Читать книгу Siren's Secret - Debbie Herbert - Страница 10

Chapter 4

Purloined coins and copper vases

Portraits of striking female faces

Antique swords and silver spoons

Artifacts filling every room.

Shelly picked through the seafood platter of sautéed shrimp and clams, scraping the baked potato, corn and bread sticks off to one side.

“I see you’re not much of a vegetable person,” Tillman said after a bite of his potato.

“’Fraid not.” She forced herself to take a bite of corn. Truth was, her diet consisted almost entirely of seafood. Anything else pretty much tasted like sawdust. Besides, she was too nervous to eat much. Which was ridiculous, really. Yeah, her dates had been few and far between since she’d moved to Bayou La Siryna three years ago. But part of it was because she didn’t relish the thought of dating any of Lily’s leftovers. The beautiful siren mercilessly enthralled the opposite sex. Lily had pretty much used and discarded the best the bayou had to offer, and Shelly wasn’t interested in being a consolation prize for Lily’s lovesick exes.

“Eddie’s enjoying your sessions together at the pool.”

“He’s come a long way. At first, he wanted nothing to do with me. Splashed around and did his own thing with minimal interaction.” She smiled, enthusiastic about her work.

“How’d you win him over?”

“Patience. I have lots of experience with special-needs persons. They need time to know you’re safe and that there’s a predictable pattern in what you ask of them.”

“He needs predictable routine, all right.” Tillman nodded. “Any little change in his routine throws him out of whack.”

She stared at him thoughtfully. “It must be tough dealing with Eddie on a daily basis.”

He shrugged. “It can be. But Eddie’s also my best friend. We go fishing at least a couple times a week and he never laughs at my off-key singing or rolls his eyes at my bad jokes.”

“And I bet he’s an excellent listener,” she added with a grin.

“The best.”

“Let’s hope others appreciate his good qualities, too, because I hope eventually Eddie can move to a group session. Socialization skills are important. Of course, I’d start him off slowly, just add one or two other people to his session and then gradually add more.”

Tillman frowned. “It’s hard for him to be around groups of people. Too much noise and he gets overloaded. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” He reached in his pocket as his cell phone went off. “Angier speaking.”

Shelly ate a few more clams as Tillman carried on his conversation.

He half rose from the table. “Excuse me, it’s work. Let me take this outside a few minutes.”

She waved a hand. “No problem.” She watched him head across the restaurant, noting the way his jeans hugged a very nice-looking ass. She hoped his invitation tonight wasn’t just to thank her for her work with Eddie.

A middle-aged woman decked in polyester approached. “Lily,” she said, “what are you doing here all alone?”

“Lily’s my cousin—I’m Shelly.”

The woman lifted a well-manicured hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. The resemblance is uncanny.”

“Happens all the time.”

“My apologies. I’m Lulu,” the woman said, extending a hand. “Be sure and tell Lily I said hello. Your cousin is an absolute genius with hair.”

“She is,” Shelly agreed. “I’ll tell her I ran into you.”

Tillman returned, worry lines creasing his brow. “Sorry about that. Occupational hazard. One of my deputies had a question about a due process hearing at the jail.”

“Sounds like you never really get away from your job.”

He shrugged. “Comes with the territory. Does that bother you?”

“No. I know what it’s like to put your heart and energy into a job. I care about my clients.” She gave him a pointed stare. “And I won’t push them to do anything I don’t think they’re ready for.”

Tillman held up a hand. “I believe you. No harm in trying out the group thing with Eddie.”

“If I see it’s a problem, I promise I’ll back off.” Shelly took a long swallow of wine, curious if he had any news about the body she’d found. Maybe he could tell her something to ease her fears. She was not pumping for information. Well, perhaps a little...but what was the harm in that?

“It can’t be easy for you, what with the latest body turning up a couple of days ago.”

His jaw clinched almost imperceptibly. “This will be the last one.”

“Really? That’s good news.”

“No such thing as a perfect crime. We’re closing in on the sick bastard.”

Shelly’s heart pounded. The sooner the better. She waited for him to continue but he concentrated on his shrimp platter.

“Any good leads?” she prompted.

“A couple.”

“I hope you find him soon. It’s nerve-racking knowing he’s out there. If I leave work after dark, I’m looking over my shoulder in the parking lot.”

He frowned. “Our office is working hard. We’re doing everything we can to end the fear in our community.”

At his grim face Shelly touched his hand. “Nobody doubts that.”

“Give me your phone.”

“What?”

“Just let me see it a minute.” He grinned. “I’m not going to read your texts.”

“I didn’t think you were.” She retrieved it from her purse and handed it over. Tillman punched in some numbers before giving it back.

“I put in the number to my office and my personal cell number. Call if you feel threatened or see anything that makes you nervous.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” Probably one of the nicest gestures she’d had from a man in ages. Uh-oh, she’d better guard her heart with this one.

Tillman touched the ring on her right hand. “Nice emerald.”

Shelly knew he was evading specifics on the case. Mata Hari she was not. She only hoped he was right about finding the killer. She glanced at the ring. “This belonged to my mother. She died while I was in college and I’ve worn it ever since.” Mom told her she’d recovered it from a shipwreck somewhere in the Baltic Ocean. Shelly liked to think it might once have belonged to a Russian princess. The gem quality was truly that rare and magnificent.

“I’m sorry about your mother. How did she die?”

A sharp pang cramped her stomach at the concern in his warm gray eyes and she had to fight past the lump in her throat to speak. “Car wreck. A drunk driver hit my parents as they were returning home from a movie.”

He nodded. “That had to be tough, losing them both at the same time.”

She managed a small smile. She doubted the fierce pain would ever ease and she’d feel like an orphan even as an old lady. She imagined rocking on the front porch, alone, gray-haired and forgotten, staring at the vast expanse of the ocean while her only blood relations were out there somewhere frolicking under the sea.

“My dad died two years ago, I guess about the same time you came to this town. It was tough, we were close. I looked up to him,” Tillman said.

“He couldn’t have been that old. What happened?”

“Heart attack. I’m sure the pressures of work and home contributed to it.”

“I’m sorry, Tillman.” She touched his hand and felt warmth travel up her arm at the brief contact.

“He was sheriff here. When I got the news he died I left Mobile and came back home. They wanted me in the Sheriff’s Office, and Mom and Eddie needed me, too.”

Shelly’s heart clinched. “Do you plan to stay in Bayou La Siryna or is this assignment temporary?”

Tillman hesitated. “There’ll be an election next year for the job. I don’t see things changing on the home front.”

“What do you mean?”

“Eddie’s a handful.”

“True, he’s on the severe end of the autism scale, but I’ve seen worse.”

“You haven’t seen Eddie at his worst. And Mom...” His voice trailed off and he shifted in his seat. “She can’t deal with it.”

Shelly recalled Portia Angier’s pale, delicate face, the way she rubbed her temples, how she often dropped off Eddie and called Tillman to pick him up from the Y. Probably suffered the classic Fragile Southern Belle Syndrome. “You’re a good man to help your family.”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m no saint.”

Shelly smiled inside. She certainly had no use for saints. Her fantasies of Tillman were far from saintly.

* * *

It had all been so easy.

A quick search on the internet at the public library to find her photo and name, and then one click for her personal address. Their names were listed on the hair salon’s business license. There had even been a picture of them at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the shop years earlier. Lily Bosarge had long blond hair and the other, Jet Bosarge, was taller and had dark short hair that barely covered her ears.

Lily was his target.

Melkie parked his car down the road, careful not to be seen, before approaching the large Victorian home with its wraparound porch. The silent darkness of the house reminded him of a cemetery. He peered through the windows and listened for the faintest sign of life inside. Convinced they weren’t home, he searched and found, behind some dense hawthorn shrubs, a small unlocked utility window. Donning latex gloves and a black skullcap to prevent loose hairs from falling, he squeezed his wiry body in the small opening and landed in the basement.

Melkie crept upstairs, entering the living room. He stopped every few seconds to check for sounds or the beam of approaching car headlights from the driveway. Taking out his penlight, he explored. He’d never seen anything like it. Coins and clutter oozed in every cubbyhole, spilled over the tops of pricy-looking furniture, and lined walls were stippled in rich tones of burnt umbers and corals. He stuffed his pockets, indiscriminately shoving handfuls of coins and little doodads that gleamed in the dark. That couldn’t be real gold, could it? What little hope he had of finding his knife vanished. Needle in a haystack, baby.

A laptop computer lay on the kitchen counter, the monitor asleep. Melkie jiggled the mouse and the screen came to life. He clicked on the email icon, grinning at the thought of leaving a message. He’d keep it short and succinct.

Die, freaking mermaid bitch. Boatman.

That should scare her out of hiding.

He headed upstairs, the pine steps creaking like a coffin opening in the midnight emptiness of a morgue. Portraits of strikingly beautiful women in old-fashioned dresses from different eras lined the walls on both sides. The old house had six bedrooms and three bathrooms on the top level. The three stale bedrooms with no signs of life he quickly dismissed. He wanted hers.

One bedroom definitely had a lived-in look. Clothes, mostly jeans, shorts and T-shirts, draped the bed and antique dresser. Melkie opened drawers, found more T-shirts and plain underwear and poked around papers and books on the nightstand. Nothing useful there—used tubes of ChapStick, old yellow-stained maps. Probably the short-haired Jet’s room, although he couldn’t rule out that it might be the bitch’s room.

The next bedroom was slightly neater, although its dresser was littered with expensive-looking glass perfume bottles and an elaborate silver comb and mirror set atop a mirrored plate. Its closet was jammed with sundresses and lacy negligees in pastel hues that shimmered like ghosts in the darkness. Melkie fingered several—their soft, feminine fabric gliding against his callused skin like the promise of sex, of tangled bodies in twisted silk sheets. He imagined fashioning a length of that silk, wrapping it around a fragile neck, jerking and pulling until she lay broken, that neck red-welted and raw from the smooth fabric. His erection was immediate and painful; all mixed with outrage that she had seen him and knew who he really was.

Focus.

He turned from the closet and went to a huge dresser stuffed with lacey things, little slips of panties with matching bras. No knife. Melkie opened the silver flask on one of the perfume bottles, breathing deep its scent, both musky and floral, complex notes scrambling his brain with lust. He put the top back on it and stuffed it in his pants pocket, too. As he left the room, possibly her room, he saw an Oriental jewelry box by the nightstand. He crossed the room and greedily swiped gold rings lined up against black velvet, sparking like midnight rainbows. Sweet. These pickings would help supplement the state of Alabama’s measly unemployment check.

This could be her room—but he’d seen nothing to know for sure.

The last bedroom was pristine, and he’d almost passed it by. But a faint citrusy scent gave him pause. He entered, checking out the closet and dresser drawers. Perhaps an overnight guest of Jet and Lily Bosarge?

Light bounced off a photo on a nightstand. Melkie picked it up, pocketing the black pearl necklace draped on its abalone-shell frame. The corners of his lips twitched as he stared at the photograph of the mermaid with her long, blond hair.

Gotcha, he whispered in the stillness.

He set it back on the table, reached in his back pocket and pulled out the mermaid figurine from the globe Tia Henrietta had given him. Breaking it into two pieces, he laid the broken mermaid under the pillow. That message should be clear enough. Melkie lay on her bed, pulling out the other present he’d bought for her—one of his mom’s old hooker panties. He’d intended to just leave them where she would find them, knowing someone had been in her room. But now—the scent of woman, the lingerie, the photograph of her smiling at him as he lay there—now he had another gift for this mermaid.

He’d show her who was boss, would make her scream in agony as he ripped out those sea-witchy, freaky eyes. Melkie unzipped his jeans and began rubbing Mama’s panties on his crotch.

* * *

By the time they got out of the restaurant and drove to Murrell’s Point for a walk, Tillman’s phone had rung twice more. Shelly wanted to toss the device in the ocean. How could he stand being tied to it all the time?

One disconcerting moment occurred when they had exited Tillman’s car and a half-dozen cats gathered around her. They bristled and hissed, their alien eyes flashing fluorescent in the moonbeams. Clearly they sensed she was the mother lode of a fish dinner. One had nipped at her legs experimentally until Tillman gallantly shooed them all away.

The ocean was calm with only an occasional whitecap in the distance. Even though the moon was beginning to wane and not at its peak, Shelly still felt a strong urge to leap in and swim, to feel the undercurrents tugging at her weightless body as she played and swam among kindred creatures. She breathed in the briny air, rife with the scent of algae and seaweed and wet driftwood. She sighed in longing, doubting she’d ever feel safe out there again.

Tillman regarded her curiously. “Smell something good?”

“I love the smell of the ocean.” Shelly grinned, slipping off her sandals.

“You mean that stinky odor produced by bacterial gas?”

She lifted her hair from the back of her sticky neck and let the ocean breeze cool the clammy skin. “I see you’re quite the romantic.”

Tillman took her hand and led her closer to the water.

Her sudden pleasure at his touch disappeared. Being in a pool was fine, but if her feet contacted the ocean’s salt water her body would automatically transform. The bare skin of her feet, when mixed with the alchemy of the sea, caused webs to form between her toes. All it took was an unexpected splash around the knees and both legs would fuse into a single tail. Iridescent scales would burst forth, coating human skin, completing the metamorphosis from legs to fins.

She hung back. “Let’s walk here where the sand is dry and warm.”

“Guess this means my fantasy of a skinny-dip together is not going to happen?”

Shelly laughed. If he got her in the sea, it would be beyond any fantasy he could ever imagine. Her laughter choked at the sudden hot ache as she pictured Tillman swimming naked. Her cousins were right—it had been too long since she’d had a man in her life. Probably explained why she was so drawn to Tillman.

He must have caught the drift of her errant thoughts. Tillman pulled her to his side and she snuggled up against his hard body, her head against his chest. The fingers of his right hand traced the outline of a wicked scar on her shoulder. A nasty souvenir from an encounter two years ago when she’d swum too close to a charter fishing boat and a hook had sunk into her flesh. Those fishermen almost got the surprise of their lives.

“Where did this scar come from?”

“Childhood accident from swimming too close to a pier.” Only a half lie.

“Ouch.”

His hand explored further to a smaller scar by her collarbone. “And this?”

“I don’t remember,” she lied. She could hardly tell him it was from struggling to get out of a tuna net last summer. Her torso bore several such scars, especially since returning to live in the Gulf. She hung her head, wondering what he would make of a close examination of her body.

He tilted her chin up with a firm hand.

“I’m too curious,” he said gruffly. “Another occupational hazard. Great for my job, not so much with people.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered, fascinated with the darkening of his gray eyes. He wanted her every bit as much as she wanted him. Dangerous territory, her mind whispered. Remember what happened to your mother when she fell in love with a human. Shelly squeezed her eyes shut, determined to drown the demon voices of doom. Surely there was no harm in a little kiss. She had wanted to get close to him for so long, had fantasized about this moment for over a year.

His lips were upon hers, hot, demanding and probing. She was drowning in sensation, her bones and blood liquefying in pools of desire. And when his tongue explored, she eagerly met it with her own. The sweet, fierce hotness made her toes curl into the warm sand. The pounding of the waves matched the pounding in her blood.

Tillman pulled back first and cupped her face in his large hands. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he said in a voice husky with desire.

“Thank God. I was beginning to think maybe this date was only your way of thanking me for my work with Eddie.”

“Not a chance.”

His fingers caressed her scalp, then traveled through the length of her hair. He paused, a thoughtful look on his face.

“What is it?”

“The length and color of your hair reminds me of something else.” He shook his head and dropped his arms. “Never mind.” He appeared to hesitate a moment before clasping her hand and continuing their walk on the shore. “If you’d like, we can go to a club in Mobile for a little dancing.”

Shelly thought fast. From what he’d told her at dinner, Tillman must live at home with his family. Not exactly conducive to privacy. The thought of loud music and crowds of people was the last thing she wanted. “Let’s just return to my house for a drink. We can sit on the porch with a glass of wine. Or a beer, if you prefer.”

“Beer sounds good.” He turned a curious sideways glance her way. “I was going to suggest we go back to my fishing cabin, but I’m sure your house is much nicer. From what I understand, not many around here have been invited inside the Bosarge home.”

Shelly followed him nervously back to the car. What had she done? Her physical desire for Tillman made her reckless. If she had been a little more patient, he would have invited her to his cabin where they could have been alone.

If she was lucky, Jet would be off for a swim, or in her bedroom immersed in her old undersea maps and shipwreck books. Her cousin could be tricky with humans—short-tempered, suspicious, condescending. No problem with Lily, she was all sweetness, unless someone bored her. Besides, Lily would be out on another flavor-of-the-month date.

Shelly drew steadying breaths as they drew nearer. Everything would be fine. Sure, they had valuable treasure scattered throughout the place, but a casual observer wouldn’t realize their china was from the Ming Dynasty or that the pottery on display was from ancient civilizations or that the various knickknacks lying about were rare maritime relics.

But when they walked in the den, Jet was sprawled on the sofa watching a Jacques Cousteau documentary.

“What are you doing back so early? Thought you’d—” She broke off at the sight of Tillman.

“Jet, this is Tillman Angier. He’s our sheriff, by the way.” Shelly waved a hand in the direction of the sofa. “Tillman, my cousin Jet.”

“Pleasure to meet you.” He crossed the room in three long strides and shook Jet’s hand.

Jet wasn’t the siren her sister was but was still a stunner with her tall, athletic frame and unusually dark irises that gave the impression her eyes were solid black pupils. Those eyes now flashed in irritation.

Tillman either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Jet shook his hand with the briefest of human contact.

“Surprised we haven’t met before.” He surveyed the room and let out a small whistle of appreciation. “Someone around here’s a collector.”

He crossed to the dozens of swords, mostly Confederate, which hung over the mantel. “Where’d you get all these?”

“Jet used to be an antiques dealer.” Shelly shot Jet a pointed look at the coffee table, its surface strewn with dozens of cartographic and monographic maps of known shipwrecks.

“Here in Bayou La Siryna?” Tillman asked with his back still to them. He strolled over to a mahogany étagère storing their better pieces of seventeenth-century French, Italian and English pottery and ceramics they couldn’t bear to sell on either the open or black market. The pieces were shipwreck finds of several generations of Bosarge mermaids from all seven seas.

“My business was wholesaling to other dealers,” Jet said, turning the treasure maps facedown on the table. “I didn’t have an actual store.” She stuffed her magnifying glass and cartographic measuring tools under the brown leather recliner.

“I know a bit about antiques myself,” Tillman said. “Mom dragged all of us to estate auctions when I was younger.”

Shelly inwardly groaned. Of all the rotten luck, Tillman actually knew something of the worth of these objects. She had brought a law enforcement officer right into their home and introduced him to her errant cousin.

Jet’s business was strictly to black-market vendors on a cash-only basis. That way, she avoided the pesky problem of explaining how the finds were retrieved with no treasure excavation expenses, and no worries of state and federal agents questioning the finds. In other words, it was all extremely illegal.

Jet shrugged and lifted both hands in a what-ya-gonna-do gesture.

Tillman continued his inspection of the room. This time he picked up a restored brass pocket watch from an end table, a pre–Civil War artifact etched with the date 1842.

“Where—?”

“Family heirloom,” Jet said. “We’re the sentimental sort.”

Shelly almost snickered. Jet and Lily didn’t have a sentimental bone or scale on their mermaid bodies. Unless you counted Jet’s unexplained preoccupation with Perry, her human lover and partner in shipwreck recovery crimes—who turned out to be a lying, self-serving scumbag, now serving time.

And good riddance, Shelly and Lily told each other. Unfortunately, Jet was still hung up on the guy, even if she refused to admit it. She probably mistook him for a swashbuckling pirate, à la Johnny Depp.

“Fascinating place you have here,” Tillman said, eyeing the large brass porthole above the fireplace. Shelly couldn’t help but feel a little surge of pride. That porthole had been a lucky discovery on her part when she was only sixteen years old and visiting the Bosarge family for the summer. She’d been swimming five miles from the house when her eyes picked up a reflective glint from a black sand bed. It had been a risky and difficult swim home with her prize, but she’d managed.