“Running?”

“Around and around the desk. Chief Bruyn had a thing for her. But Paula? She runs fast.”

A chorus of laughter from everyone within hearing distance.

“Paula’s a smart cookie,” Lorraine said. “After she had Ginny, she got a lot more careful about men.”

“Another lesson Ginny never learned,” Jacob said.

Lots of solemn nods on that one.

“You mean Ginny’s boyfriend, right?” I said. “A local guy?”

“Cody Radu,” Jacob said.

Mutters circled the room. Even Lorraine didn’t jump in to his defense.

Jacob was the first to speak. “Cody’s a rich brat who thinks he’s a lot smarter, a lot better looking, and a lot richer than he is. Big fish, small pond. His daddy’s a developer. Cody works for him. Not exactly the Vanderbilts, but around here, they’re high society, which is why they stay.”

“So it was rumored Cody was seeing Ginny?”

Lorraine snorted and muttered, “No rumor about it. He was and everyone knew it.”

“Did Ginny threaten to tell his wife?”

Jacob shook his head. “Tiffany Radu knew all about Ginny. She married the local rich boy and isn’t about to let him go, no matter what.”

Which sounded like a motive for murder, if that rich boy decided he wanted to permanently relocate to greener pastures.

“Cody likes to wallow in the mud,” Jacob said. “Tiffany’s happy to let him, as long as he keeps the muck out of her pretty little life.”

Lorraine shushed him, but only halfheartedly.

“Are we talking more muck than trashy girlfriends?” I asked.

“Sure are,” Jacob said. “Dope, parties, hookers. Hell, I’ve even heard he runs a white slavery ring out of Seattle.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Lorraine said. She looked at me. “Folks around here don’t have a lot of time for Cody Radu, but all that is just rumor.”

“Like hell,” Jacob said. “Chief Bruyn’s been investigating him for years. Everyone knows he’s up to a shitload of crap, but the cop can’t pin a thing on him. That’s how he figures Ginny and Brandi got killed. Maybe even Claire Kennedy.”

“Blackmail or extortion,” I said. “They threatened to give Bruyn the proof he needed.”

“You got it. The way those girls were killed? Wasn’t about sex. Wasn’t about rage. It was execution, pure and simple.”

eight

Next stop: the commune.

Before leaving the diner, I’d grilled Lorraine and her patrons on the local cult / commune. They were very reluctant to talk about it, wanting to leave the group in peace. Yeah, right. Show me a town where no one jumps at the chance to gossip about the local religious sect, and I’ll show you a town full of deaf-mutes.

The guy who ran the place was Alastair Koppel, a former Columbus resident who’d gone off to college and never came back. Or, at least, not until he wanted an isolated place to start a cult of nubile young women. According to the diner folk, he had at least a dozen of them living up there. Just him and the girls baking cookies.

Yep, cookies. That’s apparently how they made their living. Like a cross between Moonies and Girl Scouts, I imagined, hanging out at airports, giving away world peace with every box of thin mints purchased.

The cult was on a farm. Otherwise, it wasn’t what I had in mind at all. No guard dogs. No security cameras. No booby traps. Not even an eight-foot fence to hide the orgies. Very disappointing.

As I was pulling off my helmet, an unearthly screech shattered the silence. The frantic clucking that followed didn’t promise anything nearly as nefarious, but I was an optimist.

I followed the sound to the first building past the gate: a chicken coop. Outside it, a blond ponytailed woman was hacking the head off a chicken, the last victim still twitching, headless, by her feet.

I looked around for signs that I’d interrupted an animal sacrifice in progress. Unless cooking pots were the latest rage in occult rites, though, I was out of luck.

I waited until she was done decapitating the chicken before saying, “Got tired of the early morning wake-up calls?”

She turned. She was about my age, but with an air that said she hadn’t acted my age in a long time. Tall, lanky, and beautiful in a way that could make her a model if she deigned to wear makeup, but with an expression that said “fat chance” to that. She wiped her bloodied hands on her apron and gave me the kind of assessment I haven’t had since Paige brought me before the Coven. Considering how that turned out, this was not a good sign.

“Savannah Levine,” I said, extending a hand.

She held her bloodied hands palms up. “You might not want to do that.”

“I’m washable,” I said.

She shook my hand.

I pointed at the dead chicken. “Did he crow at dawn one too many times?”

“No, she didn’t crow at all. They’re laying hens that reached the end of their laying days.” The woman pointed at the pot. “Soup time.”

Nice retirement package. I looked down at the headless chicken, now lying motionless on its side.

“Lorraine at the diner said to ask for Megan,” I said. “I’m guessing that’s you.” If this wasn’t the woman in charge, I’d hate to be the one who tried to order her around.

“I am. You’re here about the opening?”

“No, I’m investigating Claire Kennedy’s death.”

I braced myself for the stiffening back, the hardening face, but she actually seemed to relax.

“Well, then, you’ve come to the right place,” she said. “Claire died here. The victim of an unspeakable sex act gone horribly awry. Isn’t that what you heard?”

“Nope.”

“Then it must be the satanic ritual. We ran out of babies, so we used her. Now we’re down to these ladies.” She held up a chicken. “Sure you don’t want to apply for that opening?”

“The unspeakable sex acts might change my mind, but for now I’m happy with my current employment. The story I heard was that Claire wanted out, so Alastair killed her and dumped her body in town.”

“Boring.”

“I thought so, too.”

She laid the chickens on an old wooden table. “Really, we don’t need to kill anyone who wants to leave. The brainwashing works just fine. If that fails, there are always drugs. And, of course, chaining the girls to their beds drastically cuts back on the runaway rate.”