Killer Kisses (35 page)

“The children can be, shall we say,
aggressive
at times, but there are no orphans among our people. Don’t you ever forget that, Charlene. No orphans.”

Still trying to process everything, Charlene closed her eyes and thought about her mother and father, her brother, all alone in Baltimore, disconnected from this loving clan of relatives. Her grandparents were good, not evil.
What would have made Joanna so afraid of her own family?

Shoshannah’s now chipper voice broke into Charlene’s thoughts. “So, what brings you to my lair?”

“The Internet. I need to do some research. Is that okay?”

A bell rang and children’s voices clamored in the distance. “Oh, look at the time. I’m supposed to be on first lunch duty today.” Shoshannah motioned for Charlene to sit at the desk. “Use my computer. There’s paper in the printer. Help yourself to whatever you need.”

She had the office, the computer, and her scientific research skills. She also had a sinking feeling she was on the verge of discovering her mother’s secrets and her own worst fears.

CHAPTER NINE

~*~

Secrets within Secrets

Despite recalling her father’s near daily explanations of his research, Charlene decided to do some digging beyond her memories of his work. Gorlin-Chaudry-Moss Syndrome was similar to—but in no way explanatory for the events of the previous evening. An extremely rare genetic disorder, children with this condition were often deaf, hirsute, and developmentally delayed. In addition, bone plates closed prematurely, causing shortened or uneven limbs, hence the gait problems she’d seen in the boys. The disorder was possibly an ‘autosomally recessive trait’. She twisted a strand of hair. That meant the mothers would have to be carriers, too. But
only
the offspring of Oblis exhibited these characteristics. And not one scientific article offered
any
explanation for the changes she observed in her brother overnight.

On a whim, she clicked on the website for the Johns Hopkins Genetics Lab. And found nothing related to her father and his research.

Her stomach fell in a long swooping glide and her heart thudded in her throat. Where was his name? His list of publications? All the grants he’d garnered? What the hell was going on?

She decided to call Dr. Hoffman. After all, he told her, “
If there’s anything I can do for you, call me.”
What he could do for her was tell her why her father had been erased from their institutional memory as easily as she’d erased the cookies and web addresses from the Internet browser on Shoshannah’s computer.

When she finally reached the lab by phone, an underling said the esteemed lab director might be around, but ‘deeply regretted’ that he ‘truly
needed’ to know who was calling. When she identified herself, a quick intake of breath told her that her father’s name wasn’t
completely
forgotten. Hoffman came on the line shortly after the gasp.

“Charlene, my dear, how
are
you?”

“How long did it take for you to wipe out every trace of my father’s work at your lab? A day? Two?”

“Oh, come now, my dear girl. It’s not like that.” His voice fell to a whisper. “Let me close my door.” She heard a door slam and he returned to the line. “Your father was chasing after a non-existent disorder. That’s why the NIH wouldn’t renew his grant. Good God, Charlene, we’ve only just begun to understand the
magnitude
of his delusions.”

“Delusions? My father wasn’t mentally ill.”

“He was obsessed, obsessed with a cure for your brother, so much so that he went off in bizarre tangents, into
cryptozoology
for God’s sake! Do you know how that looks to funding sources? We were the laughing stock of the NIH Rare Gene Disease Program. If he hadn’t died in the car crash, we would have been forced to fire him. And he
knew
it.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly in a futile attempt to stop the alarm bells in her head, the ones that were taking her back to the medical examiner and the trip to the morgue to identify her parents. “Did you say cryptozoology?”

His voice now fell into a low whisper, “Yes. He was looking into cases of lycanthropy and harassing the psychiatrists for the medical records of the few lunatics they saw here who claimed they were werewolves.” He paused. “People were
talking
. My funding agencies were beginning to ask some very
difficult
questions. A fraud investigation would have destroyed the lab and many fine researchers’ lives. You
do
understand, don’t you?”

A chill fell on the once cozy librarian’s office.

“No. I
don’t
understand, Dr. Hoffman. Please. I would like a detailed explanation. Tell me
exactly
what you mean.”

“I couldn’t cover up for him any longer, my dear. He
refused
to go to the Employee Assistance Program, see someone to stop this bizarre behavior. I had no choice. I
had
to tell your mother what he’d been up to, ask her to get him professional help.” He sighed. “Naturally, she was upset and defended him. Said I was out to get him. Jealous of his brilliance. When I explained the exact nature of his—his
werewolf
investigations--she was shocked into silence. Thanked me for my concern. Said she’d speak with him.” His voice broke. “Next thing I knew, they were both dead. A week after the funeral, a Special Agent from the Department of Homeland Security showed up with a warrant and demanded we turn over all his records.”

Charlene flashed on the bus accident and the dark-haired woman. “What was the agent’s name? Why did Homeland Security want my father’s notes?”

“Solomon. Like the king. I have no idea what use his crackpot research could have been to them. I was happy to give her everything we could find and to take all mention of his work off our website.” He stopped speaking.

“Dr. Hoffman?”

“Oh, my dear, I’ve said too much. I’m sorry. I really must go.” He hung up and the dial tone buzzed in her ear like a million angry flies.

She placed the receiver into the cradle and stared at it for a very long time, not really seeing the phone, the desk, or the office.

One part of her was convinced Hoffman’s concern was all self-serving, his unctuous sympathy a ruse to cover his overweening ego and agenda to promote the genetics lab. The other part felt a twinge of guilt for even thinking that about the man. He’d been her father’s boss for years. Dad never complained about him. Not once. If they had been at odds, she would have overhead something, right? Then again, she hadn’t been living at home for the past two years.

Exactly
when
did her father’s obsession drive him away from scientific explanations and into supernatural ones? How long had it been going on? Her mother would have
never
encouraged him to search for a cure for a disease that her brother
did not have.
That would have been a waste of time, money,
and
career suicide.

What possessed her father to think this tangent was a
viable
research path? Her mother was a nurse, not prone to flights of fancy. In fact, she’d discouraged Charlene from her occasional forays as a child into any supernatural reading, calling it ‘irrational, superstitious garbage’. Knowing her mother’s animosity toward all things outside the scientific realm, how
would
her mother have dealt with her father’s bizarre quest? Had Hoffman’s call to her mother provoked a fight between her parents—
and
the subsequent car crash?

And what was Homeland Security looking for, first in her father’s notes and now in Eden? What the hell was going on? She pulled the woman’s card out of her pocket and stared at the phone number.
Should she call Special Agent Solomon? Would the woman tell her the truth?
She put the card away. Not now. Not until she had more information.

Jethro—Grandfather, said Joanna contacted Jessie when she was pregnant with me.
Was she
really
trying to reconnect with her sister? Or was it an attempt to discover if she carried that elusive recessive gene? Eden wasn’t the only place with secrets—but it seemed like a good bet that these other secrets started here.
Secrets within secrets within secrets.
Joanna stayed in touch with Jessie. And Jessie was friends with—

She leaped to her feet. The
only
person she hadn’t pressed for more information was the one she’d been
sleeping
with. If she hadn’t been blinded with lust, she would have been on her game—poking at him with her scientific reasoning, asking hard questions. Instead, when she asked about his past, he dazzled her with his smile, neatly side-stepping any real replies. He
had
to know more than he had told her. One way or another, she was going to get some genuine responses out of Zack.

~*~

She found the charmer rocking on her front porch when she arrived home with Joey. He held a large bouquet of red roses and a bottle of wine. When their eyes met, his eyes filled with concern. Zack joined her at the bottom of the ramp and placed his hands on her arm.

“Let me help you.”

She shook his hand away. “I’m fine, thank you. I can take care of my brother.”

Joey’s face lit up when he saw the man and he signed, “Zack, Zack, Hi, Zack, Zack. Hi, hi, hi.”

Charlene wanted to cry and laugh at the same time.
Is Joey keeping secrets, too?

She fed Joey, then Zack assisted her in bathing him without saying a word. As soon as Joey’s head touched the pillow, he began to snore. She wished she could sleep like that. Unworried and innocent—Safe.

She pulled Joey’s door closed and walked toward the kitchen, Zack trailing behind her.

He reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her around to face him. “You have a hell of a bruise. Let me put something on it for you.” He touched her forehead and pulled back at her wince. “I know you had a bad night last night—and a rough day.”

“Really? Now how would you know that? The grapevine buzzing its way to you? Jethro maybe? What about Shoshannah? Did she give you a shout and tell you all about my visit with her?” She glared at him. “You’re the only one around here without a J name. Does that mean something? That is, you and Oblis.”

The color drained out of his face. “I am
nothing
like that viper.”

“You
seem
to be a nice man. You are
great
in bed, I’ll grant you that. But, I have to wonder why the bum’s rush? How could you
really
be in love with me? You barely know me. Or was fabulous sex just a way to keep me from asking hard questions about my aunt and my mother? Hell, for all I know you’re working for Homeland Security.”

His brow creased and he sounded genuinely baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen no dogs in Eden until the accident. Not one. Then, I almost run down a pack of them near the old mining camp. Next thing I know, a special agent from Homeland Security is racing into the woods after a bunch of black dogs.” She took a shaky breath. “
And
, the same agent seized my father’s research records from Hopkins.”

Zack pulled her close, and she struggled to wriggle out of his hug. He held her tighter and whispered, “I can’t tell you what Homeland Security is investigating. Honest. But I can tell you that I will always be here for you. No matter how much you try to push me away.”

When placed into the context of this house, this day, and this moment, the intensity of her emotions and the reports of her father’s bizarre research collided. She sagged into Zack’s arms and sobbed, grieving anew for her parents, for their lost hopes, and for her father’s desperate course of action when science failed him. The pathetic delusions of a man driven to delve into the supernatural world of lycanthropy and werewolves.

Zack rocked her like a child, patted her back, shushed her and finally lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom. Distraught, worried he wanted sex, she smacked at his hands and pushed him away when he began to undress her.

“No. It’s not like that,” he soothed. “Let me take care of you.”

She took great sucking breaths between sobs as he carefully removed her clothes, then covered her with a quilt. He stepped away from the bedside. She rolled over, closed her eyes, and tried to get control of herself. No luck. The torrent of emotions held in for so long ran wild. She beat at her pillow. Why, why, why had her father done this? Had he no idea what would happen next?

Zack returned, lifted her up again, and took her into the bathroom. He assisted her into the claw foot bathtub filled with bubbles. With a large, soft sponge, he gently bathed her from head to toe. Then, he scrubbed her back and rubbed her scalp until her breathing slowed to a slow, steady rate, and her sobs died to occasional hiccups.

When she tried to speak—to ask questions, he would only say, “Shhh, relax. This is your night off. I’m in charge.”