Whispers of Fate: The Mistresses of Fate, Book Two (5 page)

“Why didn’t you take it?” she asked quietly, knowing that Old Ninny was probably listening on the other side of the door. “You’ve been out for nearly ten years.”

He looked offended. “I wouldn’t try to cut you and Mark out.”

Yes, you would
, Circe thought, and Jane agreed.

“Why didn’t
you
take it?” he countered.

Circe kept her face still. Jane wasn’t good at lying, but she was. “I promised Mark I wouldn’t. I don’t need it anyway.”

He put his hands on the table, knuckles down. “You couldn’t find it, either, could you?”

CIRCE CLOSED THE
store early, over Old Ninny’s protests.

“I’ve got clients coming in to see me, Jane. What’s got you all riled up? That man today? Or the man waitin’ at home?”

Circe didn’t ask how Old Ninny had known her husband had returned. Old Ninny always knew things. She was talented in ways that Circe was not—would never be. “He is my husband,” Circe pointed out.
It doesn’t matter that he was gone for over twenty-five years.

Old Ninny shook her head as she walked to Circe’s car. Circe had parked in the back alley behind the shops as she always did. “Some husband. He ain’t no good, never was. And the one in here today. That’s Miss Chris’s father, isn’t it, the one tossed in jail all those years ago? Where’s he been? Why’s he coming by now?”

“I told you already. I don’t know,” Circe hissed. The old woman and the voice had been badgering her about it all day.

“You know something,” Ninny said with certainty as she opened the door to the Taurus and tossed herself inside with the agility of a much younger woman.

Circe clenched her teeth and crossed to the driver’s side and sat behind the wheel, adjusting the skirt of her dress around her legs. Ninny thought she knew everything.
She always did know more than you. More than anyone except Summer. And now the Triplets.

The Triplets were her nieces. Three chubby, annoying teenagers. Circe found their plainness offensive, especially now that they’d called so much attention to themselves by getting kidnapped last fall. They were enjoying it, she was sure of it. They’d ridden into town with their mother this morning, but they usually rode home with Circe after their yoga classes.

“Are the girls at the library?”

Old Ninny nodded. “They’re riding home with their mom after her meeting. They called a little while ago. I swear that woman wishes she’d never married into this family. Poor girl still misses John.”

“Once a Haven, always,” Circe said automatically, though she’d changed her name. She’d been Jane Arrowdale. Now she was Circe.
Or was she Jane again now that Mark returned?

“They don’t usually like to be in town so long,” Circe murmured, wary. They were up to something, those girls. She hadn’t been able to control them for years.

Ninny muttered under her breath, “Don’t know that I want them to come around with that man in your house. They can come to mine.”

Circe glanced at her sharply. “Don’t say that,” she snapped. “There’s nothing wrong with him.” The voice laughed,
Ha ha ha ha.

“Nothing that a bullet wouldn’t cure.”

4

TAVEY’S SHOULDERS DIDN’T
relax until she’d turned onto the winding gravel path that led to her family home. Small rocks crunched beneath her Range Rover as she eased her way through some potholes that had developed over the winter. She needed to attend to them, and made a mental note to take care of it this week.

Dixie, who’d been snoring in a crate in the back, barked at the familiar sounds of home, and her tail began thumping the walls of the hard plastic that kept her safe on long drives.

“I know, girl, we’re almost home,” Tavey agreed.

They rounded the curve that marked the end of the forest and the gravel evened out to the paved lane that she’d had put in over a decade ago.

Rolling green hills interspersed with huge spreading oaks rose in terraced layers to the house. Tavey rolled down the window so she could smell the blooms from the rose garden as she drove up to the porte cochere in front of the three-car garage and parked. Built by her grandfather in the 1970s, the walls of the garage were made from Georgia river rock, the doors of dark-stained wood. Garden roses climbed ornate iron trellises on either side of the porte cochere. It looked little like the main house, which was white with Doric columns supporting a large porch. It was lovely; it was home.

Dixie barked again, and Tavey heard the usual chorus of howls from the kennels, which were down a path on the right side of the garage. Her three beagles started howling from inside the house, and Tavey felt a smile kick up one corner of her mouth. The best thing about dogs—they were always happy to see her.

Using the button on her key fob, she popped open the back of the Range Rover and pulled out the custom ramp she’d had installed to let the dogs run from the ground up into the crates. Dixie ran down and shook herself violently when she reached the bottom.

“All right, girl, let’s go see Atohi.”

Tavey was never completely alone despite all her family being gone. The staff that Tavey considered family stayed in the west wing of the house, had since before her grandmother had died when Tavey was sixteen. The housekeeper, Mrs. Pascal, was Chris’s mother; the seamstress and laundrywoman, Mrs. Weaver, was her friend Raquel’s grandmother; and Atohi, the old man who helped her keep and train the hounds, had been a friend of her grandfather. All the servants had worked for Tavey’s family since before she was born, and had helped raise her.

Tavey followed Dixie down the flagstone path toward the kennels, which was lined with fruit trees, mostly peaches and pears, which would soon bear fruit. Every year she canned the majority of the fruit and sold it in the dog-grooming salon and pet store in town.

The path curved up a short slope that had been expertly leveled. A double ring of eight-foot-high wrought iron fences enclosed a small village of buildings she’d had designed and constructed two years earlier. Built with renewable materials and designed to be as efficient as possible, the small doggie hotels housed more than fifty dogs. Each building had a specific purpose. One housed the dogs Tavey used for trailing and tracking, one housed the rescue animals with behavior issues that she and her trainers worked to rehabilitate and train, one housed large rescue dogs, and another was built for human habitation, for when she held training camps. A small trailer had been outfitted as a veterinary surgical facility as well. All the buildings were air conditioned, automated, and designed with dogs in mind.

Inside the circle made by the small buildings, she’d put in an agility course and a doggie pool. It was everything she’d dreamed of as a girl.

Tavey didn’t know why, but she’d never wanted to breed show dogs like her grandfather. They were beautiful, but she’d always had an affection for the stray dogs she’d seen in the streets of Fate. She’d asked her grandfather to save them, to pick them up, but he’d always refused. When she and her friends Summer and Chris and Raquel played together after church on Sundays, Tavey would get them to help her feed the stray dogs by the railroad tracks.

When Summer had disappeared, her goal of starting a dog rescue shifted a little. Instead of just rescuing strays, she’d wanted to make the best tracking dogs in the world. When she’d inherited her grandfather’s estate, her first task had been to change the breeding program of the hounds. She wanted them bred to be sturdy, affectionate, and good trackers. She wanted to help find people because she hadn’t been able to find Summer. Now, after nearly twenty years of hard work, she had some of the best tracking hounds in the country. She and Atohi also conducted training programs for others who were interested in search and rescue.

She’d never stopped wanting to help the dogs no one else wanted, though.

Dixie ran to the gate and jumped up, tongue lolling out. The dogs who had been playing on the agility course were already waiting at the gate to greet their friend. They were the rescue dogs, mostly big dogs of all breeds and colors, and when they saw Tavey and Dixie, several of them threw back their heads and howled in delight. Atohi quickly moved to shoo them away from the gate so Tavey could enter relatively unmolested. The only dogs who were never allowed to gather in large groups or hang out at the gate were the rehabilitation animals—fights tended to break out.

Tavey opened the first gate, allowing Dixie to enter ahead of her. She closed and latched it securely behind her before moving to the next and nudging Dixie out of the way so she could open it.

“Hey, Atohi,” she greeted the elderly man. He had a tall, slightly stooped frame, closely cut gray hair, skin the color of burnt apricots, the high cheekbones typical of the Cherokee, and a proud forehead. He’d seemed ancient when she was a girl and now he seemed almost timeless, as if he were as much a part of her home as the land itself.

As old as he was, he still woke at five a.m. and took the tracking hounds through the trails in the woods on a practice run, then worked all day tending the dogs until it was time for dinner.

“Miss Tavey,” he greeted her as he had when she was a child, his face grave, but humor floated behind his dark eyes.

“How is everyone today?” Tavey held out her hands for the eager dogs to sniff, patting soft heads, scratching behind an ear, until all the dogs had greeted her. They walked together in a big herd back to the agility course.

“Doin’ fine. You find that girl?”

“Yes, sir, we did. Dehydrated and shocked, but otherwise okay.”

“That’s good news, then.”

“Yes, it is. Always a relief to find them alive.” She changed the subject. “What about that shepherd that was brought in a week ago. Still won’t let you pet him?”

“He and I are still getting to know each other, but I think he’s coming around.”

Tavey nodded. “All right. I’ll just put Dixie away and head to the house. Come by when you get a chance; I picked up some more books from the library yesterday.”

A small smile tickled the corner of his mouth. “That Mrs. Cooley still there?”

Tavey rolled her eyes. “She is.”

“She sure does dislike you girls.”

You girls.
That’s what he’d called Tavey and her friends Chris, Raquel, and Summer when they were children—what he still called them, even without Summer.

The fall that Summer disappeared, he’d been in the kennels when Chris and Summer had decided to take a trip into the woods. She knew it tore him up that he hadn’t stopped them, that he hadn’t been able to find Summer when Chris came stumbling out of the woods alone, shaken.

“She sure does,” Tavey agreed. “You coming in for dinner?”

“What’s that boy cooking tonight?”

Tavey’s lips twitched, but she answered without laughing. “I’m not sure. I haven’t been home since yesterday.”

“Well, we’ll see, then. I might stop by.”

The “boy,” Thomas, was an exchange student from France. He attended classes at the nearby college to help with his English, but he really wanted to be a chef. He used the fresh herbs and vegetables grown on the estate as well as the chickens and turkeys. Tavey didn’t keep cattle, but one of the neighbors did, and they often ate freshly butchered beef. She rarely had a full-time chef on staff, preferring to take turns cooking with whoever on staff was hungry, or offering college students and visiting chefs the chance to cook in the country for a season. And this summer, it was Thomas.

Tavey put Dixie away and headed back to the house; she wanted to clean up and take care of some paperwork. Tomorrow she had church in the morning and her weekly meeting with her best friends after that. If she was lucky, no one would call in sick to the grooming salon and she’d be able to work on more paperwork in the afternoon.

She had scheduled another search-and-rescue training camp for June and was woefully unprepared for it. She’d also just completed her purchase of the land surrounding the abandoned Cherokee Paper Mill, which abutted the northern border of her own land. She’d had to wait until the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Joe Sherman, the serial killer who’d captured Chris and Tavey’s three teenage neighbors, had concluded. While collecting evidence, the FBI and the GBI—Georgia Bureau of Investigation—had dredged the millpond and found several bodies, some of which had yet to be identified. They’d also found a book with Summer’s name written inside. Tavey intended to search the property with her dogs, just in case the FBI wasn’t as thorough as her hounds.

She opened the back door to her house, laughing as she was immediately assaulted by her three beagles, who acted as if she’d returned after being gone for several years.

“Hi, guys. Hi, babies. I missed you, too.” She laughed and bent down to hug them. She couldn’t help but think of Tyler, of what it had been like to be held by him, just for a brief moment—which was ridiculous.

“I’m ridiculous,” she told her beagles, who agreed with wagging tails.

It was time she let go of her ridiculous obsession with him. Long past time.