by Lisa Jackson
“Sexist.”
“Truth.” She climbed two steps to a back porch that also served as a sunroom, paned windows enclosing the area. She pounded on a screen door that rattled, then tried it, and it opened.
The inside door, however, was locked.
“No luck.” She sighed and they both peered through the window cut into the back door. Inside was a kitchen, clean enough, though time-worn, one of the kitchen chairs pulled out a bit, so as to view a small television propped on the table.
“No one’s here,” Voss said and they moved on, looking through windows and past partially open blinds or curtains but seeing no signs of life.
Next, the garage. It was locked as well, but a window on the side wall gave a view of the dark interior, where a workbench, clean as a whistle, stretched across the back wall, the rest of the space empty.
Cade said, “Not here.”
“And not at work. Lied about being sick,” Voss said, standing on her tiptoes for a view of the interior and holding on to the outer sill of the window for balance.
“Unless he’s at an urgent care. Or at a friend’s. Maybe he just took the day off and didn’t want the help to know he was playing hooky.”
“Or in the wind if he thinks we’re on to him.”
“If he’s the killer.”
“Yeah. So far, he’s got my vote.”
“Pretty sloppy if he wanted to get away with it.”
“Like I said, sex game that went a little too far.”
“Possibly.” But Cade wasn’t buying it. Something was off about the idea of Nate Moretti killing both women. “Let’s call him.” Cade already had his phone out of his pocket. He’d already put Moretti’s number into his contacts, but when he punched out the number and was connected, he was immediately sent to voice mail. He left a message, asking Moretti to call him back.
“So back to square one,” Voss observed as she let go of the sill and stood flat-footed again. “Unless you want to break in.”
“Not yet.” They made their way back to the SUV, parked in front of the house. “Let’s put a BOLO out for his vehicle. It’s a Toyota, right? SUV?”
“RAV4, 2019, hybrid.”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“Always.”
“Then let’s see if his father knows where he is.” He tossed Voss the keys. “I’ll run him down.” Then he was on the phone again and slid into the passenger seat as Voss climbed behind the wheel.
The day was slowly beginning to clear, clouds and fog lifting, visibility improving as she turned on the SUV, then drove back down the lane. They turned onto the county road and wound through the wooded hillsides before eventually connecting to Highway 30 and heading west to Astoria.
Cade didn’t get far with his call to reach Nate Moretti’s father. A receptionist who answered the phone at Moretti’s clinic told Cade that “Doctor” wouldn’t be in until four. Frustrated, he gave Voss the word, and at the next crossroad, she turned the vehicle around to head back to the station.
All the way back to Edgewater with Voss driving so painstakingly near the speed limit that he wanted to scream, he thought about Nate Moretti’s disappearance on the heels of his lover’s bizarre murder.
Had he met her at St. Augustine’s and, as Voss had surmised, their tryst went horribly bad?
Had someone else been waiting for them?
Was he alive, hiding out somewhere? Or on the run?
Or could he be already dead?
Cade didn’t like any of the options.
CHAPTER 29
Panicked, thinking she might have missed the kids calling her, Rachel checked her phone again for messages, texts, or missed calls. Nope. The living room was empty. Her heart began to race as she saw her bedroom and office were empty, so she hurried down to the first floor and then to the basement, hitting the switch on the wall to illuminate the darkened area.
No voices. No hum of the old treadmill. No sounds of anyone. But a scent that was unfamiliar. The hint of musk. She froze and realized that some of the boxes she’d piled down here for recycling had been moved—shuffled around.
Or at least she thought so.
But why?
And where the hell were Harper and Dylan?
The musky odor had disappeared, if it had existed at all, but Rachel felt edgy. She stood stock still and listened, but other than the sound of Reno whining at the basement door she heard no one.
Crap.
Once more she looked around. Searching past shelves of boxes of stuff she hadn’t thrown out, old lamps, paint cans, and boxes of tile left over from the bathroom remodel, she told herself she was overreacting. She swept her gaze through the three rooms, where, as she’d known the second she’d started down the rickety old steps, she would find no one.
A dark fear drizzled through her blood. As she started up the stairs, she began to text Harper, only to hear the back door squeak open and then the sound of footsteps hurrying inside. Along with the footfalls, she heard voices. Harper and Dylan and someone else, a male voice. Xander Vale, no doubt. He just didn’t get the message.
“Mom?” Harper called as Rachel stepped onto the main floor. The back door was hanging open, the security alarm beginning to bleat when Rachel’s phone rang. She checked the tiny screen and saw her mother’s number.
Melinda was returning her call.
Rachel didn’t answer. Not right now, as she spied Lucas, rather than Xander Vale, walking into her kitchen. He was pocketing his phone and keys while Harper carried in a couple of take-out sacks and Dylan in full camo bustled into the pantry to disengage the alarm.
They were safe.
Thank God!
“I thought I told you to stay home,” she said to her children and she heard the edge in her voice. Panic with a touch of anger.
“My fault.” Lucas flashed a sheepish grin. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt despite the cool weather. “I texted Harper. Wanted to see if she was okay. Mom said she . . .” He let the sentence falter.
Rachel caught his drift. But she was still irritated. “You should have let me know.”
“I thought we’d beat you back,” Harper said.
“Still—”
“Hey, I didn’t want to worry you, okay?” her daughter snapped. “I mean, you’ve been so freaked out, like, all the time, and yeah, I get it. Weird, sick things are happening, but I didn’t see how going out and grabbing tacos and Cokes in the middle of the day would be that big of a deal.” Her eyes sparked with challenge.
“But after last night—”
“Mom. I get it.” She held her mother’s gaze and a slow burning blush was climbing up the back of her neck. She was embarrassed? Because she got caught disobeying? Because Lucas was observing the fight? Or because she thought her mother was a nut job, completely unhinged.
“Fine. Next time, please just let me know,” Rachel said, backing off slightly. “You scared me, is all.”
“Everything scares you!” Harper’s chin inched up a fraction, almost daring her mother into a battle.
Her phone began ringing again.
“Let me get this. It’s Grandma. Calling me back.” She clicked on her cell, then, phone to her ear, walked into the living room, where she would have a little more privacy. “Hey, Mom.”
“Got your message,” Melinda said.
“Yeah, I was just checking in.” Rachel sat on the arm of the couch to look out the living room window, where the fog, thinner now, partially obscured the Dickersons’ front yard.
“I heard about your friend.”
Technically Annessa hadn’t been her “friend,” but she let it pass. “I know. God, it’s so awful.”
“And Harper was there?” How had she heard that already? Not that it mattered. Edgewater was a small town and news traveled through the stores, coffee shops, restaurants, and small businesses like a wildfire caught on the wind.
“Yeah.”
“Traumatic for her.” A pause. “Is she okay?”
<
br /> Stretching her neck, Rachel looked down the hallway to the kitchen, where Harper was seated at the table, Lucas at the door, Dylan out of sight, probably standing around the corner next to the refrigerator or stove. “It’s hard to tell. She says she is, and she seems as normal as can be expected, but it was rough on her. I kept both of them home from school today.” As she watched, Harper grinned widely and gave a short laugh. She handed Lucas her phone as she sipped from a straw stuck into a cup with the logo of the local Mexican take-out spot. Probably not part of her proclaimed detox regimen.
Lucas took one look at Harper’s cell and his face split into a wide grin that reminded Rachel of Lila. Luke’s son definitely took after his mother’s side of the family.
“I don’t blame you for letting them stay home,” Melinda was saying. “With everything that’s happening here, keep them close. It’s all just so hard. For all of us.”
“You read the paper today?” she asked her mother.
“Yeah, yeah, I did. I told myself not to, that I’d just be upset, but . . . anyway, of course I did, and yes, it was upsetting.” A long sigh. “It’s nothing compared to the murders, of course. Those families are in so much pain and I know what that’s like, but . . .”
Rachel said, “It still stings, though.”
“Stings like a bitch and Mercedes Jennings—er, Pope—keeps calling me and wanting me to submit to an interview for that damned paper, but I just won’t.” Melinda was firm.
“Don’t blame you.”
“I think it’s odd that she’s so focused on what happened to Luke,” Melinda confided. “Because he told me once that she didn’t like him.”
“Yeah.” Rachel sighed and shook her head. “She’s one of the few of my friends who wasn’t half in love with him. God, they all fell all over him, like he was God’s gift or something.”
“Maybe he was,” Melinda murmured.
Rachel cringed.
“At least Lila Kostas thought so,” Melinda said bitterly.
Rachel kept her voice low. “At least she gave you a grandson.”
“Yeah, well, there is that.” Melinda’s tone was flat. She’d never been close to Lucas. She’d lost a son. Lucas had lost a father he’d never known. But instead of bonding with her first-born grandson, Melinda had chosen to distance herself from him and his unwed mother, not even sending Lila a note of congratulations when she married Chuck.
Their family was absurdly complicated, Rachel would give her mother that much. At least Lucas had connected to his cousins. Here he was now, laughing and joking with Harper and Dylan.
Rachel hazarded another glance into the kitchen and saw Dylan reaching into the open sack, pulling out a wrapped taco, then wadding the empty sack and throwing it at his older cousin, who caught the incoming ball easily, then hurled it back with some force.
“I guess we’ll muddle through,” Melinda said.
“We have to. By the way, Mom, you said Luke’s dad was released from prison.”
“That’s right.”
“Has he tried to contact you?”
A pause. “Why would you ask that?”
“Just curious. I mean, he was Luke’s father.”
She could almost feel her mother bristle over the connection. “A father in name only. The man’s a beast, Rachel. Someone who talked with his fists. I’m grateful that Luke never knew him. God knows what would have happened.... Oh, Lord . . .”
Yeah, the worst had happened. Luke had died. And Bruce Hollander hadn’t been involved.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Her mother hesitated. “I got a text from him, at least I think it was him. He said it was. I didn’t respond. Blocked the number.”
A text? Rachel’s pulse jumped. “What did he say?”
“It was nothing. Came through on the anniversary of the day Luke died. He identified himself and said he was sorry. Nothing more. I figured he was in some kind of twelve-step program and I was one of the steps.”
“Do you have that number?”
“I deleted it.”
“But could you find it . . . isn’t there something under ‘recently deleted’ on your phone? Or something like that?”
“Maybe, but why? I haven’t had contact with him for over twenty years. There’s just no reason.”
“There might be, Mom,” she said. “I’ve, um, I’ve had a couple weird texts and the first one came in on the anniversary of Luke’s death.”
“What? Oh, that’s horrible. What did it say?”
“ ‘I forgive you.’”
“For what?”
“Didn’t say. But that was it. Both times.” Rachel explained about the two missives she’d received from the unknown person.
“Wow. You know, I don’t know Bruce any longer, but I’m not buying that he’s a changed man. I don’t think twenty years in prison necessarily turns a person around, but that just isn’t his style, or it wasn’t. He wasn’t into subtleties, not when I knew him, when I was married to him. And if it were really him, and he was, you know, reaching out to you like he did to me in whatever program he might be on, why not be up front? Why the cloak-and-dagger stuff? The anonymity. That’s not part of any program I’ve ever heard about and certainly not his style. At least it wasn’t in the past.” She hesitated. “I’ll try to locate that number, though.”
“Good.” If she did, Rachel intended to pass it on to Cade. ASAP. They talked a little more, and when she hung up, she spied Ella Dickerson in her yard, gardening gloves covering her hands as she knelt near a bed of roses, all starting to bud. The kids were still in the kitchen, which smelled of cumin and hot sauce. As she walked down the hall, she saw that Lucas was shoving his phone in his pocket and fiddling with his keys.
“I was just heading home,” he said as she entered.
“Don’t leave on my account.”
He shook his head as he reached for the door. “It’s not that. Mom is kind of nervous these days and I have a final I should be studying for.” To Harper, he said, “See ya,” then cast a glance Dylan’s way and hitched his chin. “We need another game.”
“Yeah.” Dylan nodded, pointing at his cousin. “You’ve got it.”
“I’ll go out with you,” Rachel said as Lucas opened the back door, then to the kids, “Just turn off the alarm for a second. I need to take Reno outside.”
Hearing his name, the dog scrambled to her side. She snapped his leash onto his collar and walked out the back and around the house to Lucas’s car, parked on the street. It struck her that Lucas was nearly the same age Luke had been at his death, so walking with him across the grass brought back unbidden memories of her brother. Though Lucas was slightly shorter and more muscular than Luke had been, his hair was almost as blond. As he folded himself into his black Porsche, she remembered Luke getting into Nate Moretti’s BMW on that fateful afternoon.
Her heart ached with the old, familiar pain. Forcing the memory back to the farther reaches of her mind, she asked, “So how’re you doing with all of this?”
Seated inside, he looked up at her through the open window. “All of what?” he asked, then caught her drift. “Oh, you mean the articles in the paper? And the people being killed?”
“Yeah.”
He frowned, more serious than usual. “It’s weird.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Okay, freaky weird.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you think—I mean, is it possible that the people who’ve been attacked, that they had anything to do with my dad?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, keeping Reno tethered in one hand as the dog sniffed around the grass near the curb. “Maybe. Maybe not. Why?”
“Just something Mom said. You know. About what happened. About how those women . . . that they were witnesses to him . . . to him dying.”
“A lot of us were.”
“I guess so.” And then he squinted at her and she saw the never-asked question in his eyes. Why did you do it? Why did you kill your own b
rother, the father I never had the chance to meet?
“You know, Lucas,” she said, her fingers curling over the edge of the sports car’s door, her throat closing, “I’m sorry about your dad. Really sorry for my part in it, sorry about . . . about all of it.”
His lips folded in on themselves. He didn’t ask why, just gave a quick nod. As if he knew what she was talking about. “Don’t worry about it,” he finally said and started the Porsche’s huge engine.
Reno jumped back, and as Lucas pulled away from the edge of the street, heading back to town, Rachel crossed in front of her house to the Dickersons’ place. Ella was still on her knees, eyeing Lucas’s sports car speeding away, then barely stopping at the far corner before roaring out of sight, disappearing into the rising mist. “It does no good to spoil a kid,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and dusting her gloved hands free of damp bark dust.
“Probably,” she agreed, then got to the point. “You have a good view of my house and I was wondering if you saw anyone hanging around.”
“I told the police everything I know about what was written on your door.” Adjusting her glasses, she added, “I was the one who told you.”
“Yeah, I know and thanks. I hadn’t seen it.”
“Horrible stuff. Sometimes it makes you wonder what the world’s coming to.”
Reno pulled at the leash. “Sit,” Rachel ordered. “But I mean not just that night, but others. Have you seen anyone hanging out by the side gate, for example?” she asked, pointing to the strip of grass that led to the back gate on the side of the house abutting the Pittses’ place.
Ella took off her gloves. “Well, yeah.”
The back of Rachel’s mouth went dry. “Who? When?”
“I don’t know, it’s usually dark. I’ve seen someone there a couple of times, didn’t think anything of it. There’s a lot of coming and going at your house. Teenagers. Cars.” She shrugged. “I never said anything because I thought you knew. I thought they were probably friends of your kids.”
Really? “What time . . . when?”
“Oh, gee, the last time was probably the night before last.” She screwed up her face as she thought. “Sometime after midnight or thereabout.”
