Rock Spider (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 2)

by Mira Gibson

  “You’re focused on the wrong thing,” said Peter, berating Zhana for something Quinton hadn’t heard.

  “My hair is falling out, Peter,” she barked, distressed and pulling her silken handkerchief from her head to exhibit the evidence. “My hair. The plants. We’re all getting sick.”

  “I told you I’m working on it,” he snapped. “It’s not a priority until we find them.”

  As if disgusted with the bald patches on her scalp, Peter paced away from Zhana, leaving Quinton the breath of opportunity he needed. Ducking low and punching his sneakers into the grass, he sprinted to the side of the porch then slid soundlessly into the yellowing vegetation. The second he landed he held his breath, checking himself from every angle to be sure he was concealed. Pressing his back into the lattice, he sensed there were a good six inches from the top of his head to the porch landing. He peered up and saw the gnarly fingers of dying branches overhead. Through them, he spied the length of Zhana’s back, her hands knotting the handkerchief into place behind her head.

  “You said you found your camera?” Peter asked, his boots clanging hard against the wooden slats with each step. “No film inside?”

  “I’m sure she had it developed,” she said, warily. “They’re probably around here somewhere.”

  “Probably and somewhere aren't good enough. Do you have any idea how damning that article was and he’s just itching to print another. I can smell it.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked, though her tone betrayed her with a curt edge of resignation. “Dig in the dirt? Knowing Roberta, she buried it somewhere. Christ.” She snorted a tired laugh. “She’s made so many deposits over the years. I’d get sidetracked trying to fathom the nonsense she’s hidden in the ground.”

  “How can I impress upon you the gravity of the situation, Zhana?” He was yelling now, irate to get through to her, but Quinton only heard her gulping her martini, unfazed.

  “I thought you said she knows what to do,” she challenged after setting her glass on the railing with a click.

  “I don't trust her,” he clarified. “When she’s within my control, when she's here, it's a different matter.”

  “So modify the plan.”

  “I have no leverage, don’t you get that? Getting rid of Livingston is the only card worth playing.”

  Silence fell between them and it set Quinton’s heart pounding. Had they sensed him? Were they mouthing to each other a plot to ambush him? It was too quiet to dig for the photos. His fingers stilled in the soil, every inch of him freezing. He dared not breathe.

  “You need to clean up that snotty attitude,” he told her, breaking the lull.

  Another snort of nervous laughter from Zhana and Quinton could feel the tension rising between them. “Maude should be alive.”

  “I agree.”

  “Yet you’re harboring Charlie,” she pointed out in a snide tone.

  “Charlie’s not right in the head, you know that.”

  Quinton heard Peter’s boots pounding across the porch then Zhana asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To fix this the only way I know how.”

  “Don’t hurt her!”

  No response.

  It wasn’t until Quinton peered through the tangle of bent branches and saw Peter stalking towards his truck that he permitted himself to breathe. The engine fired up and Peter backed the truck around, then it tore off down the driveway.

  Above him, Zhana sighed, “Shit,” pushing off from the railing and padding a few paces. Quinton heard the screen door whine open then thwack shut, bouncing against the frame.

  Then it was quiet. Only the breezy trills of nature all around him and the faint taps of Zhana’s sandals deep within the house could be heard. Quinton hopped on his knees, clawing frantically into the dirt as though a ticking bomb would detonate if he didn’t find the photos fast enough. Soon his nails scratched paper—the flap of the pocket containing the photos—and in his thrill he lost all sense of his surroundings, deaf to the whine of the screen door easing open.

  With the photos in his grasp, he listened but heard nothing, then edged his way out from the brush.

  The second he stood he realized he’d made a grave error.

  “What have you got there?” she asked in a singsong tone that made the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen. “Quinton?”

  He didn’t want to turn around. Discretely, though he felt like a bad magician, he shoved the stack of photos down the front of his pants—their crisp corners scraping his skin, dirt-cooled paper zinging his underbelly. He turned, facing her.

  “I asked you a question,” she sneered through a mean smile.

  Deflecting, he asked, “Is Roberta around? No? Oh, okay, sorry to bother you-”

  “Hang on.” She stomped down the steps and rounded the yard, advancing on him.

  He was screaming at himself to bolt, but caught in the spotlight of her emerald glare as she towered over him, Quinton didn’t have a prayer of forming a believable lie, much less dashing to his bicycle.

  “Why were you hiding in my bushes?”

  Her gaze fell to his pants, defeating him, and when she snapped her eyes up, meeting his, her mouth quirked into a sly smile he didn’t trust. “You like helping Roberta, don’t you? You like watching her mess around with men. Isn't that right?”

  The insinuation turned his stomach.

  “You’d like to keep those photos for yourself, I’m sure.” Leaning over so that the delicate end of her nose hovered so near his he could smell her lavender breath, Zhana cocked a single brow, whispering, “Have you missed me?”

  Bowels loosening, a hot rush of nerves flooded through him at the reference. He’d spent every day since Maude’s bizarre funeral party trying to forget all that had transpired between them. “Mrs. King, I really need to go.”

  She seemed to enjoy exploring his shirt, bunching it up in her long fingers, until the thick sleeve of photos poking up from his waistline was exposed.

  Her eyes brightened, as she cooed, “What have we here?” But when she reached her hand down his pants and grasped, it wasn’t for the photos.

  “Mrs. King,” he squealed, turning and shuffling away from her, but she took fast hold of his collar, forcing him back around. She didn’t have to ask for the photos, merely open her palm and he set the stack in her hand. “I have to go now.”

  Working the stack into her back pocket, she whispered, “Why don’t you give me a hug? You know my husband hasn’t been around and I found you so comforting that night.”

  He recoiled, but didn’t flee. His entire body felt like hardening cement.

  Straightening up, she took on a severe tone. “It’s my hair, isn’t it?” She patted at her handkerchief self-consciously. “It’s obvious.” When she leaned over again, she grabbed his chin, making him look at her. “Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked to keep them away from you and your family? You have no concept, do you? And this is how you thank me? By cringing? By not having the decency to look me in the eye?”

  He willed himself not to shudder. Her fingers were tendrils of ice wrapped around his chin, but he made himself meet her gaze, all the while scheming in the back of his mind. He needed the photos. He couldn’t leave without them. As Roberta had explained over the phone, spewing out curt commands in breathy whispers he hadn’t grasped until after she’d hung up, she was done being their slave. Everything would change now that she was with Gertrude. But if Peter got his hands on the photos, Roberta’s last line of defense would be shot to hell. He wants me here, he thinks I’ll take her out, he thinks I’m still one of them, she'd said, voice urgently euphoric, as she’d detailed her good fortune, Everything we need to shut them down is buried at the fucking house, don’t you see? Once Gerty gets all the pieces, I’ll be free!

  Quinton had to do it. He had to tear the photos out of her khakis, sprint as fast as his legs would go, but when Zhana pulled him in, angling her mouth to his, he was already running. Tangled thoughts c
louded his understanding of what had just happened. As though he was watching himself from six feet above, he yanked the bicycle up, jumping on, and began pedaling.

  It wasn’t until he hooked around the Opechee Bay that the magnitude of his failure came crashing down, shattering all hope of Roberta truly loving him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Reeling with a dark onslaught of guesses as to how the slippery vixen had wormed her way into Gertrude’s home, Jake pounded on the cabin door, wrestling down a lump of tension in his throat and listening hard for commotion inside that wasn’t there.

  If the circumstances had been any different, if she hadn’t exposed herself coiling around him like a viper in a misguided attempt to seduce him, if she hadn’t succeeded in the same tactics with five others, hadn’t been raised a King and warped into the perverted shape of her kin, then discovering Roberta’s prints on the candle wouldn’t have induced the kind of anxiety that was splitting through his stomach. Easily, he would have brushed over the detail as an unfortunate coincidence, no cause for concern, no harm done other than muddying the waters of what had really happened. But Roberta had entrapped men, she was warped, and she seemed to revel in the art of destroying lives.

  Why had Gertrude taken her in?

  How long had he been standing out here? It felt like an eternity was passing—the porch light buzzing overhead, grating on his nerves, urgency mounting—as he pounded and pounded.

  When finally the door sprung inward with Roberta traipsed on the other side, angling her hip then the sharp corner of her shoulder into the doorframe with the leisurely posture of a 1956 cigarette ad—blow in her face and she’ll follow you anywhere—Jake blurted out, “What have you done with her?”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  She was filling the doorway and playing with the knob, but that didn’t stop him from barreling inside, fighting her tentacle arms that cloyed like seaweed, as he passed through.

  Gertrude was seated cross-legged on the couch. The long side of her hair was braided, the scarred side sheer but for tufts of downy hair, which drew his eye to the crisp point of her ear he hadn’t notice before, though he thought he’d memorized her every inch.

  In the split second that lapsed before she touched eyes with him, he found her laying a thin sheet of plastic over the cracked screen of her cell. When they did lock eyes, Gertrude setting her cell on the coffee table and rising to her feet with a dancer’s fluidity, he caught a glint of apprehension in her gaze. It was just a flash then, as Roberta joined them, it was gone like curtains closing.

  Determined to keep what little cool he had, Jake turned to Roberta with a mock-casual air, but the strategy hadn’t caught up with his tone. “You’re staying here?”

  “If you’re asking if you’ll be seeing a lot more of me...” she finished the statement by quirking her lips into a smirk then gradually suppressed the insinuation before it fully tickled her. But she was calculating about it. Certain not to sober up until she'd glimpsed Gertrude and saw her new caregiver registering the hint. Then, cheerful as a slice of pie, she asked, “So you guys are friends?”

  Hanging back, Jake deferred to Gertrude.

  “Old friends,” she said vaguely, while starting for the bedroom. “Excuse us.”

  As he walked into the bedroom, avoiding Roberta’s penetrating gaze, he realized he preferred her unwashed, greasy-haired with a stale dress dripping down her. Freshly bathed and wearing clean clothes that smelled faintly of detergent—apple mango tango!—she seemed oddly potent, as though the filth hadn’t enhanced her power but bogged it down.

  He shut the door, disturbed he couldn't find a lock, as Gertrude adjusted the dial on her clock radio then turned up the volume so their conversation would be muddled under white noise.

  “What were you thinking?” he asked through his teeth, advancing on her with the kind of intimacy that resonated the terrible song he realized was playing—Bryan Adam’s imposing his smoky baritone suggestions on how to really love a woman.

  “She couldn’t have had anything to do with all that,” she countered, but her eyes were pleading for him to agree. “There have to be a million ways her prints got on that candle.”

  “But Gerty.” He stopped himself before implying any further that he thought Roberta being here at all was wildly inappropriate. “Did you think she was in danger?”

  “I know she was in danger.”

  “Why is she here?”

  “We got the go-ahead from the court to remove her from the home,” she asserted, as though her decision and feelings about it were at war.

  “You couldn’t have set her up with a foster family?”

  Clamming up, she folded her arms and drew in a carefully measured breath. Her eyes darkened with worry, lips tensing in a way he found impossible not to stare at. A sudden impulse to hold her clouded whatever point he was preparing to make and instead he let himself see the situation through her eyes.

  But it wasn’t reassuring.

  “You really think she came here and did all that?” she asked, slowly coming around, but fighting it in the same breath.

  “As a pawn, yes. I don’t know how responsible that makes her,” he added, softening his stance. “I don’t know if she acted alone. I don’t know if she’s being brainwashed or groomed, and you probably did the right thing removing her from that house, but taking her in like this could be dangerous. She lures people. She sets people up.”

  “She didn’t lure me into this. She didn’t even ask.”

  “You’re not giving her enough credit.” The need to convince her was tearing his mind open and if she were a man he wouldn’t hesitate to use himself as an example, disclosing Roberta’s bizarre attempt to force him into having sex, but he didn't want her finding out about that. “If there’s a silver lining here,” he continued, erring on the side of convincing himself that something might be all right with this, “maybe you can get her to open up. Maybe she’ll tell you about what’s going on over there, but I don’t like you being here alone with her.”

  Breathy and mustering up some semblance of control to right a potentially grave error, she said, “Okay, yeah, I can do that.”

  Seeing her fall quietly into thought as she seemed to grapple with the possibility a weakness she hadn’t recognized in herself could very well end up being her downfall, compelled him to kiss her.

  It was rash, poorly thought out if it was thought out at all, and yet exactly what he’d hoped. Her smooth lips pressing his, her nose softly brushing his cheek, her fingertips lightly touching his waist, Jake wrapping her close, feeling her against him, unable to get close enough, too many layers, was elevating though set to a schmaltzy love song blaring through a tinny clock radio. At least Bryan Adams wasn't loud enough to spoil whatever this was destined to turn into.

  When she urged him back, he whispered, “Sorry,” tilting his head down towards hers, as if he could will her to lift her face for more.

  “Let’s not complicate things.”

  “No, we shouldn’t complicate things.”

  But her lips met his in a gentle peck, which was entirely her doing, and he felt her hands drape gently over his shoulders.

  Between feather-soft kisses, she said, “It would be a bad idea.”

  “I think so too.”

  Each word punctuated touching lips.

  “We should stop kissing.”

  Unless she did, he wouldn’t, but he uttered, “Mm-hm,” in agreement.

  Then she held her lips to his, lingering, and he sensed she was drinking in her fill. But she stepped back, pressing her fingers to her mouth and finding reasons not to look at him, the first of which was turning the dial until a radio host came droning through the plastic speaker on the nightstand.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed and looking up at him, she asked, “You’re sure it was Kevin Robinson’s blood?”

  “On a hunch, I had my contact in Grafton County test it, a guy named Ed Cohn, who works as a floating M.
E. out of Dartmouth-Hitchcock. I had to pull a few strings to get him to pull a few strings, but Robinson had undergone a paternity test years back and Ed was able to get his hands on the DNA record on file. The blood on the book was a match. It was Robinson’s.”

  “But he stopped working for the PD over a month ago.”

  “Which means the cult either went after him-”

  “Or never let him leave,” she supplied. “Were they holding him?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. If he left and the cult tracked him down that would mean Robinson was traceable, but using all of my resources at the Daily Sun and my contacts in a number of precincts, I couldn’t find record of his whereabouts since July 5th whatsoever.”

  “Where were they keeping him?” she asked confusedly.

  “Where are they keeping him?”

  She stilled at his correction and he nodded, impacting his point. “Why are they doing this?”

  He didn’t have an answer.

  “What are they hiding? Why are they killing to keep it secret? Why kill Maude when they could’ve looked at Roberta as a litmus?”

  “Some kids are strong willed. Maybe Maude never lost sight of true north and they knew they couldn’t control her.”

  Jake retracted his hands and fished a scrap of paper out of the front pocket of his jeans.

  “I’ve filed a Missing Person’s report for Robinson in Grafton to get the ball rolling. I can’t even think about what he’s going through if he’s still alive out there in whatever prison they’ve got him in...” he trailed off, reading over his own messy handwriting on the piece of paper. “Ed had an idea about testing the blood for heavy metals thinking it might shed light on where they might be keeping him.”

  He touched eyes with her and it was clear she was with him. “He didn’t find any, but he did find high concentrations of radon.”

  “We had radon in our basement,” she said suddenly as though her mouth had remembered before she did. “Growing up, my dad was always replacing the radon detectors and taking Doris and me in for blood tests.”