Alone (A Bone Secrets Novel) (31 page)

Mason nodded.

“Her adoption was arranged by a church on the coast. This church placed quite a few babies back then. But it burned down about twenty-five years ago. At the time the property was owned by Lorenzo Cavallo. He was next on my research list when I found out this morning he’d been murdered yesterday after talking to you guys about the case. I didn’t know he’d offered information about a missing sister.”

“He ran the church?” Ray asked.

“No, just owned the land. He sold it ten years later. There’s a small strip mall in its place that struggles to hold tenants.”

“What else do you know about that old church?” Mason asked.

Brody leaned on their table, his gaze moving between Mason and Ray. “I’m not finding much. Old articles paint it as a small unique congregation. No denomination affiliation.”

“It has to belong to some branch of faith,” argued Ray.

Brody nodded. “You’d think so. It sounds like it was created more from a community of people who followed their pastor. I guess you’d call him a pastor. In my honest opinion, it’s got cult written all over it. A cult masquerading as a church. Everything seems to circle around one man.”

“Lorenzo Cavallo?” Ray asked.

Brody shook his head. “No, I think he was a member. Probably bought the land for the church. The pastor was a Cesare Abbadelli.”

“Italian?” Mason asked.
Like Lorenzo Cavallo?

“Sounds like it,” agreed Brody.

“The priest,” said Ray. “The little priest.”

Brody and Mason stared at him.

“That’s what Abbadelli means. Hey, Jillian’s grandfather was Italian. Don’t look at me like that.” He frowned and took a sip of his coffee.

“And Cesare is a form of Caesar, right?” added Mason. “That’s a powerful name. Priest and Caesar all rolled into one. This guy still alive?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Mason was surprised to hear the reporter say those words. And he didn’t look frustrated or embarrassed. Lesser men would
have talked around it or bluffed their way through the question. His estimation went up a notch.

Ray was making careful notes on his pad. “I’ll look into it, too.”

“I haven’t told you the fun part.” Brody grinned.

Ray’s head lifted. “What?”

“Victoria got an anonymous note this morning with the name of a woman the sender claimed was her birth mother.”

Mason stared at the reporter, wondering if he was pulling his leg.

“Seriously?” asked Ray.

“Yep. Seth called me, asking me to check out the name and address. I gotta say, from what I could see on the driver’s license, the woman could be related.
And
she had a previous address in Seaport. One we were just talking about.”

Mason’s brain couldn’t keep up. “That address for that church? The woman lived at the church?”

“Who knows? But she was out there close to the time when Victoria was born,” answered Brody.

“But why?” asked Ray. “Why tell Victoria in an anonymous note? What’s the motive to do that?”

“That’s the million-dollar question. Victoria and Seth were going to take a drive out to this woman’s Portland address this morning. I haven’t heard how it went.”

“That’s crazy. Why did someone contact her out of the blue like that?” Mason asked.

“Maybe I stirred something up with my questions.” Brody frowned. “I don’t see what I could have done, but the timing is pretty coincidental.”

“You find the father yet?” asked Ray.

“Next on my list,” replied Brody. “I’m waiting for a phone call any minute.”

Mason stood and picked up his cowboy hat from the chair next to him. He held his hand out to Brody. “You gonna go dig under some more rocks?”

Brody rose to his feet, shaking Mason’s hand. “My favorite pastime.”

Mason’s phone rang. “Callahan.”

“Detective Callahan, this is Katy Morris. Trinity Viders’s foster mom.”

Surprise shot through Mason. “Yes, Ms. Morris, I’ve left you a few messages, we’d like to talk with Trinity—”

“This is about Trinity. She left early this morning and I can’t reach her. Her cell phone is off.”

“Now, Ms. Morris—” Mason started.

“I know, detective,” Katy said shortly. “It hasn’t been long. But this isn’t like Trinity. She borrowed my car, saying she would only be a few hours, and now it’s late afternoon. After the shooting yesterday, my panic monitor is in high gear.
Something is wrong.
”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“She said she had to pick up a friend who needed a ride. I didn’t pry.” Her voice cracked. “She’s a good kid, detective. She has boundaries and she sticks to them. Something must have happened.”

“You’ve called her friends?” Mason sympathized for the woman, but there wasn’t a heck of a lot he could legally do at the moment.

“Yes. All of them. No one has heard from her.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Give me your plate number and a description of your car.” He scribbled on a table napkin as Katy spoke. Ray turned it to read it, already dialing his cell phone to
get the word out. “What about a boyfriend? She seeing anybody? Did you call him?”

There was a short pause. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” said Katy.

She didn’t sound convinced.

“Maybe you better give her girlfriends another call and press harder about the boy issue. I could see them trying to cover for her if you’re not supposed to know about a boy.”

Ray nodded emphatically.
The guru of female teen behavior.

Mason ended the call. The woman’s worry had triggered acid to irritate his stomach. He treated it with a last sip of cold Starbucks coffee. His burn intensified.

“I don’t like this,” Brody stated. He’d listened to Mason’s side of the conversation with his feet spread apart and his arms across his chest. His scowl had intensified with every second. “That girl seemed responsible to me.”

Mason raised an eyebrow. “Big words from a man without kids. We’re talking about teenage girls. There are no rules.”

His ear to his phone, Ray nodded again, pointing at Mason, agreeing.

“Either way,” said Mason. “I’ve added Trinity Viders to my list for the day. I want to know where she is.”

“Turn here,” Jason stated, squinting through the windshield. He pointed to her left.

Trinity slowed the car, looking for a turnoff, her nose nearly touching the top of the steering wheel. Their current road had steadily deteriorated. It was more gravel than blacktop. Hell, it was more mud than blacktop. She didn’t know if they’d officially passed out of the state forest, but it didn’t matter. The skyscraping firs still blocked the sky.

They’d headed west on Highway 26 toward the coast, driven up and over the mountain range, but then turned off after the highway had almost returned to sea level. According to a highway sign, they’d summited the range at sixteen hundred feet, but
the mountains rose up higher around the road. It wasn’t much of a highway; a lot of the time the road was two lanes. Thankfully there’d been almost no traffic.

The other drivers were smart, Trinity admitted. Who would be on the road in this wet mess? She expected to see an ark float by at any minute. Yesterday, there’d been mudslides in the West Hills of Portland and in one of the coastal communities, moving homes and wrecking barns. The rain showed no sign of letting up, smashing records for the month. Wind whipped the firs lining the roads, scattering forest debris.

She’d said a prayer as she drove through a tunnel on the highway. The tunnel had been dedicated to a highway worker who died years back when part of the tunnel roof collapsed as he inspected it for water damage. She’d whispered one prayer for his soul and one for her safe passage. Today she’d fought the urge to close her eyes as she drove through; not a good idea.

She spotted the turn, marked by a tiny street sign, and carefully guided the car through the ruts. “This is crazy. How much farther is it?”

“Not too far.”

“You’ve been saying that since we left.”

“It just seems longer because you have to drive so slow.”

Trinity bit her tongue. Damn right she was going slow. She was terrified that one of the ruts would be deeper than it looked. The road was nearly all standing water. It was hard to see. Rain pounded the roof of the car, huge drops falling from the firs. She could barely hear Jason’s words.

Why had she agreed to drive him to his grandfather’s? Katy was going to have a fit when she saw the dirty car. Maybe the rain would wash it off by the time she got home. She glanced at the clock in the dash. She hadn’t checked in with Katy since that
morning. The time with Jason had flown by, and she’d totally spaced on her responsibility.

“Would you look at my phone in my purse? See if Katy’s called me?” she asked Jason.

He turned and snagged her purse from the backseat, and then gingerly poked through it until he pulled out her cell. He pressed the screen a few times and frowned. “Your phone’s dead. Do you have a car charger?”

“No, it’s in the other car.”
Crap. Katy was going to have her head.
“Can I use your phone to call her when we get there?”

“Yeah. Not a problem.” He set her purse in the backseat.

“She’s going to kill me,” she muttered.

“You didn’t tell her where you were going?” he asked.

“No. And usually I’m not gone this long. Not without checking in, anyway.”

“My dad doesn’t care where I go, let alone if I check in,” he said.

Trinity studied him out of the corner of her eye. Jason’s face was glum. She’d felt like that before. Where no one cared what the hell happened to you. Katy’s rules had taken a bit of getting used to, but Trinity realized it felt good to have someone give a rip about where you were. “If you didn’t show up one night, he’d worry.”

Jason looked out his side window. She saw his jaw move.

“I can’t hear you.”

He turned. “I said I wasn’t sure of that.”

“He’s your dad. Of course he cares what happens to you. What about your mom?”

“My mom left years ago. She divorced my dad and left when I was five. I don’t really remember her. She lives in Idaho now. She remarried.”

“Right, you told me that. She doesn’t keep in touch?” Trinity was prying, but her curiosity was piqued.

Jason shrugged. “I get a birthday card. But my dad always opens them and reads them first. He says he doesn’t want her telling me any lies about him.” He paused. “I’ve seen him take letters before. Letters that were addressed to me. When I asked for them, he said he read them first and they were full of lies. That she was trying to turn me against him.”

Trinity struggled to understand. “I don’t get it. What could she say that would make a difference? She’s the one who left, right?”

Jason wiped at his nose and shifted in his seat. “Kyle’s mom left, too.”

“Kyle with the gun?”

“Yeah, I told you we’d kinda grown up together. Our parents hung out together. Kyle’s mom left about two years ago. He’s always been really angry with her about it.”

Trinity didn’t know what to say. Kyle plainly needed therapy. Did his father not see it? “Kyle needs help.”

“Yeah, but that’s not allowed.”

“What?” She pulled her gaze from the swamped road to actually look right at him. “What’s that mean?”

Jason squirmed. “Grandpa doesn’t think he needs it.”

“What does your grandfather have to do with Kyle?”

Jason was silent, and Trinity focused on the road.
That’s not allowed.
It reminded her of when he’d said “they punish.” What kind of family had Jason grown up in? “You said Kyle wasn’t family, right?”

“Not really. We sorta belonged to the same church. But I don’t go anymore. At least I try not to. My grandfather runs the
whole thing. It’s hard to say I don’t belong to his church, because I feel like I’m denying he’s my grandfather.”

Her brows shot up. It was most Jason had ever said about his family. Everything else had come in bits and pieces. Now it was making a bit more sense. “What church is it?”

“Nothing you’d ever heard of. It’s small. And it’s gotten smaller over the years. Now it just feels like a bunch of men who get together to talk about the old days.”

“What do the women do?”

“They don’t usually meet with them. The women sorta do their own thing.”

“Well, that sounds archaic.”

Jason nodded emphatically. “It is. All their attitudes about women are straight out of the Dark Ages.”

“Seriously? There’re still groups around that support that crap?”

“I think it’s one of the reasons my mom left.”

Trinity could barely hear him over the pounding rain. “And it would explain why your dad feels he has the right to restrict conversations between the two of you. Wow. I can’t imagine being married to someone who was that high-handed.” She looked at Jason, wondering if he’d ever talked to anyone else about his mom.

He abruptly grabbed the steering wheel, terror filling his face. “
Watch out!”

She spun her gaze back to the road, her hands clenching the wheel as she hit the brakes. The road had vanished. A river flowed where the road had been a moment ago.

It was too late.

The car lifted and shuddered, moving to the left. She stomped on the brake, steering right. The car gently sank a few inches and
jolted as her tires touched bottom. She hit the gas, praying she had traction. Twenty feet ahead, she could see the outline of the road.