She groaned silently. Maybe she had spent too many hours buried in evidence. Actually, the guy was cute, but then so were beagles. Dogs required a lot less energy than a relationship, and she didn’t even have time for them.
She half listened while her mother and Mrs. Baxter exchanged greetings, then met Matthew’s eyes briefly when her mom made the introductions. Jaci put out her hand, and from the second his closed around hers, she was mesmerized—by the painting hanging just beyond his right shoulder.
“It’s the Santiago house.”
Matthew let go of her hand. “Excuse me?”
“That painting,” she said, walking around him to stand in front of it. “It’s the house where the Santiago family was living when they disappeared.”
“I’m sorry. Were they friends of yours?”
“Not likely. I wasn’t even born when they went missing.”
“My daughter’s studying to become a forensics scientist,” her mother said, almost apologetically.
“That’s interesting,” Matthew said. “How did you choose that for a career?”
“It kind of chose me.” She didn’t bother to explain; her attention was focused on the painting. She barely managed a “nice to meet you” when the surgeon and his mother moved on.
“You certainly scared him off fast enough,” Evelyn said. “I’m assuming that was your purpose in fawning over that macabre painting.”
“It’s not just a painting. That’s the house on Cape Diablo.”
Her mother stepped back, tilted her head slightly and studied the picture. “What’s Cape Diablo?”
“One of the mangrove islands off the coast. It’s not that far from here.”
“The bougainvillea looks as if it’s bleeding all over that decaying villa. It’s repulsive.”
So were the facts. A wealthy but scandalous drug runner, his wife and two children had disappeared from the house and the island thirty years ago. The only clue to what might have happened to them was splattered blood found in the boathouse.
The crime had fascinated Jaci since she was eleven and had heard her father and his partner talking about it one night when they’d thought she was asleep.
“I can’t imagine why an artist would want to create something so morbid,” Evelyn said.
“That’s nothing compared with what you hear and see on the nightly news.”
Her mother put her hand on Jaci’s shoulder. “You are so much like your father.”
The hint of melancholy in her voice surprised Jaci almost as much as the mention of her father did. He’d been dead eleven years and they’d been divorced for three before that. Her mother probably hadn’t mentioned his name a dozen times since the divorce, and never since his funeral.
All Jaci had known of the facts surrounding the divorce was that it had broken her dad’s heart. It had broken hers, as well. And Clarence Harding III’s entrance into the picture so soon after hadn’t made matters any better.
Jaci stepped closer to the painting and studied the artist’s signature, “W. St. Clair.” It was almost hidden in the trunk of a mangrove in the bottom right corner of the canvas.
Her mother had already moved on. Jaci joined her in front of a painting of a blue heron perched on the bow of a sinking sailboat. “Are you familiar with the work of W. St. Clair?” Jaci asked.
“No. Is that who painted that horrid picture?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t plan to become familiar with his work.”
His? Maybe. But Jaci had the feeling the painting had been done by a woman. She wasn’t sure why.
“Do you have a pen?”
Her mother fished a silver ballpoint from her Prada handbag and handed it to her. Jaci scribbled the artist’s name on the napkin she’d been holding under her champagne glass, then slipped the napkin into her skirt pocket as she returned the pen.
“You surely aren’t thinking of buying that painting,” her mother said. “The house looks as if it came straight from a nightmare.”
“On my budget? Are you kidding? I’m just curious about the artist. But the Santiago disappearance would make a fascinating subject for my culminating project. And it’s nearby,” she added, thinking aloud more than making conversation.
“You wouldn’t actually visit Cape Fear, would you?”
“Cape Diablo, Mother, and there’s no reason not to go there. It’s a nice quiet, secluded island amid ten thousand others in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“I don’t like it. In fact, I’m getting a really bad feeling about the place.”
So was Jaci. It was probably the crimson paint splattered like fresh blood. But she was desperate for a project, and the murder case was still as much a mystery as it had been thirty years ago.
Besides, there was nothing to fear on the island—nothing but isolation and an aging mansion that likely held deadly secrets hidden within its crumbling walls. All within an hour of the mainland by a fast boat.
The night hadn’t been a waste, after all.
FOR THE NEXT TEN DAYS, Jaci ate, slept and breathed the Santiago murders. She was so engrossed in the details, she half expected old Andres Santiago to be standing by her bed when she woke up in the morning.
But who knew what might happen when she actually reached Cape Diablo? She was headed there now, booked into one of the small apartments in what had once been a lavish pool house, or so said one of the many articles she’d read on the Santiagos’ disappearance.
She’d tried to reach Wilma St. Clair and had finally tracked her down to a residence in South Dakota, of all places. But the artist was out of town on her honeymoon and there was no way to reach her.
Jaci had also tried to get in contact with Mac Lowell, the cop who’d taken the detailed pictures of the blood splatters on the boathouse wall the night the family had disappeared.
That was a wash, as well. He’d quit the force right after that and moved out of the area. He’d later inherited his mother’s Everglades City beach house and went to visit on rare occasions. Jaci was still hoping to contact him.
She’d left word with the neighbors and also stuck a note beneath the door, asking him to call her—covering all bases in case he made a trip back to the area.
His partner that night was also unavailable. He’d been killed in a car crash about the same time Mac had moved away.
The good news was that once Professor Greeley intervened on her behalf, the Everglades City Police Department had released copies of the blood splatter photos and the pertinent police records.
The bad news was that other than the photos, the police reports left a lot to be desired. Crime scene investigations from thirty years ago, especially when the crime involved a smuggler’s family living on an island that hadn’t fallen under the jurisdiction of a big-city police force, didn’t even approach today’s standards.
Jaci swatted at a mosquito that was circling her in search of a target not coated in insect repellent. “How much farther?”
Bull Gatlin kept his eyes straight ahead. “Another ten minutes or so.”
She hoped the trip wouldn’t take longer than that. It was already dusk, and she didn’t want to be out in these waters with nothing but the moon and stars to light their way.
She didn’t see how the pilot could find Cape Diablo