Who? Why?
She shivered, wondering if she knew, but as her thoughts turned in that direction, she forced them back to the furthest recesses of her mind. No. No . . .
Sitting at the table, she watched the sun rise through the east window. It had been the better part of a week since she’d found the body. Today she would tell Earl what she’d beheld. And she would ask him to bring Mary back to Siren Song, and they would bury her somewhere in the graveyard behind the lodge, not in the grave with her name on it, unfortunately, as that one was already filled with another’s body.
CHAPTER 1
November . . .
Middle of the day, and it was as gloomy as night. Rain spattered Detective Savannah Dunbar’s windshield as her vehicle bumped along the cracked and broken drive, and she worried that the precipitation might turn from a misting swirl to an out-and-out deluge of renowned Oregon rain. She was wearing sneakers with her black pants and blouse. Not exactly regulation, but in her condition she didn’t much care.
She had caught the call that had come into the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department, and had said she would check out the abandoned property that was reported to have evidence of squatters. She was driving back from lunch, and Bankruptcy Bluff—well, Bancroft Bluff, though anyone who knew the tale of the doomed homes slowly sliding off the dune into the Pacific referred to the debacle by its nickname—was right on her way.
Now she pulled up cautiously in front of one of the mammoth homes. It sat well back from the cliff, but if Mother Nature had her way, the house might eventually become an abandoned ruin as well. The lawsuits over this construction folly were ongoing and vicious. All that was needed was for some vagrant to either burn the place down or get in some accident where he was injured or killed.
Her cell phone buzzed. She picked it up and glanced down at its face as she was opening her door. Clausen. Her unofficial partner at the moment. Grimacing, knowing what she would hear, she answered cautiously, “Hey, there.”
“Savannah, what the goddamn hell? Don’t you dare go into that building alone! You shouldn’t be there.”
She found herself irked beyond measure. They all treated her like she was porcelain these days. “Then get your ass down here, Fred,” she snapped.
“I’m on my way. Don’t go in there!”
“I’ll wait,” she said, punching the off button on her phone.
Over the past six months she’d changed from the quiet newbie on the force to the impatient, growling pregnant woman with no sense of humor. Well, too damn bad. Yes, pregnancy had transformed her, and yes, everyone in the department wanted to baby and coddle her, and yes, there was a part of her that appreciated it, but damn it all . . . she could still make her own choices. Being knocked up hadn’t addled her brain.
Much.
She grimaced as she stepped outside, feeling the cold drops fall on her head. She quickly pulled up the hood of her jacket before the precipitation could flatten her hair to her scalp. The reasons for agreeing to become her sister’s surrogate were actually getting a little harder to remember. Kristina had begged, begged, begged her to help her have a baby, as she and her husband, Hale, were unable to conceive. Savannah had reluctantly agreed, even going so far as to volunteer to be a surrogate. In actual fact it was a gestational pregnancy: the embryo created by Kristina’s egg and Hale’s sperm had been implanted into Savannah’s womb. She was merely the vessel to give them their heart’s desire, except . . . recently she’d wondered if her sister was really feeling the same all-consuming need to be a mother. She’d been so gung ho, almost desperate, in the beginning, but as her due date approached, Savannah had sensed a weakening in Kristina’s ardor to join the ranks of motherhood. Troubling, especially when Hale St. Cloud’s enthusiasm had always been a little hard for Savannah to read. But then Hale was part Bancroft, as in Bancroft Bluff, and he was involved in the family real estate business with his grandfather, Declan Bancroft, an irascible entrepreneur who’d begun Bancroft Development decades before. Though Savvy had met Declan only a handful of times, it was clear he was a real piece of work, and she figured that Hale was probably cut from the same cloth.
But their baby boy was on his way, and they both were going to have to step up and soon. Savannah kept telling herself that once the baby was here, their maternal and paternal instincts would kick in. They all, herself included, were just feeling the predelivery jitters.
Expelling her breath, she looked toward the largest house in this cul-de-sac cluster. The Donatellas’. Right on the cliff’s edge and being eroded underneath. She knew it well, as it had been the scene of a double homicide earlier in the year, which was still under investigation. The case had languished for months with no new information.
Savannah walked a few steps closer to the behemoth of a house, her eyes taking in the red tile roof and the wrought-iron filigree of the Spanish Colonial. It was too dangerous to enter, but she wasn’t in need of going inside, as it wasn’t the one with the reported vagrants. That house was coming up on her right—a Northwest contemporary—and, though it was still standing on firm ground, given enough time, it looked to be in definite peril of crashing down to the beach far below. She could smell smoke in the damp air. The nut bag inside had built himself or herself a fire.
She hoped to God it was in one of the fireplaces.
Waiting impatiently for Clausen, she let her gaze fall to her own wide stomach, which was already straining her jacket’s buttons. Man, she was going to be glad to be herself again. This “looking like a beached whale” thing was highly overrated, no matter what anyone said.
Five minutes later Clausen pulled into the drive in a department-issued black Jeep with TILLAMOOK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT slashed across it in italicized, bold yellow letters. Someone had dubbed the officers bumblebees, which was maybe better than pigs, but the jury was still out on that.
Clausen, midfifties, with short gray hair and a roundish body, which he was constantly trying to keep from becoming full-on fat, stalked up to her hatless, water coalescing in his hair. “Stay out here,” he ordered.
“Bite me,” she returned.
“Jesus, Dunbar. Pregnancy has made you unreasonable.”
“Cranky, yes, but I’m the voice of reason.”
He shot her a look that could have meant anything and then headed to the front door and turned the knob. “Locked,” he said.
“Must be a way in.”
“Stay here. I’ll go around the back.”
She bit back what she wanted to say about that and let him commandeer the investigation as he was her senior and felt he was just plain better than she was, anyway. Tamping down her annoyance, she stepped onto the porch and kept her eyes on the front door, flanked by two shuttered windows. The owners of this house had all but abandoned it, as had most of those who owned property here, and she could see the first signs of neglect: blistering paint on the siding, a yard where dandelions and crabgrass were edging out the lawn, a weathered welcome sign that listed to one side.
Her cell phone blooped, meaning someone had sent her a text, and she glanced down at her pocket, debating about checking it.
Suddenly the front lock clicked loudly, and the door swung inward. Savannah placed her hand on the butt of her gun, which was sticking up from her hip holster. A man came staggering through, his eyes wild, his breathing rapid. He stopped short upon seeing Savannah. His hair was chin length, matted and separated, and his beard was an uneven mess of brown and gray. If he’d changed his clothes in this decade, she would have been surprised. His denim jeans were more brown than blue, and his shirt was also brown, though she suspected it hadn’t started out that color. She hoped to hell it was from dirt.
“Ohhh . . .” he said, his eyes traveling down to her girth. He staggered forward, and she stepped back, her hand yanking out the gun.
“Don’t move,” she ordered fiercely, but his hands reached out and his palms spread over her belly, even while she held up her gun.
“A baby,” he said, his mouth showing a gap-toothed smile.
Her barrel was pointed at his chin, but he didn’t seem to notice. She hesitated, her heart pounding, and then Clausen shot through the door behind him, saw he was right in front of her, grabbed the guy by his collar, and yanked him backward, hard.
“Police! Get down on the ground!” he ordered. His own gun had jumped into his hand.
“Wait, wait,” Savannah warned.
“Down on the ground!”
“No, no! It’s okay. It’s okay. Fred!” she yelled as Clausen threw the guy onto the porch face-first. “He didn’t do anything. Really. I’m okay. He didn’t do anything!”
Clausen quickly zip-tied his hands behind his back, and when the man didn’t resist, he helped him to his feet.
There was a red scrape on his cheek, but the man murmured, “Unto us a child is born,” smiling beatifically, his eyes closed as he rocked from side to side. “The baby Jesus come to save us all.”
“Are you all right?” Clausen demanded of Savannah, never taking his gaze from the man.
“I’m fine. He didn’t hurt me. I think he was . . . congratulating me.”
Clausen’s eyes narrowed on the bedraggled man as he continued to mutter and chant. “He for real?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?” Clausen asked him loudly. The man kept swaying and murmured something that sounded like a song. “You’re trespassing. Broke a window in the back. That’s breaking and entering, you understand? Sir? What’s he saying?” Clausen demanded, throwing a quick glare at Savannah.
“I think it’s ‘Jesus loves me! This I know.’”
The man suddenly opened his eyes and gasped, his gaze turning to Savannah. “You’re having a boy! Is he the savior? Are you Mary?”
“She’s not even the mother,” Clausen growled, snapping a pair of cuffs on the nut job’s thin wrists. “C’mon, pal. Let’s get you outta here. Lucky you didn’t burn the place down.” To Savannah, he said, “He had the fireplace crammed with trash and driftwood. It was spilling over the hearth and onto the carpet.”
Clausen marched him to his Jeep, but the guy kept twisting around, trying to see Savannah.
“You are his mother,” he said over his shoulder. “You are!”
There was no way she could explain to him that technically, no, she wasn’t. She walked back to her Ford Escape, the vehicle she’d traded in her Jeep for earlier in her pregnancy. There were only so many black and yellow department vehicles available, thank God; it was the only good thing about the budget cuts plaguing the state and counties. As she climbed inside, she felt Kristina and Hale’s boy kick one insistent foot under her right ribs. He had gone head down early and had been bicycling merrily away for the past few weeks. She laid her hand on the spot and smiled. A moment later she reminded herself that he wasn’t hers. Her smile dropped, and she put both hands on the wheel and drove away from Bancroft Bluff.
She arrived at the station a couple of minutes behind Clausen and the vagrant. They both pulled into the back lot and headed toward the rear door.
“His name’s Mickey,” Clausen told her as she let him lead the suspect in ahead of her.
“Last name?” Savannah asked.
“Haven’t got that far yet.”
She watched them head down the department’s back hall, and as they turned the corner that led to the holding cells beyond, Mickey was in full voice, singing, “Cuz the Bible tells me so!”
There was something eerie about his obsession, and Savannah tried to shake off the feeling as she glanced straight ahead across the wide room, which ran north/ south and offered a full-line view from rear door to front. To her left was the back hall where Clausen had just taken Mickey, a deceptively short walk to the warren of offices and holding cells that took up the western side of the building.
“Who was that?” May Johnson, the dour officer who manned the department’s front desk, asked from across the room. It was damn near impossible to scare a smile out of the woman, though she liked Savannah well enough.
“Mickey,” Savannah said, her eye turning to the puddle of water growing beneath her own feet from the rivulets of water falling off her jacket.
“Getting nasty out there,” Johnson observed, frowning as she glanced out the front windows.
“Yep.” The misting rain was now starting to come down in buckets. As Savannah unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged out of it, she finally noticed the woman seated on the wooden bench in the waiting area, by the front door. She wore a long blue dress with a high collar trimmed in unbleached white lace, and her hands were folded in her lap. Her blond-gray hair was pulled back in a bun, and she had a way of sitting stiffly that spoke of rigidity in nature. Savannah recognized her immediately.
“Miss Rutledge?” Savannah asked. Catherine Rutledge was the mistress of Siren Song. Savannah had already met her a number of times. Walking toward her with an extended hand, she introduced herself again in case Catherine couldn’t remember her name. “Savvy Dunbar.”
Catherine shook her outstretched hand, but her gaze traveled to her protruding belly, and Savannah inwardly sighed. It wasn’t the pregnancy that she minded as much as the explanations that invariably followed.
“Detective,” Catherine said, seemingly distracted by the evidence of her pregnancy. The last time they’d met, Savannah had been just entering her second trimester. Now she was close to delivery.
“Are you here to see Detective Stone?” Savvy asked her. The mistress of Siren Song and Langdon Stone had a history—one of those relationships built on basic mistrust and grudging respect—because Lang had been the detective in charge of several investigations that involved Catherine and her brood at the lodge. Lang was about the only man Catherine trusted within the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department, even though she had known Sheriff Sean O’Halloran for years. But circumstances had turned Lang into her current go-to guy whenever there was some new crisis at Siren Song, which happened more often than one would think.
“Well, yes, I came here to talk to him about something, but . . . I’ve changed my mind.”
“Want to leave him a message?” Savvy knew Siren Song did not have a working telephone, and cell phones were way out of Catherine’s experience. The woman ruled the place as if they all lived in a distant century.
“Ms. Dunbar . . . Detective . . . I think I would like to talk to you instead.”
“Well, okay, my desk is right down the hall.” She gestured with her arm. “If you want to—”
“Would it be possible to meet at some other location?” she asked, then turned to throw a stern glance to Johnson, who was unabashedly listening. Johnson, however, was hard to cow, and she just stared back until it was Savannah’s turn to frown at her. With a sniff, Johnson slammed her chair back and stalked down the hall toward the break room.
“Want to tell me what this is about?” Savvy asked.
“Could we meet at Siren Song?” Catherine said. “Maybe this afternoon? I . . . um . . . have some troubles. . . .”
“Some troubles,” Savannah repeated, wondering what fresh hell this was.
“I prefer not to talk here.”
Savannah inwardly assessed the idea. She’d always wanted to enter the locked gates of the lodge and get her own look at what was going on inside. Some of the locals thought Catherine was running a cult, and they’d dubbed it the Colony. Invitations inside were as rare as a black swan, and Catherine never invited men within Siren Song’s sacred walls at all. Lang hadn’t made it past the gates. Now, Savannah wanted to go, but she was about to start maternity leave, and she had no earthly idea what Catherine expected of her.
“When are you due?” Catherine asked.
“Three weeks? About.”
“Ah . . . would this afternoon be convenient?”
“Not really.” Savannah needed to talk to Lang about this, and maybe the sheriff, or something. “Tomorrow? Or maybe this evening?” she proposed, se
eing the shadow that crossed the older woman’s face.
“What time could you be there?” Catherine asked.
“Um . . . seven?” Savvy was already beginning to feel like she was overcommitting herself, but it was too late. Catherine had risen to her feet and was heading for the door, just as Johnson got within earshot.
“I’ll see you then, Detective,” Catherine said in that regal tone she unconsciously used. She glanced down at Savannah’s belly once more and said, “Boys can be a handful.”
Johnson returned to her desk as the door closed behind Catherine. “That woman’s got more secrets than a magician. Be careful when you go out there. That place is haunted.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Haunted,” Johnson repeated sternly.
“She assumed I was having a boy.”
“She knew.”
Savannah shook her head, then walked down the hall toward her office, making a stop at the restroom first to relieve her bladder. This endgame of pregnancy was no picnic. Many times over the past few months she’d asked herself why she’d volunteered to carry Kristina’s baby. She wasn’t really all that selfless by nature, and truthfully, Kristina could be one helluva pain in the ass. She was surprised her sister hadn’t contacted her in the past few hours. The past few weeks she’d called and texted and about driven Savannah crazy.
Texted.
Remembering the earlier bloop from her phone, Savannah pulled her cell from her pocket. Sure enough, there was a message from Kristina.
Dinner tonight? I need to see you.
Savannah made a sound of annoyance, grumbling as she entered the squad room and found her desk. She was glad to see she was alone, and she texted back.
Got a 7 pm appt. Will call when I’m done.
Her cell phone rang almost the instant Savannah set it down on her desk. This must be serious, she thought when she saw it was Kristina. When her sister moved from texts to actually phoning, it was a red-letter day.