Picture Me Dead

by Heather Graham

  As they walked, he pointed out his tomatoes and strawberries. “Up by the house, there are all kinds of vegetables. They grow great here. Our neighbors have citrus trees. Not a great place for them, but they seem determined.” As they neared the house, she noted the numerous buildings that stretched out behind it, toward the rear of the property. “See here?” he said, stopping by the garden. “Cabbage, carrots, you name it. We’re completely self-sufficient. We’re all vegetarians, so that makes it easy, really.”

  “All?” Ashley inquired with a smile. “How many of you live here?”

  “Right now? There are eight of us.”

  “Are you married? That’s a big family.”

  “More like a group of friends.”

  “A…religious group?”

  He laughed. “No. More like a commune. Just a group of people who enjoy farming, being together—and out of the mainstream bustle and trauma of life.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “Are you interested?”

  She smiled carefully. “I don’t know…. I have to admit, I’ve never thought about anything like this.”

  “Well, come in. See the place.”

  He brought her to a step that led up to a little porch. There was a screen door, which was closed, but the wooden door behind it was wide open. There was no air-conditioning, she noticed. The day was bright, but they weren’t in the dead heat of summer, so inside, the temperature was pleasant enough.

  She felt as if she had walked into a New England farmhouse. There was a knit rug before a hearth, and comfortable-looking, if slightly worn, overstuffed sofas with homey throws tossed over them. There were two rocking chairs, a basket of someone’s knitting and a pile of magazines. The titles she could see included something about cabinetry and home gardening.

  “Come in the kitchen,” he invited.

  She did so. Vegetables littered the counter. Someone was getting ready to prepare a large meal. A large vegetarian meal, she realized.

  They might be self-sufficient, and they might have eschewed air-conditioning, but they did have electricity. He opened the refrigerator. “Water, and lots of juice.”

  She was thinking that at the moment, she could use a double espresso, which she was sure was entirely out of the question here. “Water would be fine, thanks.”

  He poured her a glass of cold water, then indicated a seat at the kitchen table. She sat and looked around. The place really was charming. Copper pots and accessories hung from ceiling hooks. Mason jars filled with various preserves lined the windowsills. The chairs were covered with handmade cushions in a cheerful blue.

  “Thank you,” she told him.

  “My pleasure.” He smiled. “I get to see tomatoes in that field all day. You’re the first beautiful woman who’s ever appeared. It’s a bit unreal.”

  “Thanks again,” she said.

  “So what do you do?”

  “I’m an artist. I do sketches.”

  “For tourists?”

  She didn’t correct him.

  “But you’re looking for property in this area?”

  She laughed. “Yes. But I’m afraid I’m not as idealistic as you seem to be. I thought I’d just like a lot of land, some space.”

  He nodded. “A lot of people feel that way. You must be good, though, if you can afford a plot of land this big.”

  “Well…you know tourists. It’s all in the perception. You get one person saying they must have a sketch by a certain artist, and whether you’re any good or not, your work is the hot item to bring home.”

  “If you ever need a bunch of tomatoes to sketch, let me know.”

  “I will.” She set her glass down. “I really have to get back.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  “No, no. I’ve taken way too much of your time.”

  “It’s been a pleasure. Please, I hope you come back. Hey, on Saturday nights, Maggie—our resident folk guitarist—plays some great stuff. Please come back by and see us, if you’re free.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I will.”

  He walked back out with her, but when she insisted she could find her car, he headed back to his tomatoes, while she kept walking toward the road. She knew she was being watched and fought the temptation to look back. It struck her as strange that eight people supposedly lived there, but she hadn’t seen anyone else.

  She kept her eyes on the road, then walked along it to the barbed wire fence to reach her car. She didn’t see hide nor hair of David, and she was cursing him when she slid into the driver’s seat. She revved the engine and started driving slowly down the road.

  “Where the hell are you, you idiot?” she muttered. At that moment, he suddenly burst out of a group of trees about twenty yards in front of her. She drove closer and stopped, switching off the engine while she watched him work his way through the tangled landscape. Once he reached her, he hopped in swiftly.

  He touched her face, giving a sigh of relief. “I was about to call for backup.”

  “Backup?”

  “Well, I guess I should have said I was about to call the cops, but since you’re still kind of an almost-cop, I said backup.”

  “I should have left you here, you idiot. I got caught traipsing around out there.”

  “Yeah, I saw you with some guy.”

  “I ran into him in a tomato field. I was trespassing, but he was decent about it.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  “It’s a nice house, clean as a whistle. He says he lives there with seven other people. They’re doing their best to live off the land. It’s a commune.”

  “What were the others like?”

  “I didn’t see any of the others.”

  “Then where the hell were they?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they have day jobs before they turn back into hippies at night. He didn’t threaten me in any way, I didn’t see any marijuana growing in the midst of his tomatoes. So…all that, and I didn’t really get a damned thing.”

  “We need to find out who owns the place,” David said.

  “The guy told me his name was Caleb Harrison.”

  “Biblical.”

  “He said the place had nothing to do with religion. I know all kinds of guys down here named Jesus—it’s a popular Hispanic name, you know—and they’re not religious fanatics in the least.”

  “I think we should look around some more.”

  “I think we should get off this road and then argue about where to go from here,” Ashley said firmly, turning the key in the ignition again.

  David didn’t get a chance to answer. There was a thump on the back of the car.

  Ashley twisted in her seat. There was a tall man in cover-alls and a straw hat behind them, staring at them with narrowed eyes.

  He was carrying a shotgun.

  CHAPTER 16

  There was little to be done at Cassie Sewell’s last known residence. A family was now renting the three-bedroom apartment, and the wife assured the police that when they had rented, the last occupant had been out completely. The walls had been repainted, and new carpeting had been put down.

  A crime scene unit would still test to see if she had met her demise in the apartment itself.

  Jake doubted that she had. He was certain Cassie had quit her job, cleaned out her home, gone on…and then met her fate.

  When they finished at the apartment, leaving the crime scene inspectors there to do their work, Jake and Marty stood outside in the sunshine for a few minutes.

  “Want me to go back and follow the paper trail?” Marty asked.

  “Yes, find out to whom she wrote her last check and where she made her last credit card purchases. She had a car, a BMW, which seems to have disappeared, as well. Check the history on that.”

  “What are you going to do?” Marty asked him.

  “Go for a drive.”

  “A drive?”

  “I’m going to take a look at all the properties that were listed,” Jake told him. Then he
added, “Hey, I forgot to thank you for getting the off-duty guys at the hospital for me.”

  “Personally I think it’s unnecessary, but if it’s what they want, hey, who knows? Maybe someone is out to get the kid.”

  “Well, thanks anyway.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll go get on the real case now.”

  “Call me with anything pertinent.”

  “Ditto,” Marty told him.

  That was what he meant to do. But after Marty had headed back toward headquarters, Jake decided to stop back by the Gwendolyn. Passing Nick’s, he saw a number of customers parked in the lot and a few diners out on the terrace. He walked along the dock, waving to Sandy, who was seated on the deck of his boat, legs stretched out in the sun. The old geezer looked good, tanned and athletic. A life spent fishing and sailing could turn the skin brown and wrinkle it one hell of a lot, but apparently it kept a man fit, as well.

  Sandy waved back to him, eased his hat over his white head and leaned back.

  Jake climbed aboard his boat, irritated that he was apprehensive every time he did so now. Once inside, however, he was certain that everything was just as he had left it—including the mess. Coffee cup in the sink, bed torn askew…and a piece of red lace sticking out from underneath his pillow. He’d seen to it that Ashley had gotten her purse back, but sending Sandy over with her underwear would have been tasteless in the extreme. He’d thrown the wisps of silk and lace beneath his pillow, instead.

  After walking over to the bed, he lifted the pillow and felt the fabric between his fingers. Her scent seemed to drift up to him. A knot formed in his stomach, and a little constriction of desire tugged at him with the sensory memories that invaded his mind and body. He tucked the lace back beneath the pillow, wondering again if they weren’t both insane, then realizing that although Ashley had gone pale with everyone staring at her that morning, she hadn’t backed down, hadn’t made apologies or excuses. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder if she would roam his way so quickly that evening.

  The tightness remained. He couldn’t believe it. He wanted her here. Well, hell, of course. She moved like magic. There were moments with Ashley when the entire world could collide with the sun, and he wouldn’t even know he was dying. She was naturally sensual, instinctive, a knockout in bed. But that wasn’t it. Or wasn’t all of it, anyway. She had challenged him and, somehow, shaken him, everything about him. He didn’t just want to sleep with her; he liked waking up beside her. In the past, he had felt crowded when a woman stayed too long, but he felt an emptiness when Ashley wasn’t there. She could be all business, cool, efficient. She could be aloof, angry and speak her mind. But she was always sensual and compelling, whether she meant to be or not. And persistent.

  He hesitated, wondering if it wasn’t the growing feeling of…need inside him that had made him so quick to respond to her request for help. Of course, it was, damn it. She’d entered his life like a whirlwind. And like a whirlwind, she had changed it. She had changed him, he thought.

  Thinking of Ashley, Jake gave a quick call to Carnegie, who assured him that he didn’t mind at all if the family wanted their son guarded.

  “Anything new on the case?” Jake asked him.

  “Zilch. The only people who believe there’s a mystery behind it are the parents, the friend who involved you in the whole thing, and that nutcase who did some stories for the tabloid and got the cops digging in all the wrong places. But we’re still working it.”

  “Thanks. Listen, I’m dealing with a mountain of shit today, but I may talk with the folks at that rag myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “Be my guest. Like I said, I’ve been around too many years to let pride get in the way of truth. I take anything I can get.”

  When Jake hung up, he was irritated with himself. The day was going fast. He didn’t need to be here; he had to get moving, had to check out the properties. He shook his head, thinking that he couldn’t afford to spend any more time on a case that wasn’t even his.

  He sat at his desk, rubbing his temples for a moment, swore, then got up and dug in his medicine chest for something to cure a headache. He sat at his desk again, turned on his computer and began to bring up his records.

  He was certain that whoever had been on the boat hadn’t been out to rob him. They had been searching for information.

  Therefore, he had information worth looking for.

  What the hell was it?

  Words, numbers, names, swam before his eyes. Smoke and mirrors. Corpses, descriptions of the damage done to the bodies. The most glaring common factor to be found among the murdered women, the slashing of the ears.

  A religious cult.

  The ears slashed—like Custer’s had been at Little Bighorn, because he hadn’t heard the words of the Sioux, hadn’t listened. Obvious.

  What if it wasn’t so obvious?

  What if the ears had been slashed because of what the victims had heard, rather than what they hadn’t heeded? He hesitated, thought of the list of properties that Cassie Sewell had shown or represented, and made a phone call. His mind worked as he waited for someone to pick up.

  Smoke and mirrors.

  Back to the obvious. The dead women had been associated with the cult. Had they died because they hadn’t pleased their cult leader, had they revolted against his leadership, not listened to his commandments?

  What if the cult itself had been nothing but smoke?

  “Sharon, you here?” Nick Montague called. The bar was quiet; Katie was handling the few customers. It still bothered him that he hadn’t known Ashley had taken the new position until he had seen the drawing. He felt as if she was slipping away.

  Sharon’s car was out in the lot. She wasn’t in the bar, so she had to be in the house. Sharon had been acting very strange lately, now that he thought about it. She came and went frequently because of her work, but in the past, he always knew where she was. She’d made a point of saying she was showing such-and-such a place, maybe taking clients to lunch or going to a closing. But lately…she’d been very affectionate one minute, quiet and moody the next.

  He was crazy to put as much time into working the place himself as he did. In the last several months the business had been doing exceptionally well. Maybe it was time he stopped focussing so much on the restaurant and focussed more on the important people in his life.

  He needed some time with his niece. Quality time, as they called it. And he sure as hell needed more time with Sharon, too.

  His palms felt a little sweaty. He might well be a little bit crazy. Sharon was beautiful. Bright. Fun to be with. And he was awfully casual about their relationship. But then, until his brother had died and he’d become Ashley’s guardian, he’d been awfully casual about living in general. The bar had been good because it kept him close to boats, which had been his life until then. The water, fishing, sailing to the islands, soaking up the sun, just getting by. He’d never been interested in maintaining a relationship; the world had seemed too large, and far too full of bikini-clad women to ever make him want to settle down with just one. Then the unimaginable had happened when his brother had died and he’d had to pick up Ashley from the neighbor who had been baby-sitting, and try to explain to her that her folks weren’t coming home. Those green eyes had filled with tears, and he had held her, forced down the magnitude of his loss, and when she had clung to him, his world had changed. For years, making Nick’s place a success—had been his driving goal. Being a father-figure had become the only commitment of his life.

  His love for her had paid off. He believed with his whole heart that he had raised an intelligent young woman capable of being on her own. She had her own wing of the house because, now that she was an adult, that allowed her to enjoy independence as well as his protection and guidance. And he, of course, totally respected the fact that she was an adult.

  Yeah, right.

  He was worried as hell about this thing she had going with Jake Dilessio. Sure, he liked Jake—as long as he wasn’t messin
g with his niece. Jake had gone through women like a roll of paper towels since the episode with Nancy Lassiter years ago. Ashley didn’t understand a guy like that, good at his work, almost married to his job. A guy who made no other commitments because the world was out there. Nick did know and understand. He’d been that guy.

  Nick walked into the kitchen, puzzled. He pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator, walked to his bedroom, back to the living room. “Sharon?”

  “Here, coming!” Sharon called in return at last, emerging from Ashley’s room.

  Nick frowned, surprised to see that she had been in Ashley’s wing of the house. Not that there are any great barriers set up; Ashley never locked the door to her room. Even so, he never entered without a reason, or even without knocking. He’d never seen Sharon in Ashley’s room before at all.

  Sharon must have noticed his confusion, because she quickly explained. “Some of Ashley’s things were mingled in with ours when I did the wash. I took them in for her.”

  “Ah.”

  “I’m sorry. If you were calling, I didn’t hear you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Up?” Nick was startled to realize he had forgotten. Then he quickly remembered. “Well, actually, I was thinking…Katie’s got the bar, and it looks like it’s going to be a slow afternoon. I thought maybe you’d like to go for a spin out on the water. Just you and me. Then again, considering you stare at water all the time because of me, you might want to dress up for dinner. We could drive down to the Keys, or up to Fort Lauderdale. Somewhere that serves food that looks good on a plate, where they have linen tablecloths and a real wine cellar.”

  “I think Nick’s carries excellent wine.”

  He laughed. “I think we carry a lot of good old domestic beer. How about something a little bit more elegant?”

  “That would be lovely,” she told him. “One problem,” she said apologetically. “I may have to show a property this evening, around eight. I didn’t know that you might decide to ditch your second child—the restaurant, I mean—tonight, and I’m afraid I’m committed. If the buyer decides tonight’s his only free time, I have to go.”