Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (21 page)

Sophie felt Daniel’s tension in the fingers that imprinted
themselves on her back.

Very deliberately, he said, “Because Sophie isn’t the only
one who doesn’t believe Michelle Thomsen killed herself.”

Daniel was aware of Sophie’s shock as she turned her head to
stare at him, but he didn’t take his eyes off Burton, who looked as stunned.

“You’re investigating,” he said slowly.

Daniel hadn’t admitted as much to himself, but after a
moment he inclined his head.  “I am.”  What else could he call what he’d been
doing?  Good God, this past couple of days, he’d spent more time looking into
Michelle Thomsen’s death than he had in Doreen Stedmann’s much more recent
murder.

And now he had some concrete evidence to support the gut
feeling that had been driving him.  Until today, Sophie hadn’t come across
anything in the storage unit that could possibly explain murder and a killer’s
frantic efforts to find something.  He’d hoped when she did she would recognize
it.  He hadn’t expected what she did find…but now a picture was taking shape in
his head.  His growing suspicion made one thing clear: Sophie was the one
person who could – and had – connected the two deaths.  That made her a threat
to the killer.

And the man in whose living room they were standing was high
on Daniel’s list of suspects.

“Jesus,” Elias murmured.  He ran a hand over his face.  “I
can’t believe this.”

“Can’t you?” Daniel said flatly.

He gave a short, unamused laugh.  “That’s why you came up
here?  To grill me?”

“Have I grilled you yet?”

“It’s starting to feel that way.”

The two of them stared at each other.

When the silence stretched, Sophie intervened.  “Actually,
we’re here because I thought you might remember something.”

Burton transferred his gaze to Sophie.  “Something?”

“The necklace Mom always wore.”  Her urgency bled through in
her voice.  “I thought maybe you’d have kept a painting or drawing that showed
it.”

He glanced up automatically as if checking, but the way he’d
painted Michelle looking over her shoulder meant the necklace wasn’t visible. 
“I remember it,” he said.  “A heart.  It sort of bothered me, because it looked
like it was melting down.  You know?  I couldn’t decide what that was supposed
to mean.”

Interesting viewpoint, Daniel thought.  Maybe more of the
lovesick teenager’s wishful thinking, but interesting nonetheless.

Sophie didn’t say anything.

“I have other drawings and paintings of her.  I rarely throw
any of my work away.  I’ll go look, if you want to wait.”

“Why don’t we go with you,” Daniel said.

“I don’t like people in my studio—”  He saw Daniel’s
implacable expression and shrugged.  “Fine.”

Daniel kept his hand on Sophie as the two of them silently
followed Burton past the kitchen to a door that stood open.  He wasn’t sure if
he was being protective, or staking a claim.  He hadn’t altogether liked the
way Burton looked at Sophie, who must evoke Michelle for him.

Through the door was a single-story addition that couldn’t
be seen from the front of the house outside.  It was larger than the living
room and kitchen combined, with vast sweeps of window and skylight that, with a
slate floor, gave it the feel of a conservatory.

Several easels appeared to have work in progress. 
Paint-splattered tarps protected the slate.  Custom designed cupboards and
niches filled the two windowless walls.  Some of the cupboards stood open or
had no doors, revealing unused canvases in a variety of sizes, already
stretched, matting material, frames, unused brushes, tubes of paint.  A couple
of large tables were standing height, although tall metal stools would let the
artist sit if he chose.  On one, it appeared he’d been in the middle of
stretching a canvas.  An industrial sized stapler was beside it.

Burton went to the far end and began hunting.  Paintings by
the dozens were kept from bumping each other by dividers.  Drawers that glided
open were repositories for large folders filled with simple sketches and
charcoal or colored pencil pieces.  He flipped through a few whole notebooks.

“Do you have any organization?” Daniel couldn’t help asking.

There was a glimmer of humor in Burton’s eyes when he
glanced over his shoulder.  “Some.  By year, by subject.  This early stuff, I
haven’t looked at in a long time.”

He pulled out a few paintings and, without comment, propped
them up for Sophie to see.  He’d captured her mother in a variety of moods and
poses.  One, a watercolor, was of Sophie and Michelle both, sitting by a beach
fire and seemingly roasting hotdogs or marshmallows.  The light suggested
oncoming dusk; firelight cast shadows that made their faces both mysterious and
compelling.  The technical skill of the painting that hung over the fireplace
wasn’t there yet, but the artist’s eye was.

Daniel looked at Sophie, to see her gazing at this painting
with an expression of such yearning, he had to grit his teeth against his
desire to turn her away from it and say, Don’t look.  Remembering so much her
mind had blocked out had to be killing her.  He’d have wished it wasn’t
happening, except he really did believe she’d be better off with answers. 
Better off letting go of the anger and sense of abandonment to remember her
mother with love.

“Damn,” Burton said suddenly, softly.  “There it is.”  He
took a folder to the nearest table and opened it, then stood aside.  Both
Sophie and Daniel crowded forward.

Sophie gasped.  Daniel stared at the drawing of Michelle’s
head and shoulders.  She was laughing, and it appeared her arms were outflung. 
She wore a bikini top that revealed a swell of breasts richly suggested by the
merest shading of pencil.  The pendant on a fine chain was clearly drawn,
making Daniel guess the artist had studied it closely before. 

Daniel was flooded with a rush of the kind of exhilaration
he hadn’t had any reason to feel since he took this job in Cape Trouble.  In
the back of his mind, it occurred to him that he’d missed this: a predator’s
instinct, an awareness that he was closing in on his prey.

The necklace locked in the trunk of his car was the one
Michelle Thomsen never took off, and yet wasn’t wearing when her body was
found.

*****

Sophie had gamely gone back to work at the storage facility.

“What else am I going to do?” she said a little tartly when
he had suggested she could take the afternoon off.  “Pace and speculate and
worry?  I’d rather have something to concentrate on.  And don’t forget that
ticking clock.  If it’s up to me, this auction is going to happen.”

Her determination had been there from day one, but it was
strengthening, if anything, undeterred by the assaults on her, literal and
emotional.  She’d set out to make the auction a success for Doreen’s sake; as
she’d said, as a memorial.  But he had a feeling her motivation had become
something more.  Maybe it was those summers with her mother that she wanted to
save.

Disturbed by the unfamiliar stir of emotions, Daniel left
her somewhat abruptly.  He had recalled Slawinski to guard duty, telling him
quietly and out of Sophie’s hearing that no one, and he meant no one, was to be
allowed to so much as step foot into that storage unit, never mind get near to
Sophie.  He’d been able to tell that his intensity scared the crap out of the
poor kid, but he’d needed to impress on him that he meant what he said.

Earlier, he’d ignored some phone calls while they were at
Elias Burton’s house and then during the drive back along the winding coast
highway to Cape Trouble.  Now, as soon as he left the storage facility, he
pulled over, set the emergency brake and called up voice mail.

The second was from the sheriff.  “I’ve pulled everything
we’ve got on the disappearances of those women.  Call if you want the
highlights, or you’re welcome to go through it all.”

The remaining messages weren’t anything that couldn’t wait. 
If what he suspected was true, he’d need assistance from the sheriff’s
department anyway.  He was beginning to think he ought to send one of his own
young officers to receive training in fingerprinting, but he’d have wanted
someone who really knew what he or she was doing for this job anyway.  Surfaces
on the jewelry were mostly too tiny to take more than partials, and the fact
that Sophie had handled some of the pieces complicated the job further.  The
shoebox was a possibility, but cardboard wasn’t ideal.  He could hold out for
the state crime lab and technicians, but if his suspicions were right, the
sheriff’s department would want to be involved.  He’d get quicker results
letting Mackay’s people handle it than he would if he sent everything off to
the state, too.

He called in to let Ellie know where he was going, then
drove straight to North Fork.

This time Mackay emerged from a door down the hall rather
than his own office to greet Daniel.  His eyebrows rose at the sight of the
cardboard box Daniel was toting.  “That was fast.”

“I have something interesting.”

“Ah.  Bring it in here.”  He led the way into the same room
from which he’d just emerged.  It held a long table surrounded by chairs. 
There was a whiteboard on one wall as well as a rolled up screen.  A large
easel supported a currently empty bulletin board.  Four white cardboard
banker’s boxes, similar to the ones used for evidence storage by plenty of
other police departments, were lined up on the table.

Daniel set down his own box beside them, but didn’t open
it.  “Tell me,” he said, knowing Mackay wouldn’t have just dug out the boxes,
he’d have gone through them. 
The itch.
  “When those women disappeared,
did they have anything with them?”

“In some cases, we have descriptions of what they were
wearing.  Any jewelry.  Otherwise, no.”

“Can you recall some of that jewelry?”

Mackay cocked his head, willing to play along for the
moment.  “Sure.  Some of it’s vague, though.  You know how people are.  There
was a wedding ring.  She was the only married victim.  A charm bracelet – that
girl worked at one of the resorts, and her roommate for the summer said she had
a boyfriend who bought her a new charm for special occasions.”

“I told you Michelle Thomsen supposedly never took a
necklace off that her husband had given her, but it wasn’t with the body and
never turned up.  Until now.”  Daniel pulled on latex gloves, opened the flaps
of the box and lifted out the shoebox.  When he removed the lid, Alex Mackay
gazed down at the jumbled contents for a long minute.  Then he looked up, his
expression hard.

“Where did you find this?”

Daniel told him.

“Damn,” Mackay said softly.  “There are too many pieces of
jewelry in there.”

Daniel had been disturbed by the same realization.  They
knew of five, maybe six women who had vanished, plus Michelle.  The shoebox
held eight separate pieces of jewelry.  It was possible some of the women had
been wearing more than one – say, a necklace and bracelet, but he was betting
that wasn’t the explanation.  Additional victims could have been snatched
elsewhere, even as nearby as the next county.  Police departments didn’t always
communicate well.  And there were women who could disappear without anyone
noticing, or, if they did, caring enough to report them gone.

“Why only four boxes?” Daniel asked.

“One of the investigations wasn’t ours.  Not sure whether
Cannon Beach handled it themselves, or whether it was Clatsop County.  Either
way, I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear from us.”

They each took a box and pored over the contents.  By
chance, Daniel had gotten the young wife.  Near the top was a photograph.  He
studied it, feeling the same grief he always did at such a moment.  She’d died
so damn young.  No chance to have children.  Her husband had probably
remarried, and had kids and raised them with another woman.  Daniel also
decided Noreen Vaughn hadn’t been a natural blonde.  The killer might have been
disappointed when he discovered that, or maybe he didn’t care.

Daniel gently placed the photo on the table top and started
reading police reports.  He hit pay dirt almost immediately.

“It’s her ring,” he said.

Mackey lifted his head, peering at Daniel over the reading
glasses he’d produced from a shirt pocket.  “How do you know?”

“It had an engraving inside.  ‘Forever and a Day.’  So does
the ring in that box.”

“That can’t be coincidence, and especially not on top of it
looking like you’ve identified the Thomsen woman’s necklace.”

“No.”

Daniel restored the contents of the box, put the lid back on
and reached for another.

After a minute, the sheriff grunted.  “This one’s a dead
end.  She was staying at a cheap motel over here with a few friends.  She’d
been out on her own for several years, and neither the mother nor the friends
knew her jewelry well enough to be sure what might be missing.”

In the next box, the sobbing friend of another missing girl
had been quite sure she was wearing a fine gold chain strung with tiny garnet
beads.  Daniel had to stand to scrutinize the jewelry, but his memory hadn’t
let him down.  There it was.

“Here’s a description of the charm bracelet,” Mackay said. 
“Sterling silver, had a dog charm in memory of one that had recently died, a
kite, binoculars – evidently she was into birdwatching – and a little book with
pages that could be turned.  A few others, but they were more usual.”

“We’re three for three,” Daniel said gruffly.  “Four for
four, counting Michelle Thomsen.”

“Hell.”  Mackay removed his reading glasses and pinched the
bridge of his nose.  “Or maybe I should say hot damn.  I do love catching up to
creeps who thought they got away with an ugly crime.  It would be real helpful
if we knew how this collection came to be in the hands of the eager volunteers
putting on that auction.”

“My theory is that it was given accidently.  Stored with
some other stuff, maybe.”

“And our killer forgot it was there?”  Mackay sounded
skeptical.