Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  If she’d fallen off the wagon, she’d fallen hard. Kat doesn’t do anything halfway.

  By the time I’d finished compulsively straightening Kat’s bunk, I’d pulled myself together. I turned around and looked at Jamie, ignoring Diggs for the moment. “We should start looking for them.”

  Jamie shot Diggs a What now? look, clearly not thrilled with our findings.

  “If Kat and the students aren’t here, what’s next?” I pressed.

  “I’d like to go talk to the Melquists, actually,” Jamie said.

  I thought of the coordinates we’d found on our magic memory card of indecipherable numbers. This island was part of those numbers… And the Melquists were at the heart of this island.

  “What can you tell me about them?” I asked.

  She looked surprised. “The Melquists? Nothing, really… They’re pretty harmless, as far as I know. Jonas Melquist—the father—is the only one I’ve really dealt with. You can ask Cheyenne… I think she’s talked to them more. They’re very religious. Not crazy about technology, but nice enough. It’s a large family, about half a dozen kids, but they keep to themselves for the most part. Not a lot of interaction with the outside world.”

  “How far are they from here?” Diggs asked.

  “Other side of the island,” Jamie said. “It’s a half-hour, forty-five minute walk at the most. I’ll just take the guys with me, and we’ll have a quick chat with Jonas. You two can wait here until we have a better idea what’s going on.”

  “Listen, I’d really like to tag along,” I said. “I don’t want to sit on my hands here. I can’t. I’ll stay outside while you talk to them. I won’t get in the way, I promise.”

  Jamie looked skeptical, at best.

  “We won’t interfere with whatever you need to do,” Diggs said. “But if you do find Kat, it might be good to have us along. She can be… difficult, sometimes. Erin can keep her calm.”

  He was seriously overselling any influence I might have on my mother, but I appreciated the effort. I could tell by the way Jamie tilted her head, eyes narrowed, that she knew damned well that she was being manipulated. She had the grace to let it slide. Or maybe she was just too tired to care.

  “I need your word that you won’t interfere while I figure out what’s going on,” she said.

  “You have it,” I said. “It’s not a problem. I—” I stopped, glancing at Diggs. “We’ll wait for you to call the shots.”

  “All right, then. We’ll meet out front in ten.”

  I nodded, and Jamie left us alone. As soon as she was gone, I turned my back on Diggs and started pilfering through Kat’s stuff again.

  “We’ll find her,” Diggs said. “She’ll be all right.”

  I sat on the edge of the bunk, nodding. Diggs sat down beside me, a few inches away. Just like that, I felt things shift between us—like the Grand Canyon had sprung up in the course of half an hour. I tried to think of something to say, but all I could focus on was that backpack of booze at my feet and the thought that Kat and Maya were out there somewhere. Jenny was after them. Their house had burned to ashes on my watch... and my gut was telling me that we hadn’t hit bottom yet.

  Shit was happening, and it was happening fast.

  “We should get going,” I said finally. “I don’t want to make Jamie wait.”

  I got up and headed for the door. Diggs didn’t try to give me a pep talk; he didn’t wait for me to spill my guts or tell him all the ways I was freaking out. Instead, he slipped his hand into mine as I was heading out the door, and squeezed my fingers a little too hard. I looked back at him. He gave me one of those knockout smiles he does so well, shy and earnest and slightly dazzling.

  “We’ll get through this,” he said. I nodded, trying to keep a handle on things.

  “I know,” I said.

  He settled his hand at the small of my back as we walked out, and I hoped like hell that we found Kat intact and reasonably coherent so we could get off this rock and back on solid ground.

  Chapter Three - Solomon

  April means mud in Maine. Unless you’re on an island, of course—in which case, April means mud and ice. And snow, apparently. And a bone-deep, damp chill that’s impossible to shake.

  Or maybe that’s just me.

  Raven’s Ledge was no different, with the exception of the creepy log cabin research station and the fact that my mother had apparently fallen off the wagon here after a decade of sobriety.

  Diggs and I trudged after Jamie and her crew along a path through dark, damp woods, Einstein by my side. Diggs was quiet. I was, too—busy fighting with Kat in my head, over everything from J. Enterprises to Mitch Cameron to why the hell she’d flushed her ten years’ sober chip down the toilet in favor of her old buddy Jack Daniels.

  The arguments fizzled once we reached the Melquist house, partly because it turned out I couldn’t even win a fight with Kat when it was only in my head; partly because the Melquist house was, in a word, terrifying.

  That’s primarily because whoever had purchased Raven’s Ledge way back when had apparently made it his personal mission to build the creepiest house humanly possible. Think Scooby Doo meets Bela Lugosi: A three-story, Victorian monolith complete with circular towers and shuttered windows, looking out over a stark granite cliff high above the ocean. My skin was already crawling, and we hadn’t even set foot inside.

  True to my word, I stood back while Jamie and Juarez approached the front door. Diggs stood beside me. We hadn’t touched since we’d left the station. I knew that was my fault, but at the moment I couldn’t seem to do anything about it. The bottles of booze in Kat’s bag, combined with the solitude and isolation of this place and the fact that Kat’s house was now ashes…

  I wasn’t feeling that huggable, just then.

  Though it killed me to admit it, I felt the absence of Diggs’ steadying hand a lot more deeply than I cared to admit.

  Since I’m useless when it comes to mysteries of the human heart, I chose to focus on our surroundings instead. Quiet, creepy, and colder than a witch’s intimate bits pretty much summed it up. No one answered when Juarez knocked on the door, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Phantom, Jamie’s German shepherd, whined unhappily. Einstein echoed the sentiment. I didn’t whimper personally, but it was certainly implied.

  “Maybe we should go in,” I suggested.

  “Not without probable cause we shouldn’t,” Jamie said. “These people value their privacy. I won’t violate that without reason.”

  “The students at the research station are gone,” I argued. “Vanished without a trace. My mother is gone. Maya is gone. And we know for a fact that someone is after Kat, because they blew up her house last night. With me in it, incidentally. And it all seems to lead to this island… Which is owned by these people. Who, it seems, have also vanished. How is that not probable cause?”

  She looked at Juarez. It hit me just then that she’d been doing that a lot since he’d arrived—deferring to the G-man, when I doubted there were many people in the world that Jamie Flint ever deferred to. I waited for a twinge of petty jealousy to needle at me, and was relieved to find none. If any woman looked twice at Diggs, I was ready to throw them to wolves; someone new liked Juarez, and I was ready to throw him a party.

  The Fed thought things over for a few seconds before he went forward himself, one hand on the gun at his side, and knocked again.

  Still no answer.

  The door wasn’t locked when Juarez tried the knob.

  “Wait out here,” he said to the rest of us. “Give us a minute.”

  He and Jamie went in with Phantom, leaving everyone else to sweat it out on the front lawn. I waited for screams or gunshots, bracing myself for something to blow up again. Nothing happened. When Juarez and Jamie reappeared a few minutes later, though, they didn’t look happy about what they’d found.

  “What’s in there?” I asked, taking the two steps up to the porch in a single bound.

  “The
re’s no sign of anyone,” Jamie said.

  “I’d like to check it out,” I said. She looked at me doubtfully, but I didn’t back down. Something about this house spoke to me, calling back a childhood that seemed more mystery than memory these days. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in there I needed to see.

  We went around in circles for a while before Jamie finally came around, thanks in no small part to Juarez pleading my case. Juarez was fast proving to be the best ex-boyfriend ever.

  Inside, the house was exactly as you’d expect a creepy old Victorian mansion to be: antique furnishings, dark drapes, weird religious paintings. Diggs and I walked the corridor together while Jamie and Juarez Holmes-and-Watson’d it up on their own. Diggs glanced at a stairwell with a mahogany banister, then at me, eyebrows raised. I nodded. He went up first, Einstein and me close behind.

  There were five bedrooms lining the hall on the second floor, all with at least a couple of twin beds. The wallpaper was old but well-maintained, as was the antique furniture. Each bed was neatly made. Jesus pictures hung on the walls, along with several framed Bible verses embroidered in deep red thread.

  It was the most powerful déjà vu I’d ever experienced, being in that place. The architecture may have been different, and maybe there were a few cosmetic variations, but other than that I may as well have been standing in the Payson boarding home. I stopped in the doorway to the last bedroom on the left and stared at a set of bunk beds. Girls’ names—Jeanine and Nancy—were written on faded construction paper at the foot of each bed.

  Jeanine had the top bunk. The letters were precise, printed with desperate care; Nancy’s name was written in an impatient scrawl I could barely read.

  You’re not supposed to go outside the lines. Isaac won’t put it up if you scribble.

  I almost turned at the words, as though they’d come from somewhere other than inside my own head. A child’s voice, all but forgotten, floated back to me. Along with it came an image, as clear as if she was standing in front of me: Allie Tate. My best friend, as a kid growing up on Payson Isle.

  Don’t make him angry or he won’t let us live in the house anymore. He’ll send us away to the woods. It’s not safe there.

  He wouldn’t do that, I remembered myself insisting. Isaac won’t hurt us.

  I tried to stay with the memory, tried to remember what Allie’s reaction to my words had been. Had she agreed? And why would Isaac send us to the woods, anyway? The thought made my chest tighten and something stick in my throat. Allie was pale and thin, with brown hair and thick glasses. She had walked with a limp. I tried to remember what had happened to her, but found myself coming up blank.

  Had I ever known?

  “Well, there’s nothing any more or any less creepy in the other rooms,” Diggs said as he came into the bedroom, startling me out of my reverie. “You find anything in here?”

  I pushed past the memory of Allie Tate and shook my head. “No. Let’s get out of here.”

  I started to follow him to the door when something hanging on a hook beside the bottom bunk caught my eye. Half-hidden by pillows, I’d missed it before. When I pushed the pillows aside, my mouth went dry.

  “Sol? You coming?” Diggs asked from the door.

  I wet my lips. Shook my head. My hand floated an inch above a marionette hanging beside the girls’ bunks. It was an angel, its white gown dirty and the china-blue eyes faded. The wings were made of real feathers, half of them gone and the rest dingy and ragged.

  “Sol?”

  I took a step back and nodded to the doll. “What does that look like to you?”

  His eyes widened. “One of those creepy-ass marionettes Isaac Payson used to make, to give to the kids in his church?”

  “That’s my guess,” I agreed. My voice was shaky. My knees weren’t holding up that well, either. “I mean… I don’t know what else it could be.”

  “You think it actually came from Isaac Payson?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess—it’s definitely not new.”

  “Maybe it’s a replica.” He came over and stood beside me, both of us gazing at the doll like it was about to come to life and steal our souls. Which, honestly, wouldn’t have been that surprising. If there was ever a time for it, this was it.

  “Why would anyone make a replica of something like that?” I asked.

  “We’re talking about an entire extended family that’s holed themselves up on a remote island and vanished without a trace. Whys and wherefores aren’t exactly in abundance,” he said.

  “Fair point.”

  “Either way, I’m sure there’s a rational explanation.”

  He was right; there was no reason to freak out. Just because this house felt exactly like a boarding home where thirty-four members of a fundamentalist church were murdered in cold blood didn’t mean there was any real connection. For one thing, this wasn’t a church—this was a family.

  And Isaac Payson, the leader of the Payson Church, had been dead for over twenty years, burned to death along with the rest of his congregation. There were any number of ways that this girl, this Nancy, could have gotten her hands on a doll that looked exactly like the ones given only to children born into the Payson Church… and none of them involved Isaac rising from the grave and handing the doll to her.

  “Okay, so what’s next?” Diggs asked. He took the marionette from me and hung it back where it belonged. “Kat obviously isn’t hiding under the beds here, right? I heard Jamie say she’ll try to get the Coast Guard over here now. Clearly, something isn’t right.”

  “Cameron didn’t want us to bring the police into this,” I said automatically.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what Cameron wanted. We’re not equipped to handle this… Not alone. Besides, it’s Jamie’s call.”

  “Yeah—I know,” I said. The place was getting to me, Diggs’ voice suddenly hard to make out above the rushing in my own ears. I shook my head, trying to clear it. “You’re right. I don’t like this… It’s probably a good idea to get someone out here.”

  When he didn’t say anything, I looked up. He was studying me, concern clear in his eyes.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re agreeing with me. Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine—you look like you’ve just seen a ghost. And not the friendly kind. We’ll figure this out, Sol. Everything will be all right.”

  He didn’t look like he believed that anymore than I did, but I appreciated the effort.

  Downstairs, a door slammed. I heard footsteps in the hall below us, s and the distant sound of conversation.

  “Can you come here a second?” Jamie called up from below. Her voice sounded strained, a pitch higher than usual.

  I exchanged a silent look with Diggs. “Now what?” he asked me. Since I didn’t have a clue, I didn’t answer. He followed me out of the bedroom, down the hall, and back down the stairs.

  “Where are you?” Diggs called at the bottom.

  “Kitchen,” Jamie answered.

  We followed her voice down the hallway, to a bright room with custom-made kitchen cabinets and polished countertops. Like the rest of the place, there was no sign of any member of the household.

  No sign, that is, but a piece of paper sitting on the table, weighed down at the center by a smooth, rounded stone.

  Jamie looked shaken. Juarez was beside her; he didn’t look any better.

  Our time has come, the note began, in a flowing, precise script.

  “What is this?” Diggs asked.

  “A suicide note, we think,” Jamie said. “It goes on for the whole page. It doesn’t say anything about where they might be, though.”

  Juarez rubbed his hand over his forehead, looking dark and grim. I thought of the Payson Church, Reverend Barnel and his followers in Justice, Kentucky… And now this entire family, with a note that, as far as I could tell, didn’t make an ounce of sense.


  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Seal the place off,” Juarez said immediately. “This is a crime scene—whether they’re here or not. Or at least it’s a potential one. No one comes in or out again. You called the Coast Guard?” he asked Jamie.

  “I will as soon as we’re back at the research station,” she said. “I don’t know how fast they can get out here, though. Not in this weather.”

  “What about Kat and Maya?” I asked. “And the students who are supposed to be manning the station?”

  “We’ll figure that out when we get back there,” Jamie said. “Right now, let’s lock this place up so I can go talk to the cops. We can figure out our next move once I know how they want us to handle things.”

  Half an hour later, we left the house the way we’d found it. In case this was all some horrible misunderstanding, Jamie left a note on the front door asking someone to contact her at the research station as soon as possible. We’d found no sign of foul play in the house… other than the note, of course, which was as foul as it got, as far as I was concerned.

  The team regrouped when we got back to the station, gathering in the dining room for an impromptu meeting while Jamie went up and tried to reach the Coast Guard on the satellite phone in the lab. The note at the Melquist house had left everyone shaken. The fact that Kat, Maya, and the students manning the research station appeared to have fallen off the face of the earth wasn’t doing much for morale, either.

  About fifteen minutes after Jamie had gone upstairs to call in the troops, she reappeared at the dining room entryway. She didn’t look happy.

  “There’s a call for you, Erin—a Maya Pearce. That’s your mother’s partner, isn’t it?”

  The team had been gathered at the table speculating about the shit storm brewing around us, while the canine members of our team whined and paced. This latest development didn’t bode well; I barely managed a coherent “Excuse me” before I left the pack and trailed behind Jamie.