The Cove (35 page)

Northwest of Maestro, Virginia

Saturday morning

Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith drove out of Gaffer's Ridge at nine o'clock, after chowing down the best blueberry waffles he'd eaten since his Aunt Mae's famous Sunday brunches. He'd stayed with a college buddy, Jennifer Wiley, who happened to own Jenny's Café in the quaint touristy center of the small postcard town set among low mountains and rolling hills. Since the café was filled to bursting at seven-thirty every morning, it seemed the locals agreed with him.

He'd enjoyed his trip from San Francisco across the country, seeing friends and relatives on his way to his new posting in Washington, D.C., but he realized after two weeks with not much more to worry about than his Uncle Milton's arthritis in Colorado Springs, and catching up with a couple of old friends, pleasant though it was, he was getting antsy and ready to get back to work.

Griffin looked up at the bloated dark clouds pressing down, promising more snow. He hoped he'd get to Maestro before his world turned white again. He eased onto State Highway 48, planning to cut across to the highway.

Griffin was sipping at the rich, thick coffee from the Thermos Jenny had handed him on his way out the door: “Rich, thick, and dangerous,” she'd said, and winked at him.

His cell buzzed. Since traffic was building up, Griffin pulled off the interstate. He saw the call was blocked, and that was weird. “Yeah? Who's this?”

“This is Ruth—Agent Ruth Noble. I would have called you sooner, Griffin, to see when you'd be arriving in Maestro, and arrange to meet you, but we've got something of a situation here, and I'm helping my husband, Dix Noble—he's the local sheriff—figure things out.”

Her tone made his brain buzz. “A situation?”

“More a puzzle. It's pretty weird, actually. A Stanislaus student was found unconscious in her bathroom with a head wound. Usually that would mean she slipped and struck her head on the bathtub rim or somewhere else close. But the thing is, the neighbor who lives above her heard her scream, found her, and called 911. If she'd just struck her head, why would she scream? And there was no evidence she's hit anything. All the blood we think was hers was found on the floor around her head. The puzzle is that there was a good deal of blood in the bathtub, probably not hers, like someone else had been bleeding in there and then left or been taken away. Dix saw the blood in the bathtub and of course he realized the implications.

“The back door was jimmied. So was it a burglary gone bad? Well, whatever, it wasn't a simple burglary, what with all that blood in the bathtub.

“She's not with it enough to tell us what happened. She's in Henderson County Hospital. I'm here with her, waiting for her to wake up.

“She lived alone, so there's no roommate to call, and we don't know yet if there's a boyfriend in the picture. I'm also trying to get hold of her parents, but no luck as of yet.”

“Any sign of a blood trail outside the bathroom?”

“Nothing obvious, but we're bringing in the Henderson County forensic team to analyze the blood and go over the young woman's apartment. They'll check to see if any blood shows up under Luminol outside the bathroom.”

“It went wrong in the bathroom? That sounds strange.”

“Whatever happened, that person might have been injured or died, and was then hauled away. Don't know yet,” Ruth said. “It snowed heavily last night, and any evidence outside the duplex—blood trail, tracks, anything—is long covered up. At least it stopped snowing here an hour ago, so the plows can catch up before the next storm comes in.”

Griffin felt wired. He loved puzzles; the more convoluted, the bigger the rush when he figured them out.

The bathtub puzzle sounded complex enough to fit the bill. “I can be there in an hour and a half, if it doesn't start to dump snow on me. Have you talked to the neighbor who called 911 yet?”

“He's next on my list. Dix talked to him at the scene, but he was so upset Dix couldn't get much out of him. He's had some time to settle. Hopefully he can fill in some of the blanks.”

“I'd be glad to help when I get there if you'll let me. Who is she?”

“Her name's Delsey Freestone. She's a student at Stanislaus, like your sister.”

Griffin's heart flatlined. “Ruth,” he said, and the words hurt coming out. “Delsey Freestone
is
my sister.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath. “I'm so sorry, Griffin. But listen, don't worry, the doctors say she's going to be okay, I promise. You all right?”

Griffin couldn't wrap his brain around Delsey being attacked in her own bathroom. And with all the blood—maybe a body?

“Griffin?”

“I'm okay, Ruth. Hearing this, it's difficult.”

“I can only imagine. But like I said, Griffin, your sister will be fine.”

He was silent a moment, calming himself, then, “Don't bother trying to reach our parents—they're in Australia, in the outback for another three weeks or so, out of touch, no cell phones.

“As far as I know, there isn't a boyfriend. She told me she had a nasty breakup in Santa Monica and swore off men for the next five years.”

“All right. Get to the hospital as soon as you can. I'll be here with her, room three-fifteen.”

Griffin punched the accelerator to the floor. A burglary, it had to be. He felt a hot slick of fear roil in his belly. Who had been bleeding in her bathtub and why? Was it the person who'd struck her down or another victim? She'd surprised someone? Why hadn't he killed her? None of it made sense to him.

He knew in his gut he shouldn't be surprised that Delsey was involved. She was, in fact, the perfect candidate, a Trouble Magnet—that was her family nickname, and it had all started when she was sixteen. She'd witnessed a convenience-store robbery, managed to escape whole hide, and was the main witness at the trial that sent two felons to jail. When she was seventeen she was proudly depositing her first checks for delivering newspapers in the local bank when two robbers came in with semiautomatics. It turned out she actually knew one of the robbers. She delivered his papers. “He always gave me great tips,” she'd said sadly. “You think the money was all stolen? Will I have to give it back?”

Even her breakup with her boyfriend in Santa Monica hadn't been because of something common, such as the guy sleeping around on her or being a control freak. No, Delsey had managed to hook up with a guy who ran a car-theft ring and sold guns for his Mexican buddies on the side. “What a bummer that gorgeous red Ferrari belongs to a shopping-mall developer,” she'd told him when she and Griffin watched him leave the courtroom in shackles.

His parents had celebrated with champagne when their daughter was accepted into the Stanislaus graduate program that emphasized instrumental composition, what she'd wanted to learn more than anything, she'd told him when she'd applied. Delsey had been so pleased she'd kicked up her heels and announced, “At last, I'll learn how to score ‘Eleanor Rigby' for the tuba,” and she'd laughed. Stanislaus was not only the most prestigious music school in the South, it had the added advantage of being isolated, a very safe place on the planet, far away from big-city crooks and wackos—and trouble. Griffin agreed. Delsey had assured him during her once-a-week phone calls that there wasn't a single criminal in sight, she had a great girlfriend who played the violin and waitressed in town—everything, in short, was so normal he should worry she'd get bored, not get into trouble. And so he'd arranged to stop off in Maestro to meet Agent Noble and visit with his sister on his way to Washington, D.C.

He was a moron. And now this.

Luckily for him and the other drivers on Highway 50, snow didn't start falling again until Griffin pulled into the Henderson County Hospital parking lot. He'd made it here in fifty-eight minutes.

Henderson County Hospital

Maestro, Virginia

Late Saturday morning

Griffin ran through the hospital lobby, saw a dozen people staring up at the three stationary elevator arrows, and took the stairs two at a time to the third floor. He'd spoken to Ruth two more times on his wild drive through the mountains to the hospital. There was no change in Delsey's condition; she was still in and out, still groggy when she was in.

He ran down the corridor, ignoring a nurse's voice behind him, and opened the door to room 315 to see a tall woman in a white blouse with a black cashmere V-neck sweater, black pants, and boots standing close at the foot of Delsey's bed. She was fit and slender, her short dark hair waving around a strong, intelligent face. She looked over when he came in, and smiled. “You must be Griffin Hammersmith. You didn't let any snow melt under your tires—that was fast.”

Griffin realized she had to be Agent Ruth Noble, but all he could do was nod. He felt frozen, not from the cold but from gut-wrenching fear for his sister.

He said, “Yes, I'm Griffin Hammersmith. You're Ruth Noble.”

He shook hands with her even as he looked to the bed. Delsey looked to be asleep, or out of it. There was a large bandage on her head. “How's my sister?”

Ruth said in a calm, steady voice, “Dr. Chesney's telling us Delsey will be all right.” She knew she sounded mechanical, words spoken to a family member scared out of his mind, and not a fellow agent, but still, they were true and they calmed him.

Ruth had seen Griffin Hammersmith's photo, but she doubted she'd have recognized the wild-eyed man who burst through the door still wearing a fur-lined parka over jeans and boots. Ruth looked at him again when he tossed the parka on a chair, and was surprised at her next thought.
Wowza, your photo doesn't do you justice, señor.

His attention turned immediately to the doctor who walked into the room, an older woman wearing a white coat, a stethoscope around her neck. She was plump and pretty, a pile of curly white hair thick on her head. She smiled at him, patted his arm. “I'm Dr. Chesney.”

Griffin said, “I'm Griffin Hammersmith, Delsey's brother. What's going on with her? Agent, ah, Ruth said you believed she'd be okay, but she's not awake.”

Dr. Chesney automatically lowered the pitch of her voice. “We've done a CT scan. She has no evidence of a skull fracture or of any bleeding or contusions in or around her brain. She had a laceration of her scalp that required stitches, and she's suffered a rather severe concussion.”

Dr. Chesney saw he'd taken it all in, and added, “We gave her some medications for her pain, though we have to be very careful with that. She's still groggy, not completely oriented. It's hard to predict how long that will last, after the severe blow she had. Maybe hours, maybe days, even weeks.”

Griffin knew all about concussions, since he'd had his own bell rung more than once when he'd played high school and college football. Mostly he remembered having nagging headaches and just not feeling quite right. Griffin looked down at Delsey's face, leached of color, winced at the large white bandage. His fingers hovered over her cheek, then touched her warm skin, maybe to reassure himself she was alive. He closed his eyes as his fingers lightly pressed against the pulse in her throat. Slow and steady.

Dr. Chesney lightly touched a spot above her left ear. “As I said, the wound required stitches, but it looks a lot worse with this big bandage than it really is. We'll change it out tomorrow for something smaller. The blow jarred her brain, of course, so we can expect short-term symptoms even after she's fully awake, like difficulty concentrating, dizziness, nausea, and balance problems.

“But she will recover nicely in time, Agent Hammersmith. Right now, she's still confused. Having you here will help her. I understand she's a student at Stanislaus. I doubt she'll be up to performing for a while. What is her instrument?”

“She plays both the guitar and the piano, but she's mainly a singer and a composer,” Griffin said.

“An opera singer?”

Griffin smiled, hearing Delsey say as she rolled her eyes,
The Good Lord save me from climbing to high C every other note, except for the National Anthem. Hey, Griffin, wouldn't it be great to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl? I wish I knew who to kiss up to to wrangle that.

He said to Dr. Chesney, “She could have been an opera singer, but what Delsey really likes is to compose and perform popular music. She's already had some success. She's at Stanislaus because she wants to learn everything she can about composition and instrumentation, ah—” Griffin's voice fell away, and he swallowed. “She's very talented. She's like our grandmother.”

Dr. Chesney smiled, showing a wide space between her front teeth. “Your grandmother? Freestone?”

“No, Hammersmith.”

“Hammersmith? Goodness, Aladonna Hammersmith is your grandmother? Oh, how I wanted to be an opera singer after I first heard her perform at Carnegie Hall, but alas, even the shower water turns cold when I try an aria.”

Griffin smiled. “She was Miss Aladonna to all of us grandkids. She made the best chocolate-chip cookies in the world.”

Children, Dr. Chesney thought, had their own criteria for what was important. She remembered Aladonna Hammersmith had died of heart failure in the early nineties. In the years that followed, she'd seen a good half-dozen retrospective shows about her life. “I look forward to hearing Aladonna Hammersmith's granddaughter perform when she's up to it. If we're lucky, she'll be back to normal before you know it, so please don't worry too much. I'll be back in a couple of hours, unless she needs me. They can reach me on my beeper.”

She turned to Ruth. “I hope Dix can figure this all out. We sure don't want a repeat of anything like last year in town. Talk about horrific. At least she won't die like the others did.” Her eyes flicked again to Delsey. Dr. Chesney left the room, leaving dead silence in her wake.

Ruth shook her head. “Talk about a klutz thing to say, but that's Dr. Chesney. She was probably still so excited to hear her patient is the granddaughter of her opera goddess she forgot you were here.”

He said, “What did she mean, a horrific time last year? Was another Stanislaus student hurt? Killed?”

“There was a murder—well, several actually—but that's all over and done with. If you want to know more about it, I'll fill you in later.”

Murders at Stanislaus last year? Did Delsey's being struck down have anything to do with that old trouble? Had she somehow managed to start up with the wrong person? He wouldn't doubt it. The Trouble Magnet could sniff out a bad apple in a sealed barrel.

“Tell me, Ruth, that the murders last year were neatly solved and the killer sent to prison.”

“Well, all of them were resolved except the last one; well, there are still some questions in my husband Dix's mind and the primary suspect is in the wind, but far away from here, we think. Trust me, it has nothing to do with this.”

Griffin realized he was probably being paranoid and tried to turn it off. But a cop is a cop, and he wanted to hear all about last year's murders. But now wasn't the time. He pulled up a chair and sat beside his sister. She was sleeping, her breathing slow and regular. He pulled her hand from beneath the hospital blanket, looked at her long white fingers, magic fingers that made such beautiful music the angels wept, and when she sang you wept along with them. He slowly began to rub the back of her hand. “My mother told me when a person is down and out Miss Aladonna had told her it helps if you can hold their hands, that they somehow know, and she did that for my grandmother when she was very sick. I haven't any idea if it's true.”

Ruth pulled up the only other chair and sat on the other side of the bed, picked up Delsey's left hand and began rubbing it. She looked over at Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith. She imagined that when he walked down the street women nearly got run over staring at him. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his blue shirt to his elbows, and his jeans were old and fitted him very nicely. He looked, she thought, very fine. He was as pretty as his sister, with all his thick blond hair, his eyes as green as wet grass, a small hollow in the middle of his chin, and cheekbones sharp enough to slice a lemon. He was saved from being too pretty by a nose obviously broken a couple of times when he'd been younger, and which now sat a bit off-kilter. He and Delsey looked nearly the same age even though Delsey was six years his junior. According to her driver's license, Delsey had turned twenty-five the previous week.

She said quietly, “You know, Griffin, Dillon described you as the
real deal
. I'm glad you're here, for Delsey's sake.”

Griffin arched a perfect eyebrow at Ruth and continued rubbing his sister's hand. He said, “Delsey told me she wanted to learn everything in the known universe about how to put together a multi-instrument score, and this was the place. She never wanted to go to Juilliard, said New York was too big, too noisy, too claustrophobic.

“I haven't seen Delsey since she moved here last September to attend graduate school. I didn't make it home for the holidays because there were three bank robberies right before Christmas that had the police chief and the mayor screaming at us, and so I volunteered to head it all up, since, unlike most of the other agents, I'm not married with kids whose stockings needed stuffing.”

“Did you catch the bank robbers?”

Griffin nodded. “Two brothers, both two-time felons, neither very bright. We cuffed them while they were sleeping off a drunk in a Napa Valley motel.”

“I'll bet they bragged about their big score in a bar.”

He gave her a grin that would smite female hearts from twenty paces. “Yeah, something like that. The bartender called us.”

A tech appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Chesney said to bring this to you right away, Agent Noble.”

Griffin said, “The results from the blood in Delsey's bathtub?”

“Looks like.” Ruth took a piece of paper from him.