Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

  Mason nodded. This guy was good. “Meanwhile,” he added, “we can start interviewing some of the guests.”

  “That’s over four hundred people,” Cait said.

  “We rule out anyone who was here more than a day before we arrived and anyone who checked out before Douglas went missing.”

  Grudgingly, the woman nodded, her short blond curls moving with the motion. “That should rule out a few of them, at least.”

  “My instincts will rule out a lot more,” Rachel said.

  Mason shot her a look. She couldn’t be at the lodge interviewing guests, and neither could he. He had to keep her here, safe, where he could protect her, not to mention Marie and the boys. And he had to keep a constant eye on Jeremy.

  She looked back at him, seemed to read him and nodded. Wordless communication. They were getting better and better at it. He noticed it, wondered at it, then forced his focus back to the job. “We should take another look at the scene now that it’s daylight. Though with the snow, I doubt there’ll be much to see.” He got up from the table, leaving an empty plate behind him. Cait hadn’t touched hers. Rosie got up rather reluctantly, eyeing the stack of waffles still left behind.

  Marie came into the kitchen then. She looked far better than she had last night. She must have managed to get a few hours’ sleep, Mason thought with a surge of relief. She’d needed it.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I’ll fill you in, Marie,” Rachel said.

  Mason nodded his thanks to her, grabbed a waffle off the stack, rolled it around a sausage and led the way back through the house, eating on the way to his coat and boots.

  * * *

  I didn’t get the chance to fill Marie in on much, because two minutes after Mason, Rosie, Cait and Finnegan were out the door, the kids came dragging in, with Myrtle in tow.

  Marie picked at her food for a while. Jeremy and Josh ate like a pair of horses. Big ones. Budweiser Clydesdales. But Misty seemed to be forcing herself. I could tell from the look on her face that Jeremy had told her about the murder, about him being a suspect and maybe about Marty bringing him the booze. She kept looking at me like she wanted to talk about it, then looking at Josh and biting her lip. Like me, she wanted to keep Josh as much in the dark as possible.

  And he seemed okay, amazingly. He wolfed down a half dozen syrup-soaked waffles while Myrtle lay under his chair, scarfing every dropped crumb with uncanny accuracy. Josh held an entire sausage link down, thinking no one noticed, and she snagged it without even sniffing first. Fussy, she wasn’t.

  After she swallowed and Josh stopped laughing at her, I said, “She needs to go outside. And as much as I love her, you need to ease off on giving her junk food, Josh. It’s not good for her.”

  At the word outside, Myrtle’s ears perked up and she looked in my direction.

  “I’ll take her!” Josh volunteered.

  “I don’t think—”

  “It’s okay,” Marie said. “I’ll go with them. I need to stretch my legs anyway, get some air.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder and nodded. “Okay. You’d both better bundle up, though. Put Myrt’s sweater on her, too, would you, Josh? It’s still storming like crazy out there.” I met Marie’s eyes as Josh scrambled to get the sweater and leash. “Don’t go far from the cabin, okay?”

  She covered my hand with her own. “Thanks for caring.”

  “I do, you know,” I said. And then I wanted to gag at my uncharacteristic bout of female bonding. We should just break into a round of “Kumbaya” already.

  Marie went to the closet to begin donning her layers. Josh and Myrtle were already there. The bulldog would follow Joshua off the edge of the planet. The minute the front door closed behind them, Jeremy said, “Did Uncle Mason talk to Marty yet?”

  I drew a breath. “Not exactly.”

  He frowned at me. Misty put her hand on his shoulder and said, “What do you mean, not exactly?”

  “Marty and his fiancée checked out yesterday morning before the full brunt of the storm hit.”

  “So call him.” Jeremy pulled out his cell. “I have his number right here.”

  “It isn’t going to matter, Jer. The tower is out. The power’s down, too. This entire place is running on backup generators.”

  Misty got up from the table and went to the back door, parting the curtains to look outside. “I didn’t realize the storm was so bad.”

  “They’ve even closed the slopes. Everyone has to stick to indoor activities until further notice.”

  Misty turned from the window and met my eyes. “We should just leave, Aunt Rache. If there’s a killer here somewhere, we should just—”

  “The road is completely blocked.”

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “This is like something out of a slasher flick.”

  She looked at Jeremy. He got up from the table and put his arms around her.

  “Whoa, no PDAs, all right? You’re too fucking young.”

  “Get over it, Aunt Rache,” Misty said, gripping his wrists to keep his arms right where they were. “We have a connection.”

  “Yeah, it’s called hormonal overdrive.”

  “Don’t assume I’m driven by the same shit you are,” she snapped.

  My jaw dropped. I clamped it shut. “God, I hate when you sound like me.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned to look back outside. “Josh and Myrt are heading back.”

  “What about Marie?” I asked, going to the window to look over her shoulder.

  “I saw her heading into the woods. I think she went out to find Mason.”

  “And left Josh out there alone?” Jeremy turned and went into the living room, grabbing a coat and opening the front door before he even put it on. Conscientious about protecting his kid brother. That didn’t really seem in character for a crazed teenage serial killer, did it?

  “You don’t really think Jeremy had anything to do with Mr. Douglas’s death, do you, Aunt Rache?”

  I turned to my lovesick niece. “I wouldn’t tell you so even if I did, so the question is moot. And it doesn’t matter what I think, anyway.”

  “It does, though.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “What you think matters to Jeremy. And to me. And what Mason thinks matters more to him than whether the sun rises tomorrow morning. Just so you know.”

  I nodded slowly. “Okay, what we think matters to Jeremy. But it’s not going to matter to a criminal investigation. We need to prove he’s innocent before the police get out here and start digging around.”

  She nodded slowly. “He’s been drinking, Aunt Rache. A lot. I’m trying to help him with it.”

  “If you want to help him, you need to convince him that he has to stop, Misty. He has to stop entirely. Not one sip, not one beer, not a glass of wine, nothing. Ever. No exceptions.”

  She pressed her lips tight. “Seems kind of harsh.”

  “Look at this way. If he can do it without much effort, he doesn’t have a problem. He can drink again, within reason, when he’s legal. On the other hand, if he can’t stop easily…”

  “Then it’s a real problem.” She nodded as if that made sense to her.

  Then the door opened, and Jeremy, Josh, Myrtle and a huge blast of wind-driven snow came in.

  * * *

  The spot where Scott Douglas had been disemboweled had only a couple of inches of snow, and it was sheltered from the brutal wind today, too. Mason could still see the blood, veiled only a little by the white powder. He was moving around the crime scene on hands and knees, brushing snow away as he went in an ever-widening circle. Rosie and Cait were circling the woods a little farther out, and Finn was searching for signs of how the killer had come and gone.

  And then Mason spotted something i
n the snow.

  A cell phone.

  He picked it up carefully, using his gloved thumb and forefinger and turning its face toward him as Finnegan came closer.

  “What’ve you got?” the other man asked.

  “Phone.” Mason pushed the power button. “Dead. Wet, too. If we can dry it out and charge it up, figure out whose phone it is, we might have our man.”

  “Unless it’s the victim’s phone,” Finn suggested. “We didn’t find one in his room.”

  “No, and not on his body, either,” Mason said. “Still, we can hope.”

  Finn held out an open plastic bag. “Best let me get the thing under lock and key. I’ll take it back to the Security Shack until we can hand it off to the police tomorrow.”

  “You really think they’ll be able to get to us that soon?” someone asked.

  They both turned. Marie was standing a few yards away. Mason dropped the phone into the bag and moved toward her. “You shouldn’t have come out here alone, Marie. It’s not safe.”

  “I just… I wanted to see where Alan…” She lowered her head, closed her eyes.

  Mason sighed and put his arms around her, hugging her hard. “You’ve been through so much. I’m sorry, Marie. And I’m sorry I was a jerk about him at first, too.”

  She let her head rest on his shoulder. “I know you are.” Then she straightened. “It’s not like we were in love or anything, I just… I really liked him. He was a nice guy, you know? A genuinely nice guy.”

  “Take your sister-in-law on back to the cabin, Mason,” Rosie said, as he and Cait returned to join them. “We’re about done here anyway. And I have got to get back to Marlayna or she’s gonna skin me.”

  Mason nodded, but he shot a look at Finnegan for confirmation.

  “I don’t know there’s any more we can do here,” Finn said. “Time for us all to get back and try to keep everyone safe and calm until the roads are cleared and the police can get here.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “Drop that phone into a bowl of rice for a while. Maybe we can dry it out and find a charger to fit it.”

  “No doubt about that. We have in the neighborhood of a hundred and seventeen phone chargers in our lost and found. We let guests borrow one when they’ve forgotten theirs at home.”

  “Don’t let any guests borrow them today, at least not until we find one that fits,” Mason suggested.

  Finnegan nodded and stuffed the bagged phone into his pocket as Cait walked over to join him. Mason tucked Marie under one arm, and they all started back through the pine forest to the cabin.

  But when they got there, Marie abruptly stopped. Mason looked down at her with a question in his eyes, but she just waited while Finnegan, Cait and Rosie got into the Abominable. Finn turned the lumbering beast around, and they started back toward the lodge.

  Finally, Marie said, “I don’t know what’s happening, Mason. It’s like I’m cursed. Everyone I care about dies.”

  “No. Not everyone.”

  “Eric,” she said softly. “Our baby. And then poor Alan.” Her eyes were dry, but red, as if she’d cried for so long there were no tears left. She looked empty, hollow. Defeated. “And now Jeremy…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

  “What about Jeremy?” he asked. This was important, he sensed it right to his toes.

  She shook her head and turned toward the front door, but he caught her arm and turned her around. “Finish the thought, Marie. It’s important. What about Jeremy?”

  Marie lowered her head, sighed heavily. “Eric used to go someplace where I couldn’t reach him. Someplace…inside himself. Did you ever see that happen?”

  Holding her gaze, he nodded. He’d seen it. He just hadn’t realized what it meant. “The silences, the brooding. Staying in his room for hours at a time without a word, just staring at nothing. No TV, no music, nothing, just…nothing,” he said. “He’s always done it, even as a kid.”

  “So you know,” she said softly. “I never understood, I just… I resented that I couldn’t reach him there. He seemed so far from me during those times.”

  “Mom took him to a psychiatrist once. But Eric said he was fine, and the doctor didn’t find any reason to disagree. He could fake it really well, Marie.”

  “I wonder what he was hiding in that dark place inside him,” she mused.

  That he was a serial killer, Mason thought. But he would never tell Marie that. He’d put his career on the line to protect her and the boys from that ugly truth. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “He’s at peace now.”

  “But Jeremy isn’t. And now he’s doing the same thing. Going to that dark place where no one can find him. And it scares me, Mason. It scares me to death, because I don’t want to lose him, too.”

  Her words sent a chill right to Mason’s bones. “We’re not gonna lose him,” he said. “I plan to hold on to Jeremy for all I’m worth. I won’t let go. We’ll pull him through this, I promise you. No matter what it takes.”

  And he meant it. If Jeremy was infected with whatever evil had poisoned his father, if it was genetic, then Mason would get him into treatment, onto medication, whatever it took.

  If.

  And it was a very big if. The biggest. Because he knew he couldn’t trust his instincts where his nephew was concerned.

  But he could trust Rachel’s. They were good, better than his cop sense—which had been called uncanny—at its best. Rachel didn’t believe Jeremy could have killed Alan Douglas, much less anyone else. He was holding on to that trust, holding on for dear life. And just like he’d told Marie, he wasn’t about to let go.

  CHAPTER 15

  Friday, December 22

  It wasn’t that bad a day, considering there was a murderer somewhere nearby waiting for a chance to steal my eyes. Aside from that, it was actually pretty good, mainly because there was nothing we could do but wait for the police to arrive and the plows to clear the roads.

  We’d all done a fair amount of shopping before the storm hit, and Misty had stocked up on gift wrap and bows on our trip into the village. So we worked on wrapping our gifts, all of us together, hunching over our work spaces, so the others couldn’t see their surprises. Mason actually took an hour-long nap after that. Misty and Marie and I talked about whether we’d still be here—here at the lodge, not here among the living—on Christmas Day, and what we’d do if we were. Make dinner here or venture out to the lodge to celebrate with the other guests. The thought of being so exposed sent a shiver up my spine, but I pretended it was a logical discussion to be having, even with a serial killer after us.

  Then again, he was really only after me—and Marie, though I still had no idea why he had gone after her. I mean, I didn’t doubt it. She’d been attacked, had the bruises to prove it, but still… My extra senses were reading that signal as indecipherable. It made no sense.

  Josh was having a fit most of the time, because he wanted to be at the lodge with his grandmother and the water park and arcade—not necessarily in that order. But he forgot not to have fun every now and then.

  At some point we’d given in to the kids’ begging and put a pumpkin pie into the oven to bake. The supplies that had been waiting when we’d first arrived had included all the ingredients from filling to pre-made pie crusts, thank you God and Caity Cole, and lots of other holiday things like canned cranberry sauce and boxes of stuffing mix. I bet there was a turkey in the freezer, and at the thought I got a little warm glow in the pit of my belly.

  I smacked it upside the head and got my focus back. Killer, remember?

  It was that damn Christmas thing in the air, infecting me like it seemed to infect everyone else I knew at this time of year. It was only three days away. With the smell of the fireplace and the pie in the oven, I was damn near whimsical. Almost ready to think some holiday magic was going to ha
ppen to fix all this before I wound up paralyzed under a pine tree with a scalpel-wielding killer and my eyes wide open.

  I closed them quickly, gripped the edge of the counter and bowed my head. I didn’t mean to, it just happened. That image had hit me hard.

  “Hey, what smells so good down here?”

  Mason. I hadn’t realized he’d come back downstairs and automatically looked at the clock. “You only slept for an hour.”

  “From the looks of you, it was an hour too long. What happened?”

  I shook my head and stood up straight, crossing my arms. “Nothing. I was just walking down dark alleys in my head. Places I’ve got no business going.”

  He came right to me, like it was an everyday thing, squeezed my shoulders and leaned his face close to mine. I was ultra-conscious of Misty and Marie standing a few feet away, watching us, and then I felt his breath on my mouth and didn’t care if the Pope was standing there.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Rachel. I promise you, I’ll be the first and last thing standing between you and this maniac, and he’ll have to kill me to get by.”

  It dawned on me that this wasn’t a romantic embrace at all. It was a solemn vow, and he was standing so close to make sure I got it.

  And I did, I got it, and then I was completely dumbfounded. Because he meant it.

  I moved my face even closer to his, and I said to him, “I will never let you die for me, Mason Brown. Don’t you even think about doing something that stupid. You think I want that on my shoulders for the rest of my life? No fucking way.”

  He blinked like he was stunned.

  I felt bad, so I added, “That was probably the most amazing offer I’ve ever had, though. Thanks for that.”

  “I meant it.”

  “I know you did.” His eyes were searching mine for I didn’t even know what. Everything inside me was jiggling like St. Nick’s bowlful-of-jelly belly, and there was this urgent feeling in my soul. I wanted him like a vampire wants a pint of A-neg straight from the donor. Right there. In front of the whole fam-damily.