Summer walked out and stared across the Pacific Ocean toward the whales and waves and horizon, where the sun would soon dip below the edge of the ocean. “How do you ever look anywhere else?”
Margaret settled into a chair. “The view gives wings to the soul.”
Reluctantly, Summer turned her back, and on the far wall of the room, she saw a wood and glass case lit by a small, discreet spotlight, and inside … “My God, look at that!” Forgetting every bit of manners she had ever learned, she hurried over to look more closely.
An exquisitely crafted piece of jewelry rested against a black velvet background.
“Is that…,” she wanted to say, real. Instead she said, “… an heirloom?”
“Indeed it is. That’s the Singing Bird, commissioned in the early twentieth century by Mr. Smith as a gift for his wife after the birth of his first son. From Tiffany’s, of course. The plumage is emeralds and rubies, the eyes are aquamarines, and the bird, a phoenix, stands on the legendary seventeen-carat Smith emerald.”
“Seventeen carats?” Summer couldn’t take her gaze away.
Margaret chuckled. “When I first saw the brooch, I was a chambermaid in Dublin. Mrs. Smith’s oldest son had been killed in World War One and was buried in France, and she was on a journey to visit his grave.”
Summer faced Margaret. “She brought you back to the States?”
“She was alone in the city. I had a large family and a lot of connections. I did her a favor.” Margaret’s eyes twinkled. “When I arrived here I met her second son, Johnny, and we married. And that is how Maggie O’Brien became Margaret Smith.”
From the wry twist of Margaret’s mouth, Summer suspected there was more to the story than that. But Margaret said no more, so Summer turned back to the case and let her fingers hover over the glass above the glittering, deep green emerald. “Do you ever wear the Singing Bird?”
“No! I am only its custodian. The case is bullet-proof, impact-proof, and the brooch is protected by the most up-to-date security in the world.”
Summer snatched her hand back.
Margaret laughed. “It won’t get you as long as you don’t try to take it. I can’t really imagine you as a thief, yet Garik says you are quite the expert at breaking into houses.”
Garik was a mouthy bastard. “I only break into a house when I want to illustrate to the homeowner how easy it is to do. Then I take their protection in hand and everybody’s happy.” Except City Security, who had been profoundly unhappy.
“One wonders how you learned such a skill, and what drove you to the brave and foolish act in the first place.” Margaret put her hand to her chin and looked thoughtful. “Of course, I did note that you had at one time been hungry. And you suffered a grievous injury to your hand.”
Summer seated herself, and looked down at the pink stub of her finger. “It could have been worse.”
“Of course. It could always be worse.”
Sheriff Jacobsen rapped on the casement. “Margaret, look at who I brought you.”
Elizabeth Banner Jacobsen and Kateri stepped inside the room.
“My darling girls, I didn’t expect either one of you!” Margaret Smith embraced them. “Kateri, Garik told me you couldn’t come.”
“I discovered I most definitely could.” Kateri held her cane in one hand, and her smile held a sharp edge.
“Wonderful! Now sit down here”—Margaret indicated the chair on her right hand—“while Garik pours us all a drink.”
Everyone gave their orders. Garik served Margaret her whiskey, Kateri a glass of red wine, and Summer and Elizabeth took a bottle of water.
He took water, too.
“Elizabeth—I didn’t expect you back until tomorrow night.” Margaret kissed her cheek again.
Elizabeth flopped down in an armchair. “I couldn’t stand the conference for another day. Geologists are boring, the food was lousy, and everyone was drinking every night.”
Garik perched on the arm of her chair. “And the old farts were hitting on you.”
“Yes,” she said grumpily. Elizabeth Banner Jacobsen was one of those women other women hated on principle. Her blond hair, guileless blue eyes, and curvy figure sent every straight man into a frenzy of desire. More important, Elizabeth was oblivious to any competition; she was gorgeous, she knew it, yet didn’t seem to value her beauty. Maybe Garik did, but he couldn’t be all about the beauty, because Elizabeth overflowed with brains and was honest to the extreme. Living with her could not be good for any man’s ego.
Of course, he was a handsome man, too, and even better, he had that competent air about him that law officers often had, as if he could, and would, protect a woman with his life.
“I am glad to be home.” Elizabeth touched Garik’s arm, then looked at Summer. “Also glad to know Summer gave in and came to the resort. I thought for a while Margaret was going to have to issue the invitation.”
“What does that mean?” Summer asked.
“That few people have the guts to refuse a ninety-four-year-old woman,” Garik said.
Summer conceded with a nod. “The whole family is into blackmail, I see.”
“I learned from the best.” Garik went over, kissed Margaret on the cheek, returned to Elizabeth, took her hand, and kissed it.
He looked charming and carefree and not at all like the narrow-eyed sheriff Summer had come to expect. In here, he was nothing but a guy in love with his wife and at home with his family and friends.
“Successful blackmail is the only advantage of being my age,” Margaret said firmly.
“So, Summer, how are you doing with the Judge?” Garik sounded casual.
Summer wasn’t fooled.
He was green with jealousy.
“My car?” she said. “I manage okay. That little beast really moves. Hugs the curves. Accelerates like no car I’ve ever driven. I’d never driven a stick before, so Rainbow taught me.”
Garik blurted, “Rainbow? Rainbow Breezewing taught you how to drive that car? I can’t believe I haven’t given you a ticket yet.”
Margaret laughed. “You were so worried, Garik, that little Summer Leigh wouldn’t be able to drive the Judge the way it deserves to be driven, but she’s got it under control.”
“Yeah. I’m so happy.” Garik did not sound happy.
The women exchanged grins.
“Speaking of Rainbow,” Garik said, “has anybody seen her lately?”
“She’s gone walkabout again?” Kateri asked.
“Looks like it. She hasn’t been to work in three days. Dax had to bring in a substitute waitress, and he’s cursing Rainbow up one side and down the other.” Garik turned to Summer. “She disappears periodically, is gone for a while, then returns and goes back to her routine like nothing happened.”
“No one knows where she goes?” Summer asked.
“I’ve always thought she went out wandering in the woods,” Garik said. “But it’s late in the year. At any minute, that first winter storm could come roaring in.”
Great. Garik was concerned about Rainbow. In Summer’s book, that made him more likable. And it was so much easier to watch her words around a stern law-enforcement officer than a friend. She knew she shouldn’t have come.
“There’s no use worrying about Rainbow. She can take care of herself.” Kateri finished her water.
“I’m not worried, exactly.” Garik took Kateri’s bottle and placed it on the bar. “But let’s say I’m cautious … ever since we found the bodies in the forest.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Summer flinched.
She glanced around.
No one had noticed. They were all intent on Garik.
She took a breath, brought her voice under control, and said, “I must have missed some good gossip. What bodies in the forest are we talking about?”
“Someone dropped two dead bodies into the Olympic National Forest, figuring no one would ever find them, I guess,” Elizabeth said. “Creepy, huh?”
“It’s impossible to open a sealed airplane in flight,” Kateri informed them. “So probably they were tossed from a helicopter.”
Garik nodded. “That makes more sense. Because where would a plane take off and land without anyone noticing?”
Summer knew the answer to that; when she had stowed away on the plane from Idaho, she had landed on that isolated, forest-bound airfield about two hours’ drive from Virtue Falls. When she had walked away from the airfield, down a lonely one-lane road to the highway, she had been barely conscious, surviving on instinct alone. She had walked through wind and icy rain until that moment when a farm truck drove up behind her. The old couple inside had offered her a ride, and regardless of the fact she had never hitchhiked in her life, she accepted gratefully. She had no choice. She could not have gone much farther. She climbed in the back beneath a tarp, and by the time she got to Virtue Falls, she had been half dead with hypothermia.
She didn’t know where the airfield was. And she wasn’t about to say what she did know. That would lead to unanswerable questions. “Were the people killed first?”
“Shot. Both of them.” Garik waved a hand in the general direction of the mountains. “The Olympic Range is a big national park—almost fifteen hundred square miles. We figure there are more. Somewhere.”
Elizabeth asked, “Did you talk to Tom Perez?”
Garik explained to Summer, “Tom Perez was my supervisor at the FBI, and he’s still my contact. He said this is the first he’s heard of bodies being dumped in a national park.”
Summer took a few deep breaths, a sip of water, a few more breaths. “Do you have any ID on the bodies?”
“The most recent body is a winemaker from eastern Washington. According to the police report, he was behaving oddly, said some things that made people think he’d had a mental break. He disappeared, and everyone assumed he’d flaked out. Turns out he was in the Olympic Forest.” Garik looked somber. “His parents don’t understand what happened or how he got here.”
“A winemaker from eastern Washington?” Not Dash, then.
“Name of Pete Donaldson. He had recently changed jobs. He used to work for a winery in Idaho…”
The sound of Garik’s voice faded into the background.
A vintner from Idaho had been murdered and dropped into the forest. If she looked up Pete Donaldson, she would bet he had worked for Gracie Wines.
How had she dared imagine she could escape Michael Gracie? She had been on his plane. It had landed on an airfield somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula. Smugglers brought their goods in from Canada, using the convoluted Washington coast to hide their activities. She had heard Michael Gracie discussing his part in the business. She knew he had connections here somewhere. But she had never seen him, or his thugs, in Virtue Falls, and she had relaxed her vigilance.
What a fool she was.
The house phone rang.
She recoiled.
Garik answered, spoke to whoever was on the other end, hung up, and came to offer his arm to Margaret. “They’re ready for us in the dining room. Shall we?”
* * *
Kateri had always thought the dining room at the Virtue Falls Resort represented the epitome of graceful elegance. Mirrored panels decorated the burnished gold walls. The tables, covered by starched white cloths, gleamed with crystal and silver. Formally clad waiters and busboys moved smoothly and unobtrusively. And the wide swath of windows overlooked the ocean, where seagulls, coaxed by treats from the kitchen, swooped and danced in the outward-facing lights.
When Kateri had been the Coast Guard commander, she had dominated this room. She had been a force to contend with, strong and proud. Now she was just proud. Maybe, if a man looked closely, he would still see beauty behind the ruins. But no man cared to bother except Luis, and Luis … was on a date.
The maître d’ showed them to a round, five-person table set in the corner.
Margaret seated herself where she could survey the whole room. “I like to be able to watch over operations in my restaurant,” she told Summer.
“I understand completely. I also like to see what’s going on.” Summer took a seat beside her, her back against a wall.
Garik sat on Margaret’s other side.
Elizabeth took her seat next to Garik without even noticing the shuffling.
After a single glance at the large, centerpiece table, Kateri turned her back to the dining room. She couldn’t stand to watch Senator Jensen, the mayor, City Councilman Venegra, and their wives; the Thirteenth District Coast Guard commander, Rear Admiral Richard Ritchie;… and Lieutenant Landon “Landlubber” Adams, all spiffed up in his Coast Guard dress blues.
She wished she’d never come. What a fool she’d been for not thinking of this—where else did she think the senator and his nephew would eat? At the only five-star restaurant in the area, at Virtue Falls Resort.
Kateri allowed the maître d’ to pull out her chair. She seated herself, then handed him her cane. He leaned it against the wall with Margaret’s. With a flourish, he placed Kateri’s linen napkin into her lap. She smoothed it across her thighs. “I always enjoy myself at the Virtue Falls Resort Restaurant. I know I will tonight, also.”
Margaret reassured her with a pleasant, “We’ll make sure you do.”
Waiters swarmed the table, providing water and wine and menus.
Margaret said, “Today I heard from Tony Parnham.”
Kateri picked up the conversational ball. “The movie director? Cool. What does he want?”
“He wants to host a Halloween party at the resort. He’ll invite friends, colleagues, and guests from town.”
“Guests from this town?” Garik pulled a disbelieving face. “Who does he know in Virtue Falls?”
“He is building that home on Eagle Road.” Summer seemed not at all surprised at Margaret’s news. “He hopes to join the community. One might think he is a hard man, but he’s an artist, interested in the story, not the cash box.”
“On the phone, he seems very agreeable; he told me to bring in the Virtue Falls folks I thought would add to the festivities. He wants everything to be top drawer. He’s sending in a party designer.” Margaret’s eyes sparkled. “We’ll have a good time.”
After that, the conversation flowed comfortably.
The resort manager, Harold Ridley, came by to ask about their comfort. The waiters were attentive, the food was excellent, and as they moved from appetizers to the main course, Kateri’s tension began to ease.
Then Garik muttered, “Heads up.”
At her right shoulder, Adams’s hateful voice drawled, “I’m glad to see you here, Kateri. I didn’t know you got out much anymore.”
She looked up slowly.
Adams was like the quintessential preppie on the planet. Pale, fair, blond, with capped teeth and hands calloused from lifting weights in the gym. His upper-crust Boston accent and attitude had set her teeth on edge the first time she saw him. But back then, it hadn’t mattered what she thought of him, because she was in charge. She outranked him, outsmarted him, and knew she would outlast him.
Conceit and vanity, ground into the dirt by cruel fate.
Adams was flushed, his eyes vicious; he must already have received the bad news about his assignment.
So Kateri said, “This is an occasion, indeed, when we have a U.S. senator in town. Did he come to deliver good news?”
“Only that I’m going to receive a promotion to lieutenant commander.” Adams puffed up his chest.
“So you’ll be leaving us for a new command?” Kateri smiled, all teeth.
“Not at all! I am promised that I will be here for a very long time.” He smiled back at her, pissed and at the same time grimly triumphant.
All Kateri’s pleasure in taunting him vanished; she had been secretly hoping Luis was wrong, that Adams would go somewhere else. She wanted him to become some admiral’s aide, and fetch and carry, take messages, go to formal dinners, and never do harm to another Coastie as long as he lived.
She ought to know by now she couldn’t wish bad news away.
A big hand landed on her shoulder. “Kateri? Kateri Kwinault? I thought that was you. How good to see you looking so well!”
She looked up into the face of Thirteenth District Coast Guard Commander, Rear Admiral Richard Ritchie. “Thank you, sir, I am well.”
Her court martial had been a matter of naval custom, convened not because of any assumption of guilt, but to make the circumstances surrounding the loss of her clipper part of the official record. Then the government had listened to Landon Adams’s testimony, she had been accused of incompetence, and Admiral Ritchie had had a mess on his hands. She was pretty sure he hadn’t believed her responsible, but she also knew that with the pressure from Adams’s uncle brought to bear, the admiral had been hard-pressed to keep her out of military prison.
Then witnesses had come forward to say Adams had obstructed her race out into the open ocean. She had been acquitted. Adams had never been charged of deliberate sabotage, of which he was most certainly guilty, or of falsifying his testimony … also guilty.
In Kateri’s next life, she intended to be born into a family with political power. From what she had seen, influence really made your life easier.
Now she faced the admiral, a man who had spent the evening with the U.S. senator who was Adams’s uncle, various dignitaries, and Adams himself. She supposed, if she was being fair, Admiral Ritchie deserved kudos for acknowledging her.
She prided herself on being fair. “Congratulations on your new grandson, sir. You must be thrilled.”
The conversation became emptily social, and when the senator’s party left, Kateri felt as if the whole dining room heaved a collective sigh of relief. Harold and the waiters rushed out with complementary chocolate truffles for every table.
Elizabeth picked one up, took a single bite, spit it back into her hand, and sighed gustily. “I must be sick. I’m tired, the chocolate tastes funny, and every time I try to drink wine, I want to throw up.”
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