Savage Beauty - Peggy Webb Page 0,58
up with a call from Detective Yancy. A tiny spark of hope flared to life.
She put him on speaker phone. “Have you found Annabelle?”
“No. But we found Debbie Waycaster, barely alive.”
“Let me guess. He took her blood and cut off her finger, too?”
“Yes, to the first, no to the second. He cut off all her toes and her left arm up to the elbow.”
The world tilted sideways, and Lily almost dropped the phone. She grabbed the dashboard with her left hand and held on.
“We haven’t found Annabelle downtown. Are you sure you searched the entire underground area?”
“Yes. We started at the library and found Debbie in a network of elaborate underground rooms. The tunnel came out on the other side in an abandoned shed behind the compost pile. We’ve cordoned it off and lighted the perimeter. Teams are digging there now.”
He didn’t have to say the rest. Chances were, he’d find the remains of the other missing girls buried there. And maybe more, unless they’d already vanished into the pots of Allistairs roses and into the rose gardens across America.
“Mrs. Perkins, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve got Clive and Wyler Allistair in custody. I’ve sent reinforcements to search for your daughter. We’ve spread a net across the Gulf Coast all the way to Florida. We’re going to catch this killer.”
When the call ended, Jack reached for both her hands and held on. “I’m going inside.”
“I’m coming, too.”
“I think you should wait here in case you get another call. The evening crowd is noisy, and you might not hear your phone inside.”
When your world has crashed down around you, waiting is one of the hardest things you do. Each second was an eternity, and each thought was a fresh horror. By the time Jack returned, shaking his head, no, Lily had woven a strand of horrors that would stretch to the moon and back, terrible what ifs, each one worse than the one before it.
Just as he climbed back behind the wheel, her phone rang again. It was a number she didn’t recognize. Nor did she know the voice.
“Are you Annabelle Perkins mother?”
The phone slid from her hand, and Jack grabbed it before it hit the floorboard of her Jeep.
“That was Lily Perkins, Annabelle’s mother, and I’m their friend and physician, Dr. Jack Harper. Do you have Annie?”
“No. I work at Mary Mahoney’s in Biloxi. I found this note in the bathroom on a paper towel. It was stuck to the wall with a wad of chewing gum. I started to throw it away, but there are cops all over Biloxi, and streets blocked off every which way, so I figured I’d better call the number on it.”
“Can you read the note, please, exactly as it’s written?”
“It says Help! Something is wrong. I think S. Allistair put something in my drink. He’s taking me to his boat at the marina in Ocean Springs. Call my mom. She listed this phone number and signed it Annabelle Perkins, and that’s all I know. I swear to you.”
“Thank you. You did the right thing.”
For a moment, Lily was in shock. Then the fearsome truth hit her.
“She’s alive!”
“Yes. And she’s fighting back.” Jack called to report the latest development to Detective Yancy. Then he turned to Lily. “We’re meeting search boats at the marina.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Stephen parked his car and lifted Annabelle from the passenger side. Both she and the marina were sleeping, just as Stephen knew they would be.
Every fool in Ocean Springs was tromping around downtown at the Christmas Open House, and the drug had kicked in shortly after he’d helped Annabelle to the car, waving away diners eager to lend a hand.
She sometimes gets vertigo after she eats seafood, he’d told them. It didn’t matter whether there was such a thing. People tended to believe what you told them. Her mom and I will tuck her in, and she’ll wake up good as new.
That would make another great story for them to tell when she turned up missing.
The “Betsy” waited in her slip, a Contender 30ST, named for his grandmother. It was one of Clive’s more clever jokes.
Stephen, my boy, the old girl’s namesake will be riding the waves above her grave. She can wave every time we go fishing.
Though the remains of all the rose contributors ended up in the compost pile, Clive thought his wife, being an Allistair, deserved a more fitting resting place.
I was fond of the old girl, and looking back, Wyler probably needed a mother’s touch. I never would