Something Wicked (3 page)

“Well, yes, I came here to talk to him about something, but . . . I've changed my mind.”

“Want to leave him a message?” Savvy knew Siren Song did not have a working telephone, and cell phones were way out of Catherine's experience. The woman ruled the place as if they all lived in a distant century.

“Ms. Dunbar . . . Detective . . . I think I would like to talk to you instead.”

“Well, okay, my desk is right down the hall.” She gestured with her arm. “If you want to—”

“Would it be possible to meet at some other location?” she asked, then turned to throw a stern glance to Johnson, who was unabashedly listening. Johnson, however, was hard to cow, and she just stared back until it was Savannah's turn to frown at her. With a sniff, Johnson slammed her chair back and stalked down the hall toward the break room.

“Want to tell me what this is about?” Savvy asked.

“Could we meet at Siren Song?” Catherine said. “Maybe this afternoon? I . . . um . . . have some troubles. . . .”

“Some troubles,” Savannah repeated, wondering what fresh hell this was.

“I prefer not to talk here.”

Savannah inwardly assessed the idea. She'd always wanted to enter the locked gates of the lodge and get her own look at what was going on inside. Some of the locals thought Catherine was running a cult, and they'd dubbed it the Colony. Invitations inside were as rare as a black swan, and Catherine never invited men within Siren Song's sacred walls at all. Lang hadn't made it past the gates. Now, Savannah wanted to go, but she was about to start maternity leave, and she had no earthly idea what Catherine expected of her.

“When are you due?” Catherine asked.

“Three weeks? About.”

“Ah . . . would this afternoon be convenient?”

“Not really.” Savannah needed to talk to Lang about this, and maybe the sheriff, or something. “Tomorrow? Or maybe this evening?” she proposed, seeing the shadow that crossed the older woman's face.

“What time could you be there?” Catherine asked.

“Um . . . seven?” Savvy was already beginning to feel like she was overcommitting herself, but it was too late. Catherine had risen to her feet and was heading for the door, just as Johnson got within earshot.

“I'll see you then, Detective,” Catherine said in that regal tone she unconsciously used. She glanced down at Savannah's belly once more and said, “Boys can be a handful.”

Johnson returned to her desk as the door closed behind Catherine. “That woman's got more secrets than a magician. Be careful when you go out there. That place is haunted.”

“No, it's not.”

“Haunted,” Johnson repeated sternly.

“She assumed I was having a boy.”

“She knew.”

Savannah shook her head, then walked down the hall toward her office, making a stop at the restroom first to relieve her bladder. This endgame of pregnancy was no picnic. Many times over the past few months she'd asked herself why she'd volunteered to carry Kristina's baby. She wasn't really all that selfless by nature, and truthfully, Kristina could be one helluva pain in the ass. She was surprised her sister hadn't contacted her in the past few hours. The past few weeks she'd called and texted and about driven Savannah crazy.

Texted.

Remembering the earlier
bloop
from her phone, Savannah pulled her cell from her pocket. Sure enough, there was a message from Kristina.

Dinner tonight? I need to see you.

Savannah made a sound of annoyance, grumbling as she entered the squad room and found her desk. She was glad to see she was alone, and she texted back.

Got a 7 pm appt. Will call when I'm done.

Her cell phone rang almost the instant Savannah set it down on her desk.
This must be serious
, she thought when she saw it was Kristina. When her sister moved from texts to actually phoning, it was a red-letter day.

“What's up?” Savannah answered.

“I told you!” Kristina blurted, half angry. “We've got to talk. The baby's almost here, and I just feel . . . out of control.”

Savannah tamped down her impatience as Baby St. Cloud started another round of bicycling. “Well, get in control,” she said. She could hear male voices down the hall, so she knew she wouldn't be alone much longer. “This baby's on his way, and you need to be ready.”

“Ready? My God, Savvy. How do you get ready? I don't know how.”

“Well, figure it out.”

“I'm—I'm—I'm . . .”

“What?”

“I'm—I'm not sure Hale even wants this child,” she said in a rush, as if spitting out poison.

“Too damn bad. It's too late for him to change his mind.” Savvy had been half expecting this. Things had just gotten so squirrelly these past few weeks, and Savannah was sick to the back teeth of both her sister and Hale waffling about this child. “Pull yourself together,” she muttered through her teeth, “and get the hell ready. You're not the first person to have a baby.”

“Come over tonight. Please. Get out of whatever you're doing. I need to talk to you. Really.”

“I can't cancel.” She felt like throwing something, eyeing the paperweight on Lang's desk, which was butted up against hers. It was a clear glass ball shaped like the earth, with the continents etched in frosted glass. Pulling herself back from the brink, she relented. “If I stop by, it won't be till probably nine o'clock.”

“That's fine. That's fine,” Kristina said with relief.

“Okay . . . whatever.”

She clicked off, annoyed. Kristina's inability to have children with her husband, Hale, had tugged on Savvy's heartstrings in the beginning. One drunken night, when she was out with Kristina shortly after their mother's death from a long battle with cancer, and after hearing Kristina ask—beg—for her “help” for months, Savannah had blithely announced that she would carry the St. Cloud baby. She'd wanted to connect with her sister, her only family member left, as their father had died when they were children. Kristina had shrieked with delight, hugged her fiercely, and sent out a Facebook blast within hours, going on and on about her wonderful, giving, generous,
fabuloso
sister.

When Savannah woke up the next day, slightly hung over and full of trepidation—her stomach felt filled with lead—she'd tried to think of a way to back out. But her sister's joy and excitement were hard to squelch, and when Hale St. Cloud, one of those impossibly handsome dark-haired men, with gray eyes that seemed to pierce through all the layers of protection and burn into your soul, asked her, “Are you certain about this? Especially with your demanding job?” he kinda pissed Savannah off, and she declared, “Never been certainer,” which made Kristina jump up and hug her fiercely, and the deal was set.

Savannah had thought that she might still have a chance to get out of it, that maybe the procedure just wouldn't take, but nope, one IVF session and
bam
, she was pregnant. Knocked up. With child. Hale's sperm and Kristina's egg had combined in one tenacious little embryo, and suddenly Savannah was in the midst of a gestational pregnancy—the correct term, as it was not a surrogacy, though she used both indiscriminately when explaining her situation to others—and that was all she wrote, folks. Savannah Dunbar was pregnant with Hale and Kristina St. Cloud's child.

Now all Savannah wanted was to deliver a healthy baby to her sister, and soon, and then get back to being Savvy. Whatever problems, second thoughts, or God knew whatever else her sister might be having, didn't matter. Kristina was going to have a baby with Hale, and Savannah was going to give birth to the little guy and become his aunt. Game over.

Pain in the ass
, she thought now, not sure whether she meant her sister, her sister's husband, or the situation as a whole.

And now she had to go to the bathroom. Again. Swear to God, once it started, it just wouldn't give up.

Easing herself from her chair, she headed back to the bathroom, trying to remember what it was like to be able to bend forward and tie her sneakers, her footwear choice du jour. Her feet had swelled just enough to make other shoes feel like instruments of torture. Currently she had to sit down and bend her legs in one by one to bring her feet within reach.

When she returned to the squad room, Detective Langdon Stone was at his desk. He threw her a smile and said, “You look uncomfortable.”

“I am uncomfortable.”

“What the hell were you doing with that vagrant?”

“Mickey,” she said a little more loudly as a phone at a nearby desk began to ring over the hum of conversation and the rumble of the furnace.

“You shouldn't have gone there. Start your maternity leave. Please. You're making us all nervous around here.”

“Clausen was with me.”

“He came later,” he corrected. “This isn't just me who feels this way. Sorry if you think we're all misogynistic pigs, but you worry us.”

“I'm going to have this baby before you know it. Just don't treat me like that's all I am—a baby incubator.”

Lang gave her an “Oh, really?” look. Like Hale St. Cloud, he was handsome in a lean, hard way and had dark hair and white teeth. “How many weeks are left?”

“About three.”

“Okay, fine. I'll try. And we're meeting in the conference room in about ten,” he said.

“About what?”

“The Donatella homicides. O'Halloran's got something new apparently.”

“Really?”

“That's the word.”

“I was just at Bankruptcy Bluff,” she said, surprised.

“I know.” He shrugged.

Savannah and the rest of the department had been working on the Donatella case for long months and were no closer to an arrest than they'd been when the crime was committed. The double homicide of Marcus and Chandra Donatella had taken place at their home on Bancroft Bluff. It was weird that she'd just come from there today, after rousting out Mickey, and now there was new information? Kind of mind-boggling.

But sometimes cases were like that, she reminded herself. Nothing forever, and then things suddenly broke open and started running hot as a fever.

Maybe they were actually going to solve this damn thing.

“C
ould you put
that
down for one minute?” Declan Bancroft grumbled irritably from the oversize executive desk chair in his home office. He pointed to the cell phone pressed to his grandson's ear.

“I want to catch Russo before he leaves work.” Hale St. Cloud stayed on the line, waiting for the Portland manager to answer. “Vledich said we were red tagged, and I want to know who he talked to at the city and why construction was stopped.”

“Who's this Vledich?” the old man demanded.

“The foreman,” Hale answered, staring through the window of his grandfather's sprawling Bancroft Development home, the grounds of which meandered over several acres along a rocky tor with a spectacular view of Deception Bay. “You know Clark Russo in the Portland office. Vledich works for him.”

“Of course I know Russo,” Declan said grumpily.

Russo was one of the newer managers employed by Bancroft Development. He had started in the Seaside office and had recently been transferred to Portland at the recommendation of Sylvie Strahan, Hale's right-hand woman. Their Portland manager had quit after the debacle over Bancroft Bluff, and when the opening in Portland popped up, Sylvie suggested Russo, at least for the interim. It had taken a little talking as Russo had been reluctant to leave the area; he'd grown up on the coast.

“But this Vledich I don't know,” Declan said, taking a deep breath, as if he was about to launch into a diatribe about being the last to know, a favorite gripe of his, but Hale held up a hand as he left a message for Russo, asking the manager to call him. As soon as he was finished, he clicked off, but Declan snorted and waved at his phone. “What's happened to the world? Yes, yes, it's good to be able to catch someone at a job site, but all this texting and e-mail and playing with the phone . . .
ack
.” That was his grandfather's favorite sound of disgust:
ack.

“If I don't hear back from him, I'll send him a text.”

“In my day we answered the phone so as not to lose a customer.”

Another favorite diatribe, which Hale ignored. There was no changing his grandfather's mind about the evils of technology, and he'd wasted enough breath trying to last him a lifetime. That was why Hale had built his own home north of Deception Bay, closer to Seaside and the Bancroft Development offices, on a similar rocky bluff, a little bit removed from his grandfather.

But Declan had made his home in Deception Bay for most of his life, preferring the sleepy oceanside hamlet to the joint tourist mecca of Seaside and Cannon Beach. It was pure irony, therefore, that through his own real estate development, Declan was helping change the landscape of the town, and Deception Bay had recently become the new destination for those with disposable income and wealth. Bancroft Bluff, built south of the bay that Deception Bay was named after, was supposed to have been the first jewel in the crown of successive Bancroft luxury home developments around the area, but the unstable dune had turned that plan to, well, sand. Declan had pushed for Hale and Kristina to build on the spot, but Hale had resisted, and in hindsight it was fortuitous that Hale had decided to build his home closer to the Seaside Bancroft Development offices.

“What are you doing?” Declan demanded, frowning at Hale as his fingers pressed buttons on his phone.

“Sending that text. I want to know what the city said about the Lake Chinook project,” Hale added as he pressed the button that sent the message to Russo and Vledich. Bancroft Development had purchased a section of lake frontage land—three adjoining lots on Lake Chinook, the two-mile-long lake ten miles south of Portland—and the older homes and cabins that had been there had already been demolished, readying the site for new construction. Now the City of Lake Chinook had determined there was a sewer easement that ran under the water, and they'd red tagged the job, stopping construction of the first of the three boathouses that were being erected before the actual houses.

“We get red tagged when we shouldn't, and we're allowed to build on a goddamn dune. I'd like to kill DeWitt!” Declan bit out furiously for about the millionth time. His blue eyes burned with rage at the thought of the engineer who'd green-lighted the Bancroft Bluff project. Hale had just started with the family company when that project was under way, and though he didn't say it, he still remembered that there was an undercurrent of worry about the dune's stability even then. That fear had proved founded, but it was too late. Only the fact that his grandfather had made a boatload of money over the past decades was saving the company now from the pending lawsuits. Bancroft Development had bought most of the condemned properties back, settling the first lawsuits, though now some of the home owners were suing for mental anguish and suffering. Not that the lawsuits had merit, the settlements had precluded that. But it didn't mean it wasn't more bad publicity, and then, just when things had looked to be settling down, the horror of the Donatella murders had occurred right in their own Bancroft Bluff home.

Hale had seen the words scrawled in red paint on the wall with his own eyes—
blood money—
and even now the memory sent a chill down his spine. Worse yet, the Donatellas had been partners with Bancroft Development in Bancroft Bluff, and with that horrific message, it was generally assumed that their deaths had to do with the debacle of the doomed project. One of the prevailing thoughts was the perpetrator was a home owner or investor who'd lost their property to the dune, but since Declan had purchased, or offered to purchase, all the homes back, that theory didn't make a lot of sense. What was the motive, then?

Hale wanted to take down all the abandoned houses and let the dune go back to nature, but since Bancroft Development still didn't own all the homes, there was myriad red tape to untangle before any demolition could happen. He just wished to high heaven that the Tillamook County Sheriff's Department would figure out who had killed the Donatellas and arrest the bastards.

As if his grandfather's thoughts were traveling down the same path, Declan said, “What about that detective? Your sister-in-law.”

“Savannah?”

“Yeah, her. What's she doing? And when's my great-grandson due?”

“Soon,” Hale said, holding back his impatience. This was another topic Declan brought up again and again. Along with “What's wrong with that wife of yours that she can't have a baby?” and “You sure this young lady's going to want to give the boy up? I know all about those people who change their minds, say they're theirs and just run off with 'em.”

Truth be told, Hale was having some serious problems with the whole surrogacy thing himself. He never should have agreed to let Savannah carry their baby. He never should have let his wife talk him into the child. Things had become strained between him and Kristina, growing worse, rather than better, during the pregnancy. His marriage had never been as solid as he'd hoped, but he'd believed he could make it work, and Kristina had been so desperately eager for a child that he'd said yes to her screwball plan. Now, he wasn't sure she even wanted a baby any longer. He didn't have a clue what was going on with her, but none of it was good.

A few minutes later, with guilty thoughts chasing around in his head, he left his grandfather's house, dodging raindrops as he dashed to his black Chevy TrailBlazer. Kristina drove a Mercedes sedan, which she'd begged him for, and he'd acquiesced more because he didn't care than because the expensive car was so dear to her heart. He'd known for a while that his reasons for marrying her in the first place were both more, and less, complicated than love, which didn't really enter into it at all. He'd been wrapped in grief during his father's death from a slow, lingering sickness—cancer, Preston St. Cloud had told him—though after his death Hale had learned that none of his doctors had given him that diagnosis. Preston's last doctor, more an herbalist than a trained physician, had simply lifted his shoulders and said, “Sometimes the dying just know.”

Kristina had been everywhere during that time, helping him, soothing him, running his house, even keeping in contact with Hale's mother in Philadelphia, who wanted to be apprised of his father's condition though she and Preston had ceased even to speak since the divorce. Hale and Kristina had dated casually only a few times before Preston's last bout in the hospital, but Kristina had suddenly charged to the rescue, and when Preston died, Hale had leaned on her.

And shortly thereafter, he'd married her. A case of temporary insanity, apparently, for when he'd woken up from his grief, he'd found himself with a wife who was little more than a stranger to him. Still, she was his wife, he'd told himself, and he'd been determined that he was going to make their union work. He'd balked initially when she'd come to him crying, saying she had just learned she couldn't have a baby, and wanted to use a surrogate. He'd given her a list of reasons why that wouldn't work, leaving out the biggest one: that he wasn't sure about their marriage. And then, when she revealed that her sister would be their surrogate, he'd really put his foot down.

But . . . he did want a child, he'd realized. And though things with Kristina weren't perfect, he was in no hurry to divorce her. She was his wife, for better or worse. So they weren't madly in love. They had made plans together and, with the help of an interior designer, had just put the finishing touches on their new home, a Bancroft Development architectural dream, which had a spectacular view of the Pacific and was set well back on a rocky headland, unlike those built on the shifting sands beneath Bancroft Bluff.

So . . . ?
he'd asked himself one long night, when he'd stood on the back deck of their home while it was still being framed. Surrogacy? Was that the answer? He'd been lost in thought for hours, and in the end he'd signed the papers, half expecting nothing to come of the IVF implant. And then the news: the pregnancy had taken. A shock. And he'd shared Kristina's joy, until she said something about the baby being the cement that would keep them together. When he'd questioned her on that, it slowly came out that she'd been afraid he was going to leave her, and she'd wanted to have a baby to keep their marriage together. Not exactly a shocking revelation, but he'd expected her to eventually join more in the joy and anticipation he was feeling with the impending birth. They were going to have a child together, for God's sake. The fact that she clearly hadn't experienced any of that had eaten him up inside throughout the whole pregnancy to the point where now he found himself unable to talk about the baby with her much at all. Worse yet, she seemed to have no interest in talking to him about some very real concerns
she
was having.

It was all just . . . hell.

Now, driving up to his house, seeing its natural shingles and white trim, its sweeping drive, lush yard, and three-car garage, he swallowed back his misgivings. He hit the button on the garage-door opener and had a chest-tightening sensation of playacting. This wasn't right. He needed to get things square between them and fast because he and Kristina were having a baby very soon.
Their
baby.

Her silver Mercedes was in its spot. He exhaled a pent-up breath.
Good.
She was home. He needed to talk to her while he was full of resolve to put things back together between them.

“Kristina?” he called as he walked through the kitchen, all stainless steel appliances and cream granite with silvery veins. There was a sunroom off the back with windows that looked toward the ocean, but she wasn't there. As he walked through the kitchen to the great room, which jutted even farther toward the edge of the headland, and looked through the windows to the deck where he'd spent so many long hours that one night, deciding what to do about his marriage and the surrogacy, he didn't expect her to be outside. The rain was heavy, and it was already growing dark, but there she was, her rich mahogany hair whipping around her face as she hugged her jacket close.

“Hey,” he said, cracking open the French door. Even then the rain slapped against his face. “What's going on?”

She half turned, and he could see that her face was pale, her lips pinched. She moved toward him, and he stepped back, closing the door hard behind her as a gust of wind rattled the panes.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“No, I'm . . .” She trailed off and shook her head.

“You were standing in the rain,” he pointed out, trying to get her going again.

She gazed up at him through pale blue eyes that seemed to look right through him. He had a strange moment of recalling her sister, Savannah's, deeper blue ones, and that made him feel uncomfortable.

Kristina's hair was unnaturally darkened by the rain, and she ran her right-hand fingers through it somewhat listlessly. “I was just taking a moment.”

“You couldn't have taken your moment inside?”

“Magda came late and just left,” she said, referring to the woman who cleaned their house and also the Seaside Bancroft Development office. “She'll be here Monday again to finish up.”

“You were outside to avoid her?”

“Leave me alone, Hale.”

He was leery of her flat tone. “If there's something going on . . .”

“I'm just tired. I feel like we've been on a treadmill for a long time.”

He hardly knew what to do with her in her uncertain mood. “Got any ideas how to slow the treadmill down? The baby is coming.”

“You think I've forgotten?” She shot him a fierce glance.

He lifted his hands in surrender. “I'm kinda playing catch-up here. If I'm missing something, let me know.”