The Forever Stone (41 page)

This time she didn’t trip over it.

At the corner of the porch steps lay a pile of broken glass and the jagged neck of a bottle. To remind Sid of his promise?

Tara met them at the door and hugged them both. “Two of you! Uncle Sid’s got this cool project going in the garage. He’s building himself a ’57 Chevy Bel Air. Did you see the frame out front?”

Her glance swung to Madeleine. “He’s fine today, don’t worry. C’mon into the kitchen.”

She made tea, and Madeleine listened to the girls talk, waiting for footsteps.  

The back door closed and Uncle Sid strolled into the kitchen.

He did look sober today. The red whiskers were gone. A smile stretched across his gaunt features. Never mind that it made him look wolfish. At least the man was trying.

“May I, uh, join you ladies?” 

“Sure,” Tara said. “Have a cookie.”

He helped himself to a can of beer from the fridge and sat down.

An awkward silence fell. Tara was eyeing the beer can, scrawled with black letters: MINE—KEEP YOUR PAWS OFF. Bria was watching him as if he were a coiled rattlesnake.

Madeleine waited for him to ask the inevitable question.

He gurgled down his beer, ate two cookies, and reached for a third. “So you gave it to him.”

“As you told me to.”

The man flushed. “No more hard stuff for me.” He stared at the half-eaten cookie in his hand. “Questions, you said.”

So he remembered. “Yes.” She put down her cup. “I have questions about that pendant.”

He looked puzzled, and she said, “That silver medallion on a cord.”

He lurched to his feet, knocking his chair over backwards. “That bit of dirty metal? That ain’t no silver medal. Just a piece of junk.”

“Where did you get it?”

He sucked in his cheeks. “My brother found it.”

“Sam?”

“Yeah. He’s dead. Got what he deserved.”

Tara quivered, and Madeleine put a hand on her arm. “Where’d he find it?”

“Just fell out.”

“Out of what?”

“Glove box. Car.”

“What car?”

“Confound it, woman, you sound like a plinkin’ cop.” He picked up the chair, reversed it, and sat down facing her. “We didn’t do nothing wrong. I’ll tell you the whole thing, just don’t rush me.”

She kept her eyes on his face. Please, Lord, let him tell the truth.

He spoke in spurts, as if the beer were firing his brain. “Me and Sam was out walking—nice day for a walk. We find this car in the bushes, kind of pushed away from the road. Windshield broke. Fender bashed in. Nobody around. So we take a couple things off.”

He shrugged. “No point in letting good tail lights go to waste.”

A pause.

“What about the silver medallion?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sam looks inside. There’s something in the glove box. Binocular case. He gets all excited, but it’s empty, except for that metal thing. So he puts it in his pocket, and then he takes out the radio. We’ve got as much as we can carry and we get out of there.”

Regret passed over his face. “I went back the next day with my truck. Good tires on that car, but it was gone.”

She frowned. “How could you go back and find a place like that? Do you expect me to believe this?”

He straightened, looking offended. “Listen here, I’ve walked these woods all my life. I swear, I know exactly how I done it. Let’s see . . .”

He gave her a measuring glance. “Started at Quaker Bridge.” His voice grew more certain. “Yeah, that’s it. Walked up that road. Big white tree. There’s some ruins. Past that, a little road goes off to the left.”

“What’s it called?”

He shrugged. “Went down it a good ways, along the river, sort of. Trees get thick and—don’t rush me—somewhere along there . . .” He picked up the beer can and slowly crushed it into a handful of red and white. “Found that car. In the bushes, like I told you. Past a big old pine blocking the road.”

He spun the fractured can across the table and leaned back, looking smug.

“But it was gone when you returned?”

“Somebody must’ve towed it away. Or dumped it in the bog.”

“Who?”

The man chewed on his lip. “Dunno.”

Bria leaned forward and Madeleine knew why, and she had to ask, “What kind of car was it?”

“Nothing special. One of them Ford Escorts. Black.”

Bria made a tiny sound of distress, but Madeleine couldn’t stop now. “So Sam took the metal thing?”

“Gave it to his wife. She fancied weird stuff like that. How come you have to know all this?” He smirked. “Sally and Dixie are always fighting over it. You want it too?”

He unfolded himself from the chair. “Got a lot of work to do. Buildin’ me a car.”

He was walking away, and she still didn’t know enough. Quickly she asked, “When did all this happen?”

But he didn’t hear or couldn’t remember because he kept going, and a minute later the back door slammed shut.

Tara nudged the beer can into the center of the table. “You heard him. My dad found it.”

Bria sat white-lipped and silent.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Madeleine said quietly. “We’ll sort it out. Bria and I need to go back to the Manor now.”

Tara looked downcast. “He always spoils our parties. Can you come back tomorrow? I don’t have to go to school.”

“Why not?”

“Sid says I gotta stay and help him with that car he’s building. He’s taking out the engine. You should see the pulley system he’s rigged up. It’s cool.”

If she came back soon enough, maybe she could get a little more out of Sid.

“You’re sure no one will mind?” Like Dixie.

“Nah. It’ll be okay if we stay in the garage.”

“Maybe just for a few minutes,” Madeleine said, deliberately vague. “I’ll have to see.”

“Phone me tonight?”

The girl’s persistence was heartwarming. Isn’t this what she’d prayed for? “Yes, I’ll phone you.”

Bria didn’t speak on the trip back. She looked out the window, her lips crimped as if she were struggling not to cry.

Her father’s car must have been a black Escort.

But weren’t there hundreds of cars like that? (With a pendant in the glove compartment?) If only they could be sure about the car. What had happened to it? Why had it disappeared?

At the Manor, Jude was helping Remi strip paint off the hearth. Remi grinned. “See this?” He pointed to the dirty white stone under the scum. “It’s sure enough marble.”

“Good for you,” she said.

But Jude had read her face. “What’s the matter?” He glanced from her to Bria, who was hunched in the doorway. His sister sent him a look, and he recoiled as if he’d been struck. 

Madeleine ached for them both. Do something! “Do you know a place called Quaker Bridge?”

“Sure,” Jude said.

“Can you tell me how to get there?”

He swallowed. “It’s about the pendant, isn’t it? About Dad?”

“Tara’s uncle said something about finding the pendant. In a car in the woods. I don’t know whether to believe him or not.”

Did the man have enough imagination to make up all those details?

Jude wasn’t asking questions. “Let’s go. But it’s all sand roads out there. You’d get stuck in a minute.”

Remi stood up from the hearth. “I could drive my truck,” he said. “It’s a 4 x 4—we can go anywhere.”

Bria straightened. “I want to come.”

“Sure,” Remi said. “It’s got a crew cab.”

Jude looked at Madeleine’s sneakers. “You’d better wear your hiking boots. And bring a flashlight. It’s going to get dark.”

Hope pounded through her, but it had a sickening tinge of dread. She hoped Sid was telling the truth. She hoped there’d be a car. She hoped it wasn’t the right one.

Surely Rhys Castell was still alive, somewhere.

It seemed a long way, and the sand roads were as confusing as ever, but finally Remi paused at a narrow metal bridge. “Now what?”

“He said he walked up the road,” Madeleine said. “Mentioned a big white tree. And ruins.”

The soft, furrowed sand had become hard-packed, but Remi drove slowly. They passed a clearing, and Jude pointed out a dead tree that was stripped of bark and pale enough to be white. He and Remi discussed whether white trees could refer to the Atlantic white cedars beside the river, but it seemed unlikely.

The farther they went, the less certain she felt. “Ruins,” she said again. “And a little road that goes off to the left.” She stared out the window into the trees.  

From the back seat, Jude said quietly, “Not here, is it? I didn’t think there were ruins around Quaker Bridge.”

Bridge. Ruins. River. A warm hand holding hers, the shared happiness.

“Wait,” she said. “There’s some ruins farther up the river. Maybe not this river, even. At Hampton something.”

“Hampton Furnace?” Jude said. “I’ve been there.”

“It has a bridge too, not very big” she said. “With some ruins before you get to it.”

“Yeah,” Remi said, “from what I’ve seen, you can have ruins, sand roads, bridges, and rivers just about anywhere in these zillions of trees. It’s a really cool place, but it makes me feel small.”

Jude blew out an audible breath. “Keep going, Remi. This’ll take us to Atsion.” A minute later, he asked, “Mollie, how come you know about Hampton Furnace?”

“Nathan and I—Doc—did some exploring around there on Saturday. We were checking out a hike for the teens.”

Beside her, Remi grinned, but he didn’t say anything, and neither did the others.

Past Atsion they turned onto Hampton Road, which was as rough as she remembered, and much longer.

At last Jude said, “Here’s the meadows.”

“That big sycamore,” she said slowly, “I remember it. Kind of white.”

“There’s furnace ruins in all that grass,” Jude said.

Remi edged past a mud hole, just as Nathan had done, and peered at the road Nathan had wanted to come back to. “Think it’s this one?”

Jude shrugged. “He said off to the left, didn’t he? Whatever that’s worth.”

She nodded, and he spoke her thought aloud. “Still lying?”  

Remi swung onto it. “Let’s find out.”

It was the narrowest road she’d seen yet, with trees crowding close on both sides, and it soon became a series of humps, but Remi sent his truck across them like a skier cresting moguls. To her right, she glimpsed the river.

“Lots of bushes here for hiding a car,” Remi said. “When did you say this happened?”

“I didn’t,” Madeleine said. “He never got around to telling me, and I thought of it too late.”

“Three years ago,” Bria said in a stifled voice. “If it’s Dad’s car.”

Remi didn’t know all the details, and to his credit, he wasn’t asking a bunch of questions.

Jude muttered, half to himself, “Might be all grown over.”

“True.” Remi crouched over the steering wheel, peering ahead. “Is that the tree?”

A huge pine sprawled from one side of the road to the other, an imposing barricade of wood and dead branches. Travelers had solved the problem by detouring around it through the underbrush, and Remi followed their tracks, accompanied by an ominous scratching sound.

“Huh,” Jude said. “How many big old pine trees block the roads around here?”

“About five hundred,” Remi said.

“Got to try it,” Jude said. “Find a place to park.”

Remi nosed his truck into the bushes. “This will have to do,” he said, reaching for a flashlight.

After they’d pushed through the bushes, they came to a stretch of widely-spaced pines and Madeleine looked down the sandy aisles between the trees. “No car here. He said it might have been dumped in a bog. Where?”

“If he meant the river, it’s on the other side of the road,” Jude said. “Not nearly big enough to hide a car.”

“Swamps anywhere?” Remi asked.

“Plenty. This used to be all cranberry bogs. Let’s take a hike down here.” He and Remi started at a trot toward a grove of cedars on the far side of the pines, and Madeleine and Bria followed more slowly.

The cedars gave way to another forest, thick with underbrush. “Wait here,” Jude said. “We’ll see how far this goes.”

They disappeared into the trees and returned a few minutes later, breathing hard. “Swamp.”

“You couldn’t get a car through there,” Remi said. “Not even three years ago.”

Jude said, “Try up farther.”