Nowhere Safe

by Bush, Nancy

  “Special K . . .” September repeated.

  “Ketamine hydrochloride. Big in the nineties,” George called from across the room.

  “Big at raves, I know. I was just wondering where she got the stuff.” September shot George an annoyed look.

  “Some dealer in date-rape drugs,” Wes said with a shrug as she continued on her way to the break room and her locker.

  Ketamine hydrochloride was commonly used in veterinary clinics to anesthetize animals before surgery. Administered intravenously, the drug worked instantaneously, but it could also be taken orally—put in someone’s drink, for instance— and within minutes, the person would be dissociated from reality or completely out, depending on the amount ingested. Roofies and GHB were the two drugs September had encountered most often, roofies being what had been used on Chris Ballonni and probably Stefan.

  When she walked back into the squad room with a cup of coffee, she asked, “So is J.J. leaning toward homicide now?”

  “Results are inconclusive. I’m going to go talk to Carrie’s mom again. See what shakes loose. She’s convinced it was suicide, but there was no note. Can you come along?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a call into Rhoda Bernstein, one of the people on Chris Ballonni’s mail route. She complained about Ballonni. He gave her daughter a piece of gum, which was something he did all the time, apparently.”

  “Not smart. Handing out gum to kids.”

  “Yeah, I know. She says he handed out gum to everyone. She doesn’t see why anyone would object.”

  “She ain’t living in the real world, then,” Wes said.

  “I’m hoping Mrs. Bernstein calls me today. I plan to talk to other people along her husband’s route, and also his coworkers. But for now, I’m yours.” She smiled.

  “Let’s go.”

  Wes went to grab his coat and September did the same. There was rain in the forecast but currently it was dry, though a sharp wind was hitting in surprisingly hard bursts. Half an hour later they were pulling up to the Carter home, a two-story saltbox that had seen better days. Originally painted dusty blue with white trim, the blue had faded unevenly and the white trim had yellowed and chipped. It was located about two miles from Foxglove Park.

  Wes and September walked up to the front door together and Wes pressed the bell. He had to push it a second time before the door was opened by a woman with dark circles under her eyes and wearing a bathrobe that was as faded as the house.

  “Mrs. Carter?” Wes asked. She nodded, silently opening the door as she stepped back to allow them entry. Wes had called and alerted her that they would be stopping by, so she’d been expecting them, but she hadn’t gotten dressed in the meantime. Grief zapped energy, and there was no doubt that she was grieving.

  “I’m Detective Rafferty,” September introduced herself.

  Debra Carter shook her hand limply. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing toward the living room before letting her arm drop. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Wes said. There was a slight drawl to his words that intensified his unconscious, cowboy-ish manner.

  They sat down in two occasional chairs while Debra dropped onto one end of the couch, leaning above the overstuffed arm as if it were her total support.

  “A reporter called me,” she said. “They wanted to do an interview. . . .”

  Wes looked to September and she realized he wanted her to take the lead. She rarely had while Gretchen was her partner because Gretchen just bulled right into the questions and damned the consequences.

  Diffidently, she said, “Mrs. Carter, in your initial statement you indicated that you felt your daughter had committed suicide.”

  She had a box of tissues on the table beside her and she reached over and grabbed one up, crumpling it in one fist. “Carrie Lynne was heartbroken after Dan broke up with her. I didn’t like him much, but she thought she was in love. When he left and moved to California, she quit her job and planned to go after him, but he told her not to. He was just moving on.”

  “How long ago was that?” September asked.

  “About two months.”

  Wes had told her that he’d tried to contact Dan Quade, the boyfriend, but the guy was hard to find.

  “Where did she work before she quit?” September asked.

  “T.J. Maxx. I sent her to Dr. Rolfe. I told you that, didn’t I?”

  She was looking at Wes, who nodded and reminded her, “You said Dr. Rolfe prescribed the antidepressant found in her system.”

  “There’s who killed her,” she said sorrowfully. “The doctor.”

  “Mrs. Carter, there were other drugs found in her system, too,” September said. “Ketamine hydrochloride was one.”

  “What’s that?” She asked the question with no real interest.

  Wes said, “It has a lot of street names: Special K, or just K, or OK, Vitamin K. It’s a legal drug used for anesthesia but it’s also a date-rape drug.”

  She focused on him, a line between her brows. “You think someone gave her a date-rape drug?”

  “We don’t know how it got into her system,” September said.

  Debra Carter sighed and wagged her head back and forth. “You know, I didn’t want to go on vacation, but Charles, he loves Mexico, loves the sun. I knew Carrie wasn’t doing well after Dan left. He was such a bad influence. If she had Special K or whatever it’s called in her system, you can be sure he got it for her.” She opened the tissue and smoothed it out. “I’d like to blame him, but she probably used it on herself. She was like that.” She thought for a moment, and then added hopefully, “Unless Dr. Rolfe prescribed it for her . . . ?”

  “That’s unlikely. It’s used by veterinarians to sedate animals before surgery,” September explained.

  She blinked several times. “It’s for . . . animals?”

  “Does that mean something to you?” September asked.

  “The Stafford Animal Clinic is right across the parking lot from T.J. Maxx. That’s how Carrie met Dan. His brother worked there at the clinic.”

  September looked at Wes, who had pulled out his notebook and a pen. He asked, “Do you know his brother’s name?”

  “No. Ben, maybe?” she tried, then shook her head. “I don’t think he’s there any longer. But maybe he got the drug for Dan and then Dan gave it to Carrie.”

  They asked her a few more questions, but Debra couldn’t add anything further. She got up from the couch a few minutes later and walked them to the door, saying sadly, “I know it’s your job to make sure this wasn’t something else, but in the end, I think she just couldn’t stand to be here anymore, so she found a way out.”

  When they were back in Wes’s Range Rover, September said, “She blames herself for not being around when her daughter committed suicide.”

  Wes nodded. “Think she’s going to forgive Charles for taking her away when her daughter needed her?”

  “Not a chance. Let’s go check with the Stafford Animal Clinic and see what they have to say.”

  “And then Dr. Rolfe.”

  “And Stefan,” September reminded Wes. “When you interview him again, I want to know what he says.”

  “Your stepbrother doesn’t want to talk to the police. No way, no how.”

  “Ex-stepbrother.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, right. I keep forgetting.”

  “I don’t,” September said, thinking about Stefan’s secretive ways and sour disposition.

  They were almost back to the station when her cell phone sang a familiar tune, Hawaii Five-0, which she’d assigned to her sister, July, more an homage to cop shows rather than because it had any real meaning for her sister. Once Auggie had sneaked Dragnet onto her phone as her default ring-tone, which she’d immediately taken off as soon as it rang and her brother collapsed into fits of laughter. Now, she kind of didn’t care.

  “Hey, there,” she answered.

  “September, my God. What the hell’s up with Stefan?” July asked.<
br />
  “Yeah, I know. First he said he was tied to the basketball hoop pole as a prank, then he recanted and said he was attacked.”

  “It’s just like that other one, right?”

  “Christopher Ballonni. Definitely looks like the same MO, but it could be a copycat.”

  “I always said he was a creep,” she declared fervently. “But I kind of expected him to attack somebody, not the other way around.”

  “Stefan’s too much of a coward,” September heard herself say. She hadn’t really thought of him in those terms—mainly, she didn’t think about him, period—but once the words were out, she realized how true they were.

  “Who’s doing this?” July demanded.

  “Don’t know yet. We’re following up.” September couldn’t keep her sister informed, but at this juncture there wasn’t much to say anyway. “How are you feeling?”

  “I should be asking you that,” July said. “How’s the neck?”

  “More shoulder than neck. Fine. How’s the baby?”

  “So far so good.”

  Her older sister had determined that she was going to have a baby whether there was a father in the picture or not. To that end, July had gone to a fertility clinic and had been artificially inseminated with her daddy-of-choice’s sperm. Originally, she’d thought her little girl was due in May, and she’d planned to name her after their sister, May, who’d been killed when September was in her early teens. But recent tests showed that the baby was further along and it looked like the little girl would be coming in April. The last September had heard, her sister was torn between still naming her baby May, in honor of their sister, or April, in keeping with the family tradition of naming children after the months of the year in which they were born. Not that July was really in love with that idea, but she’d admitted she liked the name April. Still, like September and Auggie, July scoffed at their father’s strange obsession. Braden had just been lucky Auggie was born in August and September in September. If it had been the other way around, would he have kept with the tradition?

  Whatever the case, July’s daughter would be born in April.

  “Have you talked to Dad about the fire?” July asked now.

  “Over and over again. There’s been no movement.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “No new information. No new clues. It’s still an open case.”

  “You know what I think.”

  “About Stefan? Yes,” September said.

  Though July wanted to believe Stefan was responsible for pouring gasoline in the garage at Castle Rafferty and setting fire to it, there was still no proof. It was all well and good to believe Stefan capable of such an act, but just not liking him wasn’t reason enough to lay the blame at his feet. This was the same thing she’d told her sister damn near every time they spoke, so now she decided to go the other way. “Let’s say you’re right. Then why? Why would Stefan set the fire?”

  “To destroy evidence,” July responded promptly.

  “What evidence?”

  “Of a crime.”

  “You gotta be more specific.”

  “Maybe it was drugs,” July said, grasping at straws. “Or computer files, or something, that incriminated him. God, it could be anything.”

  “The fire was set in the garage and it burned into the kitchen,” September reminded her.

  “And it burned up all those boxes of our stuff that Rosamund dragged back from the storage unit after you nailed her about tossing them out.”

  “Dad got on her, too,” September reminded her.

  “As well he should,” she said roundly. “Don’t get me started on Evil Stepmother Number Two. Rosamund can’t just erase everything Rafferty from the house. But back to my point: some of those boxes were filled with Stefan’s old stuff.”

  “And Verna’s. Which she had a fit about losing. None of us likes Rosamund much, but Verna can’t stand her, and she won’t forgive Rosamund for helping destroy her things. Verna’s said that enough times for me to believe it. And as I recall, you blamed Rosamund for the fire first, before you blamed Stefan.”

  “I was just talking,” July said airily. “Verna might have been upset about losing her things, but Stefan wasn’t. You remember? He was just silent. Like he was afraid to open his mouth and give himself away. And Dad and Dash saw a man running away.”

  “They saw a figure running away,” September corrected her. “Look, I really don’t want to play devil’s advocate, here. I just need more than a feeling before I can lay the fire at Stefan’s feet.”

  “But now, there’s this other thing, too. Someone tying him to a pole, almost naked, leaving him there? There’s something going on with Stefan. I can’t be the only one who feels that way.”

  She wasn’t. September sensed something was up as well. She just wasn’t as quick to rush to judgment. She couldn’t afford to in her job.

  “My partner’s talking to him some more,” September said, sliding a glance toward Wes as he drove. He wasn’t exactly her partner, but it was going to be a while before Gretchen was back and she had an actual, bona fide one again.

  “You need to talk to Stefan, Nine. You know him.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” She wasn’t going to go into the whole problem about being semirelated to him.

  “Call Dad,” July suggested. “He wants to know more about the fire. Tell him about Stefan.”

  That was the last thing September planned to do, but she hedged on the phone with July in order to end the conversation. She didn’t want her father suddenly believing Stefan was responsible before there was any proof. That would be the worst, and it would give Braden another reason to be more in her life than he already was, something she absolutely did not want.

  When she was off the phone, she ran through the previous conversation she’d had with her father before taking his call yesterday. It had been several days earlier. He’d reached her on her cell phone, and when she’d answered, he’d said, “Hello, September,” in that stiff way of his that never ceased to put her on edge. “Thought I’d see how you are.”

  “I’m fine, Dad,” she’d told him.

  “Have, uh, you talked to August recently?”

  This was damn near a mantra with her father. “If you want to talk to Auggie, you should call him yourself.”

  “I’ve tried calling, but he never seems to be available.”

  Of course he knew Auggie was avoiding him; Auggie was always avoiding him. She diverted him by saying, “Since you asked, Jake and I are doing fine. We’re moving my furniture into his house this weekend.”

  “Oh? That’s good, if it’s what you want.”

  “Yep, it’s what I want.”

  “You’re giving up your apartment?”

  Since she hadn’t known he even knew she lived in an apartment, September had to mask her surprise. “Can’t see any reason to hang on to it.”

  Her father had then made noise that it was okay that she was seeing Jake Westerly, but he certainly hadn’t felt that way in the beginning of their relationship. Jake’s father, Nigel, had once worked for Braden, and they’d had a falling out over September’s mother, with the result being that Nigel had been abruptly fired. Not that Nigel and Kathryn had been involved. They hadn’t been. But Nigel had been first on the scene of the single-car accident that had killed Kathryn and he’d been unable to save her. Based on his own tendency toward infidelity, Braden had assumed they’d been together as the accident had happened near the Willows, the Raffertys’ winery, where Nigel worked.

  After he was fired, Nigel had then purchased a vineyard and winery of his own, which he renamed Westerly Vale Vineyard, that was just down the road from the Willows. This had created even more conflict between the two men and their families. Recently Nigel had turned Westerly Vale over to Jake’s brother, Colin, to run, and Braden had put July in charge of the Willows. Both sides were trying to get over the past, it seemed, with Braden making nice with the Westerlys ever since September and Jake ha
d become a couple. She was glad for the thawing of hard feelings and she hoped the trend would continue. Because of the enmity between their families, September had never told her father how she’d hooked up with Jake for one night in high school. In fact, she’d never told any of her family except Auggie, who, it turned out, had known all along.

  But there was no question that the accord between the Raffertys and the Westerlys was a work in progress, as was the continuing drama the Raffertys played out among themselves. After a recent family dinner that actually drew Auggie in, and where September dating a Westerly wasn’t even the biggest news, Braden had been trying very hard to tear down the fences he’d erected himself in a fury of patriarchal control. Years before he’d almost lost Auggie completely in the process, and September had just been hanging around the fringes herself. Because she worked for their father, July had come to an uneasy peace with him, but even she had her issues. Their older brother, March, was the only one who seemed to have no problem with their father, but that was because he was a chip off the old block—autocratic, stern, and unrelenting to a fault—and he worked directly with Braden in his myriad of other financial endeavors.

  That recent dinner had also been the scene of another revelation: the introduction of their half brother, Dashiell Vogt. July had brought him with her and initially they’d all thought she was dating him. Instead, they found out Dash was Braden’s son through his affair with the family’s one-time Rafferty housekeeper, Anna Marie Vogt. Anna had left her job without ever telling anyone, Braden included, that she was pregnant, but after his mother died Dash decided to look up his father. He’d introduced himself, and his claim, to July first, and then July dropped the bomb on the family all at once, which did not go over well with Evil Stepmother Number Two, Rosamund, among others. Braden had immediately denied Dash’s existence, but in the end, DNA didn’t lie.

  Now, September felt Wes’s gaze on her and she looked his way as they pulled into the parking lot of the strip center mall that held the Stafford Animal Clinic. She could see the sign for T.J. Maxx on a wing of the building set at a right angle to the clinic.