by Lisa Jackson
“Be patient,” Catherine warned. “Unless something unforeseeable happens, Earl will be here.” She exhaled heavily. “I may need you to do something else for me, too.”
“What?”
“Let’s wait until after . . . everything gets taken care of. I’ll be coming downstairs in a few minutes. I can smell that Isadora’s making dinner. Chicken? We’ll eat and then move to the great hall, and I’ll let everyone fuss over me. You’ll leave early, as you always do. Go to your room and wait. When everything quiets down and everyone’s in bed, watch out your east window, toward the graveyard. Earl will give you a signal. A quick flash of light.”
“What if someone else wakes up and sees it?”
“I’ll leave my door open a crack, so they’ll come to me first.”
“But what will you say?” Ravinia asked.
“I’ll tell them it’s you, going over the wall again.”
Savannah drove north through the rain, which seemed to be lessening a little. At least she hoped it was. There was water rushing in a thin film across the road. The snow was completely gone, washed away.
She couldn’t wait to get to Hale’s house. Hale and Kristina’s house. It wasn’t right, but it was all she could do. She drove through Deception Bay, past the turnoff to Bancroft Bluff, and then a few miles farther, she saw the entrance to Declan Bancroft’s house. Had Declan had an affair with Catherine or, despite all Catherine’s claims to the contrary, with her sister, Mary? Could the boy whom Catherine called Declan Jr. really be Declan Sr.’s son? How would you know? There was no listing of the fathers of the Siren Song girls, again, according to Catherine. There was only A Short History of the Colony, and that had been written by a man who, even within the text of the book, freely admitted that some of it was conjecture. Herman Smythe was no historian. He was just an older man who was living out his days at . . .
“Seagull Pointe,” she said aloud. The assisted living facility /nursing home would be coming up on her right very soon. She hadn’t been there since Madeline “Mad Maddie” Turnbull’s death, but Smythe was a resident, too. She’d planned on stopping in and talking to him, but, well, she’d been kind of overwhelmed with the changes in her life.
But now here she was.
Might as well try to see him.
Hale looked down the length of the dining table at the cartons of food he’d brought from Gino’s. His grandfather sat at one end; his mother at the other. Janet couldn’t forgive Declan for, at least in her mind, contributing to the failure of her marriage by having any kind of relations with the Rutledge sisters. Declan seemed perplexed by her cold distance, but it had been the same between them for years, so Hale suspected he had to have some clue.
Victoria was feeding the baby a bottle, but little Declan was starting to fuss, and the nanny heaved a huge sigh. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
Janet rolled her eyes at Hale, silently saying, “How long are you going to let this go on?”
“I’ll take him,” Hale said, and he carried the baby back to his bedroom and walked him around until he fell asleep.
He wondered what was keeping Savvy. Work, maybe. He wondered if she’d talked to Hamett and Evinrud. Probably. It gave him a slightly sick feeling to think what they might be saying about him, but Savannah was a cop and knew better than he did what to expect in a murder investigation. She could separate fact from fiction, good cop from bad, truth from lies.
He snuggled baby Declan back into his bassinet and then returned to the dining room to find Janet standing on her feet, back rigid, glaring at her father, who was still sitting. “Do you know what he said?” she asked, swinging around to Hale, her eyes bright with fury. “He said he has a son!”
“I said I have a grandson,” Declan said, sweeping a hand toward Hale, then bringing it back to rest on the tabletop, but not before waving it at Janet, as if she were a noxious fume.
“You said son. Who with? That whore, Mary Rutledge . . . Beeman . . . or whatever the hell?”
“I do not have a son.” Declan’s face was turning red with anger.
“I’m leaving,” Janet said. “I love the baby, Hale. He’s so precious, but I can’t stand this.” She swept toward the den.
“I don’t have a son!”
Hale followed after her, recalling how just the other day his grandfather had mistakenly said he had a son. Was he just losing it a little, like Hale had thought at the time? Or was Janet right and there was something more . . . like Declan Jr. . . ?
“You’re leaving tonight?” he said to her.
“I sure as hell am. And you need to do something about that girl. She’s hopeless. If she’s the best they’re offering at that nanny school where Kristina picked her out, that place should be written up!”
“She was pretty,” Hale said.
“What?”
“I told Kristina she could pick whomever she wanted, and she picked Victoria from some résumés the school sent. Victoria was the prettiest.”
“That’s sick, Hale. Really.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Janet zipped up her bag and straightened. “I notice you’re not dying to get me to stay and help you. Is it because I can’t get along with my father, or do you have someone else in mind, hmmm?”
“If you’re talking about Savannah, don’t let your imagination run wild.”
“It’s not running wild, dear.” She leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ve got a pretty clear idea of what’s going on, and for the record, I don’t approve.”
Hale felt anger rush through him. “What the hell?”
“It’s too soon. And this incestuous relationship you have going reminds me too much of your father and grandfather, hanging around Siren Song with their tongues out. It’s sick.”
“That’s not my relationship with Savvy.”
“Yet.” She picked up her bag, but Hale took it from her. Then he followed her back toward the dining room, where she threw a baleful look at Declan, who declared, “I don’t have a son, Janet!”
“Well, Mary had one about nine months after her affair with you. When I learned about her and Preston, I checked. If he wasn’t your son, are you saying he was Preston’s?”
“I’m not saying anything. Ack!”
“Maybe you don’t know,” she said tautly, heading for the front door. Before she twisted the knob, she said, “But I think you do.”
Herman Smythe was tickled pink that a young lady cop had come to see him, and he waved his guest to a chair in his meager room while he sat in a wheelchair. Savvy did as he bade her, though somewhat reluctantly. Her steps had slowed as soon as she was about to enter the building, because she’d wanted to turn around and jump in the car and race to see Hale and the baby. It was precisely her own eagerness to hurry to them, the two men in her life, that got her feet moving again. She was worried about how much it mattered. She needed to get a grip on her own emotions and fast.
And then she’d gotten the call from Detective Hamett, asking her to come in the next day and talk to them about Kristina and Hale St. Cloud.
That was what was preying on her mind now, while Herman was going on about his daughter, Dinah, who came to see him regularly.
“I’m dying, you know,” he said, snapping Savvy’s attention back to him. “One of those cancer things.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “First, it was this kind, and then it was that kind. Dinah has some herbal remedies, but when your number’s up, your number’s up. So, what did you come to see an old man about?”
“I recently read A Short History of the Colony, and I thought I’d like to meet the man who wrote it.”
“You investigating something that involves Siren Song?” he asked keenly, his bushy eyebrows lifting.
“Well, not really . . . I met with Catherine Rutledge, and it reminded me that I’d been meaning to read your book,” Savvy said, stumbling around.
“Ah, Catherine. You know about her sister, Mary, don’t you?” He
smiled in remembrance. “I should probably be ashamed of it. My ex-wife certainly thought I should, but I was one of Mary’s lovers. I think I shared that in the book.”
“You mentioned her sexuality,” Savannah said.
“Mary was something, all right.” He winked at her. “Dinah gets tired of me saying it, but I was quite a swordsman in my day.” While Savvy was wondering how to respond to that, he went on. “Mary got crazy, though. No doubt about it. It just got worse and worse.”
“You say in the book that many of Mary’s children never knew who their fathers were.”
“That’s right. I think maybe one or two of them’s mine, but Mary would never let anyone know. I could get a test now, I suppose, but Catherine keeps those girls locked up pretty tight, and, well, it’s just never happened.”
“Catherine told me that Mary put down Declan Bancroft as one of the possible fathers of a son that she named Declan.”
He frowned. “She adopted her sons out.”
“Yes. And one she named Declan.”
“No, I don’t remember that.... She did name one Silas, I thought.”
“Silas?”
“I don’t remember Declan,” he said, mulling that over. “Someone said that Declan Bancroft was spending a lot of time there for a while. That was after my time. Mary would suddenly be tired of whomever she was with and would just give one of us the boot.” He chuckled. “You always hoped it was some other guy getting kicked out, but it happened to us all eventually.”
“Did you ever interact with the children?”
“Nooo . . . Catherine would never have allowed that, and we didn’t want it, either. She finally burned that bunkhouse down, just to get rid of some of those guys who wouldn’t leave. Then she locked the gates.”
Savannah remembered the passage about the bunkhouse. “You’re sure that was Catherine? You didn’t say that in the book.”
“Catherine said, ‘You have to burn them out.’ If she didn’t do it, she had somebody who did. Not that it was a bad thing, I suppose. Mary was getting crazier, and Catherine wanted a better life for the girls.”
They talked for a few more moments, with Herman reminiscing some more, and then Savvy stood up and said she had to leave.
“You made an old man happy, Detective,” he said, clasping her hand. When she was almost out the door, he said, “Oh! Did I tell you she had a son named Silas?”
“Well, you said you thought so.”
“He wasn’t Declan’s boy. He was Preston’s. Mary always hated Janet Bancroft, and she got her hooks into Janet’s husband and woo-wee. . . .” He mock shuddered. “Lucky one of ’em didn’t kill the other.”
Well, someone killed Mary, Savvy thought while driving the rest of the way to Hale’s. She wasn’t sure whether she believed Herman’s account that Preston St. Cloud had fathered another son besides Hale. He’d said himself there was no proof about the paternity of most of Mary’s children. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to lay that one on Hale without proof.
When she got to the St. Cloud house, she saw the outdoor lights had been left on for her. She glanced down at her watch and groaned. She’d told Hale she would come for dinner, and though they hadn’t set a time, it was pretty late.
As she pulled into the drive, she noticed Janet’s rental was gone, and then she looked over to see Hale coming through the front door. It gave her a warm feeling to think he’d been waiting for her, but then again, maybe he’d been worried.
Savvy stepped out of the car into the faintest of drizzles, the outdoor lights shining in her face. Hale came toward her, a smile of greeting on his face.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she apologized.
“No set time,” he assured her easily. “Just glad you’re here. You need me to bring anything from your car?”
She patted her messenger bag, which was slung over her shoulder. “My pump’s in my messenger bag. I’m good.”
“If you want to spend the night, we have more room. Mom left about twenty minutes ago.”
Savvy was surprised. “She just got here.”
“I know. The problem is, she and Declan have a lot of issues that neither of them will let go of.”
They walked along the sidewalk to the front porch together. Being this close to Hale, with the misting rain surrounding them, feeling now more like a soft caress, Savvy tried to hold down her racing heart. She seemed to be infected with a kind of sexual madness herself.
He gazed down at her, and his lips parted, as if he were about to say something.
Savannah focused on his lips. A thrill shot through her at the thought of them crushing down on hers. Good God, but she needed to get a grip.
Victoria came out to the porch, wearing a jacket, her purse over her shoulder, heading for her blue Toyota, taking a break from nanny duty. “Your mom left? It wasn’t because of me, was it?” she asked anxiously.
“No,” Hale told her and then indicated that Savvy should enter the house ahead of him. She stepped inside, both gladdened and a little disappointed by the nanny’s appearance. She’d thought for just a moment that he was going to kiss her.
The light flashed quickly. A small jet of illumination into the black night and rain. Ravinia almost missed it, it was so brief, but she was already dressed in her darkest pair of pants and a blue shirt. Her boots and cloak were hanging in the storeroom, and she crept down the stairs and through the kitchen, banging her shin in her haste, enough that she had to bite back a cry of pain. Damn. How many times had she sneaked away with no problem at all? She had to relax. Stop hurrying.
The wind had turned into a rustle when Ravinia stepped outside, sliding a little in slippery mud that had mired onto the flagstone path that ran around the east side of the lodge. She hurried as fast as she dared toward the graveyard, then picked her way carefully through the headstones to where she could see a faint glow. Earl had turned the flashlight beam toward the ground and behind a boulder and a rhododendron toward the back of the plot where he had already been digging.
“What’s this?” she whispered when she reached him.
He pointed downward, his finger barely visible. “Mary.”
“Oh.”
When she saw the pine box that held her mother, she felt a strange guilt. Like she was betraying this woman that she didn’t even know. But then Earl needed her help to carry the box toward the lodge. Ravinia strained with all her might. She was barely up to the task and just managed to hang on to the slippery wood, her arms aching from the effort. They worked their way slowly to where her mother’s real grave lay and set the box down.
The rain had finally abated to a soft drizzle. Earl looked at the ground in front of Mary’s headstone and laid a hand on the wet earth.
“What?” Ravinia whispered.
“It was dug up recently.”
“No. It’s just messed up because of this damn rain.”
“We needed the rain to explain why the earth will be disturbed,” he muttered.
She gazed down at his damp blue baseball cap and the slick black jacket he wore. She needed better clothes for the weather. Something more weatherproof than this wool.
“Someone’s been here,” he said, his words so quiet, she had to strain to hear. Then he went back to the first grave, smoothed it over, then returned with his shovel.
“No one’s been here,” she told him, certain he was imagining it.
Earl bent down and began shoveling the dirt. He placed careful shovelfuls on the ground beside the grave while Ravinia watched and shivered. It felt like forever before Earl slowed down and finally stopped. Ravinia looked into a deep hole.
“Shouldn’t there be a casket by now?” she asked.
“There never was a casket.”
“So . . . where are the bones?”
Earl looked toward the west, and Ravinia followed his gaze, getting a bad feeling.
“Earl?” she asked, her shiver turning into a deep body shudder.
“He’s gone,” was all he sai
d.
Ravinia was still shaking by the time she entered Catherine’s room. Though she had shed her cloak and boots, the hems of her pant legs were soaking wet and left a damp trail up the stairs and into her aunt’s bedroom.
“Well?” Catherine asked tautly.
“We moved Mary’s casket into the grave with the headstone. Earl says, with all this rain, the police won’t notice that it’s been recently dug. Although, he sure seems to be able to tell those kinds of things. He says they won’t be looking, though.”
“What are you talking about?” Catherine struggled out of bed and lit the lamp again. “Close the door,” she ordered in a harsh whisper.
Ravinia did as she asked, then turned back to her, her whole body feeling like it was clenched. “The bones were gone.”
“What?”
“They weren’t in the grave.” Catherine stared at her hard, and Ravinia added, “Even before we started digging, Earl noticed something. He said someone had been there.”
Catherine got to her feet, steadying herself for a moment. When Ravinia stepped forward, she snapped, “No, no. I’m fine. Just got up too fast. I hate being so feeble.”
“But you’re getting better.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Don’t worry. What else did Earl say?”
“Nothing. He just said, ‘He’s gone,’ and then we put Mary’s casket in the grave and covered it up.”
“This wasn’t Declan Jr.,” Catherine said, her expression hard to read. “This isn’t right.”
“Who’s Declan Jr.?”
“The son of the man who tried to rape me.”
“The one whose bones should have been in the grave? If it’s his father, maybe he did take them. I mean, who else would want them?” Ravinia demanded.
“He doesn’t know. He thinks someone else is his father.” Catherine waved her to silence, her face a study in concentration.
After a few minutes of complying, Ravinia had had enough. “What do you want me to do?”
“I’m still thinking.”
