Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) (17 page)

Maybe their bad experience at the happily ever after business made it hard for me to trust men. Maybe because his wife had left him for another man, Matt had the same problem. He wanted to solve his issues by binding us together so tightly I'd never want to leave.

I was afraid of the bonds. I didn't want to wake up ten years down the line thinking I'd made a mistake like my parents. After all, I thought I loved Grant in the spring, and felt infatuation and more for Ty the horseman and Piet the firefighter. How could I trust my instincts now?

“You can trust me.”

“But what if you change
your
mind? What if your new receptionist is perfect for your office and for your life? No comings and goings, no dragging you into impossible situations, no stupid fears and phobias.” I kicked at the sand in frustration.

“It'll never happen. The woman I hired is fifty-nine and has four grandchildren. And you—”

“Shush! I think I hear them!” I kicked at the sand again, and sure enough, I heard voices. Not exactly out loud, and definitely not in any language I understood, but I sensed arguing and aggravation. I knelt down and patted the kicked sand back into place, then grabbed my pad and a marker pen out of my pocket and I drew. Dot dot dot. Willow tree. Dot dot dot. Matt's oak tree. Dot dot dot. I drew as if my life, or my town, depended on it.

Matt shook his head. No, he didn't hear anything, but he kept picking up handfuls of sand, studying them. I kept drawing, trying to fix the drawings in my head, along with offers of friendship and appreciation and how to make amends.

“Talk to me, damn it!”

Moses whined.

The tide came up, the sounds faded away, if they'd been anything more than pebbles shifting.

Matt said we'd try again later, at Paumanok Harbor's beach where all the woo-woo stuff happens. Maybe the little dudes only came out at night. We'd bring blankets and firewood, a thermos of coffee and warmer clothes. Maybe marshmallows and sleeping bags.

“What if they don't come?”

“Then we'll have the beach to ourselves. My sleeping bags zip together.”

* * *

No way was I sleeping on the beach in the middle of October, especially a narrow strip of sand that sloped down to the rising tide. We could try to reach the Andanstans on the beach after dinner, but I was sleeping in a warm bed. Unspoken was that it would be Matt's bed, and we wouldn't do a lot of sleeping.

We stopped off at my mother's house to pick up Little Red and a tote bag filled with a change of clothes, my new nightie, and a toothbrush. Marshmallows and sex. It didn't get much better than that. I floated through the front door after punching in the alarm code.

Harris must have driven Susan to work because the Subaru was outside, but neither of them were inside, only a note from my cousin that she'd see me in the morning and she'd signed my name for the package I'd sent.

A FedEx envelope, big enough for legal documents or manuscript pages, sat on the little hall table where I usually threw my keys. Sure enough, it was sent by Willow Tate from my Manhattan address to Willow Tate, Garland Drive, Paumanok Harbor, with extra charges for Sunday delivery.

The problem was, I never sent myself anything.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

I
had a good plan. But I also had a bad package. And I had half the Paumanok Harbor police department in my front yard.

Matt gingerly wrapped the package in one of the dog towels by the front door.

“Don't touch it!”

“The FedEx guy handled it, so did Susan. If there are any fingerprints, they're gone.”

I wasn't worried about fingerprints, only about bombs or cyanide powder or radioactivity. The mailing envelope wasn't very thick, but I had no idea how small a detonator could be, or a timer. “Don't jiggle it!”

“It would have gone off before this.” He carefully carried the thing outside to the paved walkway while I speed-dialed Lou, who cursed and said he'd be on the way, and to call 911.

I gave the address to the dispatcher. She didn't sound surprised. “Willy Tate, right?”

“Just send Chief Haversmith.”

Then I called Harris, who was at the Breakaway with Colin and Kenneth, enjoying more of Susan's cooking. He cursed, too, but I couldn't tell which upset him more, my getting the package or him having to leave his dinner unfinished. He said they'd be here in fifteen minutes.

“Wait! Lou's closer. You stay and tell Susan not to come home. Deni can track the package on the computer and even see who signed for it. Now she knows I'm here, even if it's not my signature.”

“You don't know it's from the stalker.”

“It sure as hell isn't from me.”

“Okay, I'll take care of Susan, but I'm sending Colin and Kenneth right now.”

We already heard the sirens coming from town. The old retriever howled. I put the dogs out in the fenced-in side yard, out of danger.

Uncle Henry Haversmith, who wasn't really my uncle but an old friend of the family's, got there first. He made Matt and me stay on the porch while he directed the next arrivals to stay back, keep other cars away, put on their bullet-proof vests. I called Aunt Jasmine to warn her not to come by when she heard the sirens, and to tell Grandma Eve we were all fine.

Soon the DUE agents arrived, taking up positions on either side of me and Matt. Finally the K-9 patrol car pulled up, right across the lawn. I guess we were all waiting for Big Eddie and Ranger, Paumanok Harbor's bomb-sniffing, drug-sniffing, cadaver-sniffing, and fugitive-tracking dog. The old dog was another one of my mother's rescues. He ate, he slept, and he looked suitably heroic in the orange K-9 vest. He couldn't smell anything.

Big Eddie could. Short and skinny, the young police officer looked anything but heroic, or big in his flak jacket. Except for his nose. That super-sensitive organ could detect animal, vegetable, or mineral, perfume, poison, perspiration, drugs. He could identify and follow thousands upon thousands of scents. The dog was window dressing for the outside world. In the world of Paumanok Harbor, Big Eddie was just another useful talent.

I wanted him to stay back, to wait for Harris with his circle of protection. “What if there are so many layers of plastic you can't smell what's inside?”

Big Eddie shook his head. That never happened. But the chief held up a hand and looked toward Lou, who looked toward Kenneth, the precog, who shrugged. “I don't sense any danger, but Pinky has a point.”

“Pinky?” Uncle Henry looked at me for the first time. “Jeez, Willy. It's not even Halloween yet.” Which had all the local cops staring at my cotton candy mop, instead of at the package.

One stepped forward, Robin Shaw, the only female on the force, and the best marksman in the county, if not the country. She winked at me, said my hair looked great, then waited for the chief's nod of approval. When he noticed her, not my hair, she slipped a knife from her sleeve, a long, thin knife, and sent it toward the package. The blade sliced neatly through a corner of the mailing envelope, exposing the contents to the air, if not our eyes. I guess her infallible aim worked for knives as well as bullets.

“Now?” Big Eddie asked.

“Now.”

He stepped near the package, wrinkling his nostrils the way a rabbit did. “No metal or plastic. No suspicious chemicals. Paper. Um, Xerox toner. Blue, no, black Magic Marker. Real faint scent of, um, off-brand shampoo. Fried food. Dog turds. No, that's from the lawn. Hard to say if the shampoo smell or the fried stuff came from the perp or the FedEx driver. Definitely not Susan. I know all her scents. But there's nothing dangerous about whatever's inside.”

Uncle Henry looked at me and shook his head. “Pink hair? If you got us all out here for another one of your crazy stunts, I'll send you back to Manhattan so fast your ears'll turn pink from the wind rushing past.”

Lou grunted. “It's not a prank. Okay, Willy, you want to open it?”

“No, I don't want to touch anything from that female.”

One of the cops shined a floodlight on the package, but no one offered to reach inside the envelope, no matter what Big Eddie said. The fact that he led Ranger farther away discouraged volunteers. Matt started to step toward it, but I grabbed his sleeve.

“You don't want to see the kind of things she sends.”

Then Harris drove up in a storm of pebbles and dust, with Susan, damn it. I wanted my baby cousin safe. And safe from Harris the Hunk, who would never settle down. Lou called him over and told him to open the damn thing, with rubber gloves. Not to protect him, but to preserve any forensic evidence. Officer Shaw handed him the knife.

Harris slit the envelope and pulled out exactly what Big Eddie'd said, photocopied pages, rubber-banded together, with a message across the first page in blue marker. Once they saw nothing but a manuscript, the others crowded closer. Harris read the message:

“‘You should have read my book, bitch. Now I'll publish this one myself. It'll be on the Internet in the morning.'“

Someone asked if that was possible. Susan said it was.

But not with my name on it. As soon as Harris read the title and author, I ran over and took it from him, forgetting about the gloves.
Little Ded
by Willow—not Willy—Tate. I flipped pages, saw that half were cartoon drawings—not mine, but a poor imitation of my style. And the storyline was nothing I'd have written in a million years. Or drawn. The woman pictured had my features, short curly hair, with blue eyes colored with the same marker pen. The dog looked like a fluffy Pomeranian, only twenty times bigger than Little Red, and empty-eyed, like a zombie dog. And they were—

“Oh, my God.”

I hadn't noticed Susan behind me. Harris tried to lead her away. Matt took the pages from me, again without latex gloves. “She's crazy. No one will let her publish this filth.”

Lou and Uncle Henry had the loose pages by now, the rubber band carefully placed in a clear evidence bag. In the light I could see Uncle Henry's face turning as pink as my hair.

Lou kept grunting as he flipped pages. “She's not crazy. She's a pervert. This is nothing but pornography. We can get her put away for decades, if we find her. And we'll send out an alert to block any new mention of your name across the web. Anyone who puts this up'll be hit by a lawsuit so fast they won't know what hit them. Then we'll trace the sender and shut down the servers. We'll get her.”

“Russ can take care of it, Willy. He's already working with your computer,” the chief reminded me. “He can destroy any program that publishes this filth.”

Yes, but my reputation would already be ruined. My books would be pulled from libraries, from bookstore shelves, from classrooms. I'd never publish a story again. Or hold my head up. My publisher could be destroyed. And Matt, Matt who kept his hand on my shoulder, would be tarred by the same horrible, hateful brush.

A man in a wool overcoat was studying the pages now. I didn't recognize him, so I went to grab the manuscript out of his hands, not wanting anyone else to see the disgusting images, but he held me off, with rubber gloves. “You know, I don't think a girl did this. It's really more a young male's style.”

Lou introduced me. “Special Agent Krause here's a profiler. He's usually at Quantico helping the FBI, that's why you never saw him before. That's why he's dressed for winter, too. His blood thinned, hanging with the Feebies. I thought he'd be a help on this case.”

I felt better knowing that Lou believed how serious the situation was, that he called in a Federal profiler. Until Krause said he was in town visiting his mother anyway. He read through the pages and said the writer was definitely a male. Twenties, middle class background, some drug use, most likely dropped out of college.

Okay, maybe the messenger who'd knocked over Mrs. Abbottini was the writer and Deni the illustrator. Or vice versa. “I know I heard a female voice on the phone messages.”

“Voices can be disguised,” Krause said. “Your senses can be fooled. My senses can't.”

Oh, that kind of profiler.

Lou nodded. “He's one of ours.”

“Wait a minute.” I whipped out my cell phone and punched in my father's number. He answered at the first ring for once. “What did she say?”

“I haven't talked to her yet. We have a situation here. Dad, you know that Irish tenor you keep hearing?”

Uncle Henry groaned. “Not another one of Tate's blasted riddles, Willy. We've got enough to think about already.”

I ignored him. “Dad, what song is he singing?”

“Damn, Willy, what do you think? The song every Irish tenor sings, endlessly. ‘Danny Boy.'”

Of course. I thanked him and hung up. So maybe Deni was Denis or Danny, not Denise. Either way, the person was deranged and dangerous. And determined. He or she knew where I lived, knew what was important to me. “What did I ever do to deserve this piece of slime?”

Krause answered. “You're a success while he's a failure. And you're pretty and smart and so far above his touch that he wants to destroy you, or be you. He worshiped you like an idol, but you rejected his love when you rejected his advances, his creative work. Now you represent everything wrong with his life, including his sex life. And he's afraid you'll write about him, telling the world what a loser he is.”

“What about the maimed animals?” Lou wanted to know.

“A lot of perversions first evidence themselves that way. Nothing unusual there. The fact that the guy tries to write graphic novels is. I'll check the sex crimes lists to see if anyone fits the pattern, but from the eyewitness physical descriptions, your guy might be too young to be registered. Or just starting out.”

Not a good prospect.

“So what can I do?”

“You write back. You have email addresses for him, don't you?”

“That's what Russell's working on.”

“Well, write back. Act humble. He'll like that, thinking he's won. Say you are sorry you didn't help him, but you were caught up in your own work. Now you'd look at his book, not this one, of course, but another. Maybe give him some hints. You could even tempt him to lay off spreading this one around by offering to ask your agent about representing him, or showing his manuscript to your editor.”

“I would never—”

“He does not know that. He'll write back or call. He
wants
your reaction. He'll make a mistake. He'll do something to lead us right to him. With DUE on it, we can get better traces, quicker IDs.”

Which meant they'd go outside regular channels. I didn't care as long as they got this dirtbag away from me. I hated the thought of encouraging a monster, but both Lou and the chief agreed that the more contact I had with Deni, the sooner we'd find him.

Krause brought one of the pages over to the light. “I think he's already made an error. Artists like to sign their work, right?”

I nodded. He called for a magnifying glass. Lou sent him Colin instead. Colin's esper eyes had found the symbols on my pendant. Now they found a tiny, nearly invisible autograph tucked in the dog's fur,
DF
. “It's a start.”

Lou got on the phone. Krause got on the phone. The chief got on the phone. I went to free the dogs from the pen. “We're not staying here, guys.”

So everyone gave their opinion about where we should go. Susan's father had arrived and insisted we both come to his house. They lived almost across the street, just down the dirt road. Harris didn't like it, which meant my intuition about Susan and the DUE agent was working fine. I agreed with Uncle George that Susan, at least, should go home.

Lou wanted everyone at Rosehill, where the entire place was wired and filled with guards. He'd be staying there, too, now that Doc Lassiter was at my grandmother's. So I was wrong about a threesome. Win some, lose some.

Matt still had his hand on my shoulder. “Willy stays with me.”

Win some.

We still had the sacks from the drugstore. I didn't know about him, but I had no urge to use them, after seeing those drawings. Lose some.

“She'll be safe with me,” Matt said. He gave a hand signal to Moses, who came and sat on my foot. “Guard, Mo.”

The big dog growled so low in his throat I could feel it vibrate in my toes. Not to be upstaged, I said “Guard, Red.” The Pom in my arms growled louder than Moses and showed his teeth. No one had to know I'd pinched his tail.

“Listen, we can't take any chances with Willy, especially now that this sand thing is going on,” Uncle Henry said. “Why do you think she'd do better at your place than where we can have a score of guards around her?”

Matt pulled me closer. “Because to you she's a key that opens doors, or shuts them. If you find a better key, you don't need her. I'll always need her with me, safe and happy, because I love her.”

Susan clapped. I blushed. Someone else shouted out, “This one's a keeper, Willy.”

I already knew I'd hit the jackpot. “I am staying with Matt as long as he'll have me.”