Last Writes (9 page)

“You’d better have brought something besides shorts. They just might expect us to put on a burka. Remember what Magdalena said—you have to wait for the guy to ask you out. Very fifties, don’t you think?”

“Oh, my, where
did
I put my petticoat and pearls? Now, if you ask me to practice demure giggling, I’m outta here. Seriously, though, Claud, we’re guests. You don’t think they’ll expect us to—”

“What? Follow the rules? When in Rome . . .”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be diddling while Rome burns. Oh, wait, I meant
fiddling.
”

“I think Nero already took care of that for you.”

Ninety minutes later they took the cutoff at Highway 79 that would lead them into Lamb Canyon, where boulder-strewn hillsides rose on either side of the road. The treacherous downhill winding road took Claudia’s full concentration. She felt cheered when the Gilman Springs sign appeared and she was able to exit the treacherous downhill winding road and get onto the rural highway that took them through Hemet.

“You never told me how Erin got to your house from the mountains. I can’t see her hitchhiking all that way,” said Claudia.

“She drove. Rod left the car they took from the Ark.”

“Kelly! Don’t you think that’s an important piece of information you might have shared? If he left the car, he must have been working with someone else who picked him up. That changes things, don’t you think?”

“No, it doesn’t. We always thought someone else must be in the mix. The car just confirms it. Anyway, I didn’t know until this morning. Erin snuck out of the house early and I followed her. She unlocked the car door and I asked her what she was doing. She about jumped out of her skin . . .” Kelly’s voice trailed off. When she spoke again she sounded troubled. “Kylie’s car seat was in the back. Why wouldn’t Rodney have taken the car seat?”

Claudia contemplated the question, but she could only come up with one answer. “The person who picked him up could already have had a car seat.”

“But who else would that have been? Erin insists that Rod doesn’t know anyone outside the damn Ark, and the only one he would confide in would be James Miller. He’s
got
to know somebody else. Besides, it’s a good thing he did leave the car or Erin would have been stuck in that place in the mountains.”

“Don’t you think you could have told me about this earlier?”

“What the hell’s the difference? We’re still going to the Ark and find out what’s going on. Erin never said she didn’t have a car, she just never said anything about it. Why should she?”

Arguing with Kelly was futile when she took a certain attitude, which was probably why her law practice was successful. But Claudia knew her well enough to recognize the depth of concern she had for her niece, and to know that she was trying to cover it up with the blasé manner. She glanced at the GPS. They were twelve miles from their destination. “We still need to come up with some kind of plan before we get there.”

“The plan is, I’m gonna get James alone so I can make him talk.”

“Please tell me you’re not gonna seduce him.”

“
Seduce
him? Ick! He’s a brown polyester kinda guy, and you know I don’t do brown polyester, ever! Not my type.”

Claudia grinned. “Or, more to the point, you’re not
his
type. I can’t wait to see the handwritings Stedman wants me to analyze, the members he said he was suspicious of. Do you think Stedman’s right? Could someone really have infiltrated the TBL?”

“Who knows; he’s probably just paranoid. While you’re working with him this afternoon, I’ll see if I can find out more about this Jephthah’s Daughters thing. I’m gonna try and find our buddy Magdalena. If she knows anything, I’ll get her to talk, even if James Miller won’t give it up.”

 

Highway 79 eventually turned into State Street as they drove through the once-dusty, now-burgeoning municipality of Hemet: old neighborhoods populated with small homes and large yards, larger tract homes with small yards; scads of mobile home parks, brand-new subdivisions boasting their own public parks, schools, and shopping precincts.

“I Googled Hemet last night,” Claudia said. “It used to be a retirement community. Now it’s mostly young families providing services to the older ones.”

Kelly smirked. “I get it: ‘newly wed or nearly dead’.”

They left the highway for a two-lane road, desert scrub and low trees flanking them on either side as they wound their way into the hills. As the incline got steeper, the trees grew taller and closer together. Mostly mulberry and cottonwood.

“He wasn’t kidding when he said they were hidden away,” Kelly noted. “We’re in bumfuck Idaho already.”

“You’d better clean up your language, young lady. They’ll send you packing in a New York minute.”

“Enough with the clichés, I know how to behave when I have to.” She pointed to the dash clock. “We’re late; it’s twelve-thirty already.”

“Well, if you hadn’t spent that extra twenty minutes chatting with Erin. . . .”

“C’mon, Claud. I haven’t seen my little sister in—Hey, look, is that where we’re supposed to turn?”

It was little more than a gash in the trees that grew alongside the road. Having lowered the volume on the GPS, Claudia would have missed the turn if Kelly hadn’t spotted it. She said, “I bet it’s pitch-black out here at night. I can’t say I’m looking forward to driving back out here after my lecture on Thursday night.”

“Claudia Rose, have you
no
sense of adventure? You can drop breadcrumbs to help you find your way back.”

Kelly’s flippant suggestion brought an image of Hansel and Gretel and the wicked old witch. Was that what they were going into? The witch’s gingerbread house—sweet and tempting on the outside, but dark and menacing inside? She shook off the vision. She would never choose Jephthah’s Daughters for her own child, and she would do everything she legally could to help Erin keep Kylie from such a fate; but from what she’d heard, it didn’t sound as if there were anything inherently dangerous in the program.

The road was well-maintained and continued for about a half mile before they came to a sudden hairpin turn. Rounding the curve, she hit the brakes. There were no signs posted to indicate what lay behind it, but a tightly packed eight-foot-tall hedge ran in both directions as far as the eye could see. A small guard shack and a gate prevented them from driving on.

They glanced at each other, assessing the situation. Kelly said, “I guess no one’s gonna be breaking in.”

“Or out?” Claudia eased the Jag forward and stopped at the gate. A scorching blast of late July hit her in the face as she rolled down the window, rendering the air-conditioning ineffectual.

A muscular man in shirtsleeves and khaki pants, his eyes hidden behind wraparound dark glasses, leaned out of the guardhouse and asked politely how he could help them. Claudia gave their names but his face remained as expressionless as a secret service agent. He asked them to wait a moment and stuck his head back inside the guardhouse.

“Who hid
his
lollipop?” Kelly murmured.

“I guess they save those really big smiles for the rallies.”

A moment later the gate opened and the guard waved them through with a nod. Claudia drove up the curving road to an open parking area. Most of a dozen parking spaces were filled with a fleet of maroon-colored bus-sized SUVs, the silver TBL logo on the sides, and a couple of Toyota sedans. Unlike the Jag, which had picked up dust from the country road, the Ark vehicles were clean and polished to a high sheen. “They must carpool to the rallies,” Claudia said.

“Happy little outings, everyone singing ‘Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall’ and playing Truth or Dare.”

“Or ‘Old MacDonald’ if they’re teetotalers. Hey, did Erin say anything about alcohol? Are they allowed to drink?”

“What I got from Erin was, they can drink, but aren’t supposed to get drunk.” Kelly’s eyes sparked with devilment. “Does my otherwise calm and dignified best friend want to issue a challenge?”

“No freaking way. Just make sure you don’t get James Miller so drunk that he can’t tell you anything.”

“Oh, Claudia, are you forgetting your most valuable resource? Hello,
it’s me!
I promise you, I can get these guys from charming to bulletproof by the time one ice cube melts in their glass. You are talking to the Drinkophilia Master, Grasshopper. I may not be modest, but when it comes to booze and men, I absolutely know how to deal the cards. And even if
they
hold the cards, I got the moves, baby.”

Claudia just shook her head and hoped for the best. The truth was, she knew Kelly was a loose cannon. There was simply no predicting how she might behave at the Ark. Claudia grabbed the door handle and prepared to face the hundred-and-four-degree heat. “Okay, Drinkophilia Master,” she said over her shoulder. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

 

 

 

The Ark’s office was located in a massive old Victorian house with an extended veranda and front porch. A balcony perched outside one of the second-floor windows. At the very top was a widow’s walk. The wooden siding had been painted a soft dove gray with white trim that reminded Claudia of an old-fashioned nun’s habit. Edging the pathway to the front door was a carefully tended rose garden that scented the air as they walked from the parking area.
Picturesque
was the word that came to her mind as they mounted the steps to the porch, where the entry door had a transom and panels of elegantly crafted leaded glass.

Already overheated from the short walk across the parking area, Kelly was fanning herself with the baseball cap she’d been wearing in the car. Claudia knocked and opened the door, looking forward to leaving the heat behind.

She was dismayed to find the temperature in the office only slightly lower than that of an oven. No air-conditioning in this climate? That was something she had never contemplated. She and Kelly exchanged doubtful glances and lifted their eyes to the two ceiling fans rotating lazily overhead. Unless the temperature plunged during the evening hours, it didn’t bode at all well for a comfortable night’s sleep.

The Victorian exterior had led Claudia to expect ornate flocked wallpaper, Moroccan leather, and overstuffed furniture. Instead, the ground floor had been gutted and converted to an attractive open-plan office space. There were four handcrafted wooden desks, two of which were occupied. A youngish woman sat at one, engrossed in paperwork.

Kelly gave Claudia’s ribs a sharp nudge and whispered, “You know who that is?”

“Shhh, yes I do.” She had recognized the woman from the previous evening at the rally: Karen Harrison, the first person to be publicly humiliated when Harold Stedman shared her confession with the group. She remembered that Karen was the one who had written about her attraction to her brother’s wife. Someone must have worked her hard to get her here at the Ark so fast.

At one of the other desks a woman working at a computer rose and came forward to greet them. “Good afternoon, sisters. I’m happy to see you found us.” Her voice had a musical quality, and to Claudia, there was something sweet and guileless in the smile she gave them.

Silver-shot wavy hair surrounded a serene face. She wore a simple green linen shift and hemp sandals. The dress was clean but wrinkled in the lap, as if she’d been sitting for a long time.

Now that they were actually inside the compound, Kelly was unusually subdued and Claudia answered for both of them. “Yes, thank you, the directions helped a lot. I’m sorry we’re a little later than we’d planned. Is Mr. Stedman ready to see us?”

“Brother Stedman is at lunch at the moment,” the woman said. “Have you eaten?”

Kelly found her voice. “Not yet, but you could twist our rubber arms.”

The woman smiled again. “No arm-twisting will be necessary; we’ll be more than happy to take care of you. By the way, I’m Rita, Brother Stedman’s office assistant.”

They put down their overnight bags and introduced themselves. Then Rita said, “Before I send you over to the dining hall, I’ll need you both to fill out some forms.”

“What kind of forms?” Kelly asked.

“Nothing complicated. We ask all guests to provide their contact information in case of emergency, things like that.” Rita went to a file cabinet in a corner and took some papers from the top drawer. “You can sit at these desks and fill them out. It’ll just take a minute.”

Karen Harrison glanced up as they each took a set of papers and sat down. There was no recognition in her gaze, but she gave them a tentative smile and returned to her task.

Claudia was still skimming the first page when Kelly looked up. “This is a nondisclosure agreement.”

“Yes,” Rita said. “We are a private community, and we need to make sure it stays that way. I’m sure you understand.”

Claudia quickly flipped to read the text at the bottom of the page. They would be signing an agreement not to discuss anything they saw or heard at the Ark. It seemed a little over the top, but she had signed similar confidentiality agreements with clients before.

“Do you have a problem with it, Kelly?” she asked.

Kelly looked none too pleased, but it appeared to be the only way they would get their investigation started. “It’s pretty standard,” she said, and scribbled her signature.

When they had completed the forms and handed them to Rita, she thanked them and said, “If you wouldn’t mind waiting here for just a moment, I’ll get someone to take you over to the dining hall.”

She disappeared through a doorway, returning a few moments later with a girl of about twelve. The girl was dressed in a shift similar to Rita’s own, even the same color. Her tawny hair was drawn away from a delicate oval face and braided into two old-fashioned plaits that were draped over her shoulders, reaching nearly to her waist.