The Sleeping Doll

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    Samantha gave a timid look to Rebecca. “He’s a good man. But he’d walk out the door if he knew the truth. That I was in a cult—”
    “It wasn’t a cult,” Linda said quickly.
    “Whatever it was, Daniel Pell was involved. That’s reason enough to leave me. And I wouldn’t blame him.”
    Rebecca asked, “What about your parents? Do they know anything?”
    “My mother’s dead, and my father’s as involved in my life as he always was. Which is not at all. But I’m sorry, I’d rather not talk about all this.”
    “Sure, Sam,” Rebecca said.
    The agent now returned to the specifics of the case. First, she gave them the details of the Pemberton killing, the theft of the company’s files.
    “Are you sure he did it?” Linda asked.
    “Yes. The prints are his.”
    She closed her eyes and muttered a prayer. Rebecca’s face tightened angrily.
    Neither of them had ever heard the name Pemberton, nor of the BrockCompany. They couldn’t recall any events Pell might’ve gone to that had been catered.
    “Wasn’t a black-tie kind of life back then,” Rebecca said.
    Dance now asked Samantha about Pell’s accomplice, but, like the others, she had no idea who the woman might be. Nor did she recall any references to Charles Pickering in Redding. Dance told them about the email from Richard Pell and asked if they’d ever had any contact with him.
    “Who?” Rebecca asked.
    Dance explained.
    “An older brother?” Linda interrupted. “No, Scotty was younger. And he died a year before I met Daniel.”
    “He had a brother ?” Rebecca asked. “He said he was an only child.”
    Dance told them the story about the crimes Pell had committed with his brother’s sister-in-law.
    Linda shook her head. “No, no. You’re wrong. His brother’s name was Scott and he was mentally disabled. That’s one of the reasons we connected so well. My cousin’s got cerebral palsy.”
    Rebecca said, “And he told me he was an only child, like me.” A laugh. “He was lying to get our sympathy. What’d he tell you , Sam?”
    She was reluctant to answer. Then she said, “Richard was older. He and Daniel didn’t get along at all. Richard was a bully. Their mother was drunk all the time and she never cleaned up, so his father insisted the boys do it. But Richard would force Daniel to do all the work. He beat him up if he didn’t.”
    “He told you the truth?” Linda asked stiffly.
    “Well, he just mentioned it.”
    “The Mouse scores.” Rebecca laughed.
    Linda said, “He told me he didn’t want anybody else in the Family to know about his brother. He only trusted me.”
    “And I wasn’t supposed to mention he was an only child,” Rebecca said.
    Linda’s face was troubled. “We all tell fibs sometimes. I’ll bet the incident with the sister-in-law—what his brother told you about—didn’t happen at all, or it wasn’t so bad, and his brother used it as an excuse to cut things off.”
    Rebecca was clearly not convinced of this.
    Dance supposed that Pell had identified both Linda and Rebecca as more of a threat to him than Samantha. Linda was the mother of the Family and would have some authority. Rebecca was clearly brash and outspoken.But Samantha . . . he could control her much better and knew she could be trusted with the truth—well, some truth.
    Dance was glad she’d decided to come help them.
    She noticed that Samantha was looking at the coffeepot.
    “Like some?”
    “I’m a little tired. Haven’t had much sleep lately.”
    “Welcome to the club,” Rebecca said.
    Samantha half rose but Dance waved her down. “Milk, sugar?”
    “Oh, don’t go to any trouble. Really.”
    The agent noticed that Linda and Rebecca shared a faint smile at Samantha’s habitual timidity.
    Mouse  . . .
    “Thanks. Milk.”
    Dance continued, “Linda mentioned Pell might have wanted to move to the country somewhere, a ‘mountaintop.’ Do you have any idea what he was talking about?”
    “Well, Daniel told me a bunch of times he wanted to get out to the country. Move the Family there. It was real important to him to get away from everybody. He didn’t like neighbors, didn’t like the government. He wanted space for more people. He wanted the Family to grow.”
    “He did?” Rebecca asked.
    Linda said nothing about this.
    “Did he ever mention Utah?”
    “No.”
    “Where could he have had in mind?”
    “He didn’t say. But it sounded like he’d been doing some serious thinking about