Onyx Webb: Book One Read online

  “No, not the drawers,” Katherine said.

  “What’s in them?” asked Onyx.

  “Nothing, Onyx,” Katherine snapped, but Onyx had already moved toward the cabinet. “They’re empty, Onyx, trust me.”

  Onyx pulled on the top drawer, leaned forward and looked inside. “Masks!” she exclaimed, reaching in and holding one up for Katherine to see. “Masks, like at Halloween.” Onyx placed the mask over her own face. “It fits,” she said, looking through the eye slits at Katherine who had hung her head and was weeping uncontrollably.

  Onyx lowered the mask. “What’s the matter? They’re just masks,” she said. Then she looked in the drawer again and saw the entire row of faces staring back at her. Young girls faces. “They all look alike,” said Onyx almost to herself. “They all look like…”

  Onyx stopped in mid-sentence and looked at Katherine.

  “Us,” Katherine said. “They all look like us, like you and me. She makes a mask of each girl, Onyx,” Katherine said.

  “What girls?” Onyx asked.

  “The girls she takes and keeps here in this room, the girls she took before she took me, and now you.”

  “They all have the same scar just like you have,” Onyx said. “On their mouths…”

  “She does it to us. She does it to make us look like her dead daughter, Lucinda,” said Katherine.

  “Why?” Onyx asked.

  “Because she’s crazy!” Katherine screamed, instantly regretting the outburst as Onyx began to cry. “I’m sorry, Onyx, I’m sorry—I know you’re scared. I’m scared too—but you’ve got to help me find something to cut these ropes. Please, Onyx.”

  Onyx nodded, placed the mask back in the drawer and began searching under the stairs. “Here! What about this?” she said, holding up a jagged piece of glass.

  “Yes!” Katherine said. “Yes, bring it here!”

  Onyx started across the room toward Katherine then stopped dead in her tracks as light streamed into the basement from the top of the stairwell. “Oh, God,” said Katherine as the sound of feet could be heard on the wooden stairs above them.

  Obedience.

  “Happy Birthday to you…” she said in a sing-song voice as she slowly came down the stairs.

  “Oh God, oh God…”

  “Happy Birthday to you…”

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God…”

  “Happy Birth-day, dear Lu-cin-da…”

  “No, no, no, no, no…” Katherine pleaded.

  “Happy Birthday… to you.”

  Katherine Keane looked up to see the gray-haired woman standing there, birthday cake in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other. “We’ll get to you in a minute, dear,” the old woman said to Katherine. “But first we have to make Lucinda pretty,” she said, turning her sights on Onyx.

  “My name isn’t Lucinda, its Onyx—Onyx Webb. And you’re not my mom!”

  “Do you want to have your cake now?” Obedience asked. “No, I say we make you pretty first.” The old woman walked over, closed the drawer with the masks and set the cake on the cabinet.

  “Run, Onyx!” Katherine screamed. “Up the stairs! Try the door! Try the door!”

  “I think we’ve had just about enough out of you,” Obedience said, pulling a rag from the pocket of her dress. She reached down and grabbed Katherine’s face, trying to force her mouth open.

  “Leave her alone!” Onyx shouted. “Katherine is my friend!”

  “Katherine?” Obedience said. “Is that what she said her name was?”

  “Yes,” Onyx said. “Her name is…”

  “Her name was Lucinda, but not anymore—she’s too old, too big,” Obedience said.

  “Onyx, run!” Katherine screamed again. “The door!”

  Obedience attempted again to force the rag in Katherine’s mouth. Katherine clenched her teeth, shaking her head from side to side. Obedience slammed her fist hard into Katherine’s stomach. Katherine let out a gasp, and Obedience jammed the rag deep into her throat.

  Onyx darted up the stairs but when she reached the landing she found the big wooden door was locked. Onyx peered down the stairwell at the old woman who she now knew was crazy, just like Katherine had said. “I want my dad,” Onyx cried. “I want my daddy!”

  Obedience walked casually to the bottom of the stairs, looked up. “Don’t worry, daddy is on his way. The war is over and he’ll be here any day now. Now, please, it’s getting late, and we have to make you pretty.” The old woman held up the pliers. “You have too many teeth to be my Lucinda, some of them have simply got to go.”

  The old woman started up the stairs toward Onyx.

  “Don’t you remember, Lucinda? You were roller skating, and you fell, knocked three teeth right out. But daddy said you were still his pretty girl—his pretty, pretty, girl—even with that nasty scar. But don’t worry, momma’s going to help you be pretty again,” Obedience said, waving the pliers in her hand.

  Onyx opened her mouth to scream.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Savannah, Georgia

  June 3, 1979

  Quinn Cole was going out of his mind.

  2:39 a.m.

  His call to the Savannah P.D. was dismissed out-of-hand since the police received an average of thirty-six calls every Friday and Saturday night during prom season from panicked parents whose sons or daughters failed to come home as promised. “And do you know how many of those kids show up over the next few hours?” the desk sergeant asked. “Thirty-six, Mr. Cole, each and every one of ‘em.”

  “This is different. Juniper would never…”

  “…blah, blah, blah, I heard it all before. By the way, why is it that you’re the one calling us? Where are your parents?”

  Quinn ignored the question because the reason didn’t matter. “How long do I have to wait until you do something? And don’t give me any standard TV show bullshit about her having to be missing 24 hours.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” the desk sergeant said. “I’m on till 8:00 a.m. If your sister hasn’t shown by 6:00 a.m., call me and I’ll see what we can do, but trust me—she’ll come walking through the door before that, saying how sorry she is, how she lost track of time, blah, blah, blah.”

  6:01 a.m.

  Quinn Cole pushed through the glass doors of the Savannah Police Department and didn’t have to look very hard for the desk sergeant since he was the only officer in the place.

  “My name is Quinn Cole, Sergeant. We talked a few hours ago about my sister Juniper. It is 6:02 a.m. and she’s not back yet, so what do we do now?”

  8:41 a.m.

  A man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, his hair turning gray at the temples to match his light gray suit, walked toward Quinn with a cup of coffee in one hand and a half-eaten bagel in the other.

  “You Cole?” the man asked. Quinn nodded and stood up.

  “Come with me,” the man said.

  The man led Quinn to an elevator door. “Hit the up button, huh? Damn thing is brand new. Cost the department $26,000 to put in, if you can believe that. And it’s slower than shit.”

  The man was right. Quinn had never been on a slower elevator in his life and couldn’t understand why they hadn’t just taken the stairs.

  They arrived at a typical gray metal desk against the far wall of the room. The combination of the name plate on the desk—which read Det. Leopold Igler—and the bagel made Quinn assume the detective was Jewish.

  Not that it mattered.

  “Detective, I’m here because…”

  “First things first, call me Leo,” Leo Igler said as he lowered his five-foot-eleven frame into his swivel chair.

  Quinn said nothing. He didn’t need a Leo, he needed a detective.

  Leo rocked back in his chair. “Okay, have it your way. Let’s start with the obvious. Where are your parents?”

  “What do my parents have to—?”

  “Humor me, okay kid? I’m not asking the question to waste time, I’m asking it to save time,” Leo s
aid. “See, I’ve been a detective for going on twenty-six years now, and never in all that time has the brother come in to report a missing sister—it’s always the parents. So, what’s the story with your parents?”

  “My father is in California, and my mother is sick,” Quinn said. “Okay?”

  “No, kid, half answers are not okay,” Leo said. “What you left out, what you failed to say, is why your father is in California and why your mother’s not.”

  Quinn seethed.

  Leo waited.

  “My father left my mother for another woman, and my mother is a drunk who doesn’t get out of bed or go out of the house unless it’s to buy a case of Boone’s Farm,” Quinn said. “Is that a complete enough answer for you, detective?”

  Leo nodded. “Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Getting somewhere?” Quinn said. “We’re getting nowhere. We’re going in circles. What do—?”

  “Your sister is a runaway,” Leo said, cutting Quinn off. “I’ve seen it a thousand times with kids who’ve got problems at home. My best guess? She’ll be back in a few days.”

  Quinn shot to his feet. “Jesus Christ! What in the hell is it with you people?” he shouted loudly enough that everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and stared. “First I’m told she’ll be back in a few hours. Now you’re telling me she’ll be back in a few days? What’s next? Is there some other department you send me to next where I’m told she’ll be back in just a few years? Isn’t there anyone… anyone…?”

  Leo stood and put his arm around Quinn’s shoulders as the tears morphed into choking sobs. “Sit down, kid, okay?” Leo said. “Take a seat, and we’ll work this thing through together. Okay?”

  As Quinn regained his composure, Leo pulled a notepad from his desk drawer and a pen from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Leo clicked the back of the pen with his thumb.

  “Okay, Quinn,” Leo said. “Tell me about your sister.”

  Quinn told him everything he could think of that might be of help. And though he didn’t think all that much had been accomplished, Quinn felt that someone was finally listening to him.

  “Anyone your sister ever dated who ever got violent with her or had anger issues?” Leo asked. “Anyone who may have made comments of a sexual nature, anyone who—”

  It only lasted a fraction of a second, but Leo saw something on Quinn’s face—a brief flash of recognition in the young man’s eyes—that made Leo think he’d hit on something.

  “What is it?” Leo asked.

  Quinn shook his head. “No, it’s nothing.”

  “Sometimes nothing turns into something,” Leo said.

  Leo remained silent and watched Quinn thinking.

  About Wyatt Scrogger…

  The pick-up lines and sexual innuendos…

  The comment about Juniper’s breasts…

  The hug that lasted just a bit too long…

  “Come on, kid,” Leo said. “Spit it out.”

  2:19 p.m.

  Leo spent a few hours digesting what Quinn Cole had told him about his friend. All-in-all the Scrogger lead was pretty thin. Comments and jokes didn’t amount to much on their own.

  3:34 p.m.

  A little over an hour later, a uniformed cop dropped a file and a stack of newspaper clippings on Leo’s desk. Leo slid on his reading glasses and flipped through the stack.

  Juniper Cole had never been in trouble.

  Juniper Cole was a straight A student.

  Juniper Cole was on the high school chess team.

  And then Leo read the next line:

  Juniper Cole was a child piano prodigy who’d appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and performed at Carnegie Hall.

  Leo realized he’d been wrong.

  She hadn’t run away. Hell, this girl was a local celebrity.

  And the Savannah PD had reacted too slowly.

  He had reacted too slowly.

  Leo glanced at his watch. Assuming someone had taken the Cole girl around midnight the night before—and Leo’s gut now told him that someone had—he was fifteen hours behind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Savannah, Georgia

  January 23, 2010

  “My, my,” Mika Flagler said from the hallway, looking at Dane, who was standing there in nothing but his boxer shorts. “Is that a lacrosse stick in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”

  “Walking dogs to make a few extra bucks?” Dane said eyeing the giant hound.

  “This is Tiny,” Mika said, handing the dog leash to Dane. “You two should get along nicely. He’s a Great Dane, like you,” Mika added, pushing past Dane into the small room.

  “You’re not planning on wearing that to the dinner, are you?” Dane asked. The silk garment looked as if someone had stitched a dozen enormous Monarch butterfly wings together, the wings fluttering in the breeze as she walked.

  “It’s Stella McCartney’s. I stole it from her suite at the St. Regis in New York after Paul’s concert at MSG—don’t tell her it was me. Where’s Koda?”

  “Working on his bowtie,” Dane said.

  “Oh, God, we’ll never get out of here,” Mika said, glancing around the room. “Isn’t that cute, you each have your own little beds. Remind me to have the concierge send up a couple pairs of Spider-Man pajamas.”

  Koda turned off the bathroom light and stepped into the room. He stopped dead when he saw the dog. “What in the hell is that?”

  “This is Tiny,” Mika said. “I got him after I saw you on the red carpet in Cannes with that troll, Paris, and that stupid Chihuahua she had stuffed in her purse like an emergency bag of Cheetos.”

  “You named him Tiny?” Koda said.

  “You know me, I don’t do small,” Mika said. “Now come here and give me a kiss.”

  Koda stepped forward and leaned in to kiss her, but as soon as he did Mika slapped him hard across the face.

  Koda rubbed his cheek. “Feel better?”

  “You have no idea.” Mika took a step back. “So, what do you think of my dress?”

  Koda looked Mika up and down. “Garish, as usual.”

  Mika turned and grabbed the leash from Dane. “Let’s go, I’m starved.”

  “We’re waiting for Dane’s tux,” Koda said.

  “Dane’s a big boy, he can dress himself,” Mika said. “You know how much I hate to be late.”

  The ballroom was decorated entirely in gold and white, with forty round tables set for eight each, an array of food stations placed strategically around the room serving lobster, caviar, shrimp, prime rib, crepes, sushi, wheat grass shooters, and over a hundred kinds of cheese.

  Savannah’s most-notable citizens nibbled at their food, renewed relationships and toasted each other’s wealth from oversized crystal glasses filled with Petrus Pomerol Chardonnay and Screaming Eagle Cabernet.

  Every inch of the room was flawlessly executed and breathtakingly beautiful. Mika had seen to it personally, refusing to delegate a single decision. Of course, at $25,000 a plate, it had to be—especially when almost any of the attendees could pull out a checkbook and buy the entire hotel simply on a whim.

  Koda and Mika stood near the doorway at the front of the room, near the stage, waiting to be introduced. Koda glanced up and saw hundreds of large Monarch butterflies hanging from the ceiling from wires—their wings fluttering in the subtle breeze that came from two large ceiling fans—and knew instantly that Mika’s dress had not been chosen by accident.

  Everything Mika Flagler did was part of a grand plan—a plan that, in the end, would serve her personal wants and needs. It was something Koda simultaneously admired and despised about her.

  The presenter on the stage was a dead-ringer for Colonel Sanders, known around Charleston and Savannah as The Southern Gentleman—a moniker he’d bestowed upon himself twenty years earlier. He’d become a mini-celebrity of sorts, serving as the Master of Ceremony at various events.

  Koda and Mika waited in the wings while The Sou
thern Gentleman worked the audience with his unique presentation, reminding members of the audience of days gone by, working them for applause and laughs:

  While we’re restoring Savannah’s buildings to their previous states of wonder l believe we should be equally focused on restoring Savannah’s culture—a culture that, if we are not careful, will eventually go the way of the dodo bird and the drive-in theater.

  I cite, as an example, the nearly extinct species referred to by biologists as “Southern-ous Gentlemen-ous”—a species that has sadly become little more than a memory in the South—a dying idea, or should I say, dying ideal. I say this out of a desire for self-preservation, for I am a southern gentleman!

  And what is it that defines a person of my breed?

  A southern gentleman knows how to make a mint julep and a whisky sour when someone asks.

  A southern gentleman wears a hat, even indoors, though never at the table. May I add, gentleman, that a wide-brimmed straw hat is never out of style, nor is a pair of highly polished spats.

  A southern gentleman never underestimates the triple threat of new ideas, aged Scotch, and old money.

  A southern gentleman knows how to eat and feels no trepidation when it comes to asking for seconds.

  A southern gentleman will gladly offer you the shirt off his back, even if it’s his last.

  A southern gentleman always greets a lady with a devilish smile on his face that never lets you know exactly what he’s thinkin’. Sometimes a devilish smile is just a smile, and sometimes it’s worn to hide the real person. It is your job, ladies, to figure out which is which.

  Speaking of the other sex, when it comes to women, life for a southern gentleman is a race: A race to anticipate her needs… a race to open a lady’s door… a race to pull out a lady’s chair… a race to take a lady’s coat… a race to throw your white Armani dinner jacket over a puddle to ensure her comfortable passage.

  Okay, maybe I went a bit too far with that last one.

  ‘Course, we southern gentlemen do have—despite all our positive traits and social graces—a few, shall I say, shortcomings.