Stone Kissed (12 page)

“Wrong side, Frank,” Delia hissed through clenched teeth. The hospital door was swinging open before her.

“Pardon me?”

“Your bird.” Delia leaned in to sniff the yellow roses blooming at Frank’s feet. The Knock Out breed had no scent, but hopefully the lady coming down the walk didn’t know that. When she passed, Delia whispered, “Your bird is on the wrong shoulder.”

“He wanted a change of scene. You can’t blame him.”

“Please. For my sake. In the dark only. Please?”

“For your sake.”

She looked up at his face. He winked.

“I mean it.” Delia shoved open the door.

“Guess what?” Kelsey greeted her, her pink stork scrubs stretched tight across her belly. “He’s sitting up! He’s been alert and vocal all day. A touch grumpy, but that’s only to be expected. Dr. Bustamante gave me these for you.” Kelsey held up a file folder with forms. “The top page is tomorrow’s appointments with the OT and the rehab therapist.”

“How’d he sleep?”

“Very well. We’re reducing his meds, but he’s adapting.” Kelsey’s face changed and she retracted the folder, resting it on her belly, “Cecily Johnson tried to see him again.”

“She has?”

“I didn’t let her in.” Kelsey stepped closer. “You don’t want her anywhere near him.”

What could that woman possibly have to say to her father? Even if her claim to be family was true, she wasn’t related to him.

“Listen, it’s none of my business, but if that were my Dad…” Kelsey swallowed and her eyes welled with tears. “Sorry. Put in a request at security to ban her from his room. I can do it for you now if you ask me to.”

Delia stepped back. Surely Kelsey was overreacting. Who was Delia to judge her father’s friendships? At least he had someone else interested in talking to him. Sure, Cecily grated on Delia’s nerves, but was it fair to block her access in the hospital?

“Delia!” Kelsey’s blonde ponytail whipped behind her like a snake. “She’s not normal. She’s like you, but she’s dangerous.”

Delia blanched. “I’m not…”

“I don’t mean that. Everyone knows you’re harmless. But she is not. With men, especially—she’s trouble.”

What did Kelsey know? Was this about Grant? “I’m hardly a nun.”

“I know.” Kelsey’s smile was broad, and she leaned in and lowered her voice. “He’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve seen since…” Kelsey trailed off and patted her belly.

“What did you mean about me being ‘harmless’?”

Kelsey shook her head and snorted. “Delia, really. Everybody knows. When I was little, we visited Mom’s sister in Michigan. She had a gnome in her yard. I spent hours pretending to play hide and seek with that thing, and Aunt Sue bought me one. Mom stuck it in the attic the moment we got home. I think it’s still there.”

Delia’s face felt numb. “I don’t…I don’t deal with gnomes.” They were usually cast concrete rather than carved stone.

“No one is sure exactly what you talk to. But you’re not your grandma and you don’t go telling tales out of school, so—harmless.”

“How long…?”

“Delia, honey, your daddy’s waiting on you. Dr. Bustamante said your visits are why he’s made so much progress so quickly. You give him a reason to live.”

Delia laughed before she could stop herself. It was easier to believe that statues could dance the jive than it was to believe she gave Vernon Forrest a reason to live.

***

Getting to Vernon Forrest was much more difficult than getting to Carl. That damned fool had been tracking her down for the better part of two days. Cecily had tried to avoid him for his own sake, but Carl was persistent and, in spite of their encounters, he wasn’t dumb. Kelsey Hardcastle was a friend of his pinch-faced wife, and it was only a matter of time before he started linking Russ’s disappearance with the fire that same week in March.

And now, Forrest was talking.

Carl followed her home. He followed her to the mall where she spent three hours stockpiling fresh clothing. He left four increasingly agitated messages on her voice mail and three on the new answering machine. When Carl drove up behind her in the grassy lot at the back of Blossom’s Folly, Cecily gave in and decided to do her civic duty and to share what she knew. Besides, her fingernails were getting soft, and there’d been a wee bit too much hair in her brush this morning.

He wasn’t surprised when she told him Russ’s last name was, indeed, Ailey. He wasn’t surprised when she said Russ was hiding out on Taylor Ridge. Carl acted as if he believed her when she said Russ had no phone and the only way to reach him was to drive out together.

“We’ll have to walk in,” Cecily explained, to Carl’s lack of surprise, in order to get him out of the cruiser near the ravine a good quarter-mile below the handful of cabins that sat like blisters along the top of the ridge.

But Carl hadn’t expected her to shove him against the cruiser. He hadn’t expected her to grab him by the jacket and knee his balls into his pelvis. He hadn’t expected her to step up onto the bumper and straddle him, jerking his fat ass up the hood of the car and slamming his skull back through the windshield.

He’d expected her to kiss him, which is why he’d driven the whole way with that ridiculous dust mask on. “Mold allergies are bad this year,” he’d said, and his hand brushed his holster when they stepped out of the car.

She didn’t reply. She didn’t waste another sound on Carl Benson until it was time to come.

Flames from his cruiser lit the ravine where she shoved it in, high on the power of Carl’s last breath. She was mesmerized by the fire. Fire, like the ocean, took everyone and everything else down to the essential elements. Only she was immune. Waves of heat rose to lick her skin. The people in the trailers along the ridge could see the fire, but they wouldn’t call anyone—those people were meth-cooking white trash with no sense of civic responsibility, who’d think, no doubt, that a lab had blown.

With her right hand she slammed the black plastic trash bag full of bones back against the hickory trunk at her side.
Thwack.
Carl’s bones cracked and crumbled like graham crackers in a zipper bag.
Thwack
. Her mother made the world’s best cheesecake, and she’d taught Cecily that it was all about consistency.
Thwack.
You had to beat the ingredients to a pulp.

The bag split on the fourth or fifth slam, so she pulled the femur out and held it like a baseball bat, whacking the head off against the tree and then shattering the shaft. The skull she simply took in both hands and slammed onto the trunk, relishing the impact down her arms. Out the corner of her eye she saw the flames leap. The car fire had spread to a stand of trees.

Oopsie.

Someone might call the police after all—oh, wait.

Cecily giggled, wiping the stream of tears from her face with the back of her hand and smearing bone dust across her cheek.

Sure enough, somewhere down in the flaming pyre, Carl’s cell phone began to ring.

***

Cecily wrinkled her nose as she pushed open the door to the Baptist Church basement kitchen. For the last few days, every old biddy in the county had gathered here to gossip, speculate and feed the searchers. To her surprise, the smoke from the ravine had drawn no fewer than five 911 calls. Chief Carl Benson’s cruiser had been found, burning and empty. Bob Griffin, Carl’s cousin and former deputy, had gotten himself promoted thanks to Cecily, though he would never fill Carl’s shoes—and how could he? Said shoes were molding in obscurity in the county dump, and Bob didn’t have the brain power to look for them there.

Bob had been smart enough, at least, to call for help, and as a result a handful of federal agents and almost every able-bodied man and woman had been searching for the past two days. The ones on break crawled into the church basement for casserole and coffee, gray with weariness. They looking as drained as if they’d spent their time alone with Cecily herself.

Every hour that passed reduced the likelihood Carl would be found—not that she worried. The truth was so far from what any of them could or wanted to believe that her secret was safe by virtue of their provincial, sheltered thinking.

Unfortunately, Delia was in the kitchen, too—elbow-deep in dishwater, Cecily was pleased to see. She watched Cecily when she thought Cecily wasn’t looking back. She looked as if she knew a secret, and Cecily had to hide her irritation, to keep herself from grabbing Delia by her grimy T-shirt and shrieking “What?” in her best ear-bleeding voice. The downside to the high of a recent burn was that Cecily found it impaired her impulse control.

But she gripped her empty mug as tightly as she dared without crushing it and leaned against the stainless steel industrial refrigerator, gritting her jaw to keep from slamming her head back in her impatience. She was here for a reason. Where Cousin was, Grant Wolverton wasn’t far behind.

“If he were up there, there’d be bones,” muttered one blue-permed granny to another as they leaned over mugs of coffee. “He’s run off. Things have been bad between him and Darcy for years.”

“More mugs, Delia.” Florid-faced Myrna Pitts pushed past Cecily and shoved a tray of dirty melamine across the serving counter between the fellowship hall and the kitchen. “The Hart and Sole Cloggers have deployed.”

Delia huddled over her sink, hot pink rubber gloves swallowing her arms up to her elbows. As she rinsed each mug, Myrna wiped with a limp towel and stacked it. They both had their backs to Cecily. The other women in the hall—the ones who could see her through the counter window—didn’t look. Seldom did any woman voluntarily make eye contact with her, but Cecily didn’t care. In fact, she was glad—even proud. Women might not respond to her call, but they feared her power, even if they were too stupid to understand what she was.

“It’s like that teacher, Mr. Sawyer,” Mrs. Hardcastle said, pushing a stack of trays across the counter. “We’ve seen the last of Carl Benson.”

The side door to the kitchen opened and Grant stepped in. Cecily caught her breath. He was in jeans, work boots and dark T-shirt like he always wore when playing Bob the Builder, but today his corded forearms were streaked with mud and he had dirt on his cheek. Delia the Oblivious wiped her sweaty forehead and turned, slamming into Grant’s large broad chest. Cecily closed her eyes, feeling the impact on her own breasts.

Had she been the one standing there, she would have wrapped her arms around him then and there and sealed on. But her stupid cousin kicked him in the shin.

“Damn,” he muttered and stepped back.

“Go away,” Delia said. “No one needs you here.”

“Now, Dee-Dee, be nice!” Cecily slipped in behind Grant and rested her hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Wolverton is vital to the search.” She poured every ounce of admiration she was capable of into her words, and he turned to her, his pupils dilated. Perfect.

Cecily had chosen her leopard-print stilettos, black silk T-shirt and dark-wash pencil-leg jeans with care. In spite of the mud from the ravine on his clothes and skin, the two of them looked like they’d stepped out of magazine advertisement.

Poor Delia’s hair hung in steamy coils, and she smelled of tuna casserole and spaghetti sauce. She looked sullen, and Cecily smiled brightly, showing her teeth. “You’ve got something…there.” Cecily pointed a finger as if to touch her and was gratified to see the little rabbit flinch. It was becoming quite the game.

Delia’s lips sealed together and she muttered, “Gotta go.”

Cecily moved to cut her off, and Delia brushed her elbow.

Once, when Cecily had gnawed into a lamp cord just to see what it was like, she’d felt this powerful of a jolt. She forgot the man at her back and reached out again to touch her cousin.

But Delia had felt it too. Her mouth was rounded in a cartoon O and she backed through the door, slamming into Myrna’s belly.

“Little Cousin,” Cecily called after her, “we need to talk.”

When Delia was out of sight, Cecily breathed again. The mildest buzz was still zipping from her elbow to her core, as clean and pure as a sip from a baby. With effort she returned her focus to Grant. She had a goal and it was time to stop wasting time. Tonight she’d drink enough from him so he could rest in the car, and she would drive overnight to Atlantic City.

“We have a date tonight, Grant.”

“Pardon me?”

“You promised to let me tell you the history of our town, of Steward House.”

“A man is missing, Miss Johnson.”

“You here to help, girl, or not?” Myrna said from the sink.

Cecily ignored her. “After you’ve finished your shift. But you have to eat. You need to keep up your energy.” She pulled out the purr because she felt the air shift behind her and the fine hairs on her arms came alive. Delia had come back. “Everyone needs sustenance, Grant.”

He shook his head at her, his eyes flicking over her shoulder.

Cecily lowered her voice, going for smoke. “She lived in the house, but she doesn’t really know the house. There’s a power on the Steward Estate. I feel it. Can you feel it?” His pupils shrank again as his eyes turned back to hers. Cecily tamped down her frustration and layered dark, seductive promises into her words. “I can tell you everything about the Steward Estate. I always could.” She pressed on, pressed in, pressed up against him. “Come with me.”

In her peripheral vision Cecily saw how everyone else spread back from them like an oil droplet in water. Everyone except Delia, who stood, frozen like the rabbit she was, barely feet behind Cecily. She could feel her, like she could feel the energy in the soil beneath her feet at Steward House. Cecily tamped down the urge to snap around, take her cousin by the shoulders and ride the whip-crack electricity promised by that touch.

But she had a plan, and it was a good one. She gave Grant a generous smile and beamed up at him. “Now.”

He nodded woodenly and she placed her palm on his chest, feeling his heartbeat, long, slow and vital, beneath her fingers. He wrapped his hand around hers. But then he pulled her palm away from his chest. She heard the slight rustle as Delia finally stepped back out of the kitchen. Grant stared over Cecily’s shoulder at the now-empty doorway.