Something Wicked (31 page)

“What?” Hale asked, realizing his grandfather had said something that he'd missed.

“I said, your father was a good man. I'm just sorry Janet never saw that.”

“Yeah.”

Hale's mind moved to the call he'd received from the medical examiner's office. They'd done an autopsy on Kristina's body earlier today. As far as he knew, there had been no surprises. Death was caused by blunt force trauma to the head. Kristina's body had been sent for cremation, and Hale needed to think about a memorial service. But he wanted to talk to Savannah about that.

“I never wanted her to marry Preston, but he was the right man for her,” Declan was going on.

“We can talk about this later.”

“Sure, sure.”

“I'll be there in about an hour,” Hale said, hanging up.

Declan was thinking about Preston because of the baby's birth. Hale's father had been in the back of Hale's mind, too: how he wouldn't be able to meet his grandson, how his slow death from liver cancer had robbed him of that chance, how the cancer had come on almost immediately after Janet divorced him. Though separate, those two issues always collided in Hale's mind: his parents' divorce and his father's declining health. Janet had split from Preston St. Cloud when Hale was about eighteen, and she'd met her current husband, Lee Spurrier, whose family was in the banking business in Philadelphia, almost immediately afterward. While Hale was in his first year of college, Janet Bancroft St. Cloud became Janet Bancroft St. Cloud Spurrier and moved to the East Coast. Preston's health started declining at the same time, and as soon as Hale graduated, though he started working for Declan, he was half taking care of his father at the same time.

Kristina crossed his path at the Bridgeport Bistro one night, at his lowest point. She knew of his grandfather, having grown up around Tillamook, which was just south of his grandfather's Deception Bay home, and she'd heard about Hale's father's illness. She'd been a willing ear and a godsend while Hale juggled all the pieces of his life. He'd been damn near overwhelmed, and Kristina had come into his life at the right time. He'd married her shortly after Preston passed away, only later realizing that he barely knew her.

He watched Victoria heat up a bottle of formula in the microwave. Her hair was long and dark brown, and she wore a skintight T-shirt and skinny jeans.

She sensed him looking at her and turned to give him a bright smile. “He's a beautiful little boy.”

“Thank you.” Hale hesitated, then asked, “Have you had much experience as a nanny?”

“Oh, it's all in my profile. The one I gave to your wife. Oh. Sorry. It's just so weird that she's gone.”

Hale nodded. “How long can you be here today?”

She blinked at him. “Ummm . . . I thought I was living with you.” A red flush crept up her skin. “I mean, I'm moving here, right?”

“I'm just catching up slowly. Do you have a copy of your profile? And the contract?”

“Sure. It's in my room.”

She walked down the hall to the spare bedroom across the hall from the nursery. Magda, their cleaning woman, had come in today and had changed all the sheets, crying and crossing her heart as she did her work, saying, “Mrs. St. Cloud said she wanted the beds changed for the baby and maybe some guests. I was going to do it last week . . . but, oh, now . . .” When she trailed off into more tears, Hale had assured her that she was doing what Kristina had wanted and that was a good thing.

It had reminded him again, like almost everything did, that the world had changed in the last two days.

Hale started thinking about his four-bedroom house and did a mental head count: one for the baby, one for Victoria, one for his grandfather, one for his mother, maybe, and one for himself. Not enough. When Janet showed, somebody was going to be sleeping on the couch. Of course, maybe it was a moot point, if Detectives Hamett and Evinrud decided he'd killed his wife, and hauled him off to jail.

Grabbing up his cell phone from where he'd left it on the counter, he went to his favorites list and touched the number for Savannah's cell. Maybe she could give him an idea what the hell was going on.

S
avvy heard Hale's ring tone and dragged her attention from the physical evidence report on the Donatella homicides. She scrabbled around in her messenger bag until she found the phone. “Hello?” she said a little cautiously. She was in the squad room, and she really wanted to talk to him without anyone overhearing.

“Hey,” he said, sounding relieved. “How's it going?”

“Not bad, I guess.”

“Are you at home?”

“No, I'm at the department.”

“You went back to work already?” He didn't try to hide his surprise.

“Yeah. How's the baby?” she asked.

“Good.” He gave her a quick rundown of picking Declan up from the hospital and how the nanny was settling in, and the fact that his grandfather and his mother were heading his way.

“You're going to have a houseful,” she said, her mind already moving ahead. “I hear you were visited by two Seaside detectives.”

“Yeah.”

There was a moment when neither of them said anything. Then Savvy said, “I'm working on some other angles.”

“To Kristina's murder? Is that allowed?”

“Not really. No. But there are some questions that cropped up when I was in Portland that I wanted to go over with you.”

There was a weighty pause. Then he said in a cooler voice, “Are you buying this? That I had something to do with Kristina's
death
?”

“I talked to a couple of people who believe Kristina was having an affair. That's more where I'm going.”

“Who said that?”

She ignored the question and asked, “You never thought that? Never had a suspicion?”

“Kristina having an affair? No . . .” She could practically hear the wheels turning in his mind. “No,” he said again, then added, “One of the reasons I called was to talk about a memorial service for her.”

Savvy felt like a heel. “Absolutely. I'm happy to help any way I can. I'm sorry, Hale.”

“I know.”

“Look, I don't mean to be a dog with a bone, but you never even got the inkling that she might be seeing someone?”

“What I thought was, she's acting crazy. That's about as far as it went.
She
thought she was going crazy.”

“It doesn't seem right to me, either, but then I don't know,” Savvy admitted. “I've got this strange theory, and it's . . . I don't want to talk about it now. I'll come to your house.”

“Okay.”

“I'm going to wrap things up here,” she said, thinking about the breast pump and a trip to the ladies' room. “I've got a few things to do. Then I'll come your way.”

“Bring an overnight bag, just in case. It's terrible weather, and you might want to stay,” he said before he hung up.

Savvy replaced her phone in her messenger bag. No, she wasn't going to stay over at Hale and Kristina's house. There was a nanny in place for the baby, and she couldn't suffer any more of the dangerous thoughts that seemed to infect her reason whenever she was too close to Hale.

Dragging her attention back to the case, she glanced back down at the report again. There was nothing in it she hadn't seen before. In her mind's eye she thought about Owen DeWitt's comment about Charlie with Kristina at the Donatella house. “He had her up against the wall. Banging her like crazy . . .” She checked again to see if the techs had found anything—blood, tissue, semen—other than that of the victims themselves, but there was no mention of it. The techs had taken fingerprints and had used luminol over most of the house, looking for blood traces from tissue or semen or actual blood from the perpetrator, but there wasn't anything definitive.

Catherine had said Declan Jr. was too careful to leave any evidence.

Was he the man Kristina had been with, if she'd been with anyone at all . . . ?

Savvy thought about that hard for a few moments, testing her own gut feeling on the subject. She did believe Kristina was having an affair, whether Hale knew it or not. She also believed that affair had gone sour; Kristina had wanted out. She'd said as much to Savannah, and all her talk of sorcery, of feeling weird, and not being herself, seemed to add credence to that theory.

Lang had been gone for a while, and now he returned, running his hands through his damp hair as he retook his seat at his desk. “Cold rain,” he said. Savvy was considering how to tell him she'd talked to Hale, when he added, “Finally reached Curtis about those deaths outside the Rib-I last Thursday.”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. The guy who killed those two is a ghost. Meets 'em outside, then pops 'em. End of story.”

“Hmmm.”

“There was a gal inside the bar who saw Garth, the male victim, get in some guy's grill about hitting on his date, Tammie, the female victim. Curtis asked for a description, but all she said was that she thought he was good-looking. Had a big smile. Tammie and Garth must've made up, because they were having sex in the parking lot when the killer attacked them.”

Savvy thought about her meeting with DeWitt. “A lot of restaurants and bars in Portland, and I was at the Rib-I two nights later, meeting with Owen DeWitt.”

“I know.”

They looked at each other. “DeWitt said some things about my sister,” Savvy admitted.

“Uh-oh.”

She smiled faintly. “Yeah. Like she was having sex with somebody up against the wall in the Donatella house on which the killer spray painted
blood money.
Said he saw her there with the same guy a couple of times when he was at the site, looking for some proof that it wasn't his fault the dune failed. DeWitt's like that. A blame shifter.”

“That's why you wanted to recheck the physical evidence?”

She nodded. “I didn't find anything. I don't even really know if I believe DeWitt's account.”

“Have you told St. Cloud this?”

“Not all of it. I asked him if he thought Kristina had a lover, and he acted like it was news.”

“You talked to him today?”

“Yep.” She related her conversation with Hale, and his expression darkened until she finished with, “We have a memorial service to plan together. I'm going to talk to him today, tomorrow, every day.”

“Don't get in Hamett and Evinrud's way. I'm just sayin'.”

“I'm just sayin' that someone other than Hale killed my sister. I want to talk to DeWitt again.”

“Hell, no. Savannah,” he said, spreading his hands in a “What gives?” gesture.

“If Kristina's death has anything to do with the Donatella homicides, that's our case.”

“
I'll
talk to DeWitt.”

“Okay, fine.”

She'd already moved on to another thought: Paulie Williamson, the ex-Portland Bancroft Development manager who'd moved to Tucson. Clark Russo had given her his number.

For a brief moment, she thought about telling Lang what Catherine had said about Mary's son Declan. How he was coming after them, and Declan Sr., too. How he might have been “gifted” with Mary's strange sexual lure. How the boys were so much more affected than the girls. Lang knew Catherine well. Knew about the woo-woo. He might give the whole thing some credence, even.

“Have Hamett and Evinrud reached you yet?” Lang asked.

“No.”

“They will. Be careful what you say to their prime suspect,” he said before heading toward the break room with an empty coffee cup.

Savvy gritted her teeth, and then the phone on her desk rang, and she answered, “Detective Dunbar,” checking the clock on the wall. Four p.m.

“Hey, Savvy,” a female voice said. It was Geena Cho, who worked dispatch for the TCSD. “You gotta call from Toonie at the shelter. She said someone there named Mickey really needs to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You gonna call her?” Cho asked, hearing Savannah's lack of enthusiasm. “'Cause if you don't, she'll keep calling and calling and calling.”

“I'll stop by there tonight,” Savannah promised, adding it to her list of errands to run before she could make her way to Hale's house.

“You sure?” she asked.

“Yes! I'll go. If Toonie calls again before I get there, let her know I'll be there within the hour.”

 

 

Ravinia watched as Catherine began the trek upstairs to her bedroom, looking exhausted. With much solicitation, Isadora and Cassandra helped her to the second floor, while in the great room below, Ophelia, Lillibeth, and Ravinia watched their progress.

“Aunt Catherine wanted to see Earl again,” Lillibeth said, sounding worried.

“She always wants to see Earl,” Ravinia answered with a shrug. She didn't want anyone questioning what had transpired between her aunt and Earl. Not with some grave digging in her near future. She suppressed a shiver at the thought.

“Did they say anything while you were with them?” Ophelia asked casually.

Ravinia slid a look at her sister, but Ophelia's bland expression gave nothing away.
Careful
, she warned herself.

“Not particularly. Let's turn the TV on,” Ravinia said and walked over to the old set, switching it on. Lillibeth's attention span was such that she would tune in to just about anything.

She half expected Ophelia to keep badgering her, but she just stood by while Ravinia channel surfed until she found something their antenna would pick up other than news: an ancient episode of
Gilligan's Island.

“We are going to get cable TV,” Ravinia stated, a challenging tone in her voice, as she left the room, heading toward the kitchen. Ophelia followed after her immediately, but Lillibeth stayed with the television program.

“I thought you were leaving,” Ophelia said.

“You sound kind of anxious to get rid of me.”

“That's not it.”

“What's your deal?” Ravinia demanded, taking in Ophelia's long dress and the loose bun in her hair. “You've been drinking Aunt Catherine's Kool-Aid a long time, but you've got a cell phone, and you've been sewing me pants and shirts like it's your job. Yet you look like that.” She swept her hand up and down, pointing out her sister's dress.

“Well, you've certainly picked up some idioms and colloquial terms from outside the gates. Part of your new friendships?”

“You'd better believe it,” Ravinia said with a snort. “Last summer I thought this imprisonment was over, but then you and Aunt Catherine and Isadora decided it wasn't. I'm not going to live like this.”

“You know it was Aunt Catherine's idea to shut the gates again.”

“Well, it hasn't worked. Whoever she's trying to keep out is coming. Just ask Cassandra. ‘He's coming.' She damn near can't say anything else.”

“That's not true.”

“Yes, it is, Ophelia,” Ravinia said, exasperated. “This whole thing is screwed up!”

“You want cable TV?” Ophelia shot back. “Fine. You're talking to the right person. I run the books for Catherine, for all of us, and yes, I think we need a new television, and yes, maybe the gates should be opened again.”

Not yet, though
, Ravinia thought with a stab of fear. She'd gone into her rant because it was what she always did, but she needed to help Catherine move the bones before anything changed. Still, she had to play a part. “Hallelujah. She sees the light!”

“Do you know how we survive here? How we get the money to pay for the electricity and the food we don't grow and store on our own?” Ophelia demanded.

Ravinia's fear turned to irritation. “We have lots of property. We get rent. I don't need an economics lesson.”

“Somebody has to run things around here. Catherine can't do it all.”

“She pretty much has so far. And she has Isadora, too.”

“Isadora helps with housework and meals. She doesn't work with the finances at all. You want better television? How about electricity on every floor? How about you learn how to drive a car, like I did.” Ophelia's blue eyes glimmered.

“What? You don't know how to drive.”

“Last summer I studied and practiced, and then I took the test with the Buick and passed.”

“Bull. Shit.”

“You were just too busy running away to notice.”

“Somebody here would have known,” Ravinia retorted in disbelief.

“Aunt Catherine knew. She took me out for driving lessons. You were gone all the time. Locked in your room, or out running around at night with all your new friends.”

“You made me these clothes so I could!” Ravinia glanced down at the pants and shirt that covered her slim body.

“I know what you want. I know you think you need to be free of these walls. So I helped you. When Catherine asked me about it, I told her what I'm telling you now. That you need to be free of these walls.”

“She told me if I left, I could never come back.”

“She's afraid, Ravinia. For all of us, and there are people out there that want to really harm us.”

It felt like Ophelia was trying to tell her something. Something she didn't want to state aloud. “How do you know that?” Ravinia asked.

“History. Justice was bent on killing us, and we're lucky he was killed, because he would have never given up.”

“That's not all it is. You know something.”

Ophelia pressed her lips together, her blue eyes holding Ravinia's. She had opened her mouth to say something when they heard Isadora and Cassandra coming back down the stairs.