Linda Lovely - Marley Clark 02 - No Wake Zone (20 page)

“That took all night?” Duncan asked.

“No,” Weaver answered. “About midnight Eric called the sheriff claiming that Nancy was drugging him. The boy also claimed he heard Nancy say she was thrilled Jake and that blackmailing son-of-a-bitch Glaston were dead.
Then Eric screamed, ‘She’s going to kill me just like Grandpa.’ The sheriff
immediately called us.”

“That bitch,” Darlene spat. “Did you arrest her?”

Weaver shook her heard. “The kid was ranting. Probably high.
There’s zero evidence to support his claims. Naturally we checked on the boy.
Since Kyle refused FBI protection, we didn’t have anyone at the house. When our
agent arrived, Eric was in bed. Passed out.”

Darlene stood, hands on hips. “So that’s it? You’re not
going to do anything to protect Eric?”

“Simmer down. I talked to Kyle in person, suggested
hospitalizing Eric. He wouldn’t hear of it—not without a court order. He claims
Eric’s been through hell so he sought refuge in drugs. Kyle characterized
Eric’s phone call as a bad trip. Said institutionalizing Eric would make things
worse. I’m going after that court order.”

“Maybe Doc Johnson can help you show cause,” Duncan said. “He treated Eric before and after he went into a drug program in Omaha.

“Eric should go back to Omaha,” he added. “Kyle should
leave, too. With Jake’s memorial service postponed, there’s no reason for any
of Jake’s heirs to hang around and wait for a new death.”

Weaver nodded. “I made a similar recommendation. Kyle
rejected it. He intends to stay in Spirit Lake until the coroner releases all
three bodies—Olivia and the two Glastons.” Weaver cast an apologetic glance at
Darlene and Julie “As long as the FBI sits on top of you, Kyle says he doesn’t
need protection.

“The bodies will be released Friday. Then, he’ll head to Omaha for services and burial. Meanwhile, Kyle and Eric are staying put. So your visit to South Carolina is a good plan. Puts a couple thousand miles between you. I’ll see you to
your plane.”

While Duncan gathered our belongings from our unused
bedroom, I pulled Weaver aside. “You promise to de-bug Aunt May’s condo after
this morning’s play, right?”

“It’s a deal. Just make sure you and Ross pull this off.”

“When will I hear from you again?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Sorry, but if our planned script stirs up the
killers, I may be a little busy. I’ll contact you as soon as I can.”

Darlene and Julie waited for Weaver at the door.

“Guess it’s time to say goodbye.” I hugged Darlene. Until
last week, my old friend had been little more than a wisp of memory. Now she
felt like a sister. Tears matted my eyelashes.

She clung to me and wept. Her shoulders shook. “This will be
over soon.” I patted her back. “We won’t lose track of each other so easily
this time. You’ll love Dear Island. Stay as long as you like. When I return,
we’ll sip rum and Cokes and drive the natives nuts. A few weeks and this soap
opera will be just another chapter from our colorful pasts.”

“I hope so.” Darlene straightened. “Thanks for everything,
Marley…Duncan. I couldn’t have gotten through the last few days without the two
of you.”

Duncan took my hand as we watched them drive away. When the
car disappeared, he kissed my tear-stained cheek. “You are absolutely right,”
he whispered. “This nightmare will end soon.”

At a little after five a.m., he walked me to Aunt May’s
door, all last night’s bawdy talk about breakfast nookie long forgotten. In the
doorway, we whispered, making plans for the next couple of days. Not
surprisingly, sleep, sleep, and deep sleep topped my immediate agenda. Dozing
fitfully in a chair hadn’t improved my disposition.

Since Duncan had cleared his morning calendar for Jake’s
memorial, now a non-event, he decided to take advantage of the hiatus to get
some shuteye and wade through stacks of accumulated paperwork.

“Want to come over to May’s for supper?” I asked. “I’ll
spend the afternoon doing her bidding to atone for last night’s desertion. But
I’m sure my aunt would love your charming company tonight.”

“It’s tempting.” Duncan smiled. “But I’d suck as a
companion. Think I’ll cart home Chinese takeout, park in front of the TV and
watch anything that flickers across the screen. Don’t worry. I bounce back
quickly. I’ll be up to snuff by tomorrow. That’s Wednesday, right? God, I’m
losing my damn marbles.”

A vivid flashback to a marbles game convinced me my mental
equilibrium had slipped, too. My prized cat’s eye rolled straight for one of
our cast-iron floor registers and tumbled through the grate. I listened as it
pinged its way down the metal chute to our cellar’s coal-burning behemoth. It’s
never good to lose your marbles.

“I’m not sure I have any left to lose.”

Duncan awarded me a smile and placed a chaste kiss on my
forehead.

***

The strange noise put me on alert. Then I laughed.

My aunt’s snores, louder than a buzz saw, had no difficulty
piercing her bedroom door and echoing down the hall. The homey sound comforted.
When she woke, May would be well rested and ready to verbally kick my butt.

Today I could promise my aunt in all good conscience that
the Olsen murderfest wouldn’t impinge on our time together. Too bad I couldn’t
say how or when the ordeal would end for Darlene and Julie.

Weaver had dismissed my fears for May’s welfare. She
theorized that Darlene and Julie’s departure took me out of danger as well.
“Who are the killers going to blame if there are more attacks? Darlene and
Julie can’t be framed if they’re a thousand miles away.”

After Ross and I did our shtick this morning, my family’s
involvement would end.

At seven o’clock, Aunt May woke and spouted off as expected.
Once she decided I was appropriately contrite, she forgave my pigheadedness. We
breakfasted on her patio. The sunshine painfully bright. I squinted at the new
day.

While I didn’t divulge all of the evening’s surprises, I did
reveal Darlene and Julie had flown the coop. Since I knew someone might be
listening, I professed ignorance of the destination. May didn’t care. She was
simply delighted they wouldn’t be drawing fire in my vicinity.

“I must say I never get bored when you visit.” May
harrumphed. “I didn’t give birth to girls of my own, but you and Kay are like
daughters. You know I love you. I just naively assumed my girls would play with
dolls not guns.”

Though bed called to me with a siren’s song, naptime had to
wait for May to exit for a date with real estate prospects and Ross to drop by at
nine o’clock for our pre-scripted chat.

My cousin’s job was to ask questions. I mentally rehearsed
my responses. Weaver reckoned panic about new evidence should prompt the
murderer to act rashly. She reasoned our playacting would give the killer—or
killers—a single target: Weaver. I’d paint a big bulls-eye on her back when I
identified her as the sole possessor of Jake’s pretend second riddle.

The doorbell rang.

“Ross, you just missed May,” I said. “But come on in and
have a cup of coffee.”

After three minutes of what we gauged to be sufficient
chitchat, we got to the meat of our play. “So, Cuz, what’s new on the murder
front? You didn’t trip over any new bodies last night, did you?”

“No, but the evening didn’t lack for drama,” I answered.
“Turns out Darlene found yet another note from the beyond. Guess Jake figured
multiple clues would ensure at least one of his evidence packets surfaced.”

“So was this new note a carbon copy of the one that led us
on our Tipsy House wild goose chase?”

“Nope. According to Agent Weaver, Jake left a clue for a
different hiding place.”

“What’s the clue, maybe I can figure this one out, too?”

I chuckled. “I’m sure you could have, but Weaver’s playing
this one close to the vest. Darlene is the only person besides Weaver who’s seen
the clue, and Darlene’s been whisked out of town and placed under guard.”

“Weaver didn’t even give you a hint?”

“No, and she claimed she wasn’t going to show the note to
anyone else in the FBI either. She thinks there’s a leak so she’s going this
one alone.”

“Well, good luck to her,” Ross said. “Hope she finds the
hidden treasure. Oh, man, look at the time. I need to run. See you at the
museum later?”

“Yep. See you this afternoon.”

I grinned conspiratorially at my cousin and patted myself on
the back for our flawless performance. God, how I hoped our listeners tumbled
into Weaver’s trap.

Mission accomplished, I practically shoved Ross out the
door. Sleep was my sole objective.

I pulled the covers over my head and slept like a baby.

Aunt May shook me awake with more gusto than my throbbing
head deemed necessary. Two cups of caffeine didn’t halt the pounding hooves in
my mental carousel. Morbid thoughts circled in lazy repetition. Maybe the sugar
lift of a sin cookie would help. I munched.

Inside an hour, I climbed the evolutionary ladder to
humanoid, and Aunt May suggested a drive. For the next two hours, we circled
blue lakes and chatted about real estate and relatives. May left her cell phone
switched off. What peace.

My aunt checked her answering machine as soon as we walked
into the house. It had logged loads of hang-ups. “Probably pesky reporters,”
May decided. Friends and family members tended to leave cranky messages, rather
than stony silences, to discourage phone possum.

Weaver hadn’t phoned. No surprise. I’d be very happy when
the agent terminated all listening devices tuned to May’s condo and had no
further need to phone me. I wanted life to return to normal. Boring has its
virtues.

We spent the rest of the afternoon indoors. I fired up my
laptop to help my internet-challenged aunt update real estate listings with
photos I’d snapped on my digital camera. I’d taken a portrait of May for the
site, too, but she nixed it, claiming it would “frighten a horse.”

Next we collaborated on the genealogy tree. It showed all
our family nuts and fruits hanging from appropriate branches using hundreds of
heirloom pictures Ross scanned last winter as a stay-indoors, frozen-lake
project. For her likeness, May selected her wedding photo. A little arithmetic
told me she was not yet twenty when it was taken. Her gleaming dark hair curled
softly. Her eyes sparkled with pleasure. She wore a creamy satin dress and held
a bouquet of calla lilies.

“Want to use your wedding portrait on your real estate
site?” I teased.

“No.” May snorted. “I’m better looking now. You just haven’t
captured my beauty.”

The genealogy artwork would decorate the walls at May’s
birthday party and we’d hand out legal-sized copies as party favors. Working on
the family tree brought to mind Mom’s cautionary tale of skeletons in the
closet.

“Remember Mom’s initiation into genealogy?”

May frowned. “Not really.”

“When she retired, Mom decided to trace our roots. After
retrieving her parents’ birth and death certificates, she searched for their
marriage license. Couldn’t find it. Finally Mom asked Aunt Julia if she had the
marriage location wrong. Julia told her to stop looking because the records had
burned in a fire at an Illinois courthouse.

“A year later, Mom stumbled across the marriage license.
She’d been looking in the wrong year, not the wrong county. Aunt Julia fibbed
because she didn’t want Mom to learn about her parents’ shotgun wedding. Like
Mom would be shocked by that news at the tender age of sixty-two.”

May laughed. “I remember now. Your mom was fit to be tied.
Couldn’t believe she’d wasted all that time combing records because Julia felt
honor-bound to protect her sister’s ‘shameful’ secret. People sure have funny
notions about what’s proper for children of any age to know about their
parents. Parents are people.”

May’s comment reminded me of Darlene’s pledge to keep Kyle
from finding out he wasn’t Jake’s biological child. Silently I asked my
friend’s forgiveness for urging Weaver to test the DNA of all Olsen family
members. Technically I’d kept my promise. I hadn’t told a soul Kyle was a
bastard. Tactically I’d forfeited the confidence.

My suggested DNA screening would cause more people to learn
Jake didn’t contribute to Kyle’s genetic code. I hoped the FBI would be
discrete if that finding didn’t relate to the case. Maybe Kyle would die
believing Jake was his natural father.

Glaston’s mystery DNA report highlighted two DNA matches—a father-and-child and siblings. Jake and Kyle weren’t the father and son match, and
they certainly weren’t siblings. But I figured either might have fathered an
out-of-wedlock child. If the FBI stumbled across an unexpected genetic link, it
might offer a clue about blackmail possibilities.

Could blackmail have triggered all the murders?

At six o’clock, May and I warmed our leftover chicken divan
and settled in to watch the evening news. Winding up a special report on the
Olsen tragedy, the anchor closed with her juiciest tidbit. “WYZK just learned
that Olivia Olsen, daughter-in-law of billionaire Jake Olsen, is the latest
biotech murder victim. Knowledgeable sources confirm her death was caused by
the same exotic research toxin that killed Olsen’s daughter, Gina Glaston, two
days ago.”

I choked on a forkful of chicken. Who’d leaked the
information?

The anchor wasn’t finished. Her mascara-enhanced eyes
widened as she credited confidential informants. “The same sources tell us
Darlene Olsen, the billionaire’s widow, and her daughter, Julie Nauer, left Spirit Lake this morning in a private jet. Destination unknown. It’s believed the FBI
continues to consider Ms. Nauer, a person of interest in the high-tech
murders.”

The reporter’s facial calisthenics produced a frown. “No one
knows the mother and daughter’s destination or if they plan a return to Spirit Lake.”

I wondered if Weaver might be the anchor’s source. Maybe she
wanted the world to know Darlene and Julie weren’t in residence.

May and I called our yawnfest quits at nine o’clock. I tried to read several pages in my mystery but my mind went AWOL. It continually
drifted back to four murders.