Hush

by Nancy Bush

They were alike in coloring and size, small and dark, but Juliet’s hair was a shade or two lighter, as was her skin tone. Coby suspected she looked a bit more like the Ettes’ mother while her other sisters favored Jean-Claude. She wasn’t going to like the questions Coby had for her.

  “Do you mind if we talk?” Coby said to Juliet, implying she wanted to be alone with her, which caused Suzette to give her a wide-eyed look and Juliet to stare at her as if she were a poisonous snake.

  “What about?” Juliet demanded.

  “I spoke with Donald Greer last night at the hospital.”

  “Wynona hates Yvette,” Suzette jumped in. “You can’t listen to her. Her dad’s just the same.”

  But Juliet’s eyes had dilated; she knew where Coby was heading. To Suzette, she said, “Give me a minute.” When her sister started to protest, Juliet said through her teeth, “I’ll be right back! Stop being such a bitch!”

  “Jesus . . .” Suzette muttered, stalking away.

  Juliet wore a black tunic over black leggings and black boots. She guided Coby to the side of the hotel lobby, near several wingback chairs in an alcove, and crossed her arms. “So?”

  “Donald told me he caught you putting the notes in the lockers. He just recently revealed what you’d done to Wynona and, kind of like Annette, I guess, Wynona doesn’t want any more secrets.” Juliet didn’t say anything immediately, just glared down at the floor, and Coby added, “You blamed it on Vic Franzen. Even last night you acted like you’d seen him at the lockers, slipping a note inside. You’ve never let him off the hook.”

  “Vic’s an ass. He deserves it,” she said, shooting Coby a cool look. “They all do.”

  “Who?”

  “The guys. All this time I thought they cared about me. None of them ever have. Even Kirk,” she said bitterly.

  “But this note thing, Juliet. It had a life of its own.”

  “Oh, who cares. It was just a prank. Even Mr. Greer saw that, although everybody just keeps talking and talking and talking about it. I don’t care. I just don’t fucking care.”

  “Did you know Hank was Benedict’s father?”

  “You mean before the party? Did you think you were the only one Annette wanted to tell secrets to? We all figured it out.”

  “You all?”

  “Me and my sisters. The Ettes,” she said with a trace of sarcasm. “Yvette was seventeen and Mr. Sainer was too old for her and he had a career that their affair would ruin. Yvette was stupid about him. Still is,” she added as an afterthought. “You think she killed Annette, don’t you?”

  “Not necessarily. If you and your sisters knew about Hank Sainer being Benedict’s father, I don’t see the why in that. I mean, why? Why would Yvette murder Annette? Her own sister.”

  “We only found out in the last few weeks,” Juliet defended. “After Annette started talking about it. We didn’t know before.”

  “Still . . . the word was out by the time of the birthday party.”

  Juliet seemed to want to argue that point, but she’d already said differently. “Well, Yvette’s not right,” she finally announced. “Nobody in the family wants to talk about it, but it’s the truth.”

  “So, you think she did it,” Coby said.

  Juliet’s hands fluttered with stress. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it might be someone else.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know. Okay? I don’t know. But there was an incident here, just before the party, that upset Annette.”

  Coby remembered her father saying something about Annette being bothered over something that happened at Lovejoy’s. “You know what it was?”

  Juliet threw a look over her shoulder toward the tearoom/wine bar. “It’s no secret that Suzette wanted Annette’s job. Me, I really don’t care. I don’t care if I ever work another day here. But Suzette sort of tried to get Annette fired. Annette caught her at it just before the party.”

  Coby absorbed this. She hadn’t seen any overt tension between Annette and Suzette that night. As if reading her mind, Juliet said, “Oh, Suzette squeezed her way out of it, just like she always does. But ask her about it. She and Annette made up, but it wasn’t going to last.”

  “Are you suggesting that Suzette killed Annette?”

  “I’m just saying that Yvette’s unstable and probably killed her, but Suzette had problems with her, too!” Abruptly, she added, “I don’t want to explain anything to you anymore. Where do you get off acting like you’re above us?” With that, she stalked back toward the wine bar.

  Coby was rolling all that over, getting ready to leave, when Suzette came hurrying toward her. She braced herself for what was undoubtedly going to be round two.

  “You really pissed Juliet off,” Suzette stated flatly.

  “Did she tell you why?”

  “No, but I can guess. She’s pissed because she slept with them all—all the guys in the group—even though she thinks some of them are beneath her, like Vic, for sure, and Paul, and maybe even Theo. Galen did not sleep with her.”

  “She slept with Theo?”

  “Girl, everybody slept with Theo Rivers. Ellen’s just one of ’em. And maybe he’s changed his ways now, but there was a time when he was as much a man-slut as Lucas was, maybe even more.”

  “Who else slept with Theo?”

  “Well, maybe no one else from your group,” Suzette conceded, “but that girl from Gresham sure did. He got her pregnant, and she miscarried, as we all know. Lucky for Theo, huh? But she wasn’t the only one he slept with in high school, from what I heard. Ellen’s parents probably packed her off to California just to keep her from getting pregnant again.”

  Coby was a little uncomfortable, listening first to Juliet, and now Suzette. There was a gleefulness to Suzette’s tale that was unseemly. She’d always thought the youngest Ette sister was the sweetest one of them, but that was apparently a complete fallacy.

  Still, information was information. “Juliet said you and Annette were at odds over something that happened at work.”

  Suzette’s mouth opened in shock, then snapped shut. “She’s such a goddamn bitch!” she declared, then swept back to the tearoom/wine bar as if ready to get into it anew with Juliet.

  Sisters, Coby thought as she walked toward the front doors. Feeling eyes on her, she turned to see Jean-Claude, who was watching her with what looked like trepidation. She felt bad. He’d been through hell this week and she appeared to be only adding to it.

  And then the inner sanctum door opened and Benedict walked through, coming to stand behind the counter with his grandfather.

  “Well, hi,” Coby said, surprised, retracing her steps to where Jean-Claude and Benedict stood.

  “Go on to the back,” Jean-Claude urged the boy. “You know you’re not supposed to be out front.”

  “Why not?” Benedict scowled.

  “Because we’re running a hotel.” Jean-Claude’s voice was clipped. “Go on now.”

  Benedict made a sound of disgust, then practically stomped back through the door.

  “Babysitting,” Coby observed.

  “Your father said it was all right to bring Benedict to work.” He sounded a bit defensive.

  Coby raised her hands. “He seems like a great kid.”

  “Despite how Yvette raised him?” Now there definitely was a defensive tone to Jean-Claude’s words.

  “I think I’ll be going,” Coby answered neutrally. “Is my dad here, still?”

  “He’s with your mother,” he said with a bit of relish.

  Well, it couldn’t get more pointed than that, Coby thought. This being an investigator had its drawbacks when it came to friends and family.

  The vehicle in Don Laidlaw’s garage was a mass of mangled, twisted metal on the front right side. It was indeed a miracle that the machine had kept running and made its way back to the garage after whatever it had been through.

  “It wasn’t this way when you left for Palm Springs?” Danner asked Don.

  “He
ll, no. I checked the cars before I left. I always check the cars.”

  “How long were you planning to be gone?”

  “Till March, or thereabouts. I go every year.”

  Danner gazed at the wreckage and thought, “probable cause.” If Yvette didn’t open her door voluntarily, he would get a warrant.

  “You think Yvette did this?” Don asked anxiously. “You think she’s all right?”

  Danner didn’t say it, but he felt for certain that Yvette was not even close to all right, and maybe never had been.

  Coby was thinking about calling Danner on her way home when her cell phone rang first. Her anticipation vanished when she looked at the number. She didn’t recognize the area code, though it seemed familiar, and so she answered her Bluetooth cautiously, “Hello?”

  “Coby! Oh, my God. Coby. He died. He just died. I barely got here and he . . . maybe he was waiting for me . . . because he just died!”

  The wail that followed sent a shiver down Coby’s spine. “Dana?”

  “I took a cab from the airport. I just got here. I just got here!”

  “I’ll be at the hospital in twenty minutes,” Coby assured her, calculating zero traffic since it was Sunday.

  “Oh, God. He’s gone . . . somebody killed him . . . somebody ran him down!”

  “I’ll be right there, Dana. I’m on my way. I’m on my way. . . .”

  Danner called Metzger on his way back to Yvette’s apartment. “I may need a warrant.” He quickly brought her up to speed on the latest events. “I’m gonna say that’s the vehicle that ran down Hank Sainer, and Yvette’s one of the few people who had access to it.”

  “I thought you were calling about Hank Sainer,” she said.

  “Sainer?”

  “We just got word from Laurelton General that he died about an hour ago. His daughter’s with him.”

  Danner was shocked. Somehow he’d thought Hank would make it. “All the more reason to get the warrant.”

  “I’m on it,” Elaine said, then clicked off.

  Danner felt a buzzing urgency, the kind of thing that happened to him when things started falling into place. He kicked himself for not getting to Yvette sooner. Maybe this could have been prevented. Maybe Hank would still be alive.

  Pulling into her parking lot with more speed than caution, he had to rein in his impulse to hurry.

  As soon as he turned off the engine he heard a shrieking he’d only been distantly aware of. A woman’s ululation was lifting to the heavens, filled with grief and agony. The hairs on his arms raised as he climbed from the cab, and he drew his Glock.

  Above him Yvette’s door was open. The shrieking was coming from inside. In five long steps he was at the stairway. Six more and he was on the second level, running toward the door. He paused before crossing in front of the open aperture and yelled, “Yvette! It’s Danner Lockwood.”

  The wailing ceased abruptly. Danner was on the side of the door, poised, ready to give a quick peek inside when a woman suddenly tumbled onto the balcony. A Hispanic woman, her face screwed up in fear and pain. She fell at his feet and he crouched down and grabbed her by her shoulders, steadying her.

  “Oh, Mama. Poor Mama.” Her eyes rolled to the doorway. “Dios . . . Dios. She is gone. She is gone. . . .”

  Danner gently released her, rose to his feet, and cautiously stepped into the apartment.

  Yvette lay on the floor, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, a pool of blood spread around her like a red halo. Beside her lay a broken lamp and a butcher knife. The blade of the knife was covered with blood from the gaping wound at Yvette’s neck.

  Chapter 27

  Coby reached the hospital in twenty-three minutes, feeling a slight shiver as she circled in front of the entrance portico and past the place the car had run at her the night before. There was still an indent in the mud and grass where she’d fallen that made her grimace.

  Dana Sainer Bracco was in the hallway outside the room where Hank had been taken after surgery, though his body was now in the hospital morgue. Seeing Coby, she ran toward her as if they were old friends, and in a general sense, Coby guessed they were.

  “I don’t know anybody here anymore,” she said, hugging Coby, her body quivering. “I left and I never looked back. I didn’t visit my dad enough. I’m sorry . . . it’s just that you called me the other day . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Coby soothed, patting her on the back. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, too. I thought Hank was stabilized.”

  Dana inhaled shakily and released her grip on Coby. “His injuries were too severe. He never woke up. I thought he would when I got here, but I barely was at his side before the monitor went flat. . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” Coby said again.

  Dana fought to pull herself together. “But who would run him off the road? Were they just stupid and reckless? He didn’t have political enemies. He always laughed about being so middle-of-the-road that no one noticed him. Who would do this?”

  Dana was still petite and birdlike, even after having children. She’d gained a bit of weight, but it worked for her as she no longer was such a waif. She’d said she had her eating disorder under control. Maybe a happy family life could do that for you.

  But now she regarded Dana with a tense, drawn face.

  Coby’s phone buzzed. “Excuse me,” she said, relieved to have an excuse not to answer her. She saw it was a text from Danner. She’d called and left a message on his voice mail about Hank, but he hadn’t gotten back to her till now.

  The text read: coming to Laurelton G see u soon

  “Danner’s on his way here,” she said to Dana.

  “Danner Lockwood?”

  “He’s helping the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department investigate Annette’s death.”

  “Oh, right. He’s a cop. I think you told me that. . . .” She turned her gaze away from Coby, retreating into her own grief.

  Coby glanced down at the screen of her cell phone, thought a moment, then pulled up the number for her father’s cell. If Hank’s death hadn’t hit the news yet, it soon would. She figured she might as well send out a warning.

  Danner drove away from Yvette’s apartment with a sense of being two steps behind a killer whose murderous plan seemed to have little rhyme or reason. Annette, then Hank, now Yvette? Maybe Lucas and maybe Rhiannon and maybe Heather McCrae? Could one person really be responsible for all those deaths? No. He didn’t believe that. Some of them had to be accidents. Had to be. Unless there was more than one killer, an idea that kept cropping up and being dismissed again, mainly because he couldn’t see the connections.

  Why? he asked himself. Who?

  He’d had his hands full at Yvette’s apartment after discovering her body. First he had to make sure no one touched the body or screwed up the crime scene before the ME and CSI techs arrived. Secondly, he had to keep the traumatized babysitter, Juanita, from becoming completely hysterical, which proved the more difficult task. Apparently Juanita had shown up at her usual time to take care of Benedict while Yvette was at work and had used her own key to enter the apartment. She’d opened the door and seen Yvette’s body on the floor. That had stopped her cold for a shocked moment, then she’d begun wailing. She hadn’t had time to look for Benedict before Danner showed up. A quick check of the premises assured Danner the boy wasn’t there, but then, where was he? The answer had been discovered fairly quickly after Danner placed a call to Lovejoy’s to locate Jean-Claude and was informed by William Johnson, the assistant manager, that Mr. Deneuve had taken his grandson home with him and wasn’t expected back for the rest of the day.

  So, okay, Benedict was with Jean-Claude. That was good. Danner didn’t want the kid traumatized. He debated heading over to Jean-Claude’s house in the west hills to give the man the bad news himself, but then he listened to Coby’s voice mail and sent her the text saying he would be there soon. He’d wanted to tell her about Yvette in person as well, but almost as soon as he sent the text he had to rethink t
hat. Jean-Claude needed to be told before the ravenous media found out.

  Danner dialed Coby’s cell and she picked up as if she’d been just waiting for him to call. “I got your text. You’re on your way?” she asked, and he could hear the eagerness in her voice. It bummed him out that he was going to have to put her off.

  “Something’s come up,” he said, hearing the grimness in his own voice. “I was planning to come straight to the hospital, but I was at Yvette’s . . .”

  “You talked to her? What did she say?”

  “Coby, Yvette’s dead. Someone slit her throat.”

  There was a shocked pause, an intake of breath. “What?”

  Briefly he recapped the scene he’d come across at Yvette’s apartment, finishing with, “Benedict’s with Jean-Claude, at his house. I’m on my way there now.”

  “But . . . how . . . when? She was at the hospital last night.” Coby sounded completely discombobulated.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be,” he said. “I’ll call you when I’m finished.”

  “I want to be with you,” she said suddenly. “Jean-Claude’s a friend. He’s my dad’s best friend!”

  “After Jean-Claude’s been given the news, I’ll call you,” Danner promised. He could hear a woman’s voice asking questions in the background and added, “Until then, keep this between us.”

  “Of course. Yes. Absolutely.” She was distracted.

  “Coby . . .”

  “Hmm?”

  “I love you,” he said. He clicked off, surprised at how much he’d needed to say that right then. Then he steeled himself for the job ahead.

  Coby was in a numb fog. She was pretty sure he’d told her he loved her, but he’d also told her that Yvette was dead. Murdered. Strange, beautiful, mercurial Yvette Deneuve had been killed. Someone had sliced her throat.

  Dana was talking but she couldn’t hear her. Coby felt like she was walking through a thick substance that robbed her of hearing except for the painfully hard beats of her heart.

  Coby had dismissed last night’s attack. Had made light of it. She hadn’t truly believed that someone had been trying to kill her. She’d thought it was a message, maybe a warning. Now, though . . .