The Waves Break Gray (The Raleigh Harmon mysteries Book 6) Read online

  Whoever that was, I didn’t care. The Ghost was growling through the sharp turns like a prowling lion. When we finally reached the bottom of the hill, the road dead-ended at a beach. In my headlights, one solitary figure sat beside a fire in the sand, the embers glowing orange in the darkness.

  “We should make a fire,” Eleanor said.

  I grabbed the phone.

  The road ran parallel to the beach. I followed it for a quarter mile. We seemed to disappear into a forest of madrone trees before the road went uphill, then down, and we were back by the water. I checked my phone. Our destination was right here. End of the road.

  “Airstreams!” Eleanor exclaimed, pointing. “I love Airstreams. Now we’ve got magic.”

  Three or four silver trailers waited under patio lights. I picked up Peter’s note, checking the address with my phone. Eleanor was already out the door with Madame following.

  I grabbed the soil samples, still clutching Peter’s note, and headed for the silver trailers. I counted four, each one connected to the other by the strings of bulb lights that swooped from the surrounding trees like lightning bugs. Between the trailers, the trail was lined with conch shells. Sand dollars. Dried starfish. Seashells, seashells, seashells.

  “Could this be a trailer park?” Eleanor asked. “Because they don’t usually show such good taste.”

  “Eleanor. You promised.”

  “Quiet. As a mouse.”

  Madame sniffed the ground, trotting under the lights, gazing left and right.

  “But I do think it’s magic,” Eleanor said.

  “You promis—”

  “Listen! Music. I think that’s Billie Holiday.”

  I stood outside what appeared to be the main trailer, where the music was coming from. Loud enough that Billie Holiday’s up-all-night-drinking-and-smoking voice seemed to vibrate the trailer’s steel rivets. The short front stoop was made of cinder blocks that led to a door painted seafoam green. I knocked.

  The music quieted. But the door didn’t open.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Eleanor called out. “Anybody home?”

  “You prom—”

  The door swung open—outward. I jumped back, just avoiding getting smacked.

  A tiny Asian woman squinted at us through wire-rimmed glasses. Black hair spiked off her forehead, like some mohawked halo.

  Eleanor said, “I simply adore your music.”

  “Thanks.” The woman gave the glasses a push, getting them closer to her squinting eyes. “You need something?”

  I lifted the paper in my hand but Eleanor was already talking, chin going up.

  “I’m sorry to say that the Grim Reaper has set up his tent on our doorstep.”

  The Asian woman stared at her. Then turned to me.

  I lifted Peter’s note again. “Are you Lani Margolis? I work with Peter Rosser. My name’s Raleigh Harmon and I need—”

  “Raleigh!” The woman slapped her hand against the door, slamming it against the trailer with a bang. “Raleigh Harmon?”

  “The name is southern,” Eleanor said. “They often give girls last names as first names.”

  “Raleigh!” Now the woman slapped her hand to her chest, thumping it twice. “It’s me—Lanette!”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “Lanette Yee!”

  How could—I looked down at Peter’s note. How could—I looked up again and in an instant I saw the fifteen-year-old girl from long ago. “But … this says … Lani … Margolis.”

  “Guilty as charged!” She raised her left hand, fluttering her small fingers. The silver band was on the third finger. “I’m married.”

  “Lanette?” I tried to think of something more to say, but came up blank.

  “Raleigh!” She threw her head back and laughed. “Come here!”

  I leaped up the steps and grabbed her in a tight-tight-tight hug. Her laughter shook her body and reverberated into me, until I was laughing, too. The kind of laughter, that sudden joy that strikes hidden fault lines and cracks them wide open. It felt like every emotion trapped inside me was erupting. I held my laughing friend from years ago and wanted to cry. The voice behind us spoke to no one in particular. And yet, to everyone.

  “I asked for magic,” Eleanor said. “And here it is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  With its low curved ceiling, the Airstream felt like the interior of a magma tube. Molten volcanic mass that hardened around an elongated bubble of air. And it seemed every surface in here was painted some watery shade of blue, from sapphire and tourmaline to opal and turquoise.

  Lanette—Lani—walked over to the built-in shelves and lowered the sound on the stereo system. Billie Holiday went into a whisper.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Lani said. “You were never going to leave the South.”

  “Yeah, well, work transfer.” I glanced over at Eleanor. She was eyeing the Airstream like it might be her next purchase.

  “What kind of work?” Lani asked.

  “FBI.”

  “So you did it?” She smiled, the familiar dimples showing. “You always said you wanted to work for the FBI.”

  I nodded.

  She pushed the wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her small nose. The gesture launched a landslide of memories. We were two fifteen-year-old nerd-girls fighting for survival on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina. Four days that changed us forever. We promised to never lose touch. But promises die.

  “I didn’t know the FBI had a geology lab in Seattle,” she said.

  “They don’t.” My mind scrambled to catch up, how to set the record straight. After our life-and-death adventure, Lanette and I turned out to be terrible pen pals. I didn’t want to write about what was really going on in my life, and Lanette’s homeschooling mom didn’t allow her to have email or a cell phone. Which probably explained the no-phone policy now. “I started with the Bureau as a geologist, in D.C.,” I said. “Then I became a special agent. That’s how the transfer happened.”

  “So cool!”

  “How about you?” I felt desperate to change the subject. “You go by Lani now?”

  She threw her head back and laughed again. That was different. As a teenager, she was brilliant but buttoned-up. I couldn’t recall ever seeing her laugh, especially like this. “I hated the name Lanette. Then I met a guy who started calling me Lani.” She smiled. “So I married him. Got a total name change.”

  “Nice.”

  There was a scratch at the door. Madame. How did I forget her? “Sorry, my dog. Can I get her some water?”

  Eleanor took a seat at the small banquette, keeping quiet but smiling like Maggie the Cat caught two mice. Lani filled a bowl with water for Madame and set it on the floor. Madame lapped, and I looked around. I never expected to see this person ever again. Yet here she was, living … I glanced around the small space … living in her own universe. “You live in a trailer,” I said.

  “I know!” She laughed. “You’d think I’d never want to see another one in my entire life.”

  Cricket—her homeschooling mom—raised her in a vagabond camper.

  “And you still don’t have a phone?”

  She threw her head, laughing harder. Eleanor clapped her hands. Madame looked up from the water bowl, questioning.

  “Life’s full of weird surprises,” Lani said. “Cricket’s indoctrination worked. No phone. And no email. Except through the university.”

  “I find that oddly impressive.”

  “Drives people nuts.” She smiled, dimples deepening. “Which naturally makes me want to keep doing it.”

  “Naturally.” I lifted the soil samples. “Peter Rosser wanted you to look at some things.”

  “Rossie. Isn’t he great.”

  Rossie? I made a mental note to tease him and handed Lani the bag of soil from Annicka’s grave. “I can’t say too much, you know the deal.”

  She nodded. If she was called on to testify, we needed her to truthfully state that her examination wasn’t ta
inted by any other information given to her. However, I was conveniently not telling her my whole story. Like, that I was here outside the Bureau. “Peter thought you might identify what he can’t—”

  “Yes!” Lani grabbed the bag.

  Oh, I remembered this girl.

  “Let’s go check it out,” she said, her voice full of excitement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Lani led us out of that Airstream and across the seashell-and-stone path, following the strings of lights to another Airstream.

  “Why, it’s your own little village,” Eleanor said.

  “Exactly.” Lani opened the second silver trailer, looking back at me. “Sorry, no pets allowed. And you both need to put on protective gear.”

  “More magic!” Eleanor said.

  Madame trotted out under the lights, with plenty to investigate, as Eleanor and I stepped inside. This trailer was different. Gone was the music, the painted surfaces. The air in here smelled dry, sterile. Almost acrylic. I recognized the scent. Laboratory.

  Lani handed us coverings for our hair and shoes, tugged on her own, and walked toward the back. She was no longer host. No longer friend. She had disappeared into the desire to know.

  I took a deep breath of the familiar sterile air, letting it out slowly.

  At a short stainless steel counter, Lani deposited the soil from the first bag into a glass dish. The grains fell with a sound like rain on a metal roof. She lifted the dish, gazing at it over the rim of her wire-frame glasses.

  “Can these trailers be taken out on the open road?” Eleanor asked.

  “Yes.” Lani opened a cupboard above the stainless steel counter. A shelf slid out. She removed large tweezers from a glass beaker. “But I’m staying in one place. Ask Raleigh. I traveled too much as a kid.”

  “Yet, you’re not living in a house.” Eleanor seemed fascinated. “Why is that?”

  Lani pinched the soil with the tweezers and lifted a filament so fine I could only see it because of the bright LED lights under the cupboard. “My husband thought a house would be nice. But something about boxes, I can’t get comfortable. So he went with the trailers.”

  Eleanor glanced at me, rhinestones shimmering.

  “What,” I said.

  “Later,” she said.

  I turned back to Lani. “Married long?”

  “Three years. Together for eight.” She laid the filament on a sterile glass slide and opened a lower cupboard. The microscope rose, strapped to the shelf, just like it was in Cricket’s weird camper-house. “Guess how I met him?”

  “He killed someone!” Eleanor said.

  “Nope. He’s a cop.”

  “Oh, I love a man in blue.”

  “He came to a workshop I was giving on how to get out of any knot. Remember the knots, Raleigh?”

  I nodded, but she’d already moved on. Sitting at the microscope, she looked fifteen again. And that strange feeling swept over me again. Lanette Yee. Her life had progressed like somebody following footsteps laid out for her. Even the workshop on knots. She’d spent two letters of our correspondence explaining to me how she’d learned to make every nautical knot known to man—including fishing knots that dated back to 5,000 B.C. The third letter contained her instructions on how to get out of a knot, in case I was ever kidnapped. Back then, we were so alike. We had plans. I though my path was laid out, too. Science, crime, lab, everything in order. Then somebody killed my dad.

  “Raleigh,” Lani said, her gaze still fixed on the scope’s lens, “can you give me just the basic location?”

  “Eastern side of the Cascades.”

  “Rural?”

  “Not all of it.”

  “I see why Rossie was baffled.” She leaned back, pushing the glasses. “Take a look.”

  I leaned over the scope’s lens. And blinked. “You’re still blind as a bat.”

  “That’s a common misconception,” she said, while I adjusted the scope’s focus. “Most bats have excellent eyesight. Particularly fruit-eating bats. Bats also come equipped with the equivalent of sonar and radar, which is why vision is sometimes—”

  “Lanette?”

  “I’m doing it, aren’t I?”

  I nodded. I was so tired. “I just need to know what I’m looking at—hair, right?”

  Under her scope, the strand looked like a reddish brown thread. Only with bristles.

  Lani walked to the other side of the lab where a bookcase divided the space from the lab’s kitchen. She slid out a three-ring binder so large she had to cradle it in both arms, then rested it on the counter.

  “I can tell you what it is.” She flipped the laminated pages. “But you need to figure out how it got there.”

  She tapped her index finger on a page with a photo at the top. It showed a microscopic view of a hair, similar to what I’d just seen.

  “Laxodonta africana,” she said.

  “Translation?”

  “African elephant.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, what I’m saying.” She pushed the glasses. “The African elephant isn’t a native species to Washington state. So you’ll need a good hypothesis for how that elephant hair got in the soil.”

  Elephant? My mind flashed to that hand, rising above the grave again. How would elephant hair get—did someone ride one up the mountain? It was preposterous.

  “I once ran away with the circus,” Eleanor said.

  Lani was already working on the next batch of soil—from Annicka’s boots. While we waited, Eleanor described the “grubby existence” with the big top. She stayed with the circus all of one week.

  “The stage was calling me,” she said.

  Lani slipped the boot soil under scope and leaned into the eyepiece. “Okay. It’s in here, too.”

  “Elephant hair?” I asked, incredulous.

  She stood, opened a drawer, and up came the printer, strapped like the scope. “I’ll make you a copy of this page.” She laid the binder on the printer’s glass face. “What else?”

  I took out the last soil sample. The burnt soil from the church. But I wasn’t feeling hopeful. The machine I needed was too big for an Airstream trailer. “You’re not hiding a GCMS in here?”

  “I wish!” She grabbed the bag. “Same collection site?”

  “No.” I couldn’t say much more. “In this soil, I’m looking for possible flammables. Flame accelerants.”

  “Arson?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Seriously,” she said, “do you ever wonder what is wrong with people?” She lifted her small hand. “Don’t answer that. You’ve always wondered.”

  At the other end of the trailer, the door swung open and a voice called out. “Honey? Are you in here?”

  “He’s here!” She dropped the bag on the counter and raced for the door. He must’ve been standing on the stairs outside because Lani flew through the opening with a squeal of delight.

  I walked over. A stocky man wearing a blue Seattle PD uniform held her in his arms. He was smiling.

  “Hey!” Lani pointed at me. “Remember that science contest on Ocracoke Island?”

  “When you were a kid?”

  “Yes.” She nodded so fast her spiked hair raked the night. “Remember Raleigh—my friend?” She squealed again. “That’s her. She’s here!”

  “Oh. Wow. Well, hi.” He offered me one hand, but didn’t let go of his wife. “Mike Margolis. How you doing?”

  “She’s an FBI agent,” Lani said.

  Mike Margolis’s face changed.

  I started to say something, but Lani kept talking, climbing out of his embrace and standing close beside him, stroking his arm. They were one of those synchronized couples. Two people turned into one being. Two people who’d found each other, and were grateful, and knew there would never be another.

  When Lani finished talking, an awkward silence fell.

  Madame wandered over, sniffing the stone path. I felt an overwhelming urge to leave.

  “So, about that
GCMS…”

  “Right.” Lani continued to stroke her husband’s arm, absently, like it was her own arm. “I’m teaching at UW tomorrow, so I might be able to sneak it into their lab. But in case I can’t, give me a week. Will that work?”

  “Yes.” I almost sighed with relief. One week was faster than it would get through the state lab. Redemption. It was within sight. We would look like heroes. “So I guess I’ll drive out in a couple days and check on the status?”

  “No.” Mike Margolis gave a weary chuckle and reached into his pocket. He took out two cell phones. “Most guys, they just gotta carry their wife’s purse around the mall. Me? I carry her phone. Take down this number, it’s for insiders only.”

  I typed the number with the 206 area code into my phone while he typed mine in hers.

  “Call that number, leave your message,” he explained. “Then I’ll give that message to Lani, and she’ll give me her message, then I call you back. It’s a total pain. And my wife’s never gonna change.” He smiled.

  I smiled back at him, but that strange feeling swept over me once more.

  “No. Not this time.” Lani held out her hand. “Give me the phone.”

  “What?” Her husband took a step back. “Give you the phone?”

  “Yes. Give me the phone.”

  His mouth hung open. But he placed the phone in her open palm. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.” She looked at me, those familiar dimples deep in her cheeks. “If Raleigh’s calling, I’ll answer the phone.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The drive home felt somber. My mind drifted over all the new developments, all the things I still couldn’t put my finger on. But now I had equipment. And Lanette Yee was now Lani Margolis. And African elephant hair was in the soil from Annicka’s grave and in her boots.

  The elephant hair didn’t make sense. But I felt a shred of hope. Clues—even confusing clues—were rising the surface. That was a start.

  And yet, deep inside my heart, something still bothered me.