Hush (18 page)

Danner stood on the balcony of his room at the Dunes in his brother‘s jeans and nothing else, facing the ocean. He was pretty much sand-blasted and rain-scoured by the elements, and the precipitation soaked him to the bone. The sun had risen in the east and the western horizon‘s curtain of night was just beginning to lift. Today was going to be one of those dark ones, like the kind that came in the dead of winter.

Well, it was almost that already.

He walked back inside and slammed the sliding glass door shut. He could feel sand mixed in with the water on his skin. The Dunes overlooked dunes all right, and what were dunes but just big mounds of sand?

It hadn‘t been the smartest move to stand outside; he didn‘t have any extra pants. But he didn‘t really give a damn.

Stripping down, he ran through the shower, turning the water as hot as it would go, but of course the hotel had one of those temperature regulators so he couldn‘t scald his skin like he wanted to, like he often did when his mind was full of too many questions with too few answers.

Twenty minutes later he pulled on his briefs and his brother‘s wet pants again, making a face as the thick, wet denim chilled his skin. Jarrod‘s pants were wet, but they weren‘t as bad as his own.

Those were stuffed in his duffel bag, thoroughly soaked and smelling of chlorine.

Jarrod‘s shirt was still okay and he yanked it over his head, running his hands through his hair and looking at himself in the mirror. Dark hair. Five o‘clock shadow. Blue eyes that regarded him soberly.

He didn‘t like the way this was going. Annette accidentally dying in the hot tub on her thirtieth birthday? He was going to wait for the facts, but his skepticism was huge and he half believed already that foul play was at work here.

But then, he was a homicide detective. He felt that way a lot.

Currently, there was a case at work; several, actually, that were tugging at his attention all the time. They hung below the surface of his consciousness and popped out a thought every once in awhile. Sometimes that thought was like a
kapow!
An answer to some niggling issue he couldn‘t resolve. More often the thought was just another question. Questions upon questions upon questions. The kinds with no answers, and maybe no rhyme or reason.

The case that had been his primary focus was a home invasion where the wife and daughter were killed in an attempted robbery and extortion gone bad. The husband had been tied up in the basement and knocked out cold. Persons unknown had escaped without being seen and there was no DNA evidence, not much evidence at all, actually. When the husband came to, he admitted being forced to take money out of their savings account to pay off the two men who had held them hostage. There was no sign of the money, no sign of the getaway car, no sign of anything.

The two women were killed by bullet wounds to the head. The mother with a blast to the back of the skull. The daughter suffered two shots. One in the neck, one closer to her crown.

Neither woman had been tied up and they fell where they were shot. The gun was a 9mm Glock owned by the husband and used . . . on the spur of the moment? It was nowhere to be found now and the husband said the doers had taken it with them.

The case bothered Danner because it just didn‘t hang together. The wife was not sexually abused. She didn‘t struggle. Had simply turned her back to the doer and let him blast a bullet into her head. She was shot first, in the bedroom. Then the daughter must have appeared at the house unexpectedly and walked in on something. She‘d been grocery shopping, and there was produce scattered across the floor, celery and carrots and a couple of avocados. She‘d walked through the front door, seen something, then turned on her heel and sprinted. She was shot at a full run.

The wife‘s murder looked premeditated. The daughter‘s an unfortunate moment of bad timing.

Danner had examined all the evidence and he just didn‘t like it. Why them? Why their house? They didn‘t have a lot of money. They weren‘t high profile. They were a nice, middle-class family in a two-story house that was starting to get that worn-down look.

The husband had taken out their life savings and given it to them. About three thousand dollars total. There was a bank video that showed him nervously taking the money. He said there were two men, one in his twenties, one more like forty-five to fifty.

It was an awful lot like the Petit case in Connecticut a few years earlier. Maybe too much . .

.?

And there was no evidence anywhere. No footprints, fingerprints, pieces of fabric, saliva, whatever the hell the CSI team wanted.

Could the husband be lying?

All the pieces ran through his head as he shaved, but he couldn‘t scare up anything new that on second or third or fourth examination might seem odd or new. His thoughts were at that second level of consciousness still. Nothing was really surfacing. No
kapow.

Of course, his brain was more involved with the events of the night before. Annette ‘s death.

Lucas Moore‘s death about a decade ago with all the same players.

Coby Rendell.

His jaw quirked in the semblance of a smile. Okay. She was in his thoughts. Pushing a lot of other stuff aside, stuff he really needed to get to. Was he really going to try again? He wanted to. No question about it.

He had images of her stuck in his mind: the way she bent her head to listen to something Jarrod was saying, the tilt at the corner of her eyes, the green-brown swirl of color in their depths, the serious mouth and self-deprecating smile. Her slim body and firm breasts. Her even teeth and a nose with a decided bump, the result of a fight with her sister where Faith threw a handheld phone receiver at her and it caught her just wrong. A flaw she‘d worried about but that Danner thought added character. Something he‘d told her once; something she didn‘t believe.

He dragged his thoughts to the home invasion case again, couldn‘t keep his brain on it.

Considered Annette Rendell and wondered if his brother‘s wife had something there in her insistence that Annette‘s death wasn‘t an accident. Genevieve was loud and bullish by nature, but she wasn‘t prone to flights of fancy. She had her feet on the ground, to a fault sometimes, maybe.

She‘d said it because she believed it. She and Annette were good friends, had become that way over the past few years. They shared things, and Gen, though undoubtedly sick with shock and grief, believed there was something about Annette‘s death that warranted looking into. Not that it was Danner‘s job. But something did feel off, and there was no question there were more than a few deaths within this small circle of friends.

He was curious as hell what the sheriff‘s department would come up with.

And if they do determine her death wasn’t an accident?

Danner looked at his reflection in the mirror. If it wasn‘t an accident, then maybe Lucas Moore‘s wasn‘t either. Maybe there was some kind of link.

He was just having a hell of a time believing it was all happenstance.

Kirk slammed his bag in his 4x4 and woulda headed out but a guy from the Seven‘s office waved him over. Frowning, Kirk wondered what the hell this was. The room was a comp. That was the deal.

―Room twenty-three? Ya got some incidentals,‖ the guy told him. ―And I don‘t see no credit card.‖

―I‘m with Split Decision. The room‘s a comp.‖

The guy yawned hugely, showing teeth that needed a trip to the dentist‘s office, tout suite.

―But there was some pizza delivered and charged to the room.‖

―No, there wasn‘t.‖ Kirk denied it, but he remembered the box he‘d seen outside the door of room twenty-four. Had Paul and Vic ordered it and then stuffed the evidence aside so Kirk wouldn‘t notice?

―Yep. There was.‖

Kirk stared at the guy. At least it wasn‘t the girl with the black-rimmed eyes and no soul, but this guy was only a couple of levels higher up the ―worthless pieces of shit‖ meter.

―Ya got a card?‖ the guy asked him.

Yeah, he had a credit card, but it was damn near at the limit and he needed a little bit of breathing room in case of emergencies. The band worked on the underground. Free this, fre e that, or a wad of crumpled bills. It worked for him and even Jarrod, who, though he liked to play by the rules, turned a blind eye.

―How much is it?‖ Kirk asked, reaching for his wallet and the cash inside.

―Forty bucks.‖

―You‘re shitting me!‖

―Two large ones, man. Maximum Meat pizzas ain‘t cheap. You can check with Bill.‖ He waved an arm over toward the nearby pizzeria, which looked tired in the gray morning light. ―He brought ‗em over and put ‘em on the room. It‘s kind of a deal we got going with them.‖

―My friends are still in the room,‖ Kirk snapped, shoving his money away. ―They ate the pizza. They can pay for it.‖ Why the fuck had he tried to work this out anyway? It was their problem, not his.

―Old man Dyer ain‘t gonna like it if they don‘t pony up.‖ The kid gave Kirk a knowing eye.

Kirk couldn‘t afford to piss off Dyer and break his relationship with the man. The Seven might not be much, but word got out if bands took advantage and/or cheated—and that word would hit the circuit, for damn sure—and that, as they say, would be the end of that.

And right there Kirk Grassi had an epiphany. He wasn‘t living the life he was meant to. He was supposed to be somebody. Somebody famous and have a lot of cars and sex with blondes with big kahunas and drink really expensive shit and stuff. This penny-ante crap wasn‘t for him. He needed more, before he ended facedown in some E. coli–infested hot tub at his next birthday.

―Fuck ‘em,‖ he said as he threw down two twenties and stalked back to his truck.

Things were gonna change, starting today.

Coby went on automatic pilot, organizing breakfast, cleaning the house, helping her father contact the sheriff‘s department and coroner‘s office. She hoped to be on her way over the mountains by noon but knew that was a pipe dream unless her father surfaced from his fugue state of grief and recognized that everyone had a life to get back to, including him.

But she was wrong. By eleven Dave Rendell was turning the corner and asked Coby humbly if she would mind just staying a few hours longer? He‘d be ready to go himself by then, and maybe they could drive back at the same time?

Faith and Danner stopped by as Jean-Claude and Yvette and Benedict were packing up.

Juliet was almost ready and Suzette and Galen kept looking at each other, then at everybody else, then back at each other, as if they hadn‘t decided quite what to do.

Danner pulled Coby aside, motioning for her to follow him into the kitchen while Faith sank down on the couch beside Dave who, though now saying all the right things, couldn‘t seem to get his legs moving forward.

―How‘s your dad?‖ Danner asked when they were out of earshot.

She shrugged. ―You‘ve seen him. What do you think?‖

―Shock. Grief. He‘s struggling to take it in.‖ He paused, then asked, ―Has the necklace turned up?‖

―Not so far. Maybe it‘s at the medical examiner‘s office?‖

He shook his head. ―If they‘d have found it, you‘d already know. Genevieve said Annette was determined to stop keeping secrets and that she told you the same.‖

―That‘s right.‖

―What‘s your impression on that?‖

―I don‘t know. She never explained herself,‖ Coby said. ―I got the impression it was just something she couldn‘t keep secret any longer. Maybe something she‘d held inside for a while, years maybe.‖

―If you had to make a guess?‖

Coby found herself staring at him, realizing this was cop mode, something she really hadn‘t seen before. He‘d been new at the job when they were dating. A recruit, then an officer, then it was over. That was eight years ago, and now he was a detective. ―Well . . . I guess I would say it had something to do with her personal life. My dad thought it was something that happened at work.

Somebody telling her she wasn‘t leading a real life unless she was brutally honest, and maybe that set her off, but the issue itself . . . the secret? Her passion made me feel like it was personal.‖

―She works at the hotel?‖

―At Lovejoy‘s. She‘s, like, the general manager. My dad and Jean-Claude are the business owners but they aren‘t as involved in the day-to-day running of the hotel as Annette is . . . was.‖

―You feel the secret Annette planned to reveal was about a personal issue,‖ Danner reiterated. ―Maybe about someone she knows personally.‖

―Something about someone. That was my impression. Yes.‖

―Someone that she knew well?‖ he pressed.

―I didn‘t get that exactly. She was vague. Maybe . . .‖

―What?‖

Coby closed her eyes a moment, giving herself time to think. She did have some impressions. She did have some information. But Annette‘s death wasn‘t a homicide—at least it hadn‘t been ruled one yet.

As if reading her mind, he said, ―Maybe there‘s an investigation about to start, maybe there isn‘t. But I wanted to get your impressions right now. Just in case.‖

―You think Genevieve‘s right. That Annette was murdered.‖

Danner seemed about to say yes, but then responded instead, ―She drowned in a hot tub with all her clothes on. Nice clothes. And she was wearing a sapphire pendant necklace that she ‘d just been given for her birthday. If it was an accident, then Annette slipped and fell into the water and died.‖

―It could have happened that way,‖ Coby said slowly.

―Could‘ve,‖ he agreed. ―Maybe that‘s just what it was. Annette accidentally drowns in a hot tub on her thirtieth birthday just after she‘s been given an expensive gift, which is now missing.‖

―Or misplaced.‖

Danner gave her a sideways look. She didn‘t know why she was defending the idea that it was an accident; she had suspicions herself. But she didn‘t want to think someone had actually killed Annette. That opened the door to a lot of other possibilities she just didn‘t want to face.

―I want to be in front of this thing, not behind it, just in case,‖ Danner told her. ―It‘s not my jurisdiction, but that doesn‘t matter to me if someone killed her.‖

They were speaking quietly. People still hadn‘t completely left. Coby could hear Yvette yelling at Benedict to get the lead out.