Savich straightened as Tennyson came striding toward him, his hand outstretched. As he pumped Savich’s hand, he said, “Boy, am I ever glad to see you guys. Dad told me he called you, in the middle of the night.” Then he stopped. He looked at Lily.
Sherlock never moved from her perch on Lily’s bed. She said, “Good to see you, Tennyson.” Such a handsome man he was, big and in pretty good shape, and at the moment he looked terrified for his wife. Why didn’t Lily want to see him?
“Lily, are you all right?” Tennyson walked to her bed, his hand out.
Lily slipped her hand beneath the covers as she said, “I’m fine, Tennyson. Do you know that I tried to call Dillon and Sherlock earlier? And my line went dead. Is it still dead now?”
Sherlock picked up the phone. There was a dial tone. “It’s fine now.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
“Maybe,” Tennyson said, leaning down to caress Lily’s pale face, kiss her lightly, “with all that morphine in you, you didn’t do it right.”
“There was a dial tone, then a person’s breathing, some clicking sounds, and then nothing.”
“Hmmm. I’ll check on that, but it’s working now, so no harm done.” He turned back to Savich. “You and Sherlock got here very quickly.”
“She’s my sister,” Savich said, looking at his brother-in-law closely. “What would you expect?” He’d always liked Tennyson, believed he’d been a solid man, one who was trustworthy, unlike Lily’s first husband, Jack Crane. He’d believed Tennyson had been as distraught as Lily when Beth was killed. He had worked with Savich trying to find out who the driver was who’d killed Beth. As for the sheriff, he’d been next to useless. What was wrong? Why didn’t Lily want to see him?
Tennyson merely nodded, then kissed Lily again. He said, his voice as soft as a swatch of Bengali silk, “I can’t wait to get you out of this place, get you home. You’ll be safe with me, Lily, always.”
But she hadn’t been safe, Sherlock thought. That was the bottom line. She’d run her Explorer into a redwood. Hardly safe. What was wrong with this picture?
“What about that psychiatrist, Tennyson?”
“Dr. Rossetti? I would really like you to see him, Lily. He can help you.”
“You said you would institutionalize me if I didn’t see him.”
Savich nearly went en pointe.
Sherlock laughed. “Institutionalize Lily? Come on, Tennyson.”
“No, no, all of you misunderstood. Listen, Lily very probably drove into that redwood last night. This is the second time she’s tried to end her life. You were both here after the first time. You saw how she was. Her mother saw as well. Well, she’s been on medication, but obviously it hasn’t helped. I want her to speak to a very excellent psychiatrist, a man I respect very much.”
“I don’t like him, Tennyson. I don’t want to see him again.”
Tennyson sighed deeply. “All right, Lily. If you don’t like Dr. Rossetti, then I’ll find another man who could possibly help you.”
“I would prefer a woman.”
“Whatever. I don’t know of any female psychiatrists who do anything other than family counseling.”
Savich said, “I’ll have some names for you by tomorrow, Lily. No problem. But we’re a bit off the subject here. I want to know the name of the antidepressants Lily’s been taking and I want to know why they seem to have the opposite effect on her.”
Tennyson said patiently, “It’s a very popular drug, Dillon. Elavil. You can ask any doctor.”
“I’m sure it is. I suppose there are a certain number of people who simply don’t respond appropriately?”
“Unfortunately, yes. I was considering whether or not we should try another drug—Prozac, for example.”
Savich said, “Why don’t you just wait on all the drugs until Lily has seen a new psychiatrist. What happened to Dr. McGill? Weren’t you with him for a while, Lily?”
“He died, Dillon, not two weeks after I began seeing him. He was such a sweet man, but he was old and his heart was rotten. He had a heart attack.”
Tennyson shrugged. “It happens. Hey, I saw you on TV, Savich, there with all the FBI brass. You got the Warlocks.”
“Turns out there was only one warlock, the other was a witch.”
“Yes, a brother and a sister. How did everyone miss that?”
“Good question.” Savich saw that Lily was listening closely now. She loved hearing about their cases, so he kept talking about it. “Turns out one of them wasn’t really a guy, just dressed like one—Timmy was really a she. She even lowered her voice, cropped off her hair, the whole deal. The profilers never saw it and neither did any of my unit. Instead of Tammy, to the world she was Timmy.”
“Did the brother and sister sleep together?” Tennyson said.
“Not that we know of.”
Lily said, “It was MAX who managed to track down that barn?”
“That’s right. Once we knew the Tuttles were back in Maryland, I knew in my gut that this was their final destination, that they’d come home, even though they’d been born and raised in Utah. They kidnapped the boys in Maryland. So where were they? MAX always checks out any and every relative when we know who the suspect is. He dug deep enough to find Marilyn Warluski, a cousin who owned this property. And on the property was this old abandoned barn.”
Thank God no one had mentioned anything about the Ghouls.
Lily said, “How many boys did the two of them kill, Sherlock?”
“A dozen, maybe more. All across the country. We’ll probably never know unless Tammy decides to tell us, and that’s not likely. Her arm was amputated thanks to Dillon’s shot. She’s not a happy camper. Thank God it’s over and the last two boys are all right.”
Tennyson asked, “You shot her? Did you kill the brother too?”
“The brother’s dead, yes. It was a team effort,” Savich said, and nothing more.
“Those poor little boys,” Lily said. “Their parents must have been torn apart when they were taken.”
“They were, but as I said, everything turned out okay for them.”
Nurse Carla Brunswick said from the doorway, “We don’t have to worry about crooks while you guys are in town. Now, I get to order the FBI out. Time for Mrs. Frasier’s sleeping pills. Say good night—even you, Dr. Frasier. Dr. Larch’s orders.”
• It wasn’t until they were in the hospital parking lot that Tennyson said, “I apologize for not realizing sooner that you’d only just arrived. You will stay with me, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Savich said. “Thank you, Tennyson. We want to be close.”
An hour later, after Savich had called his mother and told her not to worry and had spoken to his son, he climbed into the king-size bed beneath the sloped-ceiling guest room, kissed his wife, tucked her against his side, and said, “Why do you really think Mr. Elcott Frasier called us?”
“The obvious: he was worried about his daughter-in-law and wanted us to know right away. Very thoughtful. He thought it through and didn’t just call your mom and scare the daylights out of her.”
“All right, just maybe you’re right. After that heavy dose of craziness with the Tuttles, I guess my mind went automatically to the worst possible motive.”
Sherlock kissed his neck, then settled back in, her leg over his belly. “I’ve heard so much psychobabble about Lily. She tries to kill herself because it’s the only thing to do if she wants to gain peace. She has to drive her Explorer into a redwood to expiate her guilt. It just doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound like Lily. Yes, yes, I remember the first time. But that was then.”
“And this is now.”
“Yes. Seven months. Lily isn’t neurotic, Dillon. I’ve always thought she was strong, stable. And now I feel guilty because we didn’t make an effort to see her over the last months.”
“You had a baby, Sherlock, not a week after Beth’s funeral.”
“And Lily was there for me.”
“She wa
sn’t there with you—not like I was. My God, Sherlock, that was the longest day of my life.” He squeezed her so hard, she squeaked.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said.
“You never curse, but toward the end there you called me more names than I’d ever been called, even by linebackers during football games in college.”
She laughed, kissed his shoulder again, and said, “Look, I know Lily’s been through a very hard time. She’s been understandably depressed. But we’ve talked to her a lot since Beth died. I just don’t believe she was in a frame of mind to try to kill herself again.”
“I don’t know,” he said. He frowned and turned off the lamp on the bedside table. He pulled Sherlock against him again and held her tight. “It really shakes me up, Sherlock, this happening to Lily. It’s so hard to know what to do.”
She held him harder than she had in her life. And she was thinking how fragile Lily had been seven months before, so hurt and so very broken, and then she’d taken those pills and nearly died. Savich and their mother had flown out to California for the second time, not more than a week after Beth’s funeral, to see Lily lying in that narrow hospital bed, a tube in her nose, an IV line in her arm. But Lily had survived. And she’d been so sorry, so very sorry that she’d frightened everyone. And she’d come back with them to Washington, D.C., to rest and get her bearings. But after three weeks, she’d decided to go back to her husband in Hemlock Bay.
And seven months later, she’d driven her Explorer into a redwood.
She squeezed more tightly against him. “I just don’t know how I’d handle it if anything happened to Sean. I couldn’t bear that, Dillon. I just couldn’t. No wonder Lily didn’t.”
After a long time, he said, “No, I couldn’t bear it either, but you know what? You and I would survive it together. Somehow we would. But I think your instincts on this were right. You said something doesn’t feel right. What did you mean?”
She nuzzled her nose into his shoulder, hummed a bit, a sure sign she was thinking hard, and said, “Well, just last week, Lily sent us a No Wrinkles Remus strip she’d just finished, her first one since Beth was killed, and she sounded excited. So what happened over the past four days to make her want to try to kill herself again?”
4
Hemlock Bay, California
“I stole the bottle of pills,” Savich said, as he walked into the kitchen.
Sherlock grinned at her husband, gave him a thumbs-up, and said, “How do we check them out?”
“I called Clark Hoyt in the Eureka field office. I’ll messenger them up to him today. He’ll get back to me tomorrow. Then we’ll know, one way or the other.”
“Ah, Dillon, I’ve got a confession to make.” She took a sip of her tea, grinned down at the few tea leaves on the bottom of the cup. “The pills you took, well, they’re cold medicine. You see, I’d already stolen the pills and replaced them with Sudafed I found in the medicine cabinet.”
Sometimes she just bowled him over. He toasted her with his tea. “I’m impressed, Sherlock. When did you switch them?”
“About five A.M. this morning, before anyone was stirring. Oh, yes, Mrs. Scruggins, the housekeeper, should be here soon. We can see what she’s got to say about all this.”
Mrs. Scruggins responded to Sherlock’s questions by sighing a lot. She was a tall woman, nearly as tall as Savich, and she looked strong, very strong, even those long fingers of hers including her thumbs, that each sported a ring. She had muscles. Sherlock didn’t think she’d want to tangle with Mrs. Scruggins. She had to be at least sixty years old. It was amazing. There were pictures of her grandchildren lining the window ledge in the kitchen and she looked like she could take any number of muggers out at one time.
Savich sat back and watched Sherlock work her magic. “An awful thing,” Sherlock said, shaking her head, obviously distressed. “We just can’t understand it. But I’ll bet you do, Mrs. Scruggins, here with poor Lily so much of the time. I’ll bet you saw things real clearly.”
And Mrs. Scruggins said then, her beringed fingers curving gracefully around her coffee cup, “I’d think she was getting better, you know?”
Both Savich and Sherlock nodded.
“Then she’d just fall into a funk again and curl up in the fetal position and spend the day in bed. She wouldn’t eat, just lie there, barely even blinking. I guess she’d be thinking about little Beth, you know?”
“Yes, we know,” Sherlock said, sighed, and moved closer to the edge of her chair, inviting more thoughts, more confidences.
“Every few weeks I’d swear she was getting better, but it wouldn’t last long. Just last week I thought she was really improving, nearly back to normal. She was in her office and she was laughing. I actually heard her. It was a laugh. She was drawing that cartoon strip of hers, and she was laughing.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, Mrs. Savich, I can’t rightly say. Before I left, Dr. Frasier had come home early and I heard them talking. Then she just fell back again, the very next day. It was really fast. Laughing one minute, then, not ten hours later, she was so depressed, so quiet. She just walked around the house that day, not really seeing anything, at least that’s what I think. Then she’d disappear and I knew later that she’d been crying. It’s enough to break your heart, you know?”
“Yes, we know,” Sherlock said. “These pills, Mrs. Scruggins, the Elavil, do you refill the prescription for her?”
“Yes, usually. Sometimes Dr. Frasier just brings them home for her. They don’t seem to do much good, do they?”
“No,” said Savich. “Maybe it’s best that she be off them for a while.”
“Amen to that. Poor little mite, such a hard time she’s had.” Mrs. Scruggins gave another deep sigh, nearly pulling apart the buttons over her large bosom. “I myself missed little Beth so much I just wanted sometimes to lie down and cry and cry and never you mind anything else. And I wasn’t her mama, not like Mrs. Frasier.”
“What about Dr. Frasier?” Savich asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Was he devastated by Beth’s death?”
“Ah, he’s a man, Mr. Savich. Sure, he looked glum for a week or so. But you know, men just don’t take things like that so much to heart, leastwise my own papa didn’t when my little sister died. Maybe Dr. Frasier keeps it all inside, but I don’t think so. Don’t forget, he wasn’t Beth’s real father. He didn’t know little Beth that long, maybe six months in all.”
Sherlock said, “But he’s been so very worried about Lily, hasn’t he?”
Mrs. Scruggins nodded, and the small diamond studs in her ears glittered in the morning sunlight pouring through the window. Diamonds and muscles and rings, Sherlock thought, and wondered. Mrs. Scruggins said, “Poor man, always fretting about her, trying to make her smile, bringing her presents and flowers, but nothing really worked, leastwise in the long term. And now this.” Mrs. Scruggins shook her head. She wore her gray hair in a thick chignon. She had lots of hair and there were a lot of bobby pins worked into the roll.
It occurred to Sherlock to wonder if Mrs. Scruggins really cared for Lily, or if it was all an act. Could it be that she was really Lily’s companion, or maybe even her guard?
Now where had that thought come from? Hadn’t Mrs. Scruggins saved Lily’s life that first time Lily had taken the bottle of pills right after Beth’s funeral? She was getting paranoid here; she had to watch it.
“I have a little boy, Mrs. Scruggins,” Savich said. “I’ve only had him a bit more than seven months, and you can believe that I would be devastated if anything were to happen to him.”
“Well, that’s good. Some men are different, aren’t they? But my daddy, hard-nosed old bastard he was. Didn’t shed a tear when my little sister got hit by that tractor. Ah, well, I’m afraid I have things to do now. When is Mrs. Frasier coming home?”
“Perhaps as soon as tomorrow,” Sherlock said. “She’s had major surgery and won’t be feeling very well for several
days.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Mrs. Scruggins said and popped her knuckles.
Sherlock shuddered, shot Savich a look, and thanked the older woman for all her help. She shook Mrs. Scruggins’s hand, feeling all those rings grind into her fingers.
Just before they left the kitchen, Mrs. Scruggins said, “I’m real glad you’re staying here. Being alone just isn’t good for Mrs. Frasier.”
Savich felt a deep shaft of guilt. He remembered he hadn’t said very much when Lily had insisted on returning here after recuperating with their mother. She’d seemed just fine, wanted to be with her husband again, and he’d thought, I would want to be with Sherlock, too, and he’d seen her off at Reagan Airport with the rest of the family. Tennyson Frasier seemed to adore her, and Lily, it seemed then to Savich, had adored him as well.
During the months she was home, she hadn’t ever called to complain, to ask for help. Her e-mails were invariably upbeat. And whenever he and Sherlock had called, she’d always sounded cheerful.
And now, all these months later, this happened. He should have done something then, shouldn’t have just kissed her and waved her onto the flight to take her three thousand miles away from her family. To take her back to where Beth had been killed.
He looked down to see Sherlock squeezing his hand. There was immense love in her eyes and she said only, “We will fix things, Dillon. This time we’ll fix things.”
He nodded and said, “I really want to see Lily’s in-laws again, don’t you, Sherlock? I have this feeling that perhaps we really don’t know them at all.”
“Agreed. We can check them out after we’ve seen Lily.”
At the Hemlock County Hospital, everything was quiet. When they reached Lily’s room, they heard the sound of voices and paused at the door for a moment.
It was Tennyson.
And Elcott Frasier, his father.
Elcott Frasier was saying, his voice all mournful, “Lily, we’re so relieved that you survived that crash. It was really dicey there for a while, but you managed to pull through. I can’t tell you how worried Charlotte has been, crying, wringing her hands, talking about her little Lily dying and how dreadful it would be, particularly such a short time after little Beth died. The Explorer, though, it’s totaled.”