‘Nothing useful, but he clearly liked her and missed her not being in the choir.’
‘Mandy was one of the few that actually made the effort to be nice and talk to him, so he probably misses her a lot. Some of the kids, Julie Collins being one of them, even went as far as saying he had something to do with her disappearance. He was interviewed but he was with his father all day.’
‘Why would they do something like that?’ a shocked Anna asked, realizing she had not yet read Jack’s interview in the case file.
‘Spitefulness and because they see him as the oddball. I can never understand how some kids can be so cruel and narrow-minded. More wine?’ he asked, holding up the bottle.
Anna smiled and nodded, hiding the fact that she was vexed that her ploy to try to discover who ‘Carl’ was hadn’t worked so far. She decided to keep the topic of conversation on Jack Brennan.
‘I noticed Jack had a horrible-looking rash and blisters on his arms and hands. It must have been causing him pain when he played the piano but he never complained.’
‘Really, did he tell you how it happened?’
She nodded. ‘He’d been pulling out some Jimson weed and forgot to wear gloves, said his dad was upset with him.’
‘I’m not surprised – if there’s anyone who knows about every dangerous plant out there it’s his dad.’
Anna asked him if Jack’s dad was a botanist and Blane told her that he was the Chief Park Ranger for the County and had coordinated all the woodland searches for Mandy Anderson. He added that Jimson weed was very prevalent in Virginia and could be a lot more dangerous than just causing a rash.
‘It’s a member of the Solanaceae plant family and contains atropine, which makes you very ill, causes hallucinations and can even kill you.’
‘What’s Solanaka…?’ Anna star ted to ask, but gave up trying to pronounce the unfamiliar word. He grinned and apologized for being too technical.
‘It comes from the Latin word solanum, meaning “nightshade”.’
‘What, like deadly nightshade?’
‘Yes, but the strange thing is it’s also used for medicinal purposes, such as an analgesic during surgery.’
‘So how come you know so much about plants?’ she wondered, playing with the stem of her wine glass.
Blane modestly claimed his knowledge was limited, and came from a poisoning case he’d dealt with, in which a care worker in an old people’s home collected berries from a nightshade plant, crushed them and put them into the food. It was not enough to kill the residents but made them very ill and then she would give them another drug to counteract the atropine.
‘Some saw her as their saviour, changed their wills and left her everything. Once the will was changed that was it and she didn’t bother with the antidote. She was something else, but we got her in the end.’
‘How did you catch her?’ Anna asked.
‘A suspicious relative, plus the sudden high mortality rate in the home. Once arrested, she delighted in telling us how she had the power to control life and death.’
Anna had been so mesmerized by what he was telling her that she hadn’t realized that the conversation had slowly weaved away from the subject of Jack Brennan, and now it was too late – they had finished their meal.
She offered to help with the washing-up but Don was having none of it, telling her to go and relax by the fire and put on some music if she wanted. She wandered over to the rack of CDs and looked through them, impressed by the wide range but not really sure what to put on. She smiled as she noticed the name of one of the artists.
‘I didn’t take you for a Barry Manilow fan,’ she said.
‘That’s my adopted mom’s, she’s mad about him.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Anna said, and they both laughed.
‘Go ahead, put it on. I fancy a bit of nostalgia,’ Blane said.
Anna put the disc in the player and the first track opened with a slow, rolling piano intro that she recognized right away as the tune that Jack Brennan had been playing as she left the church. Reaching for the CD cover she saw that the song was called ‘Mandy’. It was rather eerie as she listened closely to the words of the opening verse, but she told herself she was just being silly. Then came the chorus and the references to Mandy, who came and gave without taking; he sent her away but still needed her today.
Anna, settling herself on the sofa, wondered if she was just imagining things but remembered Jack telling her ‘it will never be the same again without her’. Something made her suspect that the song was more than a fond memory to the young man. She glanced over at Don, who was still washing up, wanting to tell him about the song but anxious he’d think she was just imagining things, as he seemed to have a soft spot for Jack. She was equally keen to examine Jack’s original statement now that she knew that it might be vital, and so made an excuse to Don that her headache had returned and she didn’t feel so good, so she thought she’d lie down. She felt bad as Don blamed himself, fearing it was his cooking or the wine that had made her feel unwell.
Anna assured him it wasn’t and kissed him gently on the cheek before starting to go upstairs. Before she was midway up, he asked if she minded him changing the CD as it was getting on his nerves, to which she laughed and by the time she reached her bedroom the strains of Mozart drifted up. Yet, Mr Manilow’s rendition of ‘Mandy’ continued playing in her mind.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was after midnight as Anna sat cross-legged on the bed, with statements and documents from the case file strewn all over it and the floor. She still felt bad about deceiving Don into believing she had a headache, and her dilemma now was whether or not she should go downstairs and wake him up, or wait until the morning to tell him what she had uncovered. If she was right, about where the camera key ring, birthday card and, vitally, Mandy’s body could be, the Andersons might have some closure. ‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I won’t get a wink of sleep and Don wants this resolved even more than I do…’ but first, she wanted to get her scribbled notes in order, and gather the documents from the file so she could fully explain her reasoning, which pointed to not one but two suspects being involved in Mandy Anderson’s abduction and murder.
The vital information Anna had found came firstly from looking at Jack Brennan’s statement. It contained the same points he had spoken about at the church, but in slightly more detail, along with his family background. His mother had left when he was very young and he was an only child who now lived with his father, the local Chief Ranger. He knew Mandy through school and the church; she was kind to him and helped him with the piano. Jack’s account of his movements for the afternoon that Mandy went missing was that his father had taken him out on a long driving lesson and they had returned home late evening.
Thanks to Jack’s alibi, Anna had at first thought she was wrong about the Barry Manilow song having a deeper significance for the young man, but what she discovered next convinced her otherwise. Jack Brennan’s personal details showed his date of birth as 21 May 1996, meaning he was sixteen on the day that Mandy disappeared. Anna wondered if he was the recipient of the camera key ring and card, but more worrying was that if that were true, his alibi had been a lie. There was no statement in the file made by a Mr Brennan, but Anna thought it impossible that he wouldn’t have been asked to confirm his son’s movements on the day in question. She had recalled Blane saying that as the local Chief Ranger, Jack’s father had led the woodland searches for Mandy Anderson, so she had looked through the case file for the search map and accompanying report to find his name.
On discovering the Chief Ranger was called Carl Brennan, Anna realized that this must have been the very same ‘Carl’ that Don had been talking to on the phone earlier in the evening. It made sense that Jack would have told his father about meeting Anna at the church, but she couldn’t understand why Jack would suggest that she had been in any way aggressive. She appreciated, due to Jack’s ADHD and his being bullied, that Carl might be an overprotective father, but why threaten to make a complaint to the Director of the Academy? It could just have been an idle threat – but what if it was actually more than that, some sort of nervous reaction in fear of being found out? If Jack Brennan had abducted or killed Mandy and, as Anna suspected, Carl Brennan had alibied his son then they were both lying.