The Man From Primrose Lane Part 24

He opened his mouth and waved his head around.

"Are they okay?" asked Tanner.

"Oh, yes," she said. "No concerns there. Now tell me, little one, do you know any poems? I delight in poetry. A fine poem always makes me smile."

"'This is just to say, I have eaten the plums that were in your icebox and which you were prolly saving for breffast. Forgive me. They were delicious. So sweet and so cold.'"

For a moment her sternness persisted. Then she chuckled. "Brilliant," she said, reaching out and touching his cheek. "Williams is one of my favorites."

"Are you really my grandmother?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Well, how come I've never seen you before?"

"That is a very good question for which there is no good answer. Silly grown-ups. Silly, silly grown-ups with their silly grown-up problems. I'll make you a deal, Tanner. I'll tell you all about it someday. But right now I have to talk to your father a bit. I have to talk to him about some of those silly grown-up things before it gets any later. Then we'll all have supper. But for a couple minutes do you think you could go with ... do you think you could go with Grandpa over there? He wants to show you the pool table in the cellar."

"Ever shoot pool?" asked Mike.

"Never," said Tanner.

"Then I'll show you some tricks." He held out his hand and Tanner took it without a second thought and let his grandfather lead him out of the room.

When they were gone, Abigail turned to David and removed her gla.s.ses. "You pa.s.sed a wine rack on your way in. There's a corkscrew hanging above it. Find us something red."

David obliged. As he returned, Abigail was lighting a thin cigarette with a match.

"Do you smoke, David?"

He shook his head.

"Good. Bad habit. Especially with kids in the home."

He poured them each a tall gla.s.s, then sat in a wicker chair facing Abigail. She finished the cigarette, staring at the great lake outside as if she might be waiting for the Edmund Fitzgerald and its load of iron ore to come gliding into the harbor, just a little off schedule. When she finished, she picked up her gla.s.s with a shaky left hand and urged it to her lips.

"I look back, David, and my biggest regret is not telling you about the history of depression and suicide that runs in my family. I feel that if I had, maybe you would have recognized the signs..."

"I was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. I wouldn't have been able to recognize the signs if she had been waving them in my face. I knew she was sad. Thought it was typical postpartum stuff. Then it was over."

Abigail nodded. "My uncle Steven was so determined, he took a bottle of aspirin, tied a noose around his neck, stood on the barn rafters, and then shot himself in the face with a Kraut handgun he stole off a dead German in World War II."

David waited for her to continue. He knew some things needed airing before he could start asking his questions.

"I read your book, by the way. I watched the Dateline special on TV. Did she ever read your book?"

"No."

"It's a little too close to home," said Abigail, nodding. She took another sip of the wine. "I'm so glad I got to meet Tanner. You have no idea. I know you probably hate me. That's fine." When he tried to reply, she waved his words away. "Hush. I know what I know. They were identical twins, David. She looked exactly like Elaine. It was hard enough seeing my dead girl's face every day-there's no closure with that arrangement, ever. But what was worse was her voice. Every time I heard her playing in the other room, talking to her My Little Ponies, on some basic level my mind always insisted that it was Elaine I was hearing, that she was back and her abduction had just been a nightmare."

"She knew your reasons," he said. "She understood. But she didn't accept it. I don't think I could, either."

"I wonder," said Abigail, eyeing him with something close to amus.e.m.e.nt. "I think maybe you could, if you found yourself in that situation. I bet you'd be surprised."

"Fortunately, we'll never know," he said.

She looked away. "You're up against the wall out there in Akron," she said. "Read the papers. Read the blogs. Are you going to face charges in this man's death?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. There's a better suspect. I didn't do it, if that's what you're asking."

"One blog is saying the police found Elizabeth's prints in the man's house, somewhere."

"It's true."

"Was my daughter stepping out on you, David?"

"I didn't think so. I don't know."

"Would it make you mad if she had?"

"Of course. But I wouldn't kill him. Or try to."

"I told Mike, when my sister called and told me you wanted to meet, I told Mike that what you really wanted was to ask me about Elaine's murder. He said I was being paranoid. That you just wanted to reunite Tanner with this side of the family. I was right, wasn't I?"

"You were right."

"You think the man who murdered my Elaine is the same man who shot the Man from Primrose Lane."

"I think it's possible. I've come across some evidence that shows someone was trying to track down the Man from Primrose Lane. A man who fits the description of Elaine's abductor. I'm almost positive the Man from Primrose Lane was the man who saved Elizabeth's life back then, the guy who interrupted the abduction too late in the game to save Elaine."

"Another mystery," she said. "I was never any help to the police. Did Elizabeth ever tell you that?"

"She never talked about it."

"I couldn't give the police anything useful. That's what they told me. It was my fault, I guess, since I was a casual drinker and couldn't even remember what clothes Elaine was wearing that day."

"I don't think it was a crime of opportunity," said David. "The man was waiting for them to cross through the park. I think he knew they were coming. I bet they went there every day after school."

"They were at the park all the time."

"So he must have crossed paths with your daughters at some point before the abduction. I think this guy has a thing for redheads. I think he picked Elaine and Elizabeth out of a crowd somewhere, targeted them."

"FBI thought so, too."

"What was going on in the girls' lives the week before Elaine was taken? Did ... I don't know, did you change up your routine in any way, go someplace you didn't usually go with the girls-dry cleaner's, pharmacy?"

Abigail shook her head. "Nothing like that. They swam at the Y twice a week. They had gymnastics on Sat.u.r.days. We'd gone shopping that week to pick out clothes for school pictures. But they went with me to the store all the time. The night before the abduction, we went out for ice cream. I know the police questioned everyone who saw my girls in the weeks before he took Elaine."

"Any suspects?"

"Not officially."

"Unofficially?"

"There was a man who did some work on our house a few months before it happened. He built this room we're sitting in, actually, him and his crew. I guess he used to be some big-time consultant in Indonesia. He was the first guy I thought about."

"Why?"

"He was creepy. Didn't talk much. To adults. But when the girls were playing outside, he would always make an excuse to talk to them. He wasn't married. Lives in an apartment near Rocky River. Harold Schulte. I know the cops have been out there to talk to him about it. More than once."

"Did the police tell you anything?"

"Guess he got in trouble in high school for indecent exposure on the school bus. That was it."

"Did Elaine keep a diary?"

Abigail shook her head, but as she did, she stood up and walked over to a bureau near the sliding gla.s.s doors. She opened the top drawer and rummaged under some papers before she withdrew two items and returned to her seat.

"Elaine was my artist and poet," she said, handing him a piece of wide-ruled notebook paper filled with a young girl's loopy handwriting. It was t.i.tled "Dead Cat." Dead cat on the road. Killed by Mother Nature. Or maybe a truck. "It's a haiku."

"I see."

Abigail handed him the other item, which was already familiar to him; he'd seen it hanging on the wall in Sackett's office. "Her last school picture," she said.

"They really do look so similar." He traced his fingers over a black scratch on the top of the picture. He meant Elaine and Katy. "Any other hunches after all these years?" he asked. "Anyone else you feel could have done it?"

Abigail shook her head again. "We don't even have a body, you know? That complicates things. You want to hold out hope she's still alive. But I knew in my heart she was murdered the day she was taken. I could feel it. Mike didn't accept it until probably five years after she was gone. He cried with me one night and then he didn't wait for her anymore. We both came to accept that our daughter was dead. And, believe it or not, you sort of move on after a while. You move on or you die. Elizabeth, I'm afraid, was lost in that struggle. By the time her father and I were sane again, we'd just been apart too long. I was too ashamed to reach out to her and she was too stubborn to come to me." She fought back an eruption of emotion and then stuck another cigarette in her mouth. "C'est la vie."

David heard the front door close. Abigail looked at him with a start. "Expecting company?" he asked.

"David, take another drink. You think that you couldn't have made the same decision I did back then. That you couldn't have sent Elizabeth away just because she looked like her dead sister, that maybe you could have learned to live with that."

"I don't understand. Who's here?" He heard footsteps in the dining room, approaching. High heels slapping against a hardwood floor. He turned to look.

"Eventually, I did get used to it," said Abigail.

She walked into the room, una.s.sumingly, bouncing on her feet. David's breath caught in his chest.

"h.e.l.lo," she said, smiling under her red bangs. "Hi, Mom. I didn't know you had company."

"David, this is my daughter Eloise," said Abigail. "She just turned twenty. She's attending Ohio State, but comes home so much we shouldn't really be paying for her dorm room."

"Shush," said Eloise. "Who's your friend?"

"This is David Neff, Lizzie's husband."

"Shut up," she said. Then she grabbed him in an embrace. She looked remarkably like her dead sisters. Her cheeks were higher. And her eyebrows a shade darker. Her lips were a bit fuller. But the resemblance to the woman he had fallen in love with at Kent State was unwelcome and disturbing. "I'm so glad to meet you. I always wanted to meet Lizzie."

"Her son is downstairs with your dad," said Abigail.

"No way," she said. She kissed her mother and then ran out the way she had come, shouting back, "Stay there, David! I'll be right back."

When they were alone again, David looked over to Abigail, who stared back, trying to read his emotions.

"Peggy never said anything."

"I told her not to."

"Why?"

"I didn't want Lizzie to know until I got a chance to tell her myself. I wanted a boy. Instead, I got another spitting image of the girls I lost. G.o.d has a sick sense of humor."

"I think I should go," he said.

Abigail nodded.

They pulled him over as soon as he crossed the Summit County line on 77 South. Two cruisers, a black sedan, three news vans, and two civilian cars he a.s.sumed were print reporters. For just a second he considered gunning it. But then he remembered Tanner in the back seat and that kept his mind thinking logically. He pulled over.

"Tanner, listen to me."

"Whoa, are those cop cars? Dad, were you speeding?"

"No, I wasn't speeding."

He could already see Sackett and Larkey climbing out of the unmarked sedan. Even from this distance he could see that giant gun under Larkey's armpit, the one with the bone-colored grip.

"What happened?"

"I don't have time to explain it right now, kiddo. I'm very sorry, but whatever happens next, you have to just believe me that everything is going to work out."

"What's gonna happen?"

"In a second those guys are going to take me with them. And, I think, someone else is going to ... let you ride with them."

David s.n.a.t.c.hed a piece of paper from his glove compartment and furiously wrote a name and number on it. He handed the note to his son, whose eyes were wide with fear and filling up with tears.

"Look, buddy, it's going to be okay. You give this to whoever you go with. It's Grandpa's cell phone number. He'll come and get you."

"Dad?"

"Get out of your seat, Tanner. Come here."

The boy unbuckled his belt just as the detective and the FBI agent reached the car. He leapt into the front and onto David's lap.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, Daddy."