Nowhere to Hide (23 page)

Soon. But first . . . another taste. There were other laughers out there. He could see their faces, but did not know where they lived, so it would have to be someone else. Another woman outside a bar. They were easy to pluck.

Chapter 13

Jake turned into the drive of his parents’ modest three-bedroom ranch and noticed his mother’s handiwork in the riot of zinnias and chrysanthemums surrounding the front porch. He parked behind his father’s truck on the gravel drive, climbed out, and stretched.

He hadn’t wanted to leave Nine last night. He’d wanted to stay with her, be a part of what she was involved with. Help, somehow. But after their brief make-out session in her parents’ attic—she was right; that was crazy—and the call from work about another victim, she’d locked him out as if he didn’t exist. He’d been unconvinced about her mental leap to the belief that her mother had received the note they’d found the exact day Mrs. Rafferty had died, but he’d let it go. It wasn’t his call, though he’d certainly had experience dealing with that kind of blasting energy and surety. His years with Loni had taught him that.

Now, he knocked on the door and it was opened immediately by his mother, Roberta Westerly, who leaned up to give him a hard hug and kiss on the cheek. “I won’t say it. I promise I won’t say it,” she said.

“Go ahead. Say it.”

“We don’t see you enough. But that’s okay, you’re here now. I won’t even ask why. Your father said you called his cell, and I put a chicken in the oven and it’ll be done roasting in twenty minutes. Got some fingerling potatoes . . . anyway, you’re staying.”

Jake hardly knew how to respond. He looked at his mother. Her steel gray hair was swept back in soft waves, and her face had faint wrinkles around the eyes and mouth, but she still had a youthful way about her that made him smile. That was why it was so hard to say, “I can’t stay for dinner.”

“Oh . . .” She tried to hide her disappointment. “What is it this time? Work, I’m sure. Something to do with that.”

“Something to do with that,” he repeated, though it was a lie. It was because of September he was here. Her sudden leap to conclusions about her father, that though he kinda understood . . . kinda . . . had thrown her into his arms, which was great, but he sensed it would be like dealing with a bipolar person at the peak of the cycle. All crazy, wild ideas and energy.

He understood about bipolar. Loni was classic. He was lucky she’d given him the ultimatum, and he was resolved not to go back, no matter what happened, though it still chilled him to be so firm in the face of her illness. But he’d been warned by everyone from his mother to Loni’s own psychiatrist: he needed to save himself first.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked.

“On the back porch, having a beer. Want one?”

“Sure. I’ll get it.”

He headed for the refrigerator, found himself a Henry’s, twisted off the cap and opened the screen door to the porch. It was hot, but bearable in the shade. Hearing the screech of the door, Nigel looked over from where he was staring across the backyard to a vegetable garden, baking in the late sun. Some large pumpkins were visible, and Jake said, “Those look massive.”

“Might be decent size by Halloween,” his father allowed, getting up from his chair to shake hands with his son. His eyes were blue—a shade or two greener than Rafferty blue—and his smile was warm. “Have a chair.”

It was a late summer/early fall tradition for his father. A beer on the back porch while dinner was being prepared, as long as the weather was good. It didn’t matter that Nigel had all but retired. Some habits didn’t need to change.

Jake sat in the other rocker. It was bucolic. Like Westerly Vale. He didn’t know why he had such a hard time being part of this. It just felt like he was somehow marking time whenever he was away from the city. He couldn’t explain it, didn’t even want to try.

“I need to ask you a few things,” he told his father, holding the beer loosely between his palms.

“Sounds serious.” Nigel slid him a questioning look.

“It’s about Kathryn Rafferty.”

His father straightened in the chair. “Kathryn Rafferty.”

“The day she died.”

Now Nigel turned to give him a long, hard look. “What are you talking about?” he asked, half-bewildered, half-put-off.

“I don’t know really. I was with Nine—September—Rafferty last night, and we found some—”

“What do you mean ‘with her’?” he interrupted.

Jake opened his mouth to answer, but didn’t know what to say.

“She’s Braden Rafferty’s daughter,” Nigel stated flatly.

“I know who she is. She’s also Kathryn’s daughter,” Jake responded, just as flatly. Then, realizing he was going about this badly, told his father how he’d run into September at The Willows, how she’d questioned him about the ongoing investigation into a suspected serial killer, how he’d taken her to dinner and then ended up at the Rafferty “castle.” He finished with, “—and that’s when she found the note that she just jumped on, sure it was an assignation between her father and his second wife for the day Kathryn died.”

“Verna,” Nigel said, sinking back into the chair and taking a pull on his own Henry’s.

“Yeah, Verna. Nine just was sure all of a sudden that it was the note that contributed to her mother’s death.”

There was silence from his father’s chair. Nigel, too, sported gray hair but he hadn’t lost one strand. He, like Jake’s mother, could have passed for ten years younger than their age except for the color of their hair.

“What are you looking for?” Nigel asked.

“Corroboration, I guess. You were first on the scene at the time of Kathryn’s accident. Did you see her at The Willows that day? Talk to her? You were friends, right?”

“As much as Braden would allow. He really didn’t like his wife consorting with the help.” There was irony in there somewhere.

“Was it true about Braden and Verna? Did you know?”

Nigel inhaled and then exhaled, his chin dropping to rest on his chest a moment. “Braden Rafferty was not true to his wife. That was a fact. He wasn’t true to Kathryn throughout their marriage.”

Jake nodded. “I’m not sure how much Nine knows of that. Some. But she believes this note is responsible for her mother’s death.”

“Did she tell Rafferty that?”

“Braden. Not yet. Kinda think she might.”

“What’s your stake in this?” He gave his son a penetrating look.

Jake shook his head. “I don’t know yet. I just thought if you had some information . . .”

“You would take it to her as an offering.”

“Not exactly,” Jake said, a bit annoyed.

A good long time passed without either of them saying anything. Jake could hear his mother moving around in the kitchen and he turned to watch her through the screen door.

“I don’t like you getting mixed up with the Raffertys,” Nigel said quietly, staring out across the backyard to the weather vane atop the outbuilding that stood perfectly still in the dense evening air. “But September might be right. I saw Kathryn as she was getting in her car. She was upset and I tried to get her to go back inside for a bit. She said she couldn’t. She was going to face Braden with the evidence. I didn’t really know what she meant, and she told me she’d seen the note. ‘I’ve seen it,’ she said. ‘And I know they’re screwing their brains out!’ I didn’t have to ask who. Verna was hanging around like a bad smell already. Kathryn was going to confront them in the act.” He stopped, thinking a moment. “She tore into the road and was instantly hit. I ran down the drive like a madman. She was alive for a few minutes, but that was it. She was losing blood and I ran back to the house, to call 911, but it was too late.”

“You never told this to anyone.”

“I told it to Rafferty. You bet. He didn’t like hearing it and he blamed me for her death. Guilt,” he sneered. “I didn’t have the money to buy Westerly Vale, but Edmonds knew I was good for it, and he hated Rafferty almost as much as I did. We struck a deal and I vowed I would put that bastard out of business.” He made a sound almost of amusement. “Well, in that I didn’t succeed, but the vineyard did okay.”

“More than okay. It’s Neela and Colin’s total life.”

“But not yours.”

“No, not mine.”

Jake stood up, thinking about what he’d learned, wondering if it would matter to September.

“What are you doing with her?” Nigel asked.

“Nine? Nothing. We’re friends.”

“You didn’t come out here to talk to me about this if she’s just a friend.”

“I don’t know, Dad. I just wanted to have the truth before she went off half-cocked, but . . . hell, she seems to know more than I do.”

“About what?”

“Damn near everything.”

To his surprise, his father chuckled. “Oh, boy. You got it bad. And a Rafferty. You be damn careful, son. They’re rattlers.”

“You don’t know Nine.”

“I know Braden. And I know March. I’ll try to keep an open mind, but they’re supercilious bastards with too much money and too little integrity. That’s what I know. Be careful you don’t learn that the hard way.”

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon . . .” September tapped her fingers impatiently on the dash, wishing her brother would just pick up, for God’s sake.
Pick. Up.
But his cell went to voice mail again, and she was left frustrated.

Fine. She tossed her cell down on the passenger seat, twisted the ignition, and then it started ringing. Snatching it up, she realized it wasn’t Auggie’s ring tone. It was Sandler. “Hey,” she answered.

“Where are you?”

“Oh, sitting in the parking lot of my apartment building, trying to reach my brother. He’s probably turned his phone off so he can have dinner with Liv with no interruptions. Must be nice.”

“He’ll turn it back on soon,” she said, uncaring. “Are you seriously done for the day?”

“Why? You working on getting some OT?”

“Yeah, just try to get some overtime in this economy. I was just thinking, though. I’d like to talk to those kids who found Lulu. See what they say.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah, if you’re not too busy.” A pause. “I could use you.”

September half-smiled. “Because your particular style might not work with children?”

“Ya wanna come, or not?” she demanded.

September twisted the ignition and her engine rushed to life. “I’d like to see that field where they found her. Let’s do it.”

“Meet me at the station. We’ll go in my car.”

September was there in twenty minutes and Sandler was already waiting for her. They left her Pilot and climbed into Sandler’s Jeep. Her vehicle was nearly identical to those used by the force. When September had asked her about it, she’d shrugged and said she was used to it, and that she tended to drive a vehicle hard and needed something that would go over rougher terrain. “And can you really see me in a luxury car?” she’d finished.

Enough said.

Sandler adjusted her GPS with one of the kids’ addresses and they drove west into the setting sun. September put down her blind against the bright pink-orange glare, and Gretchen did the same, her eyes narrowed on Sunset Highway and the exodus of traffic from Portland, through Laurelton, and beyond. They left the city limits behind and turned south, cutting through several housing tracts, and then the rural landscape came up fast. Two-lane roads cut through farmland dotted with rambling homes separated by fields of grass and corn stalks and the occasional grape arbor.

September watched it flash by outside her window. “A friend of my sister’s lived out here somewhere. May used to spend the night with her.”

“This the sister that was killed?”

“Yeah. Her friend, Erin, worked at Louie’s, a burger place off Hillside that’s now a dry cleaners. I guess business never recovered afterward. . . .” She trailed off.

“I know where you mean. I wasn’t here, then, but I know the place.”

“It’s kind of a blur for me. He locked ’em in the backroom, and tied ’em up, stole the money, and then came back and killed them. There were dollars found in the backroom, so they think he went back to kill them. Probably thought it over, the fact that they’d seen his face. Decided he didn’t want to take a chance.”

“What about cameras?”

“One wasn’t working, so you can only see him from the back, and he kept his head kind of ducked down, anyway. He knew.” She sighed. “Or, so I’ve heard anyway. Like I say, I was a kid and it was a blur.”

Sandler slid her a look. “That the reason you’re working homicide? For your sister?”

“Auggie’s the main reason, but if we were psychologically examined . . . I’m sure that’s in there for both of us.”

Sandler glanced at the GPS. “Up on the right. About three-quarters of a mile.”

They passed several fields and homes and then came to one with a white rail fence around about an acre with a split-level home in the front. Pulling into the drive, they saw a young boy look out the picture window.

“Must be who we’re here to see,” Sandler said dryly.

The porch light came on as they stepped out of the vehicle. By the time they reached the front door it was already open and a woman in her mid-thirties was standing there. “Are you with the police?” she asked at the same moment Gretchen and September lifted their badges.

The boy was behind her, looking at them with interest. Whatever state he’d been in after seeing the body, he clearly had brushed that aside in the face of his newfound celebrity. As if to confirm September’s thought, he said, “TV people were here!”

“Shh, Stuart,” his mother admonished, opening the door to allow them entry.

“TV people, huh,” September said.

“Are you really a policeman?” he asked suspiciously.

“I really am. I’m Detective Rafferty, and my partner is Detective Sandler.”

He took a gander at Gretchen and said, “Partner. I have a partner, too. Matt. Are you gonna see him, too?”

“We’re just doing a follow-up,” Gretchen said to the mother who glanced at the glass of white wine she’d set on a nearby table and introduced herself as Tori Salisbury, Stuart’s mother.

“I didn’t know where they were going,” she said. “Those agents came by with that deputy and Stuart showed them where he was . . . wasn’t supposed to be,” she added, turning a stern look on her son, who barely noticed her.