My Sister's Keeper (15 page)

I whispered, too. “And do you know what she’s doing in there?”

“
I ‘spect she’s looking to steal something.”

“
What else do you know about the goings on in that house?”

She straightened tall and cut her eyes down at me. “Oh, I knows more’n people think.”

“
Mrs. Winslow, did you see who went in there Sunday night?”

Hearing the screen door at Ashleigh’s house squeak open and slam shut, Mrs. Winslow shuffled back inside and cut off the outside light.

“
Wait!” I whispered squatting by the deck. In the darkness I heard the sound of Mrs. Winslow’s door jingle shut and a security chain being hooked on it. I waited for Mrs. Hardesty to get back inside her house, then jumped onto the deck and tapped at Mrs. Winslow’s door. When it cracked open, I noticed there were no lights on inside.

“
Mrs. Winslow, did you see who went into that house Sunday night?”

“
I seen you.”

“
Did you see anyone else go in there?”

“
Didn’t see nobody else.”

“
But somebody must have gone in after me.”

“
Didn’t see nobody.”

“
Did you see me when I left there?”

“
I seen you laying in the yard.”

“
Do you know how long I was there?”

“
Least an hour.”

“
Did you see how I got there?”

“
Only other thing I seen was the girl leaving.”

“
What girl?”

“
The girl. Her.”

“
She left? What time was that?”

“
While you was layin’ outside. She just walked away carryin’ some kind of bag.”

“
Walked?”

“
Just walked off.”

“
Did you tell the police?”

“
They didn’t ask me that.”

“
What time did she come back?”

“
Didn’t.”

“
Where do you suppose she would have gone at that time of the night? On foot?” Mrs. Winslow shook her head, then closed the door.

“
Wait!” I whispered tapping on the door.

She didn’t answer and despite my determined knocking, she didn’t open the door again. I finally made my way around my house and entered through the front door. I was wet, cold, and trembling. It took another double scotch to settle me down.
Could Mrs. Winslow be mistaken? Could it have been another woman?

19

F
IRST THING THE NEXT MORNING, I called Scott and left a message on his voicemail telling him what Mrs. Winslow had said about Ashleigh walking off later that Sunday night. The way I figured it, that changed everything. All my appointments for Friday had been canceled and the phones were silent all day. I set up prices for Sydney’s photo packages, ran off twelve hundred order forms, and dropped them off at the dance studio on my way home. The lobby was crammed with moms gabbing noisily and tending to babies while keeping an eye on the monitors.

Sydney was teaching, so I left the forms with the receptionist. I did, however, see Sydney on one of the monitors. She and her class were moving in complete unison like a school of fish darting here and there changing directions at the same instant, controlled by the same remote. She was dressed in a black leotard with a short sheer skirt and her hair was back in a ponytail. Even on that monitor I could see the joy on her face and the love and respect the students had for her.

The place was teeming with energy and reminded me of being backstage before a live theatrical production. It was intoxicating, but the conversations around me gradually lapsed and the moms began to whisper among themselves and I could feel their gazes. I took one last extended look at Sydney and left.

The news crews were back at my house and prodded me for remarks as I drove through them. I hadn’t been inside long when I spotted Ashleigh’s cat on my back deck. But when I opened the door, it ran off. Searching the pantry, I found a can of tuna, spread the contents on newspaper, and left it outside.

There was nothing new about Ashleigh on TV so I turned it off, fixed a drink, and sat in a chair staring at a photograph of me and Jewell taken at the beach and realized Sydney was right there in the photograph with us. Jewell and I had gone surf fishing for croakers and had allowed Sydney to come along to get her out of her mother’s hair for the day. I’d looked at that photograph hundreds of times and had paid little attention to the skinny kid in the yellow bikini squeezing in between Jewell and me.

I don’t remember what was said when that photo was taken, but from the looks on our faces, it must have been hilarious and I’m sure it came from Sydney. She always made us laugh. Even then, Sydney’s personality outshined her sister’s.

The doorbell interrupted my thoughts. I expected it to be just another reporter and considered not answering it. When I looked out, though, I saw a young boy about ten years old standing on the porch. Beside him sat a brown and white collie and out in the yard, a man waited for them. The reporters had gone. I turned the outside lights on and pulled the door open.

“
Mister, you seen my bike?” the boy asked timidly.

I stepped out and pulled the door shut behind me. “Well, I don’t know. What does your bike look like?”

“
It was my dad’s old bike. It’s got fat tires and a bell on the handlebars.”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember seeing one like that recently.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody must’ve stole it. My dad’s pretty mad, too, ‘cause he says it was a Columbia
Thunderbolts
and he spent a lot of money fixing it up.”

“
Sorry, I wish I could help.”

“
Okay,” he sighed. He hung his head, descended the steps, joined his dad, and turned toward the next house with his dog trailing.

I started to go in when something occurred to me. “Excuse me,” I called. The man and boy turned around. “I was just wondering how long the bike has been missing.”

The three of them stepped back and the man extended his hand. “Hi. I’m Tom Frederick.”

“
Richard Baimbridge.”

“
My boy says it was gone Monday after he got home from school. Why?”

“
Just wondering. Where exactly do you live?”

“
We have the house with the brick driveway in the next block.”

“
Oh, yes. I know the house.”

“
The bike was a rusted old hand-me-down that became mine when I got old enough to ride.” He kept a hand rubbing the boy’s head. “I hate to lose it, if you know what I mean. You don’t see bikes like that anymore.”

“
No, you don’t. Sorry I couldn’t help.” As the man, his son, and the collie headed on down the street I lingered at the door and watched. That was a part of life I’d missed out on so far

being a dad.

Later that evening, I noticed the tuna fish was gone, set another can out, and sat awhile in the kitchen watching for the cat, but it didn’t come back. It must have known I wasn’t much of an animal person, but solitude had been taking a toll on me lately and I’d come to hate being alone. If I didn’t like it then, I surely wouldn’t like it later in life. I fixed another scotch and stepped out on the deck just as the moon was getting above the horizon. One thing I’ve noticed about the moon. It can be rising behind moss-draped cypress trees with a lake under it or ascending through skyscrapers in a city with smog dying it red. Either way, it’s beautiful. And tonight it was as beautiful as ever, and huge. Why is it you can only watch a great movie once or twice, rarely more than that, but you can watch the moon come up night after night for a hundred years and it’s always as picturesque as the first time you ever experienced it? Why is that?

A chilly breeze blew in off the lake hinting that summer was still six weeks away. I turned to head back inside when I thought I caught sight of Ashleigh’s cat.

“
Come here, girl,” I called. “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.” I moved down the steps toward the line of shrubbery and heard a tapping coming from Ashleigh’s. I moved closer. The house was dark, but the door was open and I could see a man inside with a flashlight standing on a table that had been moved to the center of the room. He was in his early twenties with short blond hair spiked to stand straight up and a large John-Boy mole on his right cheek. He wore straight-legged blue jeans, a Black Sabbath T-shirt, and latex gloves. He had his head up in a heater return vent in the ceiling and was shining his light in all directions, but must not have found what he was looking for. He stooped, closed the vent, jumped down, and moved the table back to its rightful place. He then came out, closed the door, reset the police seal, stripped the gloves off, and moved down the side of the drive toward the street. I followed at a distance and watched him get into a black late model Chevrolet Corvette parked a few doors down.

I wondered what this man was doing in Ashleigh’s house and if he’d had anything to do with her disappearance.

Deciding to follow him, I sprinted back to my house, chose the bike over the car which had my business name displayed all over it, snapped the helmet on over my bandaged head, and pressed the starter. The engine chugged, but didn’t start. I worked the gas throttle back and forth and tried it again. It coughed twice and backfired twice before coming to life. I clicked it into gear, pushed off, and spun away in search of the black Corvette. Four blocks later I eased up behind it at a stop sign.

20

I
DID NOT HAVE TIME to get a coat and the cold air was almost unbearable as I trailed the Corvette through town. The helmet’s interior support straps dug into my stitches and tormented me with every bump. I took down the man’s license plate number and was about to head back when he made a left turn toward Wrightsville Beach and I decided to stay with him a little longer.

He crossed the bridge to the barrier island and turned north where the air got much colder and tasted heavily of salt. The moon accompanied me, its reflection sparkling like diamonds off the ocean.

Many of the homes in Wrightsville Beach had been built in the first half of the twentieth century. One-story wooden white structures with colorful shutters and screened porches that sometimes wrapped completely around them. The vegetation was minimal and most driveways were sand, shell, or rock. In summer, there would be cars parked all around the cottages with surfboards on their roofs or leaning against the buildings, flags flapping in the wind, and men and women in flip-flops and sandals walking everywhere.

As we rode farther up the island, the houses got newer and larger. Finally, the Corvette slowed and turned into the drive of a well-lit elegant three-story residence sitting high on pilings overlooking the ocean.

Slowing, I turned up the driveway of an unoccupied weekend rental on the opposite side of the road, parked the bike under it, and lifted the helmet off.

Across the road, the car slid up under the beach house and extinguished its lights. John-Boy got out, leapt up the wide front staircase to the main floor, and disappeared inside.

Outdoor lighting burned brightly around the house and I doubted I’d be able to get very close until it was off. Leaving the bike, I hiked up the road, cut through a vacant lot to the beach, and drifted back toward the house.

An icy breeze blustered off the ocean and the flags up and down the shore popped and clinked on their metal poles. Waves crashed onto shore and pushed almost to the dunes before receding. With sea foam blowing past my feet, I stuffed my hands under my armpits and proceeded on toward the brightly-lit house. Sand, carried by the wind, stung my face and collected in my eyes. I lowered my head and ploughed forward. As I drew nearer, I spied two giggly young women on a patio behind the house wrapped in blankets passing a joint back and forth. I wondered who these people were and if Ashleigh had spent time there, and if she could be there now.
Alive
.

The house looked like something out of
Architectural Digest
with large windows, unusual portals, and ornate colored glass. There were porches on all three floors running the entire width of the house with stairs joining each level to a dock-like walk that connected the house to the beach—humped in the middle to rise over the dunes.

I dropped into the sea oats on a sand dune next door and waited for the lights to go out. Around 1:00 a.m., the girls disappeared inside and the outside lights went off. Soon after, lights inside began going out and eventually the last of the lights on the third floor went off.

I waited another twenty minutes before crawling over the dunes into the back yard. Immediately, the floodlights snapped back on and my heart did a double slam in my chest. I held my composure, acted a little tipsy, and continued on hoping the lights had been turned on by an automatic sensor and not by security personnel.

As I passed the side of the house, I ducked under a set of stairs, held my breath, and listened. The pounding of the surf made it impossible to hear if anyone was coming, so I pressed back into the shadows and waited. The raw wind off the ocean swirled around me and robbed me of heat. My body shivered, my teeth chattered, and sand stuck to my skin. Pulling my knees up, I wrapped my arms around them, jerked my shirt up over my nose, and breathed into it to capture the warmth.