by Lisa Jackson
Men . . .
They’re all mine. From Parnell to Seamus to the devil who gave me D.
Catherine’s eyes traveled to the closed book, and her jaw grew hard. She’d known Parnell well, how his taste for women had grown ever younger. She hadn’t mourned his death one iota. And she’d known Seamus, who’d hung around Mary like a dog who smelled a bitch in heat, until he’d finally gotten his chance to mount her. He had been married, of course, and had gone back to his wife, who’d died of a heart attack not long after. Seamus himself had died a few years later, another one Catherine hadn’t mourned. He, like so many of Mary’s conquests, never knew he’d fathered one of her children. Maybe he’d suspected. Maybe they all had, but no one had stepped up and asked.
Bastards.
Catherine wasn’t completely certain just which man had sired which child, though Mary had known. That information might be inside Mary’s journal, and it might not. She suspected the key to whoever had killed her sister was related to one of them, however: the man from the bones. And she thought she could maybe narrow it down.
Still, the words her sister had written seemed to leap off the page. Powerful. Evoking memories of those long-ago days before Catherine exiled her sister and slammed shut the gates to Siren Song.
The devil who gave me D. She certainly knew who that was.
Swallowing, she stared into the dark corners of the room while her mind’s eye vividly recalled the devil Mary referred to: the only one of her sister’s lovers that Mary had been unable to control. The sick bastard who’d forced Catherine into a closet and pressed himself upon her, stripping off her clothes and holding her down while she screamed behind his hand. A man twice her age who’d turned his laser blue eyes on her. Catherine had felt something grip her, something sexual, which she’d mentally fought, even while she was physically frozen. He would have had her, but suddenly Mary was there, slamming the butt of the shotgun from the gun closet downstairs into his skull. He went down hard, his cranium dented, his eyes fixed, and the spell broken. Catherine had been shaking uncontrollably. She’d still been in a daze when Mary said, “Help me,” and she’d obeyed, joining her sister in carrying his body from the closet downstairs and out to the graveyard, where he still lay inside the grave now marked with Mary’s headstone.
“Who is he?” Catherine had asked her as that late summer’s wind blew around them, and they had both cast anxious glances back to the lodge, worried one of the children would see them.
“Richard Beeman,” Mary had answered after a long moment. “My husband.”
“He’s not your husband,” Catherine had whispered.
Her sister had smiled coldly. “And his name isn’t Richard Beeman.”
And then she slammed the sharp end of the blade into the dirt fiercely until it hit something . . . his body . . . and Catherine gasped and turned away.
“Die, devil,” Mary spat through her teeth. Then she yanked out the shovel, the tip of the blade dark with the blood, and added conversationally, “We’ll get a coffin made. Maybe we can ask Earl. . . .”
CHAPTER 14
Hale pressed a finger to the end call button on his cell and tried to tamp down his concern. Where the hell is she? He’d been half annoyed most of the day, but now, as night fell, he crossed the threshold into low-grade alarm. For all her flightiness, Kristina had never walked out for this many hours with no contact whatsoever. He didn’t know how many times he’d called her already, but he would be reaching serious “stalker” limits were he some stranger trying to make contact.
“Want another?” the bartender asked him, pointing at his empty beer glass. She was young, with long dark hair and a name tag that read MINNIE.
Hale was seated at the bar end of the Bridgeport Bistro in downtown Seaside. He’d left the office and thought about heading home, but he had a gut feeling Kristina wasn’t there waiting for him and he didn’t want his worries to escalate just yet. And if she did happen to be there, she could damn well wonder where the hell he was.
“No, thanks,” he said. Then, as she turned away, he said, “Maybe a Scotch on the rocks.”
“Any particular one?”
“Surprise me.”
“Dewar’s?”
He nodded. He was almost sorry he’d asked for another drink now that she was pouring it for him. He wanted to do something. This sitting at the bar and wondering was making him crazy. As Minnie slid him his drink, the door blew open, sending in a swirl of frigid air, which made everyone in the place look up and frown.
“Brrr,” the newcomer said. “Sorry about that.”
“Well, get on in here, Jimbo, and keep the cold out,” Minnie said to him, playfully snapping a towel at him.
Jimbo was a big man in a plaid shirt with a thick beard and a thicker neck. He grinned at Minnie, and Hale caught a spark of romance between them. It left a dark sorrow in his heart in a way that made him angry at himself. Damn it, Kristina. Where the hell are you?
Downing his Scotch, he rethought his plan to stay away from the house, deciding he was just being immature. As he climbed into the TrailBlazer, the skies suddenly opened and a deluge of cold rain mixed with snow shot down, sending icy fingers slipping beneath his collar. He shivered as he slammed the door shut, fired the ignition, and switched on the wipers.
His house was about ten minutes south of Seaside, depending on traffic and weather. Hale had just passed Cannon Beach on the way south when his cell phone began ringing through his car’s speakers as Bluetooth picked up.
“Finally,” he muttered, flipping up his cell phone to view the number, but it wasn’t Kristina’s. The number was his client Ian Carmichael’s. Disappointed, he waited till the phone connected and then said, “Hello, Ian?”
“Oh, Godddd!” came a woman’s shriek, booming through his speakers.
The sound jolted Hale’s heart. “Astrid?” he asked.
“She’s . . . dead . . . dead. . . . She’s dead! Oh, God. Oh, my God! She’s dead!”
“Who? Astrid? Who’s dead?” Hale asked as he slowed and pulled over to the side of the road, but in some dark region of his mind he jumped to only one conclusion, and just as quickly pushed that thought aside. This wasn’t about him.
There was a sound of scrambling on the phone, as if someone had dropped it and then caught it, and a moment later Ian’s voice came on the line. “Hale?” he asked in a strained voice. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Ian. I’m driving home, and—”
“She’s not dead. Astrid grabbed the phone before I could call. We phoned nine-one-one when we found her. She was in the living room. There was blood on the wood, a heavy chunk like a beam. Must’ve fallen from above. I think she was hit with it.”
“Where are you?” he demanded, but he knew.
“We’re outside the house. She came in through a window. We found her inside.”
Hale was already turning the TrailBlazer around, aiming for Seaside and the Carmichaels’ house. His pulse was like a surf in his ears. “You found an injured woman inside your house?”
“You said they were going to demo soon and we stopped by and there she was.” He gulped audibly. “I think you should come. It might be . . .”
“I’m on my way. It might be what? Ian?” Hale demanded. Then, when Ian wouldn’t or couldn’t respond, he added, “You’re saying a woman climbed through the window.”
“’Cause it was locked, I guess. The Seaside police should be here soon,” Ian answered distractedly. “Umm . . . we’re just outside the front. We saw her and just . . . didn’t go in. There was a window open, maybe.”
One window. The one that wouldn’t close properly. Had some vagrant found it?
He experienced a horrifying, crystal-clear memory of standing with Kristina at their own house and watching rain race down the panes, and him saying, “This weather’s hell on wooden window frames. Good thing we’re redoing the Carmichaels’ house, because it’s a sieve.”
And then Kristina answering, “My par
ents’ house has wood frames. They either swell shut or just won’t latch.”
And him nodding, glad for once that they were having an actual conversation about something besides their relationship, and saying, “These windows are in the ‘just won’t latch’ category.”
Hale had a sudden vision of Kristina on the Carmichaels’ living room floor, the back of her head a mass of blood.
“Ian,” he said, forcing the words past his lips. It couldn’t be. Couldn’t! And yet . . . “Do you think the woman is my wife?”
“I don’t know, man. Just get here.”
Fear seized his chest like a vise, and he pressed his toes to the accelerator as he tore back through the dark night to the job site on the Promenade.
Savannah drove across the Willamette River, through the tunnel, then west on the Sunset Highway. The beams of headlights heading east shimmered on the pavement, and ahead of her pulsed a scarlet trail of taillights. Deception Bay lay over two hours west over the mountains. Her police band sputtered, and she was instantly tired. Damned pregnancy.
There was a Motel 6 coming up on her right, and it seemed as good a choice as any. She took the ramp off the Sunset and pulled into the lot. Zipping up her jacket and holding the collar close, she bent her head to the wind. Tiny flakes of snow swirled around her as she walked into the reception area, which smelled slightly of burned coffee.
She tried Kristina again as she waited for her key at the desk, but her cell phone went straight to voice mail for the dozenth time. She thought about calling Hale, but first Nadine’s and then Owen DeWitt’s condemnation of her sister was in the forefront of her mind, and she just didn’t feel like talking to Kristina’s husband right now.
Not that she believed a word of it. Kristina wanted Hale, and she was too determined that they should have a life together for her to blow it on an affair. Gretz and DeWitt were either lying or mistaken. Kristina wasn’t a liar or a cheat. That just wasn’t the way her sister was made.
“Where are you?” she muttered under her breath.
Her sister’s supposed sexual encounters reminded her of Catherine and what she’d said about her own sister, Mary’s “gift,” as well as her ability to draw men to her. Weird. Then there was Catherine’s strange lesson in genetics and the boys, now men, who’d been born at Siren Song. Where were they? Did they exist? Had they ever? All questions that were going to have to wait until after she finished her part of the Donatella investigation and had her baby.
She rubbed her stomach, and Baby St. Cloud gave her hand a kick. Not as powerful as before. She was getting too big, and there wasn’t the same amount of room for the little guy to move.
“Not much longer,” she told him softly.
Key in hand, she picked up her overnight bag and stepped carefully along the walkway, which was growing slippery, then up the exterior stairs to the second floor. Two-twelve was halfway down the balcony, and she let herself into a clean but cold room with a queen bed that, when she switched on the overhead, looked like it sagged a bit in the center.
She found the thermostat and turned up the heat, then, shivering, propped herself on the bed. Her brain was full of the events of the past few days. There were so many things to think about, she felt slightly ADD, her mind jumping from Catherine and the questions surrounding her sister’s death to Bancroft Bluff and the Donatella murders, and how they impacted Hale St. Cloud and his family, to the growing worry she felt about Kristina and the allegations that she’d been having an affair with someone named Charlie, to the fact that she, Savannah, was about to go into childbirth and give her sister and husband a child.
And come Monday, she would be relegated to desk duty, which, although it wasn’t a bad thing, made her feel cast aside and useless, and she supposed that was all just the baby-growing hormones at work, but she still felt it. Keenly.
She’d stuffed the pages of Bancroft Development’s financials that Ella Blessert had copied for her into her messenger bag, and now she pulled out the thick pile and laid it on the bed, starting from the furthest date back and going forward. She’d barely started reading, however, when her eyes began watering from weariness and she began to yawn.
A brief nap. That was all she needed.
Lying back on the bed, she thought she should take her shoes off, but she was too tired to care. She tried to focus instead on only one aspect of the investigation, but for reasons unclear to her, all she could think about was Kristina and her joy when she’d learned Savannah was pregnant.
Call me, she mentally ordered her sister as she drifted off.
As fast as he drove to the Carmichael house, the Seaside police and EMTs beat Hale to the site. Ian and Astrid were huddled on one side of the building as snow swirled around them and fluttered in the flashlight beams and squares of light from the windows. Hale slammed the TrailBlazer into park and leapt onto the ground, slipping a little in the dusting of snow. He rushed forward but was blocked by an officer, who told him they had a crime scene and he couldn’t enter, and at that moment a gurney with a body on it was carried through the front door.
One look and he knew. Kristina.
“Oh, God. My God.” His legs threatened to buckle.
“Sir?”
He swam back to the present with an effort. A young officer wearing a Seaside police uniform and a name tag that read MILLS was standing in front of him. Hale blinked. “Where are they taking her?”
“I don’t know, sir. You recognize the victim?”
“My wife. Kristina . . . St. Cloud.”
He brushed past the officer and asked the EMTs, “Where are you going?”
“Ocean Park Hospital.”
He turned to leave, but Officer Mills was in front of him again. “An officer will meet you at the hospital, Mr. St. Cloud.”
Hale barely heard him as he ran full bore and skidded to his vehicle. A thousand images swirled through his brain in an instant: meeting her at the coffee shop, sharing their first Christmas, a midnight kiss, making love to her . . . and then her sudden disinterest.
“Hale?”
It was Astrid Carmichael. Her voice a wavering plea in the cold night air. To both Astrid and Ian, he said tersely, “It’s Kristina. I’m going to the hospital.”
Ian Carmichael nodded once, and his wife buried her face in her husband’s chest.
The ambulance pulled out with full lights and siren, the wailing woo-woo-woo-woo screaming into the night, with Hale right on the emergency vehicle’s bumper. He drove somewhat carefully, because of the worsening weather, though he wanted to rip down the highway. Nevertheless, he was only minutes behind the ambulance as they reached Ocean Park Hospital.
Slamming his car into park, he half ran, half jogged through the carpet of snow to the ER, where sliding glass doors shifted backward as he burst through. Kristina’s gurney was just being pushed past double swinging doors controlled by a push button. Hale followed right after it, slipping inside before the automatic doors shut him out. Kristina’s eyes were closed, and her face was white.
“Kristina,” he said.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you a relative?” A woman was suddenly standing in front of him—a nurse—blocking his view.
“That’s my wife,” he said, holding on tightly to his control with everything he possessed. Dear Jesus, was she going to make it? What happened? What happened?
“If you could wait over here . . .” She gestured toward a chair in a curtained bay that was empty.
“Where’s she going?”
“They’re doing tests and prepping her for possible surgery.”
“Surgery?”
“She has head trauma. Please, sir . . .”
Hale sat down reluctantly, and as soon as he was seated, he felt the blood rush from his head. What the hell was Kristina doing at the Carmichael house? How did she get in? Through the window? Why?
“Crime scene,” Officer Mills had said.
Hale shook his head, trying to clear it. Crime scene. No accident?
<
br /> “We need you to fill out some forms,” another woman said, and a clipboard with papers and a pen were shoved into his hands. Hale stared at the documents a moment, then began filling them in, his mind racing ahead, his hand shaking as he wrote.
Ian Carmichael’s words came back to him. Blood on the wood . . . a heavy chunk like a beam . . .
Hale drew a careful breath. He’d thought Ian had meant she was hit by a board in an accident. There had been some demolition inside the house already. Sheetrock ripped off, framing hammered out of the walls. He’d initially assumed her injury was accidental. That was what he’d wanted to believe, anyway. What he still wanted to believe.
He pulled his wallet from his pocket, slid out the insurance card, then wrote the information on the form. Out of the corner of his eye he saw an officer enter through the electronically activated swinging doors, a law enforcement man wearing the tan uniform of the sheriff’s department.
Hale straightened in his chair as the man introduced himself. “I’m Deputy Warren Burghsmith of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department.”
He blinked, his mind splintered in all directions. “My wife was found in Clatsop County.”
“The hospital’s in Tillamook County, and I’m first available, Mr. . . ?”
“St. Cloud. Hale St. Cloud.”
“And it’s your wife who was brought in.”
He nodded. “Kristina St. Cloud.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“At the job site? No. I wasn’t there.” He found himself feeling overwhelmed. “I came later.”