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Authors: Lisa Jackson

BOOK: You Don't Want To Know
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Aptly named, Sheriff Biggs sat on one of the chairs tucked around a cracked marble-topped table. Spilling over the edges of the woven seat, he'd already accepted a cup of coffee from a grudging Virginia, who now was elbow-deep in dishwater and trying to appear as if she wasn't interested in eavesdropping on the conversation about to ensue between her employers and Biggs, who just happened to be her ex-brother-in-law and Khloe's uncle.
As ever, Virginia was wearing a plain housedress over her heavy frame, and a wildly colored apron was tied across her rounded abdomen and heavy breasts. Scuffed tennis shoes and dark tights completed the outfit. Ava had rarely seen her in any other attire, even years ago, before she'd been hired here, when she was just Khloe's mother. How they'd all gotten entangled since those grade-school years . . .
“Hello, Ava.” Biggs stood and extended a hand, which she shook with more than a hint of trepidation. They'd met a few times before and never had it been under anything but tense circumstances.
“Sheriff.” She nodded and pulled her hand back. Hers was clammy; his was irritatingly cool.
“I heard you ended up in the drink,” he said, reseating his bulky form and cradling his cup. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as he stared up at her. Then again, she and Biggs had never been friends. Especially not since her brother, Kelvin's, death nearly five years earlier. “Wanna tell me about it?”
“It's not a crime, is it?”
“To go for a swim?” he asked. “Naaah. 'Course not. But the folks here, they were concerned.” His face was fleshy, his cheeks showing a few capillaries that had burst, his deep-set eyes intense but not unkind. He motioned to the other people in the room. “They seemed to think maybe you were having a spell of some kind, or sleepwalking.”
“I called Joe,” Khloe piped in as she walked in from the porch, the new hire, Austin Dern, following after her.
Dern had changed, too. His dark hair was wet and slicked back from his face, and he wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, faded and dry. He caught her gaze with eyes the color of slate. Again, she felt as if she'd seen him before, in that weird déjà vu way, but try as she might, she couldn't place him.
Khloe added, “I, uh, I thought we needed help.”
“So this is
un
official?” Ava asked, since Joe Biggs was Khloe's uncle.
Biggs kept his eyes on Ava. “I just swung by 'cause Khloe called.”
“I was worried, that's all,” Khloe interjected as Virginia, spying through the open door, scowled, grabbed a towel, and wiped her hands, then pulled the thick door to the porch shut forcefully, as if she were keeping in the heat and making sure whatever lurked outside didn't get the chance to slip in.
Just swung by on a damned county-issued sheriff's department boat on a foggy night? Because a relative called? Oh, sure.
Ava wasn't buying it. Even Virginia, now at the sink again, cast a disbelieving look over her shoulder.
Khloe seemed a little less prickly as she said, “Come on, Ava, if the roles were reversed and I ran outside in the middle of the night and jumped into the bay in November, you would have panicked, too. It's not like when we were kids and snuck out to go skinny-dipping in the damned moonlight!”
In her mind's eye, Ava saw them as they had been, years before, streaking down to the water's edge as the moon cast a shimmering beacon of light across the calm sea. She and Khloe and Kelvin . . . God, what she would give to feel that carefree again.
Khloe was right.
Damn it.
Ava felt the weight of everyone's gaze upon her. From Wyatt to Dern and even to Virginia, whose hands had quit rinsing the dishes, though they were plunged into the soapy water. Everyone waited.
“I made a mistake—that's all.” Ava held her hands palm up, as if in surrender. There was just no reason to lie, and she wouldn't have anyway. “I thought I saw my son on the end of the dock and ran out to save him. It . . . it turns out I must've been mistaken. And it's not ‘the middle of the night.' ” A small point, but valid.
“Feels like midnight,” Khloe grumbled.
“The boy's been gone, what, nearly two years?” Biggs asked as Dr. McPherson slipped into the room to stand quietly near the pantry.
“Yes.” Ava's voice was careful, her legs suddenly weak. She leaned against the refrigerator, hoping no one would notice. “But I'm fine now, Sheriff,” she lied, forcing a smile. “Thank you for your concern and your trouble coming all the way out here.”
“Not a problem.” But his eyes held hers, and she realized they were both lying. It really irked her to be so submissive, but she knew she had to play her cards carefully or she could end up in a hospital under observation, her mental stability in question.
Again.
 
Claiming a headache, which wasn't a lie, Ava took dinner in her room, which, she decided, was probably the coward's way out. Too bad. Having Biggs in the house was unsettling, though she couldn't really name why. It wasn't as if he was going to arrest her or anything, but she had the feeling that he, along with everyone else, was against her, or at the very least waiting for her to slip up, make a big mistake.
About what?
Don't let your paranoia override your common sense.
“I'm not paranoid,” she whispered under her breath, then clamped her mouth shut. She couldn't let anyone hear her talking to herself. No, that wouldn't do. She needed to regroup and pull herself together and figure out who, if anyone, she could trust.
But as she dunked the crusty bread into Virginia's spicy clam chowder and stared through the window to the dock, she found she had no appetite. On clear nights, from this window she was able to spy the lights of Anchorville on the far side of the bay, even watch traffic moving through the sleepy little town.
Chewing thoughtfully, Ava wondered why Khloe had rushed to call the sheriff. Not 911, but Biggs himself. Because he was her uncle? To avoid an unnecessary trip by the EMTs or to stave off a scandal or any embarrassment? That seemed unlikely.
She stared at the department-issued boat tied to the listing dock, barely visible in the fog.
“Odd,” she muttered as she shoved most of the chowder aside. But then everything was and gossip surrounding Church Island certainly wasn't unheard of. In fact, scandal seemed as carved into the walls of this bit of land as surely as the coves and inlets that split the rugged stone outcroppings of the island. She felt a chill and found her sweater, a brown cardigan she'd had forever that she'd left on the foot of the bed. She slid her arms through the sleeves and pulled her hair out of the neckline before cinching the belt tighter around her waist.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of knuckles rapping against her door. “Ava?” The door opened and Khloe stuck her head into the room. “Hey, how're you doing?”
“How do you think?” she demanded, her heart knocking wildly. God, she was a nervous Nellie.
“Didn't mean to scare you.”
“You didn't.” It was a lie. They both knew it. She settled back at the desk where the reddish broth was starting to congeal. “Why did you call Biggs?”
“I told you. I was worried!” Khloe admitted, rubbing her arms as if she, too, experienced a sudden chill. “God, it's cold in here.”
“Always,” Ava said, “and you're hedging.”
Khloe sat on the edge of the mattress. “What if . . . what if something had happened to you and we didn't report it? You could've drowned. Passed out in the water. Been the victim of hypothermia or God knows what else.”
“I was okay.”
“You were alive. Barely. And really kind of out of it.” Thin lines of concern etched her forehead. “I probably really should have called nine-one-one, but I was afraid that they would haul you off and . . .” She shrugged her shoulders, then raked frustrated fingers through her short blue-black hair. “To tell you the truth, Ava, sometimes I just don't know what to do.”
Neither did she. “I know.”
“So . . . since Uncle Joe is still here, why don't you come down and talk to everyone? Show that you're okay.”
“You mean fake it?”
“I mean stop acting crazy. Tell Joe and that psychologist that you know you didn't see Noah.”
“But—”
“Shhh! Don't argue.” Khloe's big eyes implored her. “Just say you were confused, a little unclear because of the meds you're on and that you realize you couldn't have seen Noah.” She didn't add that Ava acting calm and rational would probably help her case, that no one would send her off to some kind of psychiatric evaluation if she pulled this off . . . Oh, hell. “Joe is here unofficially, really. He came as a favor to me—”
“In a department-issued boat.”
“It was the fastest way over here. But, really, it's more of a call to check up on you rather than anything remotely official. He even ate dinner with us.”
“Really?”
She lifted a slim shoulder. “I would just feel better, since I called him out here, if you'd show him that you're . . .”
“Sane? Have my wits about me? Not suicidal?”
“Whatever. But, yeah.” She was nodding. “Just humor me, would you?”
It seemed there was no way around facing the sheriff again. “Fine. Just don't be so quick to call the cavalry next time.”
“There's not going to be a next time. Right?”
Let's hope,
Ava thought, but didn't answer as she found a jacket hanging inside her closet and slipped her arms through its sleeves. “I think I'm lucky that Sea Cliff is closed. Otherwise Biggs might have hauled me up there.”
“Very funny,” Khloe said without the trace of a smile at the mention of the old mental hospital. An asylum for the criminally insane located on the southern tip of the island, Sea Cliff had been closed for a little over six years. Everyone at Neptune's Gate had grown up within five miles of the hospital, which had been permanently closed after one of the most dangerous criminals in Washington State history, Lester Reece, had escaped the thick, crumbling walls and rusted gates of the facility.
CHAPTER 3
B
racing herself for what would probably be another interrogation, Ava followed Khloe down the single flight of stairs and walked through the dining room where Graciela had cleared the soup tureen and dishes from the table. They deposited Ava's dirty dishes on the counter in the kitchen, then made their way through to the library where Biggs had settled into an easy chair and was cradling a mug in his fleshy hand.
Her cousin Ian, along with Jewel-Anne, had joined Wyatt and Dr. McPherson in the cozy room with its Tiffany lamp shades, cushy old couch, and side chairs. Dr. McPherson worked with Ava's medical doctor, but was Ava's primary counselor. The conversation was a quiet hum, the mood sober. Jewel-Anne, for once, wasn't listening to music, though she had one of her hideous dolls with her. This time it was a Kewpie-type doll with big, staring eyes, exaggerated lashes, and a deep-red mouth curved into a precocious pout. Ava didn't know whether the doll with its tangled yellow curls was supposed to be a child or a teenager. Either way, it was disturbing, especially the way Jewel-Anne held it, as if the damned thing were her child.
Ian didn't seem to notice the doll and kept reaching into his breast pocket where he'd once kept a pack of cigarettes always at the ready. He'd given up the habit a while back, he claimed, though Ava had seen him out near the dock, sneaking a smoke, though why he lied about it was anyone's guess. Long and lanky, topping six feet, with curly brown hair showing a few strands of gray, Ian had taken a job on the island as a handyman a few years back, and Ava had often wondered why he didn't move on, get away from this place. He, like her other cousins, had once owned part of Church Island, or “a piece of the rock,” as Ian's father had often said, a reference to an old slogan for an insurance company that fitted his view of the island.
No doubt the cozy little group had been discussing Wyatt's wife and her current mental state, as they all became quiet when she walked into the room.
Great
, she thought as the uncomfortable silence stretched, and the knot already tightening in her stomach twisted a little more painfully.
“. . . just really needs her rest,” the doctor was saying as Ava entered the room. She and Wyatt looked up, a bit guiltily, she felt.
“Ava,” Wyatt said, leaping to his feet and quickly crossing the faded rug stretched across the old hardwood of the library. He sent a quick, questioning glance in Khloe's direction as if he were upset that she'd talked Ava into coming down. As he reached Ava, he whispered, “I thought you had a headache.”
“I did, but it's a wonder what a couple Excedrin Migraine tablets can do.”
“I thought the sheriff wanted to ask her some more questions,” Khloe said stiffly.
“I do,” Biggs said.
“Good.” To Ava, Khloe said, “Let me get you some hot chocolate.” But she was too late. As if anticipating Ava's return, Demetria, Jewel-Anne's nurse, appeared with a steaming mug in which tiny marshmallows were dissolving in the thick, hot cocoa. She handed the mug to Jewel-Anne. “I've got another cup in the microwave,” Demetria offered, some of her severity seeming to have receded, her thin lips stretched into the semblance of a smile. “Just a sec.”
“Let me help,” the psychologist said, starting for the kitchen.
“Hey, could you grab me a cup of coffee?” Ian asked with a smile at Jewel-Anne's nurse.
Demetria looked about to say,
Get it yourself
, but instead she smiled coldly. “I'll see if there's any made.” Turning on her heel, she found her way back to the kitchen as Wyatt, holding Ava's hand, helped her to the sofa. They sat together, side by side, stiffly, and Ava was all too aware of everyone watching them, watching her. Wyatt's fingers remained linked with hers, as if he cared—or was afraid she might bolt.
To where? We're on an island, for God's sake.
Beneath her sweater, her shoulders stiffened and she couldn't help but feel Wyatt was acting the part of doting husband, putting on a show for everyone else, which was ridiculous. Everyone who lived at Neptune's Gate knew their marriage was in trouble. It had been since the night Noah had disappeared.
Casually, she pulled her hand from his and stuffed it into the deep pocket of her sweater. Her finger brushed something cold and metal.
. . a key, she realized as the tip of her index finger scraped the jaw-like serrations on one side.
A key to what? To where? Hadn't she worn the sweater earlier today? There had been no key in its pockets, or at least she hadn't thought so.
Demetria returned with a cup of hot chocolate for Ava and handed it to her. Evelyn McPherson, on her heels, returned as well, cradling her own mug.
“No coffee?” Ian asked. At Demetria's shake of her head, he scowled. “But I smell it and . . .” He glanced at Biggs who was taking a long swallow from his cup of coffee. “Goddamn it!” He pushed himself upright and stormed into the kitchen while Demetria seemed to swallow a smile.
Small, small victories
, Ava thought, weary of all their games.
Biggs shifted in his chair, his eyes on Ava. “You saw something and ran out to the dock?”
“I already told you I thought I saw my son and I ran out to save him. I guess I was wrong,” she admitted, though she had to force the words. “But I saw something. Someone. On the dock.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught Wyatt sneak a look at Evelyn, who stood near the fire, ostensibly warming the back of her legs but really, Ava knew, scrutinizing her patient.
Her throat thickened and she stared into her cup as the marshmallows disintegrated, like foamy, dark waves on the beach.
“I guess I was confused, but I was frightened.”
“You thought you were saving someone?” Biggs asked.
“Yes.”
“Is she on hallucinogens?” he asked the psychologist.
“I wasn't hallucinating!” Ava argued, then heard a quiet cough and saw Austin Dern standing near the window, ostensibly looking out at the dark night. He caught her gaze in the watery glass for just an instant and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
“I mean . . . Oh, I don't know what I mean.” She hated this. She was lying, but Dern's subtle warning had penetrated her anger.
“You know Noah's been gone for nearly two years,” Evelyn McPherson said kindly, and tears threatened behind Ava's eyes. “He would be almost four now. He would look much different than when you last saw him.”
Ava swallowed hard and nodded.
To the sheriff, the doctor said, “Obviously this isn't a good time.”
“Is there ever one?” Ava asked. “A good time?”
“There are better times.” McPherson straightened and Joe Biggs took his cue.
“Glad this is all straightened out,” the sheriff said.
Really?
Ava stared at Biggs as if he'd gone mad, but if he saw the doubt in her eyes, he ignored it. Squaring his hat on his head, he started out of the room.
“Thank you, Joe,” Wyatt said, and the big man stopped. “I know it's an inconvenience.”
“All in a day's work.” Biggs shook Wyatt's hand before walking through the kitchen, his heavy footsteps fading as the back door creaked open.
In her pocket, Ava's fingers curled over the unknown key in a death grip. She didn't know why it felt important. She didn't know who had left it for her, but she didn't think it was some random mistake. The key was significant to something.
If she could only figure out what.
 
What the hell had he gotten himself into? Dern wondered as he strode down the broken stone path to the stable where the small herd of horses that were now in his care was locked for the night.
The whole island was something out of a Hitchcock movie and a bad one at that, the kind his mother had watched far into the nights to accompany her and her ever-present insomnia.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the house, a huge, rambling beast of a building that rose into the night, its single turret appearing like the long tooth of a monster's lower jaw, piercing the low layer of clouds huddling over the island. Neptune's Gate . . . Whose idea was it to name it that? He supposed the building had been dubbed long ago, maybe by the original owner, a sea captain who had settled here and taken up sawmilling back when the virgin forests stretched over the states of Washington and Oregon for thousands of square miles.
Well, old Stephen Monroe Church begat himself a loony of a great-great-granddaughter in Ava Church Garrison. Beautiful, almost hauntingly so if you believed in those things. Dern didn't. With her big eyes, as gray as the waters of the Pacific in winter; high cheekbones; and pointed chin, she had the markings of a real beauty, but she was just too damned thin for his taste. Waifishly so. Though it hadn't always been. He knew.
He checked on the horses and felt a little calmer as the smell of dry hay, dust, and oiled leather was layered over the more astringent smells of urine and the earthy scent of manure. The horses rustling in the straw, occasionally nickering, was also comforting. Then again, he'd always felt more at home with animals than he had with people, and today the reasons for his feelings had become clearer than ever when he'd met more of the people housed in Neptune's Gate, a nest of vipers if there ever was one.
Locking the door behind him, he headed up the exterior stairs to the apartment that was now, at least for a short while, his home. Inside was a studio, smaller by half than the library in which he'd witnessed the interaction of the Church family members, the staff of Neptune's Gate, and the sheriff. That's where the lines blurred a bit. Some of the staff were relatives, and even the damned county sheriff was related to Khloe Prescott, who supposedly had been the missing kid's nursemaid and stayed on after his disappearance to care for Ava, who had once been her best friend.
It was like a never-ending riddle.
And he knew they were all liars. Every last one of them. Including the waifish Ava Garrison. He could feel it.
His room was barren, just a couch that folded outward into an uncomfortable bed, a gate-legged table with a stained top, one “easy” chair, and a television circa 1983 or so. A gas stove painted a deep forest green stood a step away from the front door and offered the only heat in the unit. It was also now covered with his still-soaked pair of jeans. On the wood-paneled walls, pictures of seagoing vessels from an earlier era hid holes in the worn paneling.
Home sweet home.
Earlier, upon his arrival, he'd tossed his bedroll onto the couch and packed his few clothes into a tiny closet that fit him just fine. His bath consisted of a shower stall, toilet, and chipped pedestal sink tucked behind a bifold door, and his kitchen was a long closet with a functional sink, tiny counter, microwave, and mini-fridge. From the heat stains on the old Formica counter, it seemed that a previous tenant had once owned a hot plate, but it was nowhere to be found in the tiny, single cupboard that housed dish liquid, two plates, two bowls, and an assortment of jelly jars and glasses. A coffeemaker was tucked into a corner, two cups nearby, but no coffee to be found anywhere.
He heard a scratching sound at the door and opened it to find a bedraggled dog—a shepherd mix of some kind, probably Australian crossed with a bit of Border collie, all black with three once-white feet. They were now covered in dirt. “Who the hell are you?” he muttered, then said, “Hold up.” Grabbing one of the two towels from a cupboard beneath the television, he wiped the dog's feet before the mutt wandered inside, made three circles, and dropped onto the worn rag rug that covered the linoleum in front of the gas stove. Head in his paws, the shepherd stared up at Dern, as if waiting.
“Make yourself at home,” Dern muttered before snagging his still-damp jeans off the stove and turning up the heat. As his new friend watched, Dern carried his Levi's to the bathroom where he draped them over the shower's frosted glass door, next to his still-wet shirt.
The dog didn't move except to thump his tail when Dern snapped the bifolds shut and returned. “I take it from the way you walked in that you've been here before, right, buddy?” Dern bent down—he couldn't resist scratching the dog's ears—then twisted his collar around and read a long-expired tag. “Rover?” he asked, rocking back on his heels. “Seriously? That's your name?”
Again, Dern was rewarded with a thump of the dog's wet tail as he unbuckled Rover's collar and checked to see that it really was a dog collar and nothing else. He'd already swept the small apartment for any signs of bugs, the electronic kind. He'd found nothing suspicious, no hidden microphones or tiny cameras anywhere. He'd even checked what served as an attic and searched every inch of the flooring, walls, and ceiling. It was a habit, something he'd done ever since his days in the military. And considering his motives for being here, a good idea.

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