Last Resort Page 11

  “That memory must haunt him,” Nathan said.

  “Yes, but you know Cecil. The ultimate tough guy. Never let ’em see you sweat, and all that garbage.”

  “Runs in the Cooper family.”

  She glanced at him. “Dad was the same way. So was Grandpa, and Grandma worked right alongside the men without complaint.”

  “So did Pearl, when she wasn’t keeping the books.”

  Noelle shuddered again at the memory of the accident, then returned to the office. Ancient metal file cabinets lined the west wall, between the two desks. On top of the far cabinet lay a thick black ledger, caked with dried mud, its pages crinkled from water.

  “This was what Carissa was carrying?” she asked. “An account ledger?”

  “I think that’s it. Someone must have found it in the driveway and put it there.” Nathan glanced back into the workroom through the open office door, while Noelle paged carefully through the book.

  “It’s an old one,” she said. “The last entries are dated…ten years ago.” She turned another page. “The last date entered was the day of the accident.”

  “Carissa was researching family history for her school report, remember? I’m sure she was searching for details about the accident. In fact, knowing Carissa, she’ll continue with that report as soon as she recovers. Prepare for an interview. I’ve already had mine.”

  “What kind of interview?” Noelle asked.

  “You know, questions like: ‘Were you here the day the tornado hit?’ Or: ‘What were you doing the day of the accident at the sawmill?’”

  “We talked about Mom’s death while we waited for you in the cave. Do you remember much about the sawmill accident?” Noelle asked. “You and your wife were at Cecil’s when I arrived, and it was such a comfort to see you there.”

  He looked over at her and smiled. “Thank you. That means a lot. I remember feeling so helpless, so young and inept at the time.”

  “You were always mature for your age. You handled it well.”

  “There seemed to be an undercurrent of tension among the Cooper clan.”

  She remembered that, too. In fact, she had felt such an overwhelming sense of oppression during that whole time that she’d fled back home to Springfield almost immediately after the funeral. The nightmares that had plagued her afterward, and the depression she’d battled, had been horrendous, and she’d lost considerable confidence in her ability to cope. That was around the same time she was discovering marital bliss wasn’t so blissful. Actually, being married to a drug-and-wife-abuser was a frightening, imprisoning and ongoing nightmare.

  “I picked up on some kind of undercurrent of tension, too,” she said. “I didn’t know what it was. Cecil wasn’t speaking to anyone. Pearl only came out of her house to attend the funeral, and Jill seemed as mystified about the whole thing as I was.” Noelle dusted chunks of dried mud from one of the pages of the ledger. She had known she wouldn’t be able to return here without dredging up old pain.

  Nathan peered at the open ledger. “This doesn’t look like Cooper writing—it’s too readable.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “The truth hurts.”

  “Well, it isn’t Cecil’s writing, because he didn’t keep the books. Aunt Pearl and Grandma did. Then, around the time of the accident, Melva was hired.” Noelle looked up at Nathan, then back at the book. “If Carissa was carrying this last night and someone was trailing her, is it feasible that her pursuer was after this ledger?”

  Nathan circled the desk and joined her at the filing cabinet. He thumbed through the last pages of entries. “If that was the case, don’t you think the ledger would have been taken? And besides, what possible threat could ten-year-old accounting records pose for anyone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nathan continued turning pages until he reached the cardboard backing of the binder. “Here’s something. Look at this.”

  The remnant of a ledger sheet was caught on the bottom ring; someone had ripped out the sheet and left behind a small piece of the page.

  Noelle carried the book to the window for better light. She shuffled through the pages once more, slower this time.

  “This isn’t a full ledger. It could hold three times as many pages.”

  “Maybe someone started a new book. You know—new managers taking over for your dad and grandparents, new ledgers.”

  Noelle frowned, holding the book closer to the light.

  “What is it?” Nathan asked.

  “Impressions. The last page is blank, but there are indentations from writing on this end piece of cardboard. What does that suggest to you?”

  “Someone’s removed incriminating evidence?”

  “Yes, and it would be financial in nature,” she said.

  “Embezzlement?”

  “Any discrepancies would have been caught by the accountant at the end of that year.”

  Nathan looked at her. “You mean Harvey Sand?”

  She felt a frisson of startled dread. “Oh, Nathan.”

  “The sheriff’s still investigating Harvey’s accident, which means the authorities aren’t convinced it was accidental.”

  She closed the book. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions, okay? This could all be a big coincidence.”

  “Jill told us that this wasn’t even the ledger she and Cecil wanted. They needed a ledger from this year to understand a fifteen-thousand-dollar discrepancy on the computer. Look, I know you want to protect your family, but—”

  “I’m not trying to protect anybody, I just don’t want to jump the gun. Cecil and Jill have been entering a lot of data into the new computers, and maybe there was a glitch or something. Just because Carissa was abducted when she was running that errand doesn’t mean that she was carrying evidence.”

  “But do we really want to take a chance?” Nathan asked gently. “This person is dangerous, whoever it is. I really, really hope it isn’t a Cooper, but we can’t take any chances with Carissa’s life.”

  Frustrated and spooked, she combed her fingers through her hair. “I don’t see any box of files in here, so someone probably took the records that Pearl told us were delivered from Harvey’s office to the attic in the old house for storage.” She peered at the open book, frowning. “Please tell me you don’t see a connection between Harvey’s death and Carissa’s abduction.”

  “I’m sorry. It may be nothing, but I’m not willing to let the idea go until we can be sure, and neither are you. Even if we didn’t trust Carissa’s word about her abductor—which we do—someone was serious enough about stopping us to remove that rope from the sinkhole.”

  “We need to ask Carissa about her research for that report,” Noelle said.

  “I’d also like to find out what Harvey knew.”

  Noelle returned to the entrance of the mill, which was dimly lit by windows high on the walls. This was where, many years ago, she had last heard her mother laugh. If Noelle closed her eyes, she could almost hear that sweet voice again, filled with tenderness, calling to her from the office door:

  “Go on, honey, run outside and play. I’ll be finished here in a minute, then we can get Nathan’s cupcakes from the house.”

  “Oh, Mommy, the cave. Can we have our party at our place in the cave?”

  Gentle laughter. Then: “We’ll go there as soon as I’m finished helping with these records.”

  “Can I call Nathan now?”

  Noelle opened her eyes.

  Nathan came up beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Memories?”

  She sighed and nodded. “This mill always frightened me. I think it was all the noise.”

  The sharp fangs of the huge, round saw, as high as her chest, jabbed at the air. A sickle-shaped cant hook that was used to roll the heavy oak, walnut and cedar logs rested on the corner of a flatbed truck. Noelle looked at the hook for a long moment. The very sight of that tool made her shiver, but then this whole place made her uneasy, as if something lingered here that thre
atened to crash through her memories, something she did not want to remember. But the threat of some terrible revelation hung idle; all she remembered was the very loud and continuous activity that always filled this huge building.

  She could almost hear the deafening whine of the saw and almost smell the dusty-tangy sawdust shavings that floated through the air when the mill was in operation.

  The huge contraption that her dad had invented, the sawdust drag, wound around the room’s circumference from directly beneath the saw to the vent that released the sawdust outside into drifts. The drag looked as it always had, a large chain, with cups that scooped the dust efficiently from beneath the huge metal saw. Noelle remembered, as a child, always being afraid of that drag, terrified that it would reach up and grab her when she stepped over it.

  Now she walked out onto the concrete work floor. “Where’s the light switch?” she asked, looking around the office door frame.

  Nathan joined her. “On the other side of the building, near the entrance that the employees use. Cecil had it placed beside the power switches for the equipment.”

  “Do you think something could have been going on here at the mill that someone tried to hide? Some kind of illegal operation?” Noelle asked.

  “What, for instance?”

  “Beats me. That’s why I think we need to see those records that came from Harvey’s office.”

  “If we can find them.”

  Noelle gave the mill one last sweeping look, then went back into the office. “We really need to talk to Carissa. She might know where the records are. Let’s get to the clinic.” She placed the ledger back on the metal file cabinet, then turned to give the office one final glance.

  She couldn’t help feeling frustrated, as though some solution lay within their grasp, if only they could find it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The waiting room at the clinic in Hideaway was generously proportioned. As Nathan led the way inside, he saw the Coopers and several other patients, all looking tired and grumpy, no doubt waiting long past the scheduled times for their appointments.

  A sense of chaos buzzed through the atmosphere; a child cried out from a treatment room; the telephone rang insistently. Jill opened the door from the treatment area and called a patient, while Blaze Farmer manned the desk and grabbed the telephone. Karah Lee raced to the computer station behind Blaze and clattered the keys without sitting down. She looked tired, and her short red hair hung limply over her forehead. She’d been up most of the night, helping with the search for Carissa.

  Blaze completed his call and waved at Nathan. “We were all wondering when the heroes would get here.” Although his light-blue scrubs looked crisp and clean against his ebony skin, his dark-brown eyes showed fatigue, and his short hair could use a comb. Like all his colleagues, he had rushed straight to the clinic from Cedar Hollow.

  As Noelle joined her family at the far end of the waiting room, Nathan strolled to the reception desk. “Skipping school?”

  Blaze grinned. “Any chance I get. Karah Lee and I’ve been trying to reschedule appointments and juggle patients since we got here, and now it sounds like everybody in Hideaway’s trying to call and see how Carissa’s doing.”

  The telephone buzzed once more, and Blaze answered, freeing Nathan to join the family in the waiting room, in a corner area, where two short sofas faced a row of chairs along each wall. Noelle had chosen a chair between Pearl and Cecil, near a rack of children’s books and magazines.

  Cecil and Justin sat hunched forward, elbows on knees, like twin replicas of Rodin’s “Thinker.”

  Cecil straightened in his chair as Nathan approached. “They’re giving Carissa a thorough going-over,” he said.

  “Going to use the CT scanner and everything,” Melva added. “But both doctors checked her over, and Carissa seems to be doing okay, except for that nasty bump on the back of her head and the fever.”

  “It’s coming down, though,” Cecil said.

  Melva rested her hand on Justin’s shoulder, as if to reassure herself that her stepson was okay. “That’s what Karah Lee told us a minute ago,” she told Nathan. “Jill’s all gripey because Cheyenne won’t let her take Carissa over to the CT scanner.”

  Hideaway Clinic was not officially a hospital yet; it was designated a rural clinic. The director, Dr. Cheyenne Gideon, had seen to it that the facility was well-equipped for most emergencies. Nathan had always been impressed by Cheyenne. Cheyenne had recently announced her plans to seek a hospital designation.

  Hideaway’s population increased fourfold during the summer months, just as neighboring Branson’s popularity increased. Like Branson, Hideaway was quickly becoming a tourism boomtown, and for the past couple of years, both towns’ tourist populations had continued into the autumn months. The clinic needed more staff. Even Nathan helped out from time to time when he could, using his emergency medical training to full advantage.

  The door to the exam rooms swung open, and Nathan caught a glimpse of Karah Lee racing down the hallway, clipboard in hand.

  Jill’s voice carried through the reception window. “I don’t know why I can’t stay with Carissa. You know she’s scared—all that CT equipment can be overwhelming for a kid.”

  “Taylor will keep her calm,” Nathan heard Cheyenne answer softly.

  “Taylor’s a good paramedic, but you’re letting him attend Carissa instead of her own flesh and blood.”

  “It isn’t a good idea for a doctor or nurse to treat a family member,” Cheyenne said. “Besides, I need you here.” Cheyenne looked out the reception area window, and her gaze stopped at Nathan. She gave him a brief nod.

  He nodded back. Good. She was keeping Carissa safe. Taylor Jackson was a ranger as well as a paramedic, and he would keep close watch on Carissa. He helped out here at the clinic often between his ranger duties. Word around town was that Taylor was being groomed to direct the ambulance service—when and if Hideaway’s city council agreed with the mayor that it was necessary.

  “I hope Carissa will be okay during the CT scan over there in that big old truck,” Melva said.

  “She’ll be fine,” Cecil assured her. “It takes more than a few X-ray machines to scare my girl.”

  The CT unit was brought to Hideaway once a week via a tractor-trailer unit—a godsend for this community.

  Nathan glanced toward the door. He needed to check on his pharmacy, to make sure the pharmacist filling in for him wasn’t having any problems. Nathan looked at Noelle, talking softly to Pearl about the older woman’s latest crop of herbs, then he glanced at Justin, who was staring at the floor, apparently deep in contemplation. The boy’s lips moved from time to time, as though he was reciting something in his head and couldn’t disconnect the link between his thoughts and his mouth.

  Justin was a brilliant kid with uncommonly intense focus…something that had been causing him a lot of difficulty lately.

  “Noelle.” Cecil’s deep voice rumbled softly, his gaze on the floor as if he were intensely interested in the pattern of the carpet. “You want to tell me again how you two found Carissa so fast?”

  “Nathan and I were close to the cave when we heard her scream.”

  “So you’re saying it was all coincidence.” Cecil didn’t sound convinced.

  “We were in the right place at the right time to save Carissa,” Nathan said. “You know I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  Cecil broke his staring match with the floor long enough to meet Nathan’s gaze. “You’re a pharmacist now, pal. You don’t have to play preacher with me anymore.”

  “Cecil,” Melva warned.

  “What?” he snapped, showing the first signs of irritability due to weariness.

  “What on earth was she doin’ in Bobcat Cave in the first place?” Pearl grumped. “I can’t figure it.”

  “Simple,” Melva said. “She lost her flashlight, got lost, wandered from the road.”

  Pearl patted her chest, then reached up to push her thick, coarse gra
y hair from her forehead. “What with the only usable entrance sealed shut, only way Carissa could’ve gotten into that cave would be to fall through the sinkhole the same way Noelle and Nathan climbed down, and if she’d done that, she’d be a lot worse off than she is.”

  “We don’t know how she got in.” Melva’s voice also took on an edge of irritability. “Nobody will even let us in the room with her. It’s like they think we’re going to contaminate her or something.”

  “Carissa’s been through a difficult ordeal,” Nathan said. “I’m sure they just want to keep her calm.”

  “By keeping her family away from her?” Melva complained. “You’d think they’d realize having her loved ones around her would make Carissa feel better.”

  “Not the way we’ve all been griping at each other lately,” Justin muttered. “That’d make any bratty little sister get lost for a while.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Cecil growled.

  “Justin, our disagreements have nothing to do with what happened,” Melva said. “Carissa was knocked out and she got lost. That’s the only explanation. She wouldn’t run away over the silly little argument we had about that…that woman.”

  Justin gave his stepmom a dark look. “She is our mother.”

  Melva’s expression froze. Obviously, Gladys was a touchy subject with this family. Why, Nathan wondered, couldn’t Gladys remain out of the Coopers’ lives, now that she’d abandoned her responsibilities and gone off for more moneyed pastures?

  Cecil leaned close to his son. “Give it a rest. We’re not at our best right now, and talking about your mother can only make things worse.”

  “Dad, all I was saying was that Carissa sure doesn’t need us all in there snipping at each other.”

  “Point made.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve reached Gladys yet about all this, have you?” Melva asked her husband.

  “No, I haven’t called her again,” Cecil said. “I’m not any crazier about talking to her than you are, believe it or not.”

  Melva’s cheeks grew pink. She folded her arms over her chest and glanced at Noelle. “No matter how much a stepmom loves her stepchildren, their blood mother just has to say ‘Boo,’ and they forget you like an old ghost.”