Wicked Lies (39 page)

His lips parted in true surprise. “When did you turn into such a witch?”

“I’ve always been a witch,” Laura said with a trace of bitterness. “Ask anyone around town.”

She left him with a lost look on his face that was priceless. It made her almost laugh. He didn’t know her history, of course, and therefore didn’t know she was associated with the “cult” at Siren Song.

But as soon as she’d taken ten steps away, she was seized by a wave of reality-based fear, and she leaned against her locker as she opened it. The truth was, she
was
pregnant. And it
was
his baby. And no amount of wishing and hoping was going to change that fact. Sooner or later, she was going to have to stop shoving the issue aside and face it head-on.

CHAPTER 31

E
cola State Park was on the outskirts of the town of Cannon Beach, named for the cannon replicas from shipwrecks that were placed in vehicle turnouts located at either end of the entrances to the town. Cannon Beach was a more chichi place than Seaside, full of expensive candy stores and clothing shops and restaurants, in contrast to the Coney Island feel of its northern neighbor. It was the “it” place to go on Oregon’s northern coastline, although the affluent were slowly moving to towns south of it as well.

Harrison pulled into the park and inwardly sighed as Noah jumped out of the car almost before it stopped moving, slamming the passenger door hard enough to give the Impala a case of the shakes.

The kid walked to an empty picnic table and threw himself onto the bench. Harrison had shed his jacket earlier, when the sun first threatened to come out from hiding behind the clouds, and now he watched as Noah yanked off the watch cap and ran a hand through his rumpled light brown hair. He next pulled off his black jacket, and without the armor he looked skinny and vulnerable and young.

Grabbing the bench opposite Noah, who was facing the ocean, Harrison made sure he wasn’t in the way of the kid’s view. Noah stared toward the sea for a few moments, then dragged a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, throwing Harrison a dark look in the process to see if he was going to stop him. When he got no reaction, he shook out a cigarette, jammed it to his lips, then pulled out a lighter and touched the flame to the end, sucking hard. He had to fight back a minor cough, which made Harrison inwardly sigh; then he blew out a stream of smoke and said, “They think they’re so smart, you know. The ones we target. Got all the answers. Well, they don’t know jack shit.”

“Mind if I make notes?” Harrison asked, pulling out his notebook from his back pants pocket.

“Do what’cha gotta do.”

“The ones you target . . . Do you mean your classmates or their parents, or both?”

“Their parents are fucked up, man. That’s for sure. So are mine.”

Harrison shrugged. “Kind of a common complaint from your age group, isn’t it?”

“So what? We
did
something about it. That’s what I’m saying.” He turned a sharp blue gaze Harrison’s way. “We hit their weak spot. Opened up their Pandora’s box. Showed ’em they weren’t gods.”

“You broke into their houses and trespassed and pilfered.”

Noah frowned. “Pilfered?”

“Stole,” Harrison explained with a straight face.

“Yeah, well, we formed an alliance to fight back,” he said with sudden passion. “They treat people like they’re nothing! We made them realize that we could enter their world anytime we wanted. Anytime! And take things from them. We’re deadly, man. The Seven Deadly Sinners.”

Harrison wrote down a few notes and said, “But you’re from their same world, economic-wise. How does that translate?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, but he knew.

Still, Harrison would play his game for a while. “Your father is Bryce Vernon. He’s a successful land developer who’s hung on to his wealth, even throughout this whole recession. Your family might be—and probably is—as well-to-do as the Bermans or any of the other families you hit.”

“The Bermans suck!” he said through clenched teeth. He turned away, trying to hide from Harrison’s gaze suddenly, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Harrison noted how his face grew red with some kind of emotion: anger, frustration, maybe . . . even embarrassment?

Ping.
Harrison felt the answer resound in his brain. For all Noah’s posturing, for all his “leading” of his band of entitled misfits, for all his crowing that he needed to be heard—it wasn’t about any of it. This was something to do with the Bermans themselves, and Harrison had a pretty good guess what it was.

“Britt,” he said, and the stunned look that crossed Noah’s face was all the answer Harrison needed.

“Britt?” Noah repeated carefully.

“That’s what set this in motion. Britt Berman. Your imagination did the rest. Your initials . . . your need to make something big and important out of mere jealousy. You turned your rejection and angst into a whole
thing.
”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. This Deadly Sinners alliance. It’s all smoke and mirrors. A way to attack those who’ve wronged you. You. Noah Vernon. And you got your posse to go along with it because they bought into your whole alliance thing. What did she do? Berman. Set you up to watch you fall? Humiliate you? Crush you? Maybe just never even look at you?” He paused, then said, “She doesn’t even know you exist.”

“Oh, yes, she does.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Yes, she does!”

Harrison shook his head.

“She knows me!” he insisted. “Especially now!”

“Now that you’ve broken into her house and got your Deadly Sinners in the news? And then tomorrow, when you’re eighteen, you want me to blast your name across the paper and increase the Myth of Noah Vernon. How am I doing so far?”

“You’d better take me back now, or I’ll scream that you kidnapped me. I really will.”

“Go ahead. You called the paper and left your number.”

“And you’d better not print any of that, either!”

“You don’t want to be heard anymore?”

“Not the way you’re doing it!”

“By pointing out the truth?”

“You say anything about Britt and I’ll sue you for every cent you own!” He spat out his cigarette and stomped the smoldering butt with his heavy boot.

“You and dear old Dad?”

Noah looked trapped. He glanced around, as if searching for somewhere to run. Harrison waited a few moments and could almost see the air seep out of his balloon as his shoulders slumped and his body sank onto the bench.

“Don’t worry, badass. Your secret’s safe with me,” Harrison said. “I don’t have to tell the world you’re just another lovesick loser. I’ll say you’re a Deadly Sinner and you’re the brains of the group and should be tried as an adult. You want to go to jail for this fiction, be my guest. It’s up to the judge, not me and not public opinion. I could put a different spin on it, if you want me to. Write that you were going to extreme lengths to be noticed by a girl and that—”

“No.” He was firm. “That’s not what it’s about.”

Noah got to his feet and started heading back to the car. Harrison fell in step beside him.

“If this is just about some cockeyed version of street cred,” Harrison said, “it won’t be worth the consequences you could face.”

“I don’t care.”

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

Harrison climbed into the car, and Noah flopped into the passenger seat, his face turned away, his shoulders hunched. Harrison almost felt sorry for the kid. Almost. But he definitely felt both relief and frustration that this story was ending and he could jump fully onto the Justice Turnbull one; relief that he could move on without worrying he was leaving something big, and frustration because the damn thing had taken so much energy in the first place. He needed to be with Lorelei.

And then he should be writing her story. And the Colony’s. And Turnbull’s. They were all interwoven, and it was several serious levels more intense than the Deadly Sinners’ teen drama.

Harrison dropped Noah off back at his house. Then he stopped at the
Breeze
and typed up a rather banal account of his meeting with Noah, explaining that Noah Vernon, a boy of privilege who was turning eighteen by the time this story would be published, had been bored and wanted to be something bigger, something important, and he coerced his friends into breaking and entering and robbery and trespassing as their golden ticket into another world, the world of crime.

When he turned in the story, Buddy remarked that he’d pretty much nailed Noah Vernon by naming him, but Harrison just ignored him, heading for the door. Noah’s father and a sympathetic judge would foil Noah’s plans to be infamous. Chances were the kid would be in college in a year, joining a fraternity, with a clean, or expunged, record.

That was just how it went a lot of times.

Harrison’s head was full of thoughts of the Deadly Sinners until he passed by the drive to Ocean Park Hospital on his way into Deception Bay. He almost pulled in, just to see Lorelei, but forced himself to let her work at her job. He’d told her to keep her phone on her whether it was hospital rules or not, and figured she would call him if there was trouble.

Still, it was with great difficulty that he let the hospital grounds disappear in his rearview mirror. Justice had attacked her the night before. Harrison was going to make damn sure he was with her before nightfall this evening, but for now, he wanted to speak with Zellman, if he could talk the man into an interview.

He’d just passed the access road to Lorelei’s house when something caught his attention, and he turned around at the first available empty drive and retraced his route back to her access road. As he drove up it, he saw a vehicle nearly obscured by the brush running riot on either side. A black Range Rover. The one he’d damn near sideswiped the night before.

Now he pulled up beside it and got out, circling the black vehicle. Nobody inside. Empty. He tried the driver’s door and was amazed when it opened. The interior light came on. Sliding inside, he popped the glove box and pulled out the registration. He stared at it, perplexed, for almost a full minute.

The Range Rover was registered to a Brandt Zellman.

Zellman?

The Zellman he was on his way to see?

That
Zellman?

“Huh,” Harrison said.

What were the chances that this Brandt Zellman was related to Dr. Maurice Zellman? Like 99.99 percent? Maybe Brandt was the man’s son? Harrison was pretty sure he remembered the doctor was married and had one teenaged son.

But what the hell did this have to do with Justice Turnbull? Anything?

Had Justice “borrowed” Zellman’s son’s car?

Harrison felt a chill roll down his back at the thought of what that meant. Was Zellman even okay? Maybe he should call the authorities and have them send a patrol car to check on the good doctor.

Better yet, he decided, he should check things out for himself first.

CHAPTER 32

H
arrison headed south toward Zellman’s house but wheeled into the Ocean Park Hospital drive first, squealing a little as he took the turn at the last moment. He drove fast to the parking lot and practically leapt from his vehicle, checking his watch. About three o’clock. Laura would be on the floor somewhere, and he really needed to see her first.

But he was thwarted almost immediately by a flurry of activity in the ER that had the whole hospital hopping: a three-car pileup just north of Deception Bay. Racing teens, he learned, but that was all he got from them.

He tried phoning Laura’s cell, but it went straight to voice mail. He started feeling anxious, berating himself for not hanging closer to her, and had to give himself a stern talking-to.
She’s okay. She’s at work. Getting panicky isn’t going to help anyone, or solve anything.
Besides, the TCSD had called; they were scheduled for another interview later in the day, after the detectives had gone over all the initial information.

Phoning her cell again, this time he left a message confirming that on her dinner break, which she’d said tended to be in the late afternoon, they were going to meet with the authorities.

Hanging up, he wondered if he should have told her about finding Brandt Zellman’s Range Rover abandoned near her house. Once more he considered going to the police. Once more he decided to be first on the scene himself.

Feeling superfluous with hospital personnel rushing all around him, as if he were the rock in the middle of the stream, Harrison headed back out to his car. The clouds had fully dissipated, and the beat of the sunshine on his head and shoulders was downright hot. He would go see Zellman now. On his own. Geena had told him where the doctor lived, so there was nothing stopping him.

As he turned out of the hospital drive onto Highway 101, his cell phone rang. Damn. He was going to have to get Bluetooth or risk being pulled over for talking while driving. He answered anyway.

“Frost,” he said.

“Hi, this is Dinah Smythe. You left a message on my phone?”

“Yes, I did,” Harrison confirmed, his eyes peeled for the law as he drove along. “I met with your father.” He sketched out his visit with Herman and finished with, “He told me to call you to confirm everything he said.”

“You’re writing an article?” she asked carefully.

“Just doing research.”

“I’m going to guess this has to do with Justice Turnbull’s escape, since you’re asking about the women of the Colony.”

“Your father . . . intimated . . . that you might be related to them.”

“He believes he’s at least one of thems father, so maybe. Or maybe not. It’s not some burning issue I need to know.”

“He says he had sexual relations with Mary Rutledge Beeman, who is the documented mother of the women who live there.”

“Ahh . . . you’ve read his account.”

“I was curious,” Harrison admitted. He wondered how long it would take to get to Zellman’s.

“My father likes to act as if there were a time when free love reigned at Siren Song. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. There are definitely a lot of women living at the lodge, so somebody fathered them. It’s a lot of hearsay, but my father isn’t exactly what I’d call a reliable source anymore.”