She could see now the very real wisdom behind Ernie Carpenter’s system of stashing a selection of extra clothing wherever it might be needed. As soon as she had a chance and as soon as she had that many extra clothes-she’d have to follow his example with a suitcase of her own.
When Joanna reached the highest level of terraces, she saw Isabel standing beside what was evidently a basement door, beckoning her to hurry. “This way,” she mouthed.
“They’re in the front room talking,” she whispered, as soon as Joanna was close enough. “Arguing, really. If we go up this back way, they won’t hear a thing.”
The back stairs were long, steep, and uncarpeted. They had to walk close to the ends of the risers in order to keep the boards from squeaking noisily underfoot. At the second landing, Isabel paused to catch her breath. In the otherwise-silent house, the only sound was an eerie rhythmic creaking, a sound Joanna eventually recognized as coming from Holly’s rocking chair. It was there in the background, like the steady but annoying dripping of a constantly leaking faucet.
“I’m glad someone is helping Miss Patterson Isabel Gonzales gasped between breaths. “I feel sorry for her.”
“Why?”
The older woman shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s like something is weighing her down and crushing the life out of her.”
“Maybe it is,” Joanna replied.
They climbed on then, coming out through a door in the upper corridor just across from Holly Patterson’s room. “I can handle it from here,” Joanna said.
“You go on back downstairs. Hope fully, they won’t know you helped me.”
Isabel nodded and started back down at once.
She didn’t care much for either Rex Rogers or Amy Baxter, but it would be a shame if she and Jaime lost their jobs with that nice Mr. Enders.
Cosa Viejo provided them both with a living wage as well as a free place to live. In a one-horse town like Bisbee, where mining had disappeared and jobs were scarce as hen’s teeth, that wasn’t some thing to throw away lightly.
Unsure how Holly would react to her sudden reappearance, Joanna waited several minutes before she emerged from the landing and crossed the hallway. She wanted to give Isabel plenty of time to distance herself from any difficulty that might arise.
And all the time she stood there waiting, the eerie rocking continued.
Finally, after checking the corridor, Joanna darted across the hallway. To her surprise, when she tried turning the knob, she found the door was locked. That gave some validity to the theory that Holly Patterson was indeed being held against her will.
A skeleton key lay on a nearby oak hall table.
Joanna tried it, and the door swung open, revealing a room in which nothing had changed. Joanna’s business card still lay exactly where it had fallen. Holly hadn’t moved at all. Her two scraped hands still lay hopelessly in her lap, while her Vacant eyes stared through the small opening in the otherwise-drawn drapes.
“Holly,” Joanna said softly, her voice barely rising above the incessant racket of the rocker.
Slowly, like a television camera doing a gradual pan around a room, Holly Patterson’s face and eyes swung away from the window. Her questioning gaze settled on Joanna’s face with a puzzled frown. “Who are you?” she asked.
The question startled Joanna. She had been in that very room scant minutes earlier, speaking to this same woman, asking her questions. But now Holly obviously had no memory of it. Joanna was as much a stranger as if she had never laid eyes on her. Joanna felt with rising certainty that chemicals of some kind were responsible for Holly Patterson’s faulty memory.
“I’m Joanna Brady,” she answered, speaking calmly, trying to instill confidence. “I’m the new sheriff. I came to talk to you, to see if there was anything I could do to help. Would you like to go for a walk?”
“A walk? No!” Holly shook her head vigorously. “Amy wouldn’t want me to do that. She doesn’t like it when I go for walks.”
“Amy wouldn’t have to know,” Joanna said conspiratorially. “We could just walk down the back stairs and out the door. She wouldn’t have any idea we were gone.”
“No, I’d better not. I’d get in trouble.”
Holly’s voice was plaintive, like that of a child who, while already being punished for one misdeed, fears the additional retribution of another.
As Joanna watched, two tears squeezed out of the corners of Holly Patterson’s eyes and ran down her sunken cheeks. There is something seriously out of whack here, Joanna told herself, but she still couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
There were no visible restraints on the rocking chair, but there could just as well have been. Holly refused to budge, but her tearful refusal did nothing but strengthen Joanna’s determination to somehow entice Holly out of the house.
Suddenly, she remembered what Isabel had told her earlier, about Holly wanting to see the top of the dump. Maybe that would serve as enough of a temptation. “Would you like to go up on the dump?” Joanna asked.
Joanna’s educated guess was right on the money. Holly’s rocking ceased abruptly. A look of heartbreaking eagerness settled over her face.
“You could take me up there? Really?”
“Yes. And you wouldn’t have to climb, either,” Joanna answered quickly. “That’s too dangerous. I could take you in my car, in my Blazer. I’m sure, if I called ahead and asked, the P.D. watchman would give us a tour.”
“Yes, please,” Holly Patterson said avidly, staggering to her feet and then swaying back and forth as though about to black out from the sudden effort. “I’d like that very much.”
“Then we have to move quickly,” Joanna cautioned. “Down the back stairs. I’ll lead the way.
Follow me, and stay close to the wall so the stairs don’t creak so much.”
Once Holly was out of the room, Joanna relocked the door and returned the key to its place on the table while Holly stood in the middle of the hallway, watching her in a state of confused bewilderment.
“This way,” Joanna said, taking her by the arm. “Hurry.”
As they started down the stairs, Joanna realized the whole house now echoed with sudden, deafening silence. The ever-present sound of the rocker was stilled. In its absence, the creaking floors, many times amplified, seemed to echo off the 4walls and ceilings.
What if we’re caught? Joanna wondered worriedly. It was bad enough to have two of her deputies charged with false arrest in the Kansas Settlement case. It would be far worse to have the new sheriff herself up on similar charges.
When they stepped outside, Joanna was shocked by how cold it seemed. Running up and down the stairs had left her overheated and winded, but she at least had the wool blazer. Holly had been sitting in a very warm room, and she was wearing nothing but loose-fitting sweats and a pair of bedroom slippers. They were barely out the door when Holly shivered and hunched her thin shoulders against the cold.
“Here,” Joanna said, shrugging off her blazer.
“Put this on. The car’s this way.”
But instead of heading in the way Joanna pointed, Holly Patterson set off determinedly in the other direction, winding her way down through the terrace, heading toward the towering dump, gliding along like a sleepwalker, drawn forward by some invisible and inexplicable force. Joanna darted after her. “The car’s over here,” she insisted.
When Holly still ignored her, Joanna grasped her arm and tried to turn her bodily in the right direction. It was no use. Holly Patterson, headed straight for the dump, was as unstoppable as a loaded freight train on rails. She shook off Joanna’s grasp and continued forward with single minded focus.
“Where are you going?” Joanna asked.
“I’ve got to see if he’s up there,” Holly answered with surprising animation. “I’ve got to know.”