Little Does She Know Read online

  LITTLE

  DOES

  SHE

  KNOW

  LITTLE

  DOES

  SHE

  KNOW

  PAMELA CRANE

  Tabella House

  Raleigh, North Carolina

  Copyright © 2022 by Pamela Crane

  Tabella House

  Raleigh, NC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  www.pamelacrane.com

  ISBN: 978-1-940662-244 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-940662-237 (eBook)

  Thank you for supporting authors and literacy by purchasing this book. Want to add more gripping reads to your library? As the author of more than a dozen award-winning and bestselling books, you can find all of Pamela Crane’s works on her website at www.pamelacrane.com.

  Author’s Note

  Part 1 The Red Sweatshirt

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 2 The Bloody Knife

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 3 The Smoking Gun

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part 4 The Hidden Letter

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part 5 The Motive-ational Card

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Part 6 The Missing Witness

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Enjoy what you read? Then you’ll love A Slow Ruin

  To my husband Craig. I better always be the one you’d go to jail for.

  Author’s Note

  Each part contains a clue.

  Each clue tells a story.

  Each story unravels the mystery.

  Bloodson Bay is a haunted town. A cursed town. A plague to all who live here. As with all curses, there was a beginning. And we’re all still waiting for the wretched end.

  It all began with one man and a heart broken so deep that the crack spread across time, across generations, to break many more.

  In the year 1817, Reginald Bloodson, bursting in equal measure with youthful idealism and wanderlust, left Adams County, Ohio, and journeyed southward, with no particular destination in mind. Traveling sometimes by boat, sometimes by horseback, he arrived one glorious April morning upon the coastal plains of the great state of North Carolina, and knew he had found his home at last.

  He set about farming the rich black soil, and in his first year yielded a bountiful harvest of corn, wheat, cucumbers, and potatoes. News of this fertile region spread, luring more pilgrims like Reginald from far and wide. And Reginald welcomed all.

  In two years’ time the town had twenty-five houses, a blacksmith shop, and a general store. The next year it added a law office, two doctors’ offices, and a one-room schoolhouse. After four years the town proudly boasted two houses of worship, and a splendid courthouse was under construction.

  Life was good. And Reginald Bloodson was at the center of it all.

  In all the hustle and bustle, the naming of the burgeoning town had been put aside. All suggestions were considered, but when it was put to a vote, there was only one logical choice, and all the settlers agreed. The town was christened Bloodson Bay, in Reginald Bloodson’s honor. He was pleased.

  One day a new face arrived, a beautiful face, a gentle face, and Reginald instantly fell in love with this girl. He’d pass by her at the newly erected general store and gaze at her. He’d spy her across the church aisle and smile. Then one day she approached him and spoke to him. It took several awkward moments before he found the voice to respond, but she adored his shyness as much as he adored her kindness. And soon they were constant companions.

  With her in possession of his heart, he built a house for her on the cliff overlooking the bay, and he took the girl to see it and proposed to her upon bended knee. Her kiss was all he needed to know that she loved him as much as he loved her.

  Together they began their family, creating a home, enjoying sunrises from their ocean view hideaway, and watching their land flourish. One baby after the next, their tiny family grew as they added one, two, three, then four children, all boys, to their happy little fold. While pregnant with the fifth, his beloved wife warned Reginald that if anything were to happen to her, he should raise the boys to be compassionate and loving like he was. He agreed; of course he agreed to her every request as he caressed her cheek.

  But during the birth of his fifth boy, a fateful June 27th, his wife died during childbirth. While the baby survived, Reginald found he could no longer keep his promise. His crops wilted. His home deteriorated. And his heart cracked more each day. He grew to resent, then hate that fifth child that stole his beloved’s life…and soon that hatred spilled and spread to all his children for what had become of his life. He withered into a wretched man, stooped and shrunken, filled with anguish and despair.

  On the one-year anniversary of his wife’s death, he could no longer look at his children, for they wore his beloved’s eyes, her nose, her lips, her smile. So he led them to the cliff’s edge to watch the sunrise one last time. Then one by one, he pushed his sons into the watery abyss below. Then he himself leaped onto the jagged rocks, and at last his broken body joined his broken spirit.

  That day, the blood of the children stained Bloodson Bay red. The townsfolk saw this as grimly ironic, that the sanguine name of their founder had proven so prophetic.

  Yet one child survived the fall. He grew up to continue his father’s legacy, eventually building a family of his own. A family cursed with death. You see, every year on the anniversary of his father’s death, the townspeople felt the haunting. The pull of the cliff. And for decades after, pain plagued that very day: June 27.

  Then, one day in 1986, the curse came for a young mother…and it would pull her toward that watery abyss, and eventually to her grave.

  Part 1

  The Red Sweatshirt

  Bloodson Bay Police Department

  Police Report

  Location: Bloodson Bay Beach, 6th Block

  Date: June 27, 1986

  Lead Officer Name: Officer Martina Carillo

  Case Status: Open

  Incident Type: Child Disappearance

  Narrative:

  At 9:24 p.m. on Friday, June 27, 1986, I was dispatched to the 6th Block of Bloodson Bay Beach regarding a missing child. The mother, Ginger Mallowan, reported that her 16-month-old son, Cole Mallowan, went missing from the beach for approximately 10 minute
s before she called 911 from her home phone at 64 Beachside Drive. Upon arrival, I observed Miss Mallowan in a frantic state, along with her 4-year-old son Benson Mallowan.

  Miss Mallowan claimed to see a white male with black hair, approximately 5-foot-9-inches, walking along the beach 15 minutes prior to the incident. There was no sign of this unidentified male upon my arrival. No other witnesses were on the beach at the time. Miss Mallowan had taken pictures with a disposable camera minutes before the disappearance, which she provided to investigators. The photographs may contain evidence of individuals or witnesses around the area at the time of the disappearance and will be developed immediately and reviewed.

  The missing boy was last seen wearing a He-Man T-shirt, gray sweatpants, and red Bloodson Bay sweatshirt. Additional officers and a search-and-rescue team were called in to perform an initial sweep of the beach. A red sweatshirt matching the description was recovered in the surf by the mother.

  Child presumed dead from drowning.

  .

  Chapter 1

  Ginger Mallowan

  June 27, 1986

  I couldn’t see the man’s face through the veil of twilight closing on Bloodson Bay Beach, but I could feel his stare. The stranger had been following me and the boys along the surf as we walked toward 64 Beachside Drive, our humble clapboard home that sat beyond a large sand dune on the sixth block. Not far up ahead our dilapidated boardwalk jutted out, cutting through the grassy mounds, and I quickened my step.

  As a single mother with two rambunctious boys, I doubted my shadower wanted to Take My Breath Away following a proper date. Considering my poor taste in men, I was better off Dancing With Myself to Billy Idol anyway. The way the man followed just far enough behind to blend in with the dusk, but still keeping up with my increasing pace…this stranger was up to no good.

  I could feel it in my bones.

  A vicious gust of wind ripped the beach bag from my hand, spilling the leftovers of our picnic dinner across the sand. Benny and Cole scampered ahead together, chasing seagulls that had descended on the food scraps while I chased a flying Tupperware lid. I smiled as I watched them play, each clutching their action figures—Hulk Hogan for Benny, an Optimus Prime Transformer for Cole. Their matching He-Man shirts blended in with the night.

  I remembered being terrified to raise boys after their births, cradling each one’s tiny pink body, wondering how I could nurture them to be better men than their father. It didn’t take long for each of them to become a moon to my tide, pulling me with a maternal force. They were mine, and I was theirs, so I willingly gave myself over to them, and them to me. Since then I couldn’t imagine anything different. My boys were my boys. They were my whole life and made my life whole.

  “Benny, Cole, don’t wander too far. It’s getting dark.” I glanced behind me, but the man was gone, as far as I could tell. Daylight was too scarce to know for sure.

  “Mommy, guws!” Benny shrieked with delight, pointing to the seagulls.

  “Mommy, guws!” Cole parroted his older brother.

  While almost three years separated the brothers in age, Benny’s language development had recently become severely delayed. Our physician speculated that it could be the newly popular diagnosis of “autism,” a disorder that remained a mystery to me—and our doctor as well, it seemed. Though I blamed the disappearing act of Benny’s father six months ago. The day his dad left was the day Benny stopped talking. It took every bit of effort to coax him to speak, and what words did come out were more befitting of his year-and-a-half-old brother. I was doing the best I could under the circumstances. At least that’s what I told myself when the sense of failure crept in.

  A particularly daring seagull swooped down, picking up one of the mustard yellow container lids. Shooing it away, I chased down the rest of the Tupperware that had flipped across the beach, collecting everything back in my straw Bermuda bag. A zap of lightning cracked the sky far down the shore, briefly illuminating the endless stretch of horizon. I caught a glimpse of a herd of wild horses that roamed the coastline, the only true natives that remained here. A distant whinny told me even the mustangs knew better than to stick around for the storm.

  A rip of thunder echoed, and based on my counting, the storm was about four Mississippis away. In other words, about four miles, giving us about ten minutes to take cover.

  A gust yanked on my color-block windbreaker. I slipped on my neon pink Jelly shoes I had been carrying, and held out the tiny red sweatshirt I’d bought from Wings beachwear shop.

  “Cole, come here, honey. It’s getting cold, bud. Let Mommy put this on you.” I grabbed his wrist as he tried to skirt around me, and pulled the sweatshirt over his head, threading his arms through each sleeve.

  “No!” Cole screamed, wriggling against the shirt. He hated long sleeves almost as much as I hated fighting him over long sleeves.

  When’s Cole’s head popped through the neck of the shirt, he patted the tender spot on his forehead where he had scraped the skin in a tumble on the pavement earlier this week. It was already starting to scab over into a heart-shaped scar.

  “Kiss owie,” Cole insisted.

  I brushed my lips against the boo-boo, then kissed all over his face as he tugged up the hem of the shirt.

  “Just wear it until we get inside.” I waved Benny over. “One quick picture of you two boys before we head in.”

  “Mommy, no picture!” they both whined.

  “I’ll be quick, I promise.”

  The Diaper Duo, so nicknamed because Benny had yet to potty-train and Cole still had a ways to go, struck a silly pose while I lifted the Kodak Instamatic I’d brought with me. The flash blinded them for a moment, but capturing those cute smiles was worth “torturing” them.

  Freeing them to go play—for five minutes, then inside!—I dropped the camera in my bag as a flurry whipped my hair in a frenzied halo.

  “Benny, stay with your little brother while I put this away,” I reminded him.

  “Okay, Mommy.” Then Benny tapped Cole in an impromptu game of tag. “Hey you guys!” he screamed as he took off.

  “Hey you guys!” Cole echoed. The boys had worn out their VHS copy of The Goonies and both could do a pretty decent imitation of Sloth’s signature line.

  The yellow glow of the back porch light guided me to where the boardwalk met the sand. I dropped the beach bag on the wooden planks and turned back to find the boys. By now it was nearly pitch black as I blindly called for them.

  “Benny! Cole! Come on in, boys! A storm’s coming!”

  The wind was too loud to hear my own voice, let alone their reply.

  I fought the gale with each step as I searched the shore for my sons, worried that my roof would be left shingle-less after this storm was over. While my father had regaled me with stories of how our home’s strong bones withstood 100-mph winds and a four-foot storm surge during the 1933 Outer Banks hurricane—which my young father watched from within our boarded-up house, his parents refusing to evacuate, the crazy bastards—I wasn’t so confident the foundation would survive another one.

  A gush of panic hit me as I searched the strand, finding nothing but empty beach and flapping plumes of pampas grass. Again I called for the boys. Again no one came. There was no way I was going to find them in the dark, so I ran up the wooden walkway to the house, rushing through the back door into the kitchen, straight for the junk drawer where I kept spare flashlights. It took three flashlights before I found one with working batteries, then I hurried back down to the beach, aiming the light every which way, screaming the boys’ names as I searched.

  Soon the pale white beam passed over a moving figure, and I sprinted toward it. Little Benny, holding two action figures now. He heaved breaths between words as he tried to talk over the squall. Relief flooded me as I dropped to my knees and wrapped my arms around him. After a moment I realized he was alone, without his little brother who was always at his side.

  “I to
ld you not to wander off!” I scolded. “Where’s Cole?”

  Benny shrugged. “He wiff wadey in wadew.”

  I leaned in close. I couldn’t understand him.

  “What, honey? He what?”

  “Wadey in wadew.”

  I stood up, skimming the flashlight beam across the crashing surf. “Buddy, I don’t know what you’re saying. He was wading in the water?”

  Benny shook his head, pointing down the beach. “Wadey in wadew, Mommy!”

  My boys knew the sea well, took first steps on her shore, bathed in her salty waters, learned young about her delights and dangers. I had reinforced the rules daily. There was no way Cole could have been taken by her…could he?

  I scooped Benny up in my arms, positioning him on my hip while I followed where he pointed, passing the light across the beach, along the dunes, over the whitecaps. The storm raged on around me, inside me, every crack of thunder stealing my breath and fueling my panic.

  After what felt like forever, I saw a blink of red as I passed the light over the water, and I ran toward it. By the time I reached it, I already knew what it was.

  Floating on the waves was Cole’s red sweatshirt. The white printed words Bloodson Bay bobbed along the breakers toward me. I knelt down and picked it up, pressing the seawater-soaked fabric to my chest as I screamed out my son’s name. Benny covered his ears as my screams turned to sobs, and my sobs turned to curses. But Cole was nowhere to be found.

  As the foamy surf receded, I felt it happen all at once. My old life, the one that revolved around my two boys, a life full of water gun battles and Teddy Ruxpin bedtime stories and Micro Machine races, detached and floated away. Darkness replaced the void, along with an endless hunger to fill it.