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“Thank you, Mr. Williamson.”
“You get the bastard that killed Owen, Detective. String him up by the balls.”
And maybe the bastard who killed my sister, Savannah thought as she hung up. If she found him, she’d be happy to string him up by the balls herself.
Hale fielded calls from all the projects he had going, and it took most of the morning and all of lunch. The rain lashed at the windowpanes, driven by a raging wind. He ignored the weather as he systematically returned calls and took some more, mainly from business friends who hadn’t been able to reach him the past few days and who offered condolences. Most knew about Kristina, but fewer knew he’d become a new father. He kept the calls as short as possible, mainly because he just needed to keep moving forward.
Ella knocked on the jamb of Hale’s open door. He looked up, and she said, “You missed lunch. Can I get you a sandwich?”
“No, thanks, Ella.” In truth, he wasn’t that hungry.
“It’s no trouble. You need to take care of yourself. You’re a father now.” She hesitated, her face crumpling. “A single father.”
“Ella . . .”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I’ll just go to the Bridgeport Bistro. You like that crab and Havarti one, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.” It was easier to just say yes than get in the way of Ella’s mothering.
“I’ll take money out of petty cash,” she said on a sob, and then she was gone.
Hale pushed back from his desk and walked to the windows. A few minutes later he saw Ella beneath her lavender umbrella, making her way to her car through the driving rain. Maybe the showers would stop, as the weatherman had predicted, but it wasn’t going to be today.
He thought about what Savvy had told him about Catherine Rutledge and her hunch about Kristina and Mary Beeman’s son, Declan Jr. Catherine was adamant that Declan Jr. was not truly Hale’s grandfather’s son, but Declan Jr. believed he was because that was what his mother, Mary, had told him. What a screwed-up family that was, he thought. And homicidal, too, if Catherine was to be believed. And maybe flat-out crazy. His mother certainly had nothing good to say about the Rutledge sisters, but then she had a tendency toward hyperbole. Hale did not believe his father had cheated on his mother with anyone, least of all Mary Beeman, but then he wouldn’t have believed it of Kristina, either. His wife had been fastidious and choosy, and, okay, maybe she did make some bad choices, but even so, she was about the least likely person to get involved with someone as dangerous and unhinged as this Declan Jr., as Catherine called him, seemed to be.
But someone had killed Kristina. And someone had now killed Owen DeWitt, the man who’d told Savannah he’d seen Kristina with a man he called Charlie, pounding it out together at the Donatellas’ house. Were the two murders related? It made more sense that they were than that they weren’t.
But Kristina with this Charlie, or Declan Jr. or whoever, having sex at the Donatellas’? That didn’t sound like her at all.
Do you believe in sorcery?
“No,” he said aloud. But he believed there was some nebulous danger out there, and if Catherine was correct, and it was headed for his grandfather and Savannah, among others, he was going to be on heightened alert. He didn’t know what had brought the danger to his doorstep, but he sensed it was real.
And nobody else was going to be harmed. He was going to see to that.
It was after four before Lang called Savvy, and she damn near screamed at him, wanting to know what took him so long. Instead she swallowed back her frustration and answered, “Okay, finally. What’s going on?”
There was noise in the background, and Savvy was immediately suspicious that Lang was at a bar with his good buddy Curtis. But he was sober and terse when he said, “Looks like DeWitt was killed sometime Sunday, like we thought. ME’s still nailing it down. Probably less than a day after you met with him.”
“The two things are connected,” Savannah said. “Charlie did this.”
“You certainly got someone’s attention. Did you write up that report?”
“I did. I can e-mail it to you.”
“Do that.”
“Did you get my message about Henry Woodworth?”
“Yeah, and Curtis and I went over and checked out his place. Nobody there. Pretty spotless, but there
was a broken cup on the kitchen floor.”
“Like . . . a struggle?”
“Maybe. There was nothing else, though. No other signs. Coulda just fallen off the counter. I talked to Gretz and told her to file a report with Missing Persons.”
“You think she’s jumping the gun?” Savvy asked. Her mind traveled back to the list of the other temporary employees. Was she making connections when none were there?
