by Lisa Jackson
“Hey,” he said, cracking open the French door. Even then the rain slapped against his face. “What’s going on?”
She half turned, and he could see that her face was pale, her lips pinched. She moved toward him, and he stepped back, closing the door hard behind her as a gust of wind rattled the panes.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No, I’m . . .” She trailed off and shook her head.
“You were standing in the rain,” he pointed out, trying to get her going again.
She gazed up at him through pale blue eyes that seemed to look right through him. He had a strange moment of recalling her sister, Savannah’s, deeper blue ones, and that made him feel uncomfortable.
Kristina’s hair was unnaturally darkened by the rain, and she ran her right-hand fingers through it somewhat listlessly. “I was just taking a moment.”
“You couldn’t have taken your moment inside?”
“Magda came late and just left,” she said, referring to the woman who cleaned their house and also the Seaside Bancroft Development office. “She’ll be here Monday again to finish up.”
“You were outside to avoid her?”
“Leave me alone, Hale.”
He was leery of her flat tone. “If there’s something going on . . .”
“I’m just tired. I feel like we’ve been on a treadmill for a long time.”
He hardly knew what to do with her in her uncertain mood. “Got any ideas how to slow the treadmill down? The baby is coming.”
“You think I’ve forgotten?” She shot him a fierce glance.
He lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m kinda playing catch-up here. If I’m missing something, let me know.”
“You’re not missing anything. It’s just . . .” She squeezed one fist inside her other hand, looking for all the world like she was hanging on by a thread.
“We need to get ready for the baby,” Hale said. “We need to work together. You know we do.”
“We’re prepared,” she said, not looking at him. “We’ve got everything we need.”
It sounded like she was running through an inventory in her mind, and that worried Hale even more. “Do you still want our little boy?” he wanted to ask her. “Do you?” He felt angry and helpless. Because I do.
His anger dissipated as he saw how unsettled she really was. “You want a glass of wine?” he asked her as she stared into the middle distance. “I’m going to have one.”
“Okay . . .”
Returning to the kitchen, he pulled a bottle of cabernet from the built-in wine rack, which was part of the center island. Yanking open a drawer, he found the corkscrew and quickly twisted out the cork. Kristina moved slowly into the kitchen and out to the sunroom, where rain was running in rivulets down the panes. He poured each of them a glass, brought hers to her, then took a deep swallow of his own, more like a gulp.
“I know I’ve been distant,” she said as if feeling her way.
This was the first attempt she’d made to reach out to him, so he kept his mouth shut, waiting for her to go on. It was his fault, too, he knew. He’d been buried in work; the lawsuits alone took up more time than he wanted to think about, and Bancroft Development was deep into construction projects both at the coast and around the Portland area.
She suddenly turned her back to the window and faced him, forcing her lips into a smile that just missed the mark. Before she could muster up more words, the smile fell off her face entirely, clearly too difficult to maintain. Sensing that, she buried her nose in her glass and took a long swallow herself.
What does this say about us? Hale wondered as they both drank deep gulps of wine in silence. Nothing good.
When she finally took a breath and offered up something, it took him aback.
“Do you believe in sorcery?” she asked tightly.
He half choked on his wine, laughed, then swallowed back the immediate gibe that sprang to his lips. “Well . . . no,” he said carefully.
“I knew you’d say that.”
He lifted a hand in a “You got me” gesture.
“I know how crazy it sounds, but I feel like something’s got ahold of me.”
“Bad juju?”
“Hale, please . . .” She brushed past him back into the kitchen and over to the counter, setting the wineglass on the island and then bracing herself. “I’m trying really hard to be honest with you and open and sharing . . . and you’re just pissing me off.”
“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” he said, following after her.
“I’ve made some bad decisions,” she said after a moment.
“Like what?”
“Things I thought I would never do. Nothing . . . criminal,” she assured him, though a spasm crossed her face. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m fucking crazy!”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said, taken aback.
“Some stuff’s happened, and it wasn’t my fault. I made mistakes, but I honestly don’t think I was really in control at the time.”
“You gotta be more specific.”
“I think . . .” She struggled for a moment, choosing her words. “Well, maybe I am crazy, because it feels like I’m under a spell. Like I have no will . . . like I’ve been hypnotized.”
“At the risk of pissing you off some more, you seem pretty awake to me.”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” she said, on her own track. She made a sound between a laugh and a hiccup. “Maybe I am losing my mind a little. I don’t know. What do you think?”
He had no idea in the world how to answer her. “This couldn’t be pre-mommy jitters, could it?”
“You’re not listening,” she declared, looking for all the world as if she were about to cry.
“I’m trying . . . but you’re not saying anything that makes sense.”
“That’s the problem. It doesn’t make sense, but I’m not making this up. It’s like I’m all over the place. Feeling things I shouldn’t. And yet, I don’t feel them, really. Not in my heart. It’s like it’s someone else and I’m watching myself from a distance.”
Hale regarded her soberly. He hardly knew what to say. “It sounds like fear.”
She blinked a couple of times. “I am afraid.”
“Of having a baby?”
She didn’t answer.
“Have you talked to Savannah about this?” he asked.
“I called her, but she can’t come over till later. Work, I guess. It always is.” She clenched her teeth, then shook her head and shrugged her shoulders several times. “Oh, let’s not talk about it anymore.”
“Wait. We need to—”
“What do you want to do about dinner? I’m not hungry.”
Hale fought back an angry comeback. He knew better. Whenever she changed her mind like this, further discussion was impossible.
This had become another usual thing for them. Separate meal times by virtue of different schedules. The only problem was Kristina was turning into skin and bones. She was never hungry. “We could go to that Italian restaurant,” he suggested, tamping down his frustration, hoping to continue the conversation later.
“Gino’s? It’ll take too long. I want to be here when Savvy gets here.”
“How about if we order and I go pick up?”
“I said I wasn’t hungry.”
“I’ll just get something for me, then.”
She didn’t respond, and Hale gave up and headed for the phone. Unlike Kristina, he was half starved. It had been a long day even before he got to his grandfather’s house, and he’d missed lunch. The wine was going straight to his head, and he needed to counteract the effects.
He ordered chicken and artichoke linguine, a Caesar salad, and garlic bread, enough for two regardless of what she’d said, then drank a glass of water as he waited for the fifteen minutes to pass while the food was being prepared. Kristina poured herself a second glass of wine, but s
he didn’t touch it while he was there.
He drove to the restaurant and noticed she’d left her overnight bag in his car—again. She was forever borrowing the TrailBlazer for a quick trip over the mountains, then forgetting her bag. Then again, she was forgetting a lot these days, like how desperately she had wanted a child.
When he returned from Gino’s with the bag, she was nowhere in sight. He filled two plates with the food, set them on the counter, then went in search of his wife. She was sitting on the bed, leaning against the headboard and staring into space. The untouched wine was sitting on the nightstand.
“You’re starting to really worry me,” he said.
“I don’t want you to leave me, Hale. Whatever happens. Promise me you won’t leave me.”
“What the hell, Kristina?” This was a new tack for her.
“Promise me,” she insisted.
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“Even if you find out terrible things about me?”
He started to answer automatically, to lie, but stopped himself. “I’m not doing this. I’m going to eat,” he said and stalked back down the hall, his heart heavy with doubts and his head full of worries about the future.
CHAPTER 3
The rain slanted against the windshield as Savannah drove north from the TCSD toward Deception Bay and Siren Song. She’d stopped by her house—once her parents’, now hers and her sister’s—and grabbed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, her one true craving, before heading out to Siren Song and Catherine Rutledge.
The meeting over the Donatella homicides had run long, mainly because everyone in the conference room had wanted to have their say. Sheriff Sean O’Halloran, white-haired, with bright blue eyes and a growing girth, which worried him mightily, had started by saying, “A woman called in. An employee for Bancroft Development.” He glanced down at the notepad in his hand. “Ella Blessert. She works in the Seaside office and does some bookkeeping and general office work. She claims Marcus Donatella was having an affair with his administrative assistant, Hillary Enders, whose boyfriend found out about the affair and killed Marcus and his wife out of jealousy but made it look like payback for the real estate debacle. The boyfriend’s name is . . .” He frowned down at his notes. “Kyle Furstenberg.”
“Did you talk to Blessert?” Lang asked the sheriff.
“I took the call,” Clausen answered. “She didn’t want to be overheard, so she just gave us the brief version.”
“How does Blessert know this?” Lang asked.
Clausen shook his head. “All I know is she became friendly with Enders. Girlfriends. They’d go to lunch whenever Blessert went to the Donatella trailer at Bancroft Bluff, where Enders worked.”
Lang said, remembering, “When that project was finished, Donatella moved the construction trailer to his next project, the restaurant they were building just outside the city limits of Garibaldi. What happened to Enders?”
“She moved with them,” Savannah answered. “I interviewed Hillary Enders at the time of the homicides,” she reminded them. “The restaurant was only half completed when the Donatellas were killed, so that’s when construction stopped. The trailer’s still there, but we took all the files from it. The Donatellas were in that project alone, not with the Bancrofts.”
“The project’s dead, right?” Lang said. “Died with the Donatellas.”
Savvy looked to O’Halloran, who nodded and said, “Seems to be. The Donatellas didn’t have children, and no one in the family’s stepped up.”
Everyone thought that over, but nothing had really changed since the last time they’d gone over the particulars, except the information about Marcus’s supposed affair with Hillary Enders.
“Clausen, make a date with Blessert and see what else she has to say. If she doesn’t want to be overheard, bring her to the station, or at least get her out of the office somehow,” the sheriff said.
“Okay,” the detective answered. Clausen was in a race with O’Halloran on whose girth could grow the widest, although currently Savannah had them both beat.
“What about Enders and Furstenberg?” Lang asked.
“Go ahead and follow up with them,” the sheriff instructed.
“Shouldn’t it be me?” Savvy asked. Since I interviewed Hillary first?
“Since you’re a short timer, let’s have Lang do the follow-up,” O’Halloran said.
“I’m out for only a month or so. I’m not the baby’s parent,” she protested.
The sheriff nodded, as if she’d answered her own question, which, actually, she had.
Clausen said, “Enders is living in Seaside now, according to Blessert. No job since she worked for the Donatellas. Just drifting, apparently.”
Savannah held her tongue, though she still wanted to jump in. Knowing why she was being overlooked didn’t make it any easier.
“What took Blessert so long to come forward?” Lang asked.
“Maybe she didn’t want to give up her friend?” O’Halloran hiked his shoulders.
“Blessert made it sound like Enders and Furstenberg had a falling-out after the killings,” Clausen added. “Maybe Blessert just decided the time was right.”
The three men were looking at each other and subtly edging Savannah out. She tried to hold down her rising blood pressure, but it was a trick. Working to keep the edge out of her voice, she said, “Marcus and Chandra Donatella were tied up and shot in the back of the head execution-style. Is Kyle Furstenberg the kind of guy who would do something like that?”
When Savvy first interviewed Hillary Enders, the girl had been clearly shaken to the core and lost, asking, “Why? Why?” over and over again and squeezing Savannah’s hand as if she were afraid to let go. If Hillary’s boyfriend was a stone-cold killer, it didn’t read right that he would be with someone like Hillary.
“I’ll shake down Furstenberg and see what falls out,” Lang said. “And I’ll try to get Hillary Enders to the station. See what she says while surrounded by ‘the law.’”
“What should I do?” Savannah asked.
All three of them turned to her as if they wondered why she was still in the room. She could read their collective expressions: nothing. They didn’t want her anywhere near a crime scene in her condition, nor did they want her interviewing witnesses, informants, and the like. They didn’t want her around police work of any kind until after she’d given birth.
Well, screw that. The absolute last thing she wanted to do was sit and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. “I’ll check with the Bancrofts again,” she offered up. She knew there could possibly be some objection to having her interview her sister’s in-laws, but it would just be a follow-up call and in many ways she was the natural person for the job. Kristina would just love being requestioned, but too damn bad.
“Okay.” O’Halloran seemed relieved that that was all she’d asked for.
Now Savannah narrowed her eyes through the gloom outside and tamped down her annoyance. She’d enjoyed working at the sheriff’s department until her pregnancy became visible and everyone started treating her like an outsider or, worse yet, like she should be handled with kid gloves. She liked the people she worked with as a rule. But this was no fun.
It’s just temporary. Don’t let it get to you, she reminded herself sternly.
Shaking her head, she thought back to the case. If Hillary Enders’s boyfriend had killed Marcus in a jealous rage, the blood money message sure seemed like an elaborate deflection. Also, it was kind of cold, and if it wasn’t premeditated, it was certainly opportunistic. Who was this guy?
And why take out the wife? she asked herself, something that had bothered her in the back of her mind. Chandra Donatella wasn’t to blame for the affair; she was a victim of it, for crying out loud. Unless she was somehow involved? Or maybe she was just in the way, though killing her, too, didn’t really seem like the actions of a spurned lover. Those kinds of murders were born out of passion. But this was cold. Ice cold.
If
Savannah were asked to place a bet, she’d make it against the motive being jealousy. It just didn’t wash. But they didn’t have much else to go on, so she supposed at least it was a direction to move in.
She checked the clock on the dash: 7:15 p.m. She was a little bit late and wondered if Catherine was likely to rap her knuckles. Ha! Then her thoughts turned to her sister. Kristina and Hale’s house was in Deception Bay, not all that far from the Siren Song lodge. Maybe she should try to stop by first and find out what was wrong, but then she would really be late for her meeting with Catherine.
And don’t you want the time to ask Hale and Kristina about the Bancroft-Donatella connection again? Whether they like it or not, they’re connected to Bankruptcy Bluff.
Savannah made a face. Nope. There was no time. She would have to see them after her visit with Catherine.
Keeping her Escape aimed toward the access road that turned off Highway 101 and led to the long Siren Song drive, Savannah stared through the rhythmically slapping window wipers to the darkness beyond. By the time she had angled the Ford onto the rutted lane that led to the lodge, the bumpy drive was filled with overflowing mud puddles and it was almost seven thirty. She parked in front of the wrought-iron gate, letting her headlights wash the enormous shingled building. A few minutes later she cut the engine.
She didn’t have to wait long. Catherine herself appeared in a dark, hooded cloak, walking carefully toward the gate that secured the property, carrying a flashlight and a sturdy black umbrella, apparently in case the hood failed. She unlocked the gate as Savannah climbed from her car. “Park over there,” Catherine ordered, motioning to a wet grassy section, so Savannah got back behind the wheel, nosed the SUV around, and parked where Catherine had indicated. She gingerly skirted the puddles; and once inside the gate, which Catherine pulled shut with a high, keening wail of protest from its rusted hinges, she waited while Catherine relocked it; and they walked together beneath her umbrella to the front door.
Inside the lodge, Savannah let her eyes sweep over the heavy, overstuffed furniture and the Tiffany lamps with their soft light. To her surprise, there was an old, bubble-eyed console television in one corner of the room. Old technology at best, but still unexpected, given Catherine’s obsession with keeping the current world outside of her gates.
