Marta Perry - Sound Of Fear

For a moment he thought she’d argue with him. Then she seemed to swallow whatever it was she’d almost said. “You’re sure you’ll be able to find out something by tomorrow?”

“If there’s anything to find, I will. If my father doesn’t know, someone else will, but I’m betting he’d remember anything that dramatic.” He tried to read her expression and found it impossible. “So, what do you say? I’ll meet you at the office tomorrow at ten, and I’ll bring the insect repellent. You wear something you can walk in the woods in. Okay?”

She hesitated for so long he thought she was going to turn him down. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” Her expression softened. “Look, I know I’m not going to find anything there. I just... I need to see the place.”

“I get it.” To his surprise, he actually did. It was a connection to the woman she’d always thought was her mother. “In the meantime, could you refrain from going around town asking questions?”

“I’ll consider it.” A smile took the sting from the words. “Until tomorrow, then. And thanks...” She hesitated. “Trey.”

“You see?” He kept his voice light. “Esther knows all and tells all.”

He opened the door for her, and at a word, the dog lay down in the back seat.

“I’ll see you at ten, then.”

She closed the door, and Trey stood where he was to watch her drive down the street. Not toward the highway and her motel, he noticed. That was too much to hope for.

He’d warned her. That was all he could do. Whatever waves she made now were unavoidable.

* * *

BY THE TIME he left the office for the day, Trey had stopped trying to dismiss Amanda Curtiss and her troubles from his mind. He couldn’t do it. His mother would say he was conscientious, like his father, but he knew better. It was apprehension, caused by the sense that Amanda was going to cause problems for anyone who became involved in her hunt for answers.

Stubborn, that was the word for her—just like a lot of the hardheaded Pennsylvania Dutch he’d grown up with. Once they’d made up their minds, a person might as well save his breath and prepare either to get out of the way or to pick up the pieces.

He’d headed automatically for his own place, but a sudden impulse made him turn at the corner of Oak Street and make for his parents’ house instead. He had to pick his father’s brain on the subject of Amanda’s search, so he might as well do it now.

A few minutes later he pulled into the driveway at the comfortable old Queen Anne house where he’d grown up. In his mind’s eye, he could still see a bicycle leaning against the mammoth oak tree that Dad threatened periodically to have cut down before it fell on the house. And a skateboard abandoned on the porch steps, providing the material for a fatherly lecture on the proper care of one’s belongings.

When he got out, the October sun slanted through the branches of the oak tree, picking out bronze and gold in the leaves. The lawn could use a raking, but Dad was forbidden to do that sort of thing since his heart attack in the spring. Trey would have to take the initiative and either do the fall cleanup himself or hire someone.

Scuffing through the leaves that had already fallen, he headed for the side door that led into the kitchen. “Mom? Dad? You home?” Since the car was in the garage and the door unlocked, that was a safe assumption.

“Trey!” His mother looked as delighted as if she hadn’t seen him in three months instead of three days. “How nice. You’ll stay for supper.”

He grinned, giving her a quick hug. “Now, how did you know that was on my mind?” Nothing pleased his mother more than having her cooking appreciated.

“You don’t eat enough, cooking for yourself,” she chided.

“Where’s Dad?” he interrupted, before she could tell him he ought to get married so he’d have someone to take care of him. There was never any use telling her that none of the women he dated cared any more for cooking than he did.

“In the study. You go and chat with him while I add a few more potatoes to the pot. Go on. Pork chops tonight, and luckily I got extra.”

She always had extra, of course. Dad claimed she’d never gotten past the years when as often as not Trey would bring a friend or two home for supper at the last minute.

Dad put his newspaper aside when Trey entered the round room that took up the first floor of the typically Victorian turret. Upstairs, this area was a sunroom off the master bedroom, and here it was his father’s domain. The golden oak desk still sat in front of a bank of windows, although it wasn’t littered with a slew of papers as it had been during his father’s working years.

“About time you were coming by,” he said. “Your mother convince you to stay for supper?”

Trey grinned. “You should know I never take much convincing.” Concern lurked behind the smile as he pulled up a rocking chair next to his father’s recliner. Dad was still looking too pale, too drawn, since the scare he’d put them through a few months ago.

His father seemed to see past Trey’s casual manner. “Something on your mind?”

“As a matter of fact, something has come up I’d like your advice on.” Maybe it would do his father good to be involved in the business of the firm he’d spent his life building. “I had a new client come in today—a woman who was referred by a Boston attorney I met a couple of years ago. She had a rather odd story to tell.”

“I’m retired, remember?” But he was leaning forward, obviously interested.

Trey reached in his pocket, pulled out a couple of ones and put them on the lamp table. “There. Consider yourself a consultant.”

“Right. So what am I consulting on? You can surely handle whatever it is.”

“My memories don’t go back far enough to be helpful, and I figure yours do. And you won’t go blabbing it around town.”

“Thanks for the compliment. So tell me.” In spite of the sarcastic words, he looked pleased.

But as the story unfolded, Trey saw his father’s expression change. He seemed to freeze up as he looked into the past, as if he’d seen something he’d rather not look at.

Trey faltered to a stop. His mother had been on a campaign to keep anything worrisome away from Dad, and he seemed to have tripped right into it.

His father leaned back in the chair, his mouth tight. It took a few minutes for him to speak. “If I were you, I’d tell the woman you can’t help her.”

“That was my first instinct,” Trey admitted. “But she struck me as the kind of person who doesn’t give up easily. If I don’t help her, she’ll go around town asking questions on her own. It seemed to me...”

Dad waved a hand tiredly. “No, you’re right. That would be worse.” He mused for another moment. “If you’re looking for a death in 1989 that is related to the falls, there’s only one I can think of that fits. Elizabeth Winthrop’s granddaughter was found dead at the base of the falls sometime in the spring.”

“Winthrop,” Trey repeated. It was like saying “Rockefeller” by Echo Falls standards. The Winthrop family had established the town, lumbered the surrounding hillsides, built up a thriving business that still provided employment to half the town.

“Exactly.” Dad’s eyes met his. “The story was hushed up, of course. If people knew, they were generally sensible enough not to talk about it, but word got around, of course.”

“So what was it? Suicide?” That was the first thought that came to mind. Elizabeth Winthrop was an elderly autocrat who would find it unthinkable that such a thing could touch her family.

“It was ruled accidental, of course. Still, not even the Winthrops could eliminate all the speculation, especially since Melanie Winthrop had left town suddenly some months earlier. She’d have been about seventeen at the time, I suppose.”