Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stick around this time.”

  I gently pried the bottle from her fingers. Kat pillaged through her bag until she came out with the half-empty bottle of whiskey that had been on her nightstand when Solomon and I first arrived. Eyes locked on her daughter’s, Kat opened the bottle and took a long slug.

  I didn’t try to intervene. Neither did Solomon.

  When she was done, Kat sat down heavily on the bed, a marionette whose strings had been cut. Solomon remained where she was, back against the wall.

  “Now that you’ve had your medicine,” Sol said, her voice laced with venom, “maybe you wouldn’t mind answering some questions.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “I don’t care.” Solomon’s chin came up. “You’re well enough to fight to the death over a freaking drink, you’re well enough to talk.” Her gaze flickered to me, waiting for me to stop her.

  Instead, I pulled a chair up next to the one already beside Kat’s bed. I nodded to the other one. “Have a seat, Sol.”

  Kat scooted to the other side of the bed, back against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. Solomon’s fear was palpable the closer she got to her mother. I thought again of the years I’d known her as a kid: All those times she’d come into the paper with a black eye or split lip; the brooding silence that invariably accompanied them. I hadn’t seen that girl in a long, long time.

  She sat, her gaze steady on Kat’s. “Did you know the Melquists?” she asked.

  Kat’s eyes fell to Solomon’s hand. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Kat got up abruptly—so abruptly, in fact, that Solomon flinched. I may have done the same. She brushed past us and disappeared into the adjoining washroom. When she closed the door, Sol’s eyes sank shut. I squeezed her knee.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m an idiot. I should’ve just let her have the stuff—it was stupid.”

  “Never a good idea to get between a drunk and their next drink,” I agreed. “Still… it’s no excuse for what she did.” Water ran in the other room. I ran a finger over the scratches on her cheek, my own anger rising. “She did a number on you this time.”

  She pulled away. “I’ve had worse. I’m fine.”

  Maybe two minutes trickled by before the bathroom door opened again. Kat emerged with a damp washcloth and a first aid kit. She sat down on the edge of the bed and guided Solomon’s hand to her lap. I got the feeling this had been a ritual between mother and daughter, years before—Kat’s way of trying to heal the wounds she’d inflicted. She may have done all right with the physical ones, but it dawned on me then—maybe for the first time—just how deep the psychic scars ran for Solomon. A band-aid and some antiseptic would never do the trick there.

  Kat wiped the blood away with a deft hand. An odd mix of frustration, resentment, and shame radiated from her. When she finally looked up, she avoided Solomon entirely. Instead, she focused on me. There was no trace of confusion, no sign of weakness, in her rock steady green eyes.

  “You love her, right? You love my daughter.”

  “Jesus, Kat—” Solomon said, mortified.

  “Yes,” I interrupted. It might have been a hard thing to admit once upon a time. Now, it was the one certainty I knew wouldn’t change—not with time or distance or any one of a thousand disasters the universe might set in my path. “I do.”

  Solomon wouldn’t look at me.

  “Good,” Kat said with a brusque nod, as though my answer had been a foregone conclusion. “If you love her, you’ll get her to run.”

  “What?” Solomon said. “We’re not running.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” Kat said, though not unkindly. She never shifted her gaze from mine. “If you really care about her, you’ll convince her to get the hell out of here. You’ll leave the country, find some beach somewhere, and stay there. Stop digging. Now. They’re done playing—you’ll both be dead before the week’s out if you don’t get her out of here.”

  I didn’t say anything, but Kat seemed satisfied that she had done what she could. She returned her focus to Solomon’s hand, cleaning the last of the wound before she retrieved some ointment from her bag.

  “Ask your questions,” she instructed her daughter.

  “What?” Solomon asked.

  “You have questions, right?” Kat said impatiently. “What do you want to know?”

  “The Melquists,” Solomon said, after a second of uncertainty. “You knew them.”

  Kat nodded.

  “What happened to them? How did they die? And... why? What the hell happened out here?”

  “You want to choose one of those questions, for now?” Kat said. “I’m not exactly in peak storytelling form here.” Solomon didn’t relent. Kat scratched her neck, nodding thoughtfully. “Right. Of course you don’t. Jonah Melquist knew your father. The information that’s been keeping you safe, all this time?”

  “It was hidden here,” I guessed.

  “Jonah had it,” Kat agreed. “Jenny found out.”

  “And then the whole family up and killed themselves?” Solomon asked. “I feel like there are some key points you’re skipping.”

  Kat applied a bandage to the back of Solomon’s hand, smoothing it down with a kind of tenderness I’d only seen her use when she was working. Medicine allowed for softness; life did not. When she was through, Kat looked her in the eye again. “Jonah killed his family. The alternative was to let Jenny and her people have them... It wasn’t an alternative he was willing to live with.” Her eyes clouded. “I tried to stop it. I was too late.”

  A few seconds passed in silence before Solomon got herself back together enough to move on. “The man named Mitch Cameron—you know who he is?” she asked.

  “We’ve met,” Kat said dryly. Solomon pulled her hand back. When Kat tried to clean the scratches on her cheek, she pulled away.

  “I’m fine, leave it,” Solomon said. Her voice was steady now, her eyes cool. “Dad ran away from home when he was fifteen. He didn’t show up again until December of 1978, when he joined the Paysons. Why then? Where was he before that?”

  Kat didn’t answer this time. Sol continued, undeterred.

  “Noel Hammond’s scrapbook—the one you stole from me. It had a bunch of articles from the Payson fire.”

  “I never said I stole that,” Kat said immediately. Solomon glared at her, which I could understand. Kat Everett was enough to push the pope himself to matricide.

  “Fine,” I interrupted, before things devolved once more. “The scrapbook someone stole.”

  “What about it?” Kat said eventually.

  “It was filled with two things: One was the Payson fire,” Solomon said, then hesitated. “The other was Jonestown.”

  Kat stood abruptly. She started toward the door, but Solomon blocked her path before she could go anywhere. I remained seated, tensed to my toenails.

  “Everything that’s gone wrong in your life?” Kat said, her voice hushed. She turned to face Solomon, shutting me out. “These people are behind it. Let it go. Your father tried to run; he tried to hide. Jonah Melquist—one of the men lying in that pit back there? He tried to hide. They couldn’t. You don’t get away from people like this. Not when you know as much as your father does. He saw the worst of it—knows every secret. It’s been a death sentence from the day he walked away from the Brigade. When you’re part of the Project, you don’t just leave. No one just leaves these people.”

  “The Brigade?” Solomon said. It wasn’t what I expected her to follow up on. I stayed quiet, curious despite myself. “Do you mean the Red Brigade?” She looked at me briefly, explaining. “That was the name of Jim Jones’ security detail.”

  “Erin—” Kat began.

  “No—you said you’d give me answers. Did Isaac Payson and Dad know each other before they joined the Payson Church? Was it because they were both part of Jones’ church? Both members of the Red Brigade?”

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nbsp; Not surprisingly, Kat shook her head. “If I tell you more, you’re as good as dead. Or did you miss the pit of bodies we just left behind? A war is coming—these people have been building up to it for a long, long time. If you get in their way…”

  “I’m already in their way!” Solomon shouted. “They blew up your house, Kat. Jenny would have killed Diggs and me if she’d caught us… Her people are coming for us. At least tell me what the hell they want me for.”

  “They don’t want you—they never have!” Kat shouted back. “They just want you to keep quiet. How is that so hard to get through your head, for Christ’s sake? Just keep quiet. Leave it alone.”

  “If we leave this alone, they’re just going to keep killing,” I said. I got up from my chair and joined Solomon—defending her because I knew she’d never defend herself. “Erin tried to let it go,” I said. “She didn’t go near this thing all winter, because she was trying to save my life. That didn’t stop these people from engineering an apocalyptic nightmare in Kentucky.”

  “Look: we know there’s a link to Jonestown, all right?” Solomon said. “You said you met Dad in December of 1978. You told me he was hurt—that you nursed him back to health. What happened to him?”

  Kat went to the table and unscrewed the cap from her whiskey bottle, took a slug, and set it back down. Then, she exhaled slowly and leveled a cool glare at Solomon and me.

  “Isaac Payson met your father in San Francisco in the early ‘70s, not long after your dad’s sister was murdered. Your father had gone out west to find Jones—Isaac was already a member of the People’s Temple at that point.”

  “Why was Dad looking for Jim Jones?”

  Kat hesitated, but only for a second. “His parents—your grandparents—knew him when he used to preach in Indiana. He had family in Lynn, so they all knew each other from the start.”

  “Dad was part of the People’s Temple, then?” Solomon asked. Her voice was strained. “Was he in Guyana the day everyone killed themselves? Was he at Jonestown?”

  Kat’s eyes slid to the door, as though she thought someone might be listening in. Not an unreasonable assumption, considering recent events. She didn’t answer.

  “Was the Payson Church some extension of the People’s Temple?” Solomon pressed. “Or did Isaac break off from Jones to start his own church? And what does Mitch Cameron have to do with any of it?” She took a step closer, forgetting in her fervor just how dangerous that could be. Instead of breaking, however, Kat returned to her bunk. She stared at the floor, her mouth shut and her jaw hard.

  “I’m done. I’ve already given you enough information to guarantee they’ll gun you both down. As soon as we get off this rock, I’m disappearing. I hope to hell you do the same.”

  She closed her mouth again and crossed her arms over her chest, pulling a book from her bag.

  I knew there was no way in hell she was saying anything more.

  Chapter Six - Solomon

  It was almost six-thirty by the time we walked through the Melquists’ front door again, shooting Diggs’ and Juarez’s plan to keep to daylight hours straight to hell. The temperature had dropped a good twenty degrees, but the snow had almost stopped and the winds had died down. Between exhaustion, the events of the past twenty-four hours, and Kat’s revelations, the voices that had only been whispering at the start of the day were deafening by the time I crossed the Melquists’ threshold.

  For thine is the power and the glory…

  She can’t stay here, Katherine…

  Isaac will be angry. He’ll send us into the woods.

  And then, suddenly, a voice I’d never imagined had anything to do with this: We didn’t commit suicide…

  The memory of Jones’ voice alone was enough to stop me cold.

  “Solomon?” I heard Diggs say behind me. I couldn’t make my vision level out enough to turn. I felt his hand on my shoulder, anchoring me. “Hey—talk, please, or I’m carrying you out of here now.”

  “Sorry. Yeah, I’m here. The bedrooms… I want to check the bedrooms again.”

  I went on ahead, Diggs and Juarez trailing behind. We were all armed. On top of the guns and ammo, we had a radio with us and strict orders to check in with the research station every ten minutes. I wasn’t stupid enough to think any of this ensured our safety, but it was at least an honest effort.

  “Have you noticed that you two spend an awful lot of time in creepy abandoned houses?” Juarez asked when we reached the second floor.

  “Too much Scooby Doo as a kid,” Diggs said to him. “And if I remember right, you’ve been in most of the same houses lately.”

  “A trend I wouldn’t mind breaking. You know, I was never a fan of that show. The van never seemed that safe… or sanitary. And the dog…”

  “Careful,” Diggs said, nodding in my direction. “Bad mouthing the dog is never a good idea around this one.”

  “So I’ve learned.”

  I left them to their banter, bypassing the first several bedrooms off the long hallway. When I finally stopped, it was at the last bedroom on the left. Both Diggs and Juarez had fallen silent.

  I stood in the doorway. With the light failing, the creep factor in Jeanine and Nancy’s room had grown exponentially.

  “What are we looking for?” Diggs asked. He was closer than I’d expected. I started, my heart tripping faster.

  A child’s voice echoed the words, twenty-five years past. What are we looking for, Erin? We’re not supposed to be here. If Isaac catches us…

  If Isaac catches us, what?

  There are rules that we must follow, Erin, I remembered my father saying. Isaac has them for a reason. This is the safest place for us right now. Someday, maybe I can take you away. Maybe we can go somewhere far from here—somewhere that no one can find us.

  “Erin,” Diggs said, pulling me up from the depths of those lost memories so fast it felt like I’d get the bends. His hand was on my shoulder. I shook him off, desperate to get the memory back.

  My father had wanted to leave Payson Isle. Why was it so hard to remember that shit, when the good times we spent together with the Payson Church had been front and center in my brain for decades?

  “Wait,” I said impatiently. “Just give me a minute.”

  I went inside the bedroom, but mentally I was still chasing that conversation. Where had my father and I been? The garden on Payson Isle, I was pretty sure. Or in the greenhouse. It was the day after I’d watched Isaac whip Dad in front of the entire congregation. The whole thing was too elusive now, though—like a dream already receding into my subconscious.

  I took a breath and finally let the memory go. There would be time later. For now, I had other things to worry about.

  “Are you back?” Diggs asked. Juarez watched me warily.

  “I am,” I confirmed. “Sorry.”

  “Good. So remind me why we’re in this particular bedroom?”

  “The name tags. You saw them at the end of the beds?” Diggs nodded. “They’re all written in the same handwriting, except for one.” I indicated the scrawled name at the end of Nancy’s bed. “It sets her apart, but she clearly didn’t care. Plus, she was the one with the marionette hidden beside her bunk.”

  “So you’re saying little Nancy was a rebel?” Diggs asked.

  Was. Men, women, and children, lying at the bottom of a pit like last week’s trash… One of those kids would have been Nancy. The thought made me sick.

  “I’m not sure how Nancy can help us now,” Juarez said.

  “I’m not, either,” I conceded. “But if anyone was marching to their own drummer out here, it was this kid. Maybe she wasn’t following quite so blindly as everyone else.”

  There was a small bureau against the wall, beside a window that looked out over the ocean. On top of the bureau was a well-worn Bible and an old music box with an angel on top. I opened the top drawer of the bureau and riffled through plain white underwear and plain white socks. So far, everything looked pretty innocuous.
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br />   “What did you expect to find?” Diggs asked.

  I shook my head, continuing to look. We’re not supposed to snoop, I heard Allie say. If we hear Isaac coming, I’m running away. You’ll get in trouble, and I won’t even care.

  I finished going through the bureau and moved on to a narrow closet, the door swollen closed. It took some effort before it finally budged. Hanging inside, I found miss-sized, ankle-length dresses with high necks and long sleeves. There hadn’t been a dress code in the Payson Church; I wore dungarees and overalls, sported shorts and skinned knees every summer.

  This wasn’t the same.

  And yet, it felt the same.

  I pushed the dresses aside and ran my hand along the wall, going by feel alone.

  “Solomon,” Diggs said. The way he said it made me think he’d been trying to get my attention for a while. Outside, the sun had set. The room was all shadows, lit by an old lantern and Juarez’s flashlight.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “If you could give us some idea what we’re looking for, maybe Jack and I can help.”

  “I’ll know it when I find it.”

  You’re not supposed to be so nosy—God doesn’t like a snoop. You can’t just go anywhere and do whatever you want, Allie said, her voice carrying through the years. If Isaac finds us, he’ll put us in the woods.

  Why would he put us in the woods?

  I stepped farther into the closet, half-expecting the back wall to open up to Narnia.

  “What the hell are we doing here, Sol?” Diggs asked, an edge to his voice now.

  “I was this kid,” I said. I gave up and left the closet. “The one always breaking the rules. Everyone else might have made their bed a certain way and eaten all their peas every night, but this one’s different. And if she kept something…”

  “Something like what, though?” Juarez asked.

  “I don’t know. Something.” I looked at her bed again—covers mussed, pillows askew, blue-eyed angel hanging on the bedpost. I thought of the bunk beds at the research station.

  Suddenly, I scooted in and lay down on Nancy’s bunk.

  “So much for preserving the crime scene,” Juarez said dryly. I ignored him.