Last Resort Read online

  The others stayed silent, listening.

  Melva rolled her gaze to the ceiling in chagrin. “Leave it to me to blast the news to the four corners of the county. Sorry, don’t mind me. I’m angry at the whole world right now, and I will be until we find our little girl. And blast it, I don’t care what anyone says, she’s my little girl!”

  Noelle gave Melva’s shoulders another affectionate squeeze. “You tell ’em, pal!” she said, then lowered her voice. “How badly did Carissa want to take that trip?”

  “Very.”

  “You know how headstrong she is.” Noelle felt like a traitor to even suggest such a thing, but maybe her instincts were wrong for once, and this conviction that Carissa was in trouble was pure imagination.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Noelle Cooper, and don’t you start that, too. That’s what the sheriff said. Carissa wouldn’t just run away like that.”

  “But if she’s angry—”

  “Nope.” Melva raised a hand to silence Noelle. “I can’t believe she’d do that.”

  “I would have at her age,” Noelle admitted.

  “But Carissa isn’t you,” Melva snapped. She paused, sighed, shook her head. “Sorry. I know you and Carissa are close. I just…don’t ever be a stepmother. The kids are never totally yours, no matter how much you want them to be. Blood relatives always seem to come first, even coldhearted women who should never have been mothers in the first place—although I have to admit that if Justin and Carissa had never been born…” Her voice trailed off, and tears once again filled her eyes. “Listen to me jabber on. I know I can’t be worrying about something like that now.” She squared her shoulders and glanced through the kitchen doorway at the houseful of searchers, still talking, eating, several of them praying at the round dining-room table. She touched Noelle’s arm and gestured toward the far-west corner of the kitchen, where the door to Carissa’s bedroom was closed. “Come with me,” she whispered.

  Stepping past muddy shoes, raincoats and umbrellas, they entered the expansive bedroom, which was, as usual, untidy. “She still hasn’t learned to make her bed, and I stopped nagging her,” Melva said. A chair rail border surrounded the room with horses racing across open prairie, and the curtains had been fashioned from fringed suede the color of buckskin. Noelle knew Melva had spent a lot of time helping Carissa decorate this room with all of the child’s favorite things.

  Melva closed the door behind them. She stepped to the antique dresser and opened the top drawer. Pulling out a handful of pages from a notebook, she sifted through the stack and tugged one sheet from the others. “Take a look at this. Carissa’s always scribbling notes to herself, and you know she’s started writing poetry lately.”

  “She showed me some of her poems a couple of months ago. They’re all about her favorite animals and her closest friends. But, Melva, what do they have to do with—”

  “Read that one. There’s no rhyme scheme, like with her others.”

  The first words caught Noelle’s attention.

  Dead silence in the darkness lurks in wait for

  someone,

  Maybe me. Maybe you.

  It waits, listens, calls

  Darkness calls again, deepens with the moonset,

  Whispers with its song of longing,

  Growing deeper until I go with it,

  Until it enters me and controls me,

  With the death of the moon,

  With the dying moon.

  Suppressing a shudder, Noelle handed the page back to Melva. How could a twelve-year-old girl write something like this? Especially when all her other poems reflected the happiness and joy of life that came from her spirit, or her innocent words of wondering about a mother who didn’t want her.

  “Apparently, she didn’t show it to anyone,” Melva said. “Because I found it here in her drawer beneath all the others.”

  “When?”

  “Last night, when she didn’t return from the sawmill.” Wearily, she combed her fingers through her hair. “Okay, the thought did cross my mind that she might have been hiding, and I was looking for some kind of clue about where she might have gone.”

  Noelle frowned at the poem again. It wasn’t reassuring. “You really think Carissa wrote this?”

  “It looks like her writing, doesn’t it?”

  It looked familiar, all right. Sloppy writing ran in the Cooper family. Noelle herself had been cursed with barely decipherable scribbling, just like Jill. But it didn’t necessarily have to be Carissa’s hand that had written the poem.

  Melva put all the sheets back in the top drawer and shoved it shut. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait.” Noelle reached out and touched her arm. “You don’t think the poem has anything to do with her disappearance, do you?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t get it out of my mind. Call me superstitious, but too much has happened in this hollow for my peace of mind. Too many deaths, and now this.”

  “The deaths were accidents,” Noelle said. “You’re right, you’re being superstitious.” Maybe.

  “I can’t help what I feel. Sometimes it seems like this place is haunted or something.”

  “The only thing we’re haunted by is bad memories, and that’s bad enough.”

  “It’s almost like this place has some kind of a curse on it,” Melva said. “Deaths, divorce, psychological—” She glanced quickly at Noelle, then dropped her gaze. “Anyway, maybe Cecil wouldn’t have made some of the choices that he’s made if he hadn’t allowed his parents to play on his guilt and coerce him into staying here.”

  “You can’t blame a curse for Cecil’s choices any more than I can blame a curse for the choices I’ve made,” Noelle said.

  Melva sank onto the rumpled bed. “Not completely, I know, but I believe there are influences that affect our choices.” She gave Noelle a sheepish glance. “So you don’t think I’m crazy with all this talk about some silly curse?”

  Noelle sat down beside her. “I know you’re not crazy. We’ve known each other too long for that.”

  “Gladys skipped out as soon as things got a little tough,” Melva said, gazing through the open curtains to the field beyond. “The money ran out, and so did she. That’s one reason I hate to see her try to barge back into Justin and Carissa’s lives now. They’re finally settled and living happily without her. To me, it’s just one more curse, especially when the kids are so ready to forgive everything and welcome her back with open arms.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case, Melva. You know those kids love you.”

  “Now that same curse has taken Carissa. And Justin—” Melva clamped her mouth shut.

  “What about Justin?”

  “Never mind. It can’t be the same thing. Surely, surely it can’t be the same thing.” Melva lowered the curtain. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Noelle glanced at the dresser drawer that held Carissa’s papers. If only she could read that poem once more. If only she could look through some more of Carissa’s things, maybe she could get a clue.

  “Maybe Bertie’s right,” Melva said, leading the way to the door. “Maybe together, you and Nathan can find something no one else can.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Did you get any helpful information from Melva?” Nathan had to quick-step to keep up with Noelle along the trail past the house.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. It disturbed me.”

  “Disturbed you how?”

  “Carissa was upset with Melva yesterday because Melva didn’t want the kids taking a cruise with Gladys and her latest guy. Melva showed me a poem she discovered in Carissa’s dresser drawer.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “It was pretty spooky, all about being controlled by some hidden force of darkness.”

  Nathan broke stride. “Carissa wrote something like that?”

  “It isn’t anything like her other poetry. I know, because she showed me some of her writing when I was in Hideaway a couple months ago. Besides, this poem is so
mature. It scares me that Carissa is having thoughts like that. She’s not the family member you’re counseling, is she?”

  “No.”

  “I still think she might have stumbled onto something dangerous. What about drugs? What if she found a patch of marijuana somewhere? Or what if there’s a meth lab somewhere out in the national forest? She could have—”

  “It won’t help to jump to conclusions like that. The last thing a marijuana grower would want is a search party beating the underbrush through the woods at harvest time, and nobody’s turned up any evidence of it.”

  “But a meth lab?” she asked. “Those can be very mobile.”

  “But if someone had a mobile lab, why kidnap Carissa? Why not just pack up and drive away?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because she knew whoever it was, and she could get that person into big trouble.” Noelle’s pace slowed at a fork in the trail, and she glanced at the old track to the right, now overgrown with weeds, that led to the Cooper cemetery. Miniature cliffs formed a narrow passageway for a short distance beyond the cemetery, not far from the house where Noelle and Jill had grown up. Nathan remembered playing around those cliffs as a kid.

  “I’m sure the old house was searched.” Noelle took the left fork that led along the hillside and eventually connected with national forest. The “old” house, where Noelle and Jill had spent their girlhoods, was no longer lived in, but the family had kept their bookkeeping files in the attic for years.

  “We checked it out,” Nathan said, “but remember, Jill said she was at the house last night looking for some old records when Carissa went to the sawmill.”

  The trail narrowed, and Nathan walked in silence behind Noelle for the next mile or so. Her footsteps were brisk, her head down, and he wished he could get a readout of her thoughts right now. When they were growing up, he’d almost been able to read her mind, but it had been many years since they were so attuned to each other.

  They’d been walking silently for ten minutes when they heard voices in a thicket of new growth.

  “I told you to stop wandering off on your own.” The deep voice, heavy with annoyance, belonged to Cecil Cooper.

  Noelle’s steps slowed, and Nathan had to scramble to keep from stumbling into her back.

  “But we’ve looked here, Dad. What good’s it going to do if we keep covering the same ground over and over again?” It was Justin, Cecil’s son. “Why won’t you look any place but Cooper land? Melva says—”

  “Melva’s saying lots of things right now. She’s frantic. She’s not thinking straight.”

  “Well, I don’t see why we can’t split up,” Justin muttered. “We could do a lot more if we weren’t joined at the hip. You’re treating me like I’m Carissa’s age, not seventeen.”

  “You’re acting younger than Carissa.”

  “Dad, you’re acting too weird.”

  Brush rustled at the side of the track, and Cecil and Justin emerged from the edge of the thicket a few yards ahead of Noelle and Nathan.

  Father and son looked a lot alike. They both had the same blue Cooper eyes beneath thick, well-shaped eyebrows. Cecil was a big bear of a man with straight, dark-brown hair cut militarily short, a high forehead and a florid complexion that revealed his temper—as it did now. That didn’t surprise Nathan, since Cecil and his son hadn’t exactly been the best of buds lately.

  Justin, as tall as his father, though not as heavily built, showed the same signs of temper. He made no effort to conceal his anger. Eyes flashing blue fire, he started to speak, caught sight of Nathan and Noelle and clamped his mouth shut.

  Cecil followed his son’s glance, and his expression changed with the suddenness of Ozark weather when he saw his cousin. “So you brought her down anyway. Good going, Nathan.” He strode forward and enveloped Noelle in a hug, ruffling her hair as he had done ever since they were kids. “Jill pulled her big-sister act again, or we’d have called you.”

  “Hi, Noelle,” Justin said, his voice still holding traces of resentment from the argument with his father. He hung back, hands shoved into his pockets. “We haven’t found a thing. They brought the dogs in and everything, did they tell you? Carissa’s not here.”

  “We’re going to find her.” Cecil’s expression remained calm, though annoyance once more edged into his voice. He turned to Nathan. “You two been to the house yet?”

  “We were just there.”

  “Jill didn’t see you, did she?”

  “She sure did.”

  “I bet you took a tongue-lashing,” Cecil said.

  Nathan nodded.

  Noelle touched her cousin’s arm. “Cecil, Melva said Carissa was upset yesterday.”

  For a second, Nathan thought he caught a glimmer of…what, chagrin?…in Cecil’s expression. “Let’s just say she inherited my temper, but that blew over in a hurry. By last night, she was more interested in digging up information about that report of hers than she was about the call from Gladys. She’s talked to all the neighbors, picked Jill’s brain, visited with Pearl and wanted to dig through sawmill records. You know how she is when she gets her teeth into something.” He shook his head slowly. “Wish I hadn’t sent her out in the dark like that.”

  Justin shook his head. “Dad, she’s not a little kid anymore. She’s slipped out lots of times at night like that to go on a walk or check on Gypsy. Why would last night be any different?” He shrugged. “Besides, nothing goes on down here in this holler, you know that.” He looked at his dad, then down at the ground.

  Cecil clamped his big hands on Noelle’s shoulders. “We’re gonna go to the house for a bite, then hit the woods again. Thanks for coming, Noelle. Just having you here with us again helps.” He released her and turned to his son. “Come on, Justin.”

  Justin nodded awkwardly at Noelle. “Glad you’re back, Noelle,” he murmured as he followed his father.

  Noelle stood watching her cousins leave, both of them silent, heads bowed, shoulders stooped as their long-legged strides carried them toward their home.

  “Guilt,” she said softly.

  Nathan looked at her. “What?”

  “Since Mariah and I opened the store, I’ve read a few books on body language, in order to read my customers better. It could be my imagination, but almost everybody in my family’s acting guilty for some reason or other today. It’s weird.”

  “Carissa’s missing, and they all feel responsible. Seems natural enough to me.”

  She turned and continued down the trail. “Okay, one more time, Nathan—who’re you counseling? Is somebody in the family crazy enough to want to get rid of Carissa?”

  He fell into step behind her once again. “Of course not.”

  She wished she could catch a glimpse of his expression without being obvious about it. “You sure it’s not Carissa you’re seeing? Do you think she—”

  “No. I told you I’m not—”

  “I know, I know. You’re not at liberty to divulge that information. So you don’t think your sessions have anything to do with her disappearance.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How can you be sure?” Noelle spread her hands in helpless frustration. “Why can’t you tell me who? Maybe if I knew—”

  “Will you stop it! If I tell you, you might use the information about who it is to decide where to search for Carissa, and that would be wrong. I didn’t bring you here to use your head or to read body language. I brought you here to use that special gift of yours. Tell me where we’re going. You didn’t hesitate to set off in this direction the moment we left the truck.”

  She couldn’t reply, because she wasn’t sure herself. She and Nathan were both intimately familiar with this portion of Cooper land.

  “We’re going to Bobcat Cave, aren’t we?” Nathan guessed.

  As young children, they had spent many hours playing in and around Bobcat Cave—until their parents discovered where they’d been and no longer allowed them to run free.

  “What good would that do
?” she asked. “The entrance is boarded up.” Until this moment, she hadn’t realized it, but Nathan was right. The cave was where she was going. And she had no idea why.

  Carissa awakened to the sound of water splashing down from the cave roof and puddling beneath her cheek. How long had she been asleep?

  Was there someone sitting in the dark listening? Someone she knew?

  The dripping water sounded like a whispering voice—whispering what? A warning? Or a threat? The way her head roared and throbbed, someone could be calling to her and she might not realize it.

  The throbbing in her head grew louder, then softened again. Her stomach felt jumpy and weird, but that could just be hunger. Or fear. She was so scared.

  “Please, Jesus,” she whispered. She clearly heard a splash of water in the distance. It sounded like the waterfall down on the creek after a hard rain, or like the splatter of raindrops on the lake during a heavy storm. A pool?

  She inched her fingers over the rough rock of the cave floor. When she didn’t feel a formation or a drop-off, she crawled forward, moving slowly. The rock turned to clay again. She drew closer to the sound of water, but the splashing distorted the pounding in her head.

  She rested her cheek in the cold clay, suppressing a moan. Quiet. She had to try to be quiet.

  Her nausea got worse, and she felt weak and shaky. If she could only sprinkle her face with some water and put some on her head, maybe it would help her feel a little better. Then maybe her ears wouldn’t roar so loudly.