Last Resort Page 13

  “Some.”

  Melva took Carissa’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re not shaking the way you were. And you don’t feel as feverish. You were so hot.” She turned to look at someone out of Carissa’s range of vision. “Doctor, what did you say her temperature was when you checked it last?”

  “It’s only about a hundred and one now,” came the rich, comforting voice of Karah Lee Fletcher.

  Carissa peered around the end of a privacy curtain and saw the doctor sitting at the far end of the long room, hunched over a desk. She looked like she was going to be staying around awhile. Thank you, Jesus.

  Not that she was afraid of Melva…

  “What do you remember, sweetie?” Melva’s hand tightened on Carissa’s. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I already told you what I remembered.” She didn’t want to lie to Melva. In the first place Melva would catch it immediately. In the second place, it bugged her to lie. It wasn’t a Christian thing to do. But right now she couldn’t say anything.

  She looked up into her stepmom’s round face and those brown eyes that always seemed to see what she was thinking without a word being said. What was it that had been so familiar about that person last night? It all seemed like a dream now. A horrible dream.

  Melva wiped the perspiration from Carissa’s forehead. “We can’t understand why you went back to the sawmill. Did you hear something? Or maybe you—”

  “I can’t remember it all.”

  “Yes, but anything you might be able to—”

  “I might’ve heard something.” Carissa said it before she could stop herself, and she saw the startled expression on Melva’s face.

  “What did you hear?” her stepmom asked slowly.

  The redheaded doctor across the room looked up from her work and frowned at Melva.

  Carissa swallowed past a dry throat. “Could I have some water? I’m pretty thirsty.”

  The doctor got up and crossed the room. “Of course you can.” She reached for a pitcher on the bedside stand.

  “Carissa,” Melva said in her “take no prisoners” voice, “what did you hear?”

  “Oh, you know, the wind on the trees or something,” Carissa said. “And I thought I heard a horse. Did Gypsy jump the fence again?”

  Melva’s eyes narrowed slightly. “She was where she belonged when I looked this morning.”

  Karah Lee leaned over, stuck a thermometer in Carissa’s ear, pulled it back, looked at it, and nodded. “Even better. Bertie’s keeping something warm for you over in her kitchen. You want us to call her and have it brought over?”

  Okay, this was getting better. “Black walnut pie?”

  Karah Lee laughed. “How about saving that for dessert? She made you some chicken and dumplings. She said it was your favorite.”

  Carissa nodded. Bertie Meyer’s cooking had made the Lakeside Bed and Breakfast famous.

  Karah Lee stepped to the open door and leaned out into the hallway. “Hey, Blaze, will you call Bertie and tell her she can bring that food over for Carissa now?”

  “I can do that,” Melva said. “I’ll just walk down to the Lakeside and—”

  “Nope, that’s okay,” Karah Lee said as she stepped back over to Carissa’s bedside. “Fawn is home from school by now, and she’s helping out in the kitchen today.”

  “All right!” Carissa said. “Fawn is so cool.” And Justin had a huge crush on her, which Melva would never find out about, because if she did, Justin would freak for sure. He’d gotten so secretive lately.

  While Karah Lee listened to Carissa’s breathing with a stethoscope, Carissa avoided looking at Melva. Sometimes, Melva overreacted to things. Like yesterday with Mom and the problem with Justin. Melva had gotten way too freaked about the problem with Justin, and so had Dad. Why couldn’t they treat Justin normally anymore? It wasn’t as if he’d become a different person. He was still Justin, only weirder.

  “Is anybody else here?” Carissa asked when Karah Lee completed her exam. “Is Noelle here? Or Nathan?”

  “The whole family’s here, honey,” Melva said. “Daddy and Justin, Pearl and Jill. They’re waiting to see if you’re going to be okay, but they didn’t want to disturb you while you were sleeping. You want to see them, don’t you? The doctor said you could—”

  “No!” The sharp reply seemed to carry through the room and out the door, and Melva got that hurt look on her face. Carissa hadn’t meant to say it so loudly, but she couldn’t help it. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t let on that anything had happened. Before she could think what to say, someone knocked at the open door.

  “Can we come in?” It was Noelle.

  When she and Nathan entered the room, Carissa sank back against her pillow with a sigh. Thank you, Jesus.

  Nathan followed Noelle into the large hospital-style room, which had only recently been completed by the contractor. He heard the deep tone of Cecil’s voice coming through the door of Cheyenne’s office. The sheriff had arrived in the waiting room moments ago, wearing a freshly pressed uniform and carrying a clipboard and a tape recorder. He was questioning Cecil now. Justin, Jill and Pearl were scheduled to speak with him next.

  Greg was a conscientious sheriff, and he could be trusted to be discreet, but he would also be thorough. He had already spoken with Nathan and Noelle privately. Soon, he would need to interview Melva. Taylor Jackson, the ranger, was already out at Cedar Hollow, following up on Nathan and Noelle’s story.

  This room had all the amenities of a hospital ward with three beds. Currently, only one bed was occupied, but Nathan had overheard Blaze mention that they were expecting another overnight patient later in the day.

  Carissa, the lone patient, looked better than she had when they’d last seen her. Her face was still flushed with fever, but her eyes held a livelier expression, more typically Carissa.

  Melva gave them a tired grin from Carissa’s bedside. “Hey, you two.”

  “Is this a bad time?” Noelle asked.

  “Nope, I was just trying to get this child to spill more details. I think she’s had too much sleep and she’s acting a little hyper.”

  “Noelle, where’ve you been?” Carissa asked.

  Noelle stepped to Carissa’s bedside and grasped the girl’s outstretched hand. “Talking with the sheriff.”

  Melva yawned and stretched. “I think I’ll get some fresh air before my interview. You two going to be here a few minutes?”

  “Yeah, why don’t you go to Jill’s and get some rest after the interview?” Noelle suggested.

  “I don’t want to leave Carissa alone.”

  “We’ll make sure she isn’t alone,” Nathan said. “You haven’t had any sleep, and Carissa’s safe now.”

  Melva hesitated in the doorway. “Maybe I should lie down for a little while.” She looked down at her clothes. “And I could use some freshening up, if you know what I mean.” With a final fluttering of her fingers toward her stepdaughter, she turned and walked down the hallway.

  Nathan strolled over to the door and closed it quietly. “Thanks for watching her for us, Karah Lee. I know you had other work to do.”

  “Not a problem.” The tall, redheaded doctor washed her hands at the sink in the corner of the room, and tugged two paper towels from the dispenser. “When do I get in on the mystery?”

  Carissa sat up in bed. “Mystery?”

  “About what happened to you last night.” Noelle leaned over the bed and gave Carissa a quick hug. “I can see you’re feeling better, so we need to talk.”

  “Mind if I hang out and eavesdrop?” Karah Lee asked.

  “Only if you promise not to tell what you hear.”

  “Promise.” Karah Lee grinned. “You know, patient confidentiality and all that. Can I tell Taylor?”

  “I wish you would.” Nathan pulled a chair over for the doctor. He’d become accustomed to this woman’s frankness, and he trusted her instincts.

  “You should’ve seen them today, Karah Lee,” Cariss
a said. “I thought I was dead. I mean, I was drowning, and the water pressure was pushing me against this rock so I couldn’t swim out, and then somebody grabbed me and I thought it was the whisperer and that the whisperer was going to kill me, and—”

  “Whisperer?” Karah Lee held a hand up to break the flow of Carissa’s rapid-fire words. “What whisperer?”

  “Her abductor,” Nathan said. “What have you told the others, Carissa?”

  “What others? I haven’t seen any others, except Melva, and all she knows is that I fell and hit my head at the sawmill, then woke up in the cave.”

  “That’s all?” Nathan asked.

  “No.” Karah Lee leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Carissa, you just finished telling Melva you heard something.”

  Carissa grimaced. “Yeah, I know. I blew it. Now’s she’s going to be all, ‘Oh, my poor baby, somebody chased you in the dark,’ and she’ll worry and check on me all the time, and she’ll never let me out at night again until I’m, like, twenty-five.”

  “You mean like a real mom?” Noelle asked dryly.

  Carissa dimpled. “Yeah, like that.”

  In spite of the seemingly lighthearted chatter, Nathan could tell Carissa was still spooked. She held tightly to Noelle’s arm with both hands. Her eyes were a little too bright, her movements a little exaggerated. False bravado.

  “Just go over it one more time for us,” Nathan said.

  “The truth or the story we’re telling the others?” Carissa asked.

  “The truth. We’ll tell the others about it soon enough.”

  “Okay, fine.” Carissa gazed toward the ceiling, and recited in a singsong voice, “Someone chased me in the dark, then I fell and hit my head, and whoever it was took me to the cave. And you know what happened after you found me. Somebody pulled the rope out of the sinkhole so we’d starve to death in the cave and our corpses would rot and—”

  “Okay, I get your drift,” Nathan said.

  “Nobody would’ve come looking for us there and there’s no way they would’ve heard our screams before we became too weak to scream. We’d’ve suffered for weeks before we finally died.”

  Nathan saw Noelle wince. Carissa was having decidedly morbid thoughts. She was going to need some generous doses of healthy reassurance after this ordeal.

  “We’re trying to play detective, Carissa,” Noelle said. “And we’re doing all we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Help us all you can, okay?”

  “Okay.” Carissa settled her head back onto the pillow, then winced in pain and sat up again. “That pillow hurts the lump on my skull.”

  Noelle pressed the button to raise the bed into an upright position. “That better?”

  “Yep. Karah Lee says I’m probably going to spend the night here.” Carissa glanced at the doctor. “What if someone tries to get to me again?”

  “We won’t leave you alone,” Karah Lee said. “There’s always a doctor or nurse here if we have patients in the ward.”

  “But you can’t stay by my bed all the time.”

  “Noelle or I will take turns sitting with you tonight, so no one will have another chance to hurt you,” Nathan said.

  “Carissa,” Noelle said, “we need to know more about last night, before you heard anyone. I know your dad wanted you to fetch a ledger at the mill.”

  “Right, because they couldn’t find some information they were trying to enter into the computer, and the books weren’t balanced or something. I wasn’t paying that much attention because I was still mad about Mom, and I was trying to get more information for my report—you know, the one I told you about? I guess I got the wrong ledger, anyway. They wanted one from this year.”

  “So that’s it?” Noelle asked. “They just sat around the living room twiddling their thumbs while you walked to the sawmill alone in the dark?”

  “No, I think Jill was going to the old place to see if she could find some records in the attic. Dad was heating up the calculator.” Carissa glanced toward the door. “Nobody wants to tell me what’s wrong, but there’s money missing.”

  “Any idea how much?”

  Carissa shook her head. “I heard Melva and Daddy yelling at each other a couple of weeks ago, after Justin and I went to bed. You know, Aunt Pearl told me once that Melva doesn’t always keep the books exactly straight. She thinks Melva ought to keep a double check on herself to see where the money goes. Melva says Pearl’s always picking on her, and that she’ll never be able to do it the way Pearl did.” Carissa made a wry face. “Anyway, they’re trying to keep Pearl from finding out about this missing money, because she’ll freak.”

  “Where was everyone else when you left for the sawmill?” Nathan prompted.

  “Justin was supposed to be doing his homework in his room. Takes him so much time, because of his—” she glanced at Noelle, then Karah Lee “—his problem. He keeps checking his work. But he’s getting great grades. I’d get great grades, too, if I checked my work fifteen or twenty times.”

  “What about Melva?” Nathan asked. “Where was she? And where was Pearl?”

  Carissa shrugged. “Melva went to bed with a headache before I went to my room, and you know Aunt Pearl. She goes to bed when the geese go to roost, I think. Anyway, she doesn’t go out after that.”

  Noelle leaned forward and adjusted the blanket over Carissa’s arm. “Honey, this morning before we found you, Melva showed me a poem that she had found in your bedroom. It was in free verse about silence and darkness and the dying moon, nothing like your usual poetry. I know this probably has nothing to do with what happened to you last night, but Melva seemed to think it might be connected.”

  Carissa frowned. “I didn’t write any—” Her brow cleared. “Oh, that. You mean that scary-weird poem? I didn’t write that. I found it up in the attic in the old house with a bunch of your school papers and report cards. I thought you wrote it.”

  Noelle shook her head. “Not me.”

  “That old house might be where the records from Harvey’s office are stored,” Nathan said. “Did you look through those, Carissa?”

  “Yeah, after they delivered them at the sawmill, but I didn’t find anything I could use. It was just a bunch of numbers. I’m looking for the good stuff, like the stories about things that happened. My social studies teacher told me I could probably get written reports from the claims adjuster with the insurance company and the police and newspaper articles. I thought maybe somebody in the family might’ve saved some of that stuff.”

  “Can you remember if you saw the accounting records up in the attic when you went back?” Noelle asked.

  “Yeah,” Carissa said. “I tripped over the box and bruised my shoulder, and Melva got all freaked and told me to be more careful, and I sassed her and Dad made me apologize and Melva told him to stop interfering in our relationship because she could handle—”

  “Okay, let’s get back to last night.” Nathan said. “You told us you’d heard whispers.”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t tell what was said. Later, after I woke up in the cave, I could hear more clearly, and the whisperer called my name and then got all freaked that I was gone.” Carissa hesitated, looked at Noelle. “I still think there was something familiar about that person.”

  “Can you remember any more?” Nathan asked.

  Carissa squeezed her eyes shut, as if attempting to jump-start her brain. Then she opened her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “No idea about why the familiarity?” he asked.

  “Well, in the first place, whoever it was knew my name. But I think it could’ve been the sound of the voice. Or maybe it was the accent, or…I don’t know. It’s like a dream, you know?”

  Someone knocked at the door, and Carissa reached for Noelle’s hand.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Karah Lee said as she opened the door. “It’s food.”

  Fawn Morrison walked in carrying a covered tray. “Hey, squirt! You sure go to a lot of trouble to play h
ooky from school.” The slender, cheeky seventeen-year-old, with her super-short brown hair and gamine grin, seemed to take over the room when she crossed to the bed and set the food on the hospital bed tray table. “Time to eat.”

  While Fawn and Karah Lee kept Carissa company, Noelle ushered Nathan from the room. “We need a brief powwow,” she explained to Carissa. “One of us will be right back.”

  Noelle felt Nathan’s intense interest as she gestured for him to follow her into the hallway. She closed the door behind them, then turned to him. “Can I borrow your truck for a while?”

  He reached into his right front pocket for the keys. “What’s up?”

  She glanced down the temporarily deserted hallway. She could hear the muffled voices of the sheriff, talking with Pearl in Cheyenne’s office, and Cecil’s voice, coming from down the hallway through the reception window, which meant the rest of the family was close by.

  Keys in hand, she said, “I’m going back out to the hollow before it gets dark.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Quick as a snake, he grabbed at the keys.

  She jerked away and stepped back. “Keep your voice down. And don’t cause a scene, or they’ll wonder what’s up.”

  He glared, leaning close to her ear. “We were just out there,” he whispered. “We searched the mill and found nothing.”

  “I know, but Carissa’s given me some ideas,” Noelle said. “I want to check the attic at my old home place. I forgot all about it. The attic’s as big as the living quarters. And Carissa found that poem up there. And the box from Harvey’s office. What else could she have found? Something someone felt she shouldn’t have?”

  “She didn’t say anything about—”

  “She might not realize what she’s found. Or maybe someone thought she found something that she didn’t when she was researching that family history for school. Now’s the perfect time to do some checking around, while everyone else is here in Hideaway. Nathan, until we find out differently, I don’t want to imagine that anyone in my family would hurt Carissa, but it’s obvious she thinks she knows her abductor. Or at least, her abductor knows her. The sheriff needs to get Cecil to release the personnel files for the sawmill employees, and someone needs to check on my ex-husband and find out if he has an alibi for last night at eight o’clock.”