Dead in the Water

by Denise Swanson

  Although Skye hadn’t thought about it before, there were a lot of Scumble River pets that would have to adjust to new places when the displaced families moved into temporary lodgings.

  Maybe that was why Billie Lyons was proving so difficult to locate. Wally had said Animal Control would keep Zeke’s German shepherd until the crime scene techs had a chance to process him for forensic evidence, but they might have finished with the dog and released him to Billie.

  Had she had to go somewhere away from the area in order to accommodate her husband’s pet? Billie might have even had to go as far as Joliet or Kankakee to find a place that allowed animals. Or maybe she’d boarded the dog at Linc’s clinic and he’d have a way to contact the elusive widow.

  Making a mental note to follow those leads, Skye continued to talk with her mother, checking on the status of other family members and friends. It appeared that everyone had checked in and, considering the situation, were doing as well as could be expected.

  Finally, Skye wrapped up the conversation and asked, “Do you know if Uncle Dante is in his office or not? I need to talk to him about Zeke Lyons’s responsibilities on the city council.”

  “Oh. Didn’t you hear?” May wrinkled her nose. “Dante is under the weather. He’s been home sick since late yesterday afternoon. According to Olive, it was coming out of both ends and he was camped in the bathroom all night and most of the morning.”

  “Maybe I could stop by his house.”

  “Absolutely not!” May screeched. “There’s no way you can get anywhere near him and expose the babies to his germs.”

  “Then if he’s feeling a little better, perhaps I could talk to him on the phone.”

  “Possibly.” May shrugged. “But you’ll need to wait awhile before you call him. Olive told me that Dante took a sleeping pill and will be out cold until suppertime. She was darned relieved. That man hasn’t given her a moment’s peace for the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Well, heck!” Skye stamped her foot. “With him sleeping off his meds, that means we have to find Billie Lyons. She’s the only one left I can think of who might have a motive to kill Zeke.”

  “Shit! I forgot—” Carson glanced at May and gave her a strained smile. “I think I might have forgotten to shut off the water in the bathroom at home.” He turned to Skye and said, “I need to make a phone call to my housekeeper and make sure she looks into that.”

  “Okay.” Skye shot her father-in-law a puzzled look. “Let’s go back to the break room so I can sit while you do that. My ankles are swollen and my feet are killing me.” Carson nodded his agreement and Skye kissed her mother’s cheek, then said, “See you later, Mom.”

  Once they were out of May’s hearing, Skye asked, “What did you really forget?”

  Carson waited until they were behind the closed door of the interrogation room before he answered, “It slipped my mind until I heard you mention your uncle, but Wally told me to tell you that you should go to Dante. He can help you. And you should go talk to him.”

  “That’s odd.” Skye’s eyes widened. “Wally knows that the last person around here who would want to help me is my uncle. He’s not too fond of Wally or me.” She tapped her chin. “It must be a clue. Could Uncle Dante be a code word for some location?” She chewed her thumbnail, then straightened. “Maybe Wally is being held where Dante wanted to build the incinerator. I don’t recall any buildings on that land, but I haven’t been out that way in ages, so who knows.”

  “Do you have Sergeant Quirk’s cell number?” Carson asked. When Skye nodded, he said, “Good. We don’t want this to go out over the radio. Call him and ask him to send officers to that area. Tell him you just remembered that Wally said he might go out to that site. I’m not thrilled with sending the police out there, but my security team hasn’t arrived yet and you and I can’t go there by ourselves.”

  “Why would Wally want to check on that place?” Skye dug out her phone and pulled up her contact list.

  “If he asks, say you don’t know why.” Carson was intent on his own phone. “It was a casual comment, which is why you didn’t remember it until now.”

  Although deception was probably a prerequisite for her father-in-law’s profession, Skye was impressed with the ease in which Carson lied. It would be tough to be married to someone like that. How would you ever be able to trust him?

  After Skye spoke to Roy, who assured her that the area had already been cleared, she tuned in on her father-in-law’s phone conversation with Quentin. Evidently, the company plane was finally in the air, heading back to Illinois.

  “You and the security team are sharing a cabin at the Up A Lazy River.” Carson listened, then scowled. “Yeah. I said sharing. He’s putting in a couple of rollaway beds and there are two queens, so you figure out the sleeping arrangements among yourselves. You’re lucky Charlie had a room he’d kept available or you’d be sleeping on the floor of the motor coach.”

  Skye could hear Quentin speaking, but she couldn’t make out his words.

  “Just get your butt down here with the money,” Carson growled. “If you’re too much of a candy-ass to rough it at the motor court, after you cover me at the ransom drop, you can drive back to O’Hare and fly home.” He paused. “Although, I’d think you would want to stick around and see if your cousin makes it back alive.”

  Skye’s throat tightened. Evidently, Carson wasn’t as confident about Wally’s safe return as he had been telling her. She stared at her father-in-law and struggled to stem her always-on-the-brink-of tears.

  Carson patted her hand and concluded his call. “Text me when you guys get to Skye and Wally’s place. We’ll meet you there to go over the strategy.”

  “We need to find Billie,” Skye said after her father-in-law disconnected.

  “Any ideas?”

  “Although the volunteer coordinator didn’t have any record of Billie or her mother, I think we should go out to the Methodist church.” Skye struggled to her feet. “In all the chaos, they very well may not have registered, and they could still be there.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Carson and Skye returned to the Hummer, and after she fastened her seat belt, she said, “Before we head to the church, can we drive through the affected areas? I’ve been so busy with my own concerns that I haven’t seen a lot of the worst-hit parts of town.”

  “Will they allow us through?”

  “With my police ID, yes.”

  Carson nodded, and as he drove north from the police station, he asked, “Did Mrs. Lyons’s mother live with her and her husband?”

  “I don’t know. I assumed so, since they came into the police station together and it seemed that they had been evacuated from the same neighborhood.” Skye scrunched her forehead. “Are you thinking they may be staying at the mother’s house?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “I’ll call my aunt Minnie and find out if she knows where Mrs. Gulch lives.” Skye sighed. “If she doesn’t know, can your handy-dandy computer software find out?”

  “If your aunt can give us the woman’s first name, absolutely.”

  “I’m on it.”

  After leaving a voicemail for Minnie requesting Mrs. Gulch’s address and first name, Skye stared out the SUV’s side window. This afternoon, with the house checks complete and ComEd’s assurance that the downed electrical wires were no longer live, for the first time since the storm, the residents and volunteers were being allowed back into the devastated zones.

  Officers in uniforms representing the various nearby Illinois municipalities and counties were stationed at the crossroads. They stopped each vehicle and inspected the occupant’s identifications before permitting them to pass the barricades.

  As promised, Skye’s police ID got their Hummer through, and while her father-in-law maneuvered down the streets still strewn with rubble, she put her hand over
her mouth and stared at the utter destruction. Entire blocks were completely leveled. Debris was everywhere. Buildings had collapsed and trees looked as if a giant chainsaw had slashed off their tops. It was heartrending to see people attempting to find their treasured possessions among all the wreckage.

  Although Skye had heard how much damage had been done to the neighborhoods, seeing it firsthand was a thousand times more horrible than she had imagined. Considering the damage to her own house and garage, she should have been prepared. But the sheer annihilation was overwhelming. It would take years for the town to recover.

  Turning east, Carson glanced at Skye, both concern and sympathy in his gaze. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t squeeze a word through the lump lodged in her throat. She swallowed several times before giving up and shaking her head at him.

  Skye pushed down her emotional reaction to the devastation, dug in her purse, and pulled out the small memo pad she used as a to-do list for her school psych duties. She wrote a note reminding herself that once she found out for sure when school would be back in session, she needed to contact the special education cooperative to set up counseling for the kids and consultations with their parents.

  The students were going to need help processing their emotions in order to heal, and Skye and the intern couldn’t cope with the magnitude of the required services all by themselves. There would be children who had lost everything, others who experienced some property damage, and the remainder who, while not directly affected, had observed the horrifying aftermath of the storm.

  If, as the superintendent was promising, classes resumed on Monday, it was likely that parents would still be handling their own feelings and wouldn’t have had the time or energy to deal with their children’s questions and fears. Which meant the school staff would need to be prepared to deal with both the children’s and adults’ issues that would arise.

  When Carson turned onto Elm, Skye glanced up from her notes and chuckled. Her father-in-law raised a brow at her giggles and she pointed to the house. Spray-painted on the side of a partially collapsed home were the words NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Evidently, the residents still had a sense of humor. She admired the family’s cheeky attitude.

  Carson grinned, then asked, “Seen enough, darlin’? Ready to go over to the church?”

  “Definitely.” Skye grew serious. “I want to get this done before Quentin and your security guys get here. Their ETA is now six, right?” When her father-in-law nodded, she asked, “Was Quentin giving you a hard time about bringing the money for the ransom?”

  “Nah. He’s just not used to roughing it.”

  “I could stay in Charlie’s guest room and Quentin could take the motor coach,” Skye offered. “It’s about as luxurious as a five-star hotel.”

  “Absolutely not!” Carson thundered. “It’ll do that boy good to see how regular folks live. I spoiled him after my brother died. It’s probably too late to fix my actions, but it’s time to try.”

  “You did what you thought was best at the time,” Skye soothed.

  “Wally ended up playing second fiddle.” Carson sighed. “And it pushed him away.”

  “Not anymore,” Skye reassured him. “You two are on the right track now.”

  “I hope that I can make up for the way I treated him back then.”

  “You already have.” Skye patted his thigh. “By being here with me. I’m not sure I could have handled everything on my own. Wally will appreciate it as much as I do. Thanks, Dad.”

  “You’re my daughter just as if you’d been born to me. Of course I’m here.” Carson squeezed her hand. “Now. What did your mother mean when she said you couldn’t expose your babies to your uncle’s germs?”

  “Nothing!” Skye yelped.

  “Don’t try to kid a kidder.” Carson raised a brow. “Spill.”

  Hell! Skye had been relieved when Carson hadn’t seemed to notice her mother’s slip. Now what was she going to do?

  Chapter 17

  “Yes,” answered the tin man, “I did. I’ve been groaning for more than a year, and no one has ever heard me before or come to help me.”

  After several stuttered excuses that Carson refused to believe, Skye finally said, “I’ll explain everything after Wally gets home.” She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear, then looked her father-in-law in the eye. “Until then, I have nothing to say.”

  Carson’s voice was sympathetic. “I take it my son doesn’t know yet.”

  “No.” Skye barely got the word out. She had vowed not to cry anymore, but apparently her hormones hadn’t gotten the message.

  “I understand.” Carson drove in silence for a few minutes, then, as they neared the city outskirts, he asked, “Have you heard anything about when the power might be restored?”

  Skye shrugged. “Not really. The ComEd guy told Mom at least another couple of days.”

  Carson frowned. “That seems excessive.”

  “My guess is that so much of their service area was hit, they’re as overwhelmed as everyone else.”

  “I suppose,” Carson muttered. “It just grinds my spurs that things aren’t being accomplished faster and there’s nothing I can do to hasten the process.”

  “I bet you’re not the only one,” Skye commiserated, thinking of her godfather, another alpha male who liked to be in charge.

  After a few more grumbles of dissatisfaction, Carson changed the subject and said, “When you talked to Jared Fine and Abe Bandar, the conversation was fairly straightforward. If we do find Billie Lyons, how are you going to approach her?”

  “I pretty much use the same techniques to question suspects as I do in sessions with the kids.” Skye tilted her head, thinking about her counseling process. “I try to get them to tell me how they feel about the situation and reflect those feelings back to them.”

  “Does that work?” Carson slowed as the Methodist church appeared on his right.

  As Skye’s father-in-law turned into the circular drive, she gazed at the enormous building. It wasn’t even a year old, and the pristine red brick had almost a divine glow in the bright sunshine.

  Responding to Carson’s question, Skye answered, “My interview method works most of the time. And if it doesn’t, I try something else. Considering that a big part of my job is to get information out of uncooperative teenagers, most adults don’t stand a chance.”

  “Good to know.” Carson’s tone was cautious, then he narrowed his eyes. “Any chance you’d come to work for me? CB International could use you.”

  “Nah.” Skye grinned. “I use my mad skills only for good, not evil.”

  “Are you saying that my company is evil?” Carson sounded hurt.

  “Of course not, Dad,” Skye quickly reassured him. “But I suspect there isn’t any business, other than maybe a nonprofit one, that is always completely kind.”

  “Humph.” Carson pursed his lips, then changed the subject again. “This lot is packed. It could take a while to find a parking spot.”

  “Especially one big enough for this beast of a vehicle,” Skye teased.

  Carson circled the lot until someone left, then hastily nabbed the opening. He helped Skye down from the Hummer and they walked quickly across the hot asphalt. The afternoon temperatures had risen into the high eighties and the humidity made every breath miserable.

  Blessedly cool air greeted Skye and Carson as they pushed through the double, etched-glass doors. Skye had heard that several families from neighboring towns had donated their generators and propane supply to keep the facility’s electricity running and that food and clothing donations were pouring into the shelter as well.

  Skye took a few steps inside and paused to get her bearings. To her immediate right were the open doors of the sanctuary. People sitting in the pews were listening to the minister speaking from the altar.

  “All of us have been touch
ed by the horrible storm that swept through our community.” The young man bowed his head and, in a resonant voice, said, “When our lives are going well, it’s easy to praise God.” He tented his fingers. “And when we run into difficulties, it’s natural to seek God.” He lifted his eyes to the congregation. “Now, we need not only to trust God to see us through our troubles, but also to remember to thank Him for every moment we have.”

  Skye nodded her agreement and made the sign of the cross. She imagined that similar scenes were being played out in many of the area churches. Which reminded her, she wanted to ask Carson to stop at St. Francis on their way home and light a candle…or twelve…for Wally’s safe return.

  But for now, her goal was to find Billie Lyons. Turning away from the sanctuary, Skye was stunned at the piles of clothes, food, toiletries, and other miscellanea crowding the lobby separating the sanctuary and the church hall. It was clear that while the volunteers had attempted to organize the donations, the massive amount of people in need, as well as the mountains of contributions, had swamped their best intentions.

  A beleaguered woman sat behind a long folding table, her finger in one ear as she held her cell phone next to the other. Another woman wandered through the stacks of contributions with a clipboard, evidently trying to take an inventory, while a pack of children raced back and forth among the carton maze, screaming and giggling as they played tag. Although their shouts contributed to the general bedlam of the situation, it was good to hear the kids laughing and having fun.

  When the woman on the phone disconnected, Skye said, “My father-in-law and I are trying to locate Billie Lyons. I called earlier and was told she wasn’t registered, but would it be okay if we looked around?”

  “Be my guest.” The woman waved toward the church hall to Skye’s left. “The night of the tornadoes, we tried to get everyone’s information when they arrived. But there were so many folks with no other place to go, eventually we were just overwhelmed and let them go in without filling out the paperwork.”