Siren's Secret

Chapter 2

Close your eyes, all is well

Seal your mouth, don’t ever tell

For if you do, shame will come

Mama’s Boy falls all undone.

Shelly rolled her shoulders back with determination. Even with no sleep last night, she couldn’t allow fatigue to interfere with her clients’ therapy. And staying focused on her job helped keep the terror at bay when she pictured the killer she’d encountered the previous evening.

Eddie made a beeline for the water, eyes focused straight ahead to their objective, ignoring his mother three steps behind him, stumbling in designer sandals.

Shelly moved between Eddie and the pool steps, holding up a vest. “First, we put on our vest, then we get in the water,” she reminded him.

Eddie reluctantly let Shelly strap it on.

“He’s too fast for me,” his mom panted as she caught up to them. Mrs. Angier wore black pants and a frilly high-necked white shirt accented with a striking coral necklace. While the rest of the locals sported shorts and T-shirts, Eddie’s mom stood out with her inappropriately elegant attire. The blood-sucking Alabama humidity that had everyone else sweaty and defeated never seemed to affect Portia Angier. “I can’t keep up with Eddie,” she whined, rubbing her temples with a slight wince.

“No problem,” Shelly assured her.

It had taken a whole month of once-weekly sessions to get Eddie to accept the water jacket without it being a major ordeal. He was extremely sensitive to the texture of anything against his skin. And it had taken about the same amount of time to stop Eddie from stripping off his bathing trunks the minute he stepped out of the pool.

Suitably strapped in, Eddie walked down the pool steps and waded around the shallow end, splashing and laughing.

“Too bad we don’t have an indoor pool at home,” Mrs. Angier said, still rubbing her temples, Donna Karan sunglasses dangling in one hand.

“Headache?” Shelly asked, getting into the pool with Eddie.

“The worst. If it’s okay, I’ll head on home and have his brother pick him up.”

Shelly’s heart did a little flutter. Tillman Angier had a way of making her feel like a lust-crazed teenager. Get a grip.

“Fine.” She turned to Eddie. “Ready to get started?”

He was already a step ahead of her. He picked up the kickboard from the side of the pool and began kicking his long legs. Water shot up around him but for all the exertion and noise, he only swam a few feet. “Good job,” Shelly said anyway, and they high-fived.

Eddie jumped up and down, laughing and spraying water over the side of the pool. Shelly held his hands and they jumped together in mutual delight. The buoyancy and feeling of weightlessness in the water was good for the soul. Besides improving coordination, flexibility and muscle, the warm water provided healing benefits. Shelly speculated that people with a special affinity for water were long-removed descendants of mermaid blood—so far removed they knew nothing of their heritage but were inexplicably drawn to water, especially the ocean.

She was rewarded with two seconds of eye contact before Eddie looked back down to the clear aqua depths swirling around his body.

“Time for the ball toss,” she said. She took a twelve-inch beach ball and tossed it to Eddie. Without aiming, Eddie threw it back, the ball landing a good six feet behind her.

Shelly swam after it and returned to Eddie. “Let’s try again. Throw it to me this time.”

Eddie slam-dunked the ball in the middle of her face.

Ouch. Well, she wasn’t specific enough.

Shelly threw it back and waved her hands in front of her. “Throw it at my hands, Eddie.”

He did. But after less than half a dozen throws he started humming. A sure sign he was growing impatient. Shelly quickly moved on to another exercise. During the next hour, she alternated coordination tasks with social play. Afterward, she’d return to her office and make notes on his progress. Few things gave her more satisfaction than celebrating clients’ progress.

“Shoes,” Eddie suddenly called out.

Shoes was one of Eddie’s code words—it meant someone was here to take him home and he needed to put on his shoes, get dressed and go. She searched the room with more eagerness than necessary.

Sheriff Angier, in his neatly pressed brown uniform, headed toward them in long strides. His presence filled the room and she was acutely aware of every detail of his strong face...the prominent jaw, the sharp planes of his cheeks and broad forehead. He was as unlike his sibling as much as Jet and Lily were polar opposites. The only common feature of the brothers was the same light brown, slightly wavy hair. She knew Eddie’s age was twenty-eight and that Tillman was several years older than him. Where Eddie was shorter and more compact, and prone to softness in his stomach, Tillman was tall with a well-defined musculature. Unlike Eddie’s vague, unfocused blue eyes and dreamy expression, Tillman’s slate-gray eyes were sharp and penetrating—as if he could see down to the hidden depths she didn’t allow anyone to know about.

Shelly took a deep breath and hurried after Eddie, who could be pretty darn quick when properly motivated. She reached him just in time. At the last step out of the pool, his hands were already at the top of his bathing trunks.

“Wait,” she said. “Put on your robe.”

No sooner had he fastened the robe than the trunks came off.

Shelly bent to pick up the wet trunks at the same time as the sheriff. His large tanned arm brushed against her smaller, paler arm. Prickles of heat spread from the point of contact to all parts of her body.

“I’ve got it,” he said in a deep husky voice that warmed her insides.

They rose together and Shelly fought to control her rapid heartbeat. Here she stood dripping wet with him so polished and sharp in his uniform. She judged him to be in his early thirties, only a few years older than herself, and yet he exuded a natural authority and confidence that befitted his position.

Shelly sighed inwardly. He had not caught her on her most flattering day. Her huge green eyes, what she considered her most striking feature, were red-rimmed from lack of sleep and her honey-colored hair was nothing but a sodden heap of tangles at the moment.

“I’ll be right there,” he called to Eddie, who was already halfway to the locker room.

“Your mom left Eddie’s tote bag of dry clothes over here.” Shelly went to the bleachers, acutely aware of the sheriff following behind. Damn, she should have wrapped a towel around her waist. Toned or not, wet flesh in the light of day made her feel vulnerable. The one-piece bathing suit she wore was modest, but it was still a bathing suit. And her hair was flat and clung to her back in wet chunks. She’d given up on makeup at work. Even the waterproof stuff didn’t hold up to hours in the pool.

The edge of her bathing suit rode up the cheek of her left buttocks. Terrific. Shelly fought the urge to pull it down. If she was lucky and left it alone, maybe the sheriff wouldn’t notice.

She picked up the bag and forced herself to remain professional as she faced Eddie’s brother and held it out.

His eyes jerked up from her derriere. Oh, crap. She could tell by the darkening of those gray eyes and the ghost of a smile on his lips that he had definitely been checking out her ass. But perhaps that was progress, since he hadn’t paid her much attention before. “Hope your mom is feeling better,” she said with a self-conscious smile.

His lips thinned and a flicker of annoyance lit his eyes before he slid back into his cool, confident persona. “You’re limping.” He pointed at Shelly’s foot. “An accident?”

“A minor cut.” She shrugged. “Kitchen mishap.”

He jerked his head toward the locker room. “I better see if Eddie needs any help.”

Shelly stared at his back as he walked away, a tiny bit disappointed. The man was definitely not a conversationalist.

The sheriff whirled around and caught her staring. His lips twitched at the corners.

“I watched you working with Eddie. You’re doing a great job.”

“I love working with your brother. He’s my favorite—I know I shouldn’t have any, but he is.”

“How about you let me take you to dinner Friday in appreciation for all your hard work?”

Shelly fought not to sound too excited. “Sure.” Please don’t invite your mother, she thought fervently. Don’t let this be a family thing. Nice enough woman, but she wanted the sheriff all to herself. It had been too long since she’d felt any interest in dating again.

Lurlene Elmore and others from the senior water aerobics class, the Water Babes and Buoys, emerged from the ladies’ locker room.

“Eddie’s stark naked in our locker room,” Lurlene called out in way of greeting.

A tinge of red crept up the sheriff’s neck. So he wasn’t perfectly composed at all times, Shelly thought. What a relief.

The sheriff tipped his hat to Mrs. Elmore. “Sorry. He doesn’t know the difference between the men’s and ladies’ rooms. I’m on my way.”

“Don’t apologize.” Lurlene let loose a honking laugh. “For God’s sake, it’s not like any of us have reached our advanced ages without seeing a man’s talleywacker a time or two.”

Shelly followed her ribald senior clients to the shallow end of the pool. “Talk to you later,” she said with a wave at Tillman.

Lurlene pointed at Shelly’s legs. “I tried to find that lotion that makes your legs sparkly but I didn’t see it anywhere.”

Not that again. Lurlene had been hounding her for what she used to make her legs glitter. Shelly glanced down discreetly. They weren’t that noticeable. The skin had a faint opalescence, like silver-and-pink mica particles freckling the legs. Lurlene would freak if she knew the glitter came from the faint residue of her tail fin when she shape-shifted.

Shelly shrugged. “Just put some powdered pink and silver eye shadow in a jar of baby oil and shake it.”

Lurlene nodded as she sank her massive frame into the pool. “Saw the sheriff checking you out.” She winked. “He’s a handsome devil.”

It occurred to her these senior women had probably seen more action in the past two years than she had.

Friday night couldn’t get here soon enough.

* * *

Melkie roamed the downtown shops, avoiding eye contact and blending easily with the crowd. Even in early September, the air was thick with humidity and his shirt felt sticky from perspiration. He smirked as he passed the quaint shops. The town was nothing but a fucking Mayberry R.F.D. perched precariously on the edge of a continental shelf. Hurricane Katrina had almost swept it entirely away.

A fat woman in spandex bike shorts and an oversize fuchsia T-shirt exited the soda parlor and brushed against him. Her triple scoop of blueberry ice cream narrowly missed plopping on his chest.

“Excuse me, darlin’,” she said with an apologetic grin.

Melkie pulled away and shot her a furious look. He fought back the urge to growl. The woman’s smile faded and he registered confusion, embarrassment and fear in her fatty pig eyes.

He lowered his head and kept going.

She was like everyone else in this stupid, stinking backwater. They had no idea who he was, what he was capable of doing.

Three blocks away, he entered the Bayou Seed and Feed to get a bag of Rebel’s favorite dog biscuits. Several old men in denim overalls stood around the counter, bullshitting. Melkie plopped the bag on the counter where an old fart with rheumy eyes winked at one of the customers. “How’s that ol’ mutt of yers gettin’ along?”

Melkie threw down a ten-dollar bill on the scratched Formica, ignoring the jibe.

The cashier handed back the change, which Melkie stuffed in his pocket. As he headed to the door, one of the men muttered, “Ugliest damn dog you’d ever want to lay eyes on.”

Snickering ensued.

Melkie slowly turned. All of them fell silent and looked away. He wanted to say Fuck off, but he wouldn’t give the cashier an excuse to ban him from the store. Instead, he settled for banging the door shut behind him. The attached bells gave a satisfied clanging at the violence.

He was in a crappy mood today, when he should have been calm and in control. That’s how he had felt after the first hooker, anyway. The second one...well, that was a problem.

What the hell had happened out there? That—that thing had risen up from the sea. She—it, whatever—had seen him, knew who he was and what he had done. Somehow he had to find her again. He couldn’t let a witness live. Big mistake dumping that second bitch at sea. He thought no one would ever find the body. Unlike the first one he’d left in the shallow salt marsh. That had been clumsy and ill-planned.

Images from the night before consumed him. Sure, he’d had a few beers before getting on the boat, but he wasn’t stinking drunk. He knew what he saw and that was no scuba diver. When the woman disappeared with the body, he’d seen a giant fish tail emerge.

Melkie threw the bag in the bed of his rusted-out Chevy truck with his other recently purchased supplies and drove out of town, onto the white sandy roads leading home. In the past, he would have taken Rebel with him, but he got sick of the ugly jokes. Ignorant hicks.

He’d found the dog abandoned on the roadside years ago and had taken a shine to it. At first, Melkie thought the stray resembled an overgrown rat, but he checked the library’s internet and found it was a full-bred hairless Chinese crested. Try telling that to people in the bayou.

His thoughts turned again to the woman at sea. Either he was crazy or that woman was truly a mermaid. He brooded over the mermaid possibility.

Bayou La Siryna had as many mermaid tales and sightings as some places had their resident ghost hauntings. A few locals claimed to have seen strange creatures at night, half human and half fish, swimming deep at sea. Some scuba divers once claimed they’d seen a topless mermaid with long blond hair swimming close to the marsh grassland savannas that lined the shore. All stories Melkie never believed.

Buildings changed from redbrick structures to clapboard shacks with dirt floors that smelled like a combination of ripe soil and mice droppings. At last, his neighborhood was heralded by a faded hand-painted sign reading Happy Hollows, nailed to an oak tree.

There was nothing happy about Happy Hollows. He flipped off the sign, as was his custom. Tired shotgun-style houses lined the streets, in various states of disrepair. He pulled into an unpaved driveway on a dead-end street. Rebel yapped excitedly by the peeling handmade picket fence slapped together from scrap wood.

A smile tugged the corners of Melkie’s thin mouth for the first time today. Rebel spotted the biscuit bag and ran in circles, delirious with joy.

“Shut that ugly mutt up,” a neighbor hollered from a front porch crammed with broken kids’ toys and other unidentifiable junk.

“Fuck off,” Melkie hollered back. He didn’t have to pretend to be nice around this place. Niceness got you nowhere with these folks; instead, it was viewed as a sign of weakness. Melkie had learned early on not to take anything from anyone. Ever.

Melkie stomped up the rotted steps and onto the porch, arms laden with bags and boxes, carefully avoiding spots where pieces of boards were broken or missing, exposing sand and weeds four feet beneath the foundation. He opened the screen door, but Rebel pushed up underneath his feet and a cardboard box fell out of his arms. An explosive noise of crashed glass erupted in the box like a miniature self-contained bomb. Rebel whimpered and ran away, skinny tail tucked between his legs.

“What the hell was that?” his neighbor screamed from across the street.

“None of your business,” Melkie yelled, kicking the mess to one side of the door. The box of broken Mason jars, used as insect-killing jars, joined the cast-off collection on his porch—a broken washing machine, plastic beach chairs with missing slats and who knew what else.

Melkie perked up at seeing the brown package tucked between the screen and front doors. As he checked the mailing label, his mouth curved upward.

He whistled for Rebel and the dog followed him inside. Melkie headed straight to the fridge and pulled out a beer. His unemployment check was running low, but he always had a cold one for himself, a biscuit for Rebel and his ever-increasing insect collection.

Only ten steps from the den, he entered the cramped kitchen with its battered pine cabinets. Another eight steps and Melkie would pass through a tiny bedroom, leading to a bathroom with only a toilet, a rusted-out tub and sink. Another ten steps led to the final cramped bedroom, barely large enough for a mattress and dresser. This pathetic, rotting dump was all his. Mom’s last legacy. The sisters were long gone, escaped as soon as they’d found some pussy-whipped dope to take them away. But he was still trapped here. For all its miserable worth, the house was a way to live rent-free.

“I don’t owe nobody nothing, do I, boy?”

The dog leaped on Melkie’s legs, clawing for his treat.

“Coming right up,” Melkie promised. He peeled off his sweaty T-shirt. Opening the kitchen drawer, pulling out a dull knife with a cracked wooden handle, he cut open the bag and threw a biscuit on the ripped linoleum floor. Normally, he liked watching Rebel tear into the treat with his buck teeth, the few remaining ones jutting out at crazy angles. But today he stared at the knife gripped in his palms.

His knife.

Anger rose in him, fierce and hungry. Melkie tamped it down, refused to let it interfere with the gratification in his latest package. Pulling up a chair to the table, Melkie cut open the box and spread its contents onto the scarred Formica. A hurricane of colors lay hodgepodge before him, but he focused on the largest specimen—a black spicebush swallowtail with a robin’s-egg blush fanning its hind wing and the forewing bordered by white dots. Beautiful. The butterfly’s delicate antennae and proboscis had survived shipping intact.

He dug out supplies from a plastic container and set to work, pinning the specimens with stainless-steel insect pins against a white styrene foam board. Rebel barked and whined, but Melkie shushed him with an impatient flick of his hand. At last pleased with the arrangement, Melkie slipped the foam under a shadow box frame.

It took a good twenty minutes to find the perfect location amongst the den walls covered with similar arrangements, mostly butterflies but also mountings of praying mantises, grasshoppers and dragonflies.

As soon as Melkie drove in the nail and hung his latest creation, Rebel barked and ran to the kitchen for another treat. Melkie tossed him one and Rebel gobbled it up with his yellow misshapen canine teeth.

The anger returned as he palmed the kitchen knife. His prized knife was gone. He’d seen it stuck in the tail fin of that thing at sea. He grabbed a six-pack and settled into the den’s old recliner with its ripped turquoise vinyl upholstery. He gulped his beer in long swallows, brooding over the lost knife. It was what he had used to cut out both bitches’ eyes. It was special. It also happened to be the only gift he ever remembered getting from his mother.

A big beautiful knife in a worn leather case.

“Here, kiddo,” she’d said, casually tossing it in his direction one Christmas when he’d asked her where his presents were. “It belonged to your dad. He told me it was a gift from his father.”

Melkie had grinned, fingers closing over the family heirloom. Violent vibrations hummed in his hand as he held the knife.

It had been the best Christmas ever.

Rebel jumped in his lap, jolting Melkie from the memory, and dog and owner stretched out to watch a police drama on the twenty-inch black-and-white TV set with a rabbit-ears antenna. No cable in this backwater hellhole.

Melkie petted Rebel’s mottled skin before raising an arm to flip on the window air conditioner. Between the loud hum of the AC and staring at the fuzzy speckles on the TV screen, Melkie sensed the tension ease out of his lean body. He’d just relax a bit, not sleep. If he took short dozes, Melkie found he was less apt to dream or, at least, remember them if he did. He avoided sleep, but after days of only ten-minute naps snatched here and there, his weak, treacherous body would rebel and go under for hours at a time.

Most people welcomed sleep, sought refuge and refreshment in the mysterious, suspended state of being. Not for him. Nighttime was when his mother used to slip into bed beside him. She’d creep past the first bedroom, which she shared with her two daughters, and seek him out.

But most nights she didn’t creep, she stumbled, a result of too many gin and tonics, trying to wash away the taste of customers. Then she staggered and often fell as she went through his sisters’ room to get to him. Not that his older sisters gave a damn. They conserved their energy for their own survival—for those nights Mom brought a customer to their sorry shack.

When he slept now he still fought against the groping, the sucking, the humiliation that rolled over him in waves, leaving him powerless and frightened. Even when it had happened, he knew it wasn’t right. By day he was her whipping boy and at night...

The old bitch had been dead ten years now and she still haunted his dreams. But he had found another way to fight the memories, to punish someone and take back control.

Melkie flexed his large hands with its long fingers, so out of proportion to the rest of his smaller physical frame.

Oh, yeah, he loved taking control.

* * *

Jolene Babineaux. Age thirty-four. Caucasian.

Tillman studied the photographs for what had to be the hundredth time. In one, provided by a family member of the deceased, Jolene sat on a sofa, cuddling a couple of children. A second photo was a grim mug shot of her arrest for prostitution a year earlier. She wasn’t smiling in that one. The last photograph was of her battered, skimpily clad body, sans eyes, which had been discovered last evening.

Even though Bayou La Siryna was a relatively small town, Tillman had never run across the victim. And he was pretty good at remembering names and faces. All part of the job. But a large part of the population, at least a third of the county, lived in a squalid, poverty-ridden area with the unlikely name of Happy Hollows. Most of the families there were a tight-knit community of shrimpers—people who lived for decades fishing on family-owned boats.