Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  He was gone a long time. Long enough for the kids and me to have baked, cooled and decorated four dozen Christmas cookies. Joshua kept looking outside with his wide, frightened eyes. You couldn’t see anything from the kitchen windows, but I imagined the thought of a dead body nearby was scaring the hell out of him. The only thing that distracted him was Myrtle. She was mainly lying as close to our work area as possible in hopes of falling crumbs. But every time Josh walked away from the counter to look out that window, she would haul herself to her feet, plod over and bang him in the leg with her head. If he ignored the first assault, she would start hitting him with a forepaw and whining softly. It was pretty clear to me by then that my dog thought of Joshua as her boy.

  We’d just finished frosting the last batch of cookies when flashlights came by the cabin’s windows. I caught enough shapes through the veils of snow and night to deduce that they were carrying the body back to the Abominables. And then they moved toward the front of the house and out of sight from the kitchen windows again. Mason would be in soon.

  I met Misty’s eyes and was impressed and glad when she read mine and nodded very slightly. Taking Josh by the arm, she said, “I don’t want any part of cleaning up the mess. How ’bout you, Josh?”

  She was growing up pretty damn nicely.

  He slid his eyes my way and shrugged.

  “Oh, really?” I asked, hands going to my hips. “I suppose you think I should clean up this mess?”

  “Yup,” Misty said. “Because A, we did most of the frosting. B, this entire mess was your idea to begin with. And C, we have a Mario Galaxy tournament that we need to finish before bedtime. It’s up to me to carry the banner for the female gender, and frankly, I’m not doing so hot.”

  I tilted my head to one side, pretending to consider, then nodded. “All right, I give. The reputation of womankind is more important than a messy kitchen. I’ll do cleanup. You go play video games. But take a bunch of these cookies with you or I’m going to get fat just from being around them.”

  “You already licked so much frosting your tongue is stained green,” Misty said, laughing. Josh giggled, too. Yes, she was good, my niece.

  Jeremy was silent, staring through the living room toward the front door, waiting for Mason to come in. His mother still hadn’t come down from her room, and I didn’t blame her. She must be feeling like a tragedy magnet about now.

  Misty piled cookies on a plate, handed it to Josh, then pulled three glasses out of the cupboard and started filling them with milk.

  Jeremy glanced at her, then shook his head. “None for me. I’ll be up in a while. I want to talk to my uncle first.”

  Misty darted a look at me, as if to ask if that was okay and I shrugged, having no idea. “Okay, Jer,” she said at length. “But don’t be too long, okay?”

  He nodded, but if his expression was anything to go by, he didn’t intend to head upstairs any time soon.

  Misty picked up the two glasses she’d filled. “C’mon, Josh. You can show me some of your skills while we wait for your big bro.”

  Josh followed her, and Myrtle followed him. I thought he was happy for the distraction. Myrt was just happy that the scent of Josh and the smell of cookies were moving in the same direction. There were bound to be crumbs. And I was mondo impressed with my niece for taking charge like she had, getting the kid out of range of the discussion when she must be as curious as anyone else about what had happened to poor Scott-slash-Alan Douglas.

  The entire kitchen was covered in glittering red-and-green sugar and my fingers were stained with food coloring. I started on the mess and said, “Jeremy, if you’re gonna stick around, you might as well help.”

  He looked my way, then nodded and started putting the rows and rows of artfully—well, if we’d been a group of six-year-olds—decorated cookies into the giant teddy-bear-shaped cookie jar. I ran a sink full of sudsy hot water and started washing the cookie sheets and empty frosting bowls, coloring my dishwater, while he cleaned the glittering, frosting-splotched countertop where we’d done our work.

  Mason came in just as we were finishing up, looked from me to Jeremy and back again.

  I decided to give him the straight scoop, digest style. “Misty took Joshua upstairs to play video games. Myrt’s with them. Marie’s still in her room. And Jeremy wants to know what’s going on.”

  Mason looked at Jeremy, who nodded and said, “I know something is. This is all connected, isn’t it? That attack on Mom, you bringing us all up here on the spur of the moment. You have to tell me, Uncle Mason. What’s happening?”

  Mason sighed heavy and deep. He looked exhausted, almost defeated, as he sank onto a stool near the countertop.

  I poured him a cup of strong coffee, fixing it just the way he liked it best, light, no sugar. He said, “The state police can’t get out here tonight. The storm.” He shook his head. “The timing couldn’t be worse. But there’s nothing we can do about the weather but wait it out. They told us to take pictures and then move the body under cover, figuring that will preserve more evidence than leaving it out in the woods, with the animals and everything.”

  I bit my lip and turned my head away. “I didn’t need to know that part, Mason.”

  “Sorry.” But he went on. “Finnegan brought big lights and a camera. We took shots from every angle. It’s snowing so hard, I don’t know what else we’ll get out there, but we roped off the area anyway.”

  Jeremy was looking from one of us to the other. “It wasn’t a heart attack, like Misty thinks, was it.” It wasn’t really a question.

  Mason’s eyes met mine. I wished more than anything that I could help him, but I was damned if I knew how.

  He looked back at Jeremy again. “Alan Douglas was murdered.”

  Jeremy had been standing in front of a stool. He sank onto it with those words. “Who did it?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Blinking hard, looking at nothing but clearly searching his mind, the kid asked, “Is it the same person who attacked Mom?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “But you have an idea.”

  “I’m a cop, Jer. Until I have proof of something, I don’t know anything. That’s how I operate. I follow the evidence to see where it leads. It’s true, I did bring your mother and you boys up here to get her away from whoever attacked her. But I don’t know if this murder has anything to do with that attack or not.”

  “And what about Grandmother and Rachel and Misty? You brought them, too, so they must have something to do with it, right?”

  “I was attacked, too, Jeremy,” I said. “Same day as your mom. We thought if we went somewhere out of the way, we could have a safe, fun holiday while trying to figure out who did this.”

  Nodding slowly, Jeremy slid off the stool, standing up and towering over his uncle, who was still sitting, and me, though I was standing. The kid was six-two in sock feet. “And no one knows who’s doing all this, or why? That’s it? That’s everything?”

  Mason seemed to consider for a long, long moment. Then he said, “No. Actually, it’s not.” Then he went back into the living room, all the way to the front door, where he’d left his coat hanging. He reached into the pocket and pulled out a handkerchief-wrapped bundle.

  “Mason,” I said, “I don’t know if this is the time to—”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Mason said, cutting me off as he rejoined us in the kitchen. “Grab me a zipper bag, Rache.”

  I rummaged through the cupboards and found one, then held it open for him. He put the bundle inside, holding one edge of the cloth and letting the weight of the jackknife unroll it. I focused on Jeremy, watching him carefully as the knife fell to the bottom of the bag.

  First the teenager frowned, tilting his head and leaning closer, and then he jerked backward as if a snake was snapping at him. “That’
s…that’s my jackknife.”

  “I know.”

  He looked from the bag to his uncle and back again. “But…but where was it—where did you—”

  “I found it in the woods near the body, Jer.”

  The kid was shaking his head. “No. No way. That doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t even bring my knife up here. This is crazy, man.”

  “I know it’s crazy. I know, but I’m a cop, and I have to follow up on every clue, even the ones that lead to places I don’t want to go. So I have to ask you…” He lowered his head, gave it a shake, then put both hands on Jeremy’s shoulders and looked him right in the eyes again. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I wish I didn’t have to, but I don’t have a choice. I need to know where you went last night.”

  “Uncle Mason…” He couldn’t say more. He was backing up, away from Mason’s hands, shaking his head, mouth agape. “You think…you think I—”

  “No, Jeremy, I don’t think you did anything. You need to be very clear on that. I do not believe for one minute you had anything to do with this. I know you couldn’t do something like that.”

  I heard the doubt in Mason’s voice, though, and I knew what he was really thinking. He, a detective, had missed all the clues when his own brother had turned out to be a serial killer. Could it be happening again? Had the urge to kill been somehow genetically handed down to Jeremy? Had Mason missed the signs all over again?

  I hoped Jeremy didn’t hear the doubt beneath Mason’s words, because I thought it would destroy him if he did.

  “Neither one of us believes that, Jeremy,” I said when the silence drew out too long. “But others might, because somehow your knife ended up out there. That means Mason has to know everything so he can protect you. Do you understand? He’s not trying to prove you did anything here. But he might have to prove that you didn’t.”

  Mason met my eyes briefly, and his were filled with gratitude. Then he was focused on Jeremy again. “We know you bought some booze and drank yourself into oblivion last night. You must’ve been gone quite a while to get all the way to the liquor store in the village and back again by—”

  “I didn’t go anywhere.” His voice was dead. He’d withdrawn completely.

  “The sales receipt was in the bag.”

  “I know.” Jeremy spoke in a lifeless monotone. “Misty and I met a couple on the slopes yesterday. Marty and Chelle. I mentioned them before. Marty said he and his girlfriend were going into the village to party last night, so I gave him fifty bucks to pick me up a bottle. Told him if he’d bring it to my window when he got back, he could keep whatever was left over.”

  “It was a twelve-dollar bottle,” I said.

  “It was worth fifty to me.”

  Mason was looking at the floor. “I need to know the guy’s last name, Jer.”

  The spark came back to Jeremy’s eyes, but it was an angry one. “Why? So you can arrest him for providing alcohol to a minor?”

  “So I can ensure you don’t end up arrested for murder.” He stared hard right into his nephew’s eyes, and I hoped Jeremy could see as clearly as I did that his uncle was dead serious. “I need to protect you, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy dropped the attitude. He looked scared. Good, I thought. He should be.

  “I promise, I won’t file charges because he bought you the booze. I just need him to back up your story that you were here.”

  There was a sigh, an eye roll, no answer.

  “Okay, that’s my limit.” I put my hands on Jeremy’s shoulders, even though I had to reach up to do it, and turned him to face me. “Your uncle concealed evidence to protect your ass. He picked that knife up out of the snow so no one else would see it. If anyone but me knew that, he’d be the one facing charges. And you’d better believe his career would be over. He risked his job and his freedom for you. The least you can do is participate in your own defense, you stubborn little fuck. Give him the name.”

  Jeremy blinked, then looked at his uncle. “You did all that for me?”

  Mason said nothing.

  I shook him a little. “The name, Jeremy.”

  “I don’t want to get the guy in trouble. He did me a favor.”

  I dropped my hands and turned away, frustrated. “Why are kids so damn dumb?”

  “He did not do you any favors, Jer,” Mason said softly. “You have a problem with alcohol, but we’ll discuss that later, because right now you have a bigger problem.”

  “Give your uncle this guy’s name, Jeremy, or so help me, I’ll grab you by the balls and twist until you do.”

  They both gaped at me.

  I threw my hands in the air. “What? We need the name. If there was ever a time for enhanced interrogation techniques…”

  “All right, all right. It was Marty Spencer.”

  Mason was giving me a look that said I might have crossed some kind of line, but I ignored it.

  “Can I go now?” Jeremy asked. Then with an angry look at me, he added, “If the interrogation is over?”

  “Yeah,” Mason said. “But listen up, I don’t want to catch you with another drop of booze for the remainder of this trip. There’s a killer on the loose, Jeremy. One who’s trying to point the finger at you. I need everyone on their toes. You need to stay sharp for your own sake. All right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He was already walking out of the kitchen.

  “And don’t say anything about this to Joshua,” I said to his retreating back. “He’s already terrified.”

  No response.

  * * *

  Mason’s insides felt as if they were being eaten away by battery acid. The cookies and milk Rachel was pushing on him sat untouched on the end table. He was pacing, thinking, his mind racing in a thousand directions. She was sitting in a rocking chair with her laptop open, clicking keys at what sounded like light speed while the fire crackled and popped in front of them.

  He stopped pacing long enough to wonder what had her typing like she was running on rocket fuel. He looked at her. Her eyes were intent on the screen, and she was barely blinking. She had this faraway look, and her lips moved every now and then. The look on her face was just…rapt. Man, she was focused. He almost hated to butt in, but he needed her right now. He needed her sharp mind, and maybe one of her no-nonsense smacks upside the head to snap him out of the downward spiral that had him in its grip.

  “What are you writing?”

  Her fingers stilled the minute he spoke. She blinked twice, and then she seemed to…surface. As if she’d been out of her body for a while there and was just now reentering.

  “Everything,” she said.

  “Everything?”

  “About the murders, what we know, what we don’t, what the possibilities are.”

  “You’re writing about it?” He was more than a little bit horrified, and she must have seen it, because she made a disgusted face at him.

  “Not for public consumption. Jeeze, Mason, what do you think I am, anyway? This isn’t for anyone but us. It’s just… It’s hard to explain. It’s my process. It’s how I think.”

  “By writing.”

  She nodded. “Something happens when I write. Not in the first few lines, but soon after. Something…takes over. Everything flows. I get stuff.”

  “You get stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like the stuff you write about? All that positive-thinking stuff?”

  She nodded again, her eyes dipping back to the screen. “Yeah, most of the time. Not now, though. This is different.” He sensed he was going to lose her to her thoughts if he didn’t hold on.

  “So then it’s not all bullshit, like you keep saying it is. If you’re getting it from…somewhere, it’s more like it’s channeled.”

  Her head came up fast and sharp. “Oh, come on, Mason. Channeled? Did
you really just go there?”

  “Well, what would you call it?”

  She just looked at him for a second, then turned to the screen again. Yeah, he was losing her.

  “So what did you come up with? Anything brilliant?”

  She nodded fast, scrolling now. “Yeah, maybe.”

  He moved around behind her to look over her shoulder as she scrolled up toward the beginning of the torrent of words. Some lines consisted of nothing but random words and a lot of abbreviations, nothing that made a lot of sense to him. She was writing in some kind of shorthand only she could read, he guessed.

  She found what she was looking for and stopped. “Okay, so if the guy who attacked Marie was the same guy who killed Alan Douglas, then that means he was inside Marie’s house, right?”

  “Obviously.”

  “So that means he had the opportunity to take Jeremy’s knife.”

  Mason just stood there in front of the fireplace with his ass getting hot, gaping at her while a ten-thousand-pound boulder lifted half its weight from his shoulders. She had just shown him that there was another way, an obvious way, that knife could have managed to end up at the crime scene. A way he’d missed entirely because he’d been so horrified that the evidence pointed to his nephew. Thank God.

  No. Thank Rachel.

  He couldn’t help the sigh of relief that rushed out of him.

  “Good, right?” she asked.

  “More than good. More than good, Rachel. It hadn’t even occurred to me.”

  “There are other possibilities, too. Joshua could have brought Jeremy’s jackknife up here. You know how little brothers are, always into their big brothers’ things. Josh has been all over this resort. He could’ve had the knife in his pocket and dropped it anywhere. Or the killer could have found it that day he left the angel pin at the door. Maybe it was here in the cabin, and he got inside and took it.”

  He was nodding, willing any of those possibilities to be true. “But why? Why would he want to do that?”

  “To frame Jeremy for his crimes,” she said quickly. “It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. Jeremy’s mother is seeing the killer’s intended victim and Jeremy’s pissed about it. He makes the perfect scapegoat. Not to mention that implicating your nephew throws us off track and you into a state where you can’t even think straight. Giving the killer the chance to get away or continue his mission or…who the hell knows why? I mean, someone who kills people and cuts out their organs isn’t exactly operating from any sort of logic we can relate to, right?”