Copper Lake Confidential Read online

  “Well...” Stephen shifted, tugging on the leash. “I’ve got to get this guy home and shove a couple pills down his throat. Remember, let me know about the flowers. I’ll take it out of Scooter’s cookie money.”

  She murmured something—goodbye, she thought—and watched them leave, the dog walking quietly alongside his owner, but they faded from her thoughts before they were gone from sight.

  Sure, she had money to support herself and Clary, but...what would she do? What would fill her days? What would she contribute? How would she show Clary how to be a kind, compassionate, responsible, productive adult?

  And the most terrifying question of all: With all that free time, with nothing to do but take care of Clary, how would she ever stay sane?

  * * *

  A few times on the way to the curve that marked the end of Woodhaven Villas and the beginning of the Lesser of the World, Stephen looked back over his shoulder at the Howard house. The first two times Macy stood in exactly the same position, not looking after them to make sure the flower-smashing dog wasn’t coming back, but just standing there, not looking at anything, it seemed.

  The third time she was gone.

  She’d dressed as if she belonged in the house designed not so much to be a home but a showplace. He didn’t know much about women’s clothes, but the sleeveless dress and heeled sandals she wore just looked expensive. So did the gold-and-diamond watch on her wrist and the rubies and diamonds in her ears.

  Oddly enough, she hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring. Surely she didn’t live in that place alone.

  Maybe she didn’t live there at all, he thought with a grin. Maybe Scooter had interrupted a burglary in progress. Or maybe the family was away on a trip and she’d broken in to live there as a squatter. Maybe she was the maid playing dress-up in the boss’s clothes, or—

  As his own house came into sight, he reined in his imagination. It had run wild for as long as he could remember, so he did try to exercise restraint from time to time. But wouldn’t it be a hoot if she were some kind of upper-class thief?

  Though the Howard house, as the last house in the development, was less than a half mile away, there was a whole galaxy in that distance. He had nine hundred square feet, compared with Macy’s four or five thousand. His backyard was big enough for a grill, a few chairs and a few swipes with the lawn mower, while in hers he’d glimpsed extensive gardens, a pool and what looked like a guesthouse tucked into the rear corner. He had wood floors and furnishings that ranged in age from ten years to way older than him. He had a living room, a kitchen big enough for him and Scooter, a bedroom, a bathroom and an office. He was a happy camper.

  Even in her mansion, Macy Howard hadn’t looked very happy.

  Scooter took his meds eagerly—two pills slipped inside slices of hot dog—then went to gulp down a bowl of water. “You want a walk as a reward for taking your pills? You could just say so. I’d rather walk with you than chase you down, yelling that silly name. Who in the world names a beautiful boy like you Scooter?”

  The dog grinned at him, water dripping from his beard, then went to his bed and stretched out.

  Stephen made sure the kitchen door was locked—since Scooter had learned to turn the knob, that was his newest escape route—then went across the narrow hall to what was supposed to be the master bedroom. He slept in the smaller room at the front of the house, just big enough for a bed and chest, and used this room as his office.

  Bookcases lined two walls, both packed full. More books were piled on top and on the floor and also lined the windowsills of all four windows. A few posters from favorite movies hung on the walls; magazines and papers all but obscured his computer, and two large dry-erase boards, covered with notes, took up the rest of the space. The room was cluttered and messy, but that was the way he liked it when he worked.

  He’d settled in his chair, just able to see the dog through the doorway, and jiggled the mouse to wake the computer when his phone rang. Fishing it from his pocket, he answered without checking caller ID. He knew who it was; his sister was a creature of habit. “Hey, Marnie.”

  “What are you doing?” Her usual question.

  “Working.” His usual answer. “How’s your day?”

  “It’s fine.” She sounded distracted. She was normally eating lunch when she called, usually while doing something thoroughly disgusting for her job as a lab geek for the Copper Lake Police Department. “Are you busy this weekend?”

  He looked to the wall where a calendar was supposed to hang, then remembered its thumbtack had come loose a few weeks ago and he’d never gotten around to putting it back. “I work Saturday morning, I think. Why?”

  “I actually meant Saturday night.”

  “Why?” he asked again.

  Marnie’s sigh was long-suffering. “A friend of mine—well, a friend of a friend of mine—needs a date for a thing, so she asked if I’d ask if you’d go.”

  “Which friend?”

  “Sophy.”

  The muscles in his neck relaxed. He liked Sophy Marchand—had been out with her a couple of times without Marnie acting as intermediary. “Why didn’t Sophy call herself?”

  “No, she’s my friend. Her friend is Kiki Isaacs.”

  In the kitchen, Scooter gave a little whine. The dog had excellent hearing—and taste in women. Kiki was a detective with CLPD, pretty, whiny, aggressive and didn’t know the meaning of the word subtle. The few times he’d seen her off the job, she’d still been armed, even though she could probably heave him like a javelin. She was an in-your-face type, and frankly, she scared him.

  “Uh, you know, Scooter’s been sick this week.”

  On cue, the dog lifted his head and gave a pitiful wail. Switching the phone to the other hand, Stephen fished a cookie from the bowl on the desk and tossed it to him, mouthing, Good boy.

  “And you know how I always play catch-up on weekends.” He set goals on Monday and worked as he could during the week, then busted his butt on the weekend to be sure he reached them.

  “Would it make any difference if I told you I’d be there, too?”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a retirement party for the police chief. We all have to go.”

  “How about I go as your guest and Kiki can hang out with us?” Or not.

  Marnie muttered to herself—he caught the word decomp and didn’t listen for more—then said, “I, uh, have a date.”

  Stephen’s eyes widened. He couldn’t remember the last time his sister had had a date. He loved her dearly, but she was...different. Dead people interested her way more than any living soul. Chitchat for her usually involved lab values, blood-splatter evidence, processes of death or similar subjects most people did not want to talk about over dinner.

  “Does it matter to you if I take Kiki?”

  Again she was silent. Probably weighing the satisfaction she could receive having her own escort at the party while Kiki went dateless against the knowledge that Kiki would have been dateless if not for her. “Yes,” she said at last.

  “Okay. Remind me Friday.”

  “Thanks.” The line went dead. Never any goodbyes for Marnie. If she was finished talking, she hung up.

  Stephen set his phone down, then leaned back, staring at the molten red-and-green world rotating on his computer screen. Slowly the view zoomed in, showing mountains and plains, deserts and seas, trees and buildings and people, then it swept out to a global view before repeating it in a new spot.

  Marra’akeen. The world where he spent much of his time. The world where he would much rather be come Saturday night. But if it was important to Marnie, he would go and he would be more pleasant than Kiki deserved. And if she acted the way she usually did, he swore he would make the next villain he created a pushy, curly haired whiner named Ke’Ke.

  Opening his last document with a sigh, he read what he’d written the day before. By the time he reached the last page, he was in the story’s rhythm and began typing. Though there were as many ways t
o write a book as there were people writing them, he liked stopping in the middle of a scene, saving himself the hassle of deciding what should happen next when he came back to it.

  He worked steadily for more than an hour before his gaze strayed to the south window. The roof of the Howard house was just visible through the trees. He’d driven past it hundreds of times since he’d moved here, and he’d never seen any sign of life. Of course, the Woodhaven Villains weren’t the type to sit out on their porches, in the few houses that even had porches, or work in the front yards themselves. In his world, they were Lord Gentry who hired Workers to do anything remotely similar to manual labor. They lived in luxurious cocoons, surrounded by tall walls and state-of-the-art alarm systems to keep out the Lessers. It was all way too confining for him.

  Macy Howard had looked confined, but there had been something restless about her, something...uneasy.

  He shook his head to clear it. He would probably never see her again. Scooter rarely used the same hiding place twice. Though she might come in handy as a model for the repressed daughter of the Lord Gentry Tu’anlan, who escaped her fortress home to become one of the Warrior Women who guarded the Crystal.

  Turning his back on the window, with the repressed but rather pretty Ma’ahcee forming in the back of his mind, he began typing again.

  * * *

  The brief interruption of Scooter and his master had eased a bit of the tension knotting Macy, a fact she hadn’t noticed until she walked back into the house with her suitcase and her entire body went tight again. One even breath after another, one forced step after another, she went to the purse she’d left on the kitchen island and pulled out the list she’d made.

  Go inside. Walk through the rooms. Take bag inside. Unpack in guest room. Change clothes. Start.

  An overly simple list, but some situations called for a step-by-step guide, Shrink #4 had told her. Every situation, no matter how stressful or complicated, can be broken down into manageable steps. Time to test his theory.

  Mentally she checked off the first three items, then let her gaze shift through the doorway and down the hall to the stairs. She thought of the dust particles, of climbing the stairs, of being as far from an exit as she could get in the house, and skipped ahead to the last item.

  Start. Start sorting through six years of furniture, treasures and detritus. Start choosing what to take with her and what to leave behind. Start rebuilding the life Mark had stolen from her. Start over. One manageable step at a time.

  First she needed packing supplies. Once in the van, she backed out of the driveway and into the street, and the tension in her shoulders eased. As she turned out of the subdivision onto the main road, it eased even more. It wouldn’t go away, not while she remained in Copper Lake, but it was a definite improvement.

  Her destination was the self-storage facility on Carolina Avenue that also rented moving vans and sold packing supplies. She didn’t know the clerk behind the counter, and thankfully he didn’t seem to recognize her, taking her cash and helping her load bundles of cartons, rolls of Bubble Wrap and heavy paper and tape into the back of the van.

  She would have driven straight back home except for a wandering glance at the riverfront park while she sat at a red light. Seated there on a bench, watching two small children play, was Anamaria Duquesne Calloway. Though they’d socialized with the same people, they’d never been friends, not really. The Calloways were the one local family more prestigious than the Howards, but Mark had never approved of Robbie Calloway’s wild behavior before marriage, and he certainly hadn’t approved of Robbie’s marriage to the mixed-race Anamaria, so he’d kept Macy at a distance.

  However, once, while she was pregnant with Clary, Macy had gone behind Mark’s back to meet with Anamaria. She’d wanted the psychic’s assurance that everything was fine with the baby, and she’d gotten it. The easing of her worries had been worth Mark’s irritation—and his grandmother’s fury—when he’d found out.

  Once, Macy reflected as the light changed. Once, in the years they’d been married, she’d done something Mark hadn’t wanted.

  She would have driven past the entrance to the park if some bit of resentment hadn’t seeped through her. Instead, she turned in, parking beside the lone vehicle there. She was being pushy. If she wanted Anamaria’s professional advice, she should call and make an appointment. She shouldn’t intrude on a mother’s playtime with her children. She should, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t...

  Before the argument inside her had played out, there was a tap on the window. Startled, she looked up to see Anamaria’s sympathetic face. With a click, she opened the door and slid out, straight into Anamaria’s comforting embrace.

  “Macy. It’s so good to see you.”

  For a moment she held herself stiff—when she was stiff, it was harder to be overwhelmed by emotion—but it took too much effort. She softened in Anamaria’s motherly embrace. She felt welcomed. Unjudged.

  “I’d heard you were coming back,” Anamaria said when at last she eased her grip.

  Macy smiled faintly but didn’t ask from whom. The answer could be as simple as her husband—the lawyer who’d handled both Mark’s and his grandmother’s estates—or as complex as some soul on the other side, maybe Mark. Maybe even her lost baby.

  A small hand gripped the hem of Macy’s dress, and she looked down to see Anamaria’s daughter staring up at her. “I’m Gloriana,” she murmured around two fingers tucked in her mouth. “Where’s your little girl?”

  Macy blinked, then looked at Anamaria. “I must have mentioned Clary to her sometime,” the woman said with a serene smile.

  “She’s with her uncle,” Macy replied, unconvinced by Anamaria’s smile. According to rumor, every Duquesne woman had gifts of one sort or another. Gloriana was young, but no age was too young to use the talents you’d been born with, she supposed.

  “Go play with Will.” Anamaria gave her daughter a gentle push before linking arms with Macy. “Come sit. We’ll talk. Are you coming home?”

  “No.” Macy’s reply came automatically. When they reached the bench, she sat down, then shrugged. “I can’t face... You know how people love to gossip. Eventually Clary would have to pay the price.”

  “No one blames you or Clary. How could they?”

  “We lived with him, Anamaria. I lived with him, I shared a bed with him, I was married to him for seven years. And all that time I never had a clue that he was...”

  Even now it was hard to say: he was a remorseless cold-blooded killer. The husband she’d loved so much, who’d been such a doting father, had beaten strangers to death and buried them on his grandparents’ property right outside town. And to make his evil even worse, he’d learned the skill from his grandfather.

  The blood of serial killers ran through her daughter’s veins.

  Shuddering despite the warm afternoon sun, she hugged herself tightly. “I should have known. I should have suspected something.”

  “Are you psychic now?”

  Her gaze cut sharply to Anamaria, who was watching her closely, but not in the same way her family did. They were looking for signs that the depression was returning, the weakness overtaking her, the instability gaining control. They didn’t understand how difficult it was when her every move was scrutinized: Is this the action, the thought, the comment of a sane person? Is she rational, merely emotional or sinking back into the abyss?

  But there was nothing measuring or judging about Anamaria’s gaze. A simple question, a simple look.

  “No, I’m not psychic. But I should have...”

  “Mark and his grandfather were very good at hiding their secrets. You couldn’t have known unless he wanted you to.”

  Macy breathed deeply. That was what the psychiatrists, the psychologists and even some of the other patients in group therapy had told her. Somehow it sounded more convincing coming from a woman with the gift of sight.

  “What are your plans now?”

  Macy’s laugh was
rusty. She probably hadn’t used it more than a half dozen times in the past eighteen months. “I don’t suppose you could tell me.”

  After a moment, Anamaria took her hand in both of hers, her expression growing distant, as if watching a scene no one else could see. “Everything’s going to be all right in the end,” she said at last. “If it’s not all right now, then this isn’t the end. It’ll come, Macy. One day you’re going to realize that you and Clary are better than ever.”

  They were just words, but Macy knew words had power. Words had destroyed every illusion she’d ever had, and now they gave her, if not peace, at least a little hope. She did find them hard to believe, but she could embrace the possibility. She could believe that sometime in the not-too-distant future, her life would be good again.

  She had to believe it.

  Or there was no reason to continue living.

  Chapter 2

  In need of a break, Stephen saved his file to the hard drive, then emailed it to himself. It also went automatically to an online storage account, too, but, hey, a guy could never be too careful. Sometimes the old saying “Writing is easy; just sit down and open a vein” was too true. When words were hard to come by, he didn’t risk losing any of them.

  He stood and stretched, joints popping, before walking to the front door. “Wanna go for a walk?”

  Scooter glanced up from his place on the couch, yawned and settled in deeper. Eat, sleep, play—that was his routine.

  “Next life I’m coming back as a dog,” Stephen muttered as he went out and locked up behind him.

  The spring air was warm, the sun shining. He’d done cold for four years, getting his degree at Oklahoma State University Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, then another winter in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He’d be happy if he never saw snow or subzero temperatures again.

  Hands shoved in his hip pockets, he turned north and walked to the end of the road, past each of the three neighboring houses. Elderly sisters and their husbands lived in the first two, and he called hello to them, the sisters sitting on one porch, the husbands swapping stories on the second. The last house was occupied by a great-grandson or -nephew who drove an eighteen-wheeler and was gone more often than not. Stephen hadn’t seen him five times in the months he’d lived there.