“What is it you wanted to talk about?” Savannah asked when the older woman lapsed into thoughtful silence.
She clasped her hands in front of her and set them on the table, looking down at them. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I need to know about my sister.”
“Your sister?”
“Yes. Mary Rutledge . . . Beeman.”
Savannah waited, wondering where she was going with this. For a moment she’d thought Catherine meant some other sister, though the only one on record that she knew of was Mary. “She’s deceased?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” When Catherine still seemed reluctant to proceed, Savannah said, “I don’t know a lot about her.”
“But you’ve heard the rumors about Mary.”
“Some.” You couldn’t live in or around Deception Bay without gleaning some information about the Colony whether you wanted to or not.
“Have you read A Short History of the Colony, by Herman Smythe?”
“The book at the Deception Bay Historical Society?”
“If you can call it a book,” Catherine said and sniffed.
“Not yet.”
“Don’t bother.” Catherine’s blue eyes grew chilly. “Most of the genealogy inside it is correct,” she admitted grudgingly, “but there are errors and omissions, and what’s written about my sister is mostly erroneous.” She waved a dismissive hand. “I never cared what Herman wrote. He was more harmless than most of my sister’s . . . men. But maybe it’s time to set the record straight.”
Savannah waited expectantly. She already knew that Mary Rutledge Beeman had been very sexually active during the seventies and eighties and had given birth to a lot of children, almost one a year, during that time, most all of them girls. There was the belief, maybe even proof, that Mary’s children possessed extra abilities beyond the normal, abilities that defied explanation. A Short History of the Colony explained much of that, apparently, though Savannah had yet to read it herself. Despite Catherine’s condemnation of the book, it was something she planned to rectify right away.
“I want to tell you about my sister’s death,” Catherine said at length.
“Okay.”
“I want to set the record straight, and I’m hoping you can help me.”
“Unless a crime’s been committed, the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department might not be the government body to contact.”
“I’m aware of that.” Catherine pressed her lips together, then said, “I’ve explained my sister’s death over the years in a number of ways, none of them completely truthful. I’ve said she died from a miscarriage suffered from the result of a fall . . . or sometimes I just said she just died from a fall. In truth, both were a lie.”
Now she had Savannah’s attention. “What did she die of?”
“She didn’t. Not then. Not back when I said she did.” Catherine unclasped and reclasped her hands several times. “She was living on Echo Island.”
“Echo Island.” Savannah regarded the woman skeptically.
“I know. It’s barely more than a rock. It’s owned by my family, and I guess that means just me now, until I bequeath it to the girls. But there is a cabin on it, and I assure you that Mary lived there for years.”
Savannah couldn’t help staring at her. What in God’s name was this all about? “But she is dead now.”
“Yes.”
“You think a crime’s been committed? A homicide?” Savannah asked, guessing. What other reason would she have to reach out to the TCSD?
Catherine seemed about to answer, swallowed her reply back, thought hard for a moment, then finally said, “What do you think of us here at the Colony?” There was a sneer in her voice when she said “Colony.”
“What do I think of you?” Savannah hiked her shoulders. She wondered if she was just wasting her time. Now that she’d seen the inside of the lodge, she was kind of over all the mystique. It was just a rustic, roomy home where people lived a simpler life. No serious woo-woo evident.
“You must have some impression. The locals surely do. Some people think we’re Wiccans, or so I’ve heard.”