Читать книгу Deadly Fate - Heather Graham, Heather Graham - Страница 10
ОглавлениеA deeper chill settled over Clara. That was it—of course. They were all suspects.
No, no, no. These men couldn’t possibly believe that she—or Ralph, Simon or Larry!—could have had anything to do with these horrendous murders.
Jackson would quickly set him straight on that!
But what about the film crew? She couldn’t believe they had anything to do with the murders. They’d all been too shocked, stunned and horrified when they’d been told that it was not a prank any longer, that people were dead.
But it was an island. And the only people here were her cast mates and the crew working for the film company.
And, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Crowley. The caretakers for the estate.
Had they been interviewed? Clara hadn’t even seen them yet, though she knew that Larry had gone to find them and that they had been at the Alaska Hut.
But, no. Impossible. She’d met the couple. They were in their late sixties or early seventies. Mrs. Crowley was an attractive, slim, gray-haired woman who was, admittedly, a little odd. She was coldly—but perfectly—courteous while making sure people, even Natalie Fontaine, understood that even though she was there to oversee and facilitate, they needed to help themselves and be self-sufficient if they needed something.
Mr. Crowley matched his wife; he was still fit as a fiddle.
And strong.
Strong enough to wield whatever weapon it took to cut a woman in half?
No, Mr. Crowley was a little weird, but to her, at least, he had been as nice and cheerful as a department-store Santa.
She shook her head and let out a long breath.
Maybe she could be helpful—state some simple facts.
“It is an island, Agent. It’s also heavily forested and has a ragged coastline with caves beneath ice and snow. It has little peaks and valleys. I believe there are survival caches left in various places around the island. Someone could be hiding out in the trees. Someone in a small boat could make it from the mainland in about fifteen minutes—that’s about how long it took to get here when the captain the company hired brought me out. He left me at the dock, but there are a lot of shallows and little beachy areas around the southern and western sides. A person—or persons—could easily come and go from a zillion little hidden coves.”
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “Someone could be hiding. But we have had the state police out looking and they’ll continue to look. The thing is...”
He paused and glanced toward Jackson.
“The thing is it might well be someone sitting among you like your best friend,” Jackson Crow told her. “So, be careful.”
“Exactly,” Thor Erikson said quickly.
“Jackson,” she said, “you know Ralph, Simon and Larry!”
“Yes.”
“I trust them with my life!” she said.
“Thank you for your help, Miss Avery,” Erikson told her. His ice-colored eyes fell on her and she realized that his tone had been somewhat gruff. Maybe, despite his calling in life, he’d been just as thrown as she by the girl they’d found dead in the snow. “Send Simon Green in, if you will.”
“Certainly.”
She turned to leave the room, but paused, looking at Jackson. She impulsively hugged him again and said, “Jackson, thank God you’re here!”
And thankfully, he hugged her back.
“We’ll catch this man, too, Clara, or die trying,” he promised her softly.
She gave him a nod and a weak smile.
She didn’t look back at Agent Viking, but left the room, ready to tell Simon that he was next in line.
* * *
Down to the last. Thor, with Jackson now in the room with him, just had two more interviews to go.
He was grateful for Mike—an amazing partner with whom he worked really well.
But he was even more grateful that Jackson Crow had arrived. Thor couldn’t help his feelings and his hunches, and he couldn’t help but believe that these murders were somehow personal.
And had to do with him and Jackson—and the Fairy Tale Killer.
The day had been ungodly long. While he and Jackson continued to speak with the others, Mike worked with the state police.
No one knew why the phones were down. The techs believed a phone line had been cut somewhere, but it would take a very long time to find out how and where. Of course, phones and electricity went out on the island often enough without help from a criminal mind.
The radios had just been gone. Taken. How or when, no one knew.
The television worked via satellite, but the internet system on the island had been through the phone company and was thus down, as well.
The island had been, for all intents and purposes, cut off.
Thor was good at reading people. At seeing ticks and nuances, the fall of someone’s lids over their eyes, the way they sat—many little things that gave away a liar.
But it seemed—so far—that everyone was telling the truth. Becca Marle, a woman in her early thirties, was athletic and he had the feeling she was usually competent and capable of handling her mic and sound system on her own. She had short dark hair and a muscular, almost square shape, which made him, naturally, wonder about her strength. But, she was still stunned when they spoke; she broke into tears every few seconds, as well.
Tommy Marchant was the oldest in the group, maybe forty-five or fifty, tall with a slightly protruding middle, graying hair and a sun-wrinkled face.
He’d spent most of the interview shaking his head. “Natalie. I’ve worked with her—on one project or another—for nearly twenty years,” he’d repeat now and then. He’d wince, and shake his head again. “Can’t believe it—can’t believe it.”
Nate Mahoney had been the most interesting of the film crew in his initial interview. He couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the fact that the deaths had been real. He talked about being a fabricator. He could make almost anything appear to be something else. “But, these days...well, there are unions and all, but I hang around to fix fabrications, of course, but also to deal with props and help out. Film...and TV! So fickle these days. The blood and guts were all my inventions. Great, huh. Oh, God, how terrible now. The fake has become the real. I mean, I’m good at what I do, but...wow. I don’t know much about self-defense. I’m scared. Should we be scared?”
Thor had told him that he needed to be vigilant, alert and wary—and, of course, to report anything at all to him or Mike immediately.
He thought about Becca Marle again. She had spent most of the interview crying. She was so distraught she hadn’t even thought to be afraid for herself, but, he imagined, soon enough, she would. Of the seven main members of the Wickedly Weird Productions team, she and Misty Blaine were the two surviving women.
The Annabelle Lee cast had been talkative—maybe because they all knew Jackson Crow already. Jackson’s appearance was a good thing. While Thor felt that talking with Clara Avery had been somewhat of a challenge, it had been easy, thanks to Jackson, to gain trust and a comfortable rapport with the three men.
Now...
Mr. and Mrs. Crowley.
“Their name just had to be Crowley,” Mike murmured, bringing the pair in. Neither Jackson nor Thor responded and Mike added, “Crowley. You know—like Aleister Crowley. The satanist.”
“Yeah, we know about Aleister Crowley,” Thor told him, managing a grim smile. “But, hey, it’s still a pretty common last name.”
“Just don’t think we needed it here!” Mike said. He hesitated and added, “And they’re weird! Remind me of that painting—American Gothic, I think it’s called. Or those movies you see where the old folks are raising a tribe of cannibals who feed off travelers.”
“Mike, there aren’t that many travelers out here—a family of cannibals would starve pretty quickly,” Thor told him.
“They’re still weird!” Mike said.
He’d been to the toolshed and around the Alaska Hut with the couple while Thor had interviewed the others.
Although the police and forensic crews had been scouring the island, the how of the crime here remained a mystery. No weapon could be found; no hiding place. Of course, with not much blood at the site of the body, Thor hadn’t needed the medical examiner to tell him that Amelia Carson had been killed elsewhere, and brought to be left in the snow for discovery. But how had the killer gotten her there—and gotten away—without being seen?
Unless he was among those in the house.
Ralph Martini, Larry Hepburn and Simon Green vouched for one another; they had come to the island together.
Thor had found Clara Avery running through the snow himself.
That left the film crew—unless the three actors had gone crazy and started chopping people up together, a scenario that seemed unlikely.
And then there were... Mr. and Mrs. Crowley.
According to Ralph, Larry and Simon, the first people they had seen were the film crew, when they had—screaming bloody murder over what they had discovered at the Mansion—run into the Alaska Hut. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Crowley had been in on what was going on.
Of course. The film crew had signed saying that they would make sure every last piece of fake blood was cleaned up, every bit of fabrication was taken away and the Mansion was left as it had been.
But the members of the film crew had arrived at the Alaska Hut at different times. And no one had seen Mr. or Mrs. Crowley until they’d been there at least twenty minutes or so.
Now Mrs. Magda Crowley sat across from him. She looked stiff and dignified, wiry and fit in jeans and a turtleneck sweater, and still—as Mike had commented—somewhat reminiscent of American Gothic.
“Mrs. Crowley, you’re aware of the dead woman found in the snow, of course.”
“Of course,” she said humorlessly. “My husband and I are older—we’re not deaf or stupid.”
Touché.
“Where have you been all morning? You’re not deaf or stupid so you must know that since you live here, you definitely fall into the suspect range,” Thor said flatly.
Jackson cleared his throat.
But Magda Crowley seemed to like his tone.
“Working, Agent Erikson. Preparing meals. Justin and I live up at the main house, but we came out here early—about five forty-five this morning. We were to leave the house—my pleasure, with the way those film people rigged it up yesterday!—so that it was prepared for the people to come in and see all that fake blood and gory stuff. Justin and I have been in this house since that early hour. We made sure this place was fitting for more filming, for meals. We freshened the bedrooms, we cleaned and prepared. Period. That’s it. Those film people showed up one by one, and then they laughed their asses off waiting for those actor boys to come screaming through the snow. Got to admit, they were kind of anxious when Miss Fontaine and the hostess didn’t come over with the boys. After they all laughed at scaring the actors so badly, they started to argue about whether or not to head over to the Mansion, but someone said something about waiting for Clara to show up and that’s where everything was when I started to hear the commotion going on. You’d showed up with that Clara girl and that was the first I knew that anything whatsoever had gone wrong.”
“You and Mr. Crowley were together all the time?” Jackson asked.
“What? Joined at the hip? No. I was making biscuits. He was making beds,” Magda Crowley said, looking from Jackson to Thor. “Good cop, bad cop?” she asked.
“We’re not cops,” Jackson said.
“That’s right...you’re federal men. Well, you know, this is Alaska,” she said.
“I do. I’m from Alaska, Mrs. Crowley,” Thor told her.
“You ought to be out there finding out what happened to that poor woman, not in here, hammering at hardworking folks!” Magda told him. She wagged a finger at Thor. “I could see something like this coming. I could. All this reality! People sitting in front of the boob tube watching other people behave badly. It’s horrible—just horrible. I’m darned sorry that people were killed, but am I surprised? Hell, no! It was a matter of time.”
“You didn’t see or hear anything unusual?” Thor asked.
“What the hell would you call unusual? If I’d walked by that poor girl I’d have just kept on going—you saw what they did to the Mansion, right?”
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Crowley. If you think of anything...if you see anything suspicious or can help us in any way—”
“It will help a hell of a lot if everyone just gets off the island!” she said. She stood up and started out. “I guess you want my husband now?”
“We do,” Thor said.
She sniffed and left. Mike poked his head back in. “She’s something, huh?” he whispered. “I’ll get the husband. They should both be watched—hell, who knows this island better than those two?” Mike stepped out.
Thor looked at Jackson. Jackson was grinning. “Cranky.”
“Cranky, yes. She doesn’t look much like a conspirator in any kind of demonic cult,” Thor said.
“And we both know looks can be deceiving,” Jackson reminded him.
Justin Crowley walked in then.
It was, Thor knew, a mistake to go by looks or any preconceived notion. The man, however, seemed like the most likely suspect. He was like a weathered rock—strong against whatever might come. He also had a hard, rather sour expression—he might have a heck of a lot more bulk than the farmer pictured in the painting American Gothic, but he looked just as grim.
“You couldn’t just talk to me and the wife at the same time?” he asked. “And how the hell long are you going to keep all these people here? Now you got all the cops and whoever traipsing in and out all day, too—hell of a thing to get these floors picked up now and everyone wanting coffee and more.”
“Perhaps you won’t begrudge people coffee, when they’re trying to find out who killed a young woman who won’t have the opportunity to work again ever,” Jackson said.
“I don’t begrudge them coffee—they can have all the damned coffee they want. Ain’t my coffee. Film people paid for all that’s in here. They just need to start taking care of themselves a little. Where’s this, where’s that? You don’t have any of this kind or that fake sugar? This is a quiet place, most of the time. People rent it out and come and go, but there’s a time limit on it, you know?”
“No time limit on finding a murderer,” Thor said. “So, did you see anything unusual—besides the setup by the film folks,” he put in quickly. “Did you hear anything, did you see anyone else on the island anywhere?”
Justin Crowley waved a hand in the air. “It’s a private island. We know when people are due out on the ferry. Hell, just ’cause it’s Alaska, doesn’t mean we’re not like the rest of the world! Sometimes, yeah, kids like to come out here from the mainland to the ‘rich people’s island,’ and bring girls and beer or cheap wine, but they don’t stay. We got grizzly bears in the forest and they are mean—especially the momma bears when they got cubs. If kids come, they hang out in the water, hug to the coves. In winter, you can get iced in, so no one comes then. We got generators, the missus and me, because it can freeze like a mother here and the electric can go. Did I see anyone else today—no, I did not. Did I hear anything—no, I did not. I didn’t know one damned thing about the girl in the snow or the woman killed back in Seward until you all came out here today. And that’s a fact—and there’s nothing I can say or do to help you. I wasn’t looking out for anyone to be on the island. I wasn’t paying much attention. We were just getting ready for the film people, sprucing this place up. Hadn’t been rented out in a while. It wasn’t dirty, but it’s like anything else. You don’t use it, somehow you still have to clean it anyway.” He leaned forward suddenly. “Don’t you think we’d like to help you? We live here—survive here. Thinking some maniac who likes to cut people in half might be running around isn’t a good thought, not for my wife and me. We’re a little old to be hitting an overcrowded job market!”
“People don’t always realize what they might know when something first happens,” Thor said. “After a while, you might remember a sound or a moment or something out on the ice. I’m pretty sure that whoever did this had some knowledge of the island.”
“Something might come to you later,” Jackson said. “It doesn’t matter how small.”
“Sure. So, what’s happening now? You’re not leaving the wife and me out on this island alone with a killer running around?”
“No, we won’t be leaving you alone,” Jackson said. “You’ll have forensic crews going through everything at the Mansion through the night.”
“You and your wife are sleeping here?” Thor asked him.
He nodded. “We were planning to, anyway. Natalie Fontaine hadn’t been sure how it would all go. We were prepared for her crew to stay at the Alaska Hut, too.”
“Someone will be here,” Thor assured him.
Justin Crowley nodded and set his hands on his chair. “Then I guess ‘someone’ can talk to me anytime they want. You finished with me for now?”
“Yes, we are. Thank you, Mr. Crowley,” Thor said. “And you know, of course, that we have search warrants that allow us to search every inch of property here, including your personal space?”
Crowley smiled. “Feel free. We’re too old for any personal kinky stuff, so it will be kind of boring, but, hey, go for it.”
Crowley left the room. “Hm,” Jackson murmured. He looked over at Thor and grinned. “Sometimes, the older, the kinkier.”
“Please, Lord, don’t give me any mental pictures!” Thor told him. He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes.
“What do you think—seriously?” Jackson asked him.
“Seriously—don’t paint any mental pictures!” Thor said, and then shook his head, looking at his old partner. It had been over a decade since he and Jackson had worked together. They’d been good partners—great partners, really, even knowing what each other was thinking most of the time. They had an unspoken rule: there was no sense in doing what they were doing if it fell short of real humanity. They tended to be by the book and courteous until they couldn’t go by the book and courtesy just wasn’t in the cards anymore.
“I think that they can search this island for days and miss nooks and crannies,” he told Jackson. “I think that the film crew and the Celtic American people were taken completely by surprise. Then again, the group from the ship are actors, and the film crew are in ‘reality’ TV. As for Mr. and Mrs. Crowley—they’re either cantankerous from too much cold or just downright creepy.”
“Do you think someone else is on the island?” Jackson asked him.
Thor hesitated. “There has to be someone else—or, at the very least, a cache somewhere out here. There’s not even a speck of stage blood on anyone in this house. And yet...I still believe that one of them had to have seen something. Because, at some time, Amelia Carson was killed here or brought here. We know that. We go backward from there.” He looked at Jackson again. “I can’t help but believe that Tate Morley is here somehow. That he is out there on the island. And he’s watching us.”
* * *
They weren’t being offered any means off the island—not yet.
And it had been hours, or so it seemed. Hard to tell in Alaska in the summer—the sun never seemed to really set. Clara didn’t wear a watch, but she knew that lunch and dinner had come and gone.
State police—ready to draw their weapons at the drop of a hat!—watched over them. The crew of Wickedly Weird Productions had been brought to the entertainment room in back to wait while she, Ralph, Simon and Larry were in the parlor.
They’d all had sandwiches, provided by the police officers. They’d been offered power bars and fruit. Ralph had complained a bit about not having a proper dinner as time had gone on, but she didn’t think that he was even hungry.
It was a nice enough waiting area. The fireplace was huge and the room was done with stone and natural wood. The sofas were worn, plush leather. While the entertainment center was out in back where the TV people were gathered, there was a smaller screen in the living room.
There was no stopping the media; while neither the police nor the FBI had given out any particulars, the news that producer Natalie Fontaine and celebrity TV hostess Amelia Carson had been murdered was plastered all over the screen.
Every news channel was broadcasting the information. Reporters interviewed other guests and employees at the Nordic Lights Hotel. They spoke in serious tones.
Not one of them missed the opportunity to say that both women had now become part of the sensationalist television they had promoted during their lives. And while a man named Enfield gave a press conference along with the chief of police, neither let out the information that one woman had been beheaded and another had been cut in half.
Law enforcement was doing its best to see that the murders did not become speculative gossip.
After the third or fourth program, Larry had suggested they watch a music channel.
They had all quickly agreed.
She and her cast mates had talked for a while—a little awkwardly, since a uniformed man watched them at all times—and then they had grown silent. It wasn’t a bad silence; they were all comfortable with one another. They were not only part of an ensemble cast, they had lived aboard the Destiny in close proximity, and knew each other very well. Larry and Ralph were now partners, living together, close as could be.
And, she thought, afraid. They were all scared. Every now and then, she caught her cast mates looking at her. Though they were on edge, they were men—and the killer had targeted two women.
But even she could distance herself a little. The two women killed had been with Wickedly Weird Productions.
She was not.
Becca Marle was. Clara had heard a bit of a few of her conversations with Tommy Marchant and Nate Mahoney. They were anxious. They wanted off the island.
Becca didn’t. She felt safer here than she would elsewhere. She liked the armed policeman watching over her amid a sea of cops and the FBI men, who were in the house, as well.
Clara wished that Jackson was out there with them. But now, of course, he was with the man she thought of as Agent Viking. She hoped he was taking charge; she certainly felt more secure when he was with them.
“It’s good that Crow is here,” Ralph said.
“Definitely,” Simon agreed.
Larry grinned. “I don’t know. That Thor guy looks pretty tough to me. We’re going to be all right.” He patted Clara on the knee. “Hey, don’t go wishing you were back in NOLA. Bad things can happen anywhere. Wait—very bad things did happen out of NOLA.”
She frowned, looking at him. She couldn’t help it; she did wish she was back in New Orleans. She had been born there, grown up in the French Quarter; her parents were there, and her younger brother was getting his master’s at Tulane. Home would feel good right now. Actually, New Orleans was where she’d gotten to know Jackson Crow and his wife, Angela, and where the “Krewe of Hunters” had been formed in pursuit of a killer on a high-profile case.
And when they’d been on the Destiny...
Her friend Alexi Cromwell had been there, and the cast of Les Miz had been large—lots of friends. When they were nervous, they’d stayed together. They’d kept working.
Hell, they’d polished their nails and done all kinds of mundane things.
She reminded herself that it had really only been a matter of hours that they’d been here. Long hours, but not a full day and night.
People had died—horribly.
There’d been a few minutes when she had tried to convince herself that the whole thing was an episode of Gotcha. Natalie Fontaine would come walking in and announce cheerfully that wow! They had all been really gotten. Special Agent Thor Erikson would prove to be an actor/stripper and the whole thing would have been a farce in extremely bad taste.
She couldn’t pretend at all anymore—if she’d ever been able to convince herself of such a thing. Jackson Crow was here now. She knew this was real.
“Yeah, you know, this isn’t right,” Ralph said. “Not right, and not fair. I’m reminded of The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, you know. Wonderful quotes from that story. ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.’ Well! To be in one horrendous situation is certainly misfortune, but how in God’s name did we all manage two?” he demanded. “Carelessness?” he asked.
Clara, Simon and even Larry stared at him.
“Sorry, sorry, yes, no one’s fault. Still...” Ralph let his sentence end with a sigh. “I’m scared again, I guess. God! I hate being scared.”
“We’re all right, Ralph. Really. We’re all right,” Simon said. “Two things. Both of the people killed were with reality TV, not with the cruise line or the cast. And the other—both people killed were women.”
He winced, looking over at Clara.
“It’s okay, Simon. I had noted that fact already,” Clara told him drily.
“Hey!” Simon said suddenly. “Someone else is entering the fray!”
Clara had been curled on the sofa in the parlor beneath the large picture window that looked onto the porch; at Simon’s words, she sat up and looked out.
Someone was coming. A handsome man of about forty-five, medium height, with dark hair. He wore a double sweater beneath a thick parka and he was followed by a police officer and a shivering woman carrying a notepad.
The police officer with him appeared to be frazzled.
The woman looked as nervous as a cartoon rat. She was pinched thin, and wore a parka as if it were a heavy burden upon her.
The officer, the man and the pinched-rat-like woman were stopped at the door by another state policeman.
They talked for several minutes. At last, the officer in charge of guarding the front door opened it and let them in.
For a moment, the man looked around the room. Then his eyes lit on Clara. He looked confused, as if he’d seen a mannequin come to life or a ghost return from the dead. Then he smiled. “My God—it’s you!”
Clara didn’t have the least idea of what he was talking about.
“Hello?” she said politely. She stood; the others had done the same at the man’s entry.
He smiled—a great smile, she thought.
“I’ve seen you! You performed a Sandra Dee character in Grease! You were amazing. I was a little bit in love!” the man said.
“I was in Grease,” Ralph murmured.
No one paid him any heed.
“Thank you. And I’m sorry. Who are you?” Clara asked.
“Marc. Marc Kimball,” he said. “I own Black Bear Island.”
“Oh!”
The murmur seemed like a chorus line—it so perfectly seemed to come from everyone in the room at the same time.
“How do you do?”
“It’s a pleasure.”
“Marc Kimball!”
The greetings seemed to sail around the room.
Clara didn’t speak. She felt uneasy.
She loved being a performer. She’d received good reviews and bad reviews. She’d been in casts when she’d been the low man on the totem pole, totally ignored by those seeking autographs. She’d had lead roles and signed and greeted people, as well. She’d been panned by critics and loved by critics and she’d been careful never to take any of it too seriously.
She’d been admired before, and that was nice. But something about the way this man looked at her made her feel queasy.
She tried to smile. He hadn’t done an evil thing to her.
“It is you, right? I wasn’t sure about all the particulars, but I heard about Annabelle Lee being done on the Fate. And, I knew, of course, that Wickedly Weird Productions was using cruise line employees for Vacation USA, and I had hoped...”
Simon sprang to her rescue.
“We’re all in the cast, sir. Ralph Martini and Larry Hepburn are the gentlemen over there. I’m Simon Green. And, yes, our leading lady is Clara Avery,” he said.
“Miss Avery!” Kimball said, walking over to her. He took her hand. She wanted to scream and wrench it away.
He kept looking at her as he spoke again. “I came as soon as I heard about what happened. They said it wasn’t necessary, but...I’m so glad I’m here.”
