Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Hide and Seek by Melissa Milich

When I was nine years old, I read my first Nancy Drew book, The Clue of the Broken Locket, and for some time after that the only thing I wanted to do in my life was solve a mystery, preferably one that had stumped the police. I even carried a magnifying glass from a Cracker Jack box around with me in case I stumbled upon some clues. Just like Nancy Drew, Girl Detective. I ached for her spunk, her courage, her moral fiber, and most of all her interesting life because I grew up in a small town where nothing ever happened.

But as I got older (approximately four times as old if you’re counting), the thought of a mystery in my life was something I wanted to avoid, kind of like a flat tire, an inconvenience.

I’m a person who likes to find her keys in the morning. I like to know where my purse is, how much money is in it, and what I’m having for dinner. An ordered life. I have been working at the same job for the last ten years, society editor at the local newspaper. I wear white blouses to work, and to me it’s a personal accomplishment to get through the day without getting ink marks all over them.

I thought my Nancy Drew days were gone forever, but then Naomi Ray, a dead body, came into my life.

It’s probably more accurate to call Naomi Ray a missing person because nobody had actually located her body. She simply disappeared one day, vanished it seems, off the face of the earth. She could have been snatched by a UFO, but more than a few people suspected her husband, Cyrus. Trouble is, Cyrus Ray was a member of the Rotary club and a church volunteer, what you call a pillar of the community, and pillars don’t go around knocking off their wives. He let the police come in the house and go through everything just like you would expect a pillar of the community to do. He said he had nothing to hide.

And you can’t convict somebody without a body. So then Cyrus started getting all this sympathy from the community because the sheriff decided Naomi simply woke up one day wondering why she had married Cyrus in the first place and walked away from her old life. He said she was probably living in another state with a new haircut.

Naomi’s side of the family didn’t believe it for a minute. They said Naomi would never have abandoned them, her parents and sisters. Plus, Naomi supposedly disappeared with nothing, not even her most valuable emerald necklace that she could have sold if she’d wanted to start a new life somewhere else. They were sure she was murdered, and Naomi’s family continued to harrass Cyrus Ray until finally a judge ordered them to stop.

Then one day Naomi’s sister Elaine asked me to help them put Cyrus Ray behind bars. I think originally she just dropped by the newspaper to ask me to run an announcement from her church, but instead she brought up Naomi, and I had to tell her what everybody’d been telling the family for the past three years. “They have closed the case, Elaine.”

“But if we could only find her body! I just can’t stand the thought of him walking around a free man while Naomi...” Her voice trailed off, and I handed her a box of tissues.

At that point I started thinking about Naomi Ray so hard that I got distracted and careless with my ink pen and made a big line right across the front of my blouse.

Elaine continued crying. “Please. Please.”

So there she was squeezing this crumpled tissue, and before I got a grip on myself, I promised. Something got into me that afternoon. In fact, I gave her my Girl Scout promise which was something else left over from being nine years old. But I still couldn’t figure out why she had asked me and exactly what I had promised.

“I’m not really sure,” Elaine said, “except you’re wearing red.”

That I was. A red skirt with my now inkstained white blouse, but what did this have to do—

“Naomi was wearing her red dress when she disappeared.”

Naomi Ray was standing in a grove of frightening looking trees. I thought she had the look of a lost little girl on her face — in the painting.

Cyrus Ray had won a prize at the county fair for this artistic rendition of his wife. It was hanging in his kitchen over the butcher block where Cyrus was going chop chop chop with a huge meat cleaver.

“Now, why am I a celebrity, Candace Sue?” He moved from around the table, that cleaver in his hand.

We have this feature in the newspaper called Celebrity Chef. I came up with the idea myself, where members of the community, “celebrities,” which just means somebody like the fire chief or the district attorney, since we don’t have any of the Current Affair type of celebrities around, share a special recipe.

“Well, because of your painting talent,” I said.

Boy, could I lie. You would think all those years at Catholic school would have made me at least blush a little bit when I lied that tremendously. But maybe he did have some kind of twisted talent. I could hardly take my eyes off Naomi’s portrait.

Cyrus was busy making a Chinese chicken salad. This Celebrity Chef thing had gone to his head. I could tell. I personally thought he was using way too much mayonnaise.

“That’s a pretty skirt you’re wearing, Candace Sue.”

“You must like red, Cyrus.”

He chuckled and looked very pleased. “Why, how did you know?”

“Naomi’s wearing a red dress in that picture.”

I’m never going to get very far in this detecting stuff, especially if I give all my prime clues away to the prime suspect. I got out of there as soon as I could think of an excuse to leave, even though Cyrus wanted me to stay and eat some of his mayonnaise-heavy Chinese chicken salad. He didn’t act like he suspected anything.

I returned to the newspaper office and sat down at my desk and tried to draw the portrait of Naomi as best I could from memory, but it wasn’t good enough. All I could remember were those frightening looking trees, but I thought there might have been something else in the picture besides trees and Naomi in that unlucky red dress.

Big Tim McCallister, the sheriff’s deputy, was walking my way. He always stopped at my desk when he was at the newspaper for other business. I was getting tired of being single, but me and Big Tim McCallister? I wasn’t so sure that would work. He seemed kind of slow and awkward and didn’t talk more than he needed to. Where was Ned Nickerson — Nancy Drew’s shining boyfriend — when you needed him?

“Tim, have there been any new developments on the Naomi Ray case?”

So much for easing up to the subject.

“Come on, Candace Sue. She took her jewelry and left town.”

“She didn’t take her emerald necklace.”

Tim shook his head. “Naomi’s relatives been by, haven’t they? Those people just won’t give up.”

That took care of my asking for his help on this case, so instead I asked Deputy McCallister for his pork rind recipe for the Celebrity Chef column. I set up an appointment to interview him and dropped the subject of Naomi Ray.

But as soon as he left, I pulled out my drawing again and tried to remember more, because I knew there was something else in Naomi’s portrait, something I had left out.

“Well, you know, Cyrus, I would like someone to go to a movie with once in a while. Interview with the Vampire’s coming to town soon.”

It made me absolutely sick at my stomach to pretend to flirt with Cyrus Ray, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. And it got me inside his house again.

I went with a camera around my neck and told Cyrus I had to take his photo to go along with the recipe.

“I didn’t know you were a photographer, Candace Sue.”

“Anybody can push a button down on a camera.”

If this had been a Nancy Drew book, Cyrus Ray would have gotten rid of the portrait by now, but no, it was still hanging up in the exact same spot over the cutting board and I backed Cyrus up to that. Either Cyrus Ray was innocent or he wasn’t as smart as a Nancy Drew type of crook. Or maybe I was just getting better at this detecting business.

“You want me to hold up a knife or anything?” Cyrus asked.

“That would probably add some realism.”

But where he was standing he blocked too much of the picture. “No. Over to the left. Just a little bit over to the left. Perfect. Perfect.”

I had to wonder how that eerie portrait of Naomi Ray ever won a prize (first prize yet) at the county fair, unless it was just a sympathy vote. Like I said, a lot of people still felt very sorry for Cyrus Ray. I supposed the technique and composition were good, but the rest of the painting was just plain weird. Twilight Zone stuff. One of Cyrus’s painted trees was twisted into the shape of a beautiful woman’s body with what looked to me like a face on it screaming in pain. I was hovering over the photograph with a magnifying glass just like my hero Nancy Drew would have done, but the longer I stared, the more my eyes seemed to play tricks on me.

I’d had Barney, the staff photographer, develop my film as soon as I returned to the office, even though he was kind of ticked at me for borrowing his camera without asking. But he printed up the pictures just like I asked, cutting Cyrus out completely and enlarging Naomi’s portrait in the background.

I had seen those trees before. If only I could remember where, I might find Naomi’s body buried right underneath them. I had nothing else to go on. Where had I seen those trees? You can’t see the forest for the trees. Now what made me think of that? I looked to see what else was in the picture to give me some point of reference. I hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of the picture, the background for the trees, something that looked like a long white arm.

I picked up the telephone and changed my appointment to meet Big Tim McCallister for his Celebrity Chef interview, and then I went down to the county offices. I wanted to look at a geological map. Derrick Seevers, who sat in the map room, was flapping his face with a Chinese restaurant takeout menu.

“Can’t take any more of this hot weather, Candace Sue. I’m putting in a pool. My kids will love it.”

“A big pool?”

“A couple of guys from Rotary had pools put in during that heat wave a couple of years ago. It wasn’t that expensive. They rented a bulldozer, and Cyrus Ray helped them out.”

“Cyrus Ray?”

“He’s good with cement. You done with this map?”

I nodded, and Derrick put it back on the shelf. “You know, while I’m here, there are some other things I’m wondering if you’d help me look up.”

“Sure. It’s a slow day.”

I knew I had seen those trees before. When we were kids, my cousins and I played hide and seek in that very same grove of trees, and it looked just as Cyrus had painted it after Naomi disappeared.

It was nearing five o’clock in the afternoon, which was a pretty time to be in the woods. The sun wasn’t hitting so hard, and it filtered through the branches of the trees and danced on the ground like magic crystals. The freeway overpass just to the north of the grove was new and added a lot of noise to this once secluded area. But still, nothing much had changed, and I hung my arm around the trunk of one of the trees like it was an old friend and wondered if it was time to bring Deputy McCallister in on my discovery.

This had been our very favorite spot to play hide and seek because of the faces on the trees. It was just the way the bark curled and knotted, but the faces we saw added a spooky element to our game that we couldn’t replicate anyplace else. I guessed it was still a good spot for hide and seek, because when I took a deep breath of my past and turned around, Cyrus Ray came out behind the shadow of a tree.

We didn’t say anything for the longest time. Our eyes locked on each other’s, and all this communication just buzzed between us like electricity. I could feel it, but then again, maybe it was my own fear.

“Do you see the faces?” Cyrus Ray said. “The trees have faces, Candace Sue. I knew you would want to come out here to see them again.” He stroked his hand down the side of the tree and then faced me. “I wish you all would just leave me alone. I have nothing to hide, Candace Sue.”

“That’s what you keep saying, but I don’t believe it any more.”

“So I turned the tables and have been following you around, Candace Sue. Except for this afternoon. I knew you would come out here this afternoon. Normally I’d say a pretty girl like you should find better things to do with her life, but I think it’s too late for that.”

It wouldn’t have done any good to scream for help. All the five o’clock traffic heading home on the overpass was making too much noise for anyone to hear me, so instead I started shouting Naomi’s name — don’t ask me why —“Naomi! Naomi!” which unraveled Cyrus enough to give me a little bit of a head start when I started running away from him.

But a little bit of a head start wasn’t enough for someone who had dropped out of her aerobics class. There was a steep hill in the way that would kill me before Cyrus had a chance, but halfway up I tripped over a root in the ground and fell on my face. Cyrus grabbed my ankle, and I kicked his hand away. We started sliding down the hill together, and I was still scrambling to get away, not even caring if my underwear was showing big time. His big hand grabbed my ankle again and twisted it till it hurt.

“Stop it, Cyrus!”

Only when I heard the voice of Deputy Big Tim McCallister did I allow myself to stop clawing at the dirt. I heard two clicks of a gun, and I knew he was pointing it at Cyrus Ray. I turned my head to make sure, and there was Big Tim looking about as surprised as I had ever seen him, looking at me and then at Cyrus and then back at me, and I realized I was an absolute mess.

“Is this why you wanted me to meet you way out here for my pork rind recipe?” Big Tim asked.

He was still pointing the gun at Cyrus, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. He came over to me and put his arm around my shoulders, and I let myself lean against him. “Are you all right, Candace Sue?”

I was still breathing really hard, trying to wipe the dirt off my face while Cyrus Ray hurled every insult in the book at me. “Naomi’s out here,” I said. “Real close.”

“Go ahead,” Cyrus Ray said. “Dig up every tree if you want to. You’ll never find her.”

“He’s right, Big Tim. We could dig up every tree in the county, and I still don’t think we’d find Naomi Ray.” I pointed at the stand of trees, acres and acres of trees. “She’s not buried down here.”

For one moment Cyrus looked relieved, smug even.

“She’s buried up there.” Three heads looked up to where the cars were passing overhead on the freeway overpass, the long white arm of Cyrus’s painting.

“You’re good with cement, aren’t you, Cyrus?”

You might think a body embedded in a freeway overpass would be harder to find than a needle in a haystack. Not to mention more expensive. But it really wasn’t.

It took me a little while to convince Deputy McCallister, however, even though he knew I was onto something the moment he saw the sick look on Cyrus Ray’s face.

When I’d been at the county offices that afternoon, I’d found out that the overpass was still being built when Naomi Ray disappeared. It was just a matter then of going back through the engineering log to pinpoint the section under construction at the time, the night Cyrus carried her body out there and covered her up with his own cement, doing such a fine job the construction workers never noticed.

The county narrowed down the section pretty close and decided to put in some earthquake supports in case this turned out to be a wild goose chase, but they found Naomi right away. Some threads from her red dress were still clinging to her bones.

I couldn’t face going out there, so I stayed home to try to get those dirt stains out of my blouse. It was time to go back to my humdrum life, and after sliding down the hill with Cyrus Ray, that sounded good to me.

But one other thing happened.

“Hey, Candace Sue.”

It was Big Tim McCallister at my door. “You all right?”

I giggled because he’d been asking me that so much the last couple of days.

“Candace Sue, I don’t have anybody to take to the Tri-County Sheriff’s Department Dance, and it’s this Saturday,” he began. Then he stopped.

So I said, “What about me?”

“Well, okay then.”

He turned to go. “I already bought the tickets. In fact, I already wrote our names on them.”

“Taking a few things for granted, aren’t you, Big Tim?”

“No. Too much of that going on around here already.”