Truly Dead Read online

  “About what?”

  “About another postponement of our vacation.”

  He understood her more than she wanted him to. She’d had this idea that if she got far away from everything, then maybe she could put the stuff that had happened with Tremain behind her. In a completely different setting, somewhere unfamiliar, maybe she and David would have a chance. But time and time again she’d discovered that she couldn’t run from her own life. She couldn’t run from the life she’d created. She had to face it head-on. Yet sometimes she just wanted to run, and sometimes she just wanted to give in and be vulnerable.

  David took the hotel exit. “Know what I think?” He sounded a little sad. A little hurt. “I say we forget it completely. A vacation together was a bad idea. Kind of a pipe dream for both of us. You wanted a beach; I wanted . . .” No need to spell it out. Sex. A future?

  “Maybe I want what you want.”

  “Think so?” He didn’t sound at all convinced, and his voice held an unfamiliar distance.

  “I don’t know.” Was that fear in her voice? “I don’t know if I’m ready.” Yeah, fear. Had he heard it? She hoped not.

  “When you figure it out, if you figure it out, let me know.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Once the plane made contact with the tarmac of the Savannah / Hilton Head International Airport, Elise turned on her phone, getting a tone that indicated a message. She thumbed the green icon and let out an involuntary gasp as she read a cryptic text from her daughter.

  He made me go with him.

  Her heart slammed—one of those deep and unnerving movements that felt like something was living in her chest. Had someone abducted Audrey again?

  “Call her,” David said, reading over her shoulder. The seriousness in his voice made her heart pound even harder.

  Audrey didn’t pick up, so Elise tried Sweet.

  “Didn’t want to tell you this until you got home,” her father said, “but your ex-husband was here. He took Audrey back to Seattle with him.”

  Elise’s relief at discovering Audrey was safe was quickly replaced by anger. Someone had abducted Audrey. “You let her go with him? Without contacting me first?”

  “He had a court order filed by Child Protective Services.”

  That was insane. “Thomas wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “I’m at the airport,” Sweet said. “In the waiting area. I’ll explain more when you get off the plane.” He disconnected, and Elise quickly related the news to David.

  “That makes no sense. Has this ever come up?”

  “No.” She thought back to Chicago. They’d been so busy, so involved in the case. She was always careful to check for anything from Audrey or Sweet, but had she gotten a few messages from Thomas she hadn’t read? Yes.

  In unison, she and David unbuckled their seat belts as the plane approached the Jetway, the aircraft coming to a complete stop with a final jerk, engines shutting down.

  They’d flown first class, courtesy of the City of Chicago as thanks for a job well done, so they were among the first passengers to disembark. Shouldering their laptop bags, they hurried up the walkway, passing the departure desk, sidestepping the retractable belts. Practically running, they moved past security, through the checkpoint exit, and into the brightly lit public lounge and atrium.

  Sweet spotted them and pushed himself out of a rocking chair. Dressed in jeans and boots, with his gray hair tied back, he waited and watched as they approached.

  “It happened a few hours ago,” he said. “I rode to the airport with them. And the dog. They took the dog.” He seemed almost as upset about that.

  “You were supposed to be watching her,” Elise said. The man who claimed to have no qualms about killing people was saying he’d just let his granddaughter leave Savannah to live with her father in Seattle? “Taking care of her.”

  Without comment, he handed her two envelopes. The first one contained a court order stating that Audrey would have to either go into temporary foster care or move in with her father. After reading the official document, she passed it to David and opened the second envelope.

  Thomas was filing for full custody.

  “As you can see, there was nothing I could do,” Sweet said. “It was either that or foster care.”

  “Nothing you could do? Did your bout with cancer turn you into a coward?”

  “Jesus Christ, Elise.” The words came from David. She wasn’t scoring any points with him today. She’d feel ashamed of her harsh comment to Sweet later. That’s how her relationship with her father worked.

  “I didn’t want to make it any worse,” Sweet said.

  Without discussion, all three of them moved toward the down escalator and baggage claim while Elise opened her message app, then searched for and found Thomas’s name.

  “We’ll fight it,” David said.

  He said “we” as if they were a unit, a family. His inclusive choice of words, along with the shedding of his earlier distance, reassured her. Elise scrolled through pages of text, catching words and phrases like “concerned for Audrey’s safety.” She slowed to read an entire message from Thomas about how she’d allowed Audrey to hang around undesirables like Strata Luna, owner of the Savannah brothel, Black Tupelo.

  You, rushing off to Chicago to leave our daughter in the care of Jackson Sweet, a liar with no morals, putting her life in danger once again. After she almost DIED!

  True. Every word. How many times had she silently criticized herself for her parenting decisions? Maybe that’s what this was really about. Maybe she was transferring the anger she should have directed at herself to Sweet. “I’ll never win,” she said with dawning realization. Thomas was a model citizen with a perfect family and perfect job. She, on the other hand, could only give her daughter a life of danger, chaos, and, like Thomas said, questionable company. “There’s no way I can get her back.”

  And did she deserve to get her back? Really? How telling it was that her first thought upon receiving Audrey’s message was about her daughter being abducted. Again.

  The undeniable truth was that her job put Audrey in constant danger. She’d hoped that would change now that she no longer worked for Savannah PD. But would it, especially with media attention stronger than ever? Either way was a no-win. If she didn’t fight for custody, Audrey would hate her. If she fought and won, her daughter would continue to live in danger. And resent her.

  Why had she taken the Chicago job? Why had she left Audrey in the care of a man with a disturbing past and dark reputation? What kind of parent did that?

  A bad one.

  Like father, like daughter.

  At the carousel, she felt David’s hand on her shoulder and looked up to catch his silent nod, directing her attention to her father, who was moving toward the exit. David, acting as her conscience. And he was right.

  She ran after Sweet, catching up to him outside, body-shocked by the blast of smothering heat, surprised by the sharp rush of bittersweet nostalgia carried to her heart by the scent of pine trees. But along with that nostalgia, she felt a sharp stab of unfounded fear she shoved away. “I’m sorry.” She caught her breath. “I shouldn’t have said that to you. There was nothing you could have done.”

  He watched her with unreadable eyes. “You’re wrong. I could have done something. I could have stopped him, but I’m sure you would’ve liked that even less.” He smiled a smile that made her scalp tingle, his face shifting and changing until it seemed she was looking at another person altogether. The transformation reminded her that the persona he presented most of the time, even to her, was a false one. In that moment, she believed all he’d told her about being an undercover operative for the FBI, a man who tortured and broke people. Killed people.

  “Since Audrey is gone, I’ll be leaving,” he said. They both knew the only reason he’d stuck around was to keep an eye on his granddaughter.

  “You don’t have to.” But after that smile, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to stay. Shari
ng a house, just the two of them . . . The thought made her uneasy.

  “What do you know about someone named Frank J. Remy?” she asked, taking advantage of his presence in case he slipped away and she never saw him again.

  Something darted across his craggy features. A flicker that was almost a flinch. It happened fast, and then he was just an old man again. If Sweet had been anybody else, Elise would have thought he was hiding something. But hiding something was Sweet’s whole existence, so how did you get a read on that?

  “Why do you want to know about him?” he asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say. But I can tell you I’ve come by some interesting information.”

  He thought a moment, then seemed to decide to share at least a little with her. “He was given the death sentence before you were even born.”

  A strange way of putting it. Before you were even born. Odd that her birth was even on his timeline.

  “I heard you brought him in,” she said.

  “That’s right. He got the death sentence, but he died in prison before it was carried out. Too bad, because I wanted to watch his face as they delivered the lethal injection.”

  “Why?”

  “He hurt children. Very young children. Remy taught piano to kids. They trusted him, and he violated that trust.”

  “Is that your calling? Protector of other people’s children?”

  He let out a snort. “I’ll always be the bad guy, won’t I? No matter what I do.”

  Behind them, the sound of automatic doors could be heard. David appeared, dragging two suitcases.

  Her phone vibrated. It was Audrey.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Audrey said, talking fast. “I had to come to Seattle with Dad. If I didn’t, they were going to put me in foster care!” Her rush to explain things to Elise demonstrated how far their relationship had progressed in just a few years. Not that long ago, Audrey wouldn’t have bothered to call at all and wouldn’t have cared if her mother was worried. This new thoughtfulness made the current situation even harder to bear.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Elise said. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to get you back.” A promise she maybe shouldn’t be making.

  “You’re not mad?”

  “Not at you.”

  “At Grandpa?” Audrey knew Elise’s relationship with Sweet so well.

  “Is that your mother?” Thomas’s voice, in the background. “Let me talk to her.”

  Suddenly Thomas was on the phone, tripping over his words, trying to explain himself. Thomas was not a brave person, and when faced with Elise’s wrath, he always backpedaled. That alone explained why this had happened when she was gone. He would never have tried it if she’d been home.

  A cab stopped at the curb. David and her father helped the driver load the suitcases into the trunk.

  “I’ve got to go,” Elise told her ex. “Tell Audrey I love her.” She wasn’t yet certain about the truth of her next words, but she wanted to make him sweat. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

  After telling Elise he wouldn’t be heading to her house, Sweet left the airport in a separate cab. Elise and David shared a ride, with David getting out first at his apartment at Mary of the Angels, giving Elise a look she couldn’t read before turning to pull his dark suitcase behind him up the sidewalk. It seemed like they’d been gone months, but she knew in a day or so it would feel as if they’d never left.

  In the heart of the Savannah Historic District, Elise paid the cab driver, dropped her suitcase inside the front door of her Victorian home, closing and locking the door behind her.

  The odor of her own house seemed foreign the way it always did when she’d been gone more than a few days. Even though it had been recently renovated, she could still detect the old wood, now mixed with the scent of newer materials. Beneath that was a little bit of dog and something floral, maybe the shampoo Audrey had used that morning.

  Under other conditions, it might have felt good to be home, but not now. Not with Audrey gone. The only reason she’d finished the renovation was because of her daughter. Elise didn’t care about homemaking or cooking or anything domestic—another indication that she was an unfit mother. Now the house itself mocked her.

  She kicked off her shoes and headed to the kitchen in her bare feet. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she felt the need for something to reset her brain or maybe even numb it for a few minutes. She dug out a bottle of vodka and poured herself a couple of inches.

  After surviving a three-day nightmare with Atticus Tremain, she’d prided herself in her ability to maintain. So far she’d done okay, and when the department psychologist had suggested drugs for possible PTSD, she’d passed. She’d needed a clear head. She’d needed to be there for Audrey. But now . . . Did it matter anymore, what crutch she reached for?

  Not fond of the taste of vodka, she slammed the liquid down like someone taking medicine or someone who was way too into the drama of her own life.

  She’d been hard on Sweet, and now she mentally flogged herself. No matter how she tried, she lost all resolve whenever a situation with her father moved beyond the ordinary. One step outside their established boundaries, she reverted back to the resentful child. Especially annoying, since she was a detective, someone who should always have a cool head. It would probably be best if Sweet did move out, because it was beginning to look as if she’d never be able to completely forgive him for abandoning her and her mother and setting her life on such a strange and dark path.

  Slightly buzzed, she took the stairs to Audrey’s room, where she found the bed unmade. Elise stripped the sheets and carried them downstairs, stuffing them into the washing machine, adding detergent, turning the machine on, listening to the water, experiencing a blow of sorrow. She had the urge to pull the sheets from the machine and put them back on the bed, still smelling of Audrey’s shampoo and lotion rather than clean and fresh and awaiting her daughter’s return.

  In the kitchen off the laundry area was an empty spot where Trixie’s bowls had been. Above that, the leash hooks were empty. As if everyone in her life had vanished while she’d stepped away for a few moments. As if she were being punished for leaving, and punished for the choices she’d made.

  She headed back to the living room, pulled her laptop from her messenger bag, sat down on the couch, and began searching for any information she could find on Frank J. Remy. Cops called it “open-source intelligence.” Funny, the descriptions they had for basic things. It was the same Google search engine everybody used.

  Remy’s history was old and not much came up because the Internet hadn’t kicked in until after his arrest, incarceration, and death. She took a couple of screen grabs of his image and e-mailed them to herself so she’d have them on her phone. Fifteen minutes later she sent an e-mail to her information broker, a specialist outside the police department she sometimes used for research.

  “I need anything you can dig up on Remy,” she told him. “Especially anything that might be connected to Jackson Sweet.”

  Short conversation over, she set her laptop aside and dropped deeper into the couch, covering herself with the colorful throw her aunt Anastasia had crocheted while doing time in the Georgia State Prison. She’d made a lot of throws. She was still making throws while hoping her good behavior resulted in a reduced sentence and possibly parole.

  Elise dozed until a sound like fingernails tapping against glass roused her long enough to reawaken the stab of fear she’d felt earlier, and long enough for her to identify it as the patter of live-oak leaves hitting the windows. Then she was asleep again . . . until she heard a faint crash of glass from somewhere outside.

  Savannah was never quiet, and night noise was commonplace, but a check of the front-door peephole revealed a shrouded form on her porch. She hit the light switch—nothing happened.

  In the darkness, as she watched, the person walked backward, away from the house, the face remaining hidden beneath a hood. Size and movement suggested a male. Reaching the middl
e of the street, he tossed something into the air, creating a cloud that drifted to the ground. Then he turned and ran.

  With no time to analyze the event, Elise grabbed her gun, along with the flashlight she kept in a basket near the door.

  Outside, the street was empty except for the far-off sound of the street sweeper and a few distant voices. She directed the light beam toward her feet and spotted glass shards, looked up, noted the shattered bulb, then looked back down to study the mess in front of her.

  Mixed with the shards was a pile of gray powder.

  Elise crouched to examine the material in the additional light cast from the open door. She noted the grittiness of the powder and recognized it for what it was. Cremains. She could even make out small pieces of bone. Along with the cremains was dirt, maybe even graveyard dirt—goofer dust. And judging from the odor, the potion also contained a large measure of sulfur.

  Gonna sprinkle goofer dust all around your bed; wake up in the morning and find your own self dead.

  The media attention around the Chicago case made it easy for anybody living in Savannah to know she was home.

  Exhausted and unalarmed, she nonetheless knew better than to completely dismiss the curse as just Savannah being strange. She straightened and looked down the street shadowed by moss-draped branches.

  Welcome home.

  CHAPTER 3

  Early the next morning, after toast and coffee, Elise scrolled through her contacts and called Strata Luna. The Gullah woman confirmed Elise’s suspicion about the powder left on her doorstep.

  “A killing spell,” she said, alarm in a voice that was typically deep and smooth. “You’ve been throwed. Clean it up. Right now. An’ make sure nuthin’s been buried on your property. Check under the steps. Check ’round the house. In the backyard. Gonna need a purification ritual too. I can do that.”

  “No purification ritual.”

  “A killin’ spell ain’t nuthin’ to mess with, darlin’.”

  “Who’s that?” The voice belonged to Jackson Sweet, and it was coming from somewhere in the room with Strata Luna. Elise felt an unexpected pang that took her a moment to identify. Sadness over the loss of their short-lived family, dysfunctional though it had been.