Hush

by Nancy Bush

  “Why me?” she asked. “There were a lot of people there.”

  “I know you,” he answered. “I like you. I trust your insight. I can get to the others later, but I wanted to see you today. I’ve—missed you.”

  Coby felt like she’d been thrown into a time warp. Danner was so the same. And it was in a good way, and she’d missed it, too, and now she just wanted to lay her head on the table and cry and she didn’t have a clue why.

  Instead, she swallowed a piece of croissant that felt like it was sticking in her throat and told him about her Saturday from start to finish, everything she could remember, from racing out of the meeting with a JJ&R client, to the worry over her tire and stopping at the Halfway There, to the moment when she, like everyone else, ran to the back deck and saw Annette floating facedown in the bubbling hot tub.

  “And then Juliet left in her Mercedes and I followed my dad’s car back to his condo, and I drove to my own place, parked, walked inside, and sat down at the table and had a glass of water. I don’t know how long I sat there, but I went straight to bed after that. I got up this morning and went to work.”

  He was watching her, an engaged listener. She’d expected him to take notes, or something, he simply listened.

  “Did you think it was strange that Juliet said Yvette was embarrassed over Kirk being naked?” he asked.

  “Uh . . .” She smiled quizzically. “That’s what you want to know?”

  “It just seemed like you thought it was weird. Your expression, when you brought it up, like you remembered and it caught your attention.”

  “Well, you’re right,” she admitted. “I never think of Yvette’s being embarrassed. She’s just not built that way. But she might have been pissed off and Juliet put a nice spin on it. Juliet was the one who was embarrassed. Kirk’s her boyfriend, I guess.”

  “What do you think she meant that you should talk to Yvette?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think she was worried that it was a homicide, and that Yvette might know something? Be involved, possibly?”

  Coby spread her hands. “Maybe she was referring to an argument that Yvette had with Annette. I heard her mention Dana. Like Dana Sainer . . . um . . . her married name is Bracco. Dana was one of the friends at the campout.”

  “Hank Sainer’s daughter?”

  “Yep.”

  “But she wasn’t there on Saturday.”

  “No, she lives on the East Coast. None of us have seen her in years.”

  Now he did take out a small spiral notebook, flip it open, and write down some thoughts. “Anything else in that argument?”

  “Annette said it was all going to come out and Yvette snapped back at her, and she said it wasn’t about her, and Yvette responded that it was always about her.”

  “What do you think that meant?” he asked, his blue eyes searching hers.

  It made it hard for her to keep her mind on what they were talking about. Her attention just felt fractured. “Um . . . you know, I thought it was about something Yvette had done, and Yvette was pissed at her and just made that last comment because they were sisters and were just letting each other have it.”

  “Think it had to do with the big secret Annette wanted to see the light of day?”

  “I thought it had to do with Benedict’s father, actually,” Coby said now, realizing. “I thought maybe she was talking about Lucas, but I don’t know what Dana had to do with that unless maybe she knows the truth and was going to finally tell.”

  “You think Lucas was Benedict’s father?”

  “Yvette practically said so, the night of the campout. She said they were lovers. But at Annette’s party she made a point of telling me that wasn’t the truth. We were talking and I swear she brought it up just so she could tell me Benedict was not Lucas’s.”

  Danner mulled that over. “If Dana knows, and Yvette sees it’s what you suspect as well, it’s not much of a motive to go after Annette. Everybody already knows.”

  Coby shrugged. “Maybe Annette had incontrovertible proof.”

  “Big word,” Danner said with a smile.

  “I work in a law office.”

  And for some reason that made them both laugh, a sudden release of tension. Then Danner said, “Still, given the circumstances, would it really be a reason to kill your own sister?”

  Coby thought about it and slowly shook her head. “No. It wouldn’t be. So it must be something else. I can see Yvette being totally pissed off and getting in a shoving match, maybe even hitting, but to hold Annette underwater?”

  “Rage can sweep you away,” Danner mused, but she could tell he wasn’t wild about that motive either.

  Glancing at her watch, Coby said reluctantly, “I have to get back to work.”

  Danner nodded. “I’ve got to get on the road to Tillamook.”

  They both stood up. There was an awkward moment where they almost shook hands, and then he simply gathered her in his arms and hugged her.

  “I’ll be back tonight,” he said lightly. “I’m just exchanging information with the TCSD.”

  “Not your jurisdiction,” Coby said.

  “Not my jurisdiction,” he agreed, then sketched a good-bye as he headed out the revolving doors.

  “Be still my beating heart,” Coby muttered to herself through clenched teeth. Damn, but he had a hold on her. After all this time. After all this wasted time.

  It really kind of pissed her off.

  Sometimes things just didn’t work out the way they should.

  In Yvette’s case, they never worked out as they should. She’d spent her life scratching and fighting for everything she’d earned. Nicholette had been blessed with being first and Daddy’s favorite. Annette had been smart and cagey, with a mind like a chess player, always two or five or ten moves ahead. Juliet was a pain in the ass, really. Always skulking around and watching for an opportunity to shine the light on herself, usually at someone else’s expense. And she couldn’t keep her legs together, either. Was always lying down for some guy whom she deemed the coolest of the moment. Sure, it was Kirk Grassi now, but Yvette had it on good authority that she’d slept with Theo and Paul and maybe even Vic—puke!—a time or two. Did Kirk know? Did he care? He’d certainly cut a swath through their group, as well.

  But of all her sisters, Suzette was the one who made Yvette want to rip her face off. Her sweetness, her naivete, was a complete act. Suzette had set her sights on Galen with a bulldog’s determination. For whatever reason, she found him perfect for her means. Her job at Lovejoy’s was a stepping stone; she’d been planning Annette’s demise for a long time. Yvette had overheard the sugar-coated poison Suzette had bandied about. To the Lovejoy’s staff, whenever there was a problem: “Oh, Annette said she’d take care of that. It didn’t get done?” To the hotel guests, when their needs weren’t met: “I’ll be sure and let our general manager, Annette Rendell, know.” And then Suzette conveniently forgot to mention the issue until the guest was screaming on the phone at a confused Annette.

  Yvette never intervened. Why should she? Annette was a know-it-all who thought she was always right. Let Suzette screw things up for her. Annette could use a distraction ’cause she sure as hell wanted to mess things up for Yvette.

  Who was she to blab secrets about their family, huh? Who was she?

  Now Yvette stood behind the couch of her apartment with its rented Danish modern furniture, gazing down at her son’s dark head, wanting to pull Benedict into her arms and squeeze him hard, protect him from the shit that was coming their way.

  Controlling herself, she yanked her cell phone from her purse and checked the time. If she didn’t leave soon she’d be late for work. She was on the afternoon and evening shift at Xavier’s, a steak house in Laurelton, west of Portland, a popular spot with the commuters heading home after a day in the city. A place to meet the wife, the business associate, off duty, so to speak, the mistress and/or a possible new hookup. Yvette had been propositioned by the be
st of them. She wasn’t friendly. She was sultry, kind of smoky, definitely walking on the dark side. It was a persona that was half-natural/half-designed. It got her good tips and an occasional date, but for all her bad-girl vibe, she’d become about as chaste and dried-up as an old nun.

  There was only one man for her, and she couldn’t have him anymore.

  “Juanita will be here soon,” Yvette said to Benedict, who had come home from school and flopped himself in front of the television with hardly more than three words.

  He grunted an answer. He didn’t like having a babysitter anymore, and Yvette kind of understood. But she was under fire these days, a situation that made her gnash her teeth, and she couldn’t afford anything—any little thing—that might portray her as an unfit parent.

  Thank you, Annette-fucking-Rendell.

  She flipped open the shades to the front kitchen window, which offered a view of the parking lot. If Juanita was late, Yvette was going to kill the charming Mexican babysitter. The woman was just so goddamned happy!

  It was too irritating for words.

  Now, brooding, Yvette thought back to that last fight with Annette.

  “You can’t leave him in the hot tub by himself,” Annette snapped, tossing a towel around Benedict.

  “Take a chill pill,” Kirk drawled, lounging in the tub. The bubbles didn’t cover his floating penis, which sent Annette into overdrive. She toweled Benedict off with enough energy to take off his top layer of skin, and the boy ran to Yvette’s arms. But Yvette was deep-down angry at Annette, and after wrapping the towel more securely, she sent Benedict inside, intending to have it out with her sister.

  By then Kirk had suffered enough of Annette’s rough tongue as well. He climbed out of the tub, shot her a stiff middle finger, then tucked a towel around his waist and sauntered back inside the house.

  “You’re going to lose Benedict,” Annette said, lifting her chin.

  “Shut up,” Yvette told her. She could see the sapphire necklace glint in the light from the kitchen window. Otherwise it was dark as sin outside, and though the rain was little more than a mist at that particular moment, it was cold, damp, and uncomfortable.

  “You’ve had ample warning,” Annette went on. “You’ve done a piss-poor job of raising him, and I’ll be the first one to say so in court!”

  “Stay away from me and Benedict!” Yvette’s fury, barely below the surface at the best of times, ran over in a froth of indignation.

  “I’m sick of lying for everybody. You’re done, Yvette. As of now.”

  And Annette had stood there in triumph, with her expensive white sweater, and her expensive sapphire necklace, and her planted feet, crossed arms, and tilted chin.

  Yvette lost it. Just lost it. Without thinking she barreled into her and knocked her into the hot tub. It was all she could do not to jump in after her and rip her hair out by the roots!

  Annette was sputtering, stunned, her face blank. Sitting in the tub, she lifted a hand to her head in slow motion, as if testing for a wound. Yvette just didn’t care. She circled the hot tub and headed back through the garage and into the house, dimly aware that her sister was sinking into the water.

  She remembered hoping the bitch would drown.

  And she had.

  And now?

  The doorbell rang, saving her from an answer.

  She let in the chattering Juanita, then rotely gave her son a hurried kiss good-bye before heading out the door to her job.

  Chapter 13

  The Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department was in the center of the town of Tillamook, located along a stretch of land between the south and north lanes of Highway 101. Danner pulled his Wrangler into the back lot, which was, on a good day, filled with large mud puddles and on a day like today, and after the wild, weekend weather, was pretty much a crater-filled mess with lakes of water bisected by narrow isthmuses of graveled land.

  Danner sloshed through the puddles and around a cement walkway to the front entrance. He was met by a scowling black woman in a uniform with a tag that read, “Johnson.”

  He showed his badge and said, “Sheriff O’Halloran’s expecting me.”

  The scowl never lifted and he suspected it was a perpetual expression. But she pointed out the way around a long counter to a hallway that led into the back of the building and the inner sanctum. Danner walked by a back door he’d noticed from the parking lot that he’d bypassed because it clearly said “No Entrance” and was undoubtedly meant to be used only by members of the department.

  He ran directly into Fred Clausen, the heavyset, middle-aged detective who’d taken over at Dave Rendell’s beach house. Clausen recognized Danner, too, and shook hands with him. “Meeting with the sheriff,” Clausen said, a statement more than a question, but Danner nodded as he followed the man down the rest of the hall and into a small office with a window that looked west onto the southbound lanes of 101 and a diner across the street with a carved wooden sign that read “Joanie’s” in a script that looked straight out of the thirties.

  Sheriff Sean O’Halloran was a white-haired, blue-eyed, sixtyish man with a hearty manner and crushing handshake. “You were at the Rendell party,” he said. “You know these people, then?”

  “Some of them,” Danner agreed, taking a chair.

  “The victim?”

  “Not well.”

  “Why don’t you bring us up to speed?” O’Halloran suggested as Clausen took the seat next to Danner and Danner gave them a quick recap of his own history at Rutherford High with people at the party; Annette’s relationship to Dave Rendell, Coby’s father; and the relationships of the Ette sisters with each other and their father, Jean-Claude Deneuve. What he didn’t bring up was Lucas Moore’s death twelve years earlier, which involved a lot of the same players, but Fred Clausen took care of that.

  “Second time I’ve been to that house ’cause of a death,” Clausen said, and O’Halloran, who’d clearly been prepped, frowned at his detective.

  “The first death was an accident,” the sheriff said.

  Clausen nodded. “I told Gilmore I wanted a copy of the report on the kid’s death.”

  “Gilmore’s the M.E.?” Danner asked.

  “Been here since the dawn of time,” O’Halloran said. “Even longer than me. Is he getting it to you?” he asked Clausen.

  “Like a snail,” Clausen said.

  “I’ll try to speed him up,” the sheriff responded.

  There was silence in the room for a moment, each of them involved in his own thoughts, and Danner said, “I’d like a look at the Lucas Moore file.”

  “That’s his name,” Clausen said with a swift nod of his head, like a mental snapping of his fingers.

  “Thanks.”

  O’Halloran said grimly, “I want some paper on all these people at the party. Get me some financials, phone records, work information . . . and yeah, hell, let’s take a look at the Moore file again and mark the ones who were there twelve years ago and now. Maybe the kid’s death was an accident, maybe there’s something we missed. Something from then that set up this homicide now.”

  “Want me to do some interviews?” Danner asked.

  “You weren’t there when the Moore kid died, were you?” the sheriff asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Your brother was, though,” Clausen said, which gave Danner a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  “Yep.”

  “Yeah, what the hell.” O’Halloran inhaled and exhaled heavily. “The Rendell death could be something all on its own. Most likely is. But we’ll look at both cases and Lockwood, talk to your friends. You could be in it up to your hairy eyeballs, if you try to protect them.” He half smiled.

  “I won’t hold back.”

  “Huh.” O’Halloran didn’t sound completely convinced. “Your lieutenant thinks you’ll do the job. Said you were an asset. Are you an asset?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do some interviews. Keep in contact with Clausen
or me. We’ll be doing some, too.”

  Danner shook hands with both men again as he got up to leave. At the door, he said, “So, when you get the Moore file, you mind scanning and e-mailing it to me?”

  Clausen nodded. “What do you think you’ll find?”

  “Most likely nothing.”

  “We’ll send it,” O’Halloran said, sounding like the interview was over.

  “Moore’s COD was head trauma,” Danner said, getting to his feet.

  “Drowning,” Clausen responded.

  “Drowning?”

  “I talked to Gilmore about it this morning. He said it was a combination of both, but it looked like the head bleed was slow enough that he drowned first. Flipped himself over somehow after the blow to the back of the head from the fall. Went facedown in the water and drowned.”

  “Any chance he was pushed from the cliff?”

  “Never found any reason to think so,” Clausen allowed.

  Danner nodded. It would be a stretch to believe there was some grand conspiracy that had followed this group from one murder to another. Better to assume a more straightforward crime: that Annette was killed by person or persons unknown, period.

  And if it happened to play out differently, and Lucas Moore’s death was somehow in there as well, then they could take an alternate route.

  Coby was leaving the building, eyeing the rain outside and shrugging into her coat with its fake-fur-lined hood, when her sister came through the revolving door, dripping water from her purple raincoat. Faith tossed back her hood and said, “Ugh. This weather’s a nightmare. Are you done for the day? Can I talk to you about Mom and Dad?”

  “Ugh, back at ’cha,” Coby said. “Yeah, I was going to call you.”

  “What’s going on with them?” she demanded. “I thought they never talked to each other!”

  Coby looked around the lobby and Cuppa Joe, then said, “Come back upstairs to my office where it’s a little more private.”

  “Good idea.”

  Ten minutes later, Faith was seated in one of Coby’s client chairs, running her fingers through her hair and making a face at the water left on her hands from the rain. “I need to talk to you about a few things,” she said, feeling the water between her fingers, her expression grim. “For starters, Danner Lockwood.”