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Eyes of Glass - Hearts of Stone

Chapter Thirty-nine

Wendy burst into the house late in the evening the following day. "I know where the pictures Ronnie drew came from."

Leslie looked up from his place in front of the television in the living room. Lori dragged the girl into her bedroom and closed the door.

"Shoot."

Wendy sat on the edge of the bed. "Ronnie told me that Mr. Adler said the old farmhouse has hurt people and to stay away before someone else is hurt."

Lori leaned against the door and hoped to keep the extent of her upset out of sight. "Deserted houses can be dangerous," she said in an even tone of voice.

Wendy gave a frenzied shake of her head. "Ronnie says the pictures of the girls on the table came from a room with a steel door. He said he crawled through a tunnel to get inside. He was talking about a furnace registers. It's gotten smaller because he's grown so much bigger. One of them is especially big. He could have crawled through that one when he was little."

"What kind of pictures did Ronnie see?"

Wendy wrinkled her nose. "It sounds crazy, I know, but he said he saw mostly pictures of cut up animals, like in the butcher shop. Sounds to me like he's talking about the meat locker Mr. Adler has at the store."

Lori tucked her hands into her armpits to hide their tremor from the girl. "I'll check into it. Remember that I've asked you to keep your distance from the farmhouse and from Carl Adler and his store."

Wendy's eyes widened with innocent sincerity. "Do you think I'm crazy? Mom, you're scared to death! You think Carl Adler did something bad."

"I hope you didn't give Ronnie the impression that you wanted another of those photographs."

Wendy looked uncertain. "I don't think so."

"He'd do anything to please you."

"I know."

Lori waited until Wendy was caught up in her homework, then picked up a phone book on the way to the living room and the extension phone. She found the number she needed after a few moments and tapped out the numbers with a shaking finger.

Maggie answered the phone fearfully, but brightened when Lori identified herself. "Do you know anything about that abandoned farmhouse just outside Sorrel?" Lori asked after a nerve-racking exchange of pleasantries.

"If you're referring to the empty white house on the hill just north of Sorrel, then you're speaking of Nathan and Jessica Bates' property," Maggie said.

"Bates as in Ronnie Bates?"

"Indeed. Ronnie was their son, retarded, I do believe. Ronnie is living with the grocer and butcher in Sorrel, a man named Carl Adler."

"Are they related?" Lori asked, surprised by her sudden wellspring of information.

"Carl and Nathan were cousins. A few surviving members of their families managed to leave Germany before World War II. They all died years ago. The boys were taught the grocery business. Carl followed in the family footsteps. Nathan's family traded theirs for a farm, and Nathan received it as an inheritance when they died."

"I didn't know any of that," Lori admitted, wondering just how deeply her ignorance of matters essential to her survival ran.

"It's all a bit humdrum," Maggie said happily. "Carl Adler never married. Nathan married a local girl who talked him into raising hogs, big nasty breeding animals. Jessica's father ran a local slaughter house, so she knew the business. It's been something of a tradition about Sorrel ever since, as I'm sure you're aware."

Virginia Cornell and her husband! Lori had paid no attention at all to the origin of the hog breeding business. Her head swam with the sudden cornucopia of intelligence. "Then Nathan Bates was Ronnie's father?" she said.

"Yes, he was," Maggie said.

"What happened to him?"

"The man was run over by his own tractor," Maggie said. "That was back when the child was hardly more than a toddler."

"And Jessica?" Lori asked breathlessly. "What happened to Ronnie's mother?"

"Killed shortly afterward. Horribly killed. Pigs are unclean animals, according to the Bible. It's certainly not wise for a farmer's wife to attend to the creatures while soused to the gills, especially animals half-starved with disease and neglect. She apparently fell into their midst and they devoured her."

Lori lost her grip on the phone. It clattered to the floor. She closed her eyes and folded at the waist, battling to retain control of herself. She fumbled for the phone when she succeeded and put it back to her ear, badly needing to hear everything Maggie had to tell her.

"Do not think me an uninformed woman, Lori Malcolm. I know about Virginia Cornell's recent death and the manner of such. As alike as two peas in a pod, Jessica and Virginia. Unfaithful to their husbands. Abiders of alcohol. The devil sows his temptations. Those evil seeds that find nourishment in the human soul will be reaped by death’s scythe in the end."

"Then the families knew one another," Lori said in a whisper.

"At one time," Maggie said. "The Cornell's purchased the Bates' herd following Jessica's death."

"But it's so strange!" Lori protested. "I can't accept it as coincidence that the two women died in the same manner!"

"Perhaps not so strange, and not so coincidental, if accidents have connections. The Cornells and the Bates shared mutual friends, a third couple whose name momentarily escapes me."

"Radcliff," Lori said in a monotone of inevitability.

"Karen and Ben Radcliff," Maggie said cheerfully.

"Do you know Karen Radcliff, Maggie?"

"I know of the gossip of infidelities about town at the time. I can't be more specific. I don't remember details, if any were made public. Nobody was officially accused of wrongdoing." Maggie was silent for a time. "I have other information that may be of interest to you."

Lori puzzled at the guilty tone in the old woman's voice. "You do?"

"After you stopped and inquired about the deputy, I identified one of a number of your pencil drawings. As you may know, I phoned Janice Winters to prepare her for your visit."

"Your call was very helpful," Lori said, trying to suppress the horrible possibility that Maggie would remember where she had seen the other image and inform Trent Scarelli that Lori Malcolm had been showing pencil sketchings of his missing wife about town.

"I wondered how you had known to ask me about Mr. Scarelli," Maggie said. "I thought that perhaps we had another mutual acquaintance in Sorrel. I could think of no other possibility, so I phoned Miss Carol Fisher. The woman and I met many years ago during Miss Fisher's passing interest in our young male acquaintance next door. I fear that I pry without mercy in affairs that are none of my business."

"What did Carol tell you?" Lori said, forcing herself to smile so that she would sound unconcerned.

"She would not betray your confidence. I was surprised, but the woman is otherwise an incorrigible gossip. She did mention that you have had terrible dreams during the course of the summer."

"Maggie, it's really nothing," Lori said a bit too emphatically.

"Oh, but it is. I went back over our visit in my memory item by item, and I did finally remember a name to go with another one of your drawings. You didn't know at the time that it was Laura Scarelli, the young deputy's wife."

Lori squeezed tears from her eyes, pounding the bed at her side with her fist. "No, I didn't know. Maggie, please. We have to talk about that."

"The other images in the drawings you showed me must be past acquaintances of the deputy as well," Maggie said unrelentingly. "If two have vanished, then four have vanished, and if the young deputy has taken an interest in you, then you must fear for your own welfare. And if a dream was the cause of all this, then I believe I have other information of interest to you. I do not wish to speak further over the phone. Visit me when you can. Set aside an afternoon or an evening. Please make it as soon as possible."

Maggie hung up without another word. Lori stuffed the phone into her lap and muffled a cry of anguish with her hand over her mouth. Showing the drawings to Maggie had been her only recourse at the time. What was left for her to do now?

She would have to indulge Maggie and pay a visit before the old woman spread news of the drawings all through the area. As for the dreams, she had given up hope of finding help. Forces of reason represented by Wendy's Dr. Lake dismissed them as the byproduct of a disturbed mind. Maggie would probably whip out a set of Tarot cards and sprout the kind of wild fantasies that generally went with talk of the paranormal and supernatural. The dreams had been a thorn in her side from the beginning, focusing her fears and narrowing her perception of events until she could no longer trust her own sanity.

Lori threw on her winter coat and stuck her head in Wendy's door. Wendy sat cross-legged on her bed with a pencil and notebook in her lap and the cat sleeping at her side. "I need to run to the diner and talk with Carol. Watch the house?"

Wendy thought about it and shrugged. "Sure, why not."

"Don't let Leslie out," she added as an afterthought. "He'll frostbite his ears."

The diner was moderately busy. Carol signaled to the part-time waitress to cover for her. "I just have one thing to ask of you," Lori said. "Stand guard for me at the foot of the gravel drive to the Bates' house."

"Lori, no!"

"Help me get this thing settled before something terrible happens."

Carol's expression hardened. "What exactly do you expect to find in that old empty house, may I ask?"

"According to Ronnie Bates, a steel door and a hidden room. I want to see if I can find it. I'll be in and out in fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Tonight?"

"After you get off work."

"And what if Carl Adler's finds out? What if you're caught?"

"I'll say I lost an earring the night I found the children playing house."

Carol stared off into space and then gave a reluctant nod. "Pick me up after work. If Greg's curious, have a convincing story concocted for his virgin ears."

Greg glanced at them irritably, hurrying back and forth behind the counter to fill orders. The airbrakes of semis chugged outside, and the bell to the door tingled as truckers came and went. Lori gave Carol an appreciative squeeze of her arm and hurried back home.

Lori changed into dark, warm clothing and tracked down the lantern and Leslie's radio from far corners of the house. Wendy followed her about, curious, but knowing better than to pry. Two hours later, she only shrugged when Lori asked her to watch the house again. "Just be careful, Mom."

Lori glanced back with a smile and a silent nod and then turned with grim determination to the night.

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