by Dana Nussio
“So, what did you want talk about?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you could tell me where I might find my wife.”
“Oh, my God. Is Maria missing?”
Her surprise sounded almost authentic.
“You might say that.”
“How long has she been gone? Do the police have any leads?”
She deserved a round of applause for her performance. He might even have believed her...if he didn’t know better. She’d conspired against him all during his marriage, no matter how many times he’d warned Maria that the witch was filling her head with lies about him. She should pay for all her scheming. Later. For now, if he humored her, she might accidentally cough up some of the information he needed.
“Maria couldn’t handle the separation, so she divorced me while I was away. I guess I can’t blame her. Only now I would make it up to her, if I could find her. It’s as if she just disappeared...with our son, Andy.” He’d added the long pause and the nickname for effect. Tonya wasn’t the only one who could show off acting chops.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
She gripped her hands in her lap, but she met his gaze steadily as if she dared him not to believe her. But if she was telling the truth, then he was back to square one, and he refused to go there.
“You don’t know where they are?”
“No, I don’t.” Her gaze slid to the antique desk on the far wall, a few books resting in a neat pile on its corner, but she quickly looked back to him. “How could I? I haven’t heard from her in years.”
“Sorry to hear that. Now how many years is that?”
He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind over which details she’d already given away. Although she’d admitted to being surprised that he’d been released, that also meant that she’d known he’d served time. She’d also shown no surprise when he’d mentioned their son.
He gripped the glass tighter as he imagined other things Maria might have shared with her over the years. Private things. He had to relax his fingers to prevent the glass from cracking in his hand.
“Just the occasional Christmas card.”
“That does tend to come around every year.” He couldn’t help smiling at her discomfort. She was like a mouse whipping itself into exhaustion, while he was the cat, toying with her.
Tonya shifted in her chair. “But as I said, it’s been years since I heard anything more than that from her. Have you tried to contact her mom?”
“I wasn’t sure it was worth it.”
“Amy’s never been the same since Paul died.”
“I also didn’t figure Amy would give me a chance. She never did before.” Even saying the name tasted bitter on his tongue. He’d once thought Maria’s parents would be his ticket to easy street. Screw them. He’d found his own golden ticket. “But I thought you might. Give me a chance, that is.”
“Me?”
She shook her head, so he pressed on before she had a chance to speak.
“It’s just that you’re the only one who understood how in love Maria and I were.” He cleared his throat. “Still are. That’s why you agreed to say she was sleeping over those times so that we could be alone together.”
At that, she shrugged, her pale cheeks filling with color. It had been a risk reminding Tonya that she was a part of their relationship. Complicit, you might say. But as much as it might make her more determined not to share Maria’s secrets, there was a chance that it might convince her to help him reunite with his soul mate.
Her decision was obvious as she drained her drink and then stood and reached for his. He stood up so that he towered over her, and though she stepped back, she didn’t look away this time.
“Michael, I’m happy for you that you’re free now. Really, I am. But I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I don’t even know who else you could ask.”
“What about that great-aunt she had? The one who’d sometimes send a few bucks in an envelope. She also paid for the crib before our miscarriage. Was it Aunt Sarah?”
He’d turned back to her for confirmation, and the way she startled over the mention of the woman’s name was all the proof he needed that he was onto something. She glanced at the desk again, then straightened as she turned back to him. Preparing to lie.
“No, Sarah couldn’t help.” She paused and cleared her throat. “I guess you didn’t know. She passed away several years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He didn’t believe it for a minute, either. Just like he couldn’t believe anything else she’d said today. He’d once found a letter from her where she’d said she would do anything for her best friend. She was only coming through on her promise.
Now she continued into the kitchen and spoke to him over her shoulder. “You never know. Maria might have just needed some space. Maybe she’ll come back on her own eventually.”
He stood in the kitchen doorway as she rinsed the glasses and put them in the dishwasher.
“You could be right.” And the Easter Bunny was waiting right outside. “Well, thanks for agreeing to talk to me, even if you couldn’t help. You were always decent to me. More decent than any of the others.”
Until now, he almost added. She nodded stiffly.
Instead of waiting for her to usher him out, he started that way himself. She followed him.
At the door, he surprised her by giving her a quick hug. He smiled as she stiffened under his touch.
“Thanks again,” he said as he released her. “For everything.”
Her eyes widened as she stepped back, safely out of his reach. Did she realize that she’d given him so many clues, one he would follow up on right away? Where was Aunt Sarah? Because he doubted she was already in hell where she belonged. And what was she doing to help Maria hide his money and his son from him?
Tonya closed the door behind him and turned the lock, but as he passed the picture window, he caught sight of her rushing to the desk and grabbing her house phone and a small book. Was she really going to warn Maria about his visit? Well, he couldn’t let that happen.
He rounded the house to the back door. Those two mangy cats were already meowing outside the door. The unlocked door. He shooed them away and turned the knob. It didn’t squeak, even when he locked it behind him.
She was standing with her back to him in the living room doorway, the phone pressed to her ear. An address book dangled from her free hand.
“Come on. Come on,” she pleaded. “You’ve got to pick up.”
His movements felt smooth, practiced, as his slid up behind her, jerked her head back and covered her mouth with his hand, pressing her chin up so she couldn’t bite him. The book and the phone dropped to the floor in two thumps as she raised both hands to scratch ineffectually at his wrists.
“All you had to do was tell me where she was and give me the chance to reunite my family. I would have left you to go on leading your miserable life. But you just had to lie for her.”
She made several sounds in her throat as she tried to answer. Or maybe just plead for her release. He didn’t care which. She’d already said enough today.
“You didn’t stop there, either. Now you just had to warn—”
A female voice interrupted him. A sound so familiar that it gripped his heart. His gaze lowered to the phone on the floor. Tonya strained against his hands to look down, too, as if that could stop the sound floating from the earpiece.
“You’ve reached Sarah Cline...”
Sarah? Whatever else she said, he didn’t hear it. With two words, that voice had just answered more questions than he’d been able to even ask since he’d been released. That wasn’t some shaky old woman on the phone. It was Maria. He would bet his life on it.
At the beep, he bent at the waist, forcing the petite woman to bend in half beneath him. While still holding her mout
h closed with one hand, he reached for the phone with the other. She grabbed for it, too, but his arms were longer. He was stronger and faster, too. He hit the off button, disconnecting the call just as she squealed as loudly as she could. Somehow, her teeth found purchase on the meaty side of his hand near his pinkie.
He yelped as she bit down hard, and he had to press his hand into her mouth to force her jaw to release.
“You bitch!”
He swung his hand back in a hard slap. She did call out this time, but he cut off the sound as his hands gripped her mouth again. She continued to wiggle against him, her hands scratching and pulling, but she was tiring. And perhaps recognizing the futility of her fight.
“Sounds like you weren’t lying about one thing. I guess my wife’s spinster aunt really might be pushing up daisies now. But even in death, she gave my wife quite a gift. Her name.”
Her muffled cry almost made him feel bad for her. Almost. But he, of all people, knew there were consequences for mistakes made in life. These were hers. With her back still trapped against his chest, his hands slid effortlessly from her mouth to her throat. There was something invigorating about the muscles straining against his hands, her pulse pounding against his fingertips. She was fighting him, but it was different this time. More desperate.
Like she was fighting for her life.
“You don’t have to—” she managed to whisper, before it became difficult for her to draw breath.
“That’s the thing, Tonnie. I do have to. If I let you go, you’ll call her and ruin the surprise. That just wouldn’t do.”
She shook her head, trying to deny the truth, but her scratches were becoming less effectual now.
“But don’t worry. I’ll be sure to tell her you sent me.” He grinned as she shook her head again. “That you gave us your blessing to build a wonderful life together.”
Her hands slid bonelessly to her sides, and she collapsed against him. Whether it was his hands on her windpipe or his promise that caused her to give up fighting and accept death, he wasn’t certain. Perhaps both.
“I’m sorry, but you didn’t give me any choice,” he whispered to the corpse in his arms.
As he lowered her limp body to the floor, he had this feeling that he was being watched, though the kitchen curtains were closed. Had the lights become brighter? The floor creaked beneath his feet, and those damn cats meowed outside so loudly that people in the next county must have heard them. A strange energy filled his chest, but it only battled with the acid backing into his throat. When he got a look at her face, flat eyes staring back at him, blaming him, the nausea won. He raced to the bathroom and dumped the contents of his stomach in the toilet.
He wiped the basin for fingerprints with the same towel he’d used to wipe his mouth and brought it back to the kitchen with him. He moved efficiently around the house, wiping any surfaces he’d touched, and then, putting on a pair of gloves from her closet, he dumped dresser drawers on the bed, emptied ketchup bottles on the carpeting, unlocked the front door. No one should have been able to trace the crime to him, but he had to be sure. He’d work too hard to finally have this life he’d planned to let a mishap take it from him.
He avoided looking at her face again, even when he returned to the kitchen one last time and left in the dark through the back door. The cats tried to wiggle around him, but he pushed them aside with his foot. At least outside they would have a chance to feed themselves. He wasn’t a monster.
“Bye, Tonnie.” He closed the door, her address book and her cell phone in his arms.
He still didn’t feel great as he cut through the neighborhood, staying out of sight as he made it a few blocks away to where he’d moved his car. He was exhausted but keyed up as well. His cellmate had described having feelings like that after he’d murdered a gas station attendant during an armed robbery. Taking a life had to have some repercussions, he supposed. But it hadn’t been as difficult as he would have expected. A necessary task completed. And he could do it again if he needed to.
Chapter 12
“Hey, Sarah, there’s a package out at the register for you,” Ted called from the other side of the swinging kitchen door.
A package? Her hand jerked just as she was carefully removing the foil pieces that had protected her piecrust during the first half of baking, and her fingertips brushed the oven rack. She yanked her hand back from the burn.
“Ouch. Darn it.” She closed the oven door and rushed over to the handwashing sink to run cool water over her two burned fingers.
Ted pushed open the door and peeked inside. “What’s going on in here?”
She tilted her hand so that he could see. “You shouldn’t make announcements outside the kitchen without first checking to see who has the oven open.”
He crossed to the sink to get a better look. “I’ll follow that advice if you keep your hands clear of the heat when you’re not wearing an oven mitt.”
“I’ll do my best. Anyway, looks like I’ll live.”
Ted took a deep breath, closing his eyes and smiling. “What’d you make this morning? Besides the cinnamon rolls, obviously. It smells great in here, whatever it is.”
“Apple amaretto pie.”
“Isn’t this the second time you’ve made it this week?”
“Is that a problem? Are we not selling enough slices of that type of pie?”
He rolled his eyes. “You know we are. We sell all of ’em. Always. All I’m saying is you don’t usually repeat recipes so quickly. Is it a favorite of someone special?”
She’d been continuing to let the water run over her fingers, but at his words, she jerked back her sore hand and shut off the tap.
“You have a big imagination,” she said, as she dried her hands on a paper towel.
Ted might have been right, too, but she wouldn’t tell him that. He didn’t need to know she’d convinced herself that the recipe selection had more to do with a good deal on McIntosh apples, in April, no less, than one police officer’s dessert preferences. She especially wouldn’t admit that though Jamie hadn’t visited the diner in eleven days, she still had to remind herself every time she received one of his texts that she didn’t want to see him.
“I guess that might be true.”
Sarah stared at Ted until it dawned on her that he was responding to her comment about his imagination and not reading her mind.
“Now what package were you talking about?”
“You’ll just have to see for yourself.”
She frowned. “If you had to come all the way in here and injure me, the least you could have done was to bring it with you.”
“And ruin all the fun? Not a chance.”
She didn’t have to tell her boss that this was her first package at the diner not delivered through the rear entrance in boxes marked Flour or Sugar. One needed friends, other than her boss, or at least close relatives to have gifts shipped to her at work, and she could claim none of those groups. Well, there was Tonya, but she knew better than to send Sarah a gift at work. Anyway, since Tonya had called without leaving a message almost a week before, Sarah hadn’t been able to reach her. Though she was beginning to worry, she hoped her friend had a new man in her life keeping her too busy to return calls.
Speaking of new men...the flutter in Sarah’s belly suggested that she did have one other “friend” who might have sent a gift, but she squashed that inkling. With as many times as she’d let Jamie’s calls go to voicemail and left his texts unanswered in the past eleven days, he’d probably gotten the message that they couldn’t be friends. Or anything else.
What would she have said if she’d answered, anyway? That she’d kissed him as if she wanted him to take her right on her sofa, but she hadn’t meant anything by it?
“Are you coming or not?” Ted pushed the door open again, narrowly missing one of the waitresses as she swished by, carrying
a tray.
Sarah blew out a breath. “Fine.”
She followed him out of the kitchen, trying not to picture Valentine’s Day candy or flowers on an anniversary. Those were the silly, wonderful gifts other women received all the time. Things she couldn’t have and had never wished for. Until now.
The dining room was empty for a Wednesday morning, something she hoped wouldn’t become a trend. She and Aiden would struggle to get by if her hours were trimmed.
As they rounded the cash register desk, Ted pointed to a gift bag that had been set on the floor behind it. “There it is.”
Clearly, the bag, covered with rainbows and stuffed with tissue paper, had been hand-delivered. It also could have been sent by one of Michael’s cronies who’d finally located her, and it could contain a threat. She pushed that thought away, as well. This one time, she didn’t want to think about the boogeyman under the bed. She wanted to be like any other woman, enjoying the excitement of an unexpected gift.
Just as she reached for it, Evelyn and Belinda, the two waitresses hanging around on the slow breakfast shift, joined them beside the desk.
“Did I hear Sarah has a package?” Evelyn said.
“Yep, just delivered,” Ted announced, grinning.
“Just now?” Sarah couldn’t help asking.
But as she scanned the room, she found only regulars, sipping black coffee and poring over newspapers like they’d probably done most mornings for a decade. The guest she’d most hoped to see wasn’t anywhere around.
“Come on. Open it,” Belinda said. “We need some entertainment this morning, since we’re not making a lot of tips.”
Sarah frowned. “What do you do on other slow mornings? Shoot craps in the parking lot?”
The two women only grinned. With her good hand, Sarah grasped the handles of the gift bag and set it on a table.
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Ted asked.
She stared at the bag a few seconds longer, but finally pulled a huge wad of paper out and peeked inside. A plush gorilla and a bunch of real bananas rested next to each other on the bottom of the bag.