I'll Find You (31 page)

He’d been so sexy and compelling once. She ached for the old Andre, and she wanted him back!

Carefully, she retrieved the ankh from Daniella’s neck, then gathered up the one she’d used on Lumpkin and tossed aside for effect, the one that had once been Teresa’s. The ankhs were valuable and she didn’t want to leave unnecessary evidence . . . she just wanted to be able to show Andre what she’d done. Let him know how good she was at this kind of thing, how much better than the other handmaidens. With that in mind, she snatched up the small black leather bag she’d brought with her and carefully removed a box of cigarette ash.

She looked down at all their distorted faces and smiled. She’d already spread some ash over Clarice and now she did the same to Jerrilyn, Lumpkin, and Daniella.

Then she walked quickly toward the front door, gently tossing Teresa’s ankh into a corner as if it had mistakenly fallen there. If things didn’t go the way she hoped, she was going to have to implicate Andre in their deaths. He would know she’d done the deeds, if he could hold the thought, but he wouldn’t be able to drag her down with him, as long as she was careful.

But she didn’t want things to go that way. She still wanted Andre. A part of her always would.

The cigarette ash was a brilliant addition, the perfect motif for her tableau. Andre would enjoy that she’d made them sacrifices to him and, if the authorities needed to be brought in, they might believe Andre’s scrambled brains had come up with the idea. He wore an ankh around his neck, and the presence of another one, the one used in the murders, would certainly put him under suspicion, but again, this plan was merely a last resort.

Before she left, she went back to the prayer room for a last look over her handiwork. The robed bodies were lining up and she was going to have to get Andre here soon or the smell of rot would be noticed.

Satisfied, she grabbed up Lumpkin’s pants and searched through them for his keys. She’d left her own vehicle down the street and figured it would be fine sitting there for a while. She had a couple more targets in mind, though she wasn’t exactly sure which she would do next, which would present itself first.

She locked up the house, got in Lumpkin’s vehicle, turned the ignition. She drove for about five miles before pulling off on a Venice side street and slipping out her cell phone. “Hey, lover,” she said when Andre answered. “You don’t have to worry about Clarice or Jerrilyn or Daniella anymore.... Thanks for telling me all about them. They were easy to fool, just like you said. So predictable. And as a special bonus, your landlord. Time for you to come on home.”

What?
What was she saying? “I’m not going anywhere,” Andre snarled. No one told The Messiah what to do.

“You need to come back,” she said in a singsong voice.

Andre looked around the dismal room he’d booked at the Travelin’ Inn in Castilla, a motor lodge with a lumpy bed on which he hadn’t slept a wink all night. He’d taken a drive back toward the ranch and had seen his cousin arrive. West Laughlin. Craig’s bastard who shouldn’t even be around, and yet there he was, with the nanny who looked so much like Teresa it made his groin hurt. Callie
Cantrell.
What were they doing? What was their plan? He’d dismissed West as unimportant but watching him put the nanny up against a wall and kiss her and press up against her while her hands clutched at him in delirious desperation had made him burn with lust and indignation. It was
his
house! Not some out-of-wedlock cur’s like West Laughlin. After they’d gone inside the house he’d tried to scrub the memory from his brain but his own imagination—visualizing them thrashing around in ecstasy with him inside her and her legs clamped around his back, both of them moaning and crying out—was infinitely worse! He’d gone back later to stare through the window, the urge to smash his way inside nearly overwhelming.

“. . . know you want Victoria to die, but it’s time to come back,” she was saying and he realized he’d missed what had come before.

“I don’t want her to die yet,” he hissed. “If she goes now, the boy could get everything . . . or maybe she’ll leave it all to Cal Stutz.” He could hear the despair in his voice and he pulled himself together. He didn’t remember confiding in her about the Laughlins, but he must have.

“Victoria won’t leave the ranch to the help,” she assured him.

He so wanted to believe her, but his fear was too great. “You don’t know Victoria. She’ll do whatever she wants, even though it’s not as it should be.” He glanced through a crack in his curtained window and the sudden light blasted his eyes. Quickly he dropped the curtain back and turned away.

“Where’s the boy now? At the house?”

“There’s a woman in charge of him.” He deliberately left Callie Cantrell’s name out of it. He needed to think about what to do next, and he didn’t want her spoiling his plans. Was she even telling him the truth about Clarice, Daniella, and Jerrilyn? And Lumpkin? It was so hard to tell sometimes. “She’s staying at the house with the boy.”

“If Victoria dies, is this woman in charge of the kid?”

“Possibly.”

“Make nice with her,” she ordered. “You know how to better than anyone.”

Andre couldn’t speak he was so infuriated at the suggestion.
He
was the one who made the decisions, no one else!

“I’ll call you,” he struggled to get out. His head was really pounding. The wild colors showed across everything.

“Come home,” she said and he resented her for that, too.

He was going to have to do something about her. Anarchy, that’s what it was. He thought about the Glock he’d taken from his safe, tucked at the bottom of his bag. Bullets were inelegant but all they required was a touch of the trigger, and the Glock could fire eighteen rounds without reloading.

“How are you feeling? The headaches and blank spots still there?”

“Shut the fuck up,” he ground out, clicking off the cell phone and throwing it across the room. It slammed against the wall and fell to the floor. He pressed his palms to his temples and screamed.

Callie’s cell phone rang as she was following West’s Explorer to Laughlin BBQ. Glancing at the screen she recognized Diane Cantrell’s number and thought,
Nope.
She wasn’t going to be harangued again. Not if she could help it.

West looked over at her Lexus as he pulled into the restaurant parking lot and she rolled into the spot next to him. Both Laughlin BBQ and The Bull Stops Here gift store were closer to the Laughlin Ranch house than Castilla’s downtown and it had only taken fifteen minutes to get to them. Callie got out and then helped Tucker to the gravel parking lot. As soon as he touched ground, he ran toward the rustic building with its board and bat siding stained red, and a weathervane slowly twisting atop the barn-shaped building. Two branding irons were crossed above the sliding wooden door that was the entrance, and which looked heavy enough to rupture a muscle. Tucker tugged on it to no avail, but when West clasped the handle and gave it a hard yank, it slid back on well-oiled tracks.

Tucker loved everything. Talking rapidly in his own mixture of French and English, he let them know he wanted a Cattleman’s Plate, which was steak and eggs and lots of it, but Callie thought he was more enamored of the name than of what he would be eating. She managed to talk him into a child’s stack of flapjacks, orange slice, and a glass of unfiltered apple juice, he-man style. She had no appetite whatsoever, but forced herself to eat part of a skillet of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and sauteed vegetables labeled
FOR TENDERFOOTS ONLY
.

West chose bacon and eggs, and coffee that was served in a pot large enough to fill both of their cups several times over. As soon as their order was placed, West pulled out his phone and sent a text. “For Talia,” he explained. “You can head back to LA after breakfast. I’ll stop by the hospital and then be right behind you. I’m back at work today.”

“Where we go to?” Tucker asked.

“Great-Grandma isn’t well, so you and I are heading to my house until she feels better,” Callie said.

“You got horses?”

“No.”

“Cats?” he asked hopefully.

“We’ll come up with something.”

Their food arrived and while they ate, West said, “I’d like to ask this Andre a few questions, but if he’s still around, it’s going to have to wait. Luckily, Talia can handle things. Not that I want anything to do with the ranch,” he added quickly. “But without Victoria . . .” He shrugged.

Tucker lifted his shoulders, mimicking West and grinning as he tried to cut his flapjacks and mangled them miserably. Callie helped him and soon he’d worked his way halfway through the stack.

Just as they were finishing up, the front door opened and a tall man with a shock of nearly white hair, wearing jeans, boots, and a green flannel shirt, came through. He noticed Callie immediately and stopped dead, looking like he’d seen a ghost. West glanced over at him and said, half-apologetically, “You’re going to probably get that a lot.”

“Who is that man?” she asked.

“Edmund Mikkels.” West lifted a hand to him in greeting, adding in an aside to Callie, “Victoria said he was crumbling. I just saw him a month ago and don’t remember his hair being that white.”

Mikkels had to be told twice to follow the hostess to a table two over from theirs. He couldn’t seem to rip his eyes from Callie. She murmured, “It’s pretty clear I remind him of Teresa.”

“Teresa is mine
maman,
” Tucker stated positively, which brought both West and Callie’s attention back to him with a bang.

“You overheard us talking?” Callie asked.

He nodded. “She dieded, but Aimee is not mine
maman.
” He slid Callie a sideways glance. “You is.”

Callie felt her throat tighten. “Thank you, Tucker, but you know that’s not true.”

He lifted his shoulders again, shrugging off her denial as if it were expected but not believed.

West said, “I want to say a few words to Mikkels before we leave.” He got out of his seat and headed toward Mikkels’s table just as Teddy Stutz entered the restaurant. Spying him, Tucker clambered out of his seat to chase after West.

“Tucker!” Callie half-stood, whispering harshly. The little boy ignored her, but Teddy Stutz strolled her way.

“Took the little man out for breakfast, huh. How’s Victoria?”

“I thought you might know better than I, from your father.”

“Cal doesn’t talk to me about things that matter,” he said with a short laugh. “So, that’s West Laughlin talking to Mikkels, huh? Wonder why Victoria called on him. He’s more persona non grata than I am.”

“Excuse me.” Callie hurried after Tucker, touching his shoulder to get his attention as he was staring unabashedly at Edmund Mikkels.

“Your hair is
tres blanc,
” he said.

Mikkels, who’d been asking West about Victoria, first turned to Tucker, then Callie. His eyes were red-rimmed, but she didn’t think he’d been crying. He just didn’t look well all over.

“I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but you look just like Teresa,” Mikkels said. His voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

“Doesn’t she?” Teddy Stutz said, coming up to them.

Tucker said loudly, “Knock, knock!”

“No, Tucker. Not again,” Callie said, trying to pull him away.

“Knock, knock!”

Callie managed to wrangle him away from the table, but Tucker resisted, trying to escape her grasp by twisting his body. “Tucker, we need to let them talk,” she said urgently.

“
Pourquoi?
I want to be there!”

She grabbed his hand and practically had to drag him outside. He was pouting a few minutes later when West joined them after settling the bill. His expression was intense and she could tell he was bothered about something.

“What is it?” she asked as she buckled a recalcitrant Tucker into his booster seat. His arms were crossed over his chest and he looked straight ahead in protest.

“Mikkels started to shake. Seeing you must’ve hit some chord. He wanted to apologize. Said he didn’t mean for it to happen. If Teddy Stutz hadn’t jumped in and changed the subject, he might’ve broken down completely and told me exactly what happened the day Stephen died.”

“It was a bullet from his gun that killed Stephen, right? That would make anyone feel guilty.”

“That, and for getting involved with Teresa in the first place. I don’t know at what level, but the guy’s eaten up with guilt. When I talked to him before he was morose and drinking a lot, but when he saw you . . .”

His cell phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket. “Talia,” he said aloud, answering the call.

Callie could tell Talia wasn’t happy about them leaving, but West fended her off by changing the subject. “We ran into Edmund Mikkels at the BBQ. He looks like hell.”

Her response was so loud that West pulled the phone away from his ear and Callie could hear every word.

Talia was saying, “. . . feels damn guilty for killing his friend, and who can blame him? Probably wishes he’d never introduced him to Teresa in the first place. We all wish that, don’t we? Except for Tucker, of course.”

“Stephen met Teresa in a bar in Los Angeles,” West corrected her.

“Who told you that?” Talia asked. “It was Edmund who introduced them because Teresa was hanging around the BBQ. He thought she was into him, but it was Stephen, and we all know why that is . . . the
mon-eeee
. . .”

“Teresa was living in LA before she married Stephen,” West said, clearly processing unexpected information.

“So? Yeah? I’m telling you, she met him here.”

West shook his head and said, “Investigating Teresa’s death is one more reason I’ve got to leave.”

“Fine.” Talia snorted. “At least Cal’s here, although he’s got the whole damn company to run. I’ll stick around as long as I can, but don’t forget I have a life, too.”

The hospital in Coalinga was a few miles south of Laughlin Ranch and West was in and out of it in less than an hour. The doctor said there was no change in Victoria’s condition and there wasn’t much for West to do other than ask the staff to keep him in the loop. On the drive to LA he called Victoria’s lawyer, telling a still-rattled Gary Merritt about his plans to take Tucker to Los Angeles and keep him in his and Callie Cantrell’s care in the interim. Merritt said he would talk to Talia, as the child’s grandmother, and make sure that worked with her, but if she agreed that everything was copacetic, then that was legally fine. Again, West requested to be kept in the loop and Merritt assured him he would.

The last call he made was to the San Joaquin sheriff ’s department, asking if they knew any more about the brown sedan that had run Maya and Victoria down. “What about people in the building?” West asked, knowing he was overstepping his bounds a little. In his experience, police officers of any kind didn’t like being pressed by outsiders, even sometimes other officers. But the deputy he spoke to simply said there was nothing new so far. Once more, West asked the man to make sure he was kept informed.

He was inside the Los Angeles city limits when Dorcas called and told him a homicide suspect had been brought in that he wanted West to sweat.

“I haven’t even gotten my badge back,” West protested.

“It’s a woman,” Dorcas told him. “Shot her boyfriend in the back and now’s claiming self-defense.”

“Doesn’t sound even close to credible,” West said, knowing Dorcas wanted him to do the interview because Dorcas was big and intimidating and West, though over six feet himself, had a leaner build and a face that seemed to appeal to the ladies.

“Said he drugged her and held her down, and she was kind of woozy when she was brought in. Supposedly picked up his gun and thought he was comin’ at her.”

“I’ll be there in thirty,” West said. He really wanted to spend his time concentrating on Teresa, but she wasn’t even truly his case, and now that he was going to be back on the force, he would need to work on whatever cases were assigned to him.

Andre had watched the two-car brigade leave the ranch. He’d swallowed enough Advil and aspirin to knock out a horse, and had brought the pain in his head under control.
This all started with Teresa
, he decided.
The headaches are her fault. They’ve been a bitch since that last trip to Martinique.

A stray thought struck him.

Maybe this was manufactured. Maybe one of the handmaidens did this to me. The one who killed Teresa!

He hadn’t wanted to know which one had done it. Had told himself he didn’t care, but now . . .

It was all a plot. A plot to get rid of him.

Through the binoculars he saw the Explorer and the Lexus turn down the oak-lined drive. He got in the Xterra and took after them, keeping a fair distance behind. Laughlin was in the black SUV and Callie and the boy were in the Lexus.

Maybe
she
poisoned him, he thought. She was there on the island at the time. She’d sought out Tucker, made herself look like Teresa, plotted with
West Laughlin . . .

A jab of pain in his head. He nearly swerved onto the shoulder.

“Careful,” he told himself, keeping the Lexus just in view. As ever, there was a ton of traffic barreling toward the City of Angels. The thought made him smile. Angels were looking out for him. “I am The Messiah,” he whispered.

His cell rang, sitting on the console, and he glanced over at it angrily. Naomi. Shit. He couldn’t talk now. Didn’t have fucking Bluetooth and couldn’t risk being pulled over. He let it go to voice mail, knowing she wouldn’t leave a message. A few minutes later he was proved right when he heard the buzzing ringtone that said he’d gotten a text.

Cautiously, he touched the screen and read her missive:

He grunted. At least that was good news. He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her but she was definitely the most reliable one.

In an act of pure kindness, he decided he would wait till the end to kill her . . . after the Cantrell woman and the boy and that fucking, big-mouthed bitch, Talia Laughlin.

West signed paperwork that took him off administrative leave and put him back on the force. He was issued his badge and gun, a Glock, and practically before he entered the squad room Dorcas was on him. “She’s in number three,” he said, meaning the third interview room down the hall.

“You gotta be kidding. I need some time. I’m not up on this case,” West said.

Dorcas slapped a thin file in his hands. “There ain’t enough there to care. Read it and talk to her. You’re good with the women.”

“Then I need something from you,” West said. “Everything you’ve already got on Teresa Laughlin and everything you can find. I mean everything. I want a complete murder book. The autopsy report. Fingerprints. DNA.
Everything
. I want to know what brand of toothpaste she used, you got that?”

Dorcas grinned and slapped West on the back. “Good to have you back, man.”

“Whatever,” West muttered, but he smiled at his partner. It was good to be back.