His Garden of Bones (Skye Cree Book 4) (13 page)

Skye sent her father an equally lethal glare but out of respect for her dad kept quiet while Chenoa continued to build her case.

“It’s simply not a proper venue to talk about mutilations and bones over dinner. In my opinion, it’s not in very good taste. In fact, I’ve heard enough of this kind of talk tonight to last me a lifetime. And I want it to stop this minute.”

Skye sent Travis another seething scowl. It was then she noticed her father looked positively embarrassed. She wasn’t sure but his demeanor might even border on a degree of humiliation. She was sorely tempted to ditch this whole effort then and there and head for the front door. But something about the pleading look on her father’s face prevented her from getting her feet to move. Instead of walking out, she picked up her salad fork and rolled her eyes at Chenoa. “Fine. I wouldn’t dream of ruining this delicious pasta dish by discussing such mundane and trivial topics like who might be mutilating and killing young females around Seattle when what we could be doing is counting all the blue ribbons you have hanging on your wall back home.”

Chenoa pushed her shoulders back, visibly insulted. “I’m proud of my ribbons. I earned each and every one of them. At least I know how to dress when someone invites me over to Sunday dinner.”

Skye looked down at her red fluted-sleeve top and the black trousers she’d worn. “If that dig is aimed at me, I accept. Since the invitation didn’t specify a dress code to my father’s own table, I put on what feels comfortable to me, especially during winter. Dressing like a fashionista isn’t for me.”

“Maybe it should be.”

“Maybe you should take your fashion sense and shove it up your snooty, tight—”

Josh interjected before she could finish. “This Caesar salad looks tasty. Doesn’t it, Skye?”

Skye turned that lethal stare on her husband. “Oh, it does. And the garlic bread is such a nice homey touch. If I know my frozen foods, I believe this is the brand that comes straight from the freezer section, right?” Skye made a big production of tearing it into shreds on her plate on top of the bland pasta dish.

When Travis tried to halt the tension between the two women Chenoa glared at him. Travis found himself at a loss for words and caught in the middle. Sitting at the end of the table he looked on helpless to stop the bickering.

The group managed to get through tasteless lasagna without another major blow up. But toward the end of the evening Skye’s neck began to ache from the stiff bent to her spine. Her cheeks began to feel numb as if they’d been frozen into a permanent phony smile.

So she turned to Josh shortly after the meal. “I think it’s time to get Emmett back to the hotel, don’t you? Emmett, are you ready to go? With traffic, it’ll take us an hour to make the trip.”

Emmett seemed just as eager to get out of there as she was. “You’re right. I have to get going. I have an early wake-up call tomorrow. It was nice meeting everyone.”

The three of them said awkward goodbyes and headed to the car.

Skye was too upset to drive so she let Josh take the wheel and settled into the passenger seat. Once they got underway, she offered an apology to the profiler. “I’m sorry for all that. I had no idea the evening would be so…horrible and strained. Josh warned me about bringing you along to a dinner where I had never met the hostess before. But I thought since it was dad’s house… It never occurred to me Chenoa would be so narrow-minded and intractable.”

Then the truth locked in her throat. When had Chenoa entrenched herself into her father’s life? The woman was her dad’s girlfriend. Just when things were smoothing out between father and daughter he had to go and… Her head began to ache at the thought of him with Chenoa.

From the backseat, Emmett offered up a cheery outlook. “I should thank you guys. It’s the most entertaining evening I’ve had in years.”

“We aim to please. Who knew we’d get fireworks with dinner?” Josh cracked as he pulled out onto the highway. From Everett to Seattle, they easily slid back into the serial killer exchange, spending the time going over all the scenarios that might aid in catching the guy.

After dropping the profiler back at his hotel, Josh headed to the ferry. “What is it exactly that you find so objectionable about Chenoa?”

Even in the dark front seat, Josh could tell her brows were knit in a tension-filled frown. He squeezed her hand. “Where were you just now?”

“Back at The Painted Crow. I acted like an ass tonight. I was so jealous of my father having Chenoa there and acting like the proverbial lady of the manor that I couldn’t see straight.”

“It’s nice that you recognize that in yourself and want to apologize.”

“I didn’t say anything about apologizing.”

“It was implied.”

“Not by me. Travis has a woman in his life, who obviously doesn’t understand the importance of what we do. So why would I want to apologize for the way I feel about her.”

“Then why bring it up?”

“You’re my spouse. I’m supposed to be able to tell my spouse how I feel, truly feel about things. I’m simply admitting I didn’t handle tonight very well. I’m just venting.”

“So you want me to sit here and say nothing, without comment.”

“Hmm. Yeah. That’s what I want.”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“I don’t know. What about that mind-meld thing you’re always talking about? You should know what I’m thinking.”

“You’re kidding? In a real-world scenario, ninety percent of the time I have no idea what you’re thinking. Just because you’re in a pissy mood about Chenoa doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me when I’m simply trying to keep up with your mood.”

“My mood?” She blew out a pent-up breath. “My mood reflects how my father went out of his way to find a girlfriend who already acts like she owns the place.”

Silence descended between them.

After a full minute passed without a comment, she drummed her fingers on the dash. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”

“Oh sorry, I was waiting for you to give me permission to speak.”

“Screw you.”

“Okay. I’m up for that. But maybe we should table that type activity for later. Or maybe we could do it
on
the table. I like that visual. Anyway, I thought I was supposed to wait for you to completely finish expressing your internal struggle with this moral dilemma you’re having before I injected my ‘clumsy, ill-advised man advice’ into the conversation.”

“Oh, shut up. I’m feeling guilty enough without having to listen to a pathetic attempt at humor.”

She drew in a deep breath, scrubbed both hands over her face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into me tonight. Chenoa is a perfectly suitable woman for my father. Other than the fact that she’s thirty-five and he’s fifty-two, there’s no reason they can’t date their way to New Year’s Eve for all I care.”

“No way is Chenoa thirty-five. At least I don’t think so. Where’d you get that? Did she tell you that?”

“No, but…I…just assumed. She looks…younger. Do you know how old she is…exactly?”

“I didn’t ask her if that’s what you’re getting at. I learned a long time ago you don’t do that. All I know is that she mentioned she’d been riding horses for thirty-five years. I assume she wasn’t born on one. Although
you
assumed and here we are.”

“Oh, God. I feel sick at my stomach. I’m pretty sure it’s because I acted horrible tonight and it’s making me feel really small. What kind of daughter am I to feel so petty about my father’s happiness? It isn’t like me. I’m not a petty person. Why couldn’t I just keep my big mouth shut and enjoy the evening?”

He let her battle with her inner demons for several more seconds and then offered, “Here’s a thought. You have a phone, why not call him and apologize?”

“Now? With Chenoa still there? I think I’d rather have my toenails removed. Okay, so I’ll wait until tomorrow and grovel then. There’s only so much eating crow in me. But if you don’t mind I’d rather do it when he’s alone. When I apologize, I don’t want an audience.”

“Suit yourself. Does that mean table sex is still on the agenda?”

She huffed out a breath. “You’re incredible.”

“I know. And I’d be willing to prove it to you as soon as we get back home and hit the kitchen.”

W
hile Skye and Josh rode the ferry across Puget Sound, the man who’d been born Dillard Barstow sat completely naked in his garden among the trophies and bones he’d collected over the years.

His house sat on a hill surrounded by ten acres overlooking Lake Union. It had a solarium with a skylight and enough plants to fill a landscape nursery. He had a boat—a little thirty footer—he kept docked at the Elliot Bay Marina. He often used it to navigate across Puget Sound whenever he got the urge to dump a body or explore.

It wouldn’t do for anyone to see him unloading a corpse near his estate. That’s one reason he’d hidden this part of the grounds from view. A retaining wall built from stone gave the bright red
Bougainvillea
a place to climb to soaring heights. At its base, saucer-sized purple dahlias fanned out among yellow daisies. By using layers of ornamental grass dotted under crepe myrtle and feathery smoke bush
,
he’d built the perfect “living” wall, evidence of his ability to grow just about anything.

By bringing the bodies back here to what he considered his inner sanctum, he could make the best use of the sloping terrain. The topography allowed him to use the location of his property by sectioning off certain aspects of the land—space he needed for his flower gardens. He might’ve been partial to his dark brunettes and the deep purple section where they ended up, but he refused to neglect his daisies or roses.

Sitting in the middle of it all in a circle he’d built for this very purpose, he’d swept the outer area clean and spread out fresh mantzourana
around the campfire. The smoke rising from the fire pit smelled sweet and aromatic—the marjoram wafting on the wet air. As the blaze flickered around him, he heard the voices. His women were singing, chanting to him in honeyed serenade. Soon they began to dance for him, dance in time to the bouzouki, the pear-shaped lute, he strummed in his hand. Playing as his grandmother had taught him, it was the same ritual he’d become accustomed to performing the night before going out on the hunt.

Inhaling the cannabis he drew the smoke into his lungs. He took out the carving he’d made of the white wolf, rubbed it with a layer of leaves from the mantzourana plants. The herb grew thick and tall among his flowers and marked the graves of those he’d used and then discarded. Ancient tradition taught him to scatter the plant throughout his garden, a gesture that meant the souls resting here would have everlasting peace.

In a wooden bowl, he tossed in the leaves from the wolf’s bane and mixed them with V
iscum album
, better known as European mistletoe. The concoction was so poisonous he had to make sure he kept it from making contact with his skin.

Once he blended the mixture together to a consistency that would stick to the figurine, he used a knife to spread the paste over the wood. When he was done, he placed the statue on the slab of concrete he used for an altar.

It took another round of marijuana and several chews of the San Pedro cactus containing mescaline to take him back in time to the cave of his youth.

Soon he breathed in the damp musty smell and knew he was back—back among the murky shadows that greeted him like a long lost friend. He cherished the peacefulness he found here. The coolness under the dome always lessened the fever pitch he felt growing within him.

Since the age of twelve the cave had been where he kept his personal stuff, all the paraphernalia he didn’t want his parents to find. He’d learned at an early age how to perfect secrecy. His father had taught him that. Boys didn’t act like he had. His parents had made that clear again and again. The beatings he’d taken had taught him to hoard his special items—magazines, sketches of people at school, food he’d taken from the kitchen without permission.

After his mother discovered his stash in the vent of his room, he’d waited until that weekend to set out on a journey—a journey in search of a place that would belong only to him, somewhere no one else knew existed or had yet claimed. As luck would have it, he’d come upon the cave. It wasn’t perfect. It could’ve been closer to his house and maybe roomier, but it suited his purpose just fine as long as he have privacy there.

For years, the cave had acted as his sanctuary until he left home for good at eighteen.

He remembered one of the first defiant acts against his parents had occurred at the cave when he’d shorn off his own hair then shaved his head in a military-style buzz cut.

Of course, he’d paid for his rebellious streak when he returned home. His father had been shocked almost speechless at the sight of him.

But then Dillard had rarely been able to make either of his parents happy, no matter what he did or how much he tried. It was at his mother’s direction that his father had punished him with a beating. Then she’d dealt the final blow herself, one he’d never quite been able to get over.

From that moment on, at every opportunity, his parents had gone out of their way to embarrass and humiliate him. Derogatory comments and insults became the norm.

So if he couldn’t be himself at home, he preferred the beatings. With each event, something inside him had snapped. Little by little, he lost control. And there’d been no looking back.

Coming out of his trance-like state, the revelations flowed. Clarity returned.

His parents had demanded perfection in him so it seemed only fair to expect the same of those he brought back to his garden. Only the best and the most beautiful he could find would eventually make it this far to his special place.

“Tonight, we get rid of the white wolf, the pack leader,” he uttered as he picked up the knife again. For the final act, he sliced open the pig he’d bartered from the butcher. From neck to stomach he managed to catch enough of the blood in a vial before chanting in the language of his grandmother’s tongue. He poured the red liquid over the small figurine and set fire to the carving.

Watching the flames spiral upward, he breathed in more of the marijuana and said, “What began as an anomaly, so shall it end.”