The Reticence 1 (Nantahala River) Read online

  “Agreed, but first, tell me what you’re thinking about.”

  “How do you feel about Christmas trees?” Marcia replied mysteriously.

  CHAPTER2

  Margo looked at the cover art and laughed. There she was, or rather, there was the artist’s impression of her. She was wearing a skimpy bikini with a diver’s tank on her back. Her mask was gone, and her knife was buried in an alligator’s eye. The ‘gator was thrashing violently. In the background was a blue Camaro, with a skeleton waving out the window. The cover was as corny as anything she’d ever seen, and yet, it was partly true. That is, it wasn’t entirely false.

  “Did you see the cover?” Margo asked, turning to her sister.

  Across the room, Marcia was staring at her computer screen. Margo knew that Marcia was working on the final editing of their online book. Their publisher was chomping at the bit, eager to launch their book. Margo knew that he would have to wait. Her sister was more than a bit anal about everything. The book wasn’t going to hit the Internet until it was absolutely perfect. Marcia was a perfectionist and demanded nothing but the best, always.

  “Don’t like it?” Marcia asked.

  “It’s not exactly the truth,” she replied with a frown.

  “Embellishment. And who’s to say it didn’t happen that way? There were only two of us there, and I’m satisfied with it.”

  “I’m not going to object too much. But I like to think I’m sexier than the babe on the cover.”

  Marcia laughed. “You are, little sister, you are.”

  The large room had been converted into a double office. One corner belonged to Marcia, with everything in its proper place. No loose pages were floating around or piles of books lying about. Her corner smelled of lilac.

  Margo’s corner, however, was decidedly less perfect. It wasn’t a complete mess, but she did keep stacks of loose pages on her desk. Her computer screen wasn’t cleaned on a daily or even weekly basis. Her printer sometimes blinked for days when a color cartridge needed replacing. That was how she rolled, though. She left perfection for the people who thrived on it.

  The big room dominated the upstairs of the guest house. In fact, it had been two bedrooms at one time. The sisters had knocked out the wall in the middle to create their own workspace. There were two bedrooms on the first floor, where they sometimes slept when they came in late and didn’t want to disturb their parents who occupied the big house. The compound consisted of the house, the guest house, the four-door garage, the pool, and the tennis court. Their parents still played tennis every day and often entertained guests around the pool.

  “Did you get the official word on the Camaro driver?” Margo asked.

  “Not yet,” Marcia said. “His attorney claims the husband was not driving the car when it swam with the ‘gators. According to the hubby, the wife was driving.”

  “Her skeleton wasn’t behind the wheel,” Margo said. “In a Camaro, you can’t drive from the passenger side.”

  “Well, if she wasn’t driving, then her lover must have been. He managed to escape, and the coward didn’t have the guts to try and save her.”

  “Does the hubby actually expect anyone to believe that?”

  “No, but after all these years, most of the evidence has disappeared into the pond. I’m not sure they’ll even be able to confirm the cause of death. The only good thing for the prosecution is that the hubby doesn’t have an alibi.”

  “Didn’t he claim he was with some other woman at the time?”

  “He did, and she backed him up at the time. Now that the body has been found, she’s changed her tune. She doesn’t want to be charged with aiding and abetting.”

  “It’s funny how people always reconsider their testimony once they realize what will happen to them for lying.”

  Margo glanced at her watch. “Are you almost finished?”

  “Why? Need a break?”

  “I want to go for a swim.”

  “Go right ahead. I have only a few minutes more,” Marcia replied distractedly as she shuffled some papers on her desk.

  “You should come with me.”

  “Why? You’ll want to race, and you’ll win. You’re a much better swimmer.”

  “You should come because you need to keep up your levels of vitamin D.”

  “My vitamin D is just fine,” Marcia replied in a sharp voice.

  “I know you take supplements, but that’s not enough. Getting vitamin D from the sunlight is much better.”

  “You’ve been reading online again, haven’t you? In this case, I think you might be right. So, go ahead. I’ll be out in a minute, and I’ll get my vitamin D to go with my vitamin V.”

  “Vitamin V?”

  “V is for vodka, Margo dear. Do you want one?”

  Margo laughed. “I will have one. A double. I’ll need it after my swim.”

  Margo stood up to leave when her phone rang. She picked up the call with a smile.

  “Hello, mother.”

  Margo turned to Marcia.

  “Yes, she’s here with me. Someone is in the big house? And Marcia knows? Then, why don’t I know?”

  Margo killed the connection and turned to Marcia. “You scheduled an interview?”

  Marcia frowned, her blue eyes shifting to her computer screen. “No, I didn’t. We don’t have an interview till next week.”

  “Well, someone is here. I suppose we should bail out our mother.”

  “If we don’t, we will be in the doghouse... for the rest of the month.”

  Margo laughed. “Or longer.”

  Marcia stood. “Well, let’s get it over with. I wonder what it is about.”

  The woman sipping iced tea with their mother was wearing an ill-fitting yellow dress with white flowers. Marcia took one look at her and knew that something was dreadfully wrong. She was wearing what looked to be a wig, and Marcia’s careful inspection of the woman’s face revealed painted-on eyebrows. It was clear to her that the woman must have been battling cancer, caught in the grip of a deadly disease.

  “Hello,” Margo said. “I’m Margo Fleming.”

  “And I’m Marcia.”

  “Becky Salter, and I must apologize. I know I’m a week early, but I have this feeling that I’m running out of time. Since I came to Florida for treatment, I decided to try my luck. I hope I’m not putting you out.”

  “Not at all,” Margo said.

  “We’re more than happy to conduct the interview now,” Marcia added.

  “That is my cue to leave,” Margo’s mother said. “Mrs. Salter, I assure you that you are in good hands. My daughters will do everything they can for you.”

  With that, their mother walked out of the sunroom. Mrs. Fleming projected a sense of serenity and calm that Margo and Marcia couldn’t help but envy.

  Tears came to Becky’s eyes, and she dabbed at them with a tissue. “Forgive me... I haven’t had a lot of good news lately, and well, if you had turned me away, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “You’re going to be just fine,” Margo said in a gentle voice. “Now, tell us about the cold case.”

  Becky took a deep breath in an attempt to regain her composure. “Ever since I was diagnosed, my emotions are uncontrollable. Sometimes, I think I’m going to explode. And sometimes I wish I would. All right, I’ll start at the beginning. My daughter died twenty years ago. No one has ever been arrested for her murder. She was found naked on the bank of the Nantahala River. She had been strangled, although not sexually assaulted. At age fourteen, she was just becoming a woman, if you know what I mean. She had been... tortured. Her fingers had been burned. There were cigarette burns along her back and stomach. She was missing two teeth.”

  “What time of year was it?” Marcia asked.

  “October. She was a freshman in high school, and she was playing on the volleyball team. Because there was volleyball practice after school, I didn’t worry when she didn’t come right home. The coach said Mandy had stayed after practice to work o
n her serve. That was like Mandy... She was a good student, a good girl. All of her teachers liked her. She did her homework and was respectful, and trained hard. I’m running on and on, aren’t I?” she said, giving both sisters a wry smile.

  “That’s quite all right,” Margo said. “Could you run us through the timeline?”

  “Sure, yes, let’s see. It was a Tuesday. Nothing special, just another day. I’m a nurse. I was working at the county hospital on my second shift, from five till two A.M. My husband was a trucker, and he was on the road four days out of five. He was someplace in Wyoming or Nevada. I don’t remember exactly. So, when I left for work and Mandy wasn’t home, it was no big deal. I left a note telling her how to fix dinner. When I came home, the note was still on the table, and her dinner hadn’t been touched. I checked her room because you know how teenage girls are. If they think they’re a pound overweight, they stop eating. That’s the wrong thing to do, but it’s how they lose weight. Crazy, I know. We got them in the hospital. Girls who couldn’t eat a cracker without making themselves throw it right back up...”

  “You checked her room,” Marcia coaxed, trying to bring her back to that fateful day.

  “Oh, yes, I’m wandering again. Yes, I checked her room. She wasn’t home. And it didn’t look like she had been home in a while. You know, there was no backpack, no dirty uniform or socks. So, I did what any mother would do. I called the sheriff.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I thought that if Mandy were staying with one of her friends, she would have left a message for me. I mean, we mothers stuck together. If someone’s daughter was going to spend the night, I made sure the girl’s parents always knew about it.”

  “What did the sheriff say?”

  “He wanted to know if Mandy and I had been fighting if she was upset. He believed that Mandy had run away. I don’t blame him for that. He had dealt with runaways before. As I’ve said, teenage girls make all sorts of bad decisions. They’re all about emotions and anger. I was like that, once.”

  “So, you tried to convince the sheriff that Mandy was not that kind of girl, right?”

  “I did. I went around the flagpole with him. I promised him that Mandy didn’t do drugs, that her boyfriend wasn’t all that serious, that she wasn’t having any problems with me or her father, that, as far as I knew, she didn’t have a boy who would pick her up and make a run for the coast. She wasn’t pregnant. The sheriff had heard it all before. I couldn’t blame him for telling me they would look into the disappearance. In the meantime, I had to hang by the phone. For two reasons: Mandy might call, or I might get a call from a kidnapper. We didn’t have that kind of money. No one was going to kidnap Mandy for financial gain.”

  “How long before the body was found?” Margo asked.

  “Those were the longest four days of my life. I mean, I don’t think I slept a wink in four days. I sat by the phone and yelled at Charlie, my ex, whenever he came into the room. You see, I blamed him for Mandy’s disappearance. He should have found a job around town. Being gone all the time was wrong. I was so frazzled that when they found her body, I was relieved. Is that crazy or what? She was dead, and I thought that was an improvement.”

  “Resolution relieves anxiety,” Marcia said. “It’s the reason people who intend to commit suicide are happy. They have solved their problems. Death may not be the best solution, but it is a solution.”

  “Yeah, it was like that. I could cry myself to sleep.”

  “And no one knows where she was during those four days?”

  “No, they never found a clue as to where she had been held. It was obvious why she had been left naked because her clothes might offer clues to where she had been before.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “It was October. Hunting season was just around the corner, and hunters went through the woods, looking for good places to put up a tree stand. Two hunters from the county stepped out of the trees and spotted the body. She hadn’t been dead all that long, little over a day. Luckily, no wild animals had gotten to her. I don’t know what I would have done if...” she trailed off while dabbing at her eyes.

  “Tell us about the investigation,” Margo said. “Did they find anything at all?”

  “Their biggest revelation seemed to be that Mandy was not killed where her body was found. She was dumped. That sounds awful, but it’s true. Because her body offered very little, they questioned me and Charlie and all of Mandy’s friends, but it got them nowhere. I think the sheriff was embarrassed because his theory of Mandy running away proved to be wrong. When he made no progress on the murder, he started to hide.”

  “Hide?”

  “In the beginning, the sheriff would call me almost on a daily basis. He wanted me to know that he was working the case. Then, as the weeks and months went by, he stopped calling. There was no news. There were no arrests. He could no longer give me any hope. I didn’t blame him.”

  “Mandy’s clothes never showed up?”

  “Not her clothes, her backpack, or anything else. That’s not surprising. They were left to burn before her body was found.”

  “Was there anything about the body that might provide a clue?”

  “No. Nothing beyond the burns and the teeth. Seems crazy, doesn’t it?”

  Marcia looked at Margo, and Margo’s expression spoke volumes. She wanted to take the case, but Marcia wasn’t so sure. There was very little to go on. It would be a nearly blind effort.

  “What do you expect from us?” Marcia asked.

  “Justice for Mandy. I know that finding the killer after twenty years is almost impossible. He’s probably dead or long gone by now. So, I doubt you’ll ever make him pay. But still, I’d like to know and get some closure. You know, before I die. I’m doing chemo, but things are not looking good for me. I’m going to die. So, if I could...”

  Becky lowered her eyes and dabbed at the tears once again. Marcia and Margo glanced at each other. They needed to make a decision. Would they take the cold case or not? They gazed at each other for a moment, even though they both already knew the answer. They both nodded at the same time.

  “Mrs. Salter,” Marcia said. “We’ll take the case.”

  “We can’t promise anything, though,” Margo cautioned.

  “I can’t pay much,” Becky mumbled, her eyes lowered to the floor.

  “We don’t charge,” Marcia said. “All we ask is that you sign over all your rights to the story. Because that’s how we make our money. We write a book about how we solved the case... or not... and then we sell the book.”

  “I know,” Becky said. “I’ve read your books. I liked them. That’s why I contacted you.”

  Marcia pulled out her phone and set it in front of Becky. “All right, Mrs. Salter.”

  “Becky, call me Becky.”

  “Becky,” Margo repeated. “Tell us again, from the beginning. We need to record it for our investigation.”

  Becky nodded. “I’ve told it to myself a thousand times. What’s one more?”

  Becky stayed for dinner, and the sisters asked her more questions, but they barely learned anything further. Becky ate little but was great company.

  Before Margo went to bed, she turned to Marcia.

  “All right, big sister, where is Havermill, North Carolina?”

  “Close to the Nantahala River.”

  “Boy, does that help.”

  Marcia laughed. “We start tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call Datum.”

  CHAPTER3

  Margo waded out of the pool and wrung the water out of her hair. There was something about a morning swim that always invigorated her. The exercise was one thing, water was another, but the sun was best of all. Vitamin D. She was going to live to be a hundred, all because of the warm Florida sun. Drying off, she noticed Marcia returning from her morning jog. They were creatures of habit. Good habits, for the most part. She glanced at her watch. They needed to move fast since they had an appointment with Datum, and D
atum never liked to be kept waiting.

  Marcia was showered, dressed, and in her chair when Margo rushed in.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” Margo said.

  “You’re not,” Marcia said. “I sent Datum a message, giving us an extra thirty minutes. You’re right on time.”

  “You know me too well.”

  “Not a chance, sis, not a chance. Ready?”

  “No, I need another cup of coffee, but I know Datum will not wait. What’s the ETA?”

  Marcia looked at her watch. “Thirty seconds.”

  “Let’s light these screens.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  They turned the computer screens on, and a countdown in vivid green color suddenly appeared.

  “Datum went green today,” Margo said.

  “It’s different. I wonder why?” Marcia answered.

  “Probably feels good.”

  “Datum? What are the chances?”

  When the countdown reached zero, the screen exploded in fireworks, but the sisters barely flinched in their seats.

  Then, the screen was filled with Datum's image, or what the sisters believed to be Datum. It could also be some computer-generated version. Datum was a born conspiracy theorist. She believed that the CIA had murdered JFK and that vaccines were nothing but a way for the government to control the population. The sisters knew better than to get Datum started on any of these topics. She could go on for hours about how the NSA was listening in on every one of their conversations... even this one.

  “Good morning, Datum,” Marcia said. “What have you got for us?”

  “Not as much as you would like, but more than enough to get you started. By the way, have you noticed the lights dimming down in your neck of Florida?”

  “Lights dimming?” Margo asked.

  “According to some people I chat with, the amount of electricity flowing into your area has been decreased by very, very small amounts. The effect is a dimming of the lights. It’s not noticeable to most people. In fact, you need some advanced equipment to measure it. The most insidious thing is that the decrease isn’t constant. It’s one little step today and one little step a month later. So, your eyes become adjusted to the decrease before the energy is lowered. When you think about it, it’s a real boon for the power companies. They supply less energy for the same price. Makes the batshit crazy environmentalists happy too. Anything that decreases the use of electricity is fine with them. You don’t know it, but you’re the testing ground for this kind of technology. If they get you to settle for less, well, the rest of the country will be next.”