Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller

by Christine Kling

  From upstairs, a voice called out, “Kayla?”

  The young woman rolled her eyes. “Hang on,” she said to Riley. “I’ll go tell her you’re here.” She hurried down the hall and disappeared around a corner.

  “What is this place?” Cole asked as he hung his oilskin jacket in the entryway closet.

  “I told you. My sister lives here.”

  Riley had no sooner finished speaking than Cole heard shrieks from somewhere inside the house. When he turned to look, a tall, light-skinned African-American woman wearing a bright pink blouse and flowered pants came running down the hall, her sandals clacking on the polished wood floors.

  “That’s Hazel,” Riley said.

  “Mmm. I can see the family resemblance.”

  The woman scooped Riley up in her arms and shrieked, “Girlfriend!” Cole could not help but notice the woman’s voluptuous, hourglass figure and the low-cut blouse that revealed her ample cleavage. With black hair that fell in soft waves around her shoulders, he thought she looked like a human defibrillator – she could jumpstart the heart of a dead man. After she’d spun Riley around once, she set her back on the floor, held her at arm’s length and looked down at her.

  “What happened to you?” Hazel’s voice had changed to a very businesslike tone. “Kayla, back bedroom bath. Get the kit.”

  She glared at Cole. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

  Riley patted Hazel’s shoulder. “No, no. He’s a friend. I don’t think I’d be here if it weren’t for him.”

  Hazel nodded, then put her arm around Riley’s shoulders and began ushering her down the hall. Kayla took up position on the other side. Glancing back over the top of Riley’s head, Hazel said, “Come on. You, too.”

  Cole followed the women down the hall, through a larger entry, and past a huge grand staircase with gilt banisters. They continued down another hallway to a small bedroom that overlooked an empty swimming pool. Hazel directed Riley to sit on the bed, while Kayla slipped into the bathroom. She returned seconds later with a large plastic case.

  Cole sat on the edge of a plumped arm chair by the window leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees. He felt awkward and helpless as he watched Hazel rip open packets and swab at Riley’s facial wounds.

  After examining the lower lip, the lump on her temple, and the bruises on her neck, Hazel said, “Looks like you were lucky, sister. The last woman I saw with marks like these on her neck was dead. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Riley sighed. She wet her lips with her tongue. “Not really.”

  “If you want me to keep on helping out here, you need to tell me what happened. I’ve got Kayla’s safety and mine to consider, too.”

  Riley’s shoulders sagged even lower. “You remember Diggory Priest? He’s the guy —”

  “I know who he is. The asshole from Lima.”

  Riley nodded. “He claimed my father had had a stroke, but it was all a lie.”

  Cole cursed under his breath.

  “Dig wanted to lure me back up here from the islands,” Riley continued, her voice even, almost a monotone. “This morning, Dad was saying a lot of crazy stuff.” She paused and closed her eyes, licked her lips. “Then Dig showed up. He said he’d known my dad for years, that they were both in Skull and Bones at Yale. He said –” She covered her mouth with her hand.

  At the words Skull and Bones, Cole sat up straighter.

  She lowered her hand to her lap and looked at Hazel. “My dad a Bonesman? I would have known. And he said –”

  It can’t be that bad, Riley, he thought. Say it. He wanted to take her in his arms and tell her he would never let anything hurt her again. If she’d let him. But he was the outsider here, and for the moment, as far as the women were concerned, he might just as well be invisible.

  She took a deep breath and continued in a monotone. “Dig said awful things. He talked about taking over and something about Operation Magic. The way he looked at my dad – it was awful. And he kept saying crazy things. About Michael. He claimed he did it, and Dad knew all about it.” She grasped Hazel’s arm and bit her lower lip. “That’s not possible, is it?” she asked.

  Cole wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he couldn’t bear watching her suffer like that. He stood, took a step toward the bed and called out her name.

  Hazel waved him back. He clenched his fists, stepped back and perched on the edge of the chair again.

  Riley shuddered and her eyes focused on something in the distance as though she were reliving the afternoon’s horror. “Dig told my dad he seduced me in Lima. Fucked me to get back at him. Said he was going to kill me and make my dad watch.” Her hands went to her throat and touched the bruises. “But I fought back. And he –” One tear rolled down her cheek. She closed her eyes. “Dig killed my father.” The last three words came out without emotion.

  Cole jumped to his feet. “I knew I should have killed that son of a bitch.”

  Hazel’s eyes flashed him a warning. She turned back to Riley. “Shhh, baby,” she said, pulling Riley’s head to her chest and rocking her back and forth.

  Cole strode to the window and looked out at the empty pool. He put his hand over his mouth and pulled it down across his chin feeling the rough stubble of his day-old beard. The trees on the grounds beyond the pool were black and barren against the gray sky. He turned back around to look at her. He had never felt so helpless in his life. He swore he would make this guy pay.

  Riley’s eyes were wide open, staring, but unseeing.

  “Shhh,” Hazel repeated. “There was nothing you could do.” He read her lips when she mouthed to Kayla, “She’s in shock.” Cole could see Riley’s body trembling, see the built-up tension in the taut tendons of her neck.

  He was wondering how much longer he could just stand there, watching these women, doing nothing. He saw Kayla hand Hazel a couple of pills and a glass of water. “Now, honey,” Hazel said placing the pills in Riley’s palm. “Go on and take these. It’ll help you sleep.”

  Riley shook her head and turned away from Hazel.

  “You need to get some rest. Kayla will stay with you.”

  Cole saw her shoulders lift and then fall. “All right,” she said and then she tossed the pills into her mouth.

  The two women stretched Riley out on the bed, removed her shoes and covered her with a blanket. At first, she lay there eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, but within less than a minute, her breathing slowed and her eyes closed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Washington, DC

  March 28, 2008

  1:25 p.m.

  Dig groaned when he brought his right hand up and touched the knot on the right side of his skull. What? He opened his eyes, but all he saw was a white ceiling. He rolled his head to the side and tried to focus his blurry vision on the stairs and a doorway beyond.

  Pain stabbed at the back of his eyes when he tried to sit up. He screwed up his face and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids, then he looked up and shook his head trying to clear it. He remembered where he was: the Riley house. He spread the fingers of his right hand, then squeezed them into a fist. Yorick. He flexed his hand again. Dig remembered the satisfactory loud crack the old man’s neck made when it broke — and the intense pleasure that had flowed through him from his head to his groin. He stared at his fist. He had felt the power pass into him. Then he’d seen Riley, and he had never wanted a woman as much.

  But she ran — and he chased and nearly caught her. Then it was a blank.

  He should have finished her in Lima. That was how he had planned it. Then, he was going to squeeze the life from her as Yorick watched. And again, she had thwarted his plans.

  There was another noise in the house. Pounding. Cries. He was not alone.

  When he stood, the dizziness made him wobble, and he reached for the banister to steady himself. The nausea was so strong he thought he was going to vomit.

  “Help! Somebody get me out of here!�
� He could understand the words when he stood in the kitchen doorway. He recognized the voice. It wasn’t Riley.

  She was gone. Again. He would find her and finish this now.

  He walked to the front door, opened it a crack and looked out into the front yard. The bright light seared his eyeballs. It had stopped snowing. He looked both ways. No sign of her. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious.

  Back inside the house, the shouting was louder.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  Inside the kitchen, he found a door with a hasp with an unlocked padlock hanging loose. He lifted the lock and the door swung into him hard. He stepped aside and Mrs. Wright tumbled out. She caught herself and lifted a hand to push back the gray hairs that had fallen loose on either side of her head.

  “What happened to you?” he said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “That fella. You were upstairs and I went down to see who was at the door. Fella came barging in asking to see Riley. I tried to stop him —”

  “Describe him.”

  “Shorter than you. Brown hair, stocky build. Wearing a yellow and blue rain slicker. Like to broke my arm before he locked me in there.” She pointed to the pantry. “Had to put a lock on that door to keep old Mr. Riley from eating all the cookies. I found him drinking maple syrup from the bottle once. Crazy as a loon, that one.” She pulled at the tails of her shirt and straightened her sleeves. “Never expected I’d be the one shoved in there.”

  “Shut up,” he said. The woman was getting on his nerves.

  It had to be Thatcher. In Washington. He was more resourceful than Dig had expected. So, they were together now, Riley and Thatcher. The son was turning out to be even more of an irritant than the father had been. He would see to both of them.

  “You’ve got no reason to talk to me that way,” the housekeeper said. “Not after all I’ve done for you. That fella’s gone, then? Is the daughter up there with her father? I’m surprised the old man’s not hollering down here for his lunch.”

  This woman talked too much. Then, in another one of those serendipitous moments, his mind flitted to the elder Thatcher, then back to Yorick. Dig smiled.

  “Follow me upstairs,” he said.

  Just over an hour later, Dig pulled off his gloves and surveyed the scene in Yorick’s bedroom, imagining the ideas that would be running through the minds of the rescue workers who would be called to the scene — by the smell if nothing else. He flexed the fingers of his right hand and nodded, pleased with his work. This was getting to be a theme for this whole affair. A signature. But he was so much more adept at staging than those yokels in Cornwall. Yorick was thin enough, he’d almost fit in Riley’s underwear. It didn’t matter, though, that the panties and bra had ripped when he’d dragged them on the old man’s corpse. It was all part of the scenario. And Dig had been surprised — and not a little disgusted — to find that the Wright woman had drawers full of black lacy things and various electric apparatus. He hoped it would make the press. He could see the headlines now. Murder-suicide death pact between former ambassador and housekeeper.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he looked around, thought back over his entry. No, he hadn’t touched anything else. Before going outside, he pulled his gloves back on and checked the coat closet for a hat. He found a black cap with a short bill that he pulled down over his eyebrows, and he turned up the collar on his jacket.

  He exited the house at a fast steady pace and turned right, following the street to the end of the block, where he turned right again. There idling at the curb where he’d told him to wait was the black Lincoln with his driver reading a newspaper behind the wheel. Dig opened the back door, slid inside, and leaned his aching head back against the warm leather.

  “Georgetown,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Georgetown

  March 28, 2008

  2:55 p.m.

  Hazel turned to him. “Follow me,” she whispered.

  Cole allowed her to lead him away from Riley’s room, down hallways and through several rooms. He wondered how big the house was; already, he wasn’t sure he could find his way back to Riley. When they got to a library with windows that overlooked the street, Hazel closed the door and crossed to the bar.

  “I don’t know about you, but after that, I could use a drink.” She pulled out a bottle of Maker’s Mark and poured several fingers into two crystal glasses. She handed him one, then pointed toward a couple of chairs in the corner.

  “What was that you gave her?”

  “Just a mild sleeping pill. She never takes meds so it doesn’t take much to knock her out.” Hazel shook her head. “That woman is the toughest person I know, male or female.” She took a long drink. “It must have been pretty damn bad to shake her up like that. I’ve got a feeling I should be thanking you for saving her life.” She raised her glass as though toasting him.

  Cole shrugged. He looked around the room wondering how he’d come to this place. He should have done more, he thought.

  “Did you see her throat? The man who had his hands around her like that intended to kill her. He probably still does.”

  “Hang on,” Cole said. “Things have been happening too fast. Let’s back up a bit. I’m Cole Thatcher.” He stuck out his hand.

  “Oh!” she said flashing him a lascivious smile. “So you must be Riley’s buck naked red neck. How d’ya do?” Her eyes danced and sparked, giving his entire body the once over. Then she took his hand in her strong dry grip. “Hazel Kittredge.”

  “It seems you know a few more intimate details about me —”

  She laughed and drained her glass in one long pull. “Well, you’re wondering who I am and how two so very different people like Maggie Riley and Hazel Kittredge came to be such good friends. And trust me, you are not the first to ask.”

  “She said you are her sister.”

  He saw her purse her lips in an attempt at a smile before she looked away. When she spoke, Cole heard the choked emotion in her voice.

  “Riley and I met,” she said, “when we were nine years old and both our daddies were posted to the U.S. Embassy in Barbados. We looked so much alike back then, people often took us for sisters. I tried to stay out of the sun, but that girl was outside so much, she was darker than me. Some little girls played house or princess, but we played sisters.”

  Cole watched her throw back the remainder of her whiskey. She swallowed and stared into space as though she were looking back at those two little girls.

  “My family was transferred to Cairo for a few years, but I met up with Riley again when we were all posted to Paris. Time and distance hadn’t changed a thing. We were still sisters even though we were teenagers, and we didn’t look a damn thing alike anymore. She’d stayed small and lean,” Hazel said with a laugh, “and I just kept busting out all over.” She waved a hand in the air to indicate her body.

  “That’s not a bad thing,” he said. “It looks very good on you.”

  She dabbed at her eye. “Ooh, Riley was right. You are a Southern gentleman.”

  “I grew up in Florida. I don’t know if that counts as the South.”

  She smiled. “Honey, if you’re black, Florida is the South for sure.”

  He nodded. “So you’ve stayed friends since childhood, even though she lives on a boat and you live —” He waved his hand at their surroundings.

  “That’s right. Granddaddy was an inventor and made a ton of money. All my daddy ever wanted to do was work in the foreign service. So, when granddaddy died, it fell to yours truly here to figure out what to do with it all. I got myself a little business degree from the London School of Economics while Riley was off playing soldier, and I established the Kittredge Foundation. Philanthropy suits me.” She smiled. “And, since our primary focus is on black women and girls, getting them through college and out of abusive relationships, this place has served as a shelter for more than a few battered women.”

  “I thou
ght you and Kayla looked like you’d done this kind of thing before.”

  She smiled, but there was less sparkle in it. “More times than you want to know.” She jumped up and went to the bar, returned with the bottle and refilled his glass. “So tell me about what happened before you got here.”

  “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “Start with what you know about this man. The one who hurt her.”

  Cole told her about meeting Riley in the islands, going together to Dominica, and then Dig showing up. He skipped over all the parts about what they were doing there. He explained about flying up to DC, going to her father’s house, seeing Dig enter and dealing with the housekeeper before hearing them coming down the stairs.

  “I wasn’t even thinking. I just grabbed the closest thing at hand and hit him with it.”

  “Thank God you were there. From what I know about him, he is CIA. Riley dated him for more than a year, so she may have told him about me — but he also has the resources to find out who her friends and associates are. And that means we aren’t safe here. Do you have any idea what this is about?”

  Cole wondered what he should say. If he tried to explain it all, he’d wind up sounding like some kind of nut case. He’d seen the looks on people’s faces too many times before.

  “Yes and no. I know about his kind, and I know that there is something so important to them, they’ve killed before to keep the secret buried. I think it’s this thing that he was talking about, this Operation Magic, though that’s the first time I’ve heard that name. I can tell you this — I intend to get my hands on it first and to expose it and them.”

  “Ah, tilting at windmills, that’s right. I remember her telling me that. I like that about you, Thatcher. I do a lot of that myself.”

  “The thing is, I need to get back down to the islands as soon as I can.” He wanted more than anything in the world to take Riley back with him. He needed her brain to help him solve the rest of this, and – who was he kidding? He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman before.