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Some girls...
Made to be broken.
I could drag Don Riley to Sammi's grave, show him her body, and it wouldn't change what he - and all of White Rock - thought of her. If there was any investigation, it would be quick, halfhearted at best.
As for Destiny, they'd claim she was somewhere in those woods. No one in White Rock was going to waste investigative efforts finding another Ernst brat. Right now, the only person who cared who killed her was the one who'd discovered her body.
Finding justice for Sammi wouldn't change what I'd done to Amy. But I could try.
At six, as my exhausted mind skated the border between reality and dreamland, the answer hit me and I jolted awake, certain I knew what had happened to Destiny.
The identity of Destiny's father was no mystery in White Rock. Sammi had been far from the perfect teen, but she could be counted on never to repeat her mother's mistakes, which meant she didn't screw every boy who looked her way. She had one boyfriend the year she got pregnant: Trent Drayton, whose parents owned the best land in the White Rock area.
When Destiny was born, it didn't take a genius to count back nine months and realize she'd been conceived when Trent had been spending Christmas holidays at the cottage. Even Mr. and Mrs. Drayton knew who Destiny's daddy was, though they'd spent all year threatening to sic their lawyer on anyone who said so. The family never paid a cent in support, and I suppose Sammi was too proud to claim Destiny's birthright. As for Trent, he'd been shipped off to UBC last fall after his father had found him a summer job in Vancouver.
The story sounds terribly romantic: rich boy, poor girl, star-crossed lovers... Not Sammi. She'd been raised to survive, not fantasize. When she met Trent, I'm pretty sure what she saw wasn't a prep-school Romeo, but her meal ticket out of White Rock. It's equally likely that Destiny's conception was no accident.
I'm not speaking ill of the dead. I could imagine being in Sammi's shoes, living in that house, a lifetime of Janie and her abuse, trapped in a nowhere town where everyone expects you to end up a drunken whore like your mother and her mother before her. God gave Sammi one asset: beauty. She'd be a fool not to use it, and Sammi was no fool - just a screwed-up kid with dreams of escaping the future everyone predicted for her.
So who would want Destiny? Trent Drayton's parents. After all, she was their granddaughter, white-trash mommy or not. How many times had they been to town since last fall and accidentally bumped into Sammi and their granddaughter? Seen her in worn hand-me-downs and a rusty stroller? Seen her going in and out of that hovel Sammi called home? With Sammi, Destiny had the most loving and attentive mother a child could want, but people like Frank and Lauren Drayton wouldn't see that. They'd see their flesh and blood growing up in poverty.
Sure, they could give Sammi some money and set her up in Peterborough, where they lived. But that would mean dealing with Sammi herself, treating her like a real person.
Taking Destiny legally was tricky. They'd need to prove Sammi was an unfit mother, which she wasn't. In the end, the Draytons would probably blow a huge wad of cash on legal fees only to be court-ordered to follow option one: providing for Sammi and her baby.
Why not spend that money on a more permanent solution? Get rid of Sammi for good, make it look like she'd run away, then tell the authorities that she'd handed Destiny to them on her way to a new life. Get some legal documents quietly drawn up, pay Janie to sign over her rights, and, boom, Frank and Lauren Drayton have adopted a beautiful baby girl.
I'd like to think no one would ever do such a thing. But I know better. There are people out there right now trying to find out how they can hire a hitman for jobs just like this. Got a problem? Put a bullet through it.
By seven, I was pulling out of the driveway heading to Peterborough.
Chapter Thirteen
Finding the Drayton home required nothing more than locating an area phone book. At a population of 130,000, Peterborough was s
till the kind of city where its wealthiest residents didn't fear putting their full names and addresses in the White Pages.
Locally, the Draytons were a big name. They owned Drayton Windows and Doors - a manufacturing plant that was one of the city's leading employers. By leading, I mean in terms of number of residents employed, not in wages or working conditions. I had a regular guest who worked at Drayton's factory and, for him and his wife, a weekend at the Red Oak was their only vacation. The nonunionized plant paid ten bucks an hour, a mere two dollars over the provincial minimum wage. Benefits included a discount on factory seconds and not much else.
Given the working conditions, one could assume that business was struggling and their only choice was to pay these low wages or shut down and put everyone out of work. But, having seen the Draytons' cottage, I strongly suspected their year-round residence wasn't going to be a modest bungalow.
The address led me a few kilometers beyond the official city limits. A stone wall marked the boundary between road and estate, but it wasn't more than three feet high - for show, not for privacy. No gate blocked the driveway. A metal grille was embedded at the end of the cement drive to keep the free-roaming horses in. On either side of the drive, a large brass plaque proclaimed The Draytons. If I lived in a place like this and kept my employees hovering on the poverty line, I'd be ashamed to put my name on the mailbox. But that's just me.
Beyond the gates, a lawn stretched over several acres. In the middle were two ponds, separated by a wooden bridge. In one, a fountain jetted into the sky. The other had a gazebo and a wooden dock with a paddle boat. Yes, the pond was big enough for a paddle boat.
Horses roamed free in the yard. Seeing that, I felt the first sting of envy. Not that I'm a horse person. I ride now and then, and have even considered rescuing a couple of dog-food-bound nags for the lodge, but I wouldn't count horse-ownership among my lifelong dreams. And, being practical, I'm not sure I'd want horses - and horse shit - in my front yard. Still, seeing the horses roaming free, it was like the picture-perfect image of wealthy country living, the kind you only see in Lotto 6/49 ads.
Behind the ponds, at the end of the winding concrete driveway, stood the house - a two-story stone country manor with a wraparound porch and huge bay windows. L-shaped, it was set at a forty-five-degree angle to the road, so the full size was proudly displayed to anyone drooling from his car.
To be fair, I should point out that the Draytons were renowned philanthropists in Peterborough. Every year, their company donated an entire thousand dollars to the United Way. And at Christmas, according to my guests, they held an employee skating party on their ponds and served free hot chocolate and day-old donuts. For this event, they rented Port-a-Poos, so no snowy-booted kids traipsed through the house. I understood the precaution. If I was an employee, I'd find as many excuses as possible to use the indoor washroom, accidentally spill hot chocolate on the Oriental carpet, and mash jelly donut on the spa towels.
Next door to the Drayton estate, a gravel driveway led to an empty lot separated from the estate by a stand of pines. I drove up it and parked behind the trees. From here, you could see that the driveway had once led to a house. The bones of the foundation poked up beneath a blanket of sod, like a prehistoric skeleton waiting to be unearthed. A small house, not more than a thousand square feet. Not exactly the Draytons' ideal neighbors, I'm sure. They'd probably bought out the residents and demolished the house.
My plan was simple: break in and look for signs of a baby. Like I've said, I didn't know much about babies, except that they needed their own special everything, from car seats to beds to bathing products. Breaking into the Drayton home, though, would be a big step up from illegally entering the Ernst residence. You spend this kind of money on a house and you might as well advertise in the Thieves Home Journal: "Hey, we got stuff, and lots of it," meaning the Draytons probably couldn't even get insurance without an alarm system.
Whatever the security features, though, I couldn't wait until dark. At night, Frank Drayton and the kids would be home. I needed to get in now and see proof that they had Destiny.
The house and garage backed onto forest, remnants of the former conservation area. All the lawn was up front, where people could admire it. The problem with this, as any security-conscious person could tell you, was that all an intruder had to do was cut through the forest and come out within a few feet of the Draytons' back door.
