eleven
PIXIE
Mom stayed with me the first two hours of my incarceration—I mean, my recovery—at Whidbey General Hospital in Coupeville, but she left when the swelling went down and my face returned to its natural size. The tests had all been run, my chest hooked up to wires and monitors, and now we were just waiting for the results. Although she wanted to help find Grant as much as I did, she was reluctant to leave.
“I don’t think you understand what you put me through, Marilyn. You had to be resuscitated. That’s a first. I almost prayed when I found out what had happened to you.”
“It was an accident.”
“Don’t give me that shit. You’re my only girl. And as such, I hold you to higher standards than the rest. That includes not getting poisoned. Your face is looking a little better.”
I reassured her that I felt fine, and finally she left to make coffee and sandwiches for the people searching for Grant.
“All right. I’ll go. But only because you’ve got more sense than some of your brothers, and there’s work to be done. You’ll call me when the doctors come back with your prognosis?”
I told her I would. I told her I felt fine. I did not tell her that I felt normal.
The truth was, I was scared of what the brain scans would turn up. I was sure that at least part of my brain had turned to jelly, and I wanted to put off Mom’s reaction to it as long as possible.
After all, nobody with a normal brain would’ve seen what I saw the night before: the man sitting on the log . . . the woman coming from the sea . . . Lyudmila becoming an incandescent light. And then the woman standing over me, whispering something in my ear, something important that, try as I might, I couldn’t remember.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember but couldn’t tune out the beeping from the machines I was hooked up to. What had she said?
After a while, I gave up trying and focused on the wall-mounted TV. I watched the manhunt for Grant Shepherd, the one that Patience and I should’ve wrapped up by now.
The news listed Yuri Andreevich Bulgakov as a “person of interest.” Everybody liked him for Lyudmila’s murder and Grant’s disappearance. His motive was supposed to be money.
Nobody had seen him since Sunday afternoon. The newscasters hinted he might have a link to the Russian mafia, which pissed me off. I mean, just because he was Russian didn’t mean he was carrying out hits on people. True, he owned that Kalashnikov, but I figured that was more out of habit than anything else.
Yuri was just too sad. When he was off duty and dipping into the cornichons and the vodka, he would stare a little too long at the big house and start singing verses of Russian folk songs. He would get a faraway look, massage Patience’s wrinkles, then turn to Henry and me and say, “Ah, to be young and in love.”
He loved Lyudmila with a doomed, Russian kind of love.
I always assumed that was enough for him.
I didn’t know where he’d gone, but I hoped he was okay.
I had been lying in my bed in the ER for about seven hours when Sammy showed up.
“Sammy, thank God. Have you guys found Grant yet?”
He shook his head no. His face had a weight to it I’d never seen before, and I knew at once that it was bad news.
“I need to tell you about Patience,” he said.
He handed me a bag of clean clothes. Then he sat with me and waited for the results of the MRI. As he did, he recited the facts.
“Whoever did it used the Kalashnikov, Pix. Remember? Yuri’s gun? We know it was that weapon because of the caliber of the bullet. They still haven’t recovered the gun yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
“Whoever did it would’ve shot her at close range. The first bullet would’ve made her jump. You remember how vocal she was? There would’ve been a great big aroo. But she wouldn’t have felt the other thirty-two. Thirty-three bullets total, Pix. Thirty-three. That’s some seriously twisted shit right there.”
I know not all brothers are like this. Some might have said she wouldn’t have felt a thing or gone on about burying her under the azaleas that would bloom lovely and pink in the summertime, like that shit would’ve consoled me.
But not my Sammy. Sammy was all about statistics and records. So he counted the bullets. He told me the facts. He let me draw my own grim conclusions.
Sammy had no way of knowing my part in all this. That I’d hidden the Kalashnikov when Henry and I had been alone searching the guard shack for Yuri and clues to where Grant had gone. I remembered how big the gun had been and how I hadn’t wanted it lying around where anyone could swipe it and use it on some little kid. That gun had scared me, so I stashed it out of sight in the Scotch broom.
But the fact that it had been found and used meant that someone had been watching us—had been watching me.
The night before, when we’d fanned out to look for Grant, we’d all been in a position to be picked off by that Kalashnikov one by one—Lawford, Frank, Henry, me—who knows how many more.
But no. Whoever had been watching us had deliberately taken out the dog—the one with the well-trained, professional nose.
I didn’t know what that meant, but I was going to find out. And when I did, I was going to shoot the bastard who did it with thirty-three slugs myself.
That’s how I felt like mourning.
twelve
HENRY
I was right about agent Armstrong. After we found what was left of Pixie’s dog, things started happening.
He began to notice what we hadn’t, the first of which was to wonder why, when we’d searched the house and the garage and even the guard shack, no one had thought to search the Breakers.
“The Breakers is shut tight,” Dad told him. “The only time we open it is if we have guests. And we haven’t had any in months.”
“What if Grant wanted to play hide-and-seek there?” I suggested, mostly to myself, but agent Armstrong seized on the idea.
“Let’s open it up and take a look around,” he said.
“Okay,” Dad said. “But I don’t see why. Grant doesn’t hide unless one of the Grays is abetting him. Usually at their house.”
“That’s not true,” Meredith said. “He likes small places. He likes spots where he can be alone with his book of Russian fairy tales.”
I hadn’t even realized Meredith was with us at the time. We were standing on the patio, facing the bay, getting buffeted by the wind and rain.
I should’ve known things would change for Meredith with Lyudmila gone. They would be different for all of us, but for Mere especially.
Mine wasn’t the only family to have a boys’ team and a girls’ team. While Lyudmila was around, Meredith mostly spent time with her. Mere usually talked to Dad and me only at the dinner table to make sure we were all well versed on the issues of the day. Sometimes talking to Lyudmila and Mere was like talking to a foreign species. We didn’t understand why they needed to spend $98 on yoga pants in slightly different accent colors. Black with a purple waist. Black with a pink waist. Black with a red waist. Now that there was no Lyudmila, Meredith had two choices: spend time with us or spend time with her phone.
Even odds.
And it turned out that she was right about Grant and small spaces and the Breakers, because when agent Armstrong turned the knob on the door to the cottage, it was unlocked. There were many possible reasons for it, but I liked Mere’s the best. Private spaces. Some place to curl up alone and read Russian fairy tales.
“Stay back,” agent Armstrong said, and he took the safety off his gun as he went through the door, Sheriff Lundquist following closely behind.
Dad and Mere and I stood outside, anxious, getting drenched, wondering what they’d find.
The two of them were inside a long time. When agent Armstrong came out, he said to the other cops, “Can we get eyes in here?”
“What’s going on?” Dad demanded, charging to the entrance. “Is it my son? Oh my God, is it Grant? Can I see him?”
>
“Calm down, Mr. Shepherd,” agent Armstrong reassured him. “He’s not here. But I think we may have found a crime scene . . . Henry, why don’t you take your father back to the house. Make sure he gets a shower. Something to eat. It’s been a long night.”
“What kind of crime scene?” Dad said. “I demand to know. You’re on my property.”
Dad had reverted to landowner bully, the way he was when he first met the Grays. I didn’t like him when he was like this. He was an asshole.
Agent Armstrong wasn’t fazed. “There’s a rug that appears to be missing and signs of a struggle. I need a team to go over it. In the meantime, the best thing you can do to help is take care of yourself. We’ll notify you when we know something more. It’s best if you go back to the house for now.”
Mere and I looked at each other.
“Come on, Dad,” Mere said, and he let her take his arm and lead him away.
I followed, looking over my shoulder as person after person went into the Breakers, carrying kits and putting on booties. They looked like they knew what they were doing. I just hoped they would find some bit of something that hadn’t been bleached.
In the main house, I stationed myself by a window in the upstairs hallway. Edgar came by every so often with green tea and gingersnaps from Hannah. I watched people come and go from the Breakers.
I should’ve known. It was the closest building to the bay. The door practically backed right onto the seawall. All someone would have to do was heave Lyudmila’s body over into the rowboat and dump her into the water.
I saw agent Armstrong leave the Breakers and make his way up the driveway toward our house.
I ran downstairs and practically tripped over Meredith as I did. I wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on the investigation.
Was it me? Or was there something about the way Mere looked at me and then avoided my gaze? She’d given me that same shifty look when she’d been going out with Ajay Wijenaike, a guy from the crew team and one of Todd Wishlow’s best friends. It’s not that I minded that she went out with someone from the team, but Ajay and Todd were pieces of work who were only interested in our money. She knew it; I knew it. She dated Ajay anyway.
Now I was sure she had done something else that she knew I wouldn’t approve of. And she’d done it recently.
But agent Armstrong was downstairs and probably had news, so I decided to put off asking her about it.
Big mistake.
• • •
Agent Armstrong was already in the living room when Mere and I came crashing in.
“. . . pursuing other lines of inquiry at the same time. When was the last time anyone saw Yuri Bulgakov?”
“Yuri? I don’t know. No one’s found him yet. He came to the island with the travel team, didn’t he, Joyce?”
Joyce was sitting in the corner, as usual, making notes on her electronic tablet. “Actually, he came to the island before the family arrived to make sure everything was ready. I saw him in the guard shack myself when we got here Friday evening.”
“And is he in the habit of carrying semiautomatic firearms and shooting dogs with them?”
“The first part, yes. The second part? No,” I said before Dad had a chance to answer.
Joyce scowled at me. I’d spoken out of turn. This was a serious breach of etiquette. Since she used to be our nanny, she thought she could still make us behave with a look. For the most part, she was right. But Dad was tired, and there was no way that Yuri would be plugging dogs. Especially not Patience, whom he helped train.
“I see,” agent Armstrong said as Meredith and I sat down on the couch on either side of Dad. “Could you please tell me the exact nature of the relationship of this man with your late wife?”
Dad looked startled. “What are you talking about? They were close. Friends from Russia.”
“How close?”
“Brother-and-sister close. My wife, she didn’t have the best home situation growing up in Moscow. Her father was an abusive alcoholic. I get the feeling that Yuri saved her from that somehow. He got her away from her father and into the ballet academy. At least, that’s what she told me. All I really know is that she wouldn’t come to the States without him.”
“She called him brat,” Mere said. “That means ‘brother,’ right?”
“But they weren’t real brother and sister,” I said. “It was a more spiritual thing.”
Agent Armstrong said, “They weren’t directly related. Which you would know if you had done a thorough background on him before you installed him as head of security.”
Dad gnashed his teeth. Not a good sign. “Joyce?” he said.
She bit her lip. She was in trouble. I didn’t know that she could get defensive. I did know that she’d had a bad week. Something about a breakup with her latest boyfriend? “Well, I wasn’t exactly sure how to do it, was I? Being your admin was still new to me. I’d like to see you wade through Russian bureaucracy.” She put down her tablet and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. It was a long time ago. You wanted to know if he had been a member of the Russian military. The truth is, I had no idea how to find out. I wanted to do a good job, but at the time you had to be with Lyudmila, and Lyudmila wasn’t going anywhere without Yuri. You said to make it happen. So I did. He’s been a diligent worker. Very protective of the family. Never absent. Never late.”
“Until yesterday,” Mere said.
“What are you suggesting, agent Armstrong?” Dad said.
“I’m saying that our background checks have turned up the fact that he not only was a member of the Russian military, he was a member of Russian homeland security.”
“He was a spy?” I said. If it hadn’t been such a miserable weekend, I would’ve thought that was cool.
Agent Armstrong went on. “I’m also saying that perhaps his relationship with your wife wasn’t as innocent as it seemed. That maybe they had a rendezvous at the Breakers while you were on the mainland. That maybe they quarreled and it got out of hand and he strangled her.”
I couldn’t believe it. Yuri, with the three-day stubble and the bags under his eyes. Yes, he loved her, but he never would’ve tried to get close to her. He was too tragic for that kind of thing. “You and me, Henry, we understand love from afar a little too well, I think,” he said on more than one occasion when he caught me looking at Pixie, the whole long length of her. “My chances are over, but you can still play a hand. Why not ask her on a real date? Flowers. Candy.”
“No,” I said now, and Joyce shot me another glare. “Yuri would never have made a move on Lyudmila, and he certainly wouldn’t have strangled her.”
“But his weapon killed the best scent hound in the state,” agent Armstrong said. “And the man himself is nowhere to be found. I’d like to talk to him directly.”
“Henry,” Mere said. “You’ve got to admit it looks grim.”
She was right. All the same, I couldn’t help thinking Yuri would find something philosophical about it.
Ah . . . death. Such a tragedy. Such a beautiful woman. You never know what life brings you. That is why you must tell your girl what you think of her before it is too late.
thirteen
PIXIE
It was late afternoon when I got home. In the backyard, Dean was digging a hole toward the end of the bluff, away from the Douglas firs, closer to the scrub, the ironwood, and the Himalayan blackberries, where all the critters made their homes. Next to him was a large object wrapped in an old blanket that was stained red.
I grabbed another shovel from the garage and went out to join him. After all, she was my dog.
“You don’t need to help me, Pix. You just got out of the hospital,” Dean said, looking up.
We were in the hospital so much, the house rule was that we had twenty-four hours to rest after after we were discharged. But the reality was that no one rested without being called a wuss. It wasn’t worth the grief. But Dean was talking about something else. He was talking ab
out burying Patience. He had his rain poncho on and his mud boots. It was a torrential day. Everything was getting blasted in the wind and sideways rain.
“Yes, I do.”
It didn’t go quickly. Even away from the trees, the roots were thick, and even though our arms were thicker, it was slow going, and we had to bury her deep because some of the critters that made their homes in the brush were coyotes. We didn’t want Patience dug up and carried off.
From where we worked, we could see the Shepherd McMansion below. It was swarming with activity. Helicopters circled overhead; Coast Guard boats got as close to shore as they could, which wasn’t close. Volunteers walked the lagoon; three of my brothers among them. They were taking it so slow they looked like herons.
I didn’t forget my obligation to the Shepherds. Henry texted me more than once to come down and show him how to walk the grid, but I told him that Sammy could help him. I knew I couldn’t compare the loss of a dog to the loss of a stepmother, but I wanted to honor Patience, who’d been a menace but also a hero.
I hadn’t realized how heavy Patience was until Dean and I both heaved her into the deep hole we’d dug. We had to swing her to get her to the bottom. Dean had done his best to wrap her in an old blanket, but the red blood kept seeping through. Her tongue lolled out and got dirty, but she didn’t care.
That was when I knew that Patience was finally, completely gone. All that was left were memories and compost.
fourteen
HENRY
Agent Armstrong wanted us to stay indoors and wait for news, but I wasn’t so good at that. I had to know what had happened to Grant—even if it was the worst thing I could think of. I’d been mentally preparing myself for it ever since Pixie and I turned over the rowboat the night before. At the very least, I wanted to “walk the grid” the way the Grays were doing.
Pix was back from the hospital. Sammy said she was okay and all her tests had come back normal. I could see her at the edge of her yard on top of the bluff, working at something. I texted her to come down and show me what to look for when walking a grid, and she texted back that she couldn’t at the moment, that she was burying her dog. But she’d ask one of her brothers to break off from where they were searching the lagoon. That one of them would help me. Break off? I texted her. Should they do that?
Useless Bay Page 8
