Siren's Secret. Debbie Herbert

expanse of the ocean while her only blood relations were out there somewhere frolicking under the sea.

      “My dad died two years ago, I guess about the same time you came to this town. It was tough, we were close. I looked up to him,” Tillman said.

      “He couldn’t have been that old. What happened?”

      “Heart attack. I’m sure the pressures of work and home contributed to it.”

      “I’m sorry, Tillman.” She touched his hand and felt warmth travel up her arm at the brief contact.

      “He was sheriff here. When I got the news he died I left Mobile and came back home. They wanted me in the Sheriff’s Office, and Mom and Eddie needed me, too.”

      Shelly’s heart clinched. “Do you plan to stay in Bayou La Siryna or is this assignment temporary?”

      Tillman hesitated. “There’ll be an election next year for the job. I don’t see things changing on the home front.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Eddie’s a handful.”

      “True, he’s on the severe end of the autism scale, but I’ve seen worse.”

      “You haven’t seen Eddie at his worst. And Mom...” His voice trailed off and he shifted in his seat. “She can’t deal with it.”

      Shelly recalled Portia Angier’s pale, delicate face, the way she rubbed her temples, how she often dropped off Eddie and called Tillman to pick him up from the Y. Probably suffered the classic Fragile Southern Belle Syndrome. “You’re a good man to help your family.”

      He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m no saint.”

      Shelly smiled inside. She certainly had no use for saints. Her fantasies of Tillman were far from saintly.

      * * *

      It had all been so easy.

      A quick search on the internet at the public library to find her photo and name, and then one click for her personal address. Their names were listed on the hair salon’s business license. There had even been a picture of them at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the shop years earlier. Lily Bosarge had long blond hair and the other, Jet Bosarge, was taller and had dark short hair that barely covered her ears.

      Lily was his target.

      Melkie parked his car down the road, careful not to be seen, before approaching the large Victorian home with its wraparound porch. The silent darkness of the house reminded him of a cemetery. He peered through the windows and listened for the faintest sign of life inside. Convinced they weren’t home, he searched and found, behind some dense hawthorn shrubs, a small unlocked utility window. Donning latex gloves and a black skullcap to prevent loose hairs from falling, he squeezed his wiry body in the small opening and landed in the basement.

      Melkie crept upstairs, entering the living room. He stopped every few seconds to check for sounds or the beam of approaching car headlights from the driveway. Taking out his penlight, he explored. He’d never seen anything like it. Coins and clutter oozed in every cubbyhole, spilled over the tops of pricy-looking furniture, and lined walls were stippled in rich tones of burnt umbers and corals. He stuffed his pockets, indiscriminately shoving handfuls of coins and little doodads that gleamed in the dark. That couldn’t be real gold, could it? What little hope he had of finding his knife vanished. Needle in a haystack, baby.

      A laptop computer lay on the kitchen counter, the monitor asleep. Melkie jiggled the mouse and the screen came to life. He clicked on the email icon, grinning at the thought of leaving a message. He’d keep it short and succinct.

      Die, freaking mermaid bitch. Boatman.

      That should scare her out of hiding.

      He headed upstairs, the pine steps creaking like a coffin opening in the midnight emptiness of a morgue. Portraits of strikingly beautiful women in old-fashioned dresses from different eras lined the walls on both sides. The old house had six bedrooms and three bathrooms on the top level. The three stale bedrooms with no signs of life he quickly dismissed. He wanted hers.

      One bedroom definitely had a lived-in look. Clothes, mostly jeans, shorts and T-shirts, draped the bed and antique dresser. Melkie opened drawers, found more T-shirts and plain underwear and poked around papers and books on the nightstand. Nothing useful there—used tubes of ChapStick, old yellow-stained maps. Probably the short-haired Jet’s room, although he couldn’t rule out that it might be the bitch’s room.

      The next bedroom was slightly neater, although its dresser was littered with expensive-looking glass perfume bottles and an elaborate silver comb and mirror set atop a mirrored plate. Its closet was jammed with sundresses and lacy negligees in pastel hues that shimmered like ghosts in the darkness. Melkie fingered several—their soft, feminine fabric gliding against his callused skin like the promise of sex, of tangled bodies in twisted silk sheets. He imagined fashioning a length of that silk, wrapping it around a fragile neck, jerking and pulling until she lay broken, that neck red-welted and raw from the smooth fabric. His erection was immediate and painful; all mixed with outrage that she had seen him and knew who he really was.

      Focus.

      He turned from the closet and went to a huge dresser stuffed with lacey things, little slips of panties with matching bras. No knife. Melkie opened the silver flask on one of the perfume bottles, breathing deep its scent, both musky and floral, complex notes scrambling his brain with lust. He put the top back on it and stuffed it in his pants pocket, too. As he left the room, possibly her room, he saw an Oriental jewelry box by the nightstand. He crossed the room and greedily swiped gold rings lined up against black velvet, sparking like midnight rainbows. Sweet. These pickings would help supplement the state of Alabama’s measly unemployment check.

      This could be her room—but he’d seen nothing to know for sure.

      The last bedroom was pristine, and he’d almost passed it by. But a faint citrusy scent gave him pause. He entered, checking out the closet and dresser drawers. Perhaps an overnight guest of Jet and Lily Bosarge?

      Light bounced off a photo on a nightstand. Melkie picked it up, pocketing the black pearl necklace draped on its abalone-shell frame. The corners of his lips twitched as he stared at the photograph of the mermaid with her long, blond hair.

      Gotcha, he whispered in the stillness.

      He set it back on the table, reached in his back pocket and pulled out the mermaid figurine from the globe Tia Henrietta had given him. Breaking it into two pieces, he laid the broken mermaid under the pillow. That message should be clear enough. Melkie lay on her bed, pulling out the other present he’d bought for her—one of his mom’s old hooker panties. He’d intended to just leave them where she would find them, knowing someone had been in her room. But now—the scent of woman, the lingerie, the photograph of her smiling at him as he lay there—now he had another gift for this mermaid.

      He’d show her who was boss, would make her scream in agony as he ripped out those sea-witchy, freaky eyes. Melkie unzipped his jeans and began rubbing Mama’s panties on his crotch.

      * * *

      By the time they got out of the restaurant and drove to Murrell’s Point for a walk, Tillman’s phone had rung twice more. Shelly wanted to toss the device in the ocean. How could he stand being tied to it all the time?

      One disconcerting moment occurred when they had exited Tillman’s car and a half-dozen cats gathered around her. They bristled and hissed, their alien eyes flashing fluorescent in the moonbeams. Clearly they sensed she was the mother lode of a fish dinner. One had nipped at her legs experimentally until Tillman gallantly shooed them all away.

      The ocean was calm with only an occasional whitecap in the distance. Even though the moon was beginning to wane and not at its peak, Shelly still felt a strong urge to leap in and swim, to feel the undercurrents tugging at her weightless body as she played and swam among kindred creatures. She breathed in the briny air, rife with the scent of algae and seaweed and