Killer Honeymoon (9 page)

“My contact died. Heart attack. It was a few
days ago, but his funeral is in two days and they want me to be there.”

“Oh.” She was hard-pressed to claim that death
didn’t trump honeymoon, given their current circumstances. “Where will it be?”

“Back in Portland.”

“A day trip, then?”

“A day trip in the middle of our honeymoon.”

“But you can’t not go.” She pushed her plate
away. “This guy meant a lot to the ministry, so you guys need to represent.
Show respect.” She forced some sympathy into her voice. He had, after all,
given up a lot of their alone time to her case.

“We both need to be there. It was a personal
request from the president.”

“Was this the guy you’ve been courting all
year?”

Jake slumped into his chair. “Yup.”

“So…” Her wheels were spinning. It’s not that
she wanted him to die, but… “Now you won’t be taking him to Thailand in a
week.”

“Right.”

“So we go to the funeral. Big deal. We drive in,
pay our respects. Maybe we book a hotel room or stay at that fishing shack of
yours or something. Or we just go back to the condo and have a night in our new
house. We don’t have to rush back to the beach.”

“A year’s worth of work. More, really. And all
the pressure I put on you to get you to marry me.” He grimaced.

“But you couldn’t know he was going to die.”

“Well…”

“Oh, come on, you didn’t kill him yourself.”

“No, but he was a seventy-year-old lifelong
smoker. It shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise.”

“Did he leave anything to the ministry?”

“I doubt it. He loved the idea of what we do,
but I hadn’t sold him on us yet.”

“Are they going to give you another client?
Contact? Whatever? Or do you have to go find your own?”

Jake shrugged.

Jane’s phone beeped. She checked it. “Stupid
Franny. What is this woman’s problem? First the bad beer, then the email, and
now text messages. Are you kidding me?” She pushed the phone away.

Jake picked it up. “Saw you in the news. So
sorry about the body in your shed. I’m praying for you both. Also—I have
information.” He held it out for Jane to see. “How can our organist from
Portland have information about our murder at the beach?”

“If her information is as good as her beer, I
hope she keeps it to herself.” Jane turned her phone off. “You say the funeral
is in two days?”

“Yup.”

“So we’ve got to go see Una today. Period. End
of sentence.”

“I’m all yours.”

Una lived in a little weather-beaten upstairs
apartment in a small complex behind the high school that looked like an old
motel. Jane knocked on the plain front door and waited.

The curtains on the front window shifted as
though someone was checking them out; then the door opened. “Yes?” The woman at
the door looked to be in her late twenties. Her icy blonde hair was pulled back
into a messy bun. Her blue eyes and her cheekbones declared she was related to
Daisy Smith.

“Una?” Jane asked.

She lifted an eyebrow.

“Can we come in? We have some questions about
your uncle Ryder.” Jane handed over one of her business cards. She could not
wait until she had a real private investigator’s license to show.

The woman didn’t move. “Who are you?”

“We’re private detectives. We own the house the
body was found in. He’s been tentatively identified by his teeth as Ryder, who
has been tentatively identified as your uncle.”

“Come in.” She opened the door wider and ushered
them in.

The apartment appeared to be a one-room studio
with closet and bath. A daybed was shoved against the wall that was both living
room and bedroom, and against the other wall a two-door cabinet with sink and
hot plate was the kitchen.

The toilet flushed and the bathroom door opened.
Eric stepped out. “What’s going on?” His eyes shifted from Jane to a stack of
papers on the floor by the bed.

“They came to talk about Ryder.”

Eric crossed his arms, but didn’t say anything.

“We won’t be long.” Jane stepped across the
small room to be closer to the stack of papers.

Eric did the same.

“Why was Ryder fighting with your cousins Levi
and Amos?” Jane directed the question to Una, but kept her eye on Eric.

Una didn’t respond.

“When did you find out Ryder was just Cherry’s
uncle?” She turned her question to Eric. “Does everyone else know?”

“Everyone knows,” Eric said. “That’s why I laid
into Mason. He was saying some nasty stuff about my girl by saying she left me
for her uncle.”

“How long have you been here at Una’s?”

“Just a day,” Una said. “He got back into town
yesterday. He’s been looking everywhere for them.”

“So you are worried, then?”

“She hasn’t called anyone. And some of those
girls are young. Like Rose and Emma. Their parents are freaking.”

“And they’d really freak if they knew the girls
had run off with polygamists.”

Una flinched.

“Was your bio dad a polygamist?” Jane asked
softly.

“Yes.” Una sat down on the daybed, defeated.
“But we got away from all of that before I knew anything about it. And Mom has
been so good to us, and Dad. No one knows or talks about it. We’re normal
here.”

Eric chuckled.

“They don’t talk about it to us, anyway.”

“I hear one of your mom’s…mothers came by when
you were littler. What happened to them?”

“She doesn’t talk about it and I don’t remember
much. They tried to get her to come home. They missed her, they loved her, a
lot of ‘look at your brothers and sisters,’ ‘we need you.’ All of that. They
even invited Dad to join the community, but he kicked them out.”

“Sounds like a good man.” Jake also spoke
softly.

“He is.”

“What does he think about all of this?”

“He’s mad. He called the police about it.”

“Who do you think killed Ryder?”

She stiffened. “Who could have? Or why? I don’t
know.”

“Eric, when did you find out Ryder wasn’t after
your girl?”

He stepped back and looked at Una.”

“Eric didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t know who
Ryder was at first, but he didn’t kill him.”

“Cherry and I have been a thing since middle
school. We’re going to get married.” His face slowly turned red.

“What was her reason for leaving?”

“Just tell them.” Una’s voice was almost too
quiet to hear.

“She said she wanted to know God better.” His
jaw twitched beneath the scarlet skin. His eyes narrowed.

“Crap.” Jake sat down next to Una.

She nodded.

“So even though she told her boyfriend she was
leaving him to know God better, and even though she did this by running away
with three men from a polygamy cult, you still support the idea in the
community that they’re just off on a last-of-summer road trip?”

“I have to think of Mia and Fawn.”

“I know Mia, but who is Fawn?”

“The other sister. She’s thirteen.”

“That’s a lot of girls…”

Una looked at Jake, a challenge in her eye. “You
can imagine well why Mom’s family hasn’t stopped trying to get her to come home
now, can’t you?”

“But if they all know where she is, it’s not
like she’s in hiding. What can telling the truth about her past hurt?” Jake
asked the simple question earnestly.

“You can’t go telling people things like that.”
Eric stared at Jake like he was an alien. “Not in a small town.”

“Because?”

“Because what will people say when everyone
comes home? If they are just out camping? What if they are? If the whole town
knows for sure that Amos and Levi come from the Family Group, they will say
horrible things about Cherry and Skye and all of them. And then what if it is
all true? What if the worst things we can think of are true? How will Fern and
Mia grow up in this town with that hanging over them?” Eric looked like he was
ready to hit somebody—the imaginary gossip he had conjured. To punish this
person before the girls were ruined.

“But it’s not 1950,” Jake said “A car full of
teenagers gone for three or four weeks? Everyone assumes they’re up to no good
anyway.”

“There’s normal no good,” Una said. “And then
there’s cults.”

“Why were Ryder and your cousins fighting?” Jane
redirected the conversation. It didn’t really matter right now what Una and
Eric were willing to share with the town on the whole. Just what they were
willing to share with her.

“Because Ryder was trying to stop them.” Una
brushed her hand across her face. “Levi and Amos told Mom they had left the
church and everything. She was so, so happy. She bent over backwards to help
them.”

“And then Ryder came?”

“And she was even happier.” Una took a deep
breath. “She was thrilled. But he was only here a couple of days, and it made
things really tense. Mia told me about the fight she heard. What I could make
of it was that Ryder did not support their plans.”

“So when he left with them, you felt…”

“Relief, because he would have the best
interests of the girls at heart.”

“Did you talk to your mom about this?”

Una shook her head. “She doesn’t want to talk
about things like this.”

“I talked to Carl. I talked to Carl for a long
time.” Eric stood in front of the stack of papers. He looked down at them and
moved. “He’s scared for his girls.”

“So what’s he doing about it?”

Eric kicked the stack of papers. “He’s gone a
little crazy.”

Una laughed, a hollow sound. “Those are his maps
and searches. He hired a private eye to find them, and that’s all we got for
it.”

“What’s in those papers?”

“Nothing. The conclusion was inconclusive. They
aren’t back at the Family Group—that’s its official name, if you were
wondering. And no one has used a debit card or credit card or anything
traceable like that.”

“What about the text Skye sent your mom?”

“Mia says Skye couldn’t have sent it. I haven’t
seen it, so I don’t know. I couldn’t say.”

“Hannah thinks she saw Rose in the woods.”

“I know. That’s been mapped too, but nothing
came of it.”

“We want to know what happened to Ryder,” Jane
said. “That night that everybody left, someone killed him—possibly shot him in
our shed. Who was it? Why was it? You’re sure it couldn’t have been Levi or
Amos?”

She looked at the stack of papers. “No. But
everybody knows murder is a sin. If they were taking the girls off to get them
closer to God, they wouldn’t have murdered somebody.”

“What if they wanted to start their own family
group?” Jane asked. “What if a group of lost boys were going up and down the
coast, collecting wives for each other? Where could we find them all?”

“According to that stack of papers, we can’t.”
Una stood up again and shivered. “We’ve looked. The private eye has looked. My
dad has looked. But we can’t find them anywhere.”

“I’ve driven the back roads up and down the
coast, and I haven’t seen a thing,” Eric said. “Even if she doesn’t want to be
with me anymore, she can’t be with them.”

“We need to get everyone in one place.” Jane
moved to Jake and took his hand. “My boss, all of the parents, your other
friends who knew Levi and Amos. And we need to do it tonight, because Jake and I
don’t have much time left. Can you get everyone to our place in an hour?”

“We can try,” Eric said. “We have to try.”

Rose’s parents, Emma’s parents, Carl Smith,
Rocky and Flora, Una and Eric, Mason, and Taylor were all at the beach house
within the hour.

“Thank you all for coming.” Jane had already
offered tea and water, but there were no takers. “We want to gather all of the
information we all have together. First off, Taylor, can you report on what you
have determined?”

“The dead guy is, as best as I could tell, Ryder
last name unknown, who came into town to visit about three weeks ago. He had a
distinctive pattern of crooked teeth, and judging by that, I am as sure as I
can be that it was him.”

Carl whistled. “Poor Daisy. This is going to
kill her.”

“Eric, could you tell all of us what Cherry said
her reason was for leaving?”

He cleared his throat. “She said she wanted to
know God better.”

Carl flinched but didn’t speak.

“And everyone else is aware of Daisy’s
background, is that correct?”

Everyone nodded except Rose’s mom. “I’m sorry,
can you clue me in?” She was a small, birdlike woman, and Jane suspected they
had kept it from her for that reason. She might wilt under the idea.

“My wife escaped a horribly abusive cult when
she was a young mother. She had had a forced marriage to a much older man…my
oldest, Una, was her daughter from that first marriage. We’ve done everything
we can to protect our girls from those people.”

“And yet…” Rose’s mom’s face was firm. She was
tougher than she looked.

“When Daisy’s nephews showed up and said they
needed help because they weren’t a part of that group anymore either, we did
what we could.”

“So you set the girls up for this.” Rose’s mom
inched her way forward on her seat.

“I did nothing. Two, three young men with no
education, no money, and no one to turn to showed up on my doorstep. We took
them in and tried to give them a hand up.”

“And give them our innocent girls.”

“That is
not
how this went down.” Carl
turned his back and composed himself.

“Whatever your intention,” Emma’s dad, a large
man with a swarthy complexion and a thick mustache, said, “that was what
happened. These boys ran off with our daughters, and I think we all know why.”

“We’re not here to lay the blame on anyone.”
Rocky stood up, tall frame filling the small room. “We’re here to combine our
knowledge. This young couple came here several days ago to celebrate their
honeymoon and were greeted with a dead body. Fortunately for you, Jane is a
fine young detective and has decided to find out who this young man was and who
killed him. As it turns out, she will probably find all of your missing
children as well. Now everyone take turns nicely and tell us what you know.”

He loomed over the crowd, his arms crossed.

“Have any of the girls contacted home?” Flora
asked. For the first time since Jane had known them, Flora seemed to be taking
the role of good cop, her wire-frame glasses and cat sweater marking her out as
a sweet grandma instead of the cold, clinical inspector she had inside of her.

“Dad,” Una said, “Mom claims Skye texted. What
do you say?”

“I saw the text. I didn’t believe it. It didn’t
look like it was from her. No texting shorthand. No emoticons. I called the
police immediately after I saw it.”

“But Daisy deleted it?” Jane asked.

“Yes, before the cops could see it.”

“She wanted it to be real.” Una sighed. “Poor
Mom.”

“Anyone else get contact?”

“I did.” Emma’s mom, a tall strong woman who
looked like she went well with her husband spoke. “She just sent a smiley the
morning she left. Nothing since then.”

“Have you all contacted the police?”

“Absolutely.” Emma’s mom again. “They issued a report,
they have an alert out for the car. They even seemed to take us seriously, but our
kids aren’t the only ones missing. There are girls up and down the coast that
all disappeared this summer, I think six or seven total.”

“If it was just your child”—Jane leaned forward,
resting on her elbows, and looked from parent to parent—“where do you think
they would have gone?”

“Mexico,” Emma’s Mom said. “She’s been talking
about going to Cabo for the last two years. If she got a vote, they would have
found their way to I5 and driven south until they couldn’t go any farther.”

“Where else?”

“Our girls would have wanted to go to the mountains,”
Carl said. “They love camping. Cherry always said she wanted to live in the
hills someday, not in town.”

“So nearby? These mountains?” Jane asked.

“Maybe.”

“But the police have checked,” Emma’s mom said. “They’ve
checked everywhere.”

“Nobody has gone into the hills and hunted for
them.” Mason sat across the room from Eric and Una, his black eye turning
green. “If they ran into the hills to live some weird cult life, they’ve dug
themselves in deep. Deeper than anyone would go check.”

“I looked for them,” Taylor said softly. “I went
to some of our favorite campsites, on BLM land, but they weren’t there.”

“I checked, too,” Eric said. “Some off-the-map
places I know, but nothing.”

“Hannah thinks she saw Rose in the woods one
day.”

Una unfolded a piece of paper. “Right here. This
is the map we got from our other investigator. It marks the spot Hannah thinks
she saw Rose.”

The paper was passed around.

“Is this the sum total of all of our knowledge?”
Jane’s heart fell. She had just known if everyone got together, something would
spark. They’d remember something, some random word would trigger an idea, a
memory.

“What about us, Jane?” Jake asked. “We know more
than we’ve said.”

“What?” She turned fast. “We’re not withholding
anything.”

“Franny said she knew something, but we haven’t
asked her.”

“That’s right! Give me just a second and I’ll
respond to the text.” She sent a quick message, essentially “What do you know?”

Her phone rang fast in response.

“This is Jane.”

“This is Franny, again, I cannot apologize
enough, first for ruining your wedding day, then for the sour beer, and all of
the messages and things, but when I saw the news that a body had been found and
where it was, and oh, I am so sorry.”

“It’s not a problem.” She gave a slight shoulder
shrug to the crowd as they watched her take the call.

“Did you make it to dinner at Kaiyo Sushi? No,
probably not. That’s okay. Kenji wouldn’t have known to say anything to you
guys. He’s such an old friend of mine, and he told me just the other day about
these folks that came in, looked kind of out of place, confused by the menu,
but they paid with cash. Lots of cash. Oh, it was a few weeks ago…a month,
maybe? But the thing was, there were a bunch of girls in the car. He saw them
because he was working the door. And two boys came in. One ordered and the
other went to the washroom. It just felt fishy.”

“So you think that the missing people came to
this restaurant?”

“What missing people? Are there missing people
and a dead body?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. What were you saying?” She
scratched her head, stumped. How had Franny known to tell her about a car full
of girls if she didn’t know about the missing girls?

“See, all of that cash seemed odd coming from
those young men, so he remembered them well. And later, when he closed up the
restaurant that night, there was a gun in the trash can. A cute little one. He
thought maybe some girl had dropped it in the trash on accident, like from one
of those carry conceal purses. He put it in his lost and found.”

“He found a gun in the bathroom and didn’t call
the police?”

“He didn’t want any trouble.”

“He kept a gun because he didn’t want trouble?”
Jane couldn’t fathom this and was frankly lost.

Carl took an aggressive step forward, toward
Jane.

“Your friend Kenji thought the guys with the
cash dropped it there or a girl? Which one was it?”

“He just thought someone did it on accident at
first, but then when he heard about the body, he thought hard about the day and
remembered all that cash. He thought they must be selling drugs. A drug-related
murder.”

“And so he called the police?”

“Yes, of course, but his fingerprints were all
over the gun at that point and he’s a little scared. But he works so much and the
security cameras provide him with an alibi, so I don’t think he needs to worry,
but I thought if I could share that with you about the boys and the little gun
in the trash can maybe it could make up for my trouble during the wedding.” She
choked up.

“There was no trouble,” Jane soothed. “We’re
just glad you are all right.”

“Oh, you are too sweet, really too sweet.”

“I might call you again later, would that be
okay?” Jane had a feeling Franny wouldn’t say no.

“Oh, darling, I don’t want to bother you on your
special vacation.”

“Of course not.” Jane blushed and tried not to
laugh at the irony. “But if I had more questions, I could call, right?”

“Anytime, sweetheart, any time. And you sure
were such a pretty bride.”

“Thank you, Franny. You have a good night.”

She hung up.

“First, Jane,” Flora said, “you didn’t find out
what kind of gun it was or what it looked like.”

“Er—”

“Flora…” Rocky interrupted.

“This is a training case,” Flora said.

“But this isn’t a good time.”

Flora looked around the room at the angry crowd.
“Yes, of course. We’ll discuss the call later.”

“So the gist was they may have found the murder
weapon and everyone may have had sushi for dinner.”

“Where at? I want to see this guy, hear his
description of them,” Carl said.

“What do you think?” Jane turned the question to
Flora.

“I think it’s a good idea. We need to send
someone with an investigator’s license and someone who can ID the boys down to
the restaurant.”

Jane jotted the name down on a scratch paper and
handed it to Flora. “You and Una, maybe?”

The other mamas turned to face Flora in unison.
“Yes, and you as well. Taylor, would you like to join us?”

She shook her head no.

“We’ll report back as soon as we know more.”
Flora led the two mothers and Una out of the house and to the car.

“What do the rest of us do now?” Eric asked.

“Taylor, where do you think they went? To the
woods or out of the country?” Jane asked.

“I think they went to the woods, but it’s just a
gut thing. There’s a lot of nothing out there, and who knows who all lives in
it.”

Jane closed her eyes and shot a prayer up to
God. She had a feeling she knew what was coming next.

“It’s not too dark yet.” Carl opened the door.
“We could search out a few more places, maybe start from the map and just go
in.”

“Hannah didn’t find them, and she spent a couple
nights in the woods,” Taylor said.

“Hannah doesn’t know the woods as well as we
do.” He nodded at Emma’s dad.

Emma’s dad stood. “I’m in.”

“Me too.” Mason stood.

It was beginning to feel like a kind of crusade.
Jane didn’t want to crush their moment, but she didn’t want them all lost in
the woods or mauled by bears or whatever.

“Then you go,” Rocky said. “And take great
notes. It would be best if you men find them. If you don’t, we start again
tomorrow, working outward from where you’ve already been. Real systematic, real
careful. You understand?”

“Sure do.”

“And phones don’t work out there,” Rocky
continued. “So you men had better go get your walkies. I know you have them.”

Carl grunted. Clearly he didn’t want to go home
first.

“Hold on.” Jake opened the hall closet. “We have
some, and the batteries are all charged.” He tossed four walkies to the men.
“I’ll keep one with me in case you run into any trouble.”

“Thanks.” Carl clipped the walkie to his belt
and the four men left.

“They aren’t going to find them tonight, are they?”
Jane asked.

“I don’t expect so, but we weren’t going to be
able to keep them away.”

“This still doesn’t explain who poisoned Coco.”
Taylor leaned against the wall. “Wasn’t Mason, wasn’t me.” She shrugged.

“Let’s, you and I, go see that guitar fellow.”
Jane shoved her phone in her pocket. “I feel like we haven’t had the
conversation with him that we need to yet.”

Taylor glanced at her phone. “It’s eight
thirty…I bet I can find him. Miller is a junior. They live by the grade school.
He’s an ASB kid, so I know he’s home doing school stuff right now.”