Bredloe intervened. “Don’t be insulted, Miss Kelly. I can see you learned at the knee of the late Mr. O’Connor. If you should hear from the girl again, would you please be so generous as to give us a call? We’d like to talk to her.”
“I would be happy to, Captain Bredloe,” I said, my tone as falsely sugary as his own.
He ignored me, and turned to Frank. “Pete let me know you had called this in. I just thought I’d stop by. Everything okay with you?”
Frank nodded. “Thanks, Captain.”
Bredloe seemed relieved, and turned to leave, then hesitated and looked back at me. “Don’t press your luck, Miss Kelly. You had Detective Harriman with you tonight, but that won’t always be the case. You’d be better off keeping us informed.”
“Captain Bredloe—” I started huffily, but Frank was squeezing my elbow in a plea for mercy. “Thank you for your concern,” I finished, although I hadn’t been able to keep the acid out of my voice.
Bredloe looked from Frank to me and back again. He grinned and said, “Good luck, Frank,” then walked away from us.
My anger with him managed to snap me out of the state of fear I had been in since coming home. Carlson left on Bredloe’s heels, not saying a word to either one of us. As the last officer left my house, I turned to Frank and said, “I’ve got to find Cody.”
Most of Cody’s favorite hiding places are in my bedroom, so we walked back there. Frank searched the closets while I got down on the floor. Two almond-shaped eyes blinked back from the far corner under the bed. I started crying. “He’s under here, Frank,” I managed to say. Frank got down on the floor as well, and started to reach for Cody.
“Don’t — he’ll scratch the hell out of you. He’s scared.”
“I suppose I’ve got to get something from the refrigerator for him,” he said, standing up and absently reaching his hand to a place on his face where Cody had once clawed him.
He came back a few minutes later with a piece of steak. “Steak?” I said. “Isn’t there anything cheaper in there?”
Frank ignored me and got down on the floor again, and started coaxing Cody with the meat and cooing to him. For some reason, it amused me. Cody’s stomach will always conquer his fear, and he was out from under the bed after allowing himself the bare minimum amount of proper cat obstinacy.
I held him up to my face for a kiss, and realized he smelled like Sammy’s clothes. Frank was still on the floor, looking under my bed.
“Yes, those are dust bunnies,” I said. “And no, I don’t clean as thoroughly as you do.”
He was trying to reach something under the bed, and I groaned to think of what pair of underwear or old pantyhose I might have tossed there during a look-who-just-dropped-by-to-say-hello rush clean-up operation. He got up and crawled over the top of my mattress and reached down, grunting as he pulled his hand free from the tight space between the wall and the bed.
In that hand was Sammy’s journal.
“Hiding treasures, Cody?” Frank asked with a triumphant grin.
Cody continued his post-steak wash-up without so much as a pause to reply.
“I suppose we should call Carlson or Bredloe and tell them about this,” I said, plopping down next to Frank on the bed.
“Of course,” Frank said, opening it to the first page, and holding it so that I could read it with him.
17
WE LAY THERE reading Sammy’s cramped script, prying into thoughts too personal for a best friend’s ears. The first entry was made on February 14 — Valentine’s Day. That fact, taken with the opening sentences, made me acutely aware of how isolated Sammy was.
“Do you know who any of these people are? RM, JC, the Bastard?” Frank asked.
“RM and JC have got to be Jacob and Julie, but I don’t know how she came up with the initials — must be the initials for the nicknames. No clue as to the Bastard or Bitch.”
He looked as if he was going to suggest something, but changed his mind. We read on. Disturbingly, it became clear that the Bastard and the Bitch were her parents. It was obvious that she stayed away from home as often as she could. She wrote of nights hiding out on the streets. No wonder she had left home. Pages venting her anger, fear, and sense of betrayal passed before we reached any mention of the coven.
We read of a gradual bond being forged between Sammy and her new friends. Against the previous passages of isolation, she now wrote of acceptance, the thrill of participating in something forbidden, the feelings of power that came with her act of rebellion. There was the sense of belonging and devotion to other group members that being in this secret society engendered. The allure of magical power was also drawing her closer to the coven. In more than one passage, she wrote of rituals and incantations.
