Envy (26 page)

He shook his head. “Not really,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t. “Seemed a little invasive to me.”

Shania nodded in the direction of the Ryan girls and Colton got up.

“Yes,” she said, “I think it would be. But I think if something happened to you, I’d probably do the same thing.”

He zipped up his coat, grabbed his backpack, and went for the door.

“I guess I should start deleting all the bad stuff I’m into when I get home tonight,” he said, deadpan. “You know, so you don’t have to dig through all that ugly.”

“No need,” she teased. “I’ve already installed a secret Net Nanny on your PC. I’ve caught up with all your ugly already.”

Colton was fifteen, too old to hug his mom, but he wanted to just then. He never had any doubt that she was always on his side.

“Bye, Mom,” he said.

The sky had cleared overnight, which brought temperatures down to well below freezing. Hayley, Taylor, and Colton met in the alley. The girls were zipped up and prepared for the Arctic. To humor her mother, Taylor wore what Colton knew was Aunt Jolene’s vomit scarf. Hayley had on a bright red scarf with a four-inch black leather fringe. He’d been with her when she bought it, and she had told him it was both cool and functional.

“Which is very difficult to achieve,” she had said.

Colton handed over the thumb drive. “All of Katelyn’s info is on this,” he said. “E-mails, saved chats, Word docs.”

Hayley took the thumb drive and zipped it into her pocket.

“Now are you going to tell me what’s up with that?” Colton asked.

They were nearly at the bus stop, where a few other kids were waiting.

“I have a feeling that Katelyn would never have committed suicide,” Hayley said, thinking about how she was going to say the next part.

“We both do,” Taylor said, cutting in. “It’s either an accident—”

This time it was Hayley’s turn to cut off her sister. “Or a homicide,” she said.

“You’ve been reading too many of your dad’s books.”

“Maybe so. But suspicion is a good thing,” said Taylor, the daughter who had never cracked a Kevin Ryan paperback in her life.

The bus came into view, and the space between the kids tightened as they lined up to get on board out of the cold.

“How’s that?” Colton asked, hoisting his backpack over his shoulder.

“Keeps things interesting. And we need that in Port Gamble,” she said.

Colton nodded, but deep down he knew that was far from the truth. Port Gamble was a small town, certainly, and those who didn’t live there might think it was a sleepy little place. Yet the truth was almost every household had been the victim of something. Starla’s dad, Adam, left town without so much as a word; Beth’s father drowned; Katelyn was dead; and then there was what had happened to his own mom.

Exactly what it was had never been a topic of conversation around the Jameses’ household. And as much as he loved his mother, he loved her enough not to say a word about it. Whenever he saw the scars on her neck, he pretended they weren’t there.

Later at school, between algebra and history, Colton ran into Starla—a rare occurrence because they spent most of their passing time in their separate pods, his orange, hers blue. It was even more unusual that Starla was alone, away from her usual group of mean-girl admirers and the straggler or two who wanted to be part of the group—until Starla ordered the poor girl picked off like a weakened zebra.

“Hi, Colt,” she said.

“Hi, Starla.” Colton tried to remember the last time she had spoken to him privately. Was it seventh grade? When she pretended to like him, when all she really wanted was for him to do her computer science homework? Like the biggest idiot in the universe, he had done it.

Starla edged a little closer, drawing him over by the teacher’s resource room, where it was quiet.

What does she want now?

“You doing okay?” she asked him.

“I’m fine,” Colton said, “but what about you? Are you doing all right?”

She was full-on Starla just then. She smelled good. Her eyes were done up in such a way that they looked anime-big. “It has been really hard,” she said. “My mom mentioned to me that Sandra dropped off Katelyn’s laptop for you to hack.”

The reason. Starla was ten times more efficient in getting to the point than she had been in middle school
, Colton thought.

“Yeah,” he said. “She did.”

“Were you able to get into it? You’re pretty good at that kind of stuff.”

Colton knew she was using him again, yet he still blushed a little.
Why did she have that effect on him?

“Thanks. I guess. But yeah, I was.”

“Really.”

“Yeah.
Really.
”

Starla inched a little closer. She looked concerned, interested. She was kind of good at that, and just maybe had a future in movies. Make that TV.

“What did you find out?” she asked. “She was pretty messed up, wasn’t she?”

Colton thought a moment before answering. There was always a risk in telling Starla something. Information was her currency. Gossip. Truth. Whatever she could use, she did. She was, Colton knew, an info-parasite.

“Messed up, maybe,” he said. “But not half as much as the SOB who was sending her those taunting e-mails.”

He wanted to tell her that the sick SOB who sent them was her mom’s boyfriend, but he didn’t.

“Wow,” she said, her eyes no longer as large, but shuttered a little as if she were concentrating on something important. Or as if she were trying to narrow her focus on Colton to see just what it was that he knew. “That’s totally scary.”

Colton brushed past her. “Yeah.” He didn’t look back at her anime eyes. He just went to class, letting Starla think about just what he’d found on her dead friend’s hard drive.

MOIRA WINDSOR ATE A COUPLE OF MINT-FLAVOR TUMS
she had fished out of the Paradise Bay house’s medicine cabinet. She had eaten too much. Too fast. She heard the ping of a new e-mail being delivered and quickly returned to her computer.

From: S. Osteen

To: Moira Windsor

RE: Farm to table article

Ms. Windsor, I got your e-mail about the farm-to-table story you’re doing. I’d be glad to assist you in any way that I can. I see buying local food as a key to our future longevity on this planet. Please feel free to call me or e-mail me if you’d like to meet. I live near the Bremerton Airport.

Moira picked up her phone and tapped out the telephone number provided. After a few pleasantries and some confirmation about what she wanted, Savannah Osteen invited her to come over.

“When can I come? I’m kind of on deadline.”

“Anytime,” Savannah said. “I work out of my home.”

Moira pounced. “How about today?”

Savannah paused, thinking it over. “Today’s fine,” she said.

“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.