Deadly Deceptions (29 page)

How she must have hated it.

Tucker was already inside the house when I caught up to him.

The kitchen was dark and smelled of mice and mildew, and the linoleum floor was peeling. The ceiling sagged, weighted with years of hard rains and deep snow—not to mention despair. Dust and cobwebs hung like swags from corner to corner—everything was filthy. The ancient gas stove, the harvest-gold refrigerator, the chipped porcelain sink with its pipes dangling like entrails, the cheap table in the center of the room, all those things added to the gloomy mood.

I stood on the threshold, hugging myself. I wondered which place at that table had been Frederick Severn Sr.'s, and if Greer had really dosed his supper with insecticide.

And if she had, why?

“The cellar,” I said. “Justin told me she was hiding in the cellar.”

“Stay where you are,” Tucker said, approaching a door in the far corner, next to the fridge. “This floor feels pretty spongy. God knows what kind of shape the cellar steps are in.”

I tested the floor with a toe and immediately followed Tucker. He outweighed me by at least forty pounds, so I figured if he didn't fall through, I wouldn't either. Simple physics.

“We should have brought a flashlight,” I said.

“Thank you, Nancy Drew,” Tucker retorted, clearly displeased to find me at his elbow. There were only three steps leading down into the cellar, as it turned out, and they were concrete.

At the bottom I peered over Tucker's shoulder, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.

I saw a sleeping bag, a camping lantern, a bag of Oreos and the newest issue of
Town & Country.

But Greer was nowhere in sight.

“Maybe she's hiding in the woods or something,” I said thickly. My sinuses were almost completely closed now, and the dank, dusty air in that cellar did nothing to help. “I should have come alone.”

Tucker and I snooped a little, but we didn't find much. Obviously
someone
had been staying in the Severns' cellar. I knew it was Greer, but Tucker was probably thinking the sleeping bag and the lantern could belong to anybody.

Even without the copy of
Town & Country,
the Oreos would have been all the proof I needed. I checked the magazine for a subscription label, but there wasn't one.

“I'm calling Joe Fletcher,” Tucker said.

“No,” I argued, catching hold of his hand. “Not yet.
Please.
Just give me a chance to talk to Greer—”

“I'm not leaving you alone here, if that's what you're thinking. Suppose whoever has been camping here
isn't
Greer? What if it's some drifter?”

“How many drifters do you know who read
Town & Country?
” I countered.

Tucker gave me one of those looks that singe off your eyelashes.

I stuck out my chin. “We could wait.”

“Right,” Tucker said. “You're sick. It's raining the proverbial cats and dogs. And if your sister has been hanging out in this hole, ten to one she's not coming back.”

“She's around,” I insisted. “Somewhere.”

“Or she's moved on.”

Another clap of thunder shook the sky. Dust and dead bugs drifted down from the rafters overhead.

I thought about Dave, alone in the car and probably terrified.

Tucker took me by the hand and pulled me up the concrete steps, through the dismal kitchen and out into the rain. We ran for the car, but we got soaked anyway.

Dave was pathetically glad to see us, whimpering and trying to lick our faces—first mine, then Tucker's.

Neither of us spoke all during the drive back to the motel.

There, Tucker dosed me with a couple of aspirin and a capful of the cold medicine he'd bought earlier. He peeled my clothes off, put the sweatshirt on me again and put me to bed.

I was already drifting off when I heard him turn on the shower.

When I woke up, hours later, Tucker was stretched out beside me, naked and warm and sound asleep. Dave sprawled across my ankles, and the room was dim. The TV murmured, low, somewhere in the shadows, casting bluish light into the room.

“Tuck?” I nudged him.

He stirred, sat up and yawned. Grinned sleepily, his hair mussed. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said back.

Dave unpinned my ankles and walked the length of my body to lave my face with his sloppy tongue a couple of times.

Tucker laughed and lifted the dog off me, set him gently on the floor. Got up to give him kibble and refill his water dish in the bathroom.

“Feeling better?” Tucker asked while Dave munched happily on the kibble.

“I must be,” I said. “Because I'm starved.”

Tucker ran splayed fingers through his hair. His clothes were drying on the back of a chair nearby, and he gave them a reluctant glance. I stayed where I was, enjoying the view. “Then I guess I'd better go scout up a pizza or something,” he said.

“Or,” I said, “we could call in the order and have crazy, sweaty, screaming sex while we wait for the delivery.”

Tucker arched an eyebrow, as though considering the pros and cons of the idea, grinned and then dived back into bed.

An hour later we got around to ordering the pizza.

T
HE KNOCK AT
our motel-room door seemed pretty forceful for a pizza-delivery person.

I scrambled out of bed and ducked into the bathroom, since I was bare-ass naked, and the Lakeside wasn't the kind of place where they provide robes. Tucker did the honors—after pulling on a pair of jeans and tugging a T-shirt over his head.

It was—and
wasn't—
a surprise to see Joe Fletcher, his hair dripping with rain, cross the threshold with a pizza box in his hands. Small-town cops do double duty in a lot of ways, but I wouldn't have thought delivering the pepperoni special with extra cheese would be in his job description.

I was beyond curious, and I briefly considered fashioning myself a towel toga so I could leave the bathroom without being charged with indecent exposure, but the selection on hand would have left a lot of skin showing. So all I could do was peek around the edge of the door with my ears perked.

“I've heard of some inventive ways of supplementing municipal budgets,” Tucker remarked, getting out his wallet to reimburse Fletcher and, probably, to flash his badge. “But this is a new one. Join us?”

Joe Fletcher's mouth lifted at one corner in a laconic attempt at a grin. “I've eaten, thanks. Happened to be in the pizza joint having supper when the order came in. Since I wanted to talk to both of you anyway, I decided to run it over here.”

“Have a seat,” Tucker said after giving Fletcher his name.

I tried to get Tucker's attention, catching at him with my gaze and pulling. I wanted clothes so I could participate in the conversation without calling from behind the bathroom door.

He dug a sundress out of the bag from Nellie's and brought it to me while Joe Fletcher pulled back the only chair in the room and sat down at the desk.

Dave approached and licked his shoes.

I scrambled into the dress, sans underwear, and wished I'd had a chance to make the bed before Fletcher arrived. The covers looked as though they'd been caught in a wind tunnel, and it wouldn't have taken a trained law enforcement officer to figure out why.

Joe bent to ruffle Dave's ears. “Close call with those rottweilers today, buddy,” he said with gruff affection. “Good thing Ms. Sheepshanks is a quick thinker.”

I'd been pretty traumatized at the park myself, and didn't remember introducing myself to the lawman, but it wouldn't have been any great trick to find out my name. One call to the desk clerk at the Lakeside would have done it, or Sally Swenson could have gotten on the horn as soon as I left Nellie's and told him there was a stranger in town, asking a lot of questions about the Severn family.

Joe stood when I entered the room, a point in his favor. Tucker, meanwhile, had opened the pizza box and helped himself to a slice, severing several long strands of cheese in the process.

Dave, attracted by the excellent begging prospects, left Joe to trot over to Tucker.

“First thing I'd like to do,” Joe said after shaking my hand, “is apologize for what happened at the park today. Purvis took the dogs out to his brother's place in the country—after I wrote him a ticket—so you won't run into them again.”

“Thanks,” I replied, sitting down on the edge of the sex-tousled bed, since there was nowhere else to light.

Joe sat down again, once I was seated, and cleared his throat. “I hear by the grapevine that you were asking about the Severn place,” he said.

I nodded.

Tucker offered me a slice of pizza, and I took it. I wanted to make a professional impression on Joe Fletcher for some reason, but the condition of the bed tanked the whole plan. Besides, I was ravenous, so I went ahead and stuffed my face.

“I'm curious as to why you'd be interested,” Joe told me.

Tucker, apparently in a cooperative, law-enforcement-brotherhood kind of mood, fetched the newspaper clippings off the bureau and handed them to Joe.

Joe scanned them.

“Oh,” he said.

“Tell him about Greer,” Tucker said, elbowing me. “Or I will.”

I had to swallow a mouthful of pizza first. While I was working on that, I gave Tucker a sidelong glare.

“Greer?” Joe asked, obviously puzzled.

I gulped, nearly choking. “My sister,” I said.

“I've never heard the name.”

“She would have been Molly Stillwell to you,” I explained, belatedly returning Tucker's elbow jab with one of my own.

Joe's face changed. “Oh, Lord,” he said.

I felt a little leap of hope, spawned by something in Joe's expression. “You knew her?”

“Sure did. We went to middle school together.”

I nodded to indicate the clippings, still in Joe's hand, though he seemed to have forgotten he was holding them. “According to those articles, she was suspected of lacing her stepfather's supper with poison.”

“If she did,” Joe said, a faraway and thoughtful look in his eyes, “she had good reason.”

My heartbeat quickened, and my breath caught. I was super-glad I hadn't taken another nosh of pizza, because I probably would have needed the Heimlich maneuver. “What do you mean?”

“My uncle Roy had this job before I did,” he said, still reflective. “In those days, people didn't talk about ‘other people's business' much, but I knew my uncle went out to the Severn place a couple of times, on domestic-violence calls. Molly was one of those kids who were always in trouble for one thing or another, shoplifting and the like.” He glanced down at the articles, then set them aside on the desk. “You already know what happened to Rick. Tessa—the youngest one—she must have gotten the worst of it, though.” Joe's face was bleak, and he ran a hand down the length of it. Shook his head. “That girl always looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She got so fidgety that Alice homeschooled her.”

I bit my lower lip.

Tucker started his third slice of pizza and didn't contribute to the conversation.

“Do you think Mr. Severn might have been abusing Tessa?” I ventured. “Maybe Gr—Molly, too?”

“It's a possibility,” Joe said.

A short, tense silence fell.

Tucker elbowed me again.

I told Joe about Greer's identity switch, Jack Pennington's death and her flight from Scottsdale.

“You know where she is?” Joe asked.

I hesitated.

Tucker picked up the ball and ran with it. “Indications are she's been staying in the basement of the Severn farmhouse,” he said.

I rammed him with my shoulder.

A sad grin moved in Joe's brown eyes, but didn't touch his mouth. Watching me intently, he raised both eyebrows and drawled, “Clearly, you didn't want me to know that. Why?”

“Because you'll arrest her,” I said. “And I wanted to talk to her first. This is a delicate situation.”

“In what way?” Joe persisted quietly.

“Someone's blackmailing her,” I answered after mulling over my options—which were nonexistent, it turned out—for a few moments. “And they've made some pretty heavy threats. Jack Pennington—the man Greer shot—was probably in on it. Maybe he was even the ringleader, but the original information must have come out of Shiloh.”

“I'd bet on Rick Severn,” Joe said, surprising me. “But he was killed in a jail fight almost three months ago. Believe me, if he found out where Molly was, and that she had money, he'd have wanted a piece of it, whether he was behind bars or not.”

“Do you remember a girl named Beverly Quaffly?” I asked.

“She was Rick's high school girlfriend,” Joe said. “Her dad broke it up, though. Sent Bev off to stay with relatives two days after graduation and, small towns being what they are, there was some talk that she might have been pregnant. The whole Quaffly family moved away not too long after they put Bev on the afternoon bus for Missoula. Far as I know, she's never been back here, and neither have they.”

Beverly had been Rick Severn's
girlfriend?
After seeing that house, and knowing the lifestyle to which Mrs. Pennington the first had become accustomed, post-Shiloh, it was hard to imagine her with a wrong-side-of-the-tracks bad boy like Rick.

On the other hand, bad boys are notoriously appealing, especially to girls barely out of high school.

Tucker's cell phone rang. He stopped eating pizza to answer.

I watched the color drain from his face as he listened.

“Something wrong?” Joe asked kindly when the call ended and Tucker just sat there, staring into space.

“Tucker?” I prompted.

He came to life. Got to his feet.

“Tucker?”
I repeated, scared to death.

“Danny fell in the pool,” he said, moving around the room like a sleepwalker on speed, gathering his stuff, his gaze never connecting with mine. Dave followed him fretfully from place to place. “Chelsea pulled him out, thank God, but he's in intensive care at Phoenix Children's Hospital, and he hasn't regained consciousness.”

I put a hand to my mouth, tried to stand. My knees failed me, and I dropped back onto the edge of the bed.

Tucker finally located me with his eyes. “We have to go,” he said.

I was crying silently. And I shook my head.

“Mojo,” Tucker said, “I don't have time to argue with you.”

“Go,” I murmured.

“Come with me,” he said gruffly.

Joe cleared his throat again and looked away, a man wishing he was elsewhere.

“I can't,” I said.

“Why?”

The Darroch family would close ranks around Danny, and that was as it should be. But there was no place for me in that circle. I'd be an intruder, an outsider, someone who could only get in the way.

“Because I don't belong,” I whispered.

Tucker didn't understand; I could see that in his face. His son had nearly drowned, and he had to get to him. And here I was, balking at going along.

“Go,” I repeated.

He left.

Dave followed him to the door and whimpered when it closed in his face.

“I'm really sorry,” Joe said, and I knew he wasn't just talking about Danny.

I sat with my eyes closed, listening to Tucker's SUV start up with a roar and screech out of the lot behind the Lakeside Motel.

“Is there anything I can do?” Joe asked quietly.

I nodded, and when I could speak, I said, “Yes. My car is still at the park. Could you take me over there, so I can pick it up?”

“Sure thing,” Joe said.

Sure thing,
I thought.

No such animal.

 

I
KNEW
J
OE WOULD HEAD
straight for the Severn place as soon as he dropped Dave and me off at the Volvo, but I didn't dare follow, not right away anyhow. Given the news of Danny's accident and Tucker's immediate departure for the nearest airport, my thought processes seemed to be short-circuiting all around. But I did have the presence of mind to know Joe would spot me if I tailed him too quickly, so I waited.

When half an hour had passed, I stopped cruising the streets of Shiloh and headed out of town.

Dave, who usually would have had his head between the seats, drooling on the console, was curled disconsolately on the backseat. Every once in a while he gave a sad little whine, low in his throat.

He was yearning for Tucker.

And so was I.

And there was nothing to be done about it—except wonder if I'd done the right thing, letting Tucker go back to Arizona alone.

My heart ached for him, for Allison, for Daisy.

And especially for Danny.

I stopped at the all-night market, bought a flashlight and batteries, and drove slowly along the winding country road Tucker and I had followed earlier that day. The rain had eased up, but there was mud, and I almost got stuck several times. I took a couple of wrong turns, but when I saw Joe's squad car lights flashing in the distance, I knew I'd found my way.

I parked, squinting through the windshield at the house. It was dark, but the cellar window was at the rear, and wouldn't be visible from the overgrown driveway.

I looked back, saw Dave crawl off the backseat and onto the floor and huddle there, crying softly.

“Everything's going to be all right,” I told him, hoping it was true.

When I turned around again, to open the Volvo door and get out, I almost screamed.

Danny Darroch was standing just outside my car, clad in a swimming suit, dripping wet.

“No,”
I whispered, staring, fumbling for the door latch.

Danny retreated a step, his eyes enormous. He spoke when I got out of the car, but I didn't hear his voice with my ears—it was an echo, inside my head.