Hush

by Nancy Bush

  “What secrets?” Jarrod asked.

  “We don’t know!” Genevieve snapped back, glaring at him. “Open your ears, for God’s sake. That’s why I’m asking Coby!”

  Yvette, Suzette, and Juliet were all looking at Coby, and she said, “She didn’t tell me anything other than what she said to Genevieve. She seemed kind of militant about it, like she wanted the secrets revealed and the reasons for them dealt with, but she didn’t say what they were. She just wanted to move on.”

  “From what?” Suzette asked, her dark eyes huge in her small face. She and Juliet were a lot alike, the most delicate of the Ette sisters, wiry and small-boned. But Juliet’s hair was a shade or two lighter than Suzette’s dark brown, and her manner was more direct and showed more conviction than Suzette’s emotional demeanor. Of course she was overwrought now, but Coby knew enough about the Ettes from their older sister, Nicholette, to have a pretty clear picture.

  “From whatever it was that killed her,” Genevieve decreed.

  Dave said tiredly, “It was an accident. That’s all. A goddamn accident.” He wiped a hand over his face. “She’s not here anymore.” He said it like he was testing its validity. “She’s gone.”

  “Where’s her necklace?” Suzette suddenly asked, her head popping up as if pulled by a string. “Where’s the sapphire pendant?”

  “Probably at the coroner’s office,” Dave said, waving a hand as if swatting a fly, clearly uncaring.

  “It wasn’t on her,” Danner said. “I gave her CPR and it wasn’t on her.”

  “Where is it?” Juliet asked.

  “The killer took it?” Genevieve suggested, but she didn’t sound like she liked that angle. “Maybe that’s why she was killed. For the necklace.”

  “Jesus.” Dave Rendell got to his feet and Coby stood with him, a little afraid that he might keel over. “I’m going to my room,” he stated, and he left them standing in the living room.

  “Are you ready to go?” Faith asked Danner.

  He nodded and his eyes searched out Coby for a long moment.

  Jarrod said, “We’ll follow you.”

  They gathered their belongings and headed for the door. Coby walked them out to their cars. “Thanks for getting me the room even if I couldn’t use it,” she said to Danner.

  “What’s your cell number?” he asked her. His own cell phone was in his hand and as Coby gave him her number, he punched it into his permanent caller list. Faith, Jarrod, and Genevieve were waiting for him, heads bent against the incessant rain, but Danner hesitated. “What’s your take on Annette’s death?”

  “You mean, do I think it’s murder? No.”

  “What if it is?” he asked.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “But two accidental deaths in the same small piece of geography, involving the same group of people, seems kind of remarkable.”

  “Lucas died twelve years ago.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Danner!” Faith called, starting to head back their way.

  “I’ll see you in Portland,” he said to Coby, then he turned to jog out to meet Faith and climb into her car.

  “So Annette Fucking Bitch Deneuve Rendell is dead,” Kirk Grassi said aloud as his wipers smacked across the Toyota 4x4’s front windshield. He was in a mild state of shock. For all his bravado, he didn’t do well with death. Lucas’s floating body, a lot of years ago, still preyed on his inner vision. Now Annette, also floating. At least she’d been facedown in the tub when he’d looked. He’d turned away before Danner Lockwood could roll her over.

  And he was glad he hadn’t seen Rhiannon at the bottom of that canyon, or whatever.

  With an effort, he pushed thoughts of dead Annette aside. He kinda had that blasting memory of water-covered limbs and a white, fur-matted sweater and bubbles in her slacks that made her butt kinda lift up pressed into his brain, and he was determined to squelch it quick.

  He hadn’t really hated Annette, but she was one bossy bitch who had all kinds of things to say about him to Juliet after they’d hooked up. Like she knew anything about him or what he thought! He’d made it clear to Annette that she should keep her nose out of his business, but she’d just looked down on him and gossiped about him to Genevieve, a loud, equally bossy clone of her. He supposed now that would all come out, which made him want to shit-can his relationship with Juliet altogether, not that it was much more than sex anyway.

  He’d never intended on fighting the mudslide or floods or whatever other shit Mother Nature was throwing at them in an effort to get back to Portland. Fuck it. He wasn’t going that way. His buds, Paul and Vic, were in Seaside where he and Galen—the pussy-whipped ass—had planned to meet them after the party that Juliet had wheedled him into going to. He never woulda listened to her, except Jarrod was going to be there. Jarrod, his partner. Without Jarrod there was no band, and no matter how much bass guitar Kirk threw down, he wasn’t as good at lead as Jarrod. Just fucking wasn’t. And though Kirk was the man with the beautiful bald head and rock-hard abs—Jarrod hadn’t had the balls to go with the look, so he sported that dipshit clipped hair because Genevieve the screecher missed his long locks—Kirk just couldn’t sing with the conviction of his friend, and without Jarrod, the band was fucking nowhere.

  It pissed Kirk off no end. He was like Daughtry, a bald rocker, but definitely better-looking. He had perfected a way of talking hard and meeting a woman’s gaze that just had them creaming their jeans for him. Even so, it was Jarrod who could really get the girls, and he fucking didn’t even care! Did. Not. Care. The moron had married Genevieve Knapp. The worst of those bitches. And why? Because he really had a thing for Coby Rendell but she passed him over for his big brother? So he settled for the screecher?

  It went something like that, for sure, though Jarrod wouldn’t cop to it, of course.

  But it sucked big-time.

  Annette’s floating body crossed the screen of Kirk’s mind and he blinked his eyes hard several times, willing it away, as he pulled into the parking lot of the Seventh Heaven Inn, a dive that sometimes hired a band for a gig in their dusty bar. That’s how Kirk knew them, and how he’d gotten a deal for him and his friends, a room with a fold-out couch. Their band, Split Decision, had played at the Seven once or twice, back when they called themselves Intent to Kill. Kirk had loved that name, but Jarrod said it got in the way of bookings ’cause they sounded too gang-like. Utter bullshit, but Jarrod was the man.

  The man.

  Kirk sniffed as he climbed from the cab. Behind Jarrod’s back sometimes he jokingly referred to their band as Jarrod and the Pacemakers, ripping off the name Gerry and the Pacemakers, a British group from the sixties with the hit “Ferry Cross the Mersey,” which was some English bullshit that didn’t make sense unless you knew the Mersey was the name of a river, but okay, it was a big, big hit at the time. Anyway, Kirk liked to call them Jarrod and the Pacemakers in a kinda derogatory way whenever he was pissed at Jarrod, which was a lot, but the other morons in the band, Ryan and Spence, had never even fucking heard of the group so they stared at him like, “Duh?” whenever he said it, in fact whenever he said anything clever, which pissed him off no end some more. Stupid idiots thought “pacemaker” had something to do with the heart, and Kirk wasn’t going to give them all a lesson on music; they were supposed to be musicians.

  He didn’t have much use for Ryan and Spence outside of the band. They played keyboard and drums, respectively, and that, as they say, was fucking that. No, tonight Kirk was meeting his real friends, Paul and Vic, and he was meeting them on his own ’cause Galen was a pussy and Jarrod was married and a worse pussy.

  The Seven was an L-shaped motel currently a scary aqua color with Levitz reject furniture in the rooms and a girl at the desk who constantly sucked on lollipops in a way that should have been sexy but bothered Kirk. She was young, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with huge eyes rimmed in black liner, and he kinda thought she might think
she was all that, but Jesus, if she wasn’t one of those spooky kids from a horror movie that suddenly grinned with filed, spiky teeth, she was close enough to count.

  Kirk passed by the neon-lighted office and saw the back of her head as he hefted his bag on his shoulder and followed the fluorescent-lit concrete walkway to room twenty-three. He heard the tinny sound of a television as he turned the knob only to find it locked. Banging loudly on the panels, he was about to yell when Paul opened the door.

  “Jesus. Turn that down,” Kirk said, throwing a hand at the TV “I got something to tell ya.”

  “Was Jarrod there?” Vic Franzen asked. He’d lost weight since high school, but he was still kind of an asshole, which appealed to Kirk in an indefinable way.

  “Yeah, he was there. With the bitch.”

  “How was Juliet?” Paul asked, and there was almost a smirk in his voice. He knew Kirk didn’t really care about her and somehow found it funny, which irked him in another indefinable way.

  “She was—uh—distraught,” Kirk stated, flinging his bag on the only bed, bumping into Paul’s duffel, which tumbled over the edge. “You got the floor, buddy,” he told him.

  “Hell, no!”

  “Or the couch. ’Cept you’re too tall, so Vic’s got it.”

  “It’s a fold-out,” Paul declared. “I’ll take it.”

  “And have that bar in the middle of your back all night?” Vic said. “Be my guest. The floor’s fine. I’ve got a bag.”

  “Why was Juliet distraught?” Paul mimicked Kirk’s tone.

  “No reason.” Kirk flopped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, struggling with watery Annette invading his thoughts. “Unless you count the fact that her sister drowned in the hot tub.”

  The two other men hesitated a moment, then Vic laughed shortly. “I hope it was Yvette.”

  “It was Annette.”

  Now Paul and Vic exchanged a look. “What the hell, man,” Vic said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Annette being dead! Slipping in the fucking hot tub and dying! Inhaling water instead of air! That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “You’re serious?” Paul asked cautiously. Kirk had a really twisted sense of humor at the best of times. Then, “This some kinda joke thing about Lucas?”

  Kirk swore swiftly and pungently. “Yeah, it’s a fucking joke. I said Annette drowned so that we could all talk about Lucas again. Get in touch with our pain and grief. Makes a lot of sense.”

  “Well. . .God. . .” Paul drew a breath, beginning to believe.

  Vic wasn’t so sure. “You’re a sick fuck,” he told Kirk, who leapt off the bed and shoved him with all his strength. The heavier man slipped backward, stumbled over Paul’s bag, and fell on his butt, hard. He jumped up quick, fists ready. He didn’t want to fight Kirk; that wasn’t part of their hierarchy, but sometimes one quick pop to the face, Jesus . . . he could live with that.

  But Kirk was breathing hard, not from exertion, from emotion. “I’m telling you, Annette’s dead. Suzette found her and started screaming and we all ran to look and there she was. Had to call the sheriff and they showed up and slammed the body into the back of a van and took her away.”

  “You’re fucking serious?” Vic yelled, holding up his hands as if to ward off the truth.

  “As a heart attack,” Kirk muttered, sinking back onto the bed, all energy depleted. He couldn’t help thinking about pacemakers and those morons Ryan and Spence and he suddenly felt like bawling like a baby and it was all he could do to turn over on his side and block his ears to the cries of shock and surprise from his friends.

  Coby made up the sofa in the den with sheets, blankets, and pillows from the hall closet, working in the dark. Then she lay on her back, her hands behind her head, feeling her heart pound hard and deep as if she were on the last miles of a marathon. The window was a square of gray, more “less black” than any real indication of light. She figured they could be out of power for days, the way this storm was raging, and given what she already knew about the road conditions and getting around the area, it didn’t look like Tillamook PUD would be able to fix the problem anytime soon. Idly she wondered if the Dunes had power; probably a generator if nothing else. She half wished she’d gone with Faith and Danner, but her father’s request had been something she couldn’t deny.

  Underlying these thoughts was the strange, frozen realization that Annette Deneuve Rendell was dead. Gone. Forever. Her evil stepmother who wasn’t really so evil, but who Coby had wished, at the very least, would go poof! and disappear. Coby was still struggling to believe it. She’d witnessed Annette’s body. Watched as it was taken out on a gurney. Imagined it being tucked into the coroner’s van, the doors slammed shut behind it and then gone.

  But it didn’t feel real.

  yet.

  Neither had Lucas’s death. Her mind’s eye traveled to him. His body. Cobalt blue color beneath his skin. Blue. Like Annette’s favorite color. Blue, from lack of oxygen. Two accidental deaths that occurred from asphyxiation. Lucas had fallen, but it was drowning that had actually killed him, according to the final report.

  Tell me what happened, in your own words.

  She inhaled hard and squeezed her eyes closed even more. Didn’t want to think about it. Couldn’t help it.

  Did she think there was more to these two accidental deaths? Did she?

  The night Lucas died they’d played Pass the Candle, the guys had crashed the party, most of them had drunk alcohol, and they’d hooked up with each other, or not, and fallen asleep and woken up the next day to learn Lucas had fallen from a cliff to his death. At the time Coby had told Detective Clausen a truncated version of the events, but she was clueless and scared and grief-stricken and Clausen closed his notebook on her and went on to someone else.

  Yvette’s story was the only one that had further detail. Clausen talked to her in a separate room, but Jean-Claude was with her and when the interview was done, neither he nor Yvette had any compunction about keeping things secret. After Clausen left Jean-Claude urged Yvette to tell the rest of them where she’d been all night and she did so in a quiet, clear voice that Coby thought later sounded rehearsed.

  In essence, Yvette said she’d wandered away from their group late in the night. And yes, Lucas Moore was with her. They went to the overlook just south of the area known as Bancroft Bluff, an expensive housing development built on an unstable cliff where the million-dollar-plus houses were slipping off their foundations and basically uninsurable. Beyond the bluff was a jut of land called simply the Overlook. It was a viewpoint during the day for those in the know, as it was down a private road, not made for public use, and it was a meeting place at night for anyone who wanted privacy and secrecy. Another mile down the beach was the small town of Deception Bay, and if the Overlook was ever raided, you might be able to make a desperate scramble down the cliff to the beach and get away.

  But it was a sharp drop off the edge. A tumble to the rocks below for those who were not cautious. A place to die for Lucas Moore.

  “I wasn’t there when he fell,” Yvette said. “We were talking, arguing, about Rhiannon mostly . . .” She waved a hand. “And other girls. I wanted everyone to know about us. I loved him. He loved me. But he wouldn’t do it. Was so afraid . . .” She let her voice trail off, and looked away, setting her suddenly quivering jaw. “I just left him there. Walked down the highway for a while. These people tried to pick me up. An older man and woman. They were scared for me, walking alone. I refused to get in the car and went down to the beach. There was a big piece of driftwood that I crawled behind. I just curled up and lay there on the sand, cold. I didn’t care. I just wanted him to be honest! I was sick of pretending!”

  “It’s all right,” Jean-Claude said to his daughter soothingly. Like everyone else, she couldn’t quite get it that Lucas was gone.

  “He fell,” she said, as if trying out the words. “He just . . . fell.”

  No one knew what to believe
about Yvette’s story. Coby realized Yvette had witnesses that she was alone, should she need them: the couple in the car. But she hadn’t needed them. Lucas, as Yvette said, just fell.

  And then the last year of high school began, and Yvette gave birth to Benedict in March, and Vic, or someone else, stuck notes in their lockers, and they graduated and went on to college and the rest of their lives.

  And Rhiannon died . . . and now Annette.

  Was it all random? Or did some of what Genevieve had suggested tonight, even if it was half-hysterical, ring true?

  Annette had been adamant that she was going to tell secrets. Were they the kind of secrets that could expose something? Something so big that killing Annette seemed like a good option? An option they took advantage of?

  No way. No . . . no way. That was just too unbelievable.

  But. . .

  What did Annette know? What, if anything, did it have to do with the lock of hair in the envelope? Should she tell someone about that? Like Danner? Was she, Coby, just being spooked by three unrelated deaths of people she knew?

  “Danner,” she said aloud. Almost with relief, she turned her mind to him. He was a feel-good. A happy place to go.

  She concentrated on what he looked like: the dark, slightly unruly hair; flashing, if rare, smile; blue eyes; lean body; low-riding jeans, especially when they were his brother’s. Strong hands. Strong manner. Indefinable sexiness that came at Coby like pheromones, filling her senses.

  Troubled, but with images of Danner flooding through her mind, she finally fell into a fitful sleep.

  One bitch is dead.

  I’m not sorry.

  I’ve done everything I can, used every method available, and yet I’m still an unknown face. I can barely see myself in the mirror anymore.

  I am no one. They’ve made me no one.

  I’m dissolving from sight, little by little.

  But now I’ll have my revenge. I find it is no great heartbreak to kill them. Even those I’ve loved . . . especially those I’ve loved. They never, ever do what they should! They continually disappoint me.