The Killing Game (36 page)

She’d called ahead to make certain Lance’s parents would be home and the wife, Raquel, had been a bit baffled by the call but had assured her that, now retired, they would be tending to their farm, ten acres just outside Hood River. Raquel’s directions and the GPS route were spot-on, and as September wound her way along a rutted gravel lane guarded by fir trees, she caught glimpses of a snowcapped Mount Hood piercing a thin layer of clouds. Not a bad place to retire, she thought, and a huge step up from the rental they’d lived in during their years in Laurelton.

An older SUV peeked from an open garage that was separate from the main house, an A-frame built sometime in the late seventies. September pulled to a stop beside it, scooped up her messenger bag, and headed toward a sagging front porch. A few outbuildings were scattered around the fields where a couple of goats scampered and a clutch of brightly feathered chickens pecked at the ground, clucking softly as she passed. Further off, three horses grazed, and September was reminded of the one Lance had supposedly ridden in the fields behind the rental house.

Before she reached the first step the screen door opened with a clatter. A man and a woman, both somewhere in their sixties, greeted her together. A small dog, a spotted terrier of some kind, dashed out, jumping up on her despite the woman’s shouts of, “Down, Precious! You get down!” She finally scooped up the excited dog and whispered into one pointed ear, “Troublemaker!” then she set her back down and shooed her inside. The dog launched itself at the screen door, so Mrs. Patten took the time to yank the heavy door shut. “Sorry,” she apologized as the dog’s barks became muffled and frustrated. “You must be Detective Rafferty.” She dusted her hands on worn jeans and managed a worried smile.

“Yes, I am. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” she said, showing her ID.

“What’s it about?” the man asked.

The woman jumped in. “I’m Raquel and this is Maury.”

They shook hands all around, though Maury was more reluctant than his wife. September was about to respond, but Maury cut her off. “Something about our boy? Don’t suppose you found him.” He was a tall man with a buzz cut of gray hair and a trimmed beard that didn’t hide his jowls. His jeans were belted below a stomach covered by a T-shirt that had seen better days, and though he was supposedly retired, his whole demeanor suggested he was too busy to be bothered with any interruptions, even—or maybe especially—the police.

“Is it Lance?” Raquel asked anxiously. Behind rimless glasses, her eyes swam with worry. “Do you have news about him after . . . after all this time?”

There was no way to sugarcoat this. “We’ve located some bones in a house on Aurora Lane and we’re trying to identify them. All we know is that the body was of a male, approximately eighteen years old.”

Raquel grabbed her husband’s meaty hand to squeeze it. “Lance? Oh God.” She dropped into a once orange plastic chair.

“What house?” Maury asked.

“The Singletons’,” September answered. “At the north end of the lane toward the lake.”

“Think I saw something about that on the news.” He swallowed hard, but his face set in a scowl.

“We’re trying to ID the body,” September said.

“Boy was always trouble,” Maury stated flatly.

His wife protested, “But he had a good heart.”

Snorting his disagreement, Maury lowered himself into the chair next to his wife’s and waved September onto a stool placed against the porch railing. His jaw worked as he let Raquel cling to one hand. “What is it you want to know? It’s been a long time.”

“He would be thirty-two now,” Raquel whispered.

“You don’t know what happened to him?”

“No,” Raquel whispered hoarsely. “We haven’t seen him since before he graduated from high school.” Her throat clogged, but she managed to get hold of herself.

Maury’s crusty exterior melted a little as he patted his wife’s knee. “He just up and disappeared when we were living in Laurelton in that rental. The one that skinflint Mamet owned.”

His wife sent him a disapproving look.

“Well, he was. A type A-one bastard in my book.” Ignoring his wife, Maury, whom September had expected to be the silent one, started talking. “The truth is, our kid got caught up in the wrong crowd. First drinking, then marijuana, and then God knows what else. We had lots of fights about it and he took off a couple of times but always came back.” He let out a long breath and said a little more quietly, “And then he just didn’t.” With a look toward the mountain, Maury added, “The kid just couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get his act together. Never figured out which it was. Maybe a little of both.”

Raquel was shaking her head, gray ponytail sliding across her shoulders. “We looked for him. Called all his friends, the hospitals, the police . . . anyone we could think of. He didn’t have a cell phone back then, but we had a family computer, such as it was.”

“Hand-me-down clunker from my brother,” Maury interjected.

“But,” Raquel went on, “nothing . . . not a word. Ever.”

“Do you know if he went by a nickname?” September asked.

Raquel shot her a look. “A nickname? No? Maury, here, called him ‘Son,’ but that was about it.”

“What about Laser?” September asked as a breeze kicked up, touching the back of her neck.

Maury shook his head but said, “That crowd he ran around with had all sorts of names, or handles, or whatever you want to call it, for each other. Some not so nice, if you know what I mean.”

“Would you happen to have anything of his that might help me either to ID the body or eliminate Lance as the victim?”

Raquel shuddered at the idea.

“You mean like for a sample of his DNA?” Maury asked. “Like they do in all those cop shows? What, a toothbrush or a hairbrush?”

September nodded. “Or a lock of his hair, maybe a first tooth from when he lost them?”

Raquel threw her husband a dark glance. “We’ve got nothing of Lance’s.”

“I thought it best when we moved here to start clean,” Maury said. “We’re retired and this is a new phase of our lives, so . . .”

“So we threw away everything. Gave what we could to charity, then tossed the rest.” Raquel slipped her hand away from her husband’s as a goat bleated. “
His
idea.”

“I already admitted that,” he said flatly. Obviously this was not the first time they’d had this discussion, a sore point in their marriage.

“What about the name of your dentist, in case I need to compare his records to the victim?”

Raquel said, “Dr. Emerson saw him. He had a practice on Main Street back then . . . but I think maybe Lance’s last appointment was before he got his permanent teeth. We, um, we didn’t have a lot of extra money back then, y’know, before I inherited this place.” She rubbed her hands together between her knees. “I’m sorry.”

“She blames me for that, too,” Maury said.

September changed the course of the conversation, asking about Lance’s relationship with Tommy Burkey and/or Davinia Singleton, but neither of them had much to say on either subject. She asked more about his drug use and they reluctantly talked about it a little but were clearly uncomfortable.

“I understand you had horses on Aurora Lane,” September said, purposely changing to a more neutral topic.

“A horse. Lance rode him some,” Maury said. “Now we have room for a few more.”

They looked up at her expectantly, waiting for the next question, but September was about finished. “Did you know any of the other people who rented the house before or after you?” she asked.

“The Kirkendalls lived there before us,” Raquel said. “Kim and . . . oh, what was her husband’s name? He was a real piece of work.”

“Leland,” Maury supplied. “Son of a bitch parked his RV on the front lawn. Made horrible ruts. Remember?”

Raquel said, “’Course I do. Couldn’t plant anything there for years.”

“And you think that loser Mamet would fix it? Hell no. Even though he evicted them for not paying their rent on time.”

“Well, they had a reason,” Raquel said and Maury nodded, as if the Kirkendalls’ troubles were common knowledge.

“And that was?”

Raquel said, “Their daughter of course.”

“What happened?” September asked.

“She died. That’s the real reason we got the place,” she said. “Their lives fell apart. They stopped paying rent. They stopped doing anything, as I heard it. The mother, Kim, couldn’t stand living there after Wendy was gone.”

“She was killed,” Maury said bluntly. “Drowned . . .”

“No, strangled,” Raquel said. “And dropped in the lake. Happened right before we moved in.”

September felt her skin break out in gooseflesh. Something niggled at the edge of her consciousness. Almost a memory. “I think I recall her death.”

“Yeah, it was all over the news,” Maury said. “Anything else we can help you with? We’ll look for anything of Lance’s that might help, though there’s not much here.”

Raquel said to September, “But if you do find out those—bones—are my son . . .”

“You’ll be the first to know,” September assured her.

She drove back to the office, ignoring the speed limit. The discussion of Wendy Kirkendall had built an urgency inside her. She went straight to her desk, glad George was engrossed in his computer and Gretchen, though September saw her jacket on the back of her chair, was away from her desk. She sat down and accessed her computer terminal. One quick search and Wendy Kirkendall’s name popped up. Now September remembered. It had been on the news when September was in high school herself. Wendy’s body had been found floating in Schultz Lake, but she’d died of asphyxiation, the result of a willow branch tied around her young neck.

* * *

“I’ll drive,” Luke said, snagging his keys from his pocket as Andi rounded the corner from her bedroom. She’d been dreading this meeting with Carter and the Carrera brothers all night, but she’d told herself not to be intimidated; she could get through it. With everything she had to deal with lately, including Trini’s death and the suspicion that she might have been murdered by Jarrett, Andi figured dealing with the twin thugs would be a piece of cake. Especially because Luke would be with her.

“I think I can handle it.” She found her own set of keys. “I feel like I’ve been an invalid, and I’m over that.”

“I like it.”

She walked past him to the front door, unlocked it, and stepped into the cool morning air. She breathed deeply, smelling the scents of fir and pine and the earthy odors coming off the lake behind the house.

God, she loved it here.

And she loved being here with Luke.

Don’t go there
, she reminded herself as she fantasized for half a second about a future with him, here, so close to the lake that she could watch herons, ducks, and osprey fly over.

A jacket tossed over his shoulder, Luke followed her onto the porch and yanked the door shut. “What’s that?” he asked in a tight voice.

“What?”

He was staring at the willow wreath she’d hung on the door, his willow wreath. Her heart clutched as she saw him gingerly pluck a white card from the ring of sticks.

“Another note?” he asked, and her heart went cold. All the happiness she’d felt seconds earlier, the fantasies, had shriveled.

Carefully, just touching the edges, he turned the card over.

Little birds should be careful whom they choose as a mate. Tsk, tsk. There is no such thing as faithfulness. You should know where he’s also been putting his pecker. Be careful. Seabirds can die, too.

“Shit,” Luke muttered under his breath.

Andi started quaking deep inside. “What is this? Why are they doing this?”

“To scare you,” he said grimly.

She shook her head.

“Our note writer is threatened by me,” he observed. “Not sure what he means about being faithless. Maybe he thinks our relationship has gone on longer than it has.”

“All this about birds. Trini and me . . . and now seabirds?”

“Some kind of clue,” Luke said. “Goddammit. He’s a coward.”

“It’s getting personal and he’s pissing me off.” That was true. The shivering inside her body, the fear, was morphing into anger. She was furious about Trini’s death, about her brother’s involvement, about creeping around and trying to terrorize her and now . . .
now
bringing Luke into his sick, twisted game.

“We have to find him,” Luke said grimly.

“You got that right.”

“He either came last night or very early this morning.” He stared at the ground. “If he drove, there might be tracks . . . but I don’t see any.” His gaze ran over the area around the cabin, the ground under the windows. “No footprints visible.”

Andi checked her watch and hesitated. “Maybe we should call the police,” she said, then thought about their treatment of her brother. “But right now, we’re late.”

“Give me a sec. I’ll be right back. Give me your house key, then start the car.”

She didn’t argue, just gave him the key, then headed to her Tucson and slipped behind the wheel. She’d barely switched on the ignition when she saw Luke appear on the porch again. He took a second to lock the house, then, with his jacket and a small plastic bag holding the card, jogged to her SUV and climbed inside. “Let’s go,” he said, and before he snapped on his seat belt, he gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

“What was that for?”

“Not letting the bastard’s attack on me get to you.”

“Oh, it got to me. Just not the way he intended.”

Luke flashed her a smile as he clicked his belt into place. “Hit it. We don’t want to keep the Carrera brothers waiting.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said and did a quick one-eighty before ramming the SUV into drive.

They were only a few minutes tardy by the time they reached the Wren Development offices. It wasn’t surprising that Carter was waiting for them, but the fact that Emma, more sober than Andi had seen her in weeks, was also waiting was a little unexpected. Dressed in a black dress, coat, and heels, her makeup perfect, her eyes only slightly bloodshot, she looked ready to do battle. Of course the ever-dutiful Ben was at her side.

Carter took one look at Luke and his features tightened. “This is a meeting for the members of the business only.” He wagged a finger at both Ben and Luke. “You two can wait outside. Maybe you can go get coffee or,” to Luke, “a beer. It must be five o’clock somewhere.”