by Nancy Bush
Andi felt dizzy. “I’ve gotta go pack my house.”
“I’ll take you home. No packing. You need to lie down.”
“I’m fine . . . really . . . I just need to rest a while.”
Luke threw some cash on the table and Andi felt like she was moving through water as she pulled up her bag. She heard his terse, “I’ve got it,” and then he was guiding her back to his office. She realized he hadn’t given her a chance to pay her half.
* * *
Andi sat on her couch amid the boxes, feeling like an idiot, while Luke glanced around, taking in the signs of her packing. “I’m fine,” she said with more conviction than at the restaurant. “I don’t need to lie down.” She’d been scared that she was facing another blackout, but she’d known almost immediately that it was a reaction to the news and maybe too little food that had accounted for her faintness. Luke had gotten her a glass of water as soon as they’d entered her house and she’d bounced back.
“When is this move taking place?” he asked.
“Movers are coming tomorrow afternoon. A lot of this is going to storage. My cabin’s too small for most of it.”
“The movers are taking everything. You’re not lifting anything yourself.”
A part of her was irked that he sounded so authoritative. Another part wanted to just close her eyes and say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” It had been too long since she’d been able to lean on anyone.
“Yes, the movers are doing the heavy lifting. My friend, Trini, said she’d help,” she added, though all Trini had said was that she wanted Andi to meet her new guy. That was the extent of their weekend plans together, and that one was iffy at best.
“You said you just found out you’re pregnant.”
“After I sold this place, yes. The cabin’s small, but I wanted to move.”
He nodded.
“Do we need to write up a contract or something?” she asked. “This has all been kind of weird.”
“First I want to get clear what you want me to do. Keep an eye on the Carreras. Keep them from threatening you and carrying out those threats. Find out if the Carreras are behind the note that was addressed to you, and offer you protection.”
“Yes. Right.”
“What about the broken lock—at the cabin?”
“I think it’s being taken care of.”
“Let me know.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“What about a meal? You didn’t eat anything.”
“I had a few bites. What I really need is my car back. I appreciate your driving me home, but I’m okay. Really. I’d like you to take me back to it.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Please.” Andi got up from the couch. She felt vaguely light-headed, but as he’d pointed out, she hadn’t eaten. “Maybe a little food is a good idea.”
“We can pick up your car and follow each other somewhere.”
She thought she should disabuse him of this protection thing. It felt ... self-indulgent ... but she said instead, “There’s The Café near the Wren offices.”
They were heading outside to his somewhat battered Ford truck. Luke asked, “What’s the café’s name?”
Andi broke into a grin as she climbed into the passenger side of his vehicle. Seeing her face, he asked, “What?”
“Never mind. Let’s get to my car and I’ll show you how to get there ...”
Chapter Five
Sometimes it’s easiest to let the game begin on its own. I’ve tried forcing the start a time or two, but it’s better to see what move your opponent makes first. I’m watching several players. I have them ranked already. One of them will be there at the end . . . the others are way stations. Incidental stopping points. Sidebars.
So much to do. Tumblers must fall in place.
Unconsciously, I start to pleasure myself just thinking about it, but I stay my hand.
I need to draw out the ending until it’s excruciating.
My blood races hot. I can feel myself slamming into her already, my fingers on the delicate bones at her neck. It’s so easy to crush little birds.
Little birds . . . so incredibly perfect.
* * *
Detective September Rafferty shaded her eyes against a persistent afternoon sun and watched a hawk glide over the scrubland at the end of Aurora Lane. Pointing, she asked, “Where does that field end up?”
Her partner, Gretchen Sandler, flicked a look in the same direction, westward from the end of Aurora Lane’s cul-de-sac toward distant trees against the horizon. “Dunno.”
They were standing outside the home of Jan and Phillip Singleton, who’d apparently poisoned each other after living together most of their lives in mutual hate. They’d had the fortitude to take the poison while seated across from each other at the table and just waited for each other to die. Unbelievable. But that was the story their granddaughter and her husband, Frances “Fairy” Walchek and Craig Walchek, wanted them to believe. Maybe it was even true . . .
Jan Singleton’s sister, Carol Jenkins, late seventies, with bleached, flyaway blond hair that showed a lot of scalp underneath, looked from one detective to the other, dragging her gaze away from the house her sister, Jan, had lived and died in. She then followed September’s gaze. “Schultz Lake,” she said.
“I didn’t know we were so close to it.” September scanned the faraway trees, figuring it was about a mile away. “That’s where they’re building that new lodge.”
“Oh yeah, now it’s the big deal.” Carol sniffed and held a Kleenex to her nose. It could have been from emotion, but her sister had been gone a while, so September thought it might be to cover up a sneer.
Gretchen squinted, her almond-shaped eyes screened by thick black lashes. Gretchen’s hair was a wild mass of black curls that she sometimes wore back, but today the strands were sticking to her face. She brushed them back with one hand, held on to a clump of hair impatiently, and said to Carol, “So, Fairy and Craig . . . They’re out on bail and you know they’re still insisting they had nothing to do with your sister and her husband’s deaths—”
“Frances. Her name is Frances.”
“Frances and Craig claim they had nothing to do with their deaths,” Gretchen reiterated, “and that after Harold died—”
“My brother,” Carol said.
“—of natural causes, the Singletons moved his body to their basement, which is, by definition, abuse of a corpse in the second degree, a Class C felony. But the ME couldn’t find anything in Harold’s bones that said he’d died any differently, so it’s not a homicide. Still, there are four bodies down in that basement.” She swept a hand toward the house that had held the cache of human bones she was referring to: Great-Uncle Harold’s, both Jan and Phillip Singleton’s, and an unidentified adult male’s, the main reason Gretchen and September were on Aurora Lane today.
Carol declared, “Well, I should say. Jan couldn’t hurt a soul and she’d never hurt Harry in any case! He’s our brother and we loved him.”
“Must be long-distance love; he’s been gone a while,” Gretchen pointed out.
Carol’s face turned purple. “Harold didn’t communicate for years at a time. It was just his way, and anyway, we were never the kind of family that had to check in all the time.” Neither September nor Gretchen responded to what was so blatantly obvious, which seemed to piss her off. “I’ve told you this a thousand times. I don’t see how you could let Frances and that filthy hippie out of jail. He’s responsible for everything! He’s the one who killed Jan and Phillip, and he got Frances involved!”
“You think they killed your sister, your brother, and your brother-in-law and left all their bones in the basement.”
“Yes,” she answered belligerently.
“Harold died years before of natural causes, and your sister and brother-in-law kept on cashing his social security checks. After Jan and Phillip poisoned themselves, Frances and Craig saw a good thing and kept to the same program, pocketing three social security checks
every month, forging your sister’s signature. It’s fraud, not murder.”
Except for the bones of the male who’d died at around age eighteen. Those had been jumbled in with all the rest, and there was no explanation for them. September looked back to the Singletons’ house. Several months had passed since the discovery. Fairy and Craig had been taken in for questioning, and they’d told September and Gretchen that Gran and Gramps—Jan and Phillip—had never reported Uncle Harold’s death—possibly from heart failure as medical records showed years of cardiac decline—and instead had stowed his bones in a basement closet to keep collecting his social security checks along with their own. But Gran and Gramps really didn’t like each other all that much—couldn’t stand each other—and had resorted to a double suicide at the table where they’d shared so many meals.
Everyone said that was impossible. They would be too ill to stay seated, couldn’t have had the nerve to wait there and die. But upon a complete examination, it was determined the two had also taken a shitload of sedatives, and maybe it could have happened that way. Aunt Carol believed her niece and her filthy hippie husband were “lying through their meth-ruined teeth,” which was also false because Fairy and Craig hadn’t tested for anything stronger than marijuana and had perfectly nice teeth. Impossible as it seemed, it looked much like Fairy and Craig had said: Gran and Gramps had been pretending Harry was still alive for years in order to keep his social security payments and then had eventually killed themselves. Fairy and Craig had followed suit once Gran and Gramps were gone, adding their bones to the pile with Uncle Harold’s and pocketing their social security checks along with his. Fairy and Craig were facing jail time for a whole host of charges, but it didn’t appear they were murderers. To say Aunt Carol was biased was putting it lightly. She blamed Fairy and Craig totally for the entire scam, which, truthfully, might have gone on for decades had Aunt Carol not wondered what the hell had happened to her sister and contacted the authorities, blowing the whistle on the miscreants.
It was while the pile of bones was being tagged and bagged that extra pieces were discovered: the skeleton of an as-yet unidentified male, someone who, if they’d lived, would be about September’s own age now, had been part of the basement jumble. The crime lab had recovered trace DNA from the bone marrow, and there was dirt concentrated on the bones, suggesting the body had been buried once. But the identity of the bones was still a mystery, one September and Gretchen had been tasked to solve. Gretchen had initially predicted they would wrap the case up in a matter of days, but it had dragged on into the fall, past September’s thirty-first birthday on the first day of the month.
The detectives had been canvassing the neighborhood. They’d initially placed calls to the residents, seeking to learn more about the Singletons, who’d lived in their house for nearly fifty years, but no one had offered anything. Most said they didn’t know them. That they were a cold couple who pretty much kept to themselves. That they had one son, Nathan, Frances’s father. Some knew Nathan had died, but no one knew how, except Carol Jenkins, Nathan’s aunt.
“You’d think someone would know something,” Gretchen said now. She’d rapped on another door and no one had answered.
“What about Nathan?” September asked Carol.
“What about him?”
“Your sister and her husband have been described as cold and keeping to themselves, and no one seems to remember their son that much.”
“Oh, they’re all just scared to talk to you.” She glared down the row of houses.
“I think it’s more of a case that they don’t know anything,” Gretchen said.
Carol ignored her. “Nathan was a good little boy. Jan and Phillip doted on him, absolutely doted on him. When he and that terrible woman he married—Davinia—died in that small plane crash, they doted on Frances. They took her in and cared for her, more like a daughter than a granddaughter, until she hooked up with Craig. Then things weren’t good. They weren’t good at all.”
Gretchen squinted down the street at the twenty-some houses Carol had glared at. “We’re going to have to run these people down at work. The Singletons didn’t live here fifty years without someone knowing them.” She then slid a sidelong look Carol’s way. “I don’t care if they’re scared. You came here today to make introductions and we’re still standing out in the sun.”
“Yes, of course, but I don’t know them that well,” she backed off.
September reminded, “You said you know the Myles family.”
They all turned to look at the faded yellow, shingle-sided home across the street from the Singletons’. It was why Gretchen had allowed Carol Jenkins to be any part of their investigation.
“I knew Grace Myles, but she’s in assisted living now. Early dementia, you know.”
“The Myles’s son lives there now,” Gretchen reminded her.
“Well, I hardly know him. Tynan’s Nathan’s age, not mine. I’m much more familiar with Grace, but since she’s losing her mind . . .”
“Let’s go see who’s home,” Gretchen encouraged.
September and Gretchen started up the cracked sidewalk that led to the equally cracked cement porch, but Carol stayed rooted to the spot. They stopped and looked back at her.
“Shouldn’t we call first?” Carol asked.
“We’ve called and called.” Gretchen’s smile was more a grimace of forced restraint.
“Do you want to do this or not?” September asked her.
When called on her behavior, Carol straightened up sharply. “Of course I do. I just want the proper protocol to be followed, that’s all. The world is certainly short on good behavior, and I refuse to be accused of rudeness, no matter what anyone else does.”
Gretchen said, “You’re with the police. They’ll be looking at us, not you. They’re not going to care whether you crossed every fucking t and dotted every fucking i.”
Her face suffused with color. “Well . . . really.”
September jumped in. “How about I knock and introduce myself? You can follow along.” She shot Gretchen a really? look as she walked up the porch steps of the Myles’s house and rapped her knuckles on a screen door that didn’t look as if it latched properly. She heard a crying baby inside and briefly thought about the child her sister, July, had delivered in June, naming the little girl for the month she was born. This was a Rafferty specialty, and though September and her siblings had all sworn they wouldn’t follow suit when they had their own children, July had buckled under when push came to shove and now she had little Junie.
The engagement ring on her left hand winked in the afternoon light, like a cosmic question: What will you do if and when that day comes?
Wedding first, she thought just as the door was opened by a young woman who was juggling a baby in a light green onesie on her hip.
September pulled out her badge and held it up. “Hello, I’m Detective September Rafferty. We’ve been trying to get in touch with Tynan Myles?”
“Oh God. What’s he done now?” the woman asked, making a face.
“Are you related to him?”
“My father-in-law. He’s at work. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s at a bar. Caleb is about done with him, that’s for sure.”
“Caleb is his son?” September guessed.
“Yes. My husband.” Again, the face.
September indicated the house behind her. “We’re here investigating the deaths that occurred at 1233 and are talking to all the residents on the street.”
The baby let out a howl, as if he objected to the conversation on principle. Gretchen had moved up to September, her badge out, but Carol hung back.
“I’m Hannah, and this is Greer.” The woman jiggled the baby a few more times. September had no clue as to its sex. “You can talk to Caleb when he gets back, but I don’t know how he can help you. And Tynan . . . well . . .” she said dubiously.
“Is there a cell number for Tynan?” September asked. She was more interested in speaking to someone of Nathan Si
ngleton’s generation than Caleb, who would undoubtedly be closer to Fairy’s age.
“God, no. The man lives in a different century. But he’ll be here at dinnertime. That never fails.”
“Do you know if your husband was acquainted with the Singletons?”
“Sorry.” She shrugged.
“All right. We’ll come back. Do you mind if I leave a card?”
“Sure.” Hannah opened the door and accepted September’s business card, which Greer tried to grab. Hannah made a game of it and Greer finally captured it and shoved it into his or her mouth.
“Oops.” Hannah yanked it back, which caused Greer to wail like a siren.
When the door was closed behind them, Gretchen muttered, “Babies . . . gotta love ’em.”
Carol said, “You know, she and Caleb are living there for free. Tynan doesn’t charge them anything, and he should.”
“Thought you didn’t know Tynan,” Gretchen said.
“Well, yes, but I know the situation. I was friends with Grace before she lost her mind, poor soul.”
“So, you’re not friends now?”
September would’ve elbowed Gretchen if she’d been closer.
Carol rallied to the battle. “Friendship’s really out of the question when someone doesn’t even recognize you, don’t you think?”
An hour later September and Gretchen were back at the Laurelton Police Department squad room, September at her desk, Gretchen standing in the center of the room. Detectives George Thompkins and Wes Pelligree were already there, George riding his office chair, his usual position, and Wes across the room, standing in front of his desk. They both looked up as Gretchen and September entered, and George swiveled his heft in his chair and said to Gretchen, “Turning out to be a kinky case?”
She gave him a thin-lipped smile. It was well known that Gretchen got bored with your basic homicide. “Hoping.”
Wes, tall, lanky, and black, a secret crush of September’s until she’d hooked up with her first love, Jake Westerly, again, strolled over to her desk and joined the conversation. “What’cha got so far?”
“Nobody on that street seems to know anything about the Singletons,” September said. “At least that’s what they’re saying.”