by R. J. Jagger
“Of course, that would be too easy. How do you like the tattoo?”
“Lovely.”
Yardley chuckled.
“Hey, I was wondering, do you have any tattoos?”
No.
“Did you ever work in a tattoo shop?”
No.
“Do you know anyone who ever worked in a tattoo shop?”
No.
She had no connection to tattoos at all.
Not even a little one.
Except that she had a boyfriend back in high school who had a small skull-and-crossbones inked on his ankle.
“Like a pirate,” Yardley said. “Was his name Robert by any chance?”
Aspen laughed.
No.
It was Irving.
Irving Hunter.
“He’s a lawyer or judge or something like that now,” Aspen said. “Down south somewhere—Atlanta or New Orleans, I think.”
She was checking the local phone directory to see if any of the nineteen Roberts were listed when her cell rang. It turned out to be her other client, Dakota Van Vleck.
“You’re not going to believe what I found out this morning,” she said.
“What?”
“Jeff Salter was sleeping with Whitney White.”
Yardley pulled up an image of the two of them together.
Jeff Salter, Esq.—senior partner at Radcliffe & Snow.
Whitney White—a secretary at R&S.
A secretary who got stabbed through the eye a year ago.
“What makes you say that?”
“Not now,” Dakota said. “I have a theory I want to run by you later. Do you have time to meet sometime today?”
She did.
“I’ll call you later.”
Only two of the Roberts showed up in the white pages and there was no guarantee they were the ones who got the tattoos. It could be that they just coincidentally had the same names. Yardley was just starting a Google search when she realized something.
Something weird.
The tattoo that Dawn gave Robert wasn’t a whole lot different from the real-life murder of Whitney White.
Both involved a woman stabbed in the head; different only in that one was from the side and one was through the eye.
Suddenly the boat rocked.
Meaning someone had stepped on board.
“Knock-knock.”
Yardley recognized the voice.
Coyote.
63
W hen the Shepherd rounded the corner and sprang at Dalton’s face, he twisted to the right with lightning reflexes and hooked a powerful fist to the side of the animal’s head in midair. The dog fell to the ground with a thud and twitched for a few seconds—disoriented. Then it muscled painfully to its feet and disappeared.
Dalton checked all the rooms on that level.
No Lindsay Vail.
He checked the equipment room and found two furnaces, two hot-water heaters, ladders, tools, boxes, clutter and so much junk that he walked to the corners of the room, just to be sure nothing was hidden from sight.
No Lindsay Vail.
He headed upstairs with a bad feeling in his gut.
If he had been Malcolm and had brought the woman here, he would have put her downstairs.
Upstairs, she wasn’t in the kitchen.
Or the living room.
Or the den.
He headed to the master bedroom, hoping against hope to find her there. Instead he found the German Shepherd lying on the carpet. The dog jerked to its feet when Dalton came in, ran past him and out of the room. Malcolm’s stuff was all over the room.
Dalton checked the master bathroom.
No Lindsay Vail.
Then he checked the other two bedrooms.
No Lindsay Vail.
He checked the garage; every square inch of it. Two of the three stalls were filled—one with an older Porsche 911 and one with an eggshell-blue ’57 Chevy.
No Lindsay Vail.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
He looked out the rear windows to see if there was a storage shed or outbuilding of some sort in the yard that he hadn’t spotted before.
There wasn’t.
He plopped down on a beige leather couch in the living room, beaten. Large windows framed aspen trees and a crystal blue sky. Two minutes later he got up to leave, but his stomach growled and made him head to the kitchen instead. In the freezer were a couple of boxes of Lean Pockets. Two went into the microwave and cooked while he sipped a diet root beer. A noise came from the master bedroom—the dog, no doubt.
Dalton walked in to check, just in case.
Sure enough, the dog was lying in the middle of the room.
The microwave beeped.
Dalton headed back to the kitchen, set the root beer on the granite, and opened the microwave door. The dog trotted past the kitchen, gave Dalton a sideways glance, and headed down the stairs to the lower level.
Dalton pulled the Lean Pockets out and sank a fork into one. He was bringing it to his mouth when another noise came from the master bedroom, muffled, barely audible but definitely something.
He stopped the fork in midair, set it down and headed back to the bedroom.
64
T he Serpent’s Kiss looked like something out of a D-grade horror movie—a billion jars with who-knows-what inside, dangling chicken feet, ancient books, occult clutter, and, of course, the strings of beads hanging in the doorway to the mysterious back room.
But that’s not what grabbed Teffinger’s attention.
What grabbed his attention was the woman behind the counter—black, old, a thin frame draped in dark clothes, a touch of yellow jaundice in her eyes.
She didn’t even look at Jessie-Rae.
She looked only at Teffinger.
Teffinger said, “How you doing?”
She gave no response.
He wandered through the crowded aisles, occasionally picking something up and trying to figure out what it was. Nothing was labeled; nothing had a price.
“You don’t belong here,” the woman said.
Teffinger turned his eyes to her.
“Why not?”
“You should leave.”
Teffinger walked over and set a photograph of Ryan Ripley on the counter.
“Do you know this man?”
She looked at the picture, then at him.
“You should leave.”
Before Teffinger could get his next question out, the woman pushed through the beads and disappeared into the back room. Ten seconds later, the sound of a voice wove out the doorway. The woman was clearly talking to someone, but too muted to make out any of the words.
Jessie-Rae tugged Teffinger’s arm and said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Give me a second.”
He pushed through the beads into the back room. The woman was pacing, talking to herself or chanting or something, with a snake draped around her neck. Teffinger recoiled when he saw the reptile.
“You have no right,” the woman said. “Leave now.”
“I want to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?”
“Voodoo,” he said.
“Voodoo?”
“I want to put a death curse on someone,” he said. “Where can I go to get that done? Here?”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“You think I’m a voodoo priestess?”
“I don’t know,” Teffinger said. “Are you?”
The woman laughed and then walked over until she was only a foot away. She was a full twelve inches shorter than him and couldn’t have weighed more than 95 pounds. Without warning, she flung the snake and it wrapped its muscular body around his neck. The reptile bobbed its head nervously; it could bite Teffinger ten times in the face before he’d be able to pull it off. The woman put her face as close to his as she could.
“I’m going to give you the best advice anyone has ever
given you in your life,” she said. “Get out of New Orleans and do it now.”
She grabbed the snake behind its head and gently tugged. The reptile unwound itself from Teffinger’s neck. The woman draped it over her shoulder. It coiled and darted a forked tongue at Teffinger.
He knew he should leave, right now, this second, but the answers to his questions were right here in this room. He was thinking of the next thing to say when the woman’s eyes flashed and she squeezed the snake.
It immediately lashed out and sunk its fangs into Teffinger’s neck.
65
T he afternoon sun got relentless. The marina felt like a hamburger patty that someone put on the grill and forgot to take off. So when Dakota called to see if Yardley wanted to get an iced tea at the Rock Bottom Brewery—and bill her time—she jumped in the 4Runner, turned the AC on full blast, and headed downtown.
She parked at 20th and Broadway.
The walk from there to the Rock Bottom was short but brutal.
Heat radiated from every pore of the city.
Dakota was already there when Yardley arrived, sitting in a nice booth with two large iced teas on the table. The woman looked classy and professional in expensive beige pants and a crisp white sleeveless blouse. Her makeup was minimal but effective. She pushed a check across the table as Yardley slipped in.
“Your retainer,” she said.
The check interested Yardley, but not as much as the look of excitement on Dakota’s face.
Yardley took a long sip of tea and said, “It’s hotter than hell out there.”
Agreed.
“We need rain.”
True.
“So you think Salter was doing the nasty with Whitney White, huh?”
Dakota nodded.
“I know it for a fact,” Dakota said.
“How?”
“Florence Fletcher.”
Yardley knew the name well. Florence was Jeff Salter’s personal secretary; hired more for her Betty Boop body and her people skills than her office proficiencies. Susan Salter—Jeff’s wife—had a standing joke at law firm parties that if Jeff ever cheated on her, at least she knew who it would be with.
“Why? What did Florence say?” Yardley asked.
Dakota rolled her eyes.
“She left the firm. Did you know that?”
Yardley didn’t.
“That’s a whole separate story and no one knows exactly why,” Dakota said. “But there’s a rumor going around that there was no love lost between her and Salter. So I called her up to see if she had any goodies for me. At first she didn’t want to talk, but after I got her warmed up, she told me that she walked in on Salter and Whitney White one day by accident.”
“And by walked in on, do you mean what I think you mean?”
Dakota nodded.
“Whitney was on her knees, apparently, going for it like a maniac.”
Yardley pictured it.
“She never struck me as that kind.”
“You mean the kind to get on her knees?”
“No, I’m talking about the kind to fool around with a married man.”
Dakota shrugged.
“Salter’s got that surfer-boy charm, when he wants to use it. If he decided to turn it loose on someone like Whitney, I could see how she would go for it,” Dakota said. “Oh, by the way, Florence made me promise not to tell anyone, so you need to keep it between us.”
Yardley pulled an imaginary zipper across her lips.
“So are you ready now to hear my theory?” Dakota asked.
Yardley took a swallow of iced tea.
“Shoot.”
“It’s pretty simple,” Dakota said. “Jeff Salter killed Whitney White.”
Yardley laughed.
“Why? Just because they had a relationship of some sort and then she ended up dead?”
“Right.”
“That’s not just a big leap in logic, it’s a quantum one.”
“I’m going to fill in the missing pieces,” Dakota said. “We know that their relationship ended on a bad note. Maybe Salter dumped her, or was cheating on her with a second mistress, or promised to marry her but kept making excuses—something like that. Maybe Whitney ended up pissed off and threatened to tell Salter’s wife. So Salter decided to shut her up.”
“That’s nothing more than a long chain of speculation,” Yardley said.
“That’s how proof starts.”
Yardley was driving to the marina, southbound on I-25, when Dakota called.
“I had another thought after you left,” she said. “We were thinking that Salter’s the one who turned his surfer-boy charms on Whitney. Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe she turned her charms on him and made a videotape of them doing the nasty. Then she blackmailed him with it. Rather than pay, he decided to shut her up.”
“So you’re saying that she set the whole thing up, as a preconceived way to extort money or something?”
“Exactly,” Dakota said. “Maybe someone helped her, also—you know, shot the videotape and all that.”
Yardley chuckled.
“I need to start using you as a consultant for my books,” she said. “Your imagination is way better than mine.”
66
T he noise came from the master closet. Dalton opened the door, wondering how he had been too stupid to check there before, and flicked on the lights.
Lindsay Vail laid on the floor.
Hogtied.
Gagged.
She twisted her face up and stared at him with terrified eyes.
“Lindsay,” he said. “We meet again.”
He removed the gag and she gasped for air.
“Are you okay?” Dalton asked.
“No,” she said. “Untie me, please!”
He did.
Then he let her shower while he sat on the bed and waited.
He felt good.
No, not good.
GOOD.
Lindsay Vail had been the one thing that could have destroyed his life. The dark, helpless feeling of not knowing where she was, and not knowing if she had made her way to the cops, and not knowing whether twenty armed uniforms were on their way at this very moment to grab him, was gone.
In its place was sunshine and hope and that incredibly grateful feeling of experiencing a close call of terrible proportions and managing to somehow miraculously escape totally unscathed.
He pulled a fresh, long-sleeved shirt off a hanger in the master closet, set it on the sink and then waited for her in the bedroom with the door half closed while she dried off. When she finally emerged, he took her to the kitchen and said, “Sit on that bar stool.”
She did.
“If you try anything, I’m going to retie you.”
“I won’t.”
“I hope not,” he said. “I’m being nice, so don’t make me change my mind.”
“I won’t.”
He fed her—cereal, fruit, a Lean Pocket, a turkey sandwich and two diet root beers. It didn’t matter if the owner noticed the food was gone. He would just assume Malcolm ate it.
He leaned against the stainless steel dishwasher and asked, “You know that my name’s not Sean, like I told you before, don’t you.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what my name is? Did Malcolm tell you?”
She nodded.
“What is it?”
“Dalton Wrey.”
“Good.”
“Just let me go,” she said. “I’ll never tell anything to anyone. I swear.”
“We’ll see,” Dalton said. “I haven’t totally ruled that out yet.”
“Please.”
“What I need to know right now is this,” he said. “You overheard Malcolm talking to people on his cell phone, right?”
She had.
“Did you hear him talk to someone by the name of Jason Lynch, who is the owner of this house?”
“I don’t know who he talked to.”
“Think.”
&
nbsp; “He never called them by proper names,” she said. “He just called them dude and guy and things like that.”
“But you heard him talk to people, right?”
“Right.”
“Did he ever mention my name to anyone?”
She darted her eyes.
“Not that I heard.”
“Did he ever mention the playroomto anyone?”
She looked puzzled as if searching her memory.
“Not that I can think of.” She wrung her hands together. “I’m really cooperating as much as I can. You should just let me go. I promise I’ll never tell anyone anything.”
“You swear?”
“Yes, absolutely. I just want to go home.”
“We’ll see.”
Suddenly the front doorbell rang.
Lindsay Vail immediately jumped off the barstool and darted for the front door. A bloodcurdling scream ripped from her lungs; one that would be heard even outside the house. Dalton charged after her.
His left hip suddenly exploded in pain.
A terrible hurt took him straight to the floor.
He knew what happened—he clipped his hipbone on the corner of the granite.
His forehead bounced off the hardwood floor and blood filled his nose.
“Lindsay!”
67
A fter the snake sunk its fangs into Teffinger’s neck, it recoiled just as fast and poised to strike again. Teffinger jerked his head back, out of the attack zone, and brought a hand to his neck to assess the damage.
There was blood, but not a lot.
“You won’t die,” the woman said. “Now go on and get out of here.”
A shape appeared behind him.
Jessie-Rae.
She grabbed his arm and said, “Let’s go.”
Outside in the car he said, “I swear she had that damn thing trained.”
“You can’t train a snake,” Jessie-Rae said.
“I don’t think the snake knows that.”
“It is ironic, though.”
“What?”
“The place is called The Serpent’s Kiss, and you end up getting kissed.”