded.

“She’s fine . . .”

“She’s not. He’s killed her.”

I tried, “How else would we have known to come looking for you?”

“Because Gary sent Aunt Gretchen in to get you.”

It clicked. The walker. The stumbling gait on uneven ground. The way she had leaned into me and looked so old in comparison to my grandmother. The woman in my parents’ house was
not
Gert Oeschle. It was her sister.

“She was supposed to go in pretending to be Gran, hysterical since your friend dropped off those pictures for her. Her job was to get the two of you out here so he could get you out of the way. And when Gary gets back here, he’ll kill you. Then I’m going to get to star in my own personal snuff film.”

Finally, some of her message reached me. I knew the term “snuff film.” It referred to fetish pornography in which women were killed and their bodies sexually assaulted. I had been listening for ways to help Natasha. I should have been more concerned with ways to get her moving. The police had never been called until Nana called them.
If
she called them. I had left an impostor at my house. With
my
grandmother. Sooner or later, Gary
would
come back, and Lance and I had sent our defense arm up the hill to get my sister. We needed to go.

And then I finally knew what to say to her. “Natasha, this isn’t your fault.” She didn’t believe that. I knew by the way she blew out a breath and shook her head. But it was still the right thing, because she unclenched one of her elbows from around her knees and started sliding her arms into Alex’s dress shirt.

She shifted onto those knees to button it up.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you to your grandmother. Wherever she is.”

Natasha froze, and for a moment, I thought I had spoken wrongly, but she said, “Shhh.” And pointed. She was smiling. I expected to see Gary standing behind me, but all the fear had relaxed away from her face. “Look,” she whispered. “That’s why Gary never finished Stan. I’m sure of it. But . . . he took my clothes, and I’ve been here since yesterday afternoon, and I can’t really think . . . and . . . but,
look,
will you
look
!”