Envy

“How about now? I’m not doing anything and I can be there in half an hour. I was thinking it would be a nice day for a drive.”

“Partly sunny days like this are a treasure this time of year,” Savannah said. “Sure, come on over.”

She provided directions and the address, and Moira was out the door.

ABOUT THE TIME THE PORT GAMBLE high school students were looking for their second latte of the day, pathologist assistant Terry Morris made a run to the Albertson’s store on Mile Hill Road for maple bars, because he loved those better than anything and could easily eat two on his morning drive to the Kitsap County Morgue. He didn’t care how sticky his fingers got, because he could just lick them clean in the parking lot. Who cared if anyone saw him? He wasn’t a people person, which is why he selected a career in the coroner’s office. He’d figured he might be a dead-people people-person.

That sticky, sweet maple bar run took longer than he’d planned. Terry wasn’t good at planning, period. He wasn’t really good at being the pathologist’s assistant either, but he’d been hired and was on threemonth probation. He was already getting the vibe from Dr. Waterman that he wasn’t exactly winning her over.

He tossed his greasy bakery bag into the trash by the morgue’s back door and looked inside through the window.

Good, Dr. Waterman wasn’t in there hacking away through the first autopsy of the day.

Terry was late for the autopsy of a burn victim from a house fire in Bremerton. But not too late, he thought, since it hadn’t started.

He was glad he had those maple bars. Hanging around a smelly corpse might kill his appetite for lunch.

He went upstairs, where Dr. Waterman and the county office administrator were conferring about something in the kitchen. Terry scurried past to put away his things, wiping his hands on his trousers along the way. He hoped she didn’t notice he was late.

But she did.

“Glad you made it into work today,” Dr. Waterman called out from the kitchen.

“Car trouble,” he lied.

“I have some things bagged and ready for shipping to the state crime lab,” she said. “Please get them processed and meet me downstairs in the autopsy suite. Everything’s on my desk. Let me know if you have problems managing that, all right?”

What a hag, he thought, though he didn’t say it out loud.

“No problem, Doctor,” he said, thinking that a real doctor would be helping living people, not literally picking their brains. But, hey, that was just him.

He found four bags labeled with the case information for Robin Ramstad, a gunshot victim found in a wooded area outside of Port Orchard. The incident was before his time, which was just fine with him. Terry didn’t know much about it, and, frankly, didn’t care.

He started boxing up the evidence for shipping when Dr. Waterman called out again.

“Heading downstairs,” she said. “See you there when you’re done.”

Terry scowled inwardly. He hated how passive-aggressive she was. She was always telling him what to do. She was so bossy.

It didn’t occur to him that she was bossy because she actually was his boss.

“Be right there,” he said, shoving a fifth bag into the box, before sealing it with strapping tape and signing the chain-of-custody paperwork.

He rushed downstairs, his hands still sticky and his annoyance still in full force.

What escaped him was that the fifth item, a Ziploc bag containing a pregnancy test wand, had nothing to do with Robin Ramstad.

chapter 40

THERE WAS NO GETTING AROUND IT. Starla Larsen wanted everyone out of her way. She practically stiff- armed the kids in the hall as she rummaged in her hobo for her cell phone. The look of determination and pure venom in the cheerleader’s eyes would have made a two-yearold cry for her mother. Teenage girls at Kingston High School? Pretty much the same result. Starla was just that scary right then as she hurried out the door and over to a hedge of evergreens near the bridge that served as the school’s entryway. Her heels stuck in the mud, and that only made her madder.

“Look,” she said into her phone, her eyes nervously scanning the scene. “This thing went too far, and I’m afraid someone is going to call me on it.”

Starla turned her back to the school courtyard filling up with the onslaught of kids as they meandered toward the cars in the lot. She faced the hedge and listened to the person on the other end of the line. Her lips were a straight line, and her eyes narrowed in anger. In that moment, maybe for the first time in her life, no one would have said Starla Larsen was beautiful. Maybe not even reality TV pretty.

And since she was so pissed off about what the other person was saying, she probably didn’t care what anyone thought about her appearance just then—likely another first-time occurrence.

“Don’t tell me that it wasn’t our fault. I already know that. I never wanted anything like this to happen. I’m putting the blame on you!”

Starla pressed the phone tight to her ear and balled up her other fist. If a kitten had the misfortune to walk by, she might have stomped on it with her four-inch heels. She was that irate.

Whoever was talking to her didn’t have the opportunity to say much. Starla, it seemed, was on a roll.

“The biggest mistake I ever made was to trust you. If this goes any farther, you’re the one who’s going down for this. No excuses! I have too much to live for and I’m not about to have you F it up!”

She clamped the phone shut like a mousetrap and turned around.

Taylor and Beth were coming toward her.

“Starla,” Beth said in that direct way of hers, “you look pissed off. Someone steal your pom-poms?”

Starla barely looked at either girl as she retracted her heels from the muddy grass, making a sucking sound that only served to make her angrier.

“Don’t even go there, you emo-freak,” Starla said, her voice as controlled as possible. She said nothing else and never looked back.

“Wow, she looks like crap,” Taylor said, stating the obvious.

“I almost feel sorry for her,” Beth said. “She’s really going through something. Maybe she hates her highlights.”

Taylor tugged at Beth to get to the bus for the ride home. “I have no idea what’s up,” she said, in what she knew was a big lie.

SAVANNAH OSTEEN LIVED IN A LOG CABIN in the middle of wooded acreage near the airport. While the location was indeed remote, the mosquito-like buzzing of private planes could be heard overhead as they dropped lower for landing. The aircraft was an audible reminder that even in the woods, there are people hovering, watching. Savannah’s cabin wasn’t one of those Daniel Boone affairs, all mossy and drafty, but a decidedly modern one with a steep roofline and made of perfectly peeled pine logs. Anchoring it from the ground to the sky was a river rock chimney that looked like it might even be made of real rocks. Which it wasn’t, of course.

Moira Windsor edged her pewter compact car under a gnarly grove of cedars that formed a canopy, nearly blacking out the late-afternoon sky.

“Moira?” a voice called out.

Moira turned in the direction of the voice. “Savannah?”

“Yes. I’m back here, in the aviary.”

Moira followed the sound to a large fenced pen with a ten-foot-high ceiling of chicken wire. Inside, a woman in her late thirties was huddled next to a wooden crate. Suspended above the crate was a heat lamp sending an eerie splash of orange over its contents.

Savannah motioned for her to come inside the pen.

“Dumb idea to raise pheasants in the middle of winter,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Moira unlatched the gate and walked over. She bent down a little and looked inside at a dozen or more small birds huddled in one disgusting mass and pretended to be interested.