Hide Yourself Away by Mary Jane Clark Read Free Book Online

SHEPHERD’S POINT IN NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND, LAST WEEK, HAVE BEEN POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED BY THE USE OF DENTAL COMPARISON, COMPUTER-AIDED FACIAL/SKULL SUPERIMPOSITION, ANTHROPOLOGICAL DATA, AND PERSONAL EFFECTS AS CHARLOTTE WAGSTAFF SLOANE, A WHITE FEMALE, BORN IN NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND. MRS. SLOANE WAS 28 YEARS OLD WHEN SHE WAS REPORTED MISSING FOURTEEN YEARS AGO.
    MRS. SLOANE WAS THE VICTIM OF HOMICIDAL VIOLENCE. NO FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE RELEASED. THIS IS AN ONGOING CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION.

  CHAPTER  
11
    The Seawolf was Gordon Cox’s pride and joy and a great way to impress women. He’d named his sailboat in honor of the father he never knew. Soon after marrying his mother in 1944, Gordon’s father had joined the navy, and a few months later, he was lost at sea with seventy-nine other men aboard the USS Seawolf, one of America’s World War II submarines.
    Gordon’s white hair and the crisp, white sails of the Seawolf flapped in the morning breeze as it came around the curve where Narragansett Bay met Newport Harbor at Shepherd’s Point. Professor Cox pointed out the run-down Victorian mansion on the hill to the woman who was both his student and his much younger companion. “There it is, Judy. Shepherd’s Point from a different angle.”
    The pretty, red-haired coed adjusted the brim of her baseball cap to ensure protection of her fair-skinned face from the sun’s strong rays. “It looks a lot better from this distance,” she said, squinting. “Seeing it up close yesterday with the rest of the class was kinda sad. It must have been beautiful, but it’s depressingto see what’s happened to it now. I hope someone with bags of money buys it and fixes it up.”
    “Well, that’s exactly what it would take,” Gordon said. “Bags and bags of money.”
    “Do you think Agatha Wagstaff will sell it?” Judy asked, rifling through her canvas tote, looking for sunblock.
    “I doubt it. Agatha is determined to pass it along to her niece,” Gordon answered. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Madeleine Sloane sells Shepherd’s Point when she inherits it. Even if she could afford it, I don’t think she’ll have much interest in keeping the place, especially if the bones that were found in the tunnel turn out to be her mother’s.”
    Judy’s eyes searched the coastline. “Where is the tunnel? I don’t see it.”
    Gordon made the adjustments necessary to steer the Seawolf toward the opening in the land at the water’s edge, a course he had taken many times before. As the dark, boarded-up hole came into view, he was hopeful. Maybe finding Charlotte would make the preservation of the tunnel an even more important project. After all, Gordon thought, if people’s interest in the Underground Railroad didn’t pull them in, the American fascination with a “high society” murder would.

  CHAPTER  
12
    They were minutes from arriving at the Kingston station, and Grace was apprehensive. This was a first for Lucy and for her.
    “All right, honey. Now remember, just stay here in your seat and don’t get into any conversations with anyone.”
    “I know, Mom. I know.” Lucy sighed with exasperation. “I’m not a baby, you know.”
    “You’re my baby, and I’m telling you again, don’t talk to strangers.”
    “I won’t, Mom.”
    Grace gazed with love at the freckles that sprinkled Lucy’s nose and the sooty lashes that were canopies for those big, brown eyes. The braces would be coming off next year, and Lucy was beginning to develop beneath that T-shirt. Her baby was growing up.
    The time had passed so quickly, yet it was hard for Grace to recall what life had been like before Lucy. Her daughter had been her focus for a third of her own life. Of course, the aim was to raise an independent adult, but it was difficult to let go, evengradually, hard to imagine what her life would be like without Lucy.
    At least she had seven more years before Lucy would go off to college. Seven years was a good