by Nancy Bush
Still . . . Rayne’s disappearance bothered her in a way she still hadn’t quite defined. Mac searched her feelings and decided it was because everyone’s lack of real interest got under her skin. No one seemed to care. It felt like Rayne needed a better shake than that.
She determined she would go to Sharon Sealy’s house before meeting with Taft. Bibi had given her the directions so after she followed Seth back to his place, and it looked like he was tucked in for the night, she would head over to the Sealy home and knock on the door, see if she could talk her way inside. If they weren’t there, she could camp out until they were.
She’d just decided as much when Seth strolled out of the building with another guy with longish, dirty-blond hair and a darker three days’ growth of beard that could either be a fashion statement or idle neglect. He wore a gray work shirt, dusty jeans, and worn, leather work boots, the kind that looked as if he could break your rib if he kicked it just right. Mac twisted her key in the ignition to engage the battery, pressed her finger on the button to depress her window, and heard Seth, talking fast and urgently, call him “Troy.” She grabbed her phone from its holder and quickly brought up the Best Homes company website, all the while keeping her eyes mainly on Seth, who stood with Troy by his truck. Scrolling through the personnel, she saw Andrew Best’s smiling face again. A snake-oil salesman’s smile, she decided. A little untrustworthy somehow. Or maybe she’d just been infected by Nolan’s assessment of the man.
Troi Bevins was employed with the company. There didn’t appear to be any other information.
Okay. Troi with an i. Had he taken Nolan’s old job? When she thought of her brother-in-law she recalled his strong, clean-shaven jaw and trimmed dark hair. Kind of a sea change there in terms of employees, but maybe Troi’s appearance belied a terrific work ethic . . . ? Fat chance. Probably someone else had taken that position.
Mac carefully took a picture of the two men with her phone. Seth’s arm was stretched lovingly across the bed of his F-150. Something possessive and maybe a little show-offy about it. He seemed to be trying to impress Troi. If so, Mac couldn’t tell if Troi was buying it. His back was to her and he had most of his weight thrown on one hip. Maybe Seth was applying for a job?
After a few minutes the two men said goodbye with a kind of lift of their chins, and her gaze followed Troi as he climbed into a fairly new-looking silver Audi. She automatically calculated the cost in her head, as his ride looked a lot more expensive than Seth’s older truck.
Seth pulled out of the lot and after a moment or two, Mac fired up the RAV’s engine and slid into traffic behind him. As ever she was careful to stay back from the white truck. She expected him to head to Good Livin’ for Patti, which he did, but then, with her mind wandering some, she almost missed his turnoff toward what turned out to be the Waystation again. As far as she knew, he and Patti hadn’t been back to the bar since she’d seen him there nearly two weeks earlier.
After Patti and Seth entered, she sat in her car for a while, thinking. Should she go in again? What if they remembered her? They hadn’t appeared to notice her last time, but what if they twigged to it if she walked right by them?
She twisted in her seat and searched the interior of the RAV. Her eye fell on a Mariner’s baseball cap. She honestly couldn’t remember where it came from as she wasn’t much of a sports fan, but she swooped it up and crammed it on her head. Nolan, she decided. Steph’s husband was a fan and she could almost recall her stepsister wearing it one day when they’d gone jogging together.
She strolled into the bar and slid a look out of the side of her eyes. Seth and Patti were at the same table they’d inhabited last time. Maybe it was their spot. Someone had cranked up the country music and Mackenzie could feel it throbbing in her chest. She started to head to the bar and then nearly stumbled as she put it in reverse. Doobie Gillis was plopped in his same seat. At least it was the same one he’d occupied the last time she’d been here.
She glanced around for another place to sit. There were several empty booths circling the pool table. Beneath the overhead, low-hanging, faux stained-glass lamp, one lone man was playing a game of pool by himself, squaring up his shot on the eight ball.
Before she could move, Doobie twisted around to see who’d come in and grinned when he saw her. “Hey, copper,” he greeted her.
Ugh. She didn’t look, but felt that this time she was almost certain Seth or Patti swiveled a head her way; she could sense the motion in her periphery vision. Rather than draw further attention to herself, she headed toward the bar and seated herself next to Gillis, shielding herself from Seth and Patti’s sight line. “I’m not a cop,” she reminded him.
He seemed to take her joining him as a good sign. “What can I do you for?” He waved an arm expansively toward the array of bottles against the mirror behind the bar. Several of them looked to have a light fur of dust.
The bartender, a woman this time, glanced over at Mackenzie. She looked to be in her mid-forties with thin, ropy arms, eyes heavy with mascara, and a tattoo of a ring around the third finger of her left hand.
“Wedding band?” Mac asked curiously.
“I married myself after I caught my last boyfriend doing my best friend. Haven’t seen either of them in a decade and that’s fine by me. You want something?”
“Vodka and lime.”
Mackenzie had to force herself not to peek over Gillis’s shoulders toward Seth and Patti. She could just see around him to the door and therefore could catch any movement with her eye should Seth and Patti decide to leave, which was great as she doubted she’d hear anything above the thumping music.
“Whatcha been doin’ since we last met?” Gillis asked loudly, tipping his cowboy hat back to get a better look at her.
“Not much.”
“You becomin’ a regular here?”
“You mean like you?”
“Who says I’m a regular.”
“I don’t know. When was the last time you were here?”
“Before today, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Yesterday.”
She smiled and he chuckled deeply.
“I like you,” he said.
The door opened and another couple came in, taking a table near Seth and Patti. Mackenzie lifted up a bit to see past Gillis and noticed that Seth was looking the other couple over, his gaze lingering on the woman’s shapely legs. Patti twisted around to see where his gaze had landed and her expression darkened.
Mac’s drink came and she picked it up and took a sip. Damn near straight alcohol. She pulled her phone from her back pocket and checked the time. She might have to forgo that trip to Sharon Sealy’s if Seth and Patti decided to stay awhile.
Another man came into the bar, sporting a cowboy hat like Gillis. His jeans were tight, and the collarless tee showed off a pair of arms that had seen a lot of hours at the gym. Or maybe he actually worked outdoors. Hard to say. He caught her eye and his look said he knew she’d been admiring him. She dragged her gaze back to Gillis. Like Taft, the newcomer knew he was good-looking.
Seth’s gaze had swept from the girl to the single guy who’d just entered. He squinted at the man, then seemed to remember he was there with Patti and gave her his full attention. She glared at him.
The newcomer engaged with the man at the pool table and they started up a game together. The first man whistled at the bartender and yelled, “Can ya turn that shit down?”
The bartender gave him a cold look, but went into the back for a quick moment and shaved a few decibels off the music before she returned.
Mackenzie relaxed back onto her stool. Didn’t want to appear to be gawking too much.
Gillis said, “Feel like dancin’? I feel like dancin’. There’s kind of a honky-tonk place over in Laurelton that—”
“No.”
“—is a helluva lot of fun. Oh, c’mon. Gets going around nine o’clock. Used to be later but they kept running up against the fucking noise ordinance.
I say—”
“No. Don’t dance.”
“—we mosey on over and give a little two-step.” He wriggled on his stool and gave her a wink. “C’mon, Mac. You can’t be as uptight as you seem or you wouldn’t be here at all. We could smoke a little weed. There’s a dispensary right there, but I happen to have some on me. . . .” He waggled his eyebrows beneath his hat.
“Don’t do weed. Don’t dance. Don’t have time. Don’t want to.”
“You don’t do weed?” He looked aghast.
“Thanks for the drink, Doobie. But no. Alcohol’s the boring limit to my boring existence.” Maybe it would be better to just wait outside before anyone else in the bar took more interest in her.
The first man at the pool table was in a nine-ball battle with the newcomer, but something was going down because though they were standing pretty close to each other neither man was lifting a cue stick. Mackenzie sensed a fight brewing, but then the first man folded like a fan, picked up his beer from the elbow-height shelf that ran on one side of the table, drank it fast, crushed the can, and left.
The new guy watched him leave, a slight smile on his lips. He felt Mac’s gaze and looked her over, lifting his brows in invitation.
Not exactly a stealth kind of surveillance she had going here.
She declined his invitation with a regretful smile as she put some bills on the bar and slid off the stool.
“You gotta finish your drink,” Gillis protested.
She hesitated, took a hefty sip, more for him than her, then set the glass down and headed for the door. If Seth or Patti noticed her leave, she didn’t see because she pretended to be looking at her phone as she pushed outside.
As the door shut behind her, she raced to her car and drove the RAV out of the lot and around the block, slipping into a spot between two cars that looked like they’d been parked in those same spots for a millennium by the dust, dirt and bird poop on their hoods, fenders, and roofs. She swept off the Mariner’s cap and squinched down in the seat till only the top of her head and eyes were visible. She couldn’t see Seth’s car or the door to the bar, but she had a view of the street. If he drove out of the lot and headed west, toward his home, she would likely be able to see him for half a block, or if he headed east he would drive right past her, which could be a problem if they took much longer. Right now she could pretend to be yakking on her phone to explain what she was still doing in the area, if Seth and Patti even noticed, though they hadn’t shown that they knew she’d been following them for the better part of ten days.
To her consternation, the good-looking dude was the first car to leave. He drove an F-150 Ford truck like Seth’s but it was much newer, its gunmetal gray color gleaming in the late afternoon sun. He pulled up next to her car, his engine throbbing. Mac had been trying the phone-yakking ploy, but he just stopped the truck beside her and waited.
“I’ll call you back,” Mac said, and pretended to click off as she lowered her window.
“That guy at the bar your boyfriend?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the bar.
“More like an acquaintance.”
“You hooked up with anybody?”
“Does it look like it?”
His smile was quick. “Anybody at home expecting you?”
“My mother and stepfather.”
“I mean . . .” He gave her a searing look that was meant to be sexy but didn’t quite do the trick.
“My mother and stepfather,” she repeated. She wasn’t in the habit of flirting with strangers, and there was something about this guy she found somewhat intriguing and repellant at the same time. Like if she actually thought about taking things a step further, it wouldn’t be good . . . but it might not be all bad, either. It had been a long while since Pete. It was a shame she was attracted to good-looking men who seemed too aware of their own charms.
“We could go to—”
“I’m not your type, believe me. Goodbye . . . ? It was nice meeting you?” She smiled to take the sting out of it.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Next time, then,” he said, putting the idling truck in gear. His smile seemed to have grown icier.
Mackenzie watched him depart in her rearview, feeling slightly disappointed. Maybe she should’ve gone for him. Maybe it would have scratched that itch for a romantic encounter that seemed to have infected her.
“Nah,” she said aloud, then settled back to wait for Seth and Patti.
CHAPTER SIX
The kayakers were friends from grade school. They challenged each other at every opportunity and had spent last summer windsurfing outside of Hood River, the best place in Oregon to windsurf, or so they’d heard, and they had no reason to doubt it. This March had been a tough time for outdoor sports. Rain and wind and cold. Coulda been the middle of winter. Only toward the end of the month had the weather grown favorable, and the two friends had been on several weekend biking trips, tuning up for their next adventure. This afternoon they’d headed down the East Glen River, which wasn’t much of a challenge overall, but it did have a few rapids that required some serious skill.
Coming out of one of those breathtaking, white-water spots, the first boy, Ryan, had caught an oar and capsized, turning a three-sixty and popping up again. The second boy, his friend Kurt, was still razzing him as they turned the corner along a brushy expanse, which held a far slower current. This section of the river was practically a canyon, with steep slopes on either side rising up toward a darkening sky.
“What the fuck’s that?” Ryan asked, pointing. He really wanted his friend to get off his ass.
Kurt looked over and saw some red material caught in a thicket of blackberry vines that had overrun the bank. “Somebody lost their trunks,” he said, uncaring.
“It’s not trunks. It’s . . . a sleeve.”
“Well, excuse me. Somebody lost their shirt,” Kurt corrected.
They cruised closer and both stared and stared. There was an arm sticking out of the red sleeve . . . and there was a hand at the end of it with matching red fingernails, frozen in a clawlike grab.
“Fuck me,” whispered Ryan.
“You think that’s real?” asked Kurt.
The wind switched direction, blowing in their faces. The dank, rank, rotten smell answered the question.
Ryan heard a moaning sound and realized it was coming from Kurt. His own heart was pounding triple time. He reached inside his waterproof pack, pulled out the cell phone from its interior clear-plastic sack, and stopped. “Who should I call?” he asked, his voice tight.
Kurt’s eyes were wide, glued on the grasping hand. He blinked, then croaked out, “Nine-one-one.” Any other time, he would have likely responded, “Nine-one-one, moron,” but today he didn’t even think of it.
* * *
Detective Cooper Haynes was having dinner with Jamie, Harley, and Emma when the call came through. He didn’t immediately take it because he had a mouthful of arrabbiata sauce, loosely translated as “angry” sauce, and the hot red chilis were bringing tears to his eyes.
“I made the sauce,” said Emma proudly.
Duchess slapped her tail against the floor in approval at the sound of her mistress’s voice.
Cooper had known Emma for years, before and after the tragedy that had mentally debilitated her when she was a teenager. Still struggling to talk, he looked from Emma to Jamie, Emma’s sister and the woman he’d fallen in love with. Jamie was regarding him with a guilty “oops” face. “You okay?” she asked.
“Spicy, huh,” said Harley, Jamie’s daughter. She had nibbled at a bite, but most of the red-coated linguine remained on her fork, uneaten.
Emma frowned and took a bite herself, chewing hard. Moments later she dropped her fork with a clatter and grabbed for her water glass. Cooper had already done the same.
Jamie hadn’t tasted her food yet. She’d loaded up her plate mostly with salad and had taken her time. Now she set down her fork and picked up
her napkin, covering her mouth while the rest of them swilled water, but Cooper could see that she was fighting laughter.
Emma set down her glass and drew a breath, her eyes watering. “I can’t eat it.”
“Maybe it’s a tad hot,” Jamie said from behind her napkin, trying to be conciliatory, but Emma gave her a sharp look.
“It’s uneatable,” Emma said gravely.
“We might be able to save it,” Jamie said, putting down the napkin, her face mostly under control though she had her lips pressed together as if she were afraid they would betray her.
“It’s DOA, Mom,” Harley disagreed. “Sorry, Emma. Good try.” She got up from her seat and went to the sink to clean off her plate.
“Too many chilies,” said Emma.
“Maybe a few too many,” said Jamie generously.
Emma considered. “You do better than I do. You didn’t ruin the garlic shrimp last week.”
“Well . . . that was a different dish.”
“We should order pizza,” said Emma.
“Good idea.” Harley swept her cell phone from her back pocket. “Deno’s.”
Cooper’s cell phone had fallen silent after its ding to let him know he had a voice mail. It was on the edge of the counter where he’d plugged it in upon returning “home” from the station. He didn’t actually live with Jamie; he had his own house. But he spent most of his free time here and a whole lot of meals, so, yeah. It was home. “It’s the station,” he said, getting up from the table.
While Jamie tried to convince Emma to let her try to take out the heat with more marinara sauce, Harley ignored them both and ordered pizzas, and Cooper moved away to listen to the message from dispatch. A recovery was underway on the East Glen River, below the trail that led to Percy’s Peak. A young woman’s body had been found.