An overtaxed Boxman wheezed at Jasmine from his knees. “You get any of that?”
“Enough.” Still restraining Boris—Rogan had obviously sent him back to guard her—she inched toward the fallen man.
“Are you okay?”
“Will be,” he rasped and spit to the side. “When I can swallow again.”
Something wasn’t right, her instincts warned.
Boxman wore a belt light that emitted a glow broad enough for her to see Victor’s features, and even to identify the silver stud he habitually wore in his left ear. Same face, same hair, same stud. And yet…
She studied him until it struck her. “You have stubble.” Curious, she skirted him. “You’re anal about shaving, morning and night. Why the change? Are you undercover?”
“No, I’m not undercover, and there’s no change. I recognize you, Jasmine, but I don’t know you any more than you know me. I’m not Victor. I’m his twin brother, Cyrus.”
* * *
COULD THE SITUATION GET MORE bizarre? Jasmine wondered. More tangled? More surreal?
Here she was in an off-the-map town with Rogan, Boxman and now Victor Bowcott’s twin brother, Cyrus. And where was the one person who should have been with them but wasn’t? No longer in jail thanks to former deputy Wesley Hamilton-Blume. However, if she was right about the origin of the text message she’d received that night, Daniel was alive and plugged into the situation.
As far as she could tell, no one really knew what anyone else was doing, yet all were understandably suspicious of the people and circumstances around them. It therefore made perfect sense for the entire group, plus Riese, to gather at a seedy dockside bar called Two Toe Joe’s for a question-and-answer session that might or might not bring them onto the same page.
They sat at a table in the back on chairs that wobbled, under lights that had to be Thomas Edison originals. Across the smoky room, a man as old as Methuselah winked at them. Jasmine positioned herself between Rogan and Cyrus. Riese took a seat on Boxman’s right.
Rogan opened the conversation with the question on everyone’s mind. “Why are you here, Cyrus, and not your brother?”
Shielded blue eyes returned his stare. “I intercepted a text message a couple days ago from a guy named Crocker. He said people were dying all over the country, but the heart of the problem might be in Raven’s Cove, Maine, where Daniel Corey’s been living under a new identity. He suggested that I, or rather Victor, pay Daniel a visit before whoever’s doing the killing decides to come after me. Again, me being Victor. So here I am.”
Resting her forearms on the table, Jasmine arched curious brows. “If the message was meant for Victor, why isn’t he here instead of you?”
“I told you, I intercepted the text.”
“Meaning, he hasn’t seen it?” Rogan asked.
“Not unless someone sent the same message to my phone.” Cyrus did a flip-flop with his hands. “We were barhopping after our grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party. Phones ended up on the table. Last call came, lights went down. I took his cell, he took mine. Message arrived in the wee hours. By the time I opened it and figured out it wasn’t meant for me, Victor was heading back to San Diego. He’s in the final stages of a very long, very involved undercover sting operation that he swears is going to be his last.”
Jasmine recaptured his attention. “There’ve been seven murders—eight, if you count Chief Cutless’s—in just over six weeks. Don’t you think you should have contacted your brother? After all, it’s his life that’s in danger.”
Cyrus stuck his chin out and didn’t look friendly doing it. “He’s tied up, Jasmine. He’s also a by-the-book kind of guy, whereas I, being a former cop rather than an active one, am not.”
Unfazed by his attitude, she leaned in for a clearer look. “You and Victor must drive people crazy. I’ve never seen such identical twins. I mean it. You could be your brother.”
“No, I couldn’t.” Frowning, he sat back. “Look, being an ex-cop has its advantages here.” He stabbed a stale pretzel at Rogan. “Way I see it, you have limited scope when it comes to tracking suspects. Gotta do it by the book, am I right?”
“Generally, yeah. But there’s the book, and there’s the book.”
Meaning, his book was a lot thinner than most, Jasmine reflected. “Cyrus, being in San Diego won’t save Victor’s life. None of the victims except Ian Cutless were killed in Raven’s Cove.”
To her amazement and, she had to admit, horrified admiration, Cyrus hoisted his mug and took a long swig of the greenish beer with gritty black things in it that Boxman had shoved away and Rogan hadn’t even bothered to order.
“As we speak,” he said, “my three-minutes-younger brother is living a junkie Baja, California, lifestyle and only reporting in sporadically. One wrong contact could blow his investigation to hell. Since I’d rather he not wind up there, I’ll leave the undercover work to him and deal with the lateral problem in my own way.”
“That way being to impersonate him,” Rogan said. “Now, as the murderer would see it, there are four of us here from the safe house.”
Riese blew out a gusty breath. “Man, this is Agatha Christie come to life.”
“With a dollop of Stephen King tossed in to keep the creep factor at max.” Unable to quell her amusement, because all the men wore such serious expressions, Jasmine nudged Rogan’s arm with her shoulder. “Cyrus is wearing gray leather, Lieutenant. Doesn’t that make you just a little happy?”
“Delirious,” he agreed, but slid her that slow half smile she loved and draped an arm around the back of her chair. “One thing, Cyrus. You said you thought Jasmine was someone else when you jumped her. Who did you expect her to be?”
“You tell me. I was poking around fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes before hell exploded, and I saw two guys dipsy-doodling in the woods. They had guns and, it looked to me, like a damn good buzz on.”
“Uh, right. About that.” Riese attempted a smile. “My German students wanted to try their hands at big-game hunting, so I, um, kind of told them about my cousin’s gun shop.”
Incensed, Jasmine shoved Boxman back so she could see her. “They wanted to hunt—what’s here and big—moose? And you told them where to buy the weapons to do it? To shoot Bullwinkle?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I told them the biggest things they were allowed to shoot were rabbits. My cousin needs the business. He’s putting his girl through business college. And I never told them to go out after dark drunk.”
Boxman snickered. “Got what they deserved, then, didn’t they? The one who took a header over a log shot his buddy in the arm and broke his own ankle. Picture it. The guy’s sprawled on his back when he spots Rogan in the fog, wearing black and carrying an even bigger gun than his. Uh-oh, maybe he’s seeing the possessed raven of death everyone’s been talking about. Better shoot the bastard just in case.” The snicker became a snort. “Man, is there anyone living in or visiting this town who doesn’t have ravens on the brain?” He jerked an impatient thumb. “Rogan, why’s that old fossil across the room waving his mug at you?”
“He’s waving it at me,” Riese muttered.
Boxman grunted out a breath. “And so another day winds down in freaking small-town America. Starts with a murder, ends with green beer and only a few questions answered between the two. Prime example…” He made a less-than-polite gesture in the newcomer’s direction.
“Bad divorce,” Jasmine told Cyrus, whose expression had gone from guarded to completely locked down. “Your grandfather’s still waving his mug—” she slid her eyes to Rogan “—Riese.”
“Our cue to leave.” Shoving back his chair, Rogan took her hand firmly in his. “I told the paramedics to send their report on the college kids to the county sheriff,” he said to Boxman. “Make sure they follow through.”
“They will.” A dispirited Riese regarded her grandfather, who was happily upending someone else’s drink. “They’re my cousins once removed.”
O
f course they were, Jasmine thought.
Out on the pier, she let Rogan propel her into his truck. She was pressing keys on her iPhone when he climbed in next to her. “Please work, please work,” she coaxed the small device. “You know, Lieutenant, I wouldn’t have minded meeting Rooney Blume. Riese says he’s very colorful. And knowledgeable.”
“And lucid for a man of ninety-seven who can knock back more whiskey in one night than most of us could in a month.”
Already stirred, her amusement blossomed. “Now, how would you know that? And if you say it was a lucky guess, Cyrus won’t be the only person in town with a bruised throat.”
He swung his truck out of the rut-filled parking lot. “You make it to ninety-seven in anyone’s universe, Jasmine, you’re verging on legendary status. The man’s part of Raven’s Cove lore. More important right now is what you know about Victor and his brother.”
Glancing up from her phone, Jasmine tried not to be alarmed that she couldn’t actually see the road in front of them through fog so dense it resembled sheared wool. “I don’t know much of anything about Cyrus, except that his grandmother celebrated her ninetieth birthday recently, putting her, minus the whiskey buzz, right on Rooney Blume’s heels.”
“Victor didn’t talk about him?”
“Not really. He said his father passed away when he was in his teens and his mother about three years ago. He also mentioned an older brother who died young, but just as we got onto the subject of brothers and, more specifically, twins, Boxman burst in and started ragging on Dukes for not having dinner ready.”
“And the subject of twins never came up again?”
“We didn’t do a lot of early-life histories at the safe house, Rogan. Before you got there wasn’t a whole lot different than after. We talked about Wainwright, and there were the inevitable cop horror stories, but early lives, not so much.”
“You must have been bored as hell.”
She offered him a “duh” stare, then grinned and shook her phone. “You can tell your computer brain to stop processing the possibilities. That wasn’t Victor at Two Toe Joe’s pretending to be Cyrus so he can trick a killer. And in case your mind’s on a totally twisted tear, the two are not one.”
A dark brow rose. “Sure of that, are you?”
“Positive.”
“Are you equally positive that ex-cop Cyrus is a good guy?”
“He’s good enough not to want his brother’s life endangered more than it already is by the undercover work he’s doing.”
Rogan’s lips twitched. “Not quite what I meant, love.”
She made an aggravated sound. “I am not hearing this. You are not going to suggest that Cyrus is working for someone connected to Malcolm Wainwright.”
“Ex-cop. Bad attitude. Possible chip.”
“Oh, well, when you put it that way, the man should be sent up tonight and the key tossed.” Spying a fork in the road, she used her chattering phone to wave him away from Blume House. “I want food that doesn’t involve black vegetables or me making any of the courses. There must be a diner or café somewhere around this town that’s open after 10:00 p.m.”
Rogan brought up the playlist from his iPod, gestured at the display. “You can choose the music. There’s the Crystal Birdcage.”
She didn’t trust the gleam in his eye. “Why do I get to choose?”
“Because there’s the Crystal Birdcage and, according to Riese, not another thing open at this time of night.”
“Hmm. Are we talking crystals in the shape of ravens, and servers who read palms, tarot cards and/or tea leaves?”
The gleam deepened. “Along those lines. I’d say it’s right up your Witch House alley, except that sometime around ten-thirty, the psychic servers transform into feathery bird dancers who transform back into humans by shedding their feathers to music, catcalls and cold hard cash.”
It was nice to know she could still see the absurd humor in something as quirky as dinner theater performed by molting strippers.
Scrolling to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” she pressed Play, then slid a finger along Rogan’s arm. “I’m game if you are.” Unfastening her seat belt, she eased across the console until her lips were less than an inch from his ear. “Just so you know, though…” She kissed his neck. “Only three-quarters of the servers-slash-dancers at the Birdcage are female.” She nipped his earlobe, then soothed the sting with another kiss. “And once they get down to their final feathers, you discover that half of those females—” one final, teasing kiss “—actually aren’t.”
* * *
ROGAN HAD SEEN AND DONE too many things in his life to be more than mildly entertained by the feather dancers at the offbeat dinner club. What did surprise him was that, one, Riese’s aunt had been front and center, stuffing twenties into the G-string of a beer-bellied man named Rocco, and, two, he was fine with the mostly naked men until a buff Adonis with long blond hair and a covetous gleam in his eyes sashayed up to their table and planted himself in front of Jasmine for three never-ending songs.
If he’d possessed a single homicidal tendency, Rogan would have pulled his gun and blown the ripped bastard across the room. On the flip side, if he had any sense, he’d have long since found an excuse to get Jasmine into another safe house then headed back to Florida and the tricity murder investigation he’d left hanging there.
If he had any sense…
He swore at himself as he left Blume House by way of a seldom-used side door that couldn’t be seen from Jasmine’s room. The room, she’d informed him with sly deliberation, where she was going to run a steamy lavender bubble bath, do a striptease of her own and…
She’d left the rest to his highly charged and pretty much ready-to-crawl imagination. Because he knew exactly how she would look naked and stepping into a claw-foot tub that was big enough for two. He knew how her mouth would taste—like red wine and sex—how her skin would feel—sleek and hot under his greedy hands. He even knew how she’d sound when he took her up and over the edge.
When she drove him out of his damn head.
Thank Christ for drizzly October fog that slid its thin fingers down his neck and up under his jacket to make him uncomfortable. Thank, as well, a memory with sharp, clingy claws, and a mind trained to rise above the most exquisite forms of torture.
Working through the sensations, Rogan slammed a necessary mental door, made a quick scan of the area and jogged the short distance to his woodland destination.
“It’s after 1:00 in the damn a.m., Rogan,” the man he’d arranged to meet grumbled. But he reached into his camper van for a pot of coffee and poured two strong mugs. “I assume you’re late for a reason, one I’m guessing that’s less about Cutless’s death, and more about you kicking yourself for not thinking as clearly as you usually do. In a word, female. In a name, Jasmine.”
“Helpful.” Rogan took a sip of coffee, burned his tongue and decided that topped this truly crappy day just about perfectly. “She got a text message tonight. She thinks it came from her ex. I tend to agree.”
“So Daniel’s alive. That’s good. What about Cutless’s death? A purposeful part of the spree or not?”
“I’d say not. Far as I can tell, there’s no connection between Cutless and Wainwright, or between Cutless and any of the other victims. Deputy didn’t do it.”
“You sound pretty definite.”
“Killer’s left-handed, deputy isn’t. Cutless’s throat was sliced from the murderer’s right to his left, and we know the slicing could only have been done from behind because—cop.”
His companion pulled a battered flask from his jacket, held it up. At Rogan’s nod, he sloshed a generous amount of whiskey into both mugs. “All things are relative, my friend. All things relate in some way. Murders in our case. People and places. Or maybe just one place. Talk to me about the other guests at Blume House.”
Rogan swirled the contents together. “Pair of German college kids, both out of the picture for now, a landscape artist fr
om Concord and a couple of newly retired adventurers who want a break from the RV in which they’ve been living and traveling for five-plus months. There’s a reporter—not Daniel—in one of the self-contained units and a man named Carl Blake in the other.”
“And you’re telling me this particular guest’s name because…?”
Rogan swallowed a mouthful of the hellfire brew. “Cyrus Bowcott used the name Carl Blake when he checked in the day before Jasmine and I arrived.”
“Fake name’s not uncommon in our line of work.”
“Yeah, except he’s no longer in our line of work.”
“Once a cop.”
“Cyrus made a grab—unintentional, he claims—for Jasmine earlier tonight.”
“His reason?”
“He says he intercepted an email meant for his twin. Victor’s embroiled, Cyrus came in his place.”
“And you think that’s a wheelbarrow load of bull.”
Did he? Rogan let his gaze roam the heavily misted clearing. “I checked on the status of Victor’s investigation. Cyrus isn’t lying. His brother’s off the radar and currently on the payroll of a Baja coke king. Reports in when he can, and his captain doesn’t want him burdened with extraneous issues. I explained in my usual patient way that even the most dedicated cop might not consider the idea of being a target for murder extraneous, but the captain was adamant.”
“In other words, piss off, outsider cop.”
“You got the ‘off’ right anyway. Jasmine believes Cyrus’s story. To a point. She swears he’s not really Victor being clever, and there’s no twofer like Hezekiah and the wandering evil involved.”
The older man swallowed deeply, flexed a stiff wrist. “There isn’t a whole lot I can say to that as I didn’t know Cyrus was here until just this minute. I can tell you, because you’re obviously weighing the possibility, that Cyrus and Victor are twins and both were cops until Cyrus, for reasons unknown, decided to pack it in one day about five years ago. Dropped his career, then dropped out of sight for the longest time. In fact—and don’t take this to mean I think he’s involved in anything untoward—first I heard of him resurfacing was a few months after Daniel Corey screwed up the Wainwright investigation.”
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