Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot) (10 page)

“Thought you said they hired you,” Sheriff Daniels said with a bit of a sneer. “You lying to me?”

“They hired me through an intermediary,” I said.

“Through a what?” Sheriff Daniels asked. My opinion of his intelligence, already low, slipped another notch.

“Their cousin hired me – the guy talking to them right now.”

Suddenly, there was a loud crash. I whirled back to the table. The last deputy, the one whose name I didn’t know, had fallen against the table, spilling donuts and sodas all over the floor.

“Great job, Hank,” Sheriff Daniels said. “Can’t you even stand still without knocking into something?”

“No problem. I’ll get it clean.” Hank rushed around, scooping the donuts off the floor and tossing them back into the box. I had to jump out of the way to keep him from running into me.

Deciding I would get nothing useful out of the sheriff’s department, I made my way across the room to Evan. He looked up when he saw me, and motioned to the two people standing next to him. “This is Jack and Tracy Webster. Jack, this is Cassie, the one I was telling you about.”

There was absolutely no family resemblance between Evan and Jack, which I suppose isn’t at all unusual for third cousins. Jack was much shorter and stockier than Evan, and his sandy brown hair was beginning to thin at the temples. He had deep, dark circles around his eyes and deep frown lines that would probably become permanent before all this was over. He offered me his hand and I shook it, though there was no warmth and little energy in the gesture.

Tracy, on the other hand, looked a bit like Elena when she’s deep in conversation with the dead. Her brown eyes had a vacant, faraway look and she didn’t seem to see me, not even when her husband offered me his hand. She was short as well, probably only an inch over five feet, and a bit thick around the middle. She had the look of someone who had been a beauty in her youth, but who had succumbed gracelessly to the onslaught of middle age.

“Tracy,” I said.

She did not look at me.

“My wife isn’t feeling well,” Jack said, putting a protective arm around her. “I hate to leave her, but I hate to stay here, too. There’s another search party leaving in a few minutes, and I want to go with it.”

“I was planning to go, too,” Evan told me. “I’ll be more useful out there getting a feel for the land.”

“Can we talk for a minute?” I asked.

Evan gave Jack a nod and followed me until we stood in an alcove a few yards away, where they probably stored chairs most of the time. Right now, all of the chairs and tables were scattered throughout the hall.

He stood close enough that I could smell his minty aftershave, the scent enough to create small stirrings of interest deep within me. At least he didn’t touch me.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“If you couldn’t scry for them, how do you think you’ll find them on foot?”

“I’m going to try a spell for a lost item,” Evan said. “Jack has a few pictures of his daughter wearing a pair of sneakers that she might have been wearing when she disappeared. If I knew the land around here better, I could use astral projection to look for it.”

I bit my lip. “The sheriff is a bit stupid. I don’t think the search has been all that useful.”

Evan darted a glance at the hubbub around the refreshment table. “I know what you mean.” He shifted his satchel. “The skinny one on the right keeps looking at me, too.”

“Jeff?” I looked over at the three. “He seemed a little overeager to please. Kept trying to tempt me with artificial flavors and preservatives.”

“I wish you had a cell phone.” Evan let his brown leather satchel slide from his shoulder and rummaged inside for a minute. Finally, he withdrew a light pink crystal and handed it to me. It looked similar to the one he had given me a few weeks ago, to call for him if I needed help. It had gotten me into serious debt, but it had also saved my life.

“If you get into trouble,” Evan said, “hold this in your fist and think of me.”

“What kind of trouble do you think I’m going to get into? Unless you think the girls were carried off by vampires?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Vampires still haunted my subconscious at night when I tried to sleep, but I didn’t want Evan to think that I was still afraid of them. After all, I needed him to see that I could take care of myself.

“You never know. Just keep it close, okay?”

“Okay.” I slipped it into my pocket, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it, but sensible enough not to argue. “Time to go make sense out of chaos.”

T
HE FIRST THING I NEEDED WAS
to get a few facts straight, so I
headed back to Nora Jones. She didn’t look particularly pleased to see me. She glanced my way, a sour expression on her face, but did not slow her conversation with a voluptuous red-haired woman whose back was to me.

“Mrs. Jones?” I began. “I have a few questions for you about the girls.”

Nora pursed her lips as the other women turned to face me. If her blue eyes weren’t so swollen, they would have been the precise shape and color of Regina’s.

“Ms. Scot,” Nora began.

“Scot?” the redhead interrupted. “Any relation to Edward Scot?”

“Um, he’s my father.” Sort of. At least, he used to be. Not that this woman cared about any of that at the moment.

“Oh, thank God!” The woman turned more fully to me and extended her arm. “I’m Vera Goldstein, Regina’s mom. Edward said he’d try to send help. I guess that’s you?”

“Guess so. I’m Cassie Scot.”

“Cassie?” Vera repeated. “I always thought Edward would go for more grandiose names. Not that I knew him well, but he and I spent a summer together on our great-grandparents’ farm when we were teenagers. They doted on him. Barely tolerated me after they figured out I didn’t have any talents. I don’t think they ever forgave my grandmother for marrying an accountant and having normal children.”

The wave of information almost made me dizzy. When I came up for air, I noticed Nora frowning, deeply.

“Not that you care about all that,” Vera went on, barely taking a breath. She turned to Nora. “This is my cousin. I want her to have full access here. Her family is quite gifted.”

“At what?” Nora asked, somehow looking down her nose at me even though she was at least three inches shorter. If she had hung a sign, she couldn’t have made it clearer that she did not appreciate my presence, but I didn’t sense any sinister intent from her. Not that I’m an empath, of course, but Evan had often told me that I had a good sense for people. In this case my sense was that Nora was worried about what had happened to the girls, and what was going to happen to the camp now that she had lost two of her campers.

So I decided to sidestep her question. “I just need you to bring me up to speed about what’s happening. I don’t have many details.”

Nora looked from Vera to me, as if trying to find a way to get out of talking to me, but in the end she sighed and nodded. Her mask broke somewhat, and I could see the fear and weariness underneath.

“Let’s sit down.” Nora gestured at an empty round table with eight plastic chairs strewn about.

Once the three of us were seated, Nora took a deep breath and began. “The girls are cabin mates. We assign seven girls to a cabin along with one counselor, usually a college student. They were there at lights out Monday night – every girl in the cabin said so – but yesterday morning, they were gone. At first, everyone assumed they went to the bath house. But they got worried when they didn’t come to the mess for breakfast.”

“Is that when you learned about it?” I asked.

“Yes. I sent half a dozen counselors out looking for them, but by lunchtime, no one had found any sign of them. So I called the police and their parents.” Nora lifted a hand to her head and rubbed her temples. “Most of us have been up all night.”

That didn’t give me a lot of new information, but at least I had a good time-frame now. I made a mental note of all the people I would need to talk to, starting with all the girls who had been in that cabin.

“What were the girls wearing when they disappeared?” I asked.

Nora shrugged. “How would I know?”

“Well,” I said evenly, “normally you’d look at what they left behind. If they went out in their pajamas, they’d be missing.”

Vera jumped in. “I can go through Regina’s things. I’d love to do something useful. I’m going crazy just sitting here.”

“Thanks, can you take Mrs. Webster with you?”

Vera looked hesitantly in the direction of the other mother. “I don’t know. I’ve tried to talk to her, but she’s fallen apart.”

I’d gotten the same impression, so I just nodded. As Vera stood to leave, however; I thought of one more question. “Wait.”

“Yes?”

Giving Nora a furtive glance, I asked in a hushed voice, “Did your daughter have any talents?”

Vera shook her head. “Not that I know of, at least. Of course, great-grandma didn’t even bother to test her before she died – wrote off my branch of the family, I think.”

“All right.” The answer was remarkably indecisive, so I was far from ready to check yes or no in the talent box where Regina was concerned. If I could emerge completely talentless from the mixed genes of two powerful sorcerers, then Regina could easily have a talent that had skipped several generations. In some ways, that was more likely than what had happened to me.

“Here’s my business card,” I said as an afterthought, handing one to Vera. “I don’t have a cell phone anymore, but the e-mail address is still good.”

She took it and read. Then she reread. I could see her mouthing the words “normal detective” several times.

Partly to distract her, I turned back to Nora to start making a list of people I would need to talk to. “Who knew the girls best?”

“Their counselor, Renee, and Mackenzie, who’s in charge of the stables. They spent most of their time with him and the horses.”

“I’ll need to talk to both of them.”

“They’re out searching right now.”

And unfortunately, given how poorly the search was being run, there was no telling when they would return. “Well, let me know when they get back. If I’m not here, let them know I need to talk. I’ll also want to talk to the girls’ cabin mates.”

“Two of them have already gone home. A lot of parents are coming to collect their kids. If we don’t find Laura and Regina tonight, then tomorrow we’re going to officially close down.”

That meant my first priority would need to be to talk to the other campers, to find out anything I could about the girls’ week-and-a-half at the camp – especially whether or not they had any enemies. “I’ll want a list of every camp employee who might have had any contact with the girls during their time here.”

Nora hesitated, her cheeks turning faintly pink. “You seem to be treating this as if you suspect foul play.”

I did, but I wasn’t sure if I should come right out and say so in front of Vera. Quickly, I glanced her way, but Vera seemed lost in her own little world.

“I’ll have you know I did a thorough background check on every member of my staff,” Nora said.

“I’m sure you did.” I tried to make the words sincere, but it’s possible they didn’t come across that way, given that I thought it was pretty ridiculous to protest such a thing when two girls were missing. No, there was no evidence that they had been abducted or harmed except for obstacles to magical scrying, but even without involving magic, it seemed reasonable to suspect such a thing after thirty-six hours with no sign of them. “It’s just that I have to look at all possible angles, and the fact is, you haven’t found them. If they had just gotten into an accident while out for a stroll in the woods, we probably would have run across them by now. But even if they did have some kind of accident, I want to know where they were likely to have gone in the middle of the night, and I can find out by talking to the people they knew.”

Vera was staring at me, her eyes wide. “Regina knew the outdoors. We grew up in the country. Her father wasn’t good for much, but he took her camping every summer since she was three.”

“Is her father here?” I asked. I carefully did not ask after her husband, since she gave the impression that he wasn’t. At least, not anymore.

Vera nodded. “Was too drunk yesterday to be good for much, but he sobered up enough today to go out searching.” She scowled. “Drank and gambled us into bankruptcy before I divorced him.”

Not wanting to get into the middle of some long-standing domestic dispute, I just nodded. “All right, I’m going off to the cabin to talk to those bunkmates.”

“We can go together,” Vera said, standing. “I’ve got to try to figure out what she was wearing.”

* * *

I’m used to being a disappointment. It’s one of the words most commonly used to describe me, especially by extended family like aunts, uncles, cousins, and my grandparents – before they died. Idly, I wondered if death had changed their mind. I’d have to remember to ask Elena sometime.

Vera didn’t use the word, but I could see disappointment written all over her face as we walked out of the mess hall and down the road past the lake in the direction of the cabins. The spark of hope that had flickered to life in her eyes when she’d seen me was gone, replaced by a spark of anger. Perhaps anger was an easier emotion for her to feel than fear, because it gave her a sense of power. I’d felt that way before. I felt it then, in response to her anger and disappointment.