Something Wicked (33 page)

“When did Janet last call?” Declan asked him.

“An hour ago.”

“Maybe she shouldn't be crossing the mountains,” Declan said fretfully. “Could be a lot of snow.”

Hale didn't remind him that he'd had exactly the opposite opinion just hours earlier. Both of them were worried, though Hale had channel surfed around for an updated local weather report an hour before and had learned it was mostly raining in the Coast Range. He just hoped it stayed that way.

In truth, his attention was fractured; his mind's eye pictured Savannah in the chair in his bedroom, breast-feeding his son. He yearned to be in the room with her, yet that wasn't the way it was supposed to be.

“What're you gonna do with that bimbo who calls herself a nanny?” Declan asked in a whisper.

“Shhh.”

“She doesn't know a damn thing about being a mother.”

“She's the nanny Kristina hired.”

“
Ack.
Kristina wasn't a good decision maker. Don't want to speak ill of the dead,” he added quickly, when he could see Hale was about to object. “But I'm not telling you anything you don't know. She wasn't for you, son.”

Hale stared at his empty wineglass. He'd moved from bourbon, which he'd been drinking much too quickly, to cabernet. He and Declan had eaten some of the casserole that Magda had brought from the office, one of many, apparently, that were showing up from business associates, Hale and Kristina's only real friends. Neither he nor his grandfather had much of an appetite.

Half an hour later Savannah joined them. “I put him back down. He's asleep.”

“How're you going to do this, girl?” Declan asked. “With your job.”

“Declan . . . ,” Hale warned.

“I don't know,” Savvy answered. “Things are . . . confusing at the moment.”

“Clear as glass to me,” Declan said, ignoring Hale's glare. “Quit that job. Become a full-time mother. Most important job in the universe.”

Savannah broke into a wide smile, unnerving Declan a bit, apparently, as he demanded, “What are you grinning at?”

“I'm not going to argue with you. You're . . .” She seemed to bite off what she was going to say. “I like my job, and I need to support myself, and no, I'm not going to live off Bancroft/St. Cloud money, so you can just forget that before you even get started.”

Declan had opened his mouth, and now he snapped it shut into a thin line of disapproval.

“I'll feed Declan as much as I can. I want to. But I can't be with him all the time.”

“Maternity leave,” Declan said flatly.

“We're all figuring this out,” Hale said. “We'll take it an hour at a time.”

Savannah shot him a grateful look, then asked, “Could I talk to you alone for a minute?”

They returned to the master bedroom, and Hale closed the door behind him while Savvy walked back toward her chair but didn't sit down. “You know I've been following up on some leads at work, on the Donatella case.”

“I thought you were going to tell me something about Kristina,” he said.

“That too. This is going to sound strange, but the two cases may be dovetailing. Several sources told me that Kristina was having an affair, and that she was . . . She'd been seen with a man at the Donatella house, apparently after Marcus and Chandra moved out or weren't there.”

Hale thought about his wife, her strange behavior the last weeks and months of her life. “She and I were friends with the Donatellas. . . .”

“I know it doesn't sound like her,” Savvy said, picking up his train of thought. “I'm having trouble believing it myself. But it gets stranger, and more . . . and more . . . terrible.”

Hale felt himself go still. “What is it?”

Savannah took a breath and launched in. “Last Thursday, before I came here to see Kristina, I stopped by Siren Song and met with Catherine Rutledge. . . .”

Savannah didn't know how much to tell Hale, whether she should go through every detail or hit the highlights. In the end, she settled for somewhere in between, telling him about Catherine's worry that Mary's son, who'd been adopted out when he was still a baby, apparently, had been lured to Echo Island, where Mary was exiled, and had ultimately killed her there, stabbing her to death with a knife, which was currently being tested for DNA evidence from the blood residue on its blade. She then added that Mary had named the boy Declan as a means to get back at Catherine, who'd apparently had a relationship with Hale's own grandfather at one time. Catherine believed that Declan Jr., as they were calling him, was as mentally unstable as his mother had been, or worse; that he was the one who had had an affair with Kristina and had killed her; and that he was now setting his sights on his half sisters, the women of Siren Song, on his father—or the man he assumed was his father, Declan Bancroft—and maybe even on those who were delving into his life in some way or investigating the Donatella homicides, a crime that might ultimately end up being laid at his feet, as well.

Hale absorbed all the information, a look of incredulity on his face when Savvy finished. He started to ask a question several times, stopping himself, then approaching it from another direction, only to stop himself again. In the end, he asked, “How did this Declan Jr. meet Kristina?”

Savvy said, “I talked to Owen DeWitt, and he implied that he knew someone who calls himself Charlie, not his real name, and who, DeWitt thought, is the devil incarnate.” Hale made a disparaging sound, and Savvy couldn't blame him. “If he's the same person Catherine calls Declan Jr., and I kind of think he is, then I'd say he met Kristina here on the coast. I've put in a call to DeWitt. I didn't know on Saturday, when I talked to him, that my sister had been killed. I didn't press him on Charlie. It seemed . . . I don't know . . . untrue that Kristina was having an affair.”

“But now you think it's fact.”

“Several people saw her with someone at the Donatellas'. I'm not sure exactly what nights, but sometime close to their deaths.” Savvy couldn't hold his gaze and looked away. “I just want to talk to this Charlie—DeWitt called him Good Time Charlie—and see who he is and how he's connected to this all.”

“What aren't you telling me?”

Savannah recalled Mickey's comment about Kristina being with her husband. “I need to talk to DeWitt before I say anything else. I was hoping he'd get back to me by now. Lang is trying to reach him, too. Maybe already has. I just want to know more about Charlie.”

 

 

Catherine lay awake in the dark, staring toward the beamed wood ceiling. She was torn over whether to trust Ravinia, but what choice did she have? She'd set the investigation in motion by giving Detective Dunbar the knife because she wanted to know who'd killed her sister. But that was last week, and what had been a question mark last week was almost a certainty now. It was Declan . . . Declan Jr.

She wished she could get to the island. She would kill him, she thought. She would. He'd taken her sister from her, damaged though she was, and Catherine was all about payback. She knew she should turn the other cheek, but it wasn't in her.

She wasn't sorry that Mary had killed Declan Jr.'s real father . . .
the devil who gave me D. . . .
She'd hated him on sight.

He'd come to Siren Song with a swagger, even though he was old, way past the prime of his life, but then, as she'd told the detective, she and Mary gravitated toward older, more experienced males.

But not the man Mary called Richard Beeman. At least not for Catherine.

Mary, however, had regarded him with sloe eyes, wary and sexy at the same time. She threw over her previous lover, Dr. Dolph Loman, Ophelia's father, the only one of Mary's lovers who Catherine knew was one of the girls' fathers. Mary had stuck with Loman for several years, an eternity for one of her sister's relationships, much longer, in fact, than she'd entertained his brother, Parnell, but in the end the rigid, stone-faced doctor was tossed aside, as well. However, she'd given the new man a run for his money, too. She liked the chase.

They'd never gotten around to asking Earl for a coffin, so Beeman's bones lay moldering in the ground. It was these bones that Cassandra had seen in her vision, the bones of the man who'd sired Declan Jr. “He's coming,” Cassandra had said, and Catherine had sensed the same thing.

Well, she wasn't about to sit by and cower any longer, like she had when Justice was terrorizing them. And she could admit that her methodology to keep them all safe—living in this isolated state, a
cult
, if you listened to the ignorant locals—hadn't really worked. The damage had been done long before her decision to lock the gates, even long before her promiscuous sister had dropped a dozen children. Her ancestors had sowed dangerous oats for centuries, the seeds of which had sprouted not only in the circle of land around Siren Song, but also beyond, in the Foothillers' territory, in the state of Oregon, and God knew where else.

And who was to say that Mary hadn't borne even more children . . . out on her island, luring the brave and incautious and horny males to her with her siren's song. Catherine had suspected and worried and fretted about Mary's ability to draw in the opposite sex, even out on Echo, and it was one of the reasons she'd seen her sister so rarely, even when the weather was fine.

Now she rose from her bed and walked to the window, staring out across the Pacific to where she knew Echo Island was, though with the wind and rain and darkness, it was indistinguishable tonight from the extended blackness of the ocean. What did the fire mean? What was Declan Jr. up to? He'd clearly found a way over to Echo. She hoped with all her heart that Earl would, too.

This was the thought that had been hiding in her brain, afraid to appear. As much as she feared Richard Beeman's offspring, there was a chance that whoever was on Echo was someone else. Maybe someone with ill intent. Maybe even another of Mary's children. Declan Jr. wasn't Mary's last child, nor was he Mary's last son.

Catherine turned away from the window and went to the locked drawer in her closet that held her own leather box. The key was inside the heel of one of her boots, and she reached down and grabbed up the shoe, twisting the heel sideways. The tiny key dropped to the floor with a soft
ping.
Bending over, she was slightly panicked when she couldn't find it, but then her groping fingers touched it, and she picked it up and fitted it into the lock.

Inside the drawer was the leather box, and inside the box was her own journal. It did not contain the dark mysteries that were within the pages of her sister's diary, but it did hold her younger dreams and the one secret she didn't want to share. Mary had known, but Mary had been oddly careful not to hurt Catherine with it. They were sisters, after all.

Catherine opened to a well-worn spot toward the end of the missive.

She read the message to her daughter over ten times, a ritual she went through whenever she needed strength. Feeling better, she put the journal into the box and relocked the drawer, replacing the key in the heel of her boot. Ravinia might have found Mary's journal, which was unfortunate, to say the least, but she hadn't known to look for Catherine's own.

Catherine moved back to the nightstand and extinguished the flame in the lamp. Then she climbed back into bed and thought about what was ahead with less trepidation. Tomorrow night she and Earl, with Ravinia's help, would move Richard Beeman's bones to the back of the graveyard, behind the rhododendrons, and would set Mary in the grave already marked with her name, where she should lie in eternal rest.

Once that was done, she would think about what to do about Declan Junior. One way or another, she was going to deal with him, whatever it took.

And if it turned out he wasn't the menace she sensed on the island, she would figure out who was, what they intended, and if and why they had started the fire.

I
t was almost eleven when the sound of a car pulling into the drive awoke Declan out of his sleep with a snort in the den chair. Savvy was seated across from both Hale and Declan, half watching the news, half worrying about what Hale was thinking about what she'd told him. He'd basically shut down after she told him about Declan Jr. and DeWitt's comments about Charlie and Kristina; he was still clearly processing everything. When she'd tried to go to her car to bring in her bag with the breast pump, he'd stopped her and gone to get it himself. She had the feeling he didn't want her to leave, and she didn't want to leave at all, but as the hours stretched by, she wondered what the hell she was doing. Marking time. Locked in this cocoon of safety.

But there was a killer out there. Her sister's killer. And she could pretend only so long that she was Hale's “wife” before reality jabbed at her conscience. She was a cop. She wasn't really little Declan's mom. She was living in a fake world, and though she longed for it in a way that surprised her, it wasn't her reality.

Owen DeWitt hadn't phoned her back. Maybe he was purposely ignoring her voice mail. Maybe he'd already talked to Lang. Whatever the case, he was her main priority, and tomorrow morning she was going to do something about it.

She'd told Hale almost everything she knew about the investigation into Kristina's death. She'd held back only Mickey's accusation that Kristina had been with Hale at the Donatellas' house. She hadn't told Hale she'd talked to Mickey at all. She didn't believe the homeless man's story, anyway; Mickey was hardly what you'd call a credible witness. Whatever he had seen or hadn't seen, or thought he saw or possibly dreamed . . . none of it mattered. The only thing that did was that he'd echoed Owen DeWitt's claim about seeing Kristina with someone in the same place DeWitt had.

“Who's that?” Declan asked, clearing his throat and straightening in his chair. “Someone here?”

“Looks like she made it tonight, after all,” Hale said. He'd been quiet since their conversation, not saying much of anything while he offered Savvy some dinner from the well-stocked refrigerator. She had chosen a chicken pasta salad and had made small talk with Declan while she ate it.

Savvy realized Hale's mother had arrived.

Hale walked out to meet Janet, and Savvy heard him exchange hellos with her, sounding a bit stiff. Declan was finally on his feet and would have tottered out to see them, but they appeared in the doorway, driven by a blast of frigid air, which followed them into the house and swirled tendrils of cold into the den.

“What horrible weather,” Janet declared, shrugging out of a long black coat. Underneath she wore black slacks and a gold cowl-necked sweater. She was middle-aged, tall and sturdy. Her hair was short and dark, heavily threaded with gray, attractively layered.

“Janet!” Declan greeted his daughter with delight.

“Hello, Dad,” she responded, not so enthusiastically. She did not move forward to embrace him, but that didn't stop him from hugging her.

“How's Peter?” Declan asked.

“Fine. Working.” She dismissed her husband with a small shrug, then, catching Savvy's glance, said, “Hello there. You look a lot like your sister. I'm so sorry about her accident. I didn't know anything about it until Dad called. And the baby . . .” She glanced at Hale and added, “You can't pick up a phone?”

“I was going to call you when I had more information. Kristina's accident appears to be something more,” Hale responded coolly. Unlike Declan, he didn't seem thrilled to see his mother.

“What do you mean?” Janet asked with a frown.

“Someone may have killed her.”

That stopped her cold, and she simply stared at Hale as if he'd said something so completely outrageous that she couldn't process it. Instead of addressing it, she turned away, glancing down the hallway. “I've been traveling all day and I'm tired and hungry and I want to see that baby. Let me have a peek at him.”

Hale shot Savannah a glance and said, “Don't leave,” and then he took his mother down the hall, with Declan following at a slower pace, leaning heavily on his cane.

Savvy did want to leave. Now that Janet was here, she definitely felt like a guest who'd overstayed her welcome. Maybe she could pump some milk and then head home.

Twenty minutes later Hale and Janet returned to the den, Hale gazing hard at Savvy as if he'd expected her to bolt at the first opportunity. “Declan's down for the night in the other guest room,” Hale said.

“Which means I have the couch?” Janet asked. “Since you have the nanny tucked into one of the spare rooms and your grandfather in the other. I don't really care, you know, but I'm sure your grandfather needs a real bed.”

Her tone was somewhat disparaging, as if Declan didn't deserve it, and Savannah wondered what that was about. But she saw now that if she'd even entertained the idea for a moment that she might spend the night, there was no chance of that. Which was just as well, as sleeping in Hale's bed had been too seductive, had felt too safe, and she knew she couldn't let her guard down.

“Tell me what happened to Kristina,” Janet said to Hale. “My God. Killed? Who would kill her? Why?”

“That's what the police are trying to figure out,” Hale said.

Janet's attention turned to Savvy. “You're a cop. What's the thinking here?”

“I'm not investigating my sister's death,” Savvy pointed out neutrally.

“It looks like Kristina was having an affair,” Hale said when Janet's gimlet-eyed appraisal of Savannah went on too long.

“An affair? With who?” She looked aghast. “I don't believe it.” Then, “This lover killed her?”

“I'm on the suspect list,” Hale said, which caused Janet to turn red with disbelief.

Savannah felt her pulse speed up a little at Hale's casual comment. She looked down at her overnight bag, which held the breast pump. She should have told him what Mickey said, she realized. She should have laid everything out there—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and let him mentally pick through it. But then she'd given him a lot to think about already, half of which she didn't believe herself.

“Oh, for God's sake!” Janet turned to Savvy and asked fiercely, “Is that right, Detective? Hale's a suspect?”

“We always try to rule out the family members first.”

“Well, Hale obviously didn't kill your sister. He wouldn't hurt anyone, for any reason. He's good that way, not like his father or mine.” She seemed to be waiting for some kind of reaction out of her son, as if they'd gone over this particular territory many times already, which Savvy guessed they probably had by the annoyance that flickered across Hale's face.

When he didn't respond, Janet got tired of waiting. “You got anything to drink around here?”

“Whatever you want.” Hale was stiff.

“Wine?”

Hale flicked a look Savvy's way before going to fill his mother's request. As soon as he was out of earshot, Janet's gaze narrowed on Savannah, and she sensed an inquisition coming.

“Hale doesn't like me denigrating Preston or Declan, but as far as I'm concerned, they can both rot in hell. I'm sure Preston's already there, and Dad's not far behind.” When Savannah remained silent, Janet said, “I've shocked you. You're just too well trained to show it.”

Savvy could faintly hear the sounds of Hale getting another bottle of wine open for his mother. “I already told you I can't talk about the investigation, if that's what you want.”

“Do you know who your sister was having an affair with?”

“No.”

“My husband had an affair when we were married. Did you know that? That's why I divorced him. He knew how I felt about her, but he just couldn't resist the conniving bitch. He said he tried, but come on . . . He wasn't that powerless. He could have let it go, but he wanted her.”

Hale returned with a glass of wine in a large goblet for his mother, the dark red fluid catching the light in a ruby glow. “Leave Dad alone,” he said shortly.

“I know. You think I should have stayed with him, even after he screwed that crazy witch.” She settled her bitter gaze on Savvy. “You grew up around here, right?”

“The Tillamook area,” Savvy admitted. She eased a hand toward her bag. She could probably steal into the bedroom for some privacy for a few minutes before she hit the road and headed home.

Janet was on her own track, however, about to launch into a tale she'd clearly told often, the needle groove deepening in the record with each telling.

“So you know that freak show they call Siren Song?”

“Savannah and I were just talking about Catherine Rutledge,” Hale said.

“Oh, yeah? Why? What's she done now?”

Savannah looked at Hale warily, wondering what he was going to say. He hadn't said how he felt about what she'd told him of his grandfather and Catherine's relationship. Nor had he mentioned what he thought of Mary's son, Declan Jr., who, according to Catherine, believed Hale's grandfather was his real father. Nor had he responded to Catherine's fear that he was targeting her nieces, Declan Sr., maybe Savvy, and God knew how many others.

He hadn't said anything at all.

But now Janet had brought up Siren Song, and the topic was on the table. Hale didn't react for several long moments, and instead of responding to Janet's question about Catherine, he said, “I put your suitcase in my bedroom.”

“Oh, for God's sake. I told you I'd sleep here.”

“I'll take the den,” he stated firmly.

“We'll see.” But if Hale thought he'd effectively turned the conversation away from Siren Song, he found out that was wishful thinking, as Janet said, “Catherine's not near as saintly as she would have everyone believe. What a goddamned hypocrite. Those
dresses
! That hair. That holier-than-thou attitude. She had a
thing
for Declan, only that bitch Mary took him away from her, too. First my husband, then Declan. Mary had to have them both. I don't care that Mary's been dead for years. Whenever I think of her, it's like I want to rip her eyes out.”

Hale made a sound of disgust, but Savvy found herself riveted. On the heels of Catherine's revelations about her relationship with Declan, and the son of Mary's who she believed was responsible for Kristina's death, now Janet was saying Hale's father, Preston St. Cloud, had had an affair with Mary Beeman? She was afraid to meet Hale's eyes, so she just kept her gaze pinned on Janet.

“I know, I know,” Janet said. “You think I'm making it all up. But Mary had sex with both of them. I already knew about Declan, but then I caught Preston with her, and the look on his face . . . And this was years after they'd had the affair. We were in a coffee shop, and she walked in, and he . . . he was still dying for her. And she was so fucking smug.” Janet bared her teeth at the memory. “I went through school with that sick bitch, and she stole every boy I ever had a crush on. Preston wasn't from here, but we stupidly stayed around Deception Bay, even though I
begged
Preston to leave, but no . . . Declan talked him into working for him at Bancroft Development. Just like he did Hale. And when Mary found out I loved Preston, she took him, too. Just because she could.”

Janet almost echoed Catherine's words to Savvy about Mary, how Mary had warned Catherine to let Declan go, or she would take him from her. How Mary had gathered men like trophies all her life. Just because she could.

“It's lucky she's dead, or I don't doubt she would have come for you, too,” Janet said to Hale.

“You're obsessed with this. Let it go,” Hale told her flatly.

Savvy saw that he'd never credited anything his mother had said before; maybe he'd even felt she divorced his father for crimes he'd never committed. She wondered what he was thinking now, after the things she'd told him about Declan and Catherine and Mary.

“Your saintly father screwed Mary Rutledge,” Janet declared coolly. “I know you never wanted to believe it, but I'm not making it up. I didn't find out myself about Preston until years later, but when I did, I left him and your grandfather and Deception Bay. Thank God for Peter. He took me away from this hellhole before Mary could find out about him, and I still won't bring him anywhere near that lodge and her demon-seed daughters.” She drank half the glass of wine as if it were water, looked down into the wine that was left, then knocked the rest back. “God, I forgot what it feels like being so close to them. You've got to move, Hale, before one of them turns into their mother and comes for you.”

“You're really over the top,” Hale told her.

“I wish that were true,” she answered, then held out her wineglass for a refill.

 

 

Ravinia riffled through the pages of her mother's journal. She'd skipped around, letting the book open to its most used places, but now she ran back to the beginning, examining her mother's younger entries. The “J.” she'd written about, Janet Bancroft, was featured prominently when they were in grade school and high school. “J.” could easily stand for
jealousy
, too, Ravinia realized, because her mother was consumed with it whenever Janet was mentioned, which was on a regular basis for a number of years.

From Mary's point of view, Janet Bancroft had everything. She was beautiful and rich and looked down on Mary and Catherine, who were considered outcasts by virtue of their odd family history. It must have shown in their dress, because Mary accused Janet of calling her “tawdry and embarrassing” and, later, “a psycho whore” and “sick in the head.” Ravinia found herself stirred to anger at Janet, but then her mother certainly had had her issues. Mary had then zeroed in on Janet as her enemy. She cast her web on every boy who showed an interest in Janet, though she clearly wasn't interested in them herself. She called them “stupid larvae” and “immature sperm,” which Ravinia found kind of creepy when she considered this was her own mother's writings.