Oberon Boxed Set (Books 1-3) Welcome to Oberon

by P. G. Forte

  She stepped outside to check on the big tanks and the aviary, and double check that all the gates were locked. The last thing she needed was raccoons or coyotes or any other predators getting in and further stressing her patients.

  Everything was quiet, except in the last tank, where something was disturbing the water. She climbed the steps alongside it and leaned over the edge. Every once in a while some inquisitive visiting animal would fall in and have to be rescued, but not tonight. In the faint moonlight she could see the tank’s legitimate occupant swimming, fast and rather frantically around in circles.

  Siobhan watched as the sea lion propelled herself with breathtakingly lovely grace through the silvery water. She was almost ready to be released. Siobhan felt a thrill of satisfaction. When the harbor patrol had brought the animal in, she didn’t think it would make it. It had been weak, dehydrated, injured. But worst of all, it seemed to have lost the will to live.

  Siobhan could relate to that. She knew what it was like, to want to just lay down and die. She had been in that place too many times. She knew the seductive power the idea of death could exert on a creature.

  There were worse things, after all, than dying. And living with the consequences of your actions was one of them.

  Back to Top

  * * * *

  Chapter Twenty

  * * * *

  Tuesday morning came too soon for Marsha. She hadn’t had enough sleep, and what little she had gotten had been plagued by restless and uneasy dreams. Dreams she couldn’t remember, but which left her depressed, all the same.

  “Can I drive?” Jesse asked, as usual, as they were on their way out of the house in the morning.

  “No, of course not,” she replied as usual.

  “But why not?” The ritual continued as they climbed into the van.

  “Because.” Marsha stilled, for just an instant, as she realized she needed to readjust her seat. “Uh, because ... you’re not old enough. Like I’ve already told you.” She maneuvered the seat closer to the wheel as unobtrusively as possible.

  “You really should let me practice. I mean, think about it Mom, if this was a life and death situation, and I had to drive? I’d be killing hella people.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Marsha grinned as she turned the key in the ignition. The gas tank had been filled, she realized, watching the needle rise all the way to the top of the dial. That was a nice touch.

  “Why was your seat pushed back like that?” Frank pounced on the anomaly, and quickly came to his own conclusion. “You let him drive it, didn’t you?”

  “Let who drive?” Jesse asked, but then he answered his own question as well. “You mean Sam? You’re kidding! You never let anyone drive this thing.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Marsha sniffed as she shifted into gear. “Your sister drives it whenever she wants to. I mean, when she was home, she did.”

  “Right. That’s why she always went everywhere by bike.” Frank pointed out.

  “She likes biking.”

  “Nobody likes biking that much, Mom,” Jesse scoffed. Then abruptly changed the subject. “You really like this guy, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” Marsha answered calmly, her hands only the slightest bit clenched on the steering wheel. “I told you, he’s a friend.”

  “No, I mean you like him – like him.”

  Marsha laughed. “What am I, six years old now? Like him – like him? Jeez. What the heck does that mean, anyway?”

  “Don’t act dumb, Mom. You know exactly what he means,” Frank answered. “And besides, I think he’s right.”

  “Yeah? Well, have you two ever noticed that the only time you ever agree on anything is when you’re making absolutely no sense?”

  The two boys looked at each other for a moment. “Nope,” they answered together, both folding their arms stubbornly and regarding her with identical, rather skeptical glances.

  “Well, maybe you should think about it,” she snapped.

  “Well, maybe you should think about why you’re in denial about your real feelings for this guy,” Frank answered coolly.

  “Frank, do me a favor,” she ordered between clenched teeth. “Spare me the amateur psychoanalysis. I get enough of that from your father.”

  Jesse smirked. “Well, at least someone’s getting enough of something from him.”

  Marsha stared at him uncertainly. It was cowardly, she knew, to let something like that slide by unchallenged. But she just was not up to tackling that subject. Not this early. Not on a school day. Not when she’d be dropping them off in five minutes. And definitely not after last night.

  * * *

  Tuesday was shaping up to be a hell of a day, Dan thought as he checked trays of seedlings in one of the larger greenhouses. Usually he loved being here early in the morning. He loved to feel the first rays of sunlight warm on his face, in pleasant counter-point to the chill in the air. Loved wandering around in the quiet by himself. Loved watching as the mist rose off the fields.

  But today, he wondered if anyone would notice if he just slipped away for a couple of hours and found somewhere to take a nap. These long, sleepless nights were really beginning to take their toll on his temper. Last night’s scene with Lucy had been the icing on the cake.

  “And why is it I had to be the very last person in all of Oberon to find out that Paige Delaney is dead?” she asked over dinner. “You know how much I hate surprises, Dan. I can’t believe you knew about this yesterday! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He had almost winced at the coldness in her voice, but what answer could he have made? He’d glanced around the table at the ring of faces turned expectantly toward him, awaiting his response. Why hadn’t he told her about Paige? Shit, maybe because he’d only spent the last sixteen years avoiding the subject. How about that?

  Somehow, he hadn’t thought that answer would go over too well. So, instead, he’d resorted to yelling and blustering and making more noise than even she could. Which was one tactic for dealing with Lucy. Not the best, by any means, but he occasionally found it effective. And then he’d stormed off to bed where he’d pretended to be asleep for the rest of the night.

  But he hadn’t been asleep when she’d crept into bed beside him several hours later. And he’d known by the quiet that radiated from her as she lay there – sleepless herself for quite a while – that he’d only succeeded in postponing the discussion they’d eventually have to have.

  He’d left the house extra early this morning, anxious to avoid not only Lucy, but her parents, as well. And when he got here, he’d left a very clearly worded note at the phone desk, letting everyone know he wasn’t in today. No matter who was calling.

  He could just imagine how much flack he was going to get for that, too.

  Why hadn’t he told her about Paige? Because dumb as he sometimes knew himself to be, he wasn’t quite as dumb as that.

  Dan had met Paige the summer before he and Lucy were married. He’d met a lot of women that summer. The worst summer of his life. He and Lucy had broken up in June, and she’d gone to Arizona to stay with her aunt. Leaving him with two years of monogamy to make up for, or so he told himself. Two years of memories to forget. Two years of Lucy filling his head, until he could think of nothing else.

  There was only one way he could think of to wipe her from his mind, and he made a very thorough job of trying. But it hadn’t mattered how many other women he took to bed, not when he found himself comparing every last one of them to her.

  He was on her doorstep about ten minutes after she’d returned to town, and he had her back in his bed by that evening. But it had taken him almost another month before she finally agreed to marry him. Once she had, he’d given her no chance to change her mind. He’d hustled her off to Las Vegas as soon as he could, not caring at all that he was bringing the wrath of both their families down on their heads. They’d get over their disappointment in time, he reasoned. And a whole lot easier than he’d get over his, if he
let her get away again.

  It was while he was actually packing for the trip to Vegas that Paige had showed up at his apartment; claiming she loved him, demanding he marry her, and finally, threatening to go to Lucy, and tell her everything. That’s when he had issued his own threats.

  He was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to come between him and Lucy. But what if she did? What if she managed to come between him and the only woman he’d ever loved?

  “Try it, Paige,” he’d told her in a voice so soullessly certain it had scared even him. “Try it and I’ll see you dead.”

  Why she wanted to marry him after only a couple of nights together he’d never been able to figure, and hadn’t much cared. But she and Nick had dated for months. And for a while it looked to everyone like they were getting pretty serious. Now Nick was marrying Scout, and Paige was all of a sudden dead.

  And frankly, Dan was finding the similarities a little hard to ignore.

  “Hey, Dan.” He turned around to see his brother Kenny approaching, a slightly worried look on his face. “Nick called for you again. What’s going on, anyway? How come we’re not supposed to let anyone know you’re here?”

  “Nothing’s going on, Kenny. I’m just up to my ears in in-laws at the moment. I needed a break.”

  Kenny grinned, “Yeah, well, I guess I can understand that.”

  “So,” Dan asked reluctantly. “Did Nick say what it was he wanted?”

  “Yeah, something about the fitting for the tuxes? I guess they’re doing that later this afternoon.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Ken.” Dan shrugged and turned back to work. Later this afternoon? I don’t think so. He’d run into town during lunch and get it over with. There was no way he was up to dealing with Nick today. Or with any of them, for that matter.

  * * *

  Nick slammed the phone down on his desk and swore softly as he grabbed for his cigarettes. The son-of-a-bitch was avoiding him. That much was obvious. What wasn’t so obvious, was why. Or maybe it was obvious, and he just didn’t want to admit it.

  Closing his eyes, he rubbed his forehead in an effort to rid himself of the headache that was forming there. Did he know about the folder? That was one explanation. And, oh man, he really hoped there was another explanation floating around out there someplace. Because there was only one person who could have told him about it, so far as he knew. And she was dead. And there was only one really good reason – if he had known about it, and if he’d maybe decided to do something about it – that he’d be avoiding him now. And Nick didn’t even want to put that thought into words.

  He was so deep in his musings that he barely heard the knock when it came on his door.

  “Nick?”

  He looked up to find Sam in the doorway.

  “I’m ready to get started now. I wondered if you’d had a chance to put that list together for me?”

  The list. Right. The list of possible passwords. Names and dates that might have had special meaning for Paige. Oh, yeah, he had it, all right.

  Nick opened a drawer in his desk and extracted a sheet of paper. He passed it to Sam without a word, and watched as the man scanned the list quickly. Watched as his eyebrows rose over a couple of the entries, and as he quickly hid his surprise away again.

  “Okay, well. Great. I’ll get right on it.”

  Nick nodded curtly. “Good.” He watched as the other man quietly left the room, closing the door behind him. Too bad he didn’t know of any reason why Sam would have wanted to murder Paige because, when he thought about it, he made a much better suspect than anyone else he had, at the moment.

  A stranger who just happened to be on the scene at the time of the murder and just happens to know enough about computers to access the one piece of evidence that could be critical to solving the case? What a coincidence. Of course, anything that involved Marsha was bound to get screwy like that, but wouldn’t it be nice if, along with a handy computer technician, she’d also handed him a convenient suspect?

  * * *

  Sam settled himself behind the computer and went to work. He was relieved that no one at the station seemed all that savvy when it came to computers, because it was no mean trick he was trying to pull off here. This whole set-up was proving to be a lot more risky than anything he’d attempted for quite a while.

  The strangest thing was, he kind of liked the sensation.

  He had been working steadily for several hours when he was hit with a recurrence of the same vertigo that had caught him in the park last night. A gut-wrenching sense of wrongness washed through him. He had no idea what was wrong, only that he needed to get out of there now. He turned the computer off and headed for the door, practically running into the young cop he remembered seeing at the nature center on Saturday.

  The cop looked at him questioningly. “Hey, you okay?”

  “Yeah. Uh, do me a favor. Tell Nick I’ll be back later, okay? Or maybe first thing tomorrow. I just realized I need to get some software,” Sam improvised. “I’ll be back when I can.”

  The other man shrugged disinterestedly. “Yeah, sure thing.”

  By the time Sam reached the sidewalk the panic had subsided. Leaving only a nasty taste of adrenaline behind. Damn, he thought as he started the bike, what had the woman done to him, anyway?

  * * *

  Ryan watched Sam’s bike disappear down the street. Could this case get any more weird? The guy had looked like he was on the verge of cardiac arrest a minute earlier, and now... well there didn’t seem to be too much wrong with him anymore, judging from the way he handled that bike. He was still pondering when Nick came up behind him.

  “Hey, Henderson. You have any idea where that guy Presley went. I thought he was supposed to be working on Delaney’s computer?”

  Ryan turned, not at all pleased to see Darcy Boyle was back. He stared at her stonily as he answered Nick. “Yeah, you just missed him. Said he had to pick up some software or something. I guess he’ll be back when he gets it.”

  What the hell was Nick thinking, bringing Boyle into this? Ryan shouldered his way past her and headed back into the building. He knew she and Nick had been partners, and he certainly could understand loyalty. But shit, anyone could see the woman was bad news.

  Nick had even admitted as much when he’d broached the subject yesterday.

  “Don’t worry about Darcy,” Nick had said, shrugging disinterestedly. “I’ll keep her busy. She can’t get up to too much trouble if she’s working. Besides, it’s like I’ve always said, she can be damn useful at times.”

  “Useful?” Ryan snorted. “Yeah, maybe if we were running a vice sting, or we had a sniper we needed to take out. The woman’s a natural born stone killer. Cold as a witch’s tit.”

  “Yeah well, don’t believe everything you might have read about her,” Nick replied, smiling wryly. “Paige had a bit of an axe to grind when she wrote those articles. Darcy’s a better investigator than anyone else we’ve got at the moment. And she’s familiar with the territory. But speaking of Paige, any word on the autopsy yet?”

  “Nothing we didn’t already know,” Ryan shrugged. “Her throat was slashed. That’s what took her out. Nice and clean, from the killer’s point of view. Stabbing her in the back afterwards was just an extra bit of fun.”

  “A crime of passion?” Nick sounded as if he were talking to himself. “Or did someone just want it to look that way?”

  “Dunno,” Ryan replied. “Knowing Paige, though, I’d bet on the former.”

  * * *

  Something was definitely bothering Nick, Joey decided, as the two of them were being fit for their tuxes later that afternoon. But he was no longer so optimistically hopeful that his cousin’s bad temper was proof he had come to his senses about Scout. All the same, Joey knew she had to be behind it somewhere. Just like she’d been at the heart of every other bad thing in Nick’s life for twenty long years.

  Nick had arrived at the store grim and un-communicative, and when the sales clerk happened to
mention that Dan had already been in for his fitting earlier in the day, Joey thought Nick was going to take a swing at the man.

  “Hey, Nick, c’mon, take it easy. What’s the big deal? So Dan already came in this morning and got it over with. So what?”

  Nick stared at him for a moment, and if Joey hadn’t known it to be impossible, he’d have sworn that he’d seen a flash of fear in his cousin’s eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Nick mumbled at last. “It’s no big deal, I guess. Let’s just get this shit over with, then.”

  Which, Joey reflected, was not the kind of enthusiastic response you’d expect from a man who was happy about his upcoming nuptials. Perhaps there was a reason to hope, after all. “So, I hear you’ve been seeing Darcy, again,” he remarked, casually.

  “What did you say?” Nick’s voice was ominously quiet. “Joey, are you nuts?”

  Probably, Joey thought, but he pushed on nonetheless. “Darcy. She’s back in Oberon, right?”

  “She’s in town. Yeah.”

  “So? How’s she doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “Oh, yeah? Good. So are you—”

  “Joe.” Nick interrupted. “I do not want to talk about Darcy now. Is that clear?”

  “Sure, cuz. I just thought it was interesting, is all. I mean, her turning up again at this particular point in time. Know what I mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it? Maybe about re-evaluating things?”

  “Not really,” Nick responded dryly.

  Joey switched to a different tactic. “So, what do you think is up with Dan these days, anyway? My parents say he’s been acting weird.”

  “What’s wrong with Dan? Oh, probably nothing that hasn’t been wrong for the last sixteen years or so,” Nick snarled, angry all over again.

  Joey regarded him with no small surprise. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? Sixteen years? Wait – that’s how long they’ve been married, right? What, you’re saying that’s the problem?”