Deadly Harvest (6 page)

She smiled again. “I'll lock it. I promise.”

When he was gone, she leaped out of bed and locked the door, then turned on every light in the room.
And
the television.

A little while later, as she was showering, she wondered if there was any way to shut and lock the door to her dreams.

Except that…

She was very afraid that the cornfields in her mind's eye weren't a dream at all but something very—and terrifyingly—real.

L
ogan had never been Jeremy's favorite airport, but for once his connection had not only run smoothly, but his flight had also actually arrived ten minutes early, and it was almost as if someone had unloaded the baggage and gotten it onto the belt ahead of them. His gold card accessed his reservation without a hitch at the rental agency, and he was waiting when Rowenna called to say she and her luggage were ready to go.

Her directions were perfect, and they arrived in Salem with enough time before the meeting he'd set up with Brad that he offered to take her all the way home, but she assured him that Joe would give her a ride later. Instead, she offered to give him a quick walking tour of the central tourist area.

He wanted to see the cemetery, and after pointing out a few of the more important weathered graves, she let him wander by himself.

The cemetery stood right in the middle of the tourist track. There were a few museums nearby, and just across the street was a pedestrian mall.

But despite the modern-day surroundings, he found that the cemetery itself felt intriguingly authentic.

There was something about the place, something about the old stones, that was poignant and haunting. He tuned out the mothers chasing toddlers, the fathers reminding their children to respect the dead. He could vaguely hear a guide droning on in the background, clearly eager to finish his speech and move on. Jeremy didn't blame him. Darkness came early this time of year, and it was no doubt time to call it quits and get away from a place with such eerie associations.

Especially now.

Dusk was definitely coming.

To say that it was simply falling would be a misnomer. It seemed to be curling in from both ground and sky, a silvery mist sweeping in around the old tombstones.

When he had first landed, it had been a beautiful fall New England day. The colors had been spectacular. Trees seemed to drip with oranges and golds in a mystic beauty that was like a siren's call, fascinating and sensual. And yet they were also a promise of the winter to come, when everything would be blanketed in bone-chilling cold.

Jeremy stood by the stone where Mary's phone and purse had been found and pictured what Halloween must have been like here, the ancient mingling with the new as children decked out as fairies or monsters moved along the streets. Most of the adults would have been in full costume, as well. But Halloween was over now, and the tempo and mood had changed just as the seasons did. Every season was celebrated here, not just summer to fall, but the more subtle nuances of Halloween to Thanksgiving—although, like everywhere else, Christmas was already making its presence felt. However, at least the shops here seemed to acknowledge that there was still a Thanksgiving holiday between Halloween and Christmas.

Pumpkins and pilgrims decorated store windows, along with horns of plenty, and scenes of the Native Americans and the settlers, sitting down to the original Thanksgiving feast. On the farms nearby, it was a time of reaping.

How the hell could anyone just disappear from plain sight in a city so full of tourists?

How had Mary been whisked away, given the teeming crowd that must have been everywhere on Halloween? Admittedly, the day had been darkening, the lights of the commercial district unable to penetrate fully into the cemetery, where night created a realm of shadows.

“Isn't it wonderful?” Rowenna called to him.

“It's a graveyard,” he said.

“I mean fall. The colors…”

He looked over to see her standing amid the stones. She bent down and scooped up an armful of fallen leaves, then straightened and let them scatter around her. She might have been a pagan goddess standing there, her face lifted in delight, the leaves falling all around her, the waves of her pitch-black hair cascading down over the velvet cloak she was wearing. He could imagine her as a statue, raised to celebrate the advent of autumn, although he wondered if any artist could catch the enthusiasm with which she embraced life.

He was surprised when he felt a sudden twinge of unease, as if he were afraid for her.

Afraid for her? Why?

He was just worried in general, he decided. A woman—a friend—had disappeared from right where he stood, and she still hadn't been found. And yet, watching Rowenna now, he was startled by the depth of feeling that rose in him.

Then again, a lot of things had surprised him since he'd met Rowenna.

First he'd been surprised by his instant animosity to her. He couldn't figure it out. He'd never had anything against Kendall, and she had read tarot cards for a living. But Rowenna…Well, for some reason she was different. Then there had been that immediate inner warning, telling him that he needed to keep his distance from her, because of his fascination with her. And now…

Now, more than anything, he was surprised by the mere fact that he was here with her. Because now, everything had changed. Last night, when he had left his hotel and walked right to her door, he had known. Known that if he followed the path that was beckoning him, everything in his world was going to change. He would be on a course straight toward emotional danger, with no way back.

It hadn't mattered. He'd had to go to her, even knowing she might slam the door in his face.

But she hadn't.

He watched her. She was blessed with porcelain skin and perfect features, highlighted by those glimmering golden eyes, and her long, slim body teased him even from under the billowing cloak. There was just no figuring attraction. She drove him crazy, but he cared about her. Cared
for
her. Maybe it had just been man's natural instinct for survival and self-preservation that had made him so wary of her, knowing that what he felt for her could destroy him if he gave it free rein. She was so good at an argument—yet he had found himself seeking her out to argue, because she was a challenge, and because she was so fully herself. She didn't possess an ounce of pretension, and her laughter was as charming as her pigheadedness.

Her forthrightness was his undoing. Last night, when she had opened the door, let him in, then dropped that silky nothing she'd been wearing and risen up on her toes to kiss his lips…In the darkness of the elegant old bedroom, the drapes whispering in the breeze behind her, every vestige of intelligence and thought had slipped from his mind.

And later, when they had slept, and she had started to toss and turn, crying out in the midst of her dream…

He knew that feeling. Being so deep in a dream, desperate to awaken, afraid that he wouldn't, that the dream would play out over and over again for eternity, an endless loop of hell.

The department had made him see a shrink, but in the end he had left the force, determined to beat the nightmares on his own by doing something to combat the problem that had caused them in the first place.

It had been almost two years since the accident that had killed the children, and the dream still came to him now and then. And he always remembered it when he awoke.

He had the feeling that Rowenna had remembered her dream, too.

So much for her being entirely forthright with him, he thought.

Time would tell.

Time…Dusk turned to darkness. An uniformed watchman was asking everyone to vacate the cemetery.

He would come back in daylight, he decided. He would walk every inch of the ground, check every gravestone, and he would find out if Mary had been taken away through some secret exit, like the one in the family plot back at the Flynn plantation, or if she had somehow been dragged away through the Halloween crowd. It would have been easy enough. A gag shoved in her mouth, a hooded costume thrown over her, hiding her face, and then she could have been carried off between two coconspirators, as if they were a trio, the two sober members supporting the third, who imbibed a few too many spirits throughout the day.

“Rowenna?”

He didn't see her at first, and panic flared through him. “Rowenna!”

“I'm over here.” She stepped out from behind a tree that had hidden her from view. “I was trying to read this tombstone. It has my initials on it,” she told him.

He was shaking when he reached her. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he demanded sharply.

She turned to him, startled. “What are you talking about?”

“You disappeared.”

“I was standing right here.”

“You didn't answer when I called,” he said, still angry. He knew he was overreacting, but…

A woman had disappeared—and her phone and purse had been found by a tombstone that bore her initials.

“I answered you. You just didn't hear me.”

She turned and started for the exit. He followed her. He could see by the set of her shoulders that she was angry.

So was he. For God's sake, after what had happened, she should be thinking about what she was doing. “I was worried,” he said curtly.

“Well, this is my home turf. You don't need to be worried.” She stopped so short that he almost plowed into her back.

“What?”

“There's Joe,” she said.

“Your friend, the detective Joe?”

She nodded. The white-haired man in a plain leather jacket was strolling along the street as if he hadn't a care in the world. But he had seen Rowenna, and a smile lit his lips—until he saw Jeremy standing behind her. The smile remained, but it had tightened, as if he was trying not to let it turn into a scowl.

“Joe!” Rowenna called, hurrying out the gate.

“Ro!” The man came forward, capturing her in a giant bear hug. Rowenna was five-ten, but the man seemed to dwarf her. Jeremy found himself standing a little straighter as he waited for an introduction.

“Welcome home, Ro. No, wait, it's welcome home ‘your majesty,' isn't it?” he teased. He looked at Jeremy then, not trying to hide the fact that he was assessing him carefully.

“You're the private detective, huh?” Joe Brentwood said, keeping Rowenna at his side and taking a step forward.

“I'm a private investigator, yes,” Jeremy said, offering his hand. “Jeremy Flynn. You're Detective Joe Brentwood. Glad to meet you.”

“So Johnstone is an old friend of yours,” Brentwood said, automatically offering his hand in return.

“Friend, and former partner. I used to be a police diver,” Jeremy said.

“He's a loose cannon right now,” Brentwood told him.

“I'm meeting him tonight at seven. I'll see what I can do.”

“Well, Ro and I have a little catching up to do,” Brentwood said. “In fact—” he turned to look at her consideringly “—I thought I would have seen her earlier.”

“My fault,” Jeremy said, stretching the truth. “I asked her to show me the cemetery first, and time just got away from us.”

Jeremy wondered what it was about the human race. He and Joe were just standing there talking politely, but both of them were tense and rigid. They were like a pair of roosters sparring for the attention of a hen. The older man was her friend.
He
was her lover. All right, so far he was a one-night stand, but he didn't intend for things to stay that way. His instincts had been right, though. If he'd just stayed away from her, he wouldn't be feeling now as if he had to fight for her in the midst of a modern world where she was free to make her own decisions—even decide against him, if she wanted to.

Rowenna seemed to sense both men's agitation. Who knew? Jeremy thought. Maybe they actually looked like a pair of puffed-up roosters.

“Why don't we all go have a drink together first?” she suggested.

“That would be great,” Jeremy said casually, staring at Joe Brentwood.

First round to him for appearing to be friendly and cooperative.

“Red's is right across the street. It's a bar and grill, and I'm famished,” Joe said. There was a note of reproach in his voice, as if to say he and Rowenna should have been having dinner alone.

“Sounds fine to me,” Jeremy said.

They settled at Red's, where a waitress brought a round of drafts while Rowenna and Joe pored over the menu. Jeremy, who was waiting to eat until he met with Brad, leaned forward. “You say that Brad's a loose cannon?” he asked.

Joe let out a long sigh, shaking his head. “The kid's in bad shape.” He looked at Jeremy and shrugged. “It's probably a good thing you're here. He needs someone. His wife's parents are threatening to come up here, but they've been suggesting he had something to do with it, so even if they show up, they're just going to make things worse for him.”

Jeremy nodded. He knew Mary's parents, knew they'd wanted her to file for divorce, but she had decided to fight for her marriage.

“So, do you have any experience in this kind of work?” Joe asked him. “You were a police diver. There's a lot of difference in looking for objects underwater and finding facts above ground.”

“Are you asking if I've worked missing persons and murder cases? Yes,” Jeremy assured him.