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Her mind drifted back to Catherine and her bizarre lesson on genetics. She was still trying to figure out where the mistress of Siren Song’s head had been when she’d gone into her impromptu genetics lesson, what she’d really been thinking about and trying to tell Savvy. Clearly, she was pointing a finger at the Colony males. When Savvy had asked about them, however, Catherine had dismissed them, saying they’d been adopted out, as if that were the only course of action given their condensed power. But there was something more there as well.
The Colony. Savannah couldn’t get the vision of a bee colony out of her head. She’d seen many documentaries that said bee colonies kicked out the males—the drones—in the fall, after the summer season was over and before hibernation. The worker bees were all female, and apparently, once the males had serviced the queen, they were persona non grata and were left to die outside the hive.
Was that what had happened at Siren Song? Had the women, the worker bees, kicked out the males? Savvy rubbed her eyes, feeling like she was getting fanciful. Whatever the case, it kinda sucked for the boy children, being pushed out, though, unless you considered that maybe staying under Catherine’s roof and abiding by her rules wasn’t the greatest answer, either.
Making a mental note to herself to follow up on the Colony’s male children, Savvy finished her banana and started in on her yogurt. What she really needed to do was get on the Donatella homicides before she herself was kicked out of the nest of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department. She chafed at the idea that they would be continuing without her, and she had a somewhat irrational fear that once she was gone, they wouldn’t really want her back.
Twenty minutes later she was dashing through a light rain, then hurrying up the short flight of stairs that led to the department’s rear entrance. Shedding her coat, she was glad to see she was leaving fewer puddles on the tile floor today. May Johnson was at her desk, and she looked across the room and lifted a hand in greeting. Savannah nodded, then carried her coat over one arm as she turned toward the hallway that led to the working offices in the back of the department. She went to the break room and hung her coat on a rack, then opened a cupboard and pulled out some instant decaf crystals and heated her second cup of coffee in the microwave. By the time she got to her desk, she was one minute late, but there was no one else in sight. Locking her messenger bag in a bottom drawer, she then stared into space a moment, thinking about her sister. What the hell was going on there? Did she even want to know? Kristina had always been flightier than Savannah, but she was really walking the edge right now, which sorta pissed Savannah off.
“Try really being pregnant,” she muttered aloud as Lang cruised in, crossed to the desk butting up to Savannah’s, and flopped himself into his chair.
“You’re still here,” he said, smiling.
“Pregnancy isn’t a disease.”
“Uncalled for,” he said, his smile widening.
Savannah nodded, half embarrassed. She thought about blaming her snippiness on her pregnancy, but then she would just be making his point. “I’m going to the Bancroft offices today to reinterview Hale St. Cloud—”
“Your brother-in-law.”
“And Declan Bancroft, his grandfather, among others.”
Lang nodded. “I’m still chasing down
Kyle Furstenberg. I think he may be purposely unavailable.”
“Think that’s an admission of guilt?” Savannah asked.
“It’s an admission of being scared. Maybe an admission of being an asshole. Either way, he’s not returning my calls, and everybody around his apartment acts like they’ve never heard of him.”
“Who’s around his apartment?”
“Roommates in varying states of slacker-dom. A lot of blank stares, empty pizza boxes, beer cans, and Bic lighters. No cigarettes, though, so I’m guessing they are thinking about their overall health and might be smoking a little something else.”
“That’s gotta be it,” she agreed.
They shared a smile. “I am going to miss you, y’know. When you leave,” he said.
“It’s only a temporary leave.”
“Of course.” He inclined his head. “You’ll be back in time for the wedding.”
“Long before. Long, long before,” she stressed. Lang and his fiancée, Claire Norris, were tying the knot sometime next spring, and it made Savannah’s heart clutch to even think he might believe she would still be gone.
“Kidding,” he said, and Savannah narrowed her eyes at him, which turned the smile threatening his lips into a full-grown grin.
“How are things going with Baby Bea?” she asked now, determined to get the spotlight off herself.
“They’re going. Catherine didn’t say anything about it, huh?”
Claire and Lang had been fighting to become adoptive parents to a little girl who had ties to the Colony and Catherine. Though Catherine seemed to approve of Lang and Claire as parents as a whole, she’d made noise about trying to adopt the baby herself. So far Beatrice was in Claire and Lang’s care, but it was anyone’s guess what Catherine would try to do, though at present, Savvy knew, she was wrapped up in some other mystery, which seemed to be absorbing her.
She thought about the plastic bag inside her purse but wasn’t quite ready to pull it out yet. “What happened with Hillary Enders, the girlfriend?”
“She’s coming in after work today, unless she chickens out. She was pretty anxious on the phone.”
Savannah checked the time on the wall clock, then unlocked her desk drawer and pulled out her messenger bag, plucking her cell phone from its side pocket. “Better let Hale know I’m coming.”
