The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (A Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery Book 4)

by Donna White Glaser

  THE BLOOD WE SPILL

  BY DONNA WHITE GLASER

  Book Four in the Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery series.

  Still suffering recurring panic attacks following the murder of a close friend just months ago, psychotherapist and recovering alcoholic Letty Whittaker is struggling to bring her life back to normal. She’s getting there. But when her best friend disappears into the depths of a religious cult, Letty is forced to cut ties with her safe life and plunge into a world of fanaticism, hypocrisy, and danger.

  What Letty discovers is a community in upheaval. The cult's second-in-command has disappeared without a trace. As its members vie for dominance in the power vacuum, the leader's demands for his “children” to reject worldly evils and commit their lives—and money and properties, of course—to purity and sacrifice grow increasingly bizarre. Determined to not give up the hunt for her own strangely elusive friend, Letty digs into the legion of dark secrets hidden within the community and unearths more than she may have bargained for.

  ALSO BY DONNA WHITE GLASER

  THE LETTY WHITTAKER 12 STEP MYSTERIES:

  THE ENEMY WE KNOW

  THE ONE WE LOVE

  THE SECRETS WE KEEP

  THE BLOOD WE SPILL

  COMING SOON: THE LIES WE TELL

  To Pookie

  For getting up at five in the morning to braid my hair on horse show days, for teaching me how to put makeup on and how to flirt, and for being the best sister God ever made.

  STEP SIX

  Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

  STEP SEVEN

  Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.

  Chapter One

  In the short time I had known Reggie, I’d already come to understand that her youngest daughter was a sore subject. Through the disjointed bits and pieces that she’d dropped, I had gathered that Maggie had left college one semester shy of graduating with a degree in chemistry and was living in Eau Claire. Of course, it was possible—likely even, given the nature of A.A. sponsor relationships—that she had been more candid when talking with Beth, the third member of our little gathering. Up until now, however, any time the conversation had veered even slightly toward her daughter, Reggie had directed it away. So when she abruptly started talking about Maggie before the cookie plate had even hit Beth’s kitchen table, I didn’t need my fancy therapist skills to clue in that something was up.

  After that initial admission of worry, Reggie stalled and seemed at a loss about how to continue.

  “Is she in trouble?” I asked.

  “Not according to the police,” Reggie said. “But, Letty, those freaks she’s been living with won’t let me talk to her.”

  Now the conversational menu had expanded to include the police and freaks. Difficult choice. I went with the freaks.

  “It’s this group that calls itself ‘The Elect of the Returning King,’” Reggie explained. “Maggie hooked up with them about nine or ten months ago. She moved in with them, sold her car, dropped out of college. She just pissed her whole life away. Just like that.”

  “Are we talking about a cult here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what to call it. She got involved with them right after her fiancé broke it off with her. I thought it was a good thing. I mean, it’s God stuff. How could that be bad?

  “They have a leader,” Reggie continued. “But I’ve never met the bastard. Maggie calls him ‘Dr. Abe.’ A few times she slipped and called him “Father.” That started one of our fights. I just don’t understand how Maggie got involved in all this. She’s an intelligent girl and has so much going for her.”

  There was a pause. Reggie’s eyes shifted from a pleading directness to unfocused. Her attention turned in to herself. This felt like the moment in therapy when my clients finally decide to lay it all out. It’s a tricky time; the best response is silence.

  Beth, never one for subtlety, blew it. Turning to me, she said, “Have you ever heard of them?” Her voice sounded strange. Tighter, somehow. Excited?

  I practiced psychotherapy in the small community of Chippewa Falls, but I was in no way an expert on religious communities. When I shook my head, Beth turned back to our friend. “You’re going to have to tell her everything.”

  Reggie took a deep, shaky breath. “I think she’s been kidnapped,” she admitted.

  Her statement pushed me further into therapist mode. My face muscles relaxed into a neutral position and I continued to keep silent.

  Beth took one look and bounced a wadded-up paper napkin off my nose. “Quit that. She’s not crazy.”

  “I didn’t say she was.”

  Beth was irritating when she was right. Reggie wasn’t a client. Like Beth, she was my friend. “Why do you think she’s been kidnapped? Is that why the police are involved?”

  Together, Reggie and Beth filled me in on the details of Maggie’s involvement with the group. A year ago, Maggie and her then-fiancé, Peter, went through a particularly nasty breakup. After catching Peter shooting off his fireworks with another woman over Labor Day weekend, Maggie kicked him out and tried to finish her last year at UW-Eau Claire. Her fall semester was a shambles. In addition to a twenty-credit workload, Maggie had to deal with the knowledge that her ex was frolicking around on an Alaskan cruise with his new love and planning a June wedding. Maggie fell apart.

  “I wasn’t there for her,” Reggie admitted. “I was drinkin’ hard, you know. And she never really asked for help. We’ve never been close. She’s what you might call high-maintenance.” Reggie’s voice trailed away as she halfheartedly made the excuse.

  This time Beth kept quiet and let Reggie come to terms with herself. After a few moments spent struggling with tears and her past, Reggie squared her shoulders and met our eyes.

  “My drinking kept us from being close,” she said firmly. “My drinking made her high-maintenance. She had a lot to put up with, growing up. Anyway, she must have been feeling pretty alone, pretty awful. That’s when she went to that meeting.”

  According to Reggie, the meeting had turned into a two-hour-long lecture on stress given by the Elect’s founder, Abraham Reynolds. It seemed innocent enough at the time.

  “Maggie told me it helped her understand the stress she was under. He supposedly explained the physical and psychological effects of living with today’s stress. Then he slid into the spiritual stuff. Then boom. Three weeks later, she moved in with the weirdos.

  “From then on, it was like she was a complete stranger. She wouldn’t come home for Christmas. She dropped out of school. She even started wearing those long “Little House on the Prairie” skirts and sticking her hair up in a bun. I tried to find out what was going on, but she clammed up. She even stopped taking my calls, and when I finally drove over to that house, she refused to meet with me alone. Had to have a chaperone. Can you believe that?”

  “Was that her idea or theirs?” I asked.

  Reggie thought for a bit before answering. “I guess I don’t know. If it was their idea, I didn’t see any sign of her objecting. And she was the one who cut the visit short when I started asking her again about dropping out of college. Only one more semester and she would have had her chemistry degree.

  “After that, she wouldn’t talk to me at all. I tried going back to the house, but they finally said she didn’t live there anymore. They said she was in retreat but wouldn’t say where and wouldn’t even take her a message from me.”

  “So I went to the c
ops,” Reggie continued. “They talked to the people, and then Maggie came in to the police station to talk to a detective. She had two of the freaks with her, but the cops talked to her alone. There was nothing they could do. She insisted she was fine and wanted to be with them. She, um, refused to talk to me.” Reggie stopped talking and stared out the window, tears finally streaking loose from her eyes.

  “That was last April,” Reggie said when she could continue. She fell silent again and a look I couldn’t interpret passed between her and Beth. Running a knuckle under her reddened eyes to shore up the mascara leaks, Reggie stood and announced she had to use the bathroom.

  If not for the look, I wouldn’t have suspected a thing. As it was, I eyed Beth warily while Reggie clomped out of the kitchen.

  Beth was wearing her innocent face.

  One reason why A.A. puts such stress on honesty is because it’s such a foreign concept to most of us. Of course, Beth had perfected the art of lying. Maintain good eye contact (not too intense), relax the face and shoulder muscles, and smile (not too wide). If Beth could have colored her own aura, it would have been pink and dewy fresh.

  I slowly shook my head. “Don’t even try it. It’s wasted on me.”

  Scowling also came naturally to her. She propped her chin on her hand and came clean.

  “I want to help her,” Beth said.

  “Well, sure.” I felt bad for Reggie, too.

  “No. I mean really help her. I want to check out that cult or whatever it is.”

  “Okay,” I answered slowly. I didn’t see the problem. “You mean like hire a PI?”

  “No. I mean you and I can check it out.” She answered just as slowly, enunciating each word.

  I began to see where she was headed with this, but I really didn’t want to believe it. I made one last attempt to shift her away from the dangerous path she was aiming us toward.

  “I can check around,” I said. My voice sounded frantic even to my ears. “I can ask some colleagues if they’ve done any work with former cult members. I guess you’d call them deserters…” I was nearly babbling now, trying to keep Beth from stating her real motive—the one we both knew but that I was too afraid to acknowledge. “I’ve never done that kind of work before, so I’m not really an expert.”

  Reggie came back in and made her way over to the table. Again the look. Beth gave a tiny shake of her head. I could only pretend for so long that I didn’t understand what she was asking of me. Gathering my purse, I made good-bye noises and retraced Reggie’s path across the kitchen, and then I was out the front door.

  Fleeing to my car might have been a mistake. I had recently had a very bad experience in my last one. Very bad. Gripping the steering wheel until my joints ached, I relived the terror of being trapped, sinking, nearly dying. Caught up in a wave—gasping, sweating, shaking. The memory carried me along. My heart pounded so hard my ribs throbbed from the inside out. I couldn’t think over the echoes hammering in my ears.

  I was having a heart attack.

  Chapter Two

  Nowhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—the therapists’ bible of psychological disorders—is embarrassment listed as a symptom of panic attacks. It should be. Almost everyone I had ever treated who suffered from them spent a great deal of time dealing with the embarrassment caused by these seemingly irrational behaviors. People tend to look at you funny when you begin clutching your chest and gasping in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. They call the paramedics too.

  An additional element of shame creeps in when you’re a therapist who suffers from them. To top it off, they aren’t even a stand-alone disorder; they have to be coded with another, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Generalized Anxiety. Two disorders for the price of one, I guess.

  So shame, yes. Even though it goes against everything I say—and believe—when I counsel someone else with this problem.

  After an eternity of minutes, the panic started to subside and I felt safe starting the car. Impulsively, I pointed the car north and headed up Highway 53 to Chetek. One of my biggest fears was that I would have an attack on the road. Because of that, I had begun to avoid driving except for the brief, necessary trips to work and back. I don’t know if my other friends had noticed, but I was aware that Eli, my recently acquired boyfriend, was no fool.

  My relationship with Eli, which resulted from the events last summer, came with its own set of complications. The attraction between us was as strong and scary as an undertow and, given my emotional struggles of late, its progress had been choppy and turbulent.

  In the past, I would’ve taken time to watch the fields, check out the crops, study the changes in season. Not today. This time the forty-minute trip passed by in a daze. As I turned into Eli’s half-mile-long drive, it occurred to me he might not be home. My cell phone was stuffed deep in my purse, but I didn’t bother with it. As soon as I rounded the curve in his road, I spotted his truck and his brother EZ’s newer-model Camaro. Camaros run in the family. Eli’s vintage model was sure to be tucked carefully in the renovated outbuilding that doubled as a garage. For everyday use, he drove a Ford pickup. Spotting EZ’s car reminded me that today was the Valentine family’s annual “Moving Day.” The brothers would be in either the back garden or the cellar. Choosing between a dark, stone-lined cellar and a vibrant, harvest-hued floral sanctuary was easy.

  A twist in the path opened to a view of the two brothers standing hip high in the koi pond, trying to net its elusive inhabitants. An ATV parked to the side had a small trailer hitched to it. Various items of clothing were strewn along the ground and two blue plastic barrels were set up under the shade of an apple tree. Each sibling had stripped down to bare skin and soaked, cutoff shorts. That’s it.

  Apparently my luck had turned.

  Eli shot me a wide, surprised smile. As he began wading over to me, EZ shot his net out and neatly hooked his brother.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” EZ growled. “You’re not getting out of this that easy.”

  “I’m just going to say hello,” Eli said.

  “Bullshit. You know as well as I do if you get out, you ain’t coming back in. This shit is freezing.”

  I laughed. “I’ll wait over here.” I settled in on my favorite bench to watch the show.

  Eli, heaving a theatrical sigh, returned to his task. “These aren’t even our fish,” he said. “Lainey was the one who insisted Dad put in this pond. Two years later, she’s off to college and I’m stuck dealing with these things year after year.”

  Lainey was the oldest of the four Valentine children and the only girl.

  “Well, if you didn’t wait until nearly October for Moving Day, it wouldn’t be so bad,” EZ said.

  “I’m trying to kill them. Next year let’s use spears.”

  “That might not be so good for their health.”

  “Any other goldfish dies three days after you stick them in a fishbowl. These suckers live through anything. It’s northern Wisconsin. What the hell are we doing with a koi pond, anyway?”

  “You keep feeding them, don’t you?” EZ said.

  Laughing to myself, I wisely refrained from joining in with the siblings’ teasing. Eli was rarely in a bad mood and today’s complaints seemed almost like a scripted routine. I could picture the two saying the same lines every fall as they performed this chore.

  “How come Manny isn’t helping?” I asked.

  Manny, the youngest brother, was without question the one with the most energy. He owned a bar in Chippewa Falls and often relied on his brothers for help.

  Shaking their heads in tandem, the two mirrored a fondly disgusted look. Although dissimilar physically, their gestures and expressions were reflections of the same gene pool.

  “He falls in,” EZ explained succinctly.

  Eli finally broke into a laugh. “And usually manages to take EZ down with him.”

  “He does that on purpose.”

  They continued grousing and I tuned them out, soaking in the
beautiful autumn afternoon. The garden was a glorious riot of flaming colors, and a breeze made the leaves rustle. The impulse that led me here had been a good one. As a reward to myself for venturing out past my fears, I meditated on the ethereal beauty of the setting. We all need more rewards for good behavior.

  I was wrenched out of my trance when EZ splashed me with a handful of water.

  ”Wake up!”

  My dirty look slipped off him like a fish through weeds. “What?”

  “Would you mind counting the fish we already caught? We don’t know if we got them all yet.”

  Lethargic and muzzy-headed, I walked over to the two barrels. Sheets of tan cardboard anchored by field stones, presumably kept the fish from flipping out onto the grass. I lifted one and looked in.

  How the heck did they expect me to count the swirling orange and silver masses churning around the bottom of the barrel? The silly grins from the pair made me realize I had fallen for one of their pranks. Okay, then.

  Hips swinging in exaggerated burlesque, I walked over to their shirts and towels slung across a low branch. Tossing them across my shoulder, I turned a silky smile back on the boys. Their laughter faded. Ignoring their protests, I sauntered back up the path to the house, carrying their clothing with me.

  Revenge is sweet.

  I waited on the front porch for them to finish up. While not as nice as the garden, it had its own attractions. Comfortable rocking chairs invited laziness up and down the length, and an old-fashioned wicker swing hung from chains at the end. Not to mention bonus points for the delightful view it offered of the shivering jokers as the ATV chugged up the path. Pointedly ignoring me, they drove past. Nonetheless, I caught two pairs of eyes slanting evilly at me.