Whispers of Fate: The Mistresses of Fate, Book Two (15 page)

Now, though, he thought he might have a few words with Old Ninny, maybe in the morning, before he headed to court. She worked in Jane’s shop most days, telling fortunes to anyone interested, playing poker with those of a more practical bent. He hadn’t spoken with her often, a polite greeting at best, but several people in town swore by her advice.

He made a few more notes from the case file and was about to call it a night and head home when he remembered that he’d promised to call Tavey for Christie, find out if she’d help train Christie’s dog, Grumbles. He checked the time. Nine o’clock. Late enough that it would be rude to call and bother her.

He set his phone on the desk and leaned back in his chair, thinking about her. An errant thought drifted through his head: if she would work with him, help him solve this case by doing something other than hurling speculative accusations at his uncle, she would be an unstoppable force.

He wondered what it would be like to have a woman like her at his side. Tavey’s unwavering dedication to and love for Summer was actually admirable, he had to admit. What must it be like to have someone who would defend you, search for you, defy the police for you, simply out of love and loyalty? He didn’t know many women like that, though he supposed each in her own way—Chris, Tavey, and Raquel—had changed because of what happened to Summer. Their fates had been sealed, their choices revolving around the disappearance of one lost friend.

He thought of the first time he’d seen Tavey, those haunting eyes taking him in, hovering over his bruises. She still made him furious, furious and aching, because nothing had changed. She was still Octavia Collins of the Collins family; she had more money, education, and resources than he could fathom, and she needed nothing from him.

He glanced at the file. Except, maybe if he found Summer . . .

He scowled and looked away, out the window at the warm spring night, listening idly as the Braves managed to score. He wondered what she was doing. Sometimes he thought about the time he’d kissed her. She’d been yelling at him, insisting that his uncle had to know something,
anything,
about what had happened to Summer.

He’d been sixteen, hotheaded, angry, and she’d been so pretty, with her long dark hair, big smile, and the dark eyes that watched him constantly. He’d see her in the stands at games, perched neatly between Raquel on one side and Chris on the other. She was friendly with everyone, popular. Maybe if Summer hadn’t disappeared, she would have been a cheerleader or an athlete, but instead she allied herself with two of the town’s misfits and didn’t let anyone say a negative thing about them in her presence.

The incident that led to him grabbing her and kissing her had started out small; she’d received some of Abraham’s mail and had brought it by his uncle’s house. She may have asked a question, just one or two, trying to get the old man to admit something, or maybe he’d said something to make her believe that he knew what had happened to Summer. Tyler struggled to remember what she’d said. When he’d arrived at his uncle’s house after a date, just to avoid going home, she’d been shaking his uncle’s shoulders, her brown eyes filled with tears.

“Tell me,” she’d screamed. Tyler had heard her from outside in the driveway, even with the doors and windows closed.

He’d run inside the house and dragged her out onto the porch, holding her wrists when she wouldn’t stop fighting.

“He knows something. Please.” She’d tried to pull away. “He does. He said—” She was pulling in great gulps of air, sobbing as if she were choking.

“Tavey, stop,” he’d ordered, but she’d continued to fight, so without thinking, he’d kissed her. Just to make her stop talking, stop crying.

He remembered thinking that she tasted like hot chocolate and salt from her tears. Her lips had been soft, her breath catching as he pressed his lips firmly against hers. He’d been with girls before, experienced girls, and he knew without a doubt that Tavey Collins had never been kissed. Still, no one had ever tasted the way she did, like hot chocolate, oranges, a midsummer night. No one’s lips had ever been so soft, so slick, so wanting. He’d wanted to kiss her and go on kissing her until they melted to the floor like hot wax.

He’d gripped her hair, feeling the thick shiny strands that he’d studied a thousand times but never touched, and with that, just the feel of her hair beneath his fingers, he remembered who was in his arms. He’d stepped away abruptly and she stumbled, her eyes dazed and red from crying, her mouth swollen from his kisses.

Tyler remembered feeling embarrassed, remembered wiping his mouth like she’d tasted bad when the exact opposite was true. She tasted like every dream he’d had before or since, and the feeling had frankly terrified him. For one brief moment he would have done anything for her. For a kid who’d been abused his whole life, who’d watched his mother be abused, giving someone that kind of power was impossible. It couldn’t be done. The person had to be cut away, like a diseased limb.

“Go home, Tavey. Leave my uncle alone.”

He remembered silver tears had streaked down her face. She’d turned and left, her shoulders straight, her dark hair swinging.

Tyler sighed, turning in his chair and gathering his things. He couldn’t take it back. He understood her better now that he was an adult. She’d been orphaned young, raised by grandparents who were loving but formal, surrounded by servants who were her family. She’d been a dutiful granddaughter by all accounts, proper and respectable, but she’d cared for her friends and her servants and the town not out of duty. He’d seen it today. She did it out of love. She’d loved her friend Summer and no doubt felt that she’d let her down somehow by not finding her, by not protecting her.

His phone rang. Raquel. Twice in the same day.

“Raquel? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t find Tavey.”

“What?” Tyler stood.

“She left this afternoon and hasn’t come back. We’ve been searching, but we haven’t found her.”

Tyler grabbed his keys and the case file, using his shoulder to hold the phone to his ear as he hurried to lock the station door. “Did she say where she was going?”

“She told Thomas she was going to see how one of the rescue dogs behaved. She thought she would make a good search-and-rescue dog for the Triplets. She took her best tracking dog, though, Dixie, along for the trip.”

“She was looking for something,” Tyler said grimly, securing the lock on the outer door of the building and setting the alarm.

“Maybe,” Raquel muttered.

“What were you doing while this was going on?”

“Nothing, damn it. Talking.”

He could tell by her tone that she was pissed at herself, so he didn’t see any reason to bitch at her.

“All right. What have you done so far?”

“Atohi is searching with one of the other dogs. Brent and I are walking the grounds with flashlights, but it’s dark, and we can’t get much done in the woods.”

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“We didn’t think to look for her until dinnertime,” Raquel confessed.

“Damn it.” Tyler started his truck with more force than was necessary. “I’ll be there in half an hour. Call me if you find her.”

“Okay,” Raquel agreed shortly, and hung up on him.

Tyler used his flashing lights as he left town, trying to suppress the rush of panic at the thought of Tavey going missing as Summer had, vanishing without a trace. Not if he could fucking help it.

22

ABRAHAM WAS DEAD.

Circe tried to feel some pity for him. He’d tried to fight, but Mark was strong. It had been easy for him to hold a pillow over Abraham’s face. Circe remembered a feather had floated in the air above the old man’s head. Her eyes had followed it around the room while he kicked and struggled. She’d focused every particle of her attention on the feather floating up and sideways and then up again in the breeze from a ceiling fan.

She might have given Mark the idea. She’d suggested that it would be better if no one suspected anything was wrong.

He’d seemed to disregard her advice at first. “I don’t really give a fuck. Even if those stupid teenagers mention something about me coming back, I plan on grabbing the cash and heading for the hills.”

“But it’ll be so much easier if no one knows. Maybe you could stay awhile.”

“No.”

“His nephew is an investigator with the sheriff’s department. If you shoot him, he may hunt you down before you can get away,” Jane said simply.

He’d stared at her for a long moment, like he wasn’t sure he believed her, but then he’d nodded and lowered the weapon he’d had trained on Abraham.

“It’ll be easy to make it look like the old man died in his sleep. You said he was dying anyway, right?”

Circe nodded.

“All right, then. Come with me. And be quiet.”

It hadn’t taken long.

The door had been locked, but Circe knew Abraham kept an extra key beneath a small wooden statue of a squirrel. The girls had mentioned it once, when they were in the garden. They hadn’t known she was listening at the window.

When it was done, when the old man had stopped breathing, they’d left, and Circe had carefully wiped her fingerprints from the key before putting it back under the squirrel.

She’d thought they would head back to her house even though the girls would be there, but instead he’d told her they were going for the money tonight.

“Why did you come back?” she asked, finally putting voice to what she’d been wondering.
He’s been gone all this time and never once considered just taking it?

He shot her a suspicious glance. They’d left Old Abraham’s house and had been walking in the direction of the old paper mill for hours. She’d been silent for most of the trip, plodding along behind him until it had started to get dark. He had flashlights, but it was far, seven miles or so through woods and hills, and she was tired and out of shape.

“You think they’re not still wondering?” he snapped. “We killed his son. Some part of him suspects we were involved no matter how plausible our story. And the girls. He told us those girls better not ever be found, but guess what, they were, so I’m getting my cash and getting on a goddamn plane before the FBI figures out who they were. Before he decides that even if we were telling the truth, we fucked up royally.”

Circe hadn’t thought about it. She hadn’t thought about much of anything about that night. She kept it safely tucked away in a far-flung corner of her mind. Even the voice didn’t know it was there.

“But once the FBI started sniffing around, I knew it was time to take a chance. If I wanted the money, then I better take it,” he continued.

Notice he didn’t say “we,”
the voice muttered.

“They have to be gone by now. In prison. Something.” Circe was hopeful. Surely those men didn’t still suspect them. Surely they were long dead and gone.

“You don’t know these people. They’re in this business for a reason. If Charlie hadn’t been such a colossal fuckup, we wouldn’t have had to worry about it. Everything would’ve gone smoothly as cake and pie.”

Not really
, the voice argued.
There was Belle.
Nothing went smoothly around Belle, not one damn thing. And Robbie was out of prison. He knew about it, too. He’d gone to jail. Why hadn’t they killed him?

“So why did you leave? Why didn’t you stay here and keep pretending?” She tried not to sound plaintive, but she couldn’t help it. He’d been gone so long.

He laughed harshly, climbing over a fallen log. Circe climbed after him, feeling the rough bark beneath her hands. Something touched her fingers, a bug or something, and she jerked her hand away, hurrying after him.

She gripped her arms, chilled even though it was a warm night. Grasshoppers and crickets were out and somewhere an owl hooted.

“I already told you. They sent me away. I figured I’d come back at some point, collect the cash, and be on my merry way. And when I heard about the little adventure you had here last fall, I knew it was now or never. Once the cops identify the bodies, they’ll be asking questions.”

Circe nodded. She hadn’t thought about that. She knew they’d found the bodies when they dredged the millpond, but she hadn’t thought what it would mean once the girls were identified.

“You’re going to take me with you, right? When you leave?”

He didn’t stop walking, picking his way through the growing dark with his flashlight.

“Yeah, sure,” he agreed easily enough, but Circe had trouble believing him. He didn’t seem sincere, didn’t even seem interested, really.

She would make him want her, she thought wildly. Then he would stay. She was still beautiful. She would make him see that, see how great it would be if he took her along.

23

TAVEY AWOKE WITH
a headache, confused and disoriented. It took her a moment to get her bearings. She kept looking around in the dark, unsure of where she was, the dogs whining urgently nearby.

When she realized what had happened, she cursed and tried to stand. Her ankle twisted underneath her and she fell again.

She managed to stand and called the dogs over to her.

She knew better than anyone the dangers of wandering the woods in the dark. Even with a cell phone and tracking dogs, it was easy enough to fall or get turned around. She hadn’t intended to be out so late. Dixie had taken the scent of the hair ribbon and started her search. Penny followed dutifully along, sniffing just as Dixie did, occasionally looking back as if to make sure Tavey was still there at the other end of the lead.

They’d searched for several hours. For a while, Dixie had seemed like she had a scent, but then, just as the sun was starting to get low in the afternoon sky, she’d begun to wander in half circles, eliminating directions, but hadn’t been able to pick up the scent again. Deflated and getting hungry, Tavey had decided to head home, pleased with Penny’s behavior on the trip but disappointed that the search hadn’t turned up any more evidence of Summer.

She’d thought that they would find something quickly. Her beagles never ventured far from the main house, so she’d thought the search would end in the woods at the end of the back lawn, but Dixie had led her north, through the woods away from the house.

She’d been sitting on a fallen log and giving the girls water from a foldable dish when she’d thought she’d heard the sound of laughing, like a child at play.

The breeze had kicked up and the trees overhead had creaked and groaned as if they were speaking, as if they had a story they wanted to tell. Distantly, Tavey realized she was dreaming.

She’d felt herself drift toward the sound of laughter as effortlessly as fog creeps over a field, urging the dogs to follow her as she left the woods and entered a small clearing. She’d known where she was. For a moment, she forgot the sound she’d heard and drew in a breath at the view in front of her.

The clearing was on a hillside. Looking down she could see more trees, but then, way off, the roof of her home was visible, and the roofs of the dog buildings.

The setting sun burned to her right, casting long shadows from the gravestones of her ancestors. She hadn’t been up here since her mother’s birthday the previous June, nearly a year ago, but she made sure the gardener tended starting in the spring, when the weeds began to grow up around it. He’d done a fair job, especially since he had to drive the landscaping truck up the narrow dirt road to her grandfather’s old hunting cabin and then hike up the road from there.

There were only about a dozen graves. Her great-great-grandmother and -father, her great-grandparents, various aunts and uncles. And her parents, of course.

She let the dogs explore, releasing their leads as she walked to the low, gentle arching marble stone of her great-great-grandmother. There was a bouquet of wildflowers tied with a long piece of grass on the grave, undoubtedly left by the Triplets.

OCTAVIA ROSE BURGETT COLLINS

BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

APRIL 5, 1892–JUNE 7, 1978

She’d never met her great-great-grandmother, but she’d been named for her. She’d died just days before Tavey’s birth.

She rubbed her fingers over the smoothly worn stone and picked up the bouquet. A spider jumped from it onto the gravestone, and she nearly dropped the flowers. Penny, who’d seen the spider, came over to investigate. Tavey urged her to leave it be. Dixie was sitting on her father’s grave. Tavey glanced over and the dog pawed at the headstone, as if trying to call her attention to it.

Tavey walked over to investigate but didn’t see anything amiss. It was a simple headstone, square and plain.

CHARLES PHILLIP COLLINS

OCTOBER 17, 1954–JANUARY 5, 1980

“Leave it, Dixie,” she ordered.

The dog backed away, whining a little.

Tavey had often wondered why her father’s grave didn’t have an epitaph. All her grandmother would say about it was, “Nothing seemed appropriate at the time.”

Once she understood how much trouble her father had caused, she’d realized that her grandmother had been deeply angry. Apparently he’d gambled away his father’s money, used drugs, and essentially partied instead of behaving like a responsible adult. It had even been implied, though not proved, that her father might have been the reason the car had gone off the bridge.

Tavey didn’t want to believe that. Her father had been young, only twenty-six, and Tavey had barely been two years old.

She sighed and looked at her mother’s grave. She didn’t know much about her. By all accounts, she’d been a sweet, unremarkable girl from a nice family in Rome. She’d been lovely in an old-fashioned kind of way, with dark hair and slightly crooked front teeth. Tavey had her nose, much to her dismay.

She’d overheard people gossiping in church about her mother. They’d implied that Tavey’s father had been forced to marry her mother, that he’d gotten her pregnant.

Tavey didn’t know whether it was true or not; she hadn’t wanted to ask her grandmother such a thing.

She sat down next to her mother’s grave and whistled for Penny to return. Dixie came over and leaned against her, and after a moment, Penny did the same, resting her rump against Tavey’s hip.

Tavey smiled and brushed a hand over both their smooth heads.

“We better head back, ladies. It’ll be dark soon.” Tavey realized that she hadn’t told Raquel where she was going, or when she would return, and pulled out her phone to check for messages. There were none. There were also no bars. Any kind of signal was rare on the mountain.

She’d started to sit up when she heard the noise again, only this time the laugh sounded more like a woman’s and less like a girl’s. She turned her head slowly, looking back toward her great-grandmother’s headstone, and saw a young woman with blond hair, an elfin face, and bright blue eyes. She was wearing combat boots, black jeans, and a tank top with a picture of Marilyn Monroe. She had braided bracelets on both her wrists almost to the elbow, and she was smiling at Tavey as if she knew her, as if Tavey was a friend she’d dearly missed.

“Hey, Tavey.” The girl smiled.

Tavey blinked, astonished. “Summer!”

“Uh-huh,” the girl confirmed, continuing to grin.

Tavey hesitated. “Am I dreaming?”

“You are,” Summer confirmed, “more or less.”

Tavey sighed, both relieved and disappointed. “So you’re not real?”

Summer looked offended, flicking a grasshopper off the leg of her jeans. She was different from the Summer she’d known, younger than she should be if she was grown, but her eyes looked old. “Of course I’m real.”

Tavey shook her head. “If I’m dreaming, then you’re not real.”

Summer clucked her tongue, then laughed. “You haven’t changed much. You were always so literal.”

“What happened to you?” Tavey whispered, hoping, even knowing that she was dreaming, that Summer would tell her.

Summer looked a little sad. “I’ve missed you, and Raquel, and Chris.”

“We’ve missed you, too,” Tavey replied, swallowing. “Can you tell me where to find you?”

“Oh, Tavey, that’s not how stories work. You get a hint, only a hint. You always did want all the answers right away.”

Tavey found herself smiling. It was true. She’d never had much patience for stories. “You remember.”

“Of course,” Summer agreed, jumping down from the grave and walking toward Tavey, stopping when she reached Tavey’s father’s grave. She leaned an elbow on the smooth granite and looked down to where Tavey sat. Penny wagged her tail at her. Tavey dimly realized that Summer could see, or she seemed to be seeing.

“What can you tell me?”

“I can tell you that I miss you, that I love you, and that you should tell Tyler Downs how you feel about him.”

Tavey blinked, startled. “Tyler hates me,” she blurted out.

Summer snorted. “He most certainly doesn’t.”

“He hates the way I’ve treated his uncle. But I remember. I remember how much Abraham hated you. I remember his face when I asked him about you. He knows where you are, doesn’t he?”

Summer sighed, a long sigh, and shifted so she was sitting on Tavey’s father’s grave now, turning and swinging her feet so that her boots hit the face of it.

“Abraham never hurt me, Tavey. He told me a secret.”

“A secret?” Tavey whispered, astonished. “What was it?”

Summer bent down, her long blond hair brushing Tavey’s wrist, and she whispered, her voice like the wind through the trees. “He told me that ‘in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.’ ”

TAVEY HAD AWOKEN
to the feel of Penny licking her wrist. She’d gasped, looking up at the dark, completely disoriented. Once she realized that she’d been dreaming, that she was in the woods, she recalled tripping over something in the dark, recalled hitting her head.

Once she was on her feet, both her head and ankle throbbing, she carefully removed her backpack. Her phone was in a small pocket in the front. She pulled it out with shaking hands and prayed that there was enough signal to make at least one call, if not pull up the mapping app to point her in the direction of home.

There was one bar and over twenty-five missed calls, and the barest hint of power left in the battery. She was lucky her phone hadn’t died.

She pressed on Raquel’s number, returning her most recent call.

“Thank God. Are you okay?” Raquel demanded. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“I’m okay, but I’m lost and my phone’s dying.”

“All right,” Raquel said calmly, her voice brisk and businesslike, the way it always was in an emergency. “We’ll give one of the dogs your scent. Atohi will find you.”

Tavey didn’t want that, didn’t want to be rescued. “No, I’m going to use the map on my phone, get my bearings, and come home.”

“Tavey Collins, you will sit your ass down and wait for us to come get you.”

Tavey paused, considered protesting, but realized that Raquel was right. It would be foolish to continue stumbling through the dark with a bruised skull and twisted ankle. She would survive having her pride battered.

“All right. I’ll check my phone, get my bearings, and try to text you my general location.”

“Good. Hang up and get to it,” Raquel ordered, and ended the call.

Tavey pulled up her mapping app and hit the GPS navigation button, watching the little blue arrow center in on her location. She was in a small valley about a mile from the house. She texted Raquel a general description and had just hit send when her phone died, taking the only light aside from the moon. After a moment, her eyes adjusted and the dim glow was enough for her to make out the vague outlines of the trees.

She led the dogs slowly over to a big oak tree, carefully placing her feet, listening to the snap and crunch of the twigs and leaves beneath them. She hoped the noise and the presence of the dogs would keep any overly aggressive animals away. The night air was soft and humid, smelling of earth and blooming trees. Bracing herself against the tree with one arm, she lowered herself carefully so that she was sitting next to the trunk.

The dogs came and sat next to her, sharing their warmth and the comfort of their steady panting.

She patted them, closing her eyes but not sleeping.

She remembered every crisp, vibrant detail of the dream, better than she remembered the events of the day. She remembered Summer’s face, mostly grown up, her white-blond hair hanging down. “The dead smile and sit up and return to the world,” Tavey repeated, remembering what Summer had said. Tavey felt one hot tear slide from her right eye. It was the quote from the book the FBI had found at the paper mill.
Summer was dead.
Tavey felt certain of it in a way she never had before.

It didn’t seem possible, really, that Summer was gone. She was so much a part of Tavey’s life, of Raquel’s life, of Chris’s. Even when insisting that Abraham knew where to find her body, some secret part of Tavey had hoped that Summer would be found alive, undamaged, even after all this time. She’d believed it because she’d always believed in Summer, and her heart was broken all over again.