by Bush, Nancy
September tried to think up more questions to ask him, but she only circled and recircled the same ones. In the end, she merely thanked him. He got to his feet, and as she was trying not to look up and meet his gaze, he said, “I’m waiting for you to order me not to leave town, or something.”
“Don’t leave town . . . or something.”
She said it before she could stop herself. Stupid. She was looking for his approval? Still wanted him to like her?
A smile spread across his lips. “You’re still in there, aren’t you? The September Rafferty from high school.”
Instantly she thought of their night together, and the flare in his eyes said he remembered, too. She’d been too bold that spring night. Too eager. Wanted too much. She’d called him a couple of times but he’d been unavailable and she’d been embarrassed and let it go. She’d wanted Jake Westerly like she’d never wanted anything before, and, if she were completely honest with herself—something she hated being, but sometimes it was a necessity—she could admit one taste hadn’t been enough to quench her thirst.
He could never know.
“I’m sure we’ve both changed a lot,” she said repressively, and was startled when he chuckled and shook his head.
“I’d like to talk to you and share a drink, or something, and find out everything about you that I missed the night we were together.”
The way he said together made her feel uncomfortable. “If you can think of anything else about Sheila Dempsey . . .” she began.
“I should have never gone back to Loni. That time, or any time since. It took till last January until it was completely over, but it is over now. And no, I didn’t pick up with Sheila afterward, or anyone else for that matter. What about you?”
September made herself meet his searching eyes. There was humor in their gray depths. Teasing. She felt herself prickle up and had to remember that this wasn’t high school, or even grade school.
“Are you married?” he asked.
“No.”
“Engaged or involved?”
“I’m . . . single.”
“You keep up with Bambi?”
She snapped out of the trance-like feeling surrounding her and said shortly, “Barbara’s the one who’s married and she’s got two kids, a boy and a girl.”
“She live around here?” he asked.
“We keep in touch on Facebook,” September said. Before I deactivated it.
“I’ll take that as a no. I think I have a Facebook account,” Jake said reflectively. “Might have to try using it more.” He got to his feet and peered at her speculatively. “Anything else, Officer?”
“One thing . . .”
“Yeah?”
September gazed at him seriously and said, “Didn’t you have Mrs. Walsh in the second grade?”
He gave her a long look, thinking that over. “Mrs. McBride.”
“Ah. Do you remember an art project we did at the beginning of the school year? The whole class did it. It was of cut-out crayon-colored leaves pasted onto construction paper. The leaves were falling into a pile of more leaves on the ground.”
“And the leaves on the ground were just crayoned in, not pasted. Sure. My mother saved everything, and that ‘piece of art’ was one of her favorites. I kinda peaked out in second grade, so she hung onto that one for years.” He squinted at her. “Okay. You got me. Why . . . ?”
September’s gaze searched his eyes, but he seemed completely lost. “Someone recently sent me my leaf picture with a message scrawled on it.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘my leaf picture’?”
“It was my art project. From second grade. Someone sent it to me.”
“Your art project.”
He was as pedantic as Auggie, for God’s sake. “Yes. It was a warning.”
If he was faking his confusion, he was doing an excellent job. “But how? Who would . . . how could they get it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did it say? The message.”
They were walking toward the parking lot now and September drew a breath. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him. Proof that he wasn’t involved in either Sheila’s death or the warning to her, she supposed, though she couldn’t believe there was any connection, really.
That why you hid this from your partner? a voice inside her head asked.
“You said you saw me on my interview with Pauline Kirby?”
“Yes, I did. I thought you looked young.”
“Huh.” That seemed to be the general consensus.
“You were holding your own though. . . .” He stopped suddenly and said, “Was that the message? That phrase that Pauline quoted? Do Unto Others as she did . . . or something?”
“‘Do Unto Others As She Did To Me.’”
“Holy Christ, Nine.” He stopped short, stunned. “You were sent that same message on your second grade artwork?”
“Yes.”
“Wait . . . wait . . . it was carved in her skin. Not Sheila’s. Decatur’s.”
“That’s right.”
“But Sheila’s body wasn’t carved into. That was never reported.”
“We think there’s a connection. There were markings—” September admitted.
“Sheila?”
He seemed so shattered she had to fight the urge to offer comfort. Don’t get personal. “Sheila and Glenda Tripp both had markings cut into their torsos with a knife, but they weren’t formed letters. Wait, no.” She held up her hand when he would have interrupted again. “We believe the killer was aiming toward his message. Maybe he hadn’t worked it out exactly when he killed Sheila. Didn’t know what he wanted to say, or just didn’t have time. Then he killed Emmy Decatur and left the message. And this same message looks like it was started on Glenda Tripp, but he may have been scared off by something and couldn’t finish. Unlike the other two, Tripp was found in her apartment. He didn’t take her to a field, so he may have been interrupted and wasn’t able to complete his mission.”
“You were trying to keep this under wraps,” he realized, “but Pauline Kirby already outed you.”
“If it’s a serial killer—and though we’re leaning that way—we’re moving cautiously, gathering proof. Then we’ll go public but yeah, the hikers who discovered Decatur’s body told her and she put it on the news. We’re not releasing that Dempsey and Tripp were carved on as well to the general public until we have more evidence.”
He gazed down at her searchingly. September did her best to appear unaffected. “This killer . . . he sent you the message because he knows you’re on the case?”
“Auggie suggested maybe it’s not the killer. Maybe it’s someone closer to me who’s got their own agenda.”
“Somebody screwing with you?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, it might explain how he has your artwork, but then . . . why? It makes more sense that it’s a real threat. I would take it seriously.”
She was gratified by the concerned look on his face, “I am. And Auggie is, too. I just think at some level he thinks it might be someone in the family, and he can’t wrap his head around that, yet.”
“Is that what you think?” Jake asked.
“I’m concentrating on connections between the three victims. See what the common denominator is.”
“And you’re looking at me because I knew Sheila . . . and because I went to second grade with you and just happened to do the same art project.” His gray eyes turned a bit glacial. “Maybe I shouldn’t have remembered it.” When she opened her mouth to respond, he cut in, “No, I get it. You’re making connections, and I’m weirdly connected. So, is this interview over? Have I answered enough of your questions?”
She nodded. “Let me give you my card, in case you think of anything else.”
As she fished it out and handed it to him, he said tautly, “I didn’t save your second grade artwork, Nine. And certainly not to terrorize you with it. Better stick with Auggie’s theory and
check with your own family.”
With that parting remark, he climbed into the Tahoe, started up the engine, and tore away.
She watched the taillights of his car until he turned onto the main highway and they winked out.
Suma, the maid, was just leaving the Rafferty house when September pulled up and parked.
“They’re not here,” Suma said with a faint Asian accent. She had black hair threaded with gray and dark eyes and was from a mixture of Far Eastern nationalities. She’d come with Rosamund and wasn’t the warmest person on the planet. Or, maybe she just didn’t like September.
“I talked to my father and told him I was going to look for some of my things,” September told her. She looked worried, so September pressed, “Call him. Or Rosamund. Whoever, if you need to confirm.”
Suma reluctantly unlocked the front door again and said, “The door will lock automatically behind you. Please make sure it’s pulled tight when you go.” She headed across the parking area to her older-model Toyota.
“Sure,” September said to no one in particular as she entered the house. The front door possessed a mortise lock and it shut behind her with a satisfying click. September didn’t have a key and didn’t want one, most of the time.
It was six o’clock and the shadows were growing long. Surprisingly, now that she was in the house, she felt beaten down and weary and really didn’t much want to start her search. Entering the living room, she saw Rosamund’s picture again, the pregnancy very evident. At July’s birthday party, Rosamund hadn’t really been showing, though she’d only popped in for a minute or two, claiming another engagement. At the time September had scarcely noticed her; she’d been too absorbed in navigating small talk with the rest of the Raffertys, none of whom she really wanted to see except July. Auggie, of course, had been a no show, but then he’d been working undercover at the time, and September had used that excuse to explain why he was absent when they all knew it was because he didn’t want to see his father and he didn’t really give a shit in the first place.
Exhaling heavily, she walked down the hall, opened the door to the stairs to the attic and trudged up the steep flight. At the top, she looked around. The attic was large, with a number of rooms created by dips in the roofline over several wings of the house.
There was a lot of junk in piles, everything from forgotten furniture to boxes and boxes of financial papers and old tax returns, to out-of-date electronics that should have been thrown away years before. September rooted around in the boxes of papers, unstacking them, restacking them, sneezing from the swirling dust she created, sweating from the heat that had built up. She went through twenty boxes before she gave up, swiping her inner elbow against the perspiration forming on her forehead and running down her temples.
Finally she sank down into an old toile-covered chair with worn arms and tufts of stuffing sticking through the seams. There were more boxes than she’d counted on, and it looked like it might be a fruitless task anyway. She thought about going down to the basement, but couldn’t get up the energy. Besides, she hadn’t even made a dent in any of the attic stuff.
What was she looking for? More artwork? What would that prove anyway? She knew the killer had the one piece. If she found more in the attic did that mean hers had been discovered by someone in her family? Maybe . . . but so far she hadn’t found any of hers or her siblings’ childhood memorabilia. Had it been moved somewhere?
There was a whole pile of stuff in the furthest room from the stairs but it was barricaded by more forgotten furniture: chairs, tables, mattresses. . . . She glanced over it but it would take more effort than she was willing to put in to figure it out.
The basement . . .
Leaning her head back against the chair, she gazed up at the cobwebbed rafters and thought she could use a drink of water, or lemonade, or an ice-cold vodka martini. She would check out the basement in a minute, but she just wanted to sit a moment and think. What a day. She almost wished she’d gone with Sandler to interview Emmy Decatur’s parents again. She might have learned something more rather than just come here and get disheartened.
And that meeting with Jake Westerly. She searched her feelings and shook her head. She didn’t want him involved in this.
Pulling out her cell, she put in a call to her partner. Gretchen picked up quickly and said she was busy but to meet her at The Barn Door later. “Okay,” September agreed, then hung up, feeling a little left out. The only good thing was she didn’t have to explain about her interview with Jake, something she wasn’t ready to go into with Gretchen just yet.
She thought back to the way he’d looked at her when he’d realized she’d put him specifically under the microscope. She’d seen disappointment and aversion in his eyes, and it had about killed her. She almost preferred thinking about the earlier meeting with her father, which was saying quite a lot about how much she didn’t want to think about Jake.
When September had arrived at The Willows, Braden was in a deep discussion with July about the upcoming harvest and a possible “Crush” weekend, where guests were invited to help crush the grapes, taste wine, basically eat, drink, and be merry in a kind of festival. Braden abhorred the idea while July was thinking it would be great publicity for the winery. September thought it sounded like fun as long as she didn’t have to head it up, and said as much, which earned her a cool look from her father.
“How’s your brother?” he asked her in return.
“Auggie’s fine.”
“You’re just like him, aren’t you?”
His tone reflected what he thought about that, so she’d quickly changed the subject and told him about her desire to search the house, figuring she was on a downward track of his goodwill and she’d better get out what she needed fast. He brusquely told her she was welcome to look around the house and that he would talk to Rosamund about it, then he was gone. September and July had been left looking after his tall form striding away.
“Is he as much of a pain in the ass as I think he is?” July had asked.
“Auggie and I can’t do anything right, so yeah, he is.”
“That’s only because you went into law enforcement and thumbed your nose at all things Rafferty.”
“You, at least, have a job,” September pointed out to her older sister. “I wasn’t going to hang around and hope there was something I wanted to do in the company, and that it would also be something he would allow me to do.”
“I don’t know why he’s against Crushin’ It. You ever been to the one in Washington? It’s fun. And it would create great goodwill, and put our product out there. We don’t have time to really put together a big thing this year, but we could get started, get some buzz going, and make it a regular event.”
“Sounds like you’ve been giving it a lot of thought.”
“Our wine’s too expensive,” she said. “That’s a fact. If we priced it better and got it to more people, it would sell better, but Dad and March are such . . .” She shrugged. “They don’t listen to me.”
September just nodded.
“The weather’s bound to break soon, too,” she went on. “Then it could be really nice. Harvest is starting. This is when it’s all happening and he knows that.”
“The fact that you can work with him at all . . . you’re a better woman than I.”
“You don’t believe that for a minute, Detective Rafferty,” she said with a smile. “So, what brought you here. Dad, I know. But you could have connected with him in Laurelton if you’d really wanted to.”
“I like it here,” September admitted. “And I went to the house once already and was stonewalled by Rosamund.”
“Can you believe she’s pregnant?” July asked grimly. “Verna was at least smart enough to keep from getting pregnant. But then she already had Stefan, and that probably cured her for good.”
“I think Rosamund really wants this baby,” September said.
“Yeah, well, it ties her into the Rafferty money at another level, so
mething Verna never managed to do. January. . .” she muttered, testing it out.
“She wants to name the baby Gilda.”
July snorted. “It’ll be January, bet you a case of Cat’s Paw,” she said, referring to one of their most expensive Pinot Noirs.
“No bet,” September said.
“I’m the one who should be pregnant,” July said a moment later.
“You want a baby?” This was news to September.
“I’m thirty-four and counting. Sometimes I think I should just get pregnant and figure the rest out later.”
“Thirty-four’s young. Lots of women get pregnant in their late thirties and into their forties.”
“But it gets harder and harder, not the other way around. We all know that . . . and now Rosamund . . .” She exhaled heavily.
“Well, what about Dash? Maybe things’ll happen between you two,” September suggested lightly.
“Dash and I are just friends. He’s . . . it’s not like that.” She shook her head.
July looked pensive and September wondered what the deal was between them. September had watched Dash as he’d wandered around The Willows at July’s birthday party. The long-haired guitarist had a lean, hungry look about him that held September’s attention. He’d seemed familiar, somehow, and she’d wondered, for a moment, if he’d been involved in a crime, but the penny hadn’t dropped and it was July’s party and September didn’t want to ruin it, so she let it go.
“I heard you’d moved back with Dad,” September said into the silence.
“Temporarily. Rosamund had a shit-fit over it, so I decided to stay longer than I’d originally planned.”
“Good thinking.” September smiled.
“I sold my house. It needed so many repairs it was a money-suck like you’ve never seen. Anyway, I’m trying to get a place closer to the vineyard.” She gave September a considering look. “What about you? Still chasing after killers with Auggie? I hate Channel Seven news, but Dash watches it and he told me he saw you with that woman reporter who’s such a bitch.”
“Pauline Kirby . . .”
“So, some sicko really wrote something on that body you found?”
