The Drake House (15 page)

How can he see a damn thing?
They rounded a curve in the path, following it to the left, the orchard now completely out of view. It made her heart thump wildly, but she pressed on through the fear. Unsure how far down the trail they’d need to go before getting to the house, she kept her eyes peeled for anything that looked familiar. It wasn’t. The only time she’d been here was in her sleep.

The lack of sound was frightening. No rustling of leaves or animals scurrying.

The forest was dense. If not for the half-moon, there’d be no light at all, and the tree canopy filtered most of the luminosity. The aroma of pine mixed with spring mildew hung in the air. The path was so overgrown it made walking treacherous. Enlarged tree roots jutted out from the ground, snaking the pathway. Nick’s hiking boots crunched on gravel and leaves in a steady motion.

Trisha froze, something unknown clicking in her brain. The breeze kicked up, swirling the pine scent around her and echoing Nick’s footsteps in her head. Her skin prickled, puffs of frost expelling from her mouth. It wasn’t right. It should be too warm at fifty degrees to see her breath.

Panicked, she looked at Nick as he paused in front of her. His green eyes rounded, seeing her breath. His breath wasn’t visible. The wind violently pushed her hair from her face, almost knocking her down, while his dark hair remained unruffled. She couldn’t move, like a block of ice she stood, shivering. Her vision clouded, taking Nick away from her sight and replacing him with something else. Something muddled, hazy.

Her hands were small, child-like. Pine needles at her back. Blood on her knee. Screaming. Footsteps coming toward her.

Then a rush of heat covered her face, bringing Nick back in front of her, his palm like fire on her cheek. Beginning to warm again, sensation returned to her limbs.

What is happening to me?

Someone was coming. Footsteps, light, distant, approaching from around the bend in the path. Except no one was there. The sound stopped inches from them. Nick raised his gun, not seeing a target. But somehow, Trisha knew there wasn’t one. Not a some
one
, anyway. A some
thing
.

Fear. Anger. Desperation.

The foreign feelings assaulted Trisha, shading everything else. Blindly, she reached out for Nick, grasping his arm, fingernails digging into his flesh. She couldn’t draw in air. The trees and Nick and the very atmosphere churned.

Then that voice came. The one she knew so well, but not at all.

“Thank you for coming.”

****

Trisha had no idea how they got back to the house, how a blanket found itself in her lap on the couch, or how long Nick had been standing in front of her holding a steaming cup of tea.

“Take the cup, Trish.”

“Okay,” she muttered, taking it from him.

Scrubbing his hands over his face, he sat next to her on the couch in her living room. “Thank you for coming,” he mumbled.

The alarm of hearing him say those words jolted her back. She jerked, the tea cup slipping from her fingers and shattering on the hardwood floor. “Wh-what? Where’d you hear that?”

“Damn it,” he said, pinning her hands down on the blanket in her lap. “Be still, okay? I’ll clean up the mess.”

“No!” she shouted at him, near hysterics. “Where did you hear those words?”

“I was there with you, Trish. Remember? Someone, a someone who wasn’t even physically there, said ‘thank you for coming’.”

“You heard it? You heard it too?” The shock was like a gale force wind in her chest.

“Damn right I did.” He looked down at the broken cup on the floor. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move. I took your shoes off when we got back.”

Striding to the kitchen, he returned with a broom and paper towels. After sweeping and wiping the mess he straightened. “I need paper and a pen.”

Her mind was still foggy. “What?”

“A pen and paper. I need to write notes. Where do you have…?”

“In my office,” she said, waving her hand in the direction. When he stepped back in the room and sat next to her, he had an old spiral notebook and pen. “What happened, Nick?”

He stiffened. “Tell me what you remember.”

He slid into cop mode, everything personal from the night before vanishing. She turned her head to look out the window, surprised to see the sun rising. She’d lost time again. And apparently, she was awake this time.

“I was walking with you. The sound of your footsteps made me remember…” She thought it over. “No, more like a flash of something. I smelled pine, heard footsteps, and had a gash on my knee. I think I was a kid.”

“In this flash, were you in the woods?” She nodded. “You heard footsteps? Whose?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone.” She looked over at him as he scribbled his notes. “After the…flash, I felt cold.”

His mouth thinned, jaw clenching. “You were blue.” She must’ve looked as confused as she felt, because he slowed his speech as if talking to a child. “You turned blue, as in hypothermia. And you had a haze in your eyes like you were dreaming.”

“When you touched my face your hand was hot.”

He didn’t respond, just stared at her with hard eyes. Unable to bear it, she looked away. “In my nightmares, I step onto the trail in the woods and the wind blows hard. I get a few steps, turn to ice, and then a voice says ‘thank you for coming.’ No one knows that. No one but you.”

“Who is it?”

She shrugged. “Alexandra Drake, I think.”

His eyes narrowed. “She’s dead, Trish.”

There was that condescending tone again. “Did you see anyone out there, Nick? Was there a body to go with those footsteps? No,” she answered for him. “You heard it. She wants something from you, too.”

Obviously choosing to ignore her comment, he leaned forward. “What exactly did your father say when you two talked about this?”

The night after their date came back to her, the look in her father’s face sheer terror. “He implied I wandered off and went missing as a young child. The Madison Police and half the town was searching for me. They found me with a scraped knee, but otherwise fine.”

“Where did they find you?”

“He didn’t say. And, Nick, he was scared to death. He wanted me to drop it, so I did.”

It’s like they’d never made love. Never shared a bed, or meals. Nick acted just like the first time they met. Cold. Aloof. Uncaring. Hadn’t she known it would turn out like this? She had baggage. Problems. Men didn’t want women like her for more than a night. Even if what happened in the woods hadn’t, he’d have run anyway. Eventually.

It bothered her more than she cared to admit. Something about Nick Mackey made her think he was different, or she could be different. She had dared to hope they could help each other.

“There will be a report at the Madison office then,” he said, mostly to himself. “No one from here will know we nosed around.”

Rising, he fished his cell from his pocket and dialed. “It’s Nick Mackey from Small Rapids,” he said into the phone. “Can you pull an old file for me? Trisha Eaton. It’ll be thirty or so years ago. A missing child.”

Pulling the blanket tighter to her body, she couldn’t feel anything but sorrow.

“She’s right here. No, she’s fine. Not related.” He looked over at her with the phone to his ear, not seeing her but through her. “Thanks, Lafferty.” After hanging up, he stared at the phone before looking at her again. “I’m heading up to Madison to see what I can find. The fact that you’re remembering pieces of this incident in dreams means there’s something more to it.”

At that point, she couldn’t muster the energy to care. “Fine. Let me know what you find.”

Chapter Ten

Nick was fifteen minutes into the thirty-minute drive to Madison when his cell rang. He’d stopped at the Small Rapids police station before hitting the road. This early in the morning, the calls were still forwarded to whoever’s on call, so the station was empty. So were the files. Not a damn thing on Eaton or Drake.

Shocked at the caller ID, he ordered his heart rate down. “What’s wrong, Brad?”

“Nothing. I wanted you to know I’m at Trisha’s. She filled me in on what happened.”

Nick sighed and changed lanes. “Weird, right?”

The non-talk, non-apology they had last night put them on friendly enough terms. Moreover, it forced Nick to realize how stupid he’d been acting where Brad was concerned. Whatever was going on, Brad wasn’t a suspect in Nick’s mind.

“Yeah, but I’m not surprised. I should’ve seen the nightmares as a connection sooner.” Brad cleared his throat. “Any idea why someone would kill over her getting lost as a kid?”

Nick thought about it, like he had nonstop since the night before. “I’m not even sure this is related. It could still be about her and not Alexandra.”

“Liar.”

His grin was brief. “Still, I’m almost to Madison. I’ll see what the files say. They pulled Trisha’s. I’m going to see if there’s one on Alexandra. You ever hear any rumors on how she died?”

“No. Want me to check the archives? Trish and I can hit the library or the net before everyone returns.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Just don’t raise any flags. Keep her in sight. I’ll see if I can get a property report. Find out why the county owns the house and why there’s not another owner.”

“Got it,” he said. “By the way, she’s doing fine. In case you’re wondering.”

Nick hung up and got off I-94 at his exit. As if anyone or anything could be on his mind besides Trisha. Beautiful, sexy, smart, and stubborn as hell Trisha Eaton. God damn, she’d turned blue last night. Looked like she’d died. He’d nearly died seeing her like that.

He enjoyed a good ghost story or two, but he had no intention of being in one. Like it or not, he couldn’t figure another explanation for what happened in the woods. The look on Trisha’s face was imbedded in his mind for all eternity.

Detective Lafferty was on the phone at his desk when Nick entered the station. Remnants of stale coffee hung in the air, filling his senses with memories of Milwaukee. Nick pushed them out of mind. Lafferty waved him over to his cubicle in the back and stood after hanging up the phone.

“Coroner is releasing Andrew McArthur’s body tomorrow,” he said while donning a suit coat. Indicating Nick should follow him down a hall, they headed toward the elevators. “Cause of death was strangulation. No fibers. No hairs. Interestingly enough, the bloody message on the wall wasn’t in the decedent’s blood. No match in the system.”

Nick frowned. “So there’s nothing.”

“Including motive or suspects. The guy was clean and well liked.”

They stepped into the elevator and rode down to the basement in silence. Lafferty signed out the file and went down another hall into a research room.

Lafferty dropped a manila file on the table and sat in a folding chair. “Wanna tell me what this is about?”

Nick didn’t move, but he held Lafferty’s glare.

“Have it your way,” he said, sliding the file to Nick’s side of the table.

Nick picked it up and opened the folder. There was a 911 report from Mable Eaton stating her daughter wandered off. Last seen an hour before. Everyone on the orchard thought someone else was watching her. Dispatch sent immediately. It then gave a physical description of Trisha at three years old.

That’s it. Nothing else in the file.

“What is this, Lafferty?”

“My thoughts exactly. I came down after you called and pulled the file.” He leaned over the table and indicated the creases in the folder. “See this? The file was at least a half-inch thick. It isn’t now.”

“You found it this way?” Lafferty gave him a long, level look as an answer. The hairs on Nick’s neck stood erect. “Let’s check for another file.”

“First you tell me what’s going on and why you think a man is dead because of a thirty year old case about a wandering child.”

Nick dropped into a chair and told Lafferty everything he thought safe to divulge. “Trish seems to remember hearing ‘stay away from her’ before. She remembered bits and pieces about being lost. That’s what made me think to check the file, seeing as the murderer wrote a similar message on the wall.”

“You’re just telling me now?”

“I found out last night.”

“What’s the other file you want to see?” Lafferty asked, unbelieving.

“Alexandra Drake,” Nick said. Knowing Lafferty wouldn’t leave it alone, he added, “She owned the house next door at the time. Just following up.”

“Where is this Drake woman now?”

“Dead.”

The detective’s eyebrows rose, the only indication he was anything but angry. “How?”

“Don’t know.”

Lafferty rose from his seat. “What have you gotten me into, Mackey?”

He didn’t have the foggiest idea, but he didn’t like it. Nick followed him down the hall and into the cold file storage. After looking through two aisles, endless boxes, and file cabinets, they came up with nothing.

“It could be misfiled,” Lafferty suggested.

Nick drove back to Small Rapids with more questions than answers. He despised unanswered questions. It meant this was the beginning of something only bound to escalate. After he and Lafferty left cold storage, they’d checked the computer files, coming up empty there, too. The only property report to be found about the Drake house was still in Alexandra Drake’s name dating back forty-five years. Aside from her name on the deed, it’s as if the woman never existed.

Seeing Wayne and Steve’s car in the lot at the police station, Nick drove in, an idea brewing.

Steve glanced over the rim of a coffee cup when he walked in, the desk in front of him clear of clutter except a muffin. “I hear you were in Madison today. What for?”

Word does travel fast. Too fast.

“Getting an update on the McArthur case,” he answered evasively.

Wayne turned from the coffeepot with a frown. “That’s not our case.”

“You could’ve called instead of driving up there,” Steve supplied.

Why do they care?
“Someone needed to release Andrew McArthur’s body.”

Wayne leaned against the counter in front of him, his mouth firm. “The funeral is Wednesday.”