A Trick of the Light Read online

  She caught a spark of tenderness as his eyes took in her expression of pain. “I was following my wife and panicked her. She was acting strange, crazy.” Several emotions crossed his face, but he quickly masked them. “I wanted to see if you needed anything. I feel like I should help somehow.”

  “But you saved my life.” Her voice was getting thick. “That’s all I could ever ask for.” Or was it? Another hug would be nice, even if it was a little painful. Dylan wasn’t a man who dispensed hugs easily, that much she could tell. In any case, she’d better not indulge.

  “I gave your aunt my card. Call me if you need anything. Anything at all, okay?”

  She nodded, thinking again of being held in his arms. His gaze swept over her, making her realize what a mess she must look. She thought of fluffing her hair, but didn’t have the energy.

  “Was the duck all right?” she asked.

  “Duck?”

  “I was trying to get a duck out of the street just before … I just wondered if it was all right.”

  He started to shrug, but then said, “The duck made it.”

  She wasn’t positive that he’d even noticed the duck, but she didn’t have the energy to probe further.

  “I’d better go,” he said. “You look tired.”

  She nodded, pulling the blanket up to her chin. “Thanks for coming by.”

  He paused at the doorway. “Did you find Teddy?”

  Exhaustion was pulling her down now, making her eyelids feel like clay. They’d given her something to sleep, but she didn’t want to sleep yet. “Hmm?”

  “When you came back, you asked where Teddy was. Did you find him?”

  She closed her eyes, sliding into sweet oblivion. “I don’t know anyone named Teddy.”

  Dylan’s next stop was the nursing home. If Anne was going to talk to anyone, it’d be him. If she remembered who he was today. Anne had always been cool toward him, but if he could convince her that her grandson’s life was at stake, she would help him.

  Usually when he drove through Naples, he noticed the burgeoning subdivisions filled with high-end homes and guarded by elaborate gatehouses. He wondered how many of the homes within were of his firm’s design. Now he looked for anyplace Wanda could have hidden his son on the way to the Woodsworth Nursing Home.

  He approached the woman at the marble desk in the lobby. “I need to speak with Anne Dodson. I’m Dylan McKain, her son-in-law.”

  “Didn’t you know?” the lady said after looking in her paperwork. “Your wife took her for a vacation yesterday morning.”

  A half-hour later, Dylan had talked to Jackie, the nurse in charge of Anne. Jackie was an attractive redhead who looked warm and soft but had an efficient gleam in her eyes. They’d checked Anne’s room, Jackie methodically going through each drawer while Dylan checked the bed and beneath the furniture. She then led him to their security room where they viewed the security feed. Wanda had waltzed in looking pleasant and under control and signed out her mother for a supposed trip to North Carolina. Teddy hadn’t been with her, but he could have been in the car. No one could say for sure.

  Lastly, Jackie queried her staff. All her efficiency came down to nothing. “I’m sorry, Mr. McKain,” she said, that authoritative tone leaking away to compassion. “I didn’t know there was a problem.”

  “I didn’t either,” he had to admit. If Wanda had taken her mother out of the nursing home the same day she’d taken Teddy, then he must be with Anne.

  “If they’re together, alone … is my son all right with her?”

  “She won’t hurt the boy, of course. But she may not know who he is, or that she’s supposed to take care of him. It comes and goes with her.”

  He nodded. “Did Anne say anything about the upcoming trip?”

  Jackie shook her head, but her expression turned thoughtful. “I don’t know if this will help, and I probably shouldn’t tell you. Then again, I don’t know if it’s even true. Anne felt a great deal of remorse over putting Wanda in a hospital when she was a teenager. The shock treatments were the hardest thing for Anne to talk about.”

  Dylan went cold. “A mental hospital?”

  “That’s the impression I got. Apparently Wanda heard voices in her head, and her father thought she was crazy. He made Wanda go into the hospital, and Anne felt terrible that she didn’t fight harder to keep her out. Wanda never forgave her for it.”

  Wanda in a mental hospital? He remembered back in college when they’d gotten to that sharing stage of the relationship. He’d told her about his manic-depressive mother, the pity and humiliation that shadowed him, and worse, singled him out as different. Poor Dylan. His mom’s crazy. Some mothers wouldn’t even let their sons play with him, and no one ever went to his house. That was fine; Dylan didn’t want anyone to see his mother running around the house pulling all the phones out of the jacks because the FBI was tapping them. Or making them live in the dark so the hidden cameras wouldn’t pick up their movements.

  He’d told Wanda all that out of some sense of duty, and she’d listened thoughtfully. If she’d had her own unbalanced past, would she have hidden it from him? Is that why she’d never wanted to go back to her Detroit hometown? And why her mother had always been cold and quiet, maybe afraid to say the wrong thing?

  As crazy as it sounded, it was starting to make sense. If Wanda wasn’t in her right mind, finding Teddy was going to be even harder.

  * * *

  Yochem called Dylan’s cell phone that night. “Nothing has panned out on the North Carolina story yet, though I figured that was a ruse. We have Mrs. Dodson’s picture circulating up there and here in town. We think the best thing for you to do at this point is to take it to the media. When the news programs show their pictures, somebody’ll remember.”

  “Whatever I need to do to get Teddy back.” He hated publicity, hating making his problems public. He pulled at his collar, feeling the noose tightening. He’d had enough of people probing his personal life. But this isn’t about you. It’s about Teddy.

  Yochem set up a press conference to be aired on the evening news and then rerun at eleven. All they needed was a direction.

  Afterward Dylan stayed at the police station waiting for calls. And they came, all funneled to Yochem and five other officers waiting for the deluge. It was all Dylan could do not to grab one of the ringing phones. Instead, he kept rearranging the note pads and pens, anything to stay calm.

  They repeated each lead as they took notes. “You saw them at a convenience store on Immokalee Road at ten in the morning?” one man said.

  “You saw Wanda and her mother heading to Miami at ten-fifteen,” another confirmed.

  How could Wanda be everywhere at once? Dylan scrubbed his fingers through his hair in frustration.

  “Don’t worry, this is normal,” one female officer said, handing him another cup of coffee. “Wait ‘til the psychics start calling in. It really gets interesting then.”

  “Does this work? Do any of these leads ever pan out?”

  “Sure. The problem is, we never know which ones. We have to investigate them all, no matter how crazy they sound.”

  “Give me some. I’ll start checking them out.”

  “You just hang tight, Mr. McKain. That’s our job.”

  By eight the next morning, the police were still investigating telephone leads. Dylan felt ragged, exhausted and wired all at the same time. They finally sent him home, or more precisely, out of their hair.

  Camilla was staying at the house in case Teddy showed up. Even in a state of crisis, she wore her standard white industrial shirt and black pants, filling both with her stocky figure.

  “Why don’t you take a nap, Mr. McKain? You gotta refill your energy tanks.”

  “No way could I sleep right now. I’m going to jump in the shower. Bang on the door if you hear any news.”

  She narrowed her eyes, as though Dylan were some recalcitrant charge. “I’ll fix you something to eat while you’re in the shower then.”


  “I can’t eat. My throat’s too tight for anything more than coffee.”

  “You have to take care of yourself, Mr. McKain. Food and sleep are more important than showers!”

  Her words drifted to him as he walked into his room. All he knew about Camilla was what Wanda had told him when she’d hired her. Camilla was originally from Spain but knew English well. She had recently divorced her husband and was taking night courses at a local college toward getting a teaching degree. Since she’d been a housewife her whole life, taking care of a house was her greatest skill. From the pristine floors and windows to the lack of dust in the most out-of-the-way places, she evidently did a good job.

  When he joined Camilla in the kitchen fifteen minutes later, he asked, “Any calls?”

  “Several people from your office want to know what’s going on. The hospital morgue called and want to know what arrangements we’re making for Mrs. McKain. I’ll handle it if you’d like. I’ve taken care of this kind of thing before.”

  He couldn’t even think about it. “Handle it then. Please.”

  When she pushed a plate of club sandwiches in front of him, he shook his head. “I’ve got to go. Thanks for holding down the fort.”

  “Who’s going to hold down the fort inside you?” she called as he walked out.

  Dylan spent the day driving north on I-75. Wanda could have taken any exit, east or west. She could have gone anywhere. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly he was afraid he’d wrench the thing out of the dash.

  “I held out as long as I could,” he told Yochem on the phone. “Have any of those leads from last night panned out?”

  “Not yet. But we’re still getting leads, don’t worry.”

  How could he not worry? “What about Chloe Samms?”

  “One of our officers talked to her at the hospital before she checked out.”

  “Checked out? Oh, geez, you don’t mean …”

  “No, no,” Yochem said. “She left the hospital very much alive. Did your wife ever go down to Lilithdale?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Other than that possibility, there’s no tangible connection between the women.”

  That should have been enough to put Chloe out of his mind. But it wasn’t. Dylan didn’t believe in gut instincts; facts were facts. Something in his gut was pointing to Chloe Samms.

  Late that afternoon, Dylan drove to the office. South Florida Architectural Associates took up the top floor of a contemporary office building on US41. This was the first time his three-story building didn’t bring him any comfort or satisfaction. All he could think about was how quickly he’d give it up to get his son back.

  Just as he’d suspected, the moment he walked through the oak door, Jodie rushed into his arms.

  “You poor thing, what you must be going through!” Jodie was an attractive blonde with a lush figure and a heart big enough to encompass anyone’s troubles. When he’d helped her buy a car after her divorce, she’d thanked him no less than fifty times, with hugs, words and even flowers.

  “We’ve been calling since last night when we saw the news. What are the police doing? They wouldn’t tell us anything when they came by this morning.”

  “They came by … here?”

  “Yes, asking questions about you. Have they found anything? We want to help. This is crazy!”

  Several other employees came out of their offices and inundated him with questions, suggestions or just plain concern.

  He rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble. “He’s going to be all right. I just have to figure out where Wanda hid him. She wouldn’t have left him anywhere dangerous, I know that much.” But had she been in her right mind?

  “I’m sorry about Wanda,” Steve, his senior architect said, clapping Dylan on his shoulder. “I’m sure it was some misunderstanding.”

  The image of Wanda in the car flashed through his mind and made his throat go dry. “Thank you.” No one knew that his marriage was nothing more than a legal technicality, and he wasn’t about to enlighten them. He was grateful that they didn’t ask why she’d suddenly taken off with their son.

  “Oh, I forgot! There’s someone here to see you,” Jodie said, nodding toward one of the plush chairs in the lobby.

  When he saw Chloe, his heart jumped for a moment. In surprise, that’s all. Or maybe because of the bruises on her face. She was wearing a pale blue jumpsuit, a matching headband to hold back her curls, and a bandage on her cheek. The sneakers matched her outfit, making him think of the heart-wrenching sight of that one lone sneaker on the sidewalk. He swallowed hard, tugging at his collar.

  “Hi,” she said in a whisper, then cleared her throat and slowly stood. She clutched a large, colorful canvas bag. “I need to talk to you.”

  Did she want something? Well, hadn’t he offered her anything? He didn’t care what she wanted; he’d write a check, whatever. Maybe that would ease his mind and eradicate the persistent thought of her.

  He led her to the grouping of chairs in the corner of his office. “I’d rather stand,” she said. “Kinda hurts to move up and down.” She put her hand to her throat and fiddled with a small owl pendant on a gold chain. On her index finger she wore an intricate butterfly ring.

  Her stiff movements made him wince in sympathy. He didn’t like the effect she had on him. “Are you … all right?”

  “The aches I can live with. The nightmares are the worst. I keep seeing the car coming at me.” She blinked away the haunted shadow in her beautiful blue eyes and met his gaze. It made him think of the boo-boo face her aunts had mentioned. “I’m all right. And very lucky.” She looked away for a moment. “Or maybe I should say blessed.”

  He was blessed too. The first close look at her face could have been on the evening news with a reporter telling how a freak accident had snuffed out her life.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Soda? Money?”

  She choked, placing her hand to her chest. “Do you always offer visitors those choices?”

  He caught himself smiling for a moment, realizing how his words had come out. “Not usually. Then again, we don’t have any visitors quite like … you.”

  “Yeah, I’m different,” she said in a soft, resigned voice.

  He bet she had a great mouth when it wasn’t marred by the gash on her lower lip. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, pushing away a disturbing memory of how that mouth felt beneath his. “I meant …”

  “I know what you meant. No, I don’t want anything, thank you.”

  If she didn’t want money, what could she possibly want? Another hug?

  “Why did I come here? That’s what you want to know.” She laughed, a thin, kind of laugh. “When I should be home in bed instead of out scaring people. I tried that, believe me. The last thing I need is to be standing here with you …” She swallowed. “About to tell you what I’m going to tell you. I saw you on the news. You have to understand, I thought it was a dream.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “I may be able to help you find Teddy,” she said, visibly tensing in anticipation of his reaction.

  “You knew Wanda?”

  “Not exactly. Not in a knowing kind of sense.”

  “In what sense did you know her then?”

  “I met her right after she died.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “You want to run that by me again?”

  Her words weren’t coming out right. He was throwing her off by watching her too intensely. As soon as she told him, he was going to get that look on his face, the same one she got whenever she mentioned her association with Lilithdale.

  “Let me see if I can think of a better way to say this.”

  She bought time by looking around his office. Behind his desk hung a framed cover of Architectural Digest, presumably with a mansion he’d designed on the cover. Pictures of other majestic homes covered the slate-colored walls. Dark blue carpet, polished wood furniture, all the signs of success. Well, except for the two yellow Leg
os in the candy dish. There were two framed pictures of a smiling Teddy, and one picture of Teddy and Wanda. And there was Dylan, tall, handsome, if fatigued. He fit into this world of thick carpet and rich wood.

  Which meant he was going to think she was one Fruit Loop shy of a full bowl.

  Fifteen times two-hundred-fifty is thirty-seven hundred fifty.

  She turned back to him, mentally reciting another calculation. All right, it was her crutch, but she wasn’t about to let go of it now.

  “Don’t laugh, just please don’t laugh. Something happened when I died. Believe me, nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

  His expression remained blank. She walked over to the large window; she found herself seeking the light now, though it would never be as wondrous as the light in the tunnel.

  She started plucking dead leaves off a staked philodendron plant. “Have you ever heard of near-death experiences?”

  He walked up beside her. “Where people who die supposedly see a tunnel and their dearly departed loved ones?”

  Ah, now she could see the skepticism, but she forged ahead. “It was the most incredible thing I have ever experienced. It was the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere, really belonged.” Let’s not go there. “It was incredibly peaceful, and there was the light they talk about, but I could feel it as much as I could see it. And I know now … there’s nothing to be afraid of when we die.” She could feel it all over again as the memory came alive inside her.

  He’d been watching her, and she wondered what her face had looked like. She pinched another dead leaf off the plant.

  “Go on,” he said, masking what he thought of her story so far.

  “You’ve heard of people who feel they’ve been given a second chance for a reason? But they don’t know what that reason is? Well, I know. Wanda was in that tunnel. She told me I couldn’t die yet because I had to find Teddy. She was about to tell me where he was when you revived me. She said the voices told her to hide him, but now she knew they were wrong.”

  At that, his expression hardened. “You know about the voices?”