Midnight Lullaby Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  All the Blue-Eyed Angels

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  More Savings

  More Erin Solomon

  The Erin Solomon Series

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2015 by Jen Blood

  Published by Adian Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover Design By

  Jeremy John Parker

  www.jeremyjohnparker.com

  For Dad

  Who taught me to think big,

  Dream bigger, and always take the long way around.

  MIDNIGHT LULLABY

  PREQUEL TO

  THE

  ERIN SOLOMON MYSTERIES

  Jen Blood

  Chapter 1

  It was a Wednesday night in July, the summer of 2000, when we found Charlene Dsengani’s body—her throat slit and her belly sliced, organs removed, eyes plucked from their sockets. A hollowed vessel, empty as a chalice in my father’s church on communion Sunday, left to rot on a pier in Portland, Maine.

  Earlier that night, Solomon and I watched the Sox take down the Twins for the third time in as many days. After that, we stayed on at the Porthole, a hole-in-the-wall pub on the wharf, toasting our good fortune.

  Or I toasted our good fortune. It wasn’t clear what Solomon was doing.

  “You haven’t finished your beer,” I pointed out to her shortly before midnight.

  “It’s warm,” she told me. She wrinkled her nose when she said it, like an irritated bunny.

  “That’s because it’s been sitting in front of you for an hour. You want a fresh one?”

  She shook her head. Her red hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, and she was still in her work clothes—a pencil skirt and a sleeveless white blouse, Solomon’s version of business casual. Based on all the looks she’d been getting, she pulled it off well.

  Not that I noticed, of course.

  “I don’t know why I bothered getting you that fake ID,” I said. “Hell, if all you were gonna do was let perfectly good beer go to waste, I bet Manny over there never would’ve carded you in the first place.”

  Manny looked up at mention of his name. He was short and paunchy and hairy as a marmot, with a glass eye he liked to pop out at the end of the night to give the tourists a thrill.

  “What’d you say?” he called to us.

  “Nice job, genius,” Solomon said to me. She raised her voice so Manny could hear her. “Ignore him, Manny. He’s drunk.”

  I wasn’t, actually, but I’m not dumb enough to argue semantics with Solomon. At the other end of the bar, a trio of local fishermen had been getting progressively louder as the night wore on. Every half hour or so, one of them would wobble a couple of steps in Solomon’s direction. So far, I’d been able to keep them at bay with a glare, but I got the sense that wouldn’t work much longer.

  Solomon’s focus shifted back to the TV mounted at the corner of the bar. She pulled her hair off her neck, leaving the column of her lily-white throat exposed.

  Which I, naturally, also didn’t notice.

  That summer, Solomon was nineteen. I was twenty-seven. I’d mentored her back at our hometown newspaper beginning when she was a sophomore in high school. When it turned out she was interning at the Portland Tribune that summer of 2000, after her second year wowing them at Wellesley, it seemed only natural—fitting, even—that we get a place together while I worked for our old boss at a weekly rag overlooking the harbor.

  Since the day we’d moved in together, when Solomon showed up in shorts and a fitted t-shirt over curves I definitely didn’t remember from her high school days, I’d spent a lot of time not noticing her.

  “How much longer do I have to stay here watching you not drink your beer?” I asked.

  “It’ll be on in a minute,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the TV. “If you’d just pony up the cash to pay for cable at our place, we could be watching this in the comfort of our own squalor.”

  “I’m not paying for cable.”

  “Then I’m not leaving until this interview’s over.”

  The bar had cleared out for the most part—even in July, Wednesday nights were slow in Portland. Apart from the fishermen and Solomon and me, the only others in the bar were seated at a three-top in the corner. Johnny and Wolf Cole spent most nights at the Porthole, unless they were shooting pool over at Old Port Billiards. The customary third in their party, Lisette Mandalay, sat beside Johnny. Johnny and Wolf were old-school Boston-Irish transplants. Both of them had pale white skin and ice-blue eyes, the biggest difference being their hair—Johnny’s was coal black, Wolf’s an anemic red. And their size. Johnny was slim, five-foot-eight or nine...

  Wolf was a mountain.

  Next to the two of them, Lisette looked like she’d come from another planet. Her skin was the deep, rich tone of polished ebony, her eyes the color of onyx. She had chiseled cheekbones and a slender frame, and she stood at least two inches taller than Johnny when she wore heels. Which she usually did.

  Rumor had it that Lisette had been plucked straight off the streets of Cape Town when she was fifteen, by an American talent scout who saw her and knew he could turn her into a star. He hadn’t been wrong—she spent almost ten years gracing the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Elle before she retired to Maine at the ripe old age of twenty-four. Despite the fact that she’d once walked the runways of Paris and New York, I noticed the fishermen in the corner never made the mistake of wobbling in her direction.

  “He’s on,” Solomon said, interrupting my train of thought. She nodded to Manny, who obligingly turned the sound up as loud as it would go. At that volume, people three blocks over would be able to hear every word Congressman Rick Foster, God’s gift to the Democratic Party, had to say.

  “Jesus, Manny,” one of the fishermen complained.

  “Erin needs to hear this,” Manny said, using Solomon’s given name—one I use so infrequently I often forget it belongs to her. “She’s interviewing this jackass next week. You don’t like it, settle your tab and hit the highway.”

  Solomon has a way of engendering mindless devotion that I’ve never quite understood.

  “You can turn it down a few notches,” she generously told Manny, before our collective eardrums burst.

  The Tonight Show was on, Jay Leno at the helm in those days. A well-coiffed man in a pale-blue Polo shirt and khakis walked onto the stage. Jay stood and greeted him while the audience applauded politely. Solomon perked up at sight
of Foster, who reportedly used to run with Leno back in Beantown—the only way a guy running for congress in Maine would ever rate a spot on national TV. I was vaguely aware of a disturbance at the table behind us, but kept my focus on the television.

  “So, Congressman Foster,” Leno lisped, “I hear your next stop on the campaign trail is a place we out in LA don’t get to all that often—Maine, isn’t it? Most everyone here is probably curious why someone running for the U.S. Senate would take valuable time out of his schedule to campaign in Canada.”

  The crowd laughed. Foster laughed. Solomon rolled her eyes at me. I rolled mine back.

  Behind us, the commotion between the Cole brothers escalated.

  “Why don’t you shut that thing off,” I heard one of them say. Wolf, I thought.

  “Can you just give it a second?” Manny said, uncharacteristically deferential. A wise choice—Manny might have been crazy, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “I just want to go,” I heard Lisette say. Solomon remained focused on Foster, but I shifted my attention to the argument between Lisette and the brothers Cole.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Johnny asked her. “It’ll be five minutes. What, you got a problem with the senator?”

  “He’s not a senator,” Wolf corrected him. “He’s running. Not there yet.”

  “I’m just going out to get some fresh air,” Lisette said, enunciating each word carefully. I heard something I wasn’t used to in the polished diction of her South African accent: fear. I shifted just slightly on my stool so I could see her.

  She started to stand. Johnny grabbed her arm.

  “Just sit down and wait. Five more minutes,” he said. Wolf watched the exchange, his jaw tight and his eyes dark, but he didn’t comment. I waited for bloodshed, which I assumed was imminent.

  On the screen, Foster was talking to Leno about his work with refugees in Africa and South America. How excited he was about the prospect of working in the senate. What he planned to do in Maine. Naturally, the conversation turned to lobster. I stifled a yawn.

  At the table behind us, I heard the first bars of a pop hit that had been relentless that summer. I shifted my gaze once more, as subtly as possible, and watched Lisette reach for her cell phone. I half-expected Johnny to tell her she couldn’t answer. Instead, he just watched her with a kind of lizard-like, guarded curiosity.

  “I’m gonna bring the car around,” Wolf said to Johnny. He got up and left, glancing briefly at the TV and then Solomon and me before he walked out.

  Meanwhile, Lisette had said only hello on the phone before she’d gone silent. Unable to get a good view of her face from my vantage, I turned so I could watch her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She stood. Johnny reached for her. This time, she shook him off without a word—not something people did to Johnny Cole on a regular basis. He must have seen the same look on her face that I did, though, because he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even try to stop her when she started for the door. Her voice was too low for me to catch what she was saying, but her urgency was unmistakable. She left without a word to Johnny, letting the door slam shut behind her.

  The interview was winding up on the TV screen. I stood, surprised to note that Johnny didn’t do the same. He looked at me, though, with an expression I couldn’t read—a cruel kind of amusement, maybe. Whatever it was, it didn’t sit well with me. I reached for my wallet, one eye still on the door.

  “Diggs,” Solomon said. She has an irritating way of reading my intentions before I’ve realized I intend them. “Don’t.”

  “I’m just getting a quick breath of fresh air,” I assured her. I glanced back at the table. Johnny still hadn’t moved, despite Lisette’s abrupt exit.

  “Then I’m coming with you,” Solomon said.

  There were arguments I could make, but with the same result: Solomon would beat each of them down with questionable logic, until I eventually gave up and let her come. The main difference being that if I bothered, I’d waste ten minutes—and risk losing Lisette.

  “Fine, grab your coat. And stick close.”

  She opened her mouth, prepared to launch her rebuttal, but clamped it shut when she realized I’d agreed. Just as she was pulling her jacket on, the bar was plunged into darkness.

  The fishermen groaned.

  “That’s it,” Manny said. “Lights out. Time to settle up, boys. Cash only—you know the drill. I ain’t waiting for the lights to come back on to go home.”

  The city had been running rolling brownouts all summer to try and alleviate stress on the local power supply. They usually timed them better.

  “We’re set, Manny,” I called through the darkness. He turned on a battery-powered lantern on the bar, and nodded a terse goodnight to us both. Solomon and I stepped outside.

  Custom House Wharf is old-school Portland. It’s not trendy, and—while it does have a kind of old-world charm—it’s not particularly pretty. Once upon a time, it was paved with cobblestones. Now, it’s a rocky mix of cobblestone, pavement, gravel, dirt, and potholes. Flanked by dumpsters and dilapidated warehouses, it smells like salt and fresh fish, greasy burgers and cold beer and the sweat of the fishermen who work there.

  That night, the air was cool and dry—perfect weather for a midnight stroll, though a change in venue would have been preferable.

  “Which way?” Solomon asked.

  I looked both ways, the night black as wet ink in either direction. To our right, at least there were still signs of life in the form of the occasional car passing by on Commercial Street. If we went left, it would take us farther out onto the pier. Dense fog hung over the scene, obliterating what scant light a sliver of crescent moon offered.

  The sound of clipped footsteps echoing on the pavement made the decision for us: I motioned Solomon to our left.

  We’d barely gone five steps before Lisette emerged from the fog, a specter as dark as the night that had swallowed her. She fled, panicked, her eyes cast over her shoulder as she ran straight into my arms.

  She recoiled when she realized what she’d done, stumbling backward. I caught her by the elbows and steadied her. She trembled like a tuning fork struck by lightning.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I was in the bar and saw you leave—you seemed upset. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  She was far from that, clearly. She shook her head and took another step back, pulling herself from my grasp.

  “Sorry. I am sorry. I was—I thought I saw something. I must...”

  Just then, headlights illuminated her face as someone turned onto the wharf. They continued driving slowly until they were almost on us, then braked a few feet away. I heard a door open and then slam shut behind me. When I turned, Wolf strode toward me. I got the sense me standing there would be little more than a speedbump if I got between him and Lisette.

  “What are you doing?” he said. I wasn’t sure whether he was talking to me, Solomon, or Lisette. Before I could find out, he motioned to Lisette. “Get in the car. I’ll be right there.”

  She nodded. She’d managed to school her features into some semblance of calm, but her fear still hung in the air.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” Wolf demanded when Lisette had gone. He took a step toward me. I didn’t take a step back, out of sheer arrogance. At six feet and just shy of two hundred pounds, I’m not a small man, but Wolf had me by a good three inches and probably fifty pounds—all of it muscle.

  “We were watching out for Lisette, since you guys are apparently too dumb to do it yourselves,” Solomon said. Wolf raised his eyebrows at me, but he didn’t try to kill either of us. One point for the spunky redhead.

  He looked over her head, straight at me. I grabbed Solomon by the shoulder before he decided he wasn’t amused.

  “You always have Girl Scouts do your fighting for you?” he asked.

  “Only when they’re willing,” I said. “Seriously, though—you should check on your friend. I don’t know what the hell�
�s going on, but it’s got her spooked.”

  I expected him to keep fighting me, but he simply nodded. “Is my brother still in there?” he asked.

  “Last I knew. The brownout should make it easier to haul his ass out, though. Manny’s trying to close.” He grimaced. Looked back at the car, then the bar. “I can call a cab for him if you want,” I offered.

  “No, that’s all right. It’ll only take a second. You might want to make yourselves scarce, though. Last I knew, he was looking for a fight.”

  “You sure you don’t need a hand?” Solomon said. Wolf shook his head.

  “Nah. I told you—just get out of here.” He hesitated. “And thanks for looking after Lisette.”

  After he’d gone inside, Solomon started back toward the pier. I caught her by the elbow. “No way. Whatever’s out there was enough to have her running scared—hang back. I’ll check it out.”

  She started to argue, but this time I didn’t cave. After another couple of minutes of pointless debate, she agreed to stay behind. I produced a flashlight from my bag of tricks, and stepped into the darkness.

  Freight trucks were parked on either side of the alley. Warehouses with graffiti’d walls and broken windows rose up to my left and right, obliterating the ocean view. The smell of the sea was stronger here, the salt thick enough to taste on the air. I’d gone no more than a few paces when I heard footsteps behind me.

  I turned. Solomon froze in the glare of my flashlight.

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “Oh, come on. You didn’t really think I was waiting back there, did you? You know me better than that.”

  “Fine. But you have to listen to me if I tell you to do something.”

  “What kind of something?” I didn’t answer, instead waiting in silence for her to get the point. She nodded. “Okay, yeah. You’re in charge.”

  She took out her own flashlight, and we moved forward together. When we cleared one of the last warehouses, a twenty-foot stretch of concrete opened up onto the harbor. Beyond it was one more warehouse—a fish-processing plant built at the edge of the dock. It was actually two buildings, with space between where trucks could come in, pick up their freight, and leave.