Nowhere to Hide (26 page)

“Only in the fact that her parents acted like she was off to college, or something. They never faced that she was in a mental institution. Bet they wish they could change things now, but it’s too late.”

“What was she being treated for? She is another victim,” September repeated, even though she had said as much, in case Dawn decided to question whether she ought to spill private information without a warrant.

But Dawn had no such compunction. “Anorexia . . . bipolar . . . recreational drugs. She was a hot mess, but she pulled it together, the last I heard. It’s a shame, what happened to her.” And then, hearing herself, she added, “I wouldn’t put this past Navarone, either.”

“Do you mind if I call you again? It might come up in the investigation.”

“Sure. But you’re wasting your time. Dr. Frank Navarone is your man.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” September said and clicked off.

“So?” Gretchen asked as she turned the Jeep into the station.

September brought her quickly up to date. “A lot of pieces, but no jigsaw puzzle,” she finished.

“That’s the way of it. It’ll come together.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” she said confidently.

Chapter 15

By the time September was home, through the shower, dressed, and applying some new makeup, it was almost seven o’clock. Jake was undoubtedly on his way, but she felt rushed and a bit overwhelmed. She’d tried on three different outfits, frustrated with herself for caring so much, and in the end she’d chosen a mid-calf black skirt and a salmon-colored sleeveless top with silver hoop earrings, the kind she eschewed while on the job.

She’d put a call in to Auggie, wanting to basically chew him out for not being square with her about what he’d told Sofia, the nurse at Grandview Senior Care, and leaving her to fumble her way through the interview. He didn’t answer, so she hung up and texted him her complaint, figuring he’d get that before a phone message.

Now, she slid her phone in a side pocket of her messenger bag, slipping her Glock into the bag’s large interior along with her wallet. The whole thing felt too bulky for her outfit, but she didn’t care. Slipping on a pair of black leather sandals, she took a hard look at the image in the mirror, seeing storm clouds in her blue eyes directed solely at herself as the doorbell rang.

“Okay,” she told herself, not quite sure what she meant by that, as she went to answer the door.

Jake stood on the other side in a pair of black pants and a gray shirt, darkly handsome and surprisingly serious. She felt her smile of greeting fade on her own face. “What?” she asked him.

But he was gazing at her in a way that made her self-conscious. “You don’t look like a cop,” he finally said.

“That’s good. I thought maybe there was something else wrong.”

She gave him a long look, but he just said, “You ready?”

“Just let me get my bag.” She grabbed up the messenger bag and then walked ahead of him down the stairs to his Tahoe. “Where are we going?” she asked, as they headed out of the lot.

“Have you ever been to La Mer?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He drove south, but though they held a conversation, it was all small talk. His mind was elsewhere, probably on whatever he wanted to talk to her about. Thirty minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant that looked high over Lake Chinook. September climbed from the Tahoe and glanced at the black and silver awning overhead as they walked to the front door. They entered an anterior room with rich, dark paneling and piped in string music. The maître d’ smiled at them and led them past intimate booths with flickering votives to the back patio, also beneath a black and silver canopy, and to a table for two that overlooked the green lake far below.

As soon as they were seated, September leaned forward. “Okay, out with it. You’re starting to make me crazy.”

“I thought you weren’t going to be a cop. Where’s the small talk?”

“I’m not good with it,” she said seriously.

“Point taken. Neither am I, really.” He picked up the wine list, looked at it, then set it aside. “I saw my dad last night. Both of my parents, actually. I wanted to talk to them about your mother. After searching through the attic with you, and finding that note, and everything . . . I wanted to ask my dad about the day Kathryn died. I wanted his take on it.”

September made a face. “Oh, Jake. No . . . I’m sorry I blamed him. I thought—”

“This wasn’t about how you acted about him when you were eleven. After you found the note, I just wanted to know if he thought it could be true. About your father and Verna.”

“I know you thought I jumped to conclusions.”

“I did. I did think that. But my father . . .” Jake looked at her, his eyes searching hers. “He remembered that day. And he remembered the note your mother got. She was upset and driving fast and the accident happened. You were right, Nine. The note set her off.”

Her throat felt hot. She hardly knew what to say. “It’s not fair, you know,” she said. “My father tried to shift blame to Nigel. He said . . .” She drew a breath.

“I know what he said.”

“I knew it wasn’t true. I always did. I just wanted to blame someone else besides my father.”

He reached across and clasped her left hand with his right.

She felt a quiver overtake her from head to toe, and she had to pull back though she didn’t want to. Emotion thrummed through her like a live wire. This was crazy wild, a seesawing ride that ran from low to high and back again. It was dangerous. Especially because it was Jake.

“Can we . . . talk about something else?” she asked on an intake of breath.

“Sure.”

“I wish I were hungrier.” She half-laughed. “Sorry.”

“We can leave,” he said.

“No, we can’t leave. We just got here. Don’t be so understanding, Westerly,” she said.

“It’s back to Westerly, huh?”

“Makes it a little easier for me. But, no, I don’t want to leave. I’m just, absorbing.” She nodded several times.

The waiter came and took their drink order. She asked for a glass of Pinot Gris and Jake had a scotch on the rocks. Then they both ordered salmon with a basil pesto sauce and September did her best to do it justice. By the time their waiter brought the check September had recovered a little bit of equilibrium, and when Jake reached for her hand again as they walked beneath the front canopy and across the lot to his Tahoe, she was able to clasp it without feeling like she was going to fall into a schoolgirl faint.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“Home?”

When he didn’t argue, she was almost disappointed, but then when he drove right past the turn that would take them to her apartment, she said, “Uh . . .” and pointed at the road they should have taken.

“Oh, I thought you meant my home,” he said, fighting a smile.

She laughed. “You’re too slick for your own good.”

“Want to go back to yours?”

“No,” she said after a moment.

They drove to another part of Laurelton and down a lane to a small rambler home that made her give him a long look as he pulled into the garage. He pushed the remote as they climbed from the vehicle and the garage door rattled down behind them. Then Jake opened a side door that led into the house.

“Not what you expected, huh?” he said, as he flipped on the lights.

They were standing in a family room off the kitchen, which Jake walked across on his way to a back patio. He slid open the sliding glass door and beckoned her to follow him outside.

September moved into the warm outside air and admitted, “I pictured you in a downtown high-rise condominium.”

“My office is a little like that,” he admitted. “But I’m moving when the lease is up.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know. Guess I need to figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.”

“Sounds . . . uncertain.”

“Yeah, well.”

The patio was lit by outdoor lights and Jake moved to the table, picked up a lighter, and touched the flame to the wick of a fat yellow candle that sat inside a large, clear votive in the center of a small table. There were two cushioned lounge chairs and he brushed one off with his hand, inviting her to sit down, which she did, lying back and looking toward the stars. She heard him brushing off his own chair, then he perched on the edge of it. “I have beer and not much else.”

“Let me think . . . okay, I’ll take a beer.”

He flashed her a smile and headed into the house. She heard the refrigerator door open, then the snap of the tops being popped, and a few minutes later he returned, handing her a longneck Bud and keeping one for himself. “I should have asked if you wanted a glass.”

“This is fine,” she assured him, and it was.

They sat drinking in relative silence, feeling the heat of the day dissipating, watching the flickering candle. “How’s the investigation going?” he asked after a while.

“I’ve got a lot of pieces that could mean something, or not, or I don’t know.”

“Can you tell me?”

“Some of it.” She looked at the shadowed planes of his face. “There’s definitely an elementary school connection somehow. I don’t know if he went to our school, or knew someone who did, but it keeps circling back there. The FBI’s on the case now, but I haven’t really confided in them about this yet.”

“Yeah?”

“They want to kick me off the case because of the artwork. I don’t want to be kicked off the case.”

“You want to get this guy yourself.”

“I want to be a part of the posse, yeah.”

“What’s the grade school connection?” he asked.

“Well . . .” She shrugged, then she told him how Ms. Osborne had phoned her back and she’d told her about the artwork and asked her if she knew the name Wart, which she hadn’t. From that, September ran through her meeting with Mrs. McBride where the teacher had mentioned theirs was a problem class, especially with three of the boys, for various reasons. She finished with, “Neither of them knew anyone nicknamed Wart. I tried that name out with a nurse who’d worked at Grandview Mental Hospital when Tripp’s uncle was on staff there, but she didn’t know it, either.”

“Who told you about Wart, in the first place?”

“I heard it from Ben Schmidt, Sheila’s sixth grade boyfriend. And then, I talked to a couple of her other school friends that Ben told me about, Andrew Welke and his wife, Caitlyn, and they said Sheila thought this Wart was weird. That he maybe had a real interest in knives, and that he possibly went to Sunset Elementary before transferring to their school, Twin Oaks. They also said they heard that he might be dead, or in jail, or something. No one seems to really remember, though. I’m not convinced that Wart isn’t a catchall term that Sheila might have used. She used ‘psycho’ in her everyday language, so maybe ‘wart’ as well.”

“Maybe when she was younger. I never heard her say that.”

“But how well did you know her?” September questioned. “You said yourself, she was more of an acquaintance.”

“She was.” He peeled part of the label of the beer with his thumb, staring down at it thoughtfully.

The conversation lulled. She wondered how much she should tell him. It wasn’t like she was giving away state secrets, but there was an unspoken understanding that the less civilians knew, the better. Still . . . “We learned today that Emmy Decatur was a patient at Grandview for a while. Her parents held that back because they were embarrassed. Emmy let her roommate think they’d kicked her out of the house in high school rather than admit the truth. She might’ve been there about the same time Dr. Navarone was on staff.”

“You think Glenda Tripp and Emmy Decatur crossed paths?”

“With each other, or maybe with someone else,” she agreed. “Glenda told a coworker she’d had sex with someone on her uncle’s examining table. She didn’t say exactly when, but it appears to be when she was a teenager.”

“Huh.” He shot her a look. “Sounds less romantic than in a grape arbor.”

Her thoughts flew to the memory of that night and she pulled them back, aware that her pulse had increased at the fact that he was remembering that.

“So, you think it’s someone who went to our grade school?” he asked, when she went quiet.

“Or, knew someone who did and was connected that way. Then, he met Sheila at Twin Oaks, but from there . . . I don’t know about Grandview.”

“Because Sheila never went to Grandview. Only Decatur and Tripp.”

“I just wish there was some common denominator for all of them. So, if the killer knows Sheila, it’s maybe through elementary school, but I can’t make a connection to Grandview with her.” She exhaled heavily. “But then maybe she just met him at The Barn Door and the rest is coincidental.”

“Except there was that guy who hassled her at the bar. Someone she knew from the past.”

“Yeah . . . maybe this Wart/psycho character. Maybe someone else.” She made a face and took another pull on her beer.

“Don’t get discouraged,” he said.

“I’m not, I’m just . . .”

“What?”

He moved from his chair to perch on hers. They stared at each other through the uncertain light thrown by the candle. He put his hand on her knee and through the skirt she felt her skin turn to fire.

“Confused, mostly,” she said.

He leaned over and kissed her, pressing his lips to hers, testing her response.

September closed her eyes, kissing him back, fully aware that she was recalling those moments amongst the vines, comparing. His weight pushed her further into the chair and she was conscious of every place their bodies touched: legs, hips, arms, mouth.

Am I going to really do this?
she thought, with a quick calculation of her time of the month. She was close to her period, so she was sure she was okay; she was as regular as clockwork. And she wasn’t sexually active enough to carry condoms with her. If you looked in her purse, you’d be more likely to find a gun.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked, his breath hot on her lips.

“Remembering . . .”

He propped himself up on one elbow, staring down at her face. “I didn’t get the impression at our first meeting that they were good memories, but now . . . ?”