Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

"My God," Quentin said. "Missy."

“Missy?" Diana tore her gaze from the sketch to stare at him. "You know her? You mean — she's real?" She sounded shaken now, and there was a new tension in her body, as though she were poised to run.

Quentin got a grip on himself, realizing in the same instant that his grip on her arm had tightened unconsciously. She didn't seem to notice, but he forced his fingers to relax at least a little, and summoned a smile he hoped was reassuring.

"You've captured her beautifully," he said, keeping his tone casual. "I could never forget those sad eyes."

"But... I don't know who she is. I don't know anybody named Missy."

"Maybe you've just forgotten," he suggested. "It was a long time ago."

"What?"

Quentin swore silently and tried again. "Look, Diana, why don't we talk about this over lunch?"

"Why don't we talk about it here?" Seemingly noticing his grip for the first time, she pulled her arm free. "Who is Missy, Quentin?"

He forced himself to look at the sketch again, consideringly this time. Asking himself if the resemblance he had first seen really existed. There was, after all, no reason to further upset Diana if he'd imagined the similarity.

Except...he hadn't. Because that was Missy. Not an image that merely resembled her, but her. The big, sad eyes. Long, dark hair. The oval face with its stubborn chin. Even the way she was standing, one foot tucked behind the other ankle, balancing easily, was characteristic.

And it was painful, how vividly alive she was in his mind.

"Quentin?"

He looked at Diana, fully aware that he wasn't much good at hiding his feelings. "Maybe it's just my imagination," he suggested.

Spacing the words for emphasis, she said, "Do you know who this girl is?"

"Was," he said finally. "Who she was. Missy Turner was murdered, Diana, at the age of eight. Here at The Lodge. Twenty-five years ago."

She stared at him, drawing a slow, deep breath, then said with what was obviously a tenuous calm, "I see. Then I must have seen a photograph somewhere."

"Do you remember seeing one?"

"No. But my memory isn't the best. Some of the medications I've been on... stole time from me."

He thought that was one of the most wrenching things he'd ever heard despite her matter-of-fact tone, and had to clear his throat before saying, "We can figure this out, Diana. But not standing here. Why don't we have lunch — out on the veranda, if you like, in the sunshine — and talk?"

Again, her wavering was visible, and Quentin spoke quickly to persuade her.

"You came here for a reason. One more round of self-examination, remember? And in the process of that self-examination, you drew an amazing picture of a little girl who died twenty-five years ago. A little girl whose murder I've been trying to solve most of my adult life. There must be an explanation for that, and I think we both need to find it. That's worth a conversation over lunch, isn't it?"

"Yes," she replied slowly. "Yes, I think it is."

"Good. Thank you."

Diana looked at the sketch a moment longer, then carefully tore that page from the pad and rolled it up. She slid it inside the oversized tote bag hanging on the side of her easel, then took off the smock she wore and hung it in place of the tote bag.

Quentin noticed that the tote bag held a smaller version of the sketchpad on the easel, but didn't comment as she put the strap over one shoulder and indicated with a nod that she was ready to leave.

It wasn't until they reached the door that she realized something, asking, "Was I here alone when you came in? Where was Beau?"

"He left when I got here." Quentin didn't elaborate and hoped she wouldn't question him further on the subject.

Diana frowned, but shrugged as though to herself. She didn't say anything else until they were settled at a table on the veranda and the attentive waitress had taken their order and left them with iced tea and a basket of rolls.

Ignoring both, Diana said, "You said you'd been trying to solve her — her murder most of your adult life. Why? Were you related to her?"

"No."

"Then why? If it was twenty-five years ago, you had to be no more than a child yourself."

"I was twelve."

"Were you here when it happened?"

He nodded. "I grew up in Seattle, but that summer my father moved us into one of the cottages here because he was doing some work near Leisure. He's an engineer, and he was overseeing the construction of a major bridge."

"So you spent the summer here. What about Missy? Did she live here?"

"Her mother was a maid in The Lodge. In those days, some of the employees had small apartments in what eventually became the North Wing. That's where Missy lived." He shrugged. "There weren't many kids around that summer, so those of us who were here tended to do things together. Hiked, fished, rode the horses, swam. Typical summer stuff, mostly designed to keep us out of the way of the grownups."

Diana could barely remember being eight, so she was guessing when she said, "Did Missy have a crush on you?"

He smiled slightly at the word, but nodded. "Looking back — yeah, she probably did. At the time, thinking myself so grown-up, I just saw her as a tag-along kid. She was the only girl in the group, and the youngest of us. But she was shy and sweet, she didn't mind bugs or jokes or the messes boys got into, and I... got used to having her around."

Still guessing, Diana said, "You're an only child."

He didn't seem surprised by the statement. "Yeah. So having other kids around all the time was a novelty for me, one I enjoyed. To me, by the end of the summer Missy had become the little sister I never had."

"By the end of the summer?"

Quentin nodded. "It was when she died. In August. It'll be twenty-five years this coming August."

"What happened?"

His face tightened, and a bleak chill entered his eyes. Slowly, he said, "There was something weird about that summer, from the very beginning. At the time, I thought it was just that The Lodge was old, and that old places had a creepy feel to them; it was something I'd noticed before then, at other places. And then, being kids, we scared each other senseless with ghost stories around campfires down near the stables, pretty much on a nightly basis. But it was more than tall tales and overly active imaginations. We — all of us — had experiences that summer that we really couldn't explain."

"Like what?"

"Bad dreams when we'd never had them before. Catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of our eyes, only to turn and find nothing there. Strange sounds we heard in the night. Places in the buildings and on the grounds that felt wrong to us. Places that felt... bad."

Quentin grimaced slightly. "When you're a kid, you're not very good at articulating something you feel, or at least I wasn't. All I knew was that there was something wrong here. And I should have told someone."

Diana, intent, frowned slightly. "You blame yourself for what happened to Missy? Because of that?"

"Not just because of that," he said. "Because Missy was afraid. Because she tried to tell me what she was afraid of — and I didn't listen. Not then, and not two days later when she tried to tell me again. That was the last time I saw her alive."

By late morning, Madison had explored most of the gardens, or at least those that interested her. Which was a good thing. She had returned obediently to the main building and inside to have an early lunch with her parents, and reluctantly promised afterward to stay inside because storms were forecast for the afternoon.

Since she was an independent child and not the sort to be destructive or get herself into trouble, her parents didn't object when she announced her intention of exploring inside as she had the gardens.