Chapter Seven
“Holy shit,” Sam muttered, the same thing he’d muttered half a dozen times as he strode to his pickup. “Holy mother of—”
You don’t actually believe her, do you?
Nope. Nope, he didn’t. But okay, she was weak. And shattered, and she’d been through hell, and he was sorry he had to be the one to tell her about Joe. Joe. Her husband. Whom she said she didn’t remember.
He called Sheriff Vandra as soon as he was seated in his pickup, staring across the parking lot to the hospital, counting the floors, his eyes searching out approximately where Jules’s room was.
The receptionist answered and said the sheriff wasn’t available. Sam left his name and told her it was urgent, which they probably heard all the time, but maybe Vandra would think he’d learned something of import.
He thought about calling either Detective Stone or Dunbar, but by the way it had seemed this morning, this case was the sheriff’s baby. Why had Vandra removed the guard? Did he believe it all was just a terrible accident? What had made the sheriff decide that?
But why did Joe contact you, then? His brother didn’t do stuff like that just for the hell of it.
Sam drummed his fingers on the wheel, his thoughts churning. He tried to divine what his brother had been thinking, but it was beyond him. Twisting the ignition, he thought some more. Maybe going to Joe’s office in Salchuk would offer some results. The town was not as well known and populated as either Seaside or Cannon Beach, nor as much of a tourist mecca, but it was getting that way. A gem with a beautiful, somewhat private, stretch of beach just north of the twin headlands that reached into the sea where he’d found Jules.
Salchuk also had its own tiny police force, three officers who did everything from traffic control to working local crimes. Sam didn’t know any of them personally. Their reach was too narrow for him to come in contact with them much. He hadn’t bothered to apply for a job with the Salchuk Police because he hadn’t wanted to go that small, nor would they have probably had an opening. Now, however, he wished he’d at least shown up and tried to hire on, just so that he would have some history with the officers. He wanted in to Joe’s office, and he didn’t know how he was going to do that without breaking in. He wanted to know what his brother had been working on. He wanted to know if the Cardaman file was on the premises.
He didn’t want to think about Jules.
He drove into Salchuk, along the store-lined main street that sloped directly toward the ocean, which today glittered under a gray sky, the sun glaring down balefully on the restless water. Beside him were typical shops: beach togs and toys, caramel corn and saltwater taffy, art galleries that featured local artists, kitchy knickknack places, kites and sand bikes and skim boards. On the hill to the north, homes with expansive windows dotted the hillside, their glass fronts glimmering within the fir trees. These were the expensive houses, mostly owned as second homes by wealthy Portlanders and other out-of-towners. To the flatter south was less ostentatious housing. A few original cabins were tucked in among other residences, which had been, were being, or were soon to be remodeled, but they were in the minority as Salchuk had morphed into an “in spot.” If you had the dough, and you wanted a sleepy, somewhat secluded, safe community, Salchuk was for you. Only the few homes along Fisher Canal, on the other side of Highway 101 and south of Salchuk, were considered on par with the Salchuk hillside McMansions. They might not be as impressive architecturally, but they were getting there, and the waterway was prime real estate with limited length. Sam’s father had told him the price Joe and Jules had paid for their house, which had made Sam wonder if his father was lying or just plain wrong.
And Tutti had just handed over the key.
Sam knew Joe’s office was on Eighth Street, and though he’d never been there before, he drove right up to it, seeing the sign for Joseph Ford Investments. He parked on the street and walked up a gravel path to the the small office, which had been converted and updated from one of the original cabins. Joe’s investment clientele were from all over, again according to their father, which may or may not be the truth. Sam knew very little about his brother’s business, by choice. The last time he’d seen Joe, when they’d run into each other visiting their father, there’d been some business talk between Joe and Donald. Donald didn’t see Joe as much as he did his younger son, mainly because Joe’s life was currently very busy whereas Sam was between jobs. There had also been that tension, though at the time Sam had put it down to the fact that Joe was closing his Seaside office and maybe business had dropped off some.
“Why’re you moving to Salchuk?” Donald had complained. “If you’re moving, you should go back to Portland. That’s where the business is.”
“Just seemed like the thing to do,” Joe had answered.
Donald snorted. “You staying away from those Hapstells?”
“You know I don’t like partners.”
“Yeah, but they sure try to worm their way in, don’t they?”
Joe hadn’t responded, but he’d glanced Sam’s way, as if thinking about what he might be overhearing.
“Don’t mind me,” Sam had said, lifting his hands. He felt uncomfortable around Joe at the best of times, and if his brother didn’t want him overhearing, so be it. He’d left the room and let them keep talking.
Now he wished he’d stayed. Maybe he would have learned something that could lead him to the right answers. It was disheartening how little he truly knew about his brother.
He tried the handle. Locked. He cupped his hands to look inside and could see a desk and credenza in the main room. There was an old river rock fireplace gracing the wall opposite the desk, and some file drawers arranged in what used to be the nook. Sam walked around the building to the back entrance, finding it locked as well. No surprise. He looked inside and saw the remains of a kitchen with extra shelving for office supplies. He didn’t think he’d get lucky enough to find a window that didn’t close correctly, but he tried them all anyway, to no avail.
He was just walking back to his pickup when a Salchuk patrol car cruised up to him, a newish, dark blue Ford Explorer similar to the one Joe owned, and double-parked next to Sam’s car. The officer left the engine running and climbed out, giving Sam a fake smile. “You looking for someone?” he asked in a genial tone, but Sam sensed he was being checked out very carefully.
“This is my brother’s office.” He was fairly certain Officer Kent Bolles, as his tag read, already knew the male body found from the boat fire was Joe. Vandra had said he was keeping a lid on Joe’s identity, but word got out, especially in the law enforcement community.
The officer was in his midthirties, fairly short, about five seven, with dark wiry hair, cold eyes, and a faint paunch around the middle. The smile dropped from his face at Sam’s words. “That right? Well, I’m real sorry about what happened. We all know Joe.”
“His wife’s in the hospital. She asked me to check the house and Joe’s office.” The lies came easily.
He nodded several times and pursed his lips. “Heard she was having some memory problems. She okay?”
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“Just heard it around.”
Rodriguez, the guard, Sam guessed, who’d probably reported to Vandra. The fact that Vandra knew Jules was compromised and still pulled Rodriguez pissed Sam off all over again.
“She’s being released tomorrow morning,” Sam said. “It’s going to take a while before I’d say she was okay.”
Bolles nodded toward the office. “You have a key?”
“Nope. It may have gone down with the ship, so to speak. Wasn’t on Joe’s body when he was . . . recovered. We’re hoping it, or a spare’s, at the house.”
“Well, you know your brother moved down here earlier this year. I heard he closed his office in Seaside. That would make this his main office. Bound to be confidential files in there.”
Sam realized he hadn’t seen a laptop or tablet or other electronic device. What did Joe do with his information?
“Your brother handled a lot of money,” Bolles was saying. “Gonna panic a few people that he’s gone.”
“Yes . . . I would imagine.”
“We all trusted him, y’know?”
“Joe was trustworthy,” Sam agreed.
“You aren’t the first one come sneaking around today.”
“I’m not? Who else?”
“You know Phoenix Delacourt?” he asked with a sneer.
The reporter. “I know of her.”
“Thinks she’s some kind of investigator these days. She wanted in to your brother’s office, too, but I turned her right around.”
Vandra had said she was hanging around the Sheriff’s Department. Sam had no interest in talking to a reporter about his brother, but she seemed pretty fast on the trigger about Joe.
“Half the people around here invested with Joe,” Sam said, more to make conversation and ease back to his car than because he really wanted to keep talking to Bolles.
“Half? You’re not giving your brother enough credit.”
Sam regarded him carefully, sensing something underneath his words. “You invested with him?” he guessed.
“I don’t have the kind of money some people do, but I put a nickel or two in with him.” The smile was back in place, just as phony as before.
“Okay,” Sam said, for want of anything better to say.
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“Sam Ford.”
“You have some ID I could look at?” he asked casually. “Can’t be too careful in times like these.”
Sam reached for his wallet. He moved very slowly and deliberately, picking up vibes he couldn’t understand. When he showed his driver’s license to Bolles, the man scrutinized it carefully, a line drawing between his dark brows.
“Bad business out there on the water,” he said, handing Sam’s license back to him and shooting a glance west. From Joe’s office you could see over the tops of the houses on the downward side all the way to the ocean. The sun had broken free of the obscuring clouds for a moment, lightening up a strip of water that almost glowed in the light.
“I talked to Sheriff Vandra this morning,” Sam said, tucking his wallet into his back pocket. He decided to test the waters. “Forensic team’s going over the boat. No word yet on whether it was an accident or the fire was set intentionally.”
“Set intentionally?” He shook his head and squinched up his face as if something smelled bad. He walked back toward his SUV with “Salchuk Police” swept across the side in large white script. “I’ll keep an eye on the place till you find that key. Don’t want anybody breaking in now, do we?”
Sam climbed into his car and watched the policeman leave. “Couldn’t have that,” he agreed to himself.
His stomach rumbled. Glancing at the clock on the dash, he saw it was after three. His crullers weren’t going to do it. Deciding to get something to eat, he drove down the main street to the Spindrift, a diner known for its huevos rancheros, though they were way past breakfast and lunch.
The place was full of tchotchkes that had something to do with the beach, the walls lined with shelves above four-top tables with plastic tablecloths, each shelf crowded with dolphin, seagull, and whale figurines, salt and pepper shakers designed like starfish and crabs, small framed pictures of waves and sand and sky. He was shown to a table in the back and his waitress swept a salt and pepper combo of dancing mermaids off her serving tray, plopping them on his table along with a plastic-wrapped menu. “The huevos rancheros,” he said without opening it.
“Too late for huevos. That’s the dinner menu.”
He looked it over, then glanced at the only other diners at this hour, an older couple who’d split a fairly large cheeseburger and fries.
“How about that?” he said, pointing.
“Something to drink?”
“Water’s fine.”
He handed her back the menu and thought about Joe, which made him think of Jules, and then back to Joe. He’d gotten his cheeseburger and was just finishing up, eyeing the rest of the French fries but remembering that Tutti had invited him over—bound to be more food there, and he wanted to meet the other “Fishers”—when a wiry woman with long gray hair pulled back in a clip at her nape breezed in and walked directly up to him. Her gaze was direct and she had a weather-beaten, no stranger to the elements look that suited her.
“You looking for me?” he asked, wiping his hands on a napkin.
“I am if you’re Sam Ford,” she said, pulling out a chair. “I saw you talking to Officer Bolles.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m—”
“Phoenix Delacourt.” He shook her hand.
“Ah . . . yes.” She offered a faint smile of acknowledgment. “I heard about your brother. I’m really sorry. I liked him.”
“Sheriff Vandra was trying to keep Joe’s name out of the press, but it clearly hasn’t worked.”
“It’ll be on the news tonight in any case. Nothing to do with me.” She held up her hands. “I’m coming at this from another place.”
“What place is that?”
She eyed him carefully. Her eyes were very close to the color of her hair, a dove gray. “I’ve been doing some research on Joseph Ford Investments, among others. There’re a lot of local people who have their life savings tied up with just a few financial companies up and down the coast. If one of them should go under, it could create a tidal that would drown people in debt. Good people.”
“What’s this about?”
“Do you know Dennis Mulhaney?” she asked.
“No.”
“Never heard his name?”
“No. Why? Does he have something to do with Joe?”
“He worked for your brother up until a few months ago. He wasn’t happy with the direction the business was going and he said so. Pretty loudly. To anyone who would listen, myself included. He threatened to make a claim to the SEC about illegal use of money, and then he quit.”
Sam didn’t like talking to the reporter. Whatever else he felt about Joe, he believed he was a good businessman, an honest businessman, and that he wanted the best for people who invested with him, who trusted him with their savings. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m still working on the story. Denny came to me all fired up. He wanted to take your brother down, but there are . . . indications . . . that it was mostly a grudge on Denny’s part. He’d made his own investments and they apparently went nowhere, but he blamed your brother.”
Sam scooted back his chair, ready to get to his feet. “I don’t know anything about my brother’s business.”
“He moved it here to Salchuk a few months ago, about the time Denny quit. You don’t have any idea why?”
“I just told you, I don’t know.”
“Denny kept in contact with me. He moved to Portland and took a big hit in pay taking a job as a bookkeeper in a small firm, but he still wanted to blow the whistle on the whole ‘financial corruption on the coast.’ His words, not mine.”
“I don’t know him, but I know my brother,” Sam said, getting hot under the collar. “And it sounds like this Denny is blaming Joe for all of his own problems.”
“That’s a real possibility,” she agreed. “But now, y’see, Denny’s disappeared. He’s been missing for about six weeks. Just didn’t show up for work one day and nobody’s seen him since.”
Sam stood and dropped enough cash on the table to pay for his cheeseburger and leave a healthy tip, but Phoenix stayed seated at the table. “What are you getting at?”
“Your brother just died in a boating accident and your sister-in-law’s in the hospital. Denny’s missing, and those are the three people who worked at Joseph Ford Investments.”
“Jules worked there?”
“Part-time, yes. I tried to see her yesterday, but there was a guard outside her door. Why is that? Is there a chance your brother’s death wasn’t an accident?”
“All I know is my brother’s gone,” Sam said, turning away. If she wanted to stay, fine, but he had things to do.
That got her to her feet. She had a suede, fringed bag of sorts that she slung over her shoulder. “Do you mind if I talk to you again later?” she asked, following him out.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree. I might not know about my brother’s business, but I know his character.”
“And his wife?”
“What?”
“You know her character, too?”
“If you mean, could she have something to do with whatever financial conspiracy you’re spinning, no. She’s not made that way either.”
Sam’s chest was tight. In high school, Brady Delacourt had been proud of his aunt, who’d left the coast to go make her way in Portland, or Seattle, or some other big city. It had been a disappointment to the whole Delacourt family when their shining star returned and took a position at the lowly North Coast Spirit, which was really little more than a pamphlet of local happenings despite Phoenix’s efforts to print more substantial stories.
“Officer Bolles told me that you were at my brother’s office this morning, trying to get in,” he said as they headed outside.
She lifted her face to the sunlight. “He’s right. I would have loved to have poked around in there.”
“To find the information to prove my brother’s taking his investors,” Sam said coldly.
“I’d like to prove against it.”
“Sure. And you wouldn’t mind breaking in to an office to do it.”
She ignored the jab. “I understand your sister-in-law has some memory issues.”
He gave her a hard look. He was beginning to understand Sheriff Vandra’s aversion to the woman. She just kept lobbing the balls at him. “Where’d you hear that?”
She just shrugged and smiled.
He left her and fired up the truck, putting the phone on speaker and then placing another call to Vandra, only to be sent to voice mail once more. Frustrated, he phoned Detective Stone next, who answered but admitted the sheriff wasn’t around. “Not sure where he is right now,” Stone admitted. “Something I can help you with?”
“I’m not comfortable with the guard being removed outside Jules . . . Julia Ford’s room. I don’t think Joe’s death was an accident.”
Stone seemed to want to say a lot of things about that, but he chose discretion, which was too bad in Sam’s mind. “Sheriff’s still waiting on forensics.”
“When that information comes back, I want to know it, too,” Sam said a bit belligerently.
“I’ll tell Vandra.”
Sam hung up in disgust. When you were inside the police community, you were privy to all kinds of information. When you were outside, you were on a need-to-know basis only.
The problem was, he hardly knew which way to jump until he heard if the boat fire was arson. If that proved to be the case, he was launching his own investigation outside the Sheriff’s Department. He needed to know what had happened to Joe. If the fire was not arson, he still had questions. Why had Joe called him? What had he wanted to say? Was there a money problem as Phoenix Delacourt suspected?
Sam shook his head, feeling like he was wading through a nightmare. Half the time he didn’t think about Joe’s death, focusing instead on what was going on in his brother’s life directly prior to it. The other half he felt knee-buckling grief and guilt. If only he’d had time to make amends, to become friends again with his only brother, to get past the fact that Joe had married Jules.
But now all that was lost to him.
He allowed himself a few moments of grief, aware that if he took the reins off his emotions that he could actually break down. He thought of his brother’s smile, one that had become rarer over the years. When had that happened? When Joe broke away from the huge firm he’d worked with in Portland and gone into business for himself? Joe had initially been close with Jules’s father, but Peter St. James had taken his life somewhere in that first year of their marriage and left personal financial disaster in his wake, again, according to Sam’s father. And it was a kind of strange twist of fate, too, that when Peter St. James lost the imposing family home on the beach, the Montgomerys and Hapstells weren’t far behind. The three families with all the money moved out of their palatial houses within a few months of each other.
Maybe they’d all lost money in the same way.
Sam turned his truck toward Joe and Jules’s house, and about a mile from the turnoff, he got another call on his cell. He didn’t recognize the number. “Sam Ford,” he answered.
A stuttered gasping reached his ears. “Who is this?” he asked.
“It’s Georgie!” a young, female voice wailed. “Mom said you told her that Dad’s dead! What happened? Oh, my God, oh, my God!”
The line went dead.
* * *
The café where they met was just outside Portland on the west side. It touted its homemade cinnamon rolls, which were small, dense, and tasteless. The result was, nobody of note patronized the place, and it was a perfect spot to rendezvous, whenever either one of them was ready to go back to the coast, away from their Portland killing grounds.
By unspoken understanding they eschewed the rolls and drank coffee strong as iron, staring across at each other in the booth. He reached a hand toward her, but she ignored it and kept on cradling her coffee cup.
“Bridget’s not happy with Tom,” she said, her eyes never leaving his as she sipped the hot drink.
“What the fuck. I did everything I was supposed to do.”
“Except make sure there was no one to tell the tale.”
He leaned back, pissed. “I took care of Joe. That was the deal. That was the payment.”
“Plus any contingencies,” she hissed. “And there was a pretty fucking big contingency that you missed and she’s lying in a hospital bed just waiting to tell her tale.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he snarled.
She wanted to reach across the table and slap him. She was the pragmatic one. He was a dreamer and she’d always known it. She’d had a good marriage once, but then she’d started sniffing around for adventure and there he was. Who knew she’d find someone with a like mind?
“And we have another problem, two actually, for a total of three.”
“What are you talking about?” He tried to play with her fingers with his, but she pulled her mug of coffee toward her.
“Loose ends,” she hissed. “Loose fucking ends!”
“I told you I’m on it. I’ll take care of Julia tonight.”
“And the other two?”
“The kid’ll be easy. If you’re hinting about Phoenix, that’s gonna be trickier.”
“No loose ends,” she repeated. “That’s what the man said. That’s the mission.”
“I like it better when it’s just you and me, doing our thing. No jobs. No bosses . . . Just us having some fun.”
“I want to retire from my job,” she said. “I want enough money so that we can do what we want. That’s why we have to hire out.”
“Yeah, this one got more complicated than it was supposed to be. What the hell was that about taking the boat out? I about shit myself,” he confessed. “Had to work really fast.”
“You always planned to take him out at sea.”
“Not yesterday! I wasn’t really ready and then he took his goddamn wife with him.”
“And you like her and don’t want to hurt her. But she’s a loose end!”
“I’m going to do it. Shut your beautiful mouth. Save it for more important things,” he added suggestively.
“We just have to be clear, that’s all. You need to do your job and I need to do mine.”
“Remember the first time?” He gazed at the window into the far distance. “Gives me a hard-on every time I think of it.”
She struggled to tamp down her anger. He always did this. Always went to the romantic, ignoring all the signs of trouble. He was a creature of sensation, but then so was she.
“I remember,” she said shortly.
They’d been at a viewpoint overlooking the ocean with a split rail fence at the edge of the headland, a popular spot for tourists to take pictures. She’d stopped to assess her life, go over all the mundane pieces that had led her to where she was, try to figure out where she went wrong, where her road to “exceptional” had wound down to “mediocre.” Stuck in a job and a marriage that were both going nowhere.
He’d been driving by and seen her and had pulled in. “Hey,” he’d said, getting out of the car, and she’d been a little annoyed because she’d been trying to commune with herself.
They were the only people at the viewpoint apart from a middle-aged couple who were wearing matching shirts splashed with gaudy pink flamingos and matching virulent pink pants. They wore matching straw hats and had matching potbellies. They were taking pictures but couldn’t get in the shot together. The man hollered over at them.
“Hey! Yoo-hoo! Can one of you take our picture?” He waggled the camera at them, a huge Nikon that had been around a few years.
Neither of them had responded. They were making small talk of their own. They knew each other well, but it was pure circumstance that they were standing there at that time. Neither of them wanted to deal with the tourists.
“Yoo-hoo! HEY!” Both of them were clamoring now.
Under his breath, he said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if they just fell over that cliff and died?”
“The world would be a better place,” she agreed.
“HEYYYY! OVER HERE!!”
They’d both turned reluctantly to look at the couple, who were waving at them frantically. Then they’d looked at each other and something happened. A sizzle of awareness that ran through her like an electric wire. She’d almost come just standing there, thinking about pushing the couple over the edge.
They sauntered over to where the couple was standing in front of the fence. Behind them was a sharp drop to jagged rocks below.
“Well, hi there,” the portly man said, thrusting out the hand not holding the camera. “We’re Jerry and Jeri Hofstetter. That’s how we met, you know. Our names being the same and all.”
“We went to grade school together,” Jeri added, smiling at her spouse and the clearly oft-told story.
“What are your names?” Jerry asked.
They hesitated, and then she said, “Bridget.” She’d always liked that name.
“I’m . . . um . . . Tom,” he said.
“You married?” Jeri asked.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” he said at the same time.
“We’ve been engaged so long sometimes it feels like marriage,” she told the couple, smiling at Tom. She should have known right then he’d be the weak link in their partnership. “We’re still searching for that perfect ring.”
Jeri had scanned both of their left hands as they’d approached like the nosy old lady she apparently was. With that answer, Jeri brightened and said, “Oh, Jerry and me just went out and did the dirty deed with a plastic ring he’d saved from when he was a kid!”
“Got it in a cereal box,” Jerry confided with a wink.
“Of course you did. That’s adorable,” Bridget said, smiling.
Jerry handed Tom the camera and he and Jeri scooched in together, their arms around each other. Tom aimed the lens at them and took a picture while Bridget stood beside him.
“I’ll take a couple more, just to be sure,” Tom assured them.
She could feel the excitement rising in him, rising in herself. Were they really going to do this? No. No way. It didn’t happen that way. A random thrill-kill from two law-abiding citizens? Uh-uh.
Tom took one more shot, then pulled back and looked at Bridget through heavy-lidded eyes. He was feeling it, too, their eye contact hot enough to burn right through her. She was thrilled anew that she was about to come. With no body friction. Holy mother of God!
When he stepped toward Jerry and Jeri, she did, too. And then they took another step. And then another, crowding into them.
“Whoa,” Jerry said. Looks of confusion crossed both of their fat faces.
And then, as if choreographed, they both put their right hands out and pushed them over. Jerry flipped over the rail and bumped once and was gone. Jeri’s purse strap got hung up on the rail for a nanosecond, so Bridget picked up her foot and kicked her over. The Hofstetters’ dying screams were cut off by a hard thunk-thunk as they landed, followed by a cascade of pebbles as their bodies bounced off the cliff-side into the ocean.
Bridget and Tom looked at each other. “Damn, woman,” he breathed, and then they both dashed to their cars, he still with the old couple’s camera.
They drove off madly, both in the same direction, Tom in front, Bridget following. She wanted him inside her and she called his cell and told him so. He warned her to slow down and he did the same. They drove as carefully as they could given that inside they were thrumming with sexual need. When he pulled onto a lane that led past a bed-and-breakfast on the east side of Highway 101, away from the ocean, then went on past the place and wound into deep woods, she was on his bumper, practically panting.
At a small clearing in the woods, miles above the ocean, they both stepped out of their cars. She ran to him. He opened the door to the backseat, grabbed her, and threw her inside. Her head banged hard onto the seat but she didn’t care. They couldn’t rip their clothes off fast enough, and then he jammed himself inside her and she screamed with pleasure so loud that he clamped his hand over her mouth. “Careful, ‘Bridget.’ At that decibel level someone might hear us.”
Afterward they laughed like maniacs. He lay atop her on the seat, his pants down around his ankles, hers hanging from one still-shod foot. When their laughter broke they stared at each other with smiles in their eyes.
My soul mate. My love. My secret passion.
Now she looked across at him and had different thoughts. Yes, she could still feel the high and desire that had come after killing the Hofstetters, and a number of others since, but it was hard to reach that same level again. Her desire wasn’t as high, wasn’t as strong, wasn’t as good.
And the Hofstetters had nearly been their undoing. Right there, at the very beginning! Some passing motorist whom neither of them had noticed had reported seeing a couple of sedans parked at the viewpoint and thought there’d been another couple with the Hofstetters. The search had gone on and on and for several months she’d been crazy with fear that somehow they would be found out. The fear had served to heighten her sexual need and she’d rendezvoused with “Tom” in remote places several more times, always somewhere outside the area they lived.
And then time had passed and nothing had happened. They’d gone about their lives and the Hofstetters became a cold case. When she was with him the need, the memory, the desperate desire was reflected in his eyes. She knew he could see it in hers.
They decided to kill again, but somewhere else. The nearest big city was Portland, so that’s where they went. It wasn’t easy. Neither of them could get away for long and the excuses grew thinner and thinner, not to mention finding a mark they both agreed on. She didn’t want to take out a mother with a young child, and he didn’t want to kill any man supporting his family.
They agreed their kills should be singles, childless couples, or anyone over the age of fifty.
And then they found Monique. He/she—they never knew what to call him/her—was part of the LGBT community and therefore a perfect mark. Neither of them cared a whit about Monique’s sexual identity. He/she could be whoever they wanted, for all they cared. But his/her sexual identity sure as hell was a great smoke screen to hide the blame for whodunit, and sure enough, as soon as his/her body was discovered, the media declared Monique’s death was a hate crime. Everyone was riled up and the search was on, but Bridget and Tom were long gone. They’d wooed Monique out of a dark bar and into a back alley with the promise of a three-way, then Bridget had grabbed the baseball bat they’d planted earlier and had bashed in his/her head. Tom took off Monique’s boa, and together they wrapped it around and around his/her neck until Monique’s chest stopped rising and falling. They waited precious long seconds more to assure themselves he/she was really dead, then they racewalked to their respective cars, drove to the nearest freeway exit with a cheap motel, and screwed their brains out for a couple of hours before driving back the two hours to the coast.
After that, they claimed Portland as their hunting ground. There was no reason either one of them would be there, let alone want anyone dead. The homicides seemed unrelated and so they were.
But he—Tom—had a big mouth, something she hadn’t foreseen. He’d hinted about their extracurricular activities to someone who had their listening ears on. He’d said that he knew how to commit murder and get away with it. And that person, over time, finally asked if there was any way he could have one whistle-blowing little shit taken out, once and for all—theoretically, of course—and Tom had told the man that anything was possible.
Luckily, he’d never brought her name into it, even as Bridget, but it had really sent her pulse skyrocketing with fear.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” she’d screamed at him.
“I’m thinking of the future, darling. There may come the time that we need to run, and to do that we need cash.”
She’d argued with him to the point of slapping and shoving him, and then he’d done the same to her, and somehow they’d wound up screwing on the hood of her sedan. And she’d pushed her doubts aside and even gotten into it when they’d hustled Denny. She’d pretended she had a husband named Ricky who was a stone-cold killer. The bartender at Tiny Tim’s might be able to describe Tom and Bridget. That had been a risk. But no one knew Denny was dead yet, or no one cared apparently, because it had been over a month and there’d been nothing. Not a word about him going missing. Nada. He was that much of a loser.
But then new panic. All of a sudden the man wanted them to take out Joe Ford. Had hinted that if Tom didn’t take the job, he would be exposed. And that would mean Bridget would be exposed as well because Tom was basically weak. She’d wanted to throttle him for putting them in this position and yet . . . the man who’d hired him paid well. The rumor was the man had lost a ton of money through bad investments and he blamed Ford.
“Get rid of Joe Ford,” the man ordered.
Tom had argued that it was too soon after Denny, but his worries had fallen on deaf ears. The man gave him three days and so he and Bridget had hustled around, putting a new plan into place. Their original one had included burning Joe’s boat, but then yesterday, at the last minute, Joe had apparently gotten wind of what was coming down and had changed his own plans. He suddenly took the boat out himself, with his wife, and they were gone. Tom and she had been forced to scramble around and run by the seat of their pants. Plan B meant Tom had to intercept The Derring-Do, claim his motorboat had run out of gas, and ask if he could get a lift. Joe Ford had helped Tom aboard, but before he could ask what the problem was, Tom hit him with the gas can and sent him overboard. Julia had run, but he’d caught her and pushed her into the ocean as well. With that, he’d poured gasoline all over that boat, stem to the stern, then dropped the lighted match as he dove into the water. He’d watched the boat go up in a whoosh as he climbed back into his own boat, one he’d liberated from its mooring at the marina, and motored out to sea. Once he was several miles out, he turned north and kept going all the way to Seaside, where he ditched the stolen boat at a private dock where he knew the elderly vacation homeowners never came. He’d wiped the boat down, though seawater and the elements would probably take care of any DNA material he might inadvertently leave. It could be weeks before anyone found it. Meanwhile, she had purposely put herself in a bar at the entrance to the bay, in full view of people who knew her, so when the boat went up, she was one of the first to gasp, point, and shriek for help.
Tom had gone to a bar in Seaside afterward, which had kind of pissed her off for no reason she could name, but then they’d rendezvoused at the rest stop and trekked into the woods and that had all been good.
Now, however, the fallout was starting to concern her. The man who’d paid them for Denny, and who was paying for Joe Ford, had assured Tom he would be safe, but that was before Joe’s wife saw Tom on the boat and survived. And that was just one of the problems that were popping up like mushrooms, all because Tom had gone rogue.
Yes, the money was nice, but getting locked up for murder would make that a hollow victory, wouldn’t it?
“She has no memory,” Tom said now. “I’ve got some time to take care of her.”
“That’s a rumor,” she reminded. “And even if it’s true, what about when she remembers?”
“She might not remem—”
“You want to bet your freedom on that? I sure as hell don’t!”
“How’m I gonna get her in the hospital, hmmm?”
“You better figure out how.”
“I said I’d take care of it, and I will.”
“What if she recognizes you?”
“It won’t do her any good, because it’ll be her last few minutes of life.”
“I mean, what if she remembers before you get to her.”
“Stop worrying.”
His lackadaisical attitude drove her insane. If he didn’t take care of the problem, she’d have to, and was she supposed to do it alone? What if she failed? What if she was caught?
No fucking way.
“They’re releasing her tomorrow,” he said now.
“How do you know? Did you get a call?” She glanced toward his cell phone, which lay beside his hand on the table.
“Sure did.”
“What if she remembers tonight? Or, maybe she already has and we just don’t know it. What about that?” Her voice was rising and he shot her a sharp look.
“You gotta take it easy.”
“You’ve got to take it more seriously.”
He sent her a ghost of a smile. “I got a dick that’ll slide right into you and have you screaming for more.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I’m coming over there.”
“To my side of the booth? What are you talking about?”
“I’m gonna make you howl.”
The place was practically deserted, but there was no way that was going to work. She started laughing. He was so easy to turn on. As pissed off as she was at him, the idea was turning her on, too, but she could handle the heat. He couldn’t.
To her surprise, he jumped from his side of the booth and slid into hers, jamming his hand between her legs.
“Stop it!” she hissed, slapping at his hand. For an answer, he unbuttoned her jeans and slid his other hand inside, wiggling his fingers. She tried to squirm away, glancing around with wild eyes to make sure they were alone, but he was insistent.
She wanted to kill him!
“Okay,” she gasped. “Okay!”
He pulled himself away from her but stayed on her side of the booth. “Don’t worry about Julia Ford,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll take care of her.”
“All right.”
She was all jazzed up in spite of herself. She wished she could be part of the killing, but it was too dangerous. Still, the thought of it made her blood run hot. She smiled to herself, relieved and a bit bereft when he slid back to his side of the booth, then threw some money on the table.
“We gotta go,” he said.
She walked to her car, her head full of images of Julia Ford, imagining her wide eyes filled with sheer terror as she came at her . . . and then the image switched to Tom as she attacked him, the question in his eyes turning to horrified realization as she stuck a knife between his ribs once, twice, three, four, five times!
She shivered in delicious excitement.
In the end, her beloved Tom was going to be her best kill.