Tangled Threat ; Suspicious

by Heather Graham

  She saw interest on the faces before her. The employees knew by now that Donald Glass had been taken away. They knew that horrible things had happened the night before, that Angie had been attacked by her host and that Maura had been attacked—but found, and found along with Heidi and the other three missing girls. Heidi was already fine and home with her parents. The other girls were still hospitalized. For Lily Sylvester it would be a long haul. She’d been in the dark, barely fed and given dirty water for months—and it had taken a toll on her internal organs. Lydia Merkel would most probably be allowed to go home that afternoon, and for Amy Bonham the hospital stay would be about a week.

  There was hope for all of them. They’d lived.

  The resort guests had all gone. They had been asked to vacate by the police and Marie Glass until the tragedy had been appropriately handled.

  The resort was empty except for the staff, Detectives Flannery and Lawrence, and Angie and Maura.

  Donald Glass remained gone—biding his time in jail before arraignment. But if things tonight went the way Maura thought they would, that arraignment would never come.

  “Thinking about Gyselle brings to mind—to many of us—what happened to Francine Renault. Well, I don’t really see her in a long gown running through the forest, but she, too, met her demise on this ranch. And through the years, we suspect, so did many other young women. They didn’t all come to the tree. After Francine they were stabbed. Yes, by the same killer. Brutally stabbed to death. As Peter Moore, a cook here back then, was stabbed. It doesn’t sound as if it should all relate. One killer, two killers, working independently—or together? All compelled by just one driving motive—revenge.”

  Blank faces still greeted her. She wasn’t a cop or FBI. They were curious, but confused.

  “I thought they were random kidnappings,” someone murmured.

  “Yes and no,” Maura said.

  Brock stepped forward. “We discovered a longtime association or society. It was called Sons of Supreme Being. They don’t—we believe—really exist anymore. So legend gave way to what might be revamped—and imitated.”

  “I thought the police were going to explain what really went on here,” Nils Hartford said.

  “I guess Donald Glass did consider himself a supreme being,” his brother added sadly.

  “Well, he might have,” Maura said. “But...there you go. I’m back to beautiful Gyselle, running through the forest. Her sin being that of a love affair with the owner of the plantation.”

  “I’m letting Maura do the explaining,” Brock said. “She’s always been a great storyteller.”

  Maura turned and looked at Marie Glass. “Donald didn’t kill Francine, Marie. You did.”

  “What?” Marie stared at her indignantly. “I did not kill Francine. My husband killed Francine.”

  “No, no, he didn’t. He didn’t kill Francine. Nor did he kill Maureen Rodriguez or the other woman whose remains have been found. Donald loved history—and kept it alive. He loved women. You found your way to take revenge on those who led him astray—and, of course, on Donald himself. Oh, and you killed Peter Moore—that’s when you discovered just how much you enjoyed wielding a knife.”

  “This is insane! How do you think that I—” Marie gestured to herself, demonstrating that she was indeed a tiny woman “—could manage such acts? Oh, you ungrateful little whore!”

  “No need to be rude,” Brock said. “Marie, you were good—but we have you on camera.”

  “Really? How did I tie up Angie and get back and...”

  “Oh, you didn’t tie up Angie.”

  “Of course not!”

  “Angie tied herself up,” Brock said calmly.

  Angie sprang to her feet. “No! I wasn’t even around when Francine Renault was killed. Or the cook. Why on earth do you think that I could be involved?”

  “I still don’t know why you were involved, Angie,” Brock said. “But you were. There was no one else in the woods. We’ve found sound alibis for everyone else here. Oh, both Mark and Nils Hartford were sleeping with guests that night—a no-no. But you weren’t one of those guests. And there’s video—the security camera picked it up—of Fred Bentley talking to the night clerk right when it was all going on. What? Did you two think that we were getting close? That we’d figure it out—that Marie’s hints about her husband were a little too well planted? Then, of course, there was you—wanting to see where the bones had been discovered. Strange, right? But I’m thinking that the bones washed out in the drainage system somehow—and Marie panicked and wrapped them in hotel sheets, thinking she could dispose of the remains with the laundry. And maybe you were hoping that you hadn’t messed up somehow. Maybe you didn’t know. But for whatever reason, you and Marie have been kidnapping and killing people. Marie getting her rage out—certain she could frame her husband if it came to it. But you...”

  “That’s absurd!” Angie cried.

  “No, no, it’s not. We checked your phone records—you talked to Marie over and over again during the last year. Long conversations. She chose the victims. You helped bring them down.”

  The hotel staff had all frozen, watching—as if they were caught in a strange tableau.

  “You’re being ridiculous!” Angie raged. She looked like a chicken, jumping up, arms waving at her sides in fury. “No, it was Marie! I didn’t—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Marie cried. “I’m not going down alone. I can tell you why—she wanted to hurt Donald as badly as I did. We were willing to wait and watch and eventually find a way to create proof that made the system certain that it was Donald. And those women... Whores! They deserved to suffer. We could have seen that Donald rotted for years before he got the death penalty. There’s no record of it—her mother was one of my husband’s whores. He paid her off very nicely to have an abortion. The woman took the money—she didn’t abort.” She looked at Angie. “You should have been an abortion!”

  “Oh, Marie, you lie, you horrible bitch!”

  Angie tore toward her in a fury.

  Rachel stepped up, catching her smoothly and easily, swinging an arm across her shoulders.

  She then snapped cuffs on Angie.

  And Marie—dignified Marie—was taken by Mike.

  She spit at him. She called him every vile name Maura had ever heard.

  And then some.

  They were taken out. The employees stood in silence, gaping.

  Then, suddenly, everyone burst into conversation, some expressing disbelief, some arguing that they were surprised.

  “No,” Fred Bentley said simply, staring after them. “No.”

  “Yes. You saw,” Brock told him.

  “So, what do we do now?” Mark asked.

  “Well, Donald Glass is being released. Right now he’s sick and horrified at what has happened. He believed that he caused Marie to be cruel. He never knew he had an illegitimate child, and now he’s left with the fact that his child...became a killer. He needs time. He’s the one who has to make the decisions,” Brock said. “For now, he has said to let you know that you don’t need to worry while he regroups—everyone will be paid for the next month, no matter what.”

  There was a murmur of approval, and then slowly the group began to break up.

  Fred stared at Brock and Maura for a long time. “Well,” he said. “I will be here. I will keep the place in order. Until I know what Donald wants. I’ll see that the staff maintain it. I’ll be here for—for anything anyone may need.” He started to walk away, and then he came back. “I’m... I can’t believe it. Imagine, that cute little Angie. Who could figure...? But thank you, Brock. Yeah, thank you so much.”

  He turned and left, heading behind the restaurant toward the office.

  Brock and Maura stood alone in the center of the lobby.

  “Shall we go?” he asked her.

  “We shall,
but...”

  “But where, you ask?” Brock teased. “An island. Somewhere with a beautiful beach. Somewhere we can lie on the sand and make up for lost time, hurt for those who died and be grateful for those who lived. You are packed and ready to leave?”

  “I am,” she told him.

  They drove away.

  * * *

  MAURA COULD FEEL the deliciousness of the sea breeze. It swept over her flesh, filtering through the soft gauze curtains that surrounded the bungalow. She could hear the lap of the waves, so close that she could easily run out on the sand and wade into the water.

  It was beautiful. Brock had found the perfect place in the Bahamas. It was a private piece of heaven, and no one came near them unless they summoned food or drink with the push of a button. The next bungalow was down the beach, and they were separated by palms and sea grapes and other oceanfront foliage.

  It was divine.

  Though nothing was more divine than sleeping beside Brock so easily, flesh touching, sometimes just lying together and talking about the years gone by, and sometimes, starting with just the slightest brush against each other, making love.

  There would be four days of this particular heaven, but...

  “You did talk to your parents, right?” Brock asked Maura.

  “Of course! If news about what happened had reached them and they hadn’t heard from me...they would have been a bit crazy,” Maura assured him. She inched closer to him. “I almost feel bad for my mother—she’s so horrified, and she admitted all the messages she’d gotten from you and kept from me...poor thing. And then, I have myself to blame, too. I was hurt that I didn’t hear from you—and so I never tried to contact you myself. I thought I was part of your past—a past you wanted closed.”

  “Never. Never you,” he said with a husky voice. Then he smiled again. “But your mom... She is coming to the wedding.”

  Maura laughed. “Oh, yes. She didn’t even try telling me that we were rushing things when I said we were in the Bahamas but coming home to a small wedding in New York at an Irish pub called Finnegan’s. And my dad... Well, he thinks that’s great. Why wait after all this time? Now or never, in his mind. It’s nice, by the way, for your friend to arrange a wedding and reception in one at his place—his place? Her place?”

  “Kieran and Craig have been together a long time. Craig is a great coworker and friend. Kieran owns Finnegan’s with her brothers—they’re thrilled to provide for a small wedding and reception. And you...you don’t mind living in New York? For now? Maybe one day, we’ll be snowbirds, heading south for the winter. And maybe, when we’re old and gray, we’ll come home for good. Or, hell, maybe I’ll get a transfer. But for now...”

  She leaned over and kissed him. “I lost you for twelve years. I’m going to say those vows and move to New York without blinking,” she promised. “Besides... Hmm. I’m going to be looking for some new clients—New York seems like a good place to find them.”

  He smiled, and then he rolled more tightly to her, his face close as he said, “It’s amazing. I knew I loved you then. And I never stopped loving you—and I swear, I will love you all the rest of my years, as well. With or without you, I knew I loved you.”

  “That’s beautiful,” she whispered. “I love you, too. Always have, always will.” She smoothed back his hair.

  He caught her hand and kissed it.

  Then the kissing continued.

  And the ocean breeze continued to caress them both as the sun rose higher in the sky.

  Later, much later, Maura knew that the ocean breeze wouldn’t be there every morning. They wouldn’t be sleeping in an oceanfront bungalow with the sea and sand just beyond them.

  And it wouldn’t matter in the least.

  Because his face would be on the pillow next to hers, every morning, forever after.

  * * *

  Suspicious

  To the Miccosukee tribe of Florida.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The eyes stared across the water.

  They were soulless eyes, the eyes of a cold-blooded predator, an animal equipped throughout millions of years of existence to hunt and kill.

  Just visible over the water’s surface, the eyes appeared as innately evil as a pair of black pits in hell.

  The prehistoric monster watched. It waited.

  From the center seat of his beat-to-shit motorboat, Billy Ray Hare lifted his beer can to the creature. He squinted as he tried to make out the size of the beast, an estimation at best, since the bulk of the body was hidden by the water. Big boy, he thought. Didn’t see too many of the really big boys down here anymore. He’d even read some article about the Everglades alligators being kind of thin and scrawny these days, since they were surviving on insects and small prey. But every once in a while now, he’d still see a big beast sunning along the banks of the canals in the deep swamp.

  He heard a slithering sound from the canal bank and turned. A smaller gator, maybe five feet long, was moving. Despite the ugly and awkward appearance of the creature, it was swift, fluid and graceful. Uncannily fast. The smaller crocodilian eased down the damp embankment and into the water. Billy watched. He knew the canals, and he knew gators, and he knew that the long-legged, hapless crane fishing for shiners near the shore was a goner.

  “Hey, birdie, birdie,” Billy Ray crooned. “Ain’t you seen the sun? It’s dinnertime, baby, dinnertime.”

  The gator slid into the water, only its eyes visible as the body swiftly disappeared.

  A split second later, the beast burst from the water with a spray of power and gaping jaws. The bird let out a screech; its white wings frantically, pathetically, beat the water. But the huge jaws were clamped. The gator slung its head back and forth, shaking its prey near death, then slid back into the water to issue the coup de grâce, drowning its victim.

  “It’s a damned dog-eat-dog world, ain’t it?” Billy murmured dryly aloud. He finished his beer, groped for another, and realized that he’d finished the last of his twelve-pack. Swearing, he noticed that the big gator across the canal hadn’t moved. Black reptilian eyes, evil as Satan’s own, continued to survey him. He threw his beer can in the direction of the creature. “Eat that, ugly whoreson!” he croaked, and began to laugh. Then he sobered, looking around, thinking for a minute that Jesse Crane might be behind him, ready to haul him in for desecrating his precious muck hole. But Billy Ray was alone in the swamp. Alone with the bugs and birds and reptiles, with no more beer and no fish biting. “Bang-bang, you’re dead! I’m hungry, and it’s dinnertime. Damned environmentalists.” Once upon a time, he could have shot the gator. Now the damn things were protected. You had to wait for gator season to kill the suckers, and then you had to play by all kinds of rules. You could only kill the wretched things according to certain regulations. Too bad. Once upon a time, a big gator like that could have meant some big money....

  Big money. What the heck.

  They made big money out at that gator farm. Old Harry and his scientist fellow, Dr. Michael, the stinking Australian who thought he was Crocodile Dundee, and Jack Pine, the Seminole, and hell, that whole lot. They made money on alligators. Damn Jesse and his reeking white man’s law. Now he was the frigging tribal police.

  Billy Ray shook his head. The hell with Jesse Crane and his whole bleeding-heart crowd. What did Jesse know? Tall and dark and too damned good-looking, and all powerful, one foot in the s
wamp, the other foot firmly planted in the white world. College education, plenty of money now—his late wife’s money, at that. The hell with him, the hell with all the environmentalists, the hell with the whites all the way. They’d been the ones who screwed up the swamp to begin with. While the whole country was running around screaming about rights—equal pay for women, real justice for blacks, food stamps for refugees—Jesse Crane didn’t see that the Indians—the Native Americans—were still rotting in the swamps. Jesse had a habit of just leaning back, shrugging, and staring at him with those cool green—white-blooded—eyes of his and saying that no white man was making old Billy Ray be a mean, dirty alcoholic who liked to beat up on his wife. Jesse wanted him in jail. But Ginny, bless her fat, ugly butt, Ginny wouldn’t file charges against him. Ginny knew where a wife’s place was supposed to be.

  Alcoholic, hell. He wasn’t no alcoholic. God, he wanted another beer. Screw Jesse Crane.

  “And screw you,” he said aloud, staring at the gator. Those black eyes hadn’t moved; the creature was still staring at him like some prehistoric sentinel. Maybe it was already dead. He squinted, staring hard. Tough now to see, because it was growing late. Dinnertime.

  Sunset. It was almost night. He didn’t know what he wanted more, something to eat or another beer. He had neither. No fish, and he’d used up his government money.

  The sky was orange and red, the beautiful shades that came right before the sun pitched into the horizon. But now the dying orb was creating a beautiful but eerie mantle of color on the water, the trees that draped their branches over it, and the seemingly endless “river of grass” that made up the Everglades. With sunset, everything took on a different hue; white birds were cast in pink and gold, and even the killer heat took a brief holiday. Jesse would sit out here like a lump on a log himself, just thinking that the place—with its thick carpet of mosquitoes and frequent smell of rot—was only a small step from heaven. Their land. Hell, he had news for Jesse. They hadn’t been the first Indians—Native Americans—here. The first ones who’d been here had been wiped out far worse than animals ever had. But Jesse seemed to think that being half Indian made him Lord Protector of the realm or something.