And the San Carmelita Mission stood—as it had since it was built by those new, reluctant converts in the late 1700s—on a hilltop, overlooking the town and beyond it, the ocean. The panoramic view became more magnificent with every hairpin turn of the road that zigzagged up the steep hill, giving a traveler the light-hearted feeling of truly being “above it all.”
But Francie Gorton had no appreciation for the sweeping vista as she guided her brother’s Charger up the hill toward the old mission. She was wondering why Savannah Reid had changed their plans and asked someone to phone and switch the location.
“Behind the mission just after eleven,” the caller had said. “And she won’t have much time, so don’t be late.”
Francie had hoped that Savannah would keep their meeting confidential, but she seemed like a smart, nice lady, and if she had needed to change their meeting place and tell someone else about it . . . Francie would trust her judgment.
In a few minutes, she would be trusting her with a lot more. Her very life, in fact. But, remembering how kind and concerned the lady had been when they had talked there on the bench, overlooking the vineyards, Francie relaxed a bit.
Francie considered herself a good judge of character, and her instincts told her that Savannah Reid had a good heart. Someone had told Francie that she had been a cop for years, so if anyone would know how to handle this situation, she would.
Francie pulled the Charger into a parking lot that had been laid behind the mission for visitors, who were welcome to tour the place on weekends. In the seventh grade, her history teacher had brought the class here for a field trip. She recalled getting an A- on the report she had written about the visit, and Francie had been distressed. She wasn’t accustomed to getting an A-, and she resented the reason the teacher gave for marking her down—her statement that she had felt the place was haunted.
But she had.
Francie had always been sensitive about certain things, feeling things that no one else was aware of. And she had been most aware of an uneasiness about the old place. Within those thick, adobe walls, she sensed them . . . the spirits of the men, women, and children who had died of disease and abuse, while being forced to build those walls and worship a god who was a stranger to them.
Local legend said that there were literally hundreds of the Chumash tribe buried on the property in mass graves. But Francie didn’t feel them in the ground. She felt them in those thick, white, adobe walls.
As she got out of the car and walked toward the mission, Francie wished that Savannah had chosen anywhere, anywhere at all, other than this place to meet. It was private, to be sure; no one was in sight, and hers was the only car in the parking lot. Nobody would overhear their conversation.
At least, no one who had been alive for the past two hundred years.
A breeze swept up the hill, a hot wind that whipped sand into her eyes, making them tear. She could smell the wild scents of the sage and margaritas blooming on the hills around her, their aromas rich in the heat of the midday sun. A mockingbird sang somewhere, repeating his song several times, then changing his tune, and a pair of doves cooed to each other in the nearby brush. Francie liked birds. She liked chickens. But it made her sad to think of her chickens right now.
She glanced at her watch. It was only a few minutes past eleven, so it wasn’t surprising that Savannah hadn’t arrived yet. But Francie was sure she would soon. Savannah seemed like a punctual person, and she had sounded eager to meet with her.
Thank goodness she had Savannah. She wasn’t sure what step to take next, but Savannah would direct her. Savannah would protect her. For the first time since Barbie had told her that ugly secret, Francie felt safe.
But the feeling was short-lived. With every step she took closer to the mission, she found it more and more difficult to breathe. At first she thought it was the dust blowing around her, irritating her asthma. Then she decided it was the heat. The sun beat down on her, heating her dark hair until it felt like it was burning the top of her head.
And the air was thicker, harder to pull in and out of her lungs.
The wind caught the bell in the tower and caused it to chime, once, twice, three times. “For whom the bells tolls,” she whispered. “It tolls for me.”
Then she shook her head, trying to reorient herself to reality. This was no time to let her imagination take over. She needed to stay calm and grounded, and not think about the restless spirits within the adobe walls.
“Francie.”
She heard it. She was sure she heard it . . . coming from the mission. Someone was calling her. The spirits, they were—
“No,” she told herself. “It’s Savannah. She is here. I don’t know where her car is, but she got here before me.”
“Francie.”
There it was again, louder than before. It was coming from the side of the mission, from a stairwell that led down into some sort of dark cellar beneath the building. She recalled the guide taking her and the other students down there. It had been dark and damp, spooky and gloomy, and she hoped that wasn’t where Savannah was waiting.
“Francie.”
“Yes? I’m here. Where are you?”
She walked to the side of the building and stood, squinting up at the whitewashed walls that were so bright in the sunlight that just looking at them caused spots to form in front of her eyes.
Feeling a bit dizzy, she walked to the top of the narrow stone staircase. About fifteen steps down was a small landing, where the steps turned and proceeded down to the cellar. She really didn’t want to go there. If Savannah was in the cellar, she should come up here into the sunshine. Why stay down in the dark?
“Savannah? Is that you? Are you in the cellar?” she called. “If you are, please come out. I don’t want to come down there. Savannah?”
Standing on the top step, she strained to hear any sound from below, but all was silent.
A seagull screeched overhead, frightening her. She jumped and leaned one hand against the wall to regain her balance. Leaning forward, she peered into the darkness below, and called, “Savannah, please answer me. I’m up here. Come out. Okay?”
She felt it again . . . just as she had on the field trip . . . that uneasy conviction that she wasn’t alone. Something, someone was there with her. She felt their grief, their rage, their—
A blinding white light, a lightning bolt of pain flashed through her head, obliterating every other sensation.
She was flying. Falling forward into the darkness.
She hit hard. And she heard, rather than felt, some of her bones break.
Lying on the cold stone, she was dimly aware of someone standing over her.
“Are you dead?” she heard a voice ask. “Well . . .” The nudge of a foot in her broken ribs. “. . . are you?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so either. You’re not making this easy, you know.”
She felt hands reach beneath her . . . lift . . . and shove.
Over and over she tumbled, farther down into the musty darkness. She landed even harder than before.
“Are you dying?” asked a voice, but it wasn’t the hateful, angry voice on the stairs. This was a soft, gentle voice . . . maybe that of a Chumash Indian child . . . or a saint . . . or an angel.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I believe I am.”
“Then, come with me.”
“Where?”
“With me. You’re one of us now.”
Francie felt a hand slip into hers . . . and tug. “But who are you?” she asked.
“You know.”
After a few minutes, there were footfalls on the stone stairs, going up, out of the darkness and into the sunlight. Hurried steps, the steps of the living, not the dead.
The dead remained behind with all the others who had died violently, unjustly, within the thick, adobe walls of Mission de San Carmelita.
With her black garbage bag in her hand and a grim smile on her fac
e, Savannah walked up the sidewalk to a building that held hardly any good memories for her at all. It was the medical examiner’s complex—a drab blue-gray cement-block structure that would never be confused with anything more cheerful, like a discotheque or even a funeral parlor.
Savannah had spent some of her worst moments as a cop inside that building, bringing people to identify the physical remains of their loved ones. Another part of the job she had hated and didn’t miss.
This time the victim was a dead chicken, and as much compassion as she had for barnyard poultry, it wasn’t as bad.
Inside, sitting at the reception desk with his finger in his nose was the repulsive Officer Kenny Bates, another reason why Savannah avoided this place like a bad case of PMS.
“Savannah, baby! It’s about time you dropped in to see me!” he exclaimed as she walked through the door.
“Drop dead, Bates.”
He grinned as though she had just propositioned him. Judging from the peanut butter between his teeth and the white bread guck stuck to his gums, she assumed he had just finished his lunch. “You miss me, don’t you, baby? Been havin’ hot dreams about me?”
“I assure you, Bates, I don’t. I might miss an infected hangnail, an abscessed tooth, an enormous pimple on my chin . . . but I don’t miss you.”
She walked up to the desk, grabbed the sign-in clipboard, and scrawled her name across it. Not wanting the police department brass to know she was there, she usually signed a fictitious name. This time it was “Minnie Mouse.” Nobody, especially the worthless Officer Kenny Bates, actually checked.
“Give me a call sometime, honey,” he said as she walked away, “and I’ll take you out. Wednesday is ladies’ night at Hooter Hollow. You can drink all you want for free, and we’ll watch the strippers. They can . . . ah, load my gun, and then we can go to my place and I’ll let you pull my trigger, if you know what I mean. What’dya say?”
“I say that you are a wart on the buttocks of humanity, Bates.”
“But you like me.”
“I despise you.”
“You want me.”
“I loathe you. All women do, Bates. Haven’t you noticed that even nice ladies spit on you when you walk by?”
“They don’t spit on me. Nobody spits on me.”
“Check out the back of your jacket sometime.”
She chuckled as she walked down the hall, knowing that at that very moment, he would be twisting his spine out of alignment trying to see behind him. What a moron.
Ahead, at the bend of the hall, was a pair of double stainless-steel doors. Dr. Liu’s autopsy suite. The M.E.’s office was around the corner to the right, but she was seldom there. Jennifer spent most of her time in the field or performing her examinations.
Savannah swung the door open a crack and peeked in. Dr. Liu was standing at a steel table, scalpel in hand, wearing surgical gloves, greens, cap, and disposable paper booties over her sneakers. Her long, black hair was tied with a brilliant pink-and-purple silk scarf.
A corpse was on the table, its chest open, major organs removed. Dr. Liu had Barbara Matthews’s heart on a scale and was dictating the numbers into a microphone that was suspended over the table.
When she turned and saw Savannah, she tapped a pedal beneath the table with the toe of her shoe, turning off the microphone.
“Hey, lady!” she said, “Did you bring me some chocolate goodies?”
Savannah laughed. “No, sorry.” She held up the black plastic bag. “This definitely isn’t a delicacy.”
“I thought you were stopping by to get the results of the Matthews examination.”
“Well . . . since I’m here, I’d be very interested in anything you have.”
She peeled off her gloves and tossed them into a biohazard waste can. “First, let me see what you have there.”
Savannah handed her the bag. “Actually, for the record, it’s Dirk—not me—dropping this off . . . in an evidence bag.”
She reached out and took it, giving Savannah a suspicious look. “And does Dirk know that he’s dropping this off to me?”
“He will.”
“Okay.”
She glanced into the bag and made a face. “What is this mess?”
“I suspect it’s the rest of the chicken. Would you take a quick look at it . . . when you get a chance, of course . . . and let me know if it died from natural causes?”
“And what would you consider a natural way for a chicken to croak?”
“If a wolf bit it.”
“I see. And where did you find this mangled, half-rotten, disgusting . . . treasure?”
“Tied to a wolf’s neck with a piece of twine.”
Jennifer stared at her for a long moment, then shook her head. “Okay, I won’t ask. And I’ll check to see if it’s missing a gizzard. But you owe me so-o-o-o big for this one.”
“Dirk will settle up with you.”
“No way. His idea of payment is a Hershey’s Kiss. And, while I like them, this dead chicken thing is a Godiva job.”
“I hear you. What have you got on Barbie?”
Dr. Liu glanced at the table and a sadness crossed her face. “A perfectly healthy young woman who died a very unpleasant death.”
“I’m sure falling off that cliff wasn’t very pleasant.”
“She was dead before she went over the edge. There’s lividity along her left side. She was lying on it a while before the body was moved.”
“Then what was the cause of death?”
“Her sinus cavities, esophagus, bronchial tubes and lungs were chemically burned. She inhaled something highly caustic.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait for the lab results. But I’m sure it wasn’t anything she was sniffing recreationally. If she had been physically able to escape that poison, she would have.”
“You said before that you think she was bound.”
“Yes, and I’m sure of it now. There was even a shred of tape still on one of her wrists. It looks like standard duct tape, but we’ll run tests on it, too. I’ll see if we can identify a brand for you, but I wouldn’t bet on it. There wasn’t much.”
“Any hair or fibers?”
“Hairs were all hers. We have some dark fibers. I think they’re carpet threads. Maybe from an automobile. I’ll get that for you, too.”
Savannah walked over to the table and looked down at the earthly remains of Barbara Matthews, Beauty Queen, and felt bad that she didn’t feel worse.
Not only was the young woman dead, but so few people seemed to be sorry. Everyone deserved to be grieved. Even unpopular, bratty girls like Barbie.
And, although Savannah couldn’t summon an enormous amount of grief from her heart, she would do everything she could to supply justice for Barbara Matthews. Even unliked, ungrieved victims of murder deserved justice.
“Yes,” Jennifer said as she walked up to stand next to Savannah by the table, “a perfectly healthy young woman. A perfectly healthy, pregnant young lady.”
Savannah gave her a quick sideways glance. “Really?”
“Really. About eight weeks.”
“Mm-m-m.” She silently reaffirmed her promise. Now there were two victims who required justice, and that doubled her burden of responsibility.
Chapter 19
When Savannah returned to Villa Rosa that afternoon, she found the pageant activities centered, once again, on the patio surrounding the swimming pool. At one end of the area, on a stage decorated with gold-and-silver-mylar balloons, the interview portion of the pageant was being conducted.
On a set designed to look like a talk-show stage, the young ladies were taking turns sitting in the guest’s chair, chatting with the pseudo-host, a very debonair-looking Anthony Villa. But Savannah could tell that in this case, looks were deceiving. Although he was playing his role well, she got the distinct feeling Tony would have much preferred to be walking in his vineyard.
She spotted Dirk at the edge of th
e crowd, showing half a dozen snapshots to first one, then another, of the girls. But as each one took a look, she shook her head, then walked away. He had his “I’m Discouraged—I Hate My Job” look on his face. Savannah wondered if what she was going to tell him would cheer him up or plunge him further down into the “I Hate the Whole World—Life Ain’t Worth Diddly” mode.
“Hey there, good-lookin’,” she told him with her best Mae West impression, one hand on her hip, the other patting her hair. “If you’re not getting anywhere with those youngsters, show a real woman what you’ve got.”
But he was in too lousy a mood even for Mae’s double entendres. “I got squat, that’s what I got.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead, and Savannah noticed that he was flushed all the way up to the receding hairline he denied he had.
“Why don’t you come over here and sit in the shade a spell,” she told him. “Take a load off and all that.”
She led him over to an umbrella-covered table and sat him down. Dirk wasn’t able to go all day long at breakneck speed the way he had when she’d first met him. The old fella was getting some mileage on him. While she, on the other hand, felt fresh out of the showroom.
She sat down on the chair beside him and groaned with relief as she propped her feet in the crook of the table legs. Okay, so her odometer had rolled over a few times, too. They were still an awesome twosome . . . at least in her estimation.
“Whose picture are you showing there?” she asked.
He fanned the photos out on the table like a Las Vegas card dealer and pointed to the one in the middle, a gangly, teenage boy with stringy long hair and a sullen expression that looked more like a mug shot than the school picture that it was. “That’s Trent, the boyfriend,” he told her. “I was hoping that maybe somebody saw him come back later in the evening, after Ryan pitched him off the property.”
“Any luck?”
“Nope. Nobody saw nada. They were all at that dinner thing.”
“Have you found him yet?”
“No. But once I got the word from Dr. Jennifer this afternoon that it was murder for sure, I put an APB out on him and his dark blue Charger. By the way, she says you dropped something off to her and told her it was from me.”
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