The Lost Girls of Johnson's Bayou (16 page)

Normally, the keys would have been safe there, and it would have been a logical place to keep the spares, as usually only Ginny or Madelaine had a key to the café or were in the kitchen. But Saul had been in there alone for a week, and Ginny hadn’t even thought about the spare keys being in the drawer. She’d bet anything Madelaine hadn’t, either. He’d had an entire week to make a copy of the keys, and neither Ginny nor Madelaine would have been the wiser. And the hardware store wouldn’t even blink at the contractor having keys made.

Ginny prepared the drinks and carried them back into the café, careful to mask the worried look she knew she’d developed after finding the keys. Madelaine dropped the valance she’d been folding onto the counter as Ginny stepped through the doors.

“Thanks,” she said gratefully and took a huge swig of the ice-cold tea. “It’s humid in here.”

Ginny took a sip of her soda and glanced around the café at the remaining valances. “What are you going to do with these?”

“Probably give them to the church. The color’s still good on the fabric since I had them dry-cleaned all these years, and they need some new valances for the nursery. They’ll look nice, since the walls are pale blue.”

“I assume you’re going to have them cleaned first?”

“Of course. What kind of Christian gives dirty stuff to a church?” Madelaine laughed. “For that matter, I guess we better check all the seams before I take them to the cleaners and fix anything that’s loose.”

“Okay.” Ginny stretched one of the valances across the counter with the length trailing over the front edge. Slowly, she pulled the fabric toward her, inspecting the hem on the top and bottom of the valance as she pulled. When she got to the end of the valance, she saw a frayed thread below an unusual lump in the fabric.

She felt the fabric and realized that something fairly stiff was inside the one-inch hem. She pulled a bit on the thread and exposed a couple of inches of the seam. “There’s something inside the hem on this one,” Ginny said.

Madelaine looked over and nodded. “Sometimes people sew a cardboard piece or something else stiff in the hem to make them hang right. Although…there doesn’t appear to be any in this one.”

“The seam’s already loose. Do you want me to take it out?”

“Might as well. It’s probably deteriorated anyway after all this time.”

Ginny stuck her fingers into the seam and tried to pull the folded paper, but all she accomplished was tearing off a piece. She tossed the scrap on the counter and prepared to tackle the hem again when something caught her eye.

The scrap had writing on it.

She picked up the piece and studied it closely, but all she could make out was the letter “s.” Her pulse quickened and she pulled the thread to widen the opening in the hem. It could be nothing. It could be a grocery list.

But everything in her body screamed that this scrap of paper that had been tucked in a valance hem for sixteen years was very important. She wriggled her fingers into the hem and grasped the paper, then slowly eased it out from the fabric. Her hands shook as she unfolded the yellowed paper.

Please help u

Ginny gasped and slid the scrap with the s across the counter and fit it into the gap at the end of the sentence.

“What’s wrong?” Madelaine’s voice sounded right next to her and Ginny jumped. She reached for the papers, hoping to slide them off the counter before Madelaine could see, but it was too late.

“Oh, my.” Madelaine stared in horror at the childlike print. “Those poor girls.”

“It could be anything,” Ginny tried to rationalize. “It could be from homework or stories made up for fun.”

Madelaine narrowed her eyes at Ginny. “It could be, but that’s not what you believe. I can see it in your face, Ginny. You know something. You and Paul are up to something. I’ve kept quiet about it because it didn’t appear to be anything serious and I thought you deserved a bit of fun, but I want to know what’s going on. I’m making it my business now.”

Ginny stared at Madelaine for a moment, not even knowing where to start, and when she finally opened her mouth to speak, a knock sounded on the café door. They both looked over to see Paul standing in front of the café and giving them a wave.

“Excellent timing,” Madelaine said as she walked to the front door to let him in.

Paul stepped through the door into the café and gave Madelaine a big smile. Madelaine scowled and said, “I want you two to tell me everything you’ve been up to. And you’re going to start.”

She pointed her finger at Paul, who now stared at her with a deer-in-the-headlights expression. “Who are you, really? What do you want with my daughter? And what happened to those girls at that school?”

Chapter Thirteen

Paul stared at Madelaine, at a complete loss for words. He looked over at Ginny, who stood frozen at the counter and wondered what in the world had happened to set her mother off. “Did I miss something?” he asked.

Ginny nodded. “Yeah. You need to look at this.” She explained the stack of valances on the counter and pointed to the note she’d found inside the hem.

Paul felt his blood go cold as he read the words. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t up-front with you,” he said to Madelaine, “but Ginny and I didn’t want to worry you, especially because we don’t really know anything concrete yet.”

“About what happened to those girls?” Madelaine asked.

“Yes,” Paul replied. “That’s part of it, but there’s a lot more. Maybe we should all sit. This is going to take a while.”

Madelaine slid into a chair at one of the tables and Paul and Ginny took a seat across from her.

Paul handed her her blood pressure medicine. “Maybe you should take that first.”

Madelaine narrowed her eyes at him and downed a pill with her tea. He could tell she was still put out, but maybe by the time he’d finished explaining everything to her, she’d understand why Ginny had been less than honest.

He started at the beginning with his real reason for coming to Johnson’s Bayou. Madelaine listened in rapt and sometimes shocked attention as he covered finding Ginny, their visit to the house, Ginny’s recent feelings of being watched and her suspicions that someone had been in her apartment. Then he told her about the shooter from the night they visited the old school and his suspicions about Ginny’s attacker the night before.

The color vanished from Madelaine’s face as he talked. “I can’t believe someone tried to kill you—twice,” Madelaine said, her voice almost hoarse. “And you didn’t tell me.”

“Oh, Momma,” Ginny said, “the last thing I wanted was to put you in danger. You know if the situation was reversed you would have done the same thing.”

Madelaine wasn’t quite convinced, but she didn’t argue. “Are you starting to remember?” she asked Ginny.

Ginny nodded. “I think so, but it’s more of a feeling than a memory. Sometimes, I feel like someone’s watching or someone’s in danger, but the fear is almost like that of a child afraid of monsters, not an adult afraid of a predator. I know that sounds odd. Every once and a while, I look at something and just for a millisecond, I have this flash like I’m going to remember and then it’s gone.”

Madelaine looked at Paul. “Do you think she’s going to remember?”

“I think she’ll eventually remember something or feel a familiarity when seeing certain people or things that weren’t there before. It’s hard to say if any of that will ever become clear.”

Madelaine reached across the table and took Ginny’s hand in hers. “I wish you would have talked to me about all this, but I understand why you didn’t. You’re a good girl, Ginny, and the best daughter anyone could ask for. I know you need to do this, but I need you to come out of it alive. For me. I’m just gonna be selfish and say it. So if it comes down to those girls resting in peace or you being alive, you know where my vote lies.”

Ginny brushed at the tears on her cheek with her free hand. “We were being careful. As careful as we could be, but it didn’t stop him from coming after me. This was bound to happen when I started remembering. He started after me right after I started to remember.”

Madelaine stared at her. “You’re saying he’s been stalking you for what—months, years? And we’ve never noticed? How can that be?”

Ginny glanced at Paul and said, “I don’t think he had to stalk me.”

Madelaine looked confused for a moment, as if she was waiting for Ginny to finish her thought, then it dawned on her exactly what Ginny was saying. Her hands flew up to cover her mouth. “It’s someone we know. That’s what you’re telling me. That someone you’ve probably served coffee every week of your life is trying to kill you.”

“He must have been watching closely and noticed a change when I started having those flashes,” Ginny said. “My going to look at the school just reinforced what he was already thinking. I’m lucky Paul was here when it started, otherwise, I don’t know how things would have turned out. I had no idea the magnitude of what I was stepping into.”

“Neither did I,” Paul said to Madelaine. “I swear to you, I had no idea of all the trouble my investigation or Ginny’s remembering would cause. Someone has been hiding a dark secret for a long time, and even though we have no idea what the secret is or who’s hiding it, we’ve made ourselves targets.”

“So that’s it?” Madelaine said, a bit of an edge to her voice. “You just intend to walk around with targets on your back?”

“Absolutely not,” Paul said. “I intend to find out what happened sixteen years ago. Ginny will never be safe until it’s all exposed.”

“I want to know what you’re doing every second of this.” Madelaine gave Paul a look that clearly said no arguing was allowed. “I’m an old woman and not fit for running from shooters, but I expect to know everything you two are doing. I need to know when to send backup. You can’t continue this without a backup plan.”

“I agree,” Paul said. “The stakes have increased dramatically, and it will make me feel better knowing someone I trust knows what we’re doing and when to call for help. I can’t tell you what that means yet, though. First, we have to determine our next step.”

“First,”
Ginny said, “in addition to the security system Paul’s getting for us, I want to change the locks on my apartment. Every time the café is empty, someone has the opportunity to get in there. I know locks won’t keep people out if they really want in, but it will make it a lot harder to get in without exposing himself.”

Madelaine narrowed her eyes at Ginny. “You think Saul took my key when he was building those countertops? That’s why you asked about him earlier. Is the key to your apartment still in my desk drawer?”

“Yes, along with a key to your house, but he had plenty of time to copy them and put them back.”

Madelaine’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think—”

“Of course not,” Ginny interrupted. “Why would you?”

“So you think it’s Saul? Is he the one?” Madelaine asked.

“We don’t know,” Paul said. “It could have been him, or someone could have dropped by to talk to him and he let them in. There’s really no way to know for certain without asking, and I don’t want to alert him. I’m going to be watching him closely, though, especially as he’ll be here painting.”

Madelaine shook her head. “This is so much more complicated than I imagined. You’re right. Anyone in town could have stopped by and he’d have let them right in. There could be any number of keys out there by now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Paul said. “I’ll visit the hardware store and pick up a new lock. The hardware comes with two keys, so that way no one else will get a chance to touch them but me and the two of you. And while I’m at the hardware store, I’ll make sure everyone there knows I’m changing out the locks here so that bit of information can work its way around town. With any luck, it will filter to your attacker so he’ll know that avenue is closed or at least infinitely more difficult to disguise.”

“Why would people gossip about my changing the lock on my apartment?” Ginny asked. “This is a small town, but really, more is going on than that.”

Madelaine laughed. “They won’t care about you changing your lock, but they’ll certainly talk about a handsome, young stranger doing it for you, especially after he rescued you last night.” She gave Paul an approving nod. “You’re a sharp young man.”

Paul sighed. “I wish that were true. If I were sharper, perhaps I’d find my sister.”

Madelaine’s expression grew sad. “You’re sure Ginny’s not your sister, right?”

“She has the wrong eye color.”

“But you think your sister was at the school?”

“Yes. I think that’s where Ginny got the design she uses for her jewelry. My sister drew it on everything.”

Madelaine’s eyes widened. “Oh! What about the other girl? The one who the firefighters pulled out alive?”

“So far, I haven’t been able to locate her. My partner tracked her to the hospital in New Orleans, but I talked to some of the people who cared for her back then. That’s where I was yesterday—why I wasn’t here protecting Ginny. But it was a dead end. No one knows where the girl went after she was released from the hospital.”

“I do.” Madelaine rose from the booth, an excited look on her face. “Or at least, I know someone who probably will. Give me a minute.”

Madelaine ran into the kitchen, and a couple of seconds later they heard her talking on the phone. Her voice was high-pitched and had an excited tone, but they couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying. Paul tried not to get his hopes up, but it was impossible. If Madelaine had another lead for him to follow, it might be the break he’d been looking for.

Several agonizing minutes later, she ran back into the café, her face flushed with excitement. She handed Paul a piece of paper with a name on it. “That’s her,” Madelaine said. “I had a friend who worked at the rehab center where she went after the hospital discharged her. She called me as soon as the girl arrived to ask about the school and the fire. She was trying to put together what had created her condition, hoping that would give her some insight into designing therapy for her.”

“And she’s still there?”