Kiss of Fate

by Deirdre Dore

  Something that looked like an old-fashioned hard suitcase was resting on top of the man’s chest, almost as if he’d been clutching it, even in death. Brent thought about the rumors that had swirled about Charlie Collins, about his drinking, the gambling debts, the deal he’d made with a drug lord. None of it was very clear. The only witness they had to what happened that year—Mark’s wife, Jane Arrowdale, or Circe, he guessed—was more than half crazy. But Brent was fairly certain one of the rumors about Charlie Collins was true—that he’d been involved with Raquel’s mother, the beautiful, talented, and incredibly weak-willed Gloria Belle Weaver. Brent had been trying to find out who had kidnapped her without Raquel’s help. She was a cop. He was a filmmaker. It was crazy what people would tell him just because he was famous.

  The wind whipped in the other direction, tugging at the flowers that had been laid on the graves of Bessie and Atohi, pulling petals off roses that had begun to wilt and sending them flying. He heard Raquel gasp and saw her take a step forward. She’d seen something—so had Chris. A ribbon—blue with stars—had blown onto the body despite the technicians’ efforts to keep the scene from getting contaminated. Tavey stopped close to the casket, staring at where the ribbon lay pinned by the wind to the suitcase the man held, fluttering but not flying off.

  “Please get that.” Tavey pointed, and the tech hesitated, looking at Ryan, who was technically the agent assigned to the case.

  “Go ahead,” Ryan told him, and the man obeyed, securing the ribbon with a gloved hand and putting it in an evidence bag. Brent remembered a conversation from several weeks earlier, when Tavey’s dogs had found an old ribbon in the woods. Though it had been mostly rotted and stained with what looked like old blood, Tavey had sworn that she’d recognized it as the ribbon Summer had been wearing when she’d disappeared into the woods.

  Chris had argued differently, remembering that the ribbon Summer had been wearing was blue with yellow stars, and since Chris had been the last one with her, Tavey had been forced to concede that maybe it had been another of Summer’s ribbons.

  But here was a ribbon—blue with yellow stars—suddenly appearing in front of them, and the women clearly thought it had belonged to Summer.

  Brent liked to keep an open mind; he’d seen a few strange things in the course of his filmmaking, but he thought Fate might just be one of the weirdest places he’d ever been. Figures that the most fascinating woman he’d ever met would choose to live there.

  A FEW HOURS later, in the Collins mansion, Raquel studied Brent as she sipped iced green tea. He was watching her again, not bothering to hide the fact that he was staring. She didn’t mind the staring, not if it was just sex on his mind, but she couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking. He was plotting something, she was sure of it. He was going to get himself killed.

  Raquel didn’t realize that she studied people in exactly the same way, but not for the same reason. She studied them because it was her job to catch predators, and you don’t catch predators by not paying attention.

  “Raquel, what do you think?” Tavey asked.

  Raquel had already weighed in about the ribbon. She’d agreed that it’d looked like one of Summer’s, but until DNA analysis came back on it, or the ribbon that they’d found weeks earlier, she didn’t think they could be certain. It was just so strange and, in Raquel’s mind, yet another sign that now was the time to find Summer. Of course, it was no stranger than Charlie Collins’s turning up dead in his grave.

  Raquel redirected her attention to the current thread of the conversation—the presence of Charlie Collins in his grave, where he technically wasn’t supposed to be. Charlie Collins and a suitcase full of money. Well, the man they assumed was Charlie Collins. She supposed they wouldn’t know for sure until the forensics came back, but she was fairly certain it was him. Who the hell else would it be?

  “I think it’s a good idea,” she replied to the group—Tavey, seated at the breakfast table by the window, Chris next to her, and Ryan standing behind Chris’s chair. Brent was standing as well, a few feet away from the table, slightly apart as always. Raquel was vaguely aware they’d been talking about keeping the money they’d found with the body out of the press. All they knew about the money had been gleaned from strange, fragmented conversations with Jane, but apparently it was somehow connected to a drug deal that had gone wrong in 1986.

  “Are you going to run it by Tyler?” Tavey questioned Ryan. “It’s technically his case.”

  Raquel watched Brent’s gaze shift down to rest on Tavey, one of those annoying secret smiles on his face. He was probably thinking that Tavey sounded like a woman in love, defending her man, who was the investigator for Cherokee County. Raquel heard it, too, the subtle softness that touched Tavey’s usually crisp voice when she said Tyler’s name. He was still at the hospital, though he’d said he was feeling better.

  Brent was looking at her again. Raquel felt the weight of his stare the way she’d felt the sun on her shoulders today. She didn’t return his gaze this time.

  She set down her empty glass on the counter. “We should talk to Jane again. Her story doesn’t add up.”

  Chris flipped her thick brown hair over her shoulder and snorted. “Jane’s story changes more than her personality. Jane”—she rolled her eyes—“or Circe. Sorry,” she said sarcastically, “I forget what personality I’m talking about. Circe said Mark told her that Charlie was dead, and that Mark told her to dig in the subfloor of that house for his body and the money. So how did he end up in his own grave with the money sitting on his damn chest?”

  “If it’s even Charlie,” Raquel added, because it was stupid to make assumptions.

  “It’s him,” Chris muttered. “Jerk. He abandoned Tavey so he could do drug deals in the woods. What kind of asshole sacrifices the life of his wife and a totally innocent person so he can pretend to be dead? What the hell?”

  Raquel’s jaw clenched. Her mother probably would have sacrificed her a hundred times over for another hit, but her grandmother had been a good person, loyal to those she’d loved. And she’d loved Charlie Collins, though he wasn’t a good man.

  “I think Gramma and Atohi found Charlie under that mill house,” Raquel said, sharing with them what she’d considered the other morning. “I think Atohi used the dogs to find him. They knew he’d been hiding out in the hunting cabin. They knew something about what was going on, my mother may have told them. I think that when they found him, they moved him and the money to where they thought he belonged, where everyone else thought he already was, rather than cause more scandal.”

  The grandfather clock in the hallway gonged loudly in the silence. Noon.

  When the twelve note faded into silence, Brent nodded as if on cue, shoving his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. He looked earthy and capable, like a man who would drive a Jeep to the mountains and climb boulders for fun. His hair was thinning on top and there were laugh lines around his eyes, but he was in such good shape, they just added to his general air of approachability. “That makes sense, right, Tavey? Tyler said Atohi was the one who told him that Charlie was ‘where he belonged’?”

  Tavey nodded. “It does make sense. They wouldn’t have wanted me to know my father abandoned me. But if Charlie and Mark were dealing drugs out there? Or cooking them? Or they thought he had deliberately killed my mother?” She waved a hand in dismissal. “They wouldn’t have condoned that. Or killing people,” she added, referring to the bodies they’d found in the millpond. “I don’t think they knew that part.”

  Raquel didn’t disagree. It was likely that Charlie Collins had hidden the darkest parts of himself from the people who’d loved him. It was also likely that Bessie and Atohi had known exactly what Charlie was like and had lied to themselves about it. People lied to themselves all the time.

  “We’ll probably never know for sure,” Raquel suggested. “But if we want to know who killed
him, or what happened to Summer and to Brent’s sister, and all the other bodies we found in the pond, keeping the fact that we found the money out of the press is one way we can draw out anyone else involved.”

  “I agree.” Ryan nodded in Raquel’s direction. “We know someone else was involved. We still need to find out who took your mother, and what Abraham’s connection to the leader of the motorcycle gang means, if anything.”

  “The Warlocks were the only motorcycle gang that was using Atlanta as a way station between the East Coast and Mexico back then,” Chris said. “At least the only one I can find.” Chris used the Internet to find out all manner of unsavory things. It was what made her so good at finding missing and exploited children. Her methods were also just shy of legal on occasion. Raquel didn’t doubt that she was right.

  Raquel met Brent’s eyes. His sister had been involved with the Warlocks before she’d disappeared. He was fairly certain, but they hadn’t shared that with everyone else. She supposed she wouldn’t want everyone to know that, either, not when it didn’t make any difference, not when the girl was long dead and nothing could change what foolish things she’d done as a teenager. Of course, that was probably what her grandmother and Atohi had thought when they’d located Charlie’s body and decided it would be best not to reveal his behavior to the world.

  Yes, people lied to themselves all the time.

  6

  GEORGE CHEWED ON his lip and considered his options, fiddling with the binoculars that hung around his neck. They’d found Charlie’s body . . . and the money. Brent had told him about the exhumation—not the details, but enough that George knew he’d have to look into it. He’d known he couldn’t go, that it would seem suspicious, but he’d had to know the truth—the whole of it—so he’d snuck into the woods and watched from a distance. It seemed Gloria Belle had been right. Charlie Collins had been moved, probably by her mother.

  He wasn’t sure what to do about that. He didn’t have as many options as he’d like, not since his niece’s bones had been found at the bottom of the millpond. George’s niece had been dating Jessop’s son Nick when the two of them had disappeared in 1986. Jessop had liked using the young couple as couriers for the cash and the drugs. He’d given them a car, which had annoyed Nick, but there was no easy way to put that much money on a bike, there just wasn’t.

  Jessop, the leader of the Warlocks and George’s business partner, had asked Jessica and Nick to pick up the money and bring it back to Pennsylvania. The kids had never returned, though, and the money had disappeared.

  All these years, Jessop had believed what Mark Arrowdale told him, that the couriers had never arrived at the mill. He’d had good reason to believe it. George had backed the story up to a degree, telling Jessop that Jessica had mentioned not wanting to be involved with the drugs anymore, about her wanting to go clean.

  That hadn’t been true. Jessica had liked the adventure, had enjoyed the thrill of breaking the law.

  But in 1986, Jessop hadn’t had the luxury of exercising any doubts, either. He was under suspicion already by the Pennsylvania police and the Feds, and back in Fate, eight-year-old Summer Haven had disappeared in the woods. It had been too hot at the time, but now, now that Charlie’s body had been found, Jessop would want his money, his drugs, and likely some version of the truth, but George wasn’t ready to give it to him, not until he found the girl.

  Sweat dripped from George’s temples down his thick gray sideburns to where his binoculars lay on his chest. He lifted the bottom edge of his shirt, exposing his enormous pale belly, and absently rubbed at the sweat. He squinted against the sting of salt in his eyes.

  Still, even though he’d expected Jessop’s calls . . . and the suspicious questions, George hadn’t expected Jessop to ask him to torture Gloria Belle to find out what she knew about the money. George had known that torture wasn’t necessary. He’d had the men kidnap her so Jessop would think he took the command seriously, but scaring Gloria Belle hadn’t been his intention.

  He’d last seen Gloria Belle nearly two weeks earlier, late at night in Atlanta, in an old house that he’d bought using Summer’s name—she brought him luck, the magic girl. No one had ever discovered any of the houses he’d purchased with her stolen name, had never found the drugs or the girls or the weapons that Jessop had him move.

  “George?” she’d asked when she came stumbling into the abandoned house, the two men who worked for Jessop behind her. She had torn herself away from them, tripping on ridiculously high heels for a woman her age, her beautiful voice high with relief and a little bit of fear. “What the hell, honey?”

  George had winced and swallowed. He didn’t like it when she cursed. Her voice should never curse.

  “Hey, Gloria.” He’d flushed.

  She’d shaken her head at him and flopped into an old La-Z-Boy with a white sheet thrown over it. “Jesus, George, baby. You could’ve just said you wanted to talk to me. These idiots shot Clare.”

  She let her legs fall apart, revealing bright red undergarments. She was too old to wear that. George averted his gaze. She’d been a lady once, a beautiful lady, with a voice like an angel. She glanced over her shoulder at the two men who worked for him—or for Jessop, depending on how you looked at it.

  George shook his head at the two men. “I said quietly.”

  The taller one with the buzz cut that descended into a long rattail stared at George a minute and then shrugged. “Whatever, man. Jessop said we had to make a point.” He jerked his head at his partner, a thickset biker with a long beard and a small button nose, like Santa Claus. “Right?”

  “Yeah,” the other one agreed. “She ain’t dead.”

  George shifted his feet. His new hiking boots pinched, but his old ones had fallen apart from carrying his heavy body on repeated trips to the woods. “Okay. You can leave,” he said awkwardly, wondering if they’d listen.

  The taller man rolled his eyes. “Sure, douche bag. We’ll leave. Let us know when you’re done.” He turned to go, but the fat one approached the chair where Gloria was sitting.

  “I’ll see you, later,” he told her, putting one thick paw on her shoulder.

  Gloria Belle’s dark eyes flashed up at him, but a sly smile curled her lips. “You know what you gotta do, then.”

  A smile slithered over his face, and he flashed a quick wink at George. “Sure, sure. You finish up with George here and we’ll talk.”

  He started to leave, but Gloria stopped him with one slender hand. She shifted her head back flirtatiously. “You got a cigarette, baby?”

  He hesitated again, then shrugged. “Sure, girl.” He pulled a hard pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and tapped one out. “You need a light?”

  She’d laughed and George had felt the hair on his arms stand up. Her voice. Her voice and her laugh . . . he could feel them. She was like the place in the woods.

  “Always,” she told him with a small pout, and he tossed one to her. She caught it in one hand, her eyes going cold and hard.

  “Thanks,” she said, and lit the cigarette, dismissing him.

  The men left, and Gloria Belle arranged herself a little more appropriately in the chair. She took a long drag of the cigarette and eyed him, letting the smoke lazily slip from her lips. Her beautiful face was lined, deep creases ran around her eyes and mouth. It made him think of the mountains. Of the woods.

  He scowled at the cigarettes. They had ruined her voice, just enough that she couldn’t sing like she used to.

  “So, George”—she raised an eyebrow—“what’m I doin’ here?”

  George Mills considered her, twisting his lips to one side. “You know. Mark came back. He wasn’t supposed to.”

  “No shit?” Gloria played with the lighter in her hand. “Bet ol’ Janie was happy about that.”

  “Jane,” he corrected her. “She likes to be called Circe now.”

&n
bsp; “Well, George . . .” She held her cigarette in one hand while she fixed a bra strap with the other. “I never cared much for what that crazy white girl wanted.”

  George frowned again. “You know I don’t like when you talk like that. She is my family.”

  Her eyes flickered, like she wanted to say, I never cared much for what you wanted, either, crazy white man, but they both knew that wasn’t true. She’d always cared for what he wanted, because he had what she wanted. She wanted it now.

  “Sorry, George,” she pouted sweetly, but the hand holding the cigarette had begun to tremble.

  “That’s okay,” he hurried to assure her. “I have some for you.”

  He pulled out a small baggie and set it carefully on a glass-and-metal coffee table that looked like it had been around since the ’80s, which had been around the time he’d met Gloria Belle. Charlie Collins had made him come to a bar in Atlanta even though George didn’t like to go out. Charlie had wanted him to see his girl, Gloria Belle, even though she was black and he was white. George hadn’t cared that she was black, either, after he’d heard her sing.

  Her eyes flickered hungrily at it, but she didn’t move, not yet. She knew the game.

  “Cocaine.” She sounded neutral, like she didn’t care.

  “No.” He licked his lips. He felt stupid even saying it, always had. “China White.”

  She nodded, but her eyes had gone glassy, as if she’d already put it in her veins, as if she remembered, and in remembering, she could feel a little bit, just a taste. He’d always been amazed that people did this to themselves, that they paid him and Jessop for this poison.

  She took another drag of the cigarette.

  “Whaddya wanna know?”

  “Jessop wants to know if you know where the money is.”

  She licked her lips. “You know I don’t. We tried to find it, remember?”

  They had, several weeks after everything had gone wrong. But he had to ask. He’d told Jessop that he would ask, so he had to ask.