“My name is Harper.” She kept her voice measured. “This is Miles. We heard about what happened with Xavier Rayne. We work for the Savannah Daily News.” At the mention of the newspaper, he flinched, and she hurried to finish. “The police have asked us to write about it. To spread the word. In case someone’s seen him or knows where he might be.” She took a step forward, keeping her eyes steady. “We just want to help.”
“Oh, man.” He rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. “I didn’t think the press would find out so soon.”
His eyes were bloodshot. His shoulders sagged a little, as if the day pushed down on him. There was something boyish and vulnerable about him that Harper instinctively liked.
“Who is it, Hunter?” A woman about his age appeared just behind him. Resting a hand on his shoulder, she moved him aside gently.
She was stunningly beautiful. Long, honey-blond hair hung across one shoulder; her makeup-free face was fine-boned and poreless. She wore a flowing white skirt so long the hem brushed the tops of her small, bare feet. A white cotton sweater exposed one narrow shoulder.
This had to be the actress, Harper thought. Cara something.
“They’re from the newspaper in Savannah.” There was an unspoken warning in Hunter’s voice. “They want to know about Xavier.”
“We just want to spread the word,” Miles interjected. “To get people looking out for him.”
“He hasn’t even been missing a day,” Hunter began to argue, but Cara cut him off.
“He’s been gone since two A.M. We can’t assume he’s okay. Someone could have kidnapped him or drugged him.…” Her eyes filled with tears and she stopped, biting her lip. After a second, she stepped back and motioned for them to follow her.
“Please come in. We’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”
4
Inside, the house seemed bigger than it had from outside and, if possible, more impressive. A wide central hallway led in a straight line from the front door to the back. Harper could see the angry gray ocean through the window at the end. The air was cool and dry, and carried the scent of some exotic incense with a faint and not unpleasant hint of cigarette smoke.
As she followed Cara and Hunter, she caught glimpses of rooms, each a blur of bohemian elegance: a large kitchen with towering white cabinets and a wide-board floor, a dining room with silk wallpaper in delft blue, a long oak table bearing candelabra dripping wax. A curved, stately staircase with a heavy oak bannister that drew her eyes upward to a light-filled corridor above.
Gradually, she became aware of music. Somewhere in the house, a woman was singing mournfully. The ghostly sound made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise.
The living room was at the back of the house. When they entered, all the curtains were closed, shrouding it in gloom. Cara hurried to open them—ripping the fabric aside with quick, impatient movements, revealing a room as perfectly disheveled as a spread from a design magazine.
Beneath soaring ceilings, sofas and deep armchairs covered in white linen faced each other across a glass-topped coffee table littered with cigarette packs, melted candles, and empty glasses.
“Hunter”—Cara turned to where he had stopped in the doorway, his hands hanging limp at his sides—“could you get some coffee? I’m so tired I think I might pass out.”
He pivoted instantly, as if relieved to have an excuse to leave the room.
Harper and Miles perched stiffly on a sofa. Cara placed herself across from them. Her skirts billowed as she sat, a cloud of gauzy fabric.
It was hard not to stare at her. She was as delicate as a fawn. Her long slim wrists looked breakable. She was too thin to be healthy—every bone seemed to stand out in relief beneath skin tanned pale gold. But the overall effect was striking.
“I’m sorry about that,” she apologized disarmingly. “None of us slept much. It’s been chaos since we noticed Zay … since Xavier was gone.”
She stumbled over what Harper presumed was his nickname.
“I guess I should start with the obvious question.” She kept her tone gentle, unthreatening. “Do you have any idea where Xavier might have gone?”
Cara shook her head. “We only know a few people on the island. Most of his friends are in Savannah or Atlanta. We’ve called his agent, his manager, his mom … no one has seen him.”
She had a pleasant voice—soft, with a curiously flat accent that seemed to come from nowhere in particular.
Before Harper could ask another question, Miles noticed an acoustic guitar leaning near a spindly music stand.
“Is that Xavier’s guitar?” he asked. “The one he left on the beach?”
Cara turned to look at it, her chin trembling. Her reply was a whisper. “Yes.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?”
When she didn’t object, he walked over, picking it up to examine it. “This is a limited-edition Gibson.” His voice held something like wonder. “It’s a beautiful instrument. It’s hard to believe he’d leave it behind voluntarily.”
Cara tried to speak but no words emerged. She brushed a tear from her cheek with a quick, unconscious gesture. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I keep doing this. I just want him to come back.”
“Don’t apologize,” Harper told her. “We understand.”
Setting the guitar down as carefully as if it were made of glass, Miles returned to the couch. “Is there anything you can think of that might have caused him to run away?” he asked.
She shook her head. “None of this makes any sense.”
The singing had stopped at some point. In the quiet, Harper could hear the clatter of cups from the kitchen, water running. The house was big, but sound carried through it. If something had happened to Xavier in this house, they would all have been able to hear it.
She decided to wait to ask more questions until Hunter was back in the room. There was an angry edge to him—she had a feeling he’d reveal more than Cara, who was giving them nothing but tragic fragility.
“This is a beautiful house,” she said, stalling. “How long have you lived here?”
Cara looked around as if she’d never thought about it. “It’s really Zay’s place. He rents it.”
“He doesn’t own it?” Miles asked.
“He wants to buy it.” Cara gave a sad smile. “It’s the main thing we disagree on. I want him to move to LA, where I live. He wants to stay here.”
“Why doesn’t he want to move?” Harper asked.
Cara straightened her skirt with a nervous swish of her fingers. “He says LA is filled with cheats and fakers.”
Her lips were tight—this was clearly a sensitive subject.
“Didn’t he grow up in Savannah?” Miles asked.
Cara nodded. “His dad was from here. He died when Zay was ten. After that, he and his mom moved to Atlanta. Zay moved back after he left Juilliard.”
Harper scribbled quick notes in a pad resting on her knee. Cara’s gaze glanced off it like rain bouncing off a stone.
“Who else lives in the house?” Harper asked.
“Hunter.” Cara gestured vaguely at the kitchen. “He plays keyboards in Zay’s band. They’re very close.”
That was where Harper had seen him. He was in some of the photos she’d come across earlier that day, standing onstage harshly lit by the spotlight.
“Don’t forget Allegra.” Hunter stood in the doorway, holding four mugs by the handles, some leaning perilously.
“Yes,” Cara glanced at him before turning back to Harper and Miles. “You haven’t met her yet. She sings backup on his new album.”
While she talked, Hunter set the coffee down on the low table, moving candle holders and ashtrays to make space.
When he finished, he dropped down onto an overstuffed chair and lit a cigarette.
Reaching out gracefully for a cup, Cara gestured for Harper and Miles to do the same. “I can’t be the only one who needs caffeine.”
Hunter blew out a stream of smoke a
nd made a dismissive sound. “Nobody sleeps when Xavier’s pulling one of his acts.”
Holding her coffee with both hands, Cara pretended not to hear him. But this was what Harper had been waiting for. She turned to Hunter. “What do you mean by ‘one of his acts’? Has Xavier disappeared before?”
“He’s always taking off without telling us.” His voice was clipped. “He’s a drama queen, like all the best artists.”
“Hunter, that’s not fair.” Cara fired a look at him, but he didn’t back down.
“Come on. New York six months ago. He walked out of a recording session and checked out of his hotel and disappeared. Stu was furious.”
“That was different,” Cara insisted, but he waved his cigarette at her, smoke trailing.
“It’s exactly the same.” His voice rose. “Xavier does this shit, Cara. He does. New Mexico, last year. Walked off the stage because he didn’t like the sound he was getting. Got on a plane and left. Stu spent two days trying to get him to come back.”
“I’m sorry, who’s Stu?” Harper interrupted.
There was a pause as the two of them exchanged a simmering look. It was Cara who replied. “Stuart Dillon. The band’s manager.”
“He’s getting a flight back from Paris tonight,” Hunter cut in. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to abandon his vacation to look for Xavier.”
“You have to stop comparing this with other times.” Cara looked increasingly tense. “Every other time he was working, and he got upset about something in the music. This time he’s not working. This is downtime. He doesn’t feel ignored. Everything was fine.”
Hunter gave her a weighted look Harper couldn’t read. Her face reddened, but she said nothing, turning instead to Harper and Miles and insisting, “I know Xavier. I love him. He wouldn’t run away like this.”
“He’ll come back.” A pixieish young woman stood in the doorway from the hall. She was tiny—under five feet tall—with short, glossy dark hair and huge eyes. Like Cara, she wore no shoes. “Stop talking like he won’t come back.”
With a frustrated sound, Hunter leaped to his feet and stalked to the window.
Cara, though, calmed down. “Of course he will.” She patted the sofa next to her. “Come here, Legs. Do you want some coffee?”
“No caffeine,” the girl said. “I already can’t sleep.” She walked across, taking a seat next to Cara on the sofa. Her gaze was disconcertingly direct as she glanced from Miles to Harper. “I’m sorry—I don’t know who you are.”
A South Carolina accent, thick as cane syrup, lay on every word. Harper knew where she’d grown up without even asking her.
“They’re from the Savannah newspaper,” Cara explained. “They want to write about Xavier. To help us find him.”
“I think he’s just gone to be with friends,” Allegra announced. “He does this kind of thing sometimes.”
“Could you tell me in your own words what happened last night? When and why he left?” Harper included them all in the question, but it was Cara who spoke first.
“Nothing happened. That’s what’s so strange. I came in from LA around six o’clock. We had some wine. Allegra cooked dinner.” She rested a hand on the girl’s arm—an almost maternal gesture. “Xavier was fine. Tired, maybe. But in a good mood.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Harper saw Hunter turn from the window to watch as she continued. “Zay and Hunter played the new music they’ve been working on. We talked for hours, the way we always do when we’re all together. I was tired after traveling so I went to bed around one. Hunter and Legs both stayed up.”
“After Cara went to bed, we talked some more,” Hunter said, picking up the story. “Drank some more. At about two in the morning, we were all going to bed, but Xavier said he was too wired to sleep and he wanted to go down to the beach. That’s the last time I saw him.”
“Was this unusual?” Harper glanced at the three of them. “Going to the beach in the middle of the night? Even in February?”
“He loves it there,” Allegra explained. “He says he takes strength from the ocean. It inspires him.”
As if this irritated her, Cara set her coffee mug down a little hard. “Zay has insomnia,” she said, simply. “He says watching the sea helps him relax.”
“So none of you thought anything about it until…?” Harper glanced back and forth between them.
“Until this morning.” Hunter walked back to sit down, picking up his cigarettes again, but not lighting one. “He wasn’t in his room. It didn’t look like he’d slept in his bed. There’d been a storm overnight. We went looking for him outside, on the beach—he wasn’t there.”
“I hate to ask this but, have there been any signs of trouble?” Miles asked, delicately. “Any sign that he’s depressed? Has he been using drugs at all?”
Cara dropped her eyes, the resigned set to her shoulders said she’d expected this question. Allegra looked outraged. “He doesn’t touch drugs,” she insisted. “He wouldn’t.”
“And he isn’t depressed.” Hunter’s voice was firm. “Our album just came out. Things are looking good.”
Miles considered this. “I just keep thinking about how he left that guitar behind,” he said. “I’ve never met a musician who wasn’t protective of his instrument. Was it like Xavier to leave his guitar out there all night, exposed to the sand and salt water?”
Hunter and Cara exchanged a long look.
“He just forgot,” Allegra insisted.
But Cara shook her head.
“Xavier would cut off his right arm before he’d leave that guitar behind.” She looked from Harper to Miles, her eyes filling with anguished tears. “Please help us. I think something terrible might have happened to him.”
5
Miles and Harper caught rush-hour traffic on the way back, and it was after six o’clock when they walked into the newsroom. By then, most of the day-shift reporters had gone home. Only DJ was still at his desk, headphones on.
The second she sat down, he ripped them off and spun around to face her. “Tell me Xavier Rayne isn’t dead,” he demanded. “I’ve got tickets for his show next month and I don’t think I can get a refund.”
“Maybe he’s lost.” She plugged her scanner in to charge. “People get lost.”
“Seriously, though. What do you think happened?” He rolled closer. “Has he gone on a bender or something? Is he a junkie?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she admitted. She thought about that guitar. “But I’m not getting a good feeling.”
“Ah, dammit. It’s always the talented ones.” DJ sighed. “His new album was going to put Savannah on the map.”
“Savannah’s already on maps,” she said.
“Yeah, but he was going to make us look cool.” His tone was doleful.
Across the room, Baxter appeared in the doorway of the glass office. Spotting Harper, she hurried across, her navy blazer fluttering behind her. “What’ve you got?”
“All anyone knows is he got drunk, walked down to the beach, and disappeared,” Harper said. “There are a few possibilities but drowning is the obvious one.”
Miles, who was uploading his pictures at a desk nearby, walked over to join them. “He could have had a breakdown—the housemates implied he was emotionally fragile.” He glanced at Harper. “Also, I don’t know about you but I wasn’t buying their ‘everything was fine until he disappeared’ act.”
“They definitely weren’t telling us everything,” Harper said. “I got the feeling they were protecting him somehow.”
“Whatever happened to him, if he doesn’t show up by morning we’ll have the national press on this,” Miles said.
“Were there any TV crews out there?” Baxter asked.
Harper gave her a significant look. “Not a single one.”
The editor gave a thin smile. “Call the island cops—find out what kind of search they’re doing. If they’ve got boats out looking for him, we run it on the front page. I’ll pull some images from th
e wire. Let’s put together a package—who he is, his music. What’s his story? Was he an alcoholic? A druggie?”
DJ, who had been pretending not to listen, couldn’t take it anymore. He spun his chair around. “His new album is all about his dad,” he informed them, eagerly. “I think he was shot to death in Savannah when Xavier was a kid.”
Harper made a mental note to look through the old files.
Baxter pointed a finger at DJ. “Drop whatever you’re working on and help Harper with this. I want a front-page spread ready to go by ten o’clock.”
As everyone got to work, she headed to her office, her last words floating across the rows of empty desks: “I’m going home to get some rest. I’ll be back at ten. Call me if a body turns up.”
This was the system that had been developed since she took over for Paul Dells. She came in at nine, worked all day, went home for a quick break, then returned to work until midnight.
DJ rolled his chair closer to Harper’s, not bothering to hide his eagerness. “How should we divide this up?”
He covered education, but often got roped into helping her on bigger stories. He rarely objected. His own beat wasn’t, he freely admitted, as sexy as hers.
“You know Rayne’s music better than I do—why don’t you write about that: his career, his new album. Anything you don’t know, ask Miles,” she told him. “I’ll handle all the cop stuff.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He spun back around as she logged into her computer.
There was something that had been bothering her since she first saw Admiral’s Row. Opening an internet map, she located the lane—a tiny dash, next to the sea—and traced the island’s edge until she located Cedarwood Drive, where she’d first run into Tom Southby.
She stared at the map for a long time, and then she picked up the phone.
The Tybee officer who’d tipped her off about Rayne’s disappearance answered on the first ring. “Tom Southby.”
“This is Harper McClain,” she said. “Sorry to bother you, but I’m checking in on the Rayne case—is there any news?”
“Nothing so far. We’ve contacted family and friends, checked with hospitals and all the morgues in the area. No sign of him, dead or alive.”
Revolver Road Page 3
