The Elizabeth McClaine Thriller Boxed Set

by Catherine Lea

  “And this is her?” Elizabeth asked. Something in the pit of her stomach fell so hard she felt the jolt. It was little wonder these people despised her. They saw this child every day—working with her, loving her, while her mother was off hiding in a bottle or at some “important” event she couldn’t possibly tear herself away from. Mortification and self-hatred bolted through her: that same self-loathing that had followed her every living day like an accusing ghost.

  Laura was sliding painting after painting past her. “This one is her. But most of her paintings are of you. Let me show you another one,” she said, but Elizabeth wasn’t listening. Looking over these strokes and scrawls that seem to have found lives in the confines of these pages, Elizabeth felt something from a past life reach out with pale and transparent fingers, stretching across the miles. Somewhere, deep in the Darklands, something had awakened. Suddenly, she caught the barest glimpse of something she had thought she would never see—her child.

  “I had no …” She bit her lip, almost too afraid to say anything more in case it broke that fragile moment as she shuffled through the pages once more.

  “They’re very nice,” she whispered in a voice only she could hear. Threads of images began to knit together and find form. And one by one, those images meshed and merged into something that seemed to have been eluding her all these years—this was really her child. From that very first day, she had viewed Holly as some kind of imposter, a child sent to deny her the child she should have had. These pictures had broken a spell. It was as if a light had flickered on to reveal the world as it really was. And her daughter had appeared right in front of her.

  “How did you know these figures are of me?” Elizabeth asked. “They could be …” She almost said Sienna and stopped herself. “Well, they could be anyone.”

  “She told me they were you,” said the teacher.

  Elizabeth frowned.

  “The sign language we’ve been teaching her. You … knew she signed …”

  “Of course. Of course I did,” Elizabeth lied and turned her attention back to the pictures. But now she could see Diana du Plessis moving in and she felt her defenses go up like a ten-foot fence around a tiny, vulnerable settlement on some far-flung prairie, because this was the fatal blow, and she wasn’t prepared for it. One of those cracks had been wrenched apart to reveal a vulnerable, newly beating heart beneath.

  “You’ve probably seen her using this sign,” Laura said as she placed the thumb of her open hand to her chin. “It’s the sign for ‘Mommy.’”

  “I see,” she said. Of course she recognized the gesture. How many times had she seen Holly do that and ignored her? In fact, somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered telling her to stop doing it because it was aggravating her. She had told Sienna to take the child to the park or her room or wherever that was out of Elizabeth’s sight because just being in her presence intensified her feelings of discomfort and failure.

  Six long years of sadness were already weighing heavily on her when one of the young teachers crossed her fists over her chest, and added, “Oh, and this is the sign for ‘Love.’ Then again, you’ve probably seen that a million times—though I doubt you’d have known it.”

  Elizabeth cut an angry look to her, but Laura stepped between them, saying, “Thank you, Belinda, that’ll be all.”

  Elizabeth straightened, head high. “For your information, young lady, I did know that.” She didn’t dare look at Diana du Plessis. Instead she turned her attention back to the paintings and lifted a couple so she wouldn’t have to face her.

  Belinda jutted her chin. “Is this the first time you’ve ever been here?”

  Elizabeth felt her bravado falter. “Of course not. I’m sorry, I missed your name. Miss …?”

  “Fischer. Belinda Fischer. I’ve been Holly’s teacher aide for the past six months. I’m amazed I never met you before.”

  Laura touched her on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go and see to the other children, Belinda?” If her tone was meant to admonish, it flew straight over the young teacher’s head because Belinda stood her ground.

  “Do you have any idea why your daughter comes here, Mrs. McClaine? What she does …?”

  Laura cut her off. “I said that’s enough, Belinda. Why don’t you go and help Ellie?”

  Belinda glared from Laura to Elizabeth. “I don’t care who you are or how much money you have, you’re a lousy mother.” And she walked away.

  “Well, I really …” Elizabeth felt as if her temples had been crushed. Her hands trembled and her breath caught in her throat.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. McClaine,” said Laura. “Please understand, this has been very hard for us, too.”

  “Yes. I’m sure.” Elizabeth turned, fumbling in her purse as if she was searching for something.

  Laura gestured to a door leading to the play area outside. “Why don’t we move on to the activities out here? I think we could all do with some fresh air.”

  Now, all Elizabeth wanted to do was get out and go home to hide because the tightness in her chest was suffocating her. Feeling genuinely nauseous now, she touched her fingers to her forehead and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Miles, I feel rather unwell. May I have a glass of water?”

  “Oh, of course. Sit down,” she said, searching around them for someone to bring a glass. Elizabeth sank into a nearby chair and massaged her temples.

  Meanwhile, Diana had moved in again, bending at the knee and placing a hand on her arm. “Are you all right, Elizabeth?”

  “I’m fine. I didn’t sleep well last night,” she replied.

  “Of course. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.” When a young woman appeared with the water, Diana took the glass and handed it to Elizabeth, who put it to her lips and sipped. For some while, she sat staring into the bottom of the glass, mentally fending off the sensation of internal collapse and searching for an excuse to leave. The ringing of her cell phone broke the tension. She dredged it out of her purse to find Richard’s name flashing on the display. She immediately got to her feet, excused herself, and stepped away while she answered.

  “Elizabeth,” he said in an urgent tone, “you need to get back right away. The police called. They’ve had an anonymous tip-off. They think they know where Holly is.”

  If Richard had been there, she would have kissed him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  DAY TWO: 11:07 AM—KELSEY

  Jesse Milano had made a tidy sum in the seven years he ran the chop shop. Which was just as well, because the day he turned forty-two, he was busted and his whole distribution network came tumbling down, and it took almost every penny he had accumulated to hire his fancy-ass lawyer to keep him out of prison. The standing joke after that was that, of the two—Jesse and his lawyer—it was hard to tell which of the two was the greater criminal. Most agreed it was the lawyer, but at the end of the day, Jesse was still a free man. He may have been well and truly screwed over, but he never let a bad word pass his lips about it.

  The auto shop he had built up since his all-too-expensive brush with the justice system was three doors down from an Asian market in Old Chinatown where the rents were cheap and business was steady. Kelsey did a slow drive-by, checking out the wide garage door that was rolled right up to reveal a single bay service area and workshop inside. When she doubled back and parked across the street, she spotted him. Dressed in his customary dark blue coveralls, he was turning something that might have been an alternator in his hand as he moved around a white Honda Civic that was up on the hoist. After checking the rearview mirror and giving the street a thorough scan, she figured she was good for at least ten minutes so she pulled the car into the workshop forecourt and cut the engine.

  Jesse immediately looked up and pushed his wire-rimmed eyeglasses up onto his forehead, eyeing the jackass who’d just parked right in front of the Do Not Park sign. He reached up, plucked the glasses off his head and strode forward, gearing up to give the ignorant son-of-a-bitch a piece of his mind.
But when Kelsey emerged from the car, his you-gotta-be-shitting-me expression softened and gave way to a half-grin.

  “Kelse,” he said and nodded in greeting. “Long time, no see.”

  “Yeah, long time.” Instead of going to him, she stood with the car door open and her foot on the sill so she could keep an eye on the street behind her. It was a ploy to keep the bruising on her face out of his line of sight because she knew exactly what he’d say. With her head angled as if something in the street had caught her attention she pushed the door closed, then she stepped into the workshop, still with the bruised side of her face turned away.

  It felt like yesterday. All the tools and used parts and old tires and piles of shit, all laid out with that old familiar smell of hot grease and sump oil and sweat and bad coffee. He’d even brought along all the grease-laden photographs in boxy black frames that had lined the walls in the last place, each showing Jesse posing alongside a series of the fifteen vintage cars he had lovingly restored before the lawyer took them and a stack of cash into the bargain. She smiled as she moved from one frame to the next, studying each of the photographs until she got to one of herself with Jesse and Matt, all huddled together and grinning into the camera. She broke away from it and turned to take in the rest of the place. The shop might have been smaller than his last outfit, but it was like coming home.

  “Hey, this is nice,” she said, looking all around and nodding in approval. When she turned back to him, his gaze zeroed straight in on her swollen eye, then went to her broken nose and down to the blood-encrusted stains on the front of her clothes, and his demeanor did a shift. She dropped a self-conscious gaze to the sticky, half-dried blood on her jeans and her shirt, and thought, Here we go. Same story, different shop.

  “So, what brings you here?” Jesse asked, his tone a little chillier.

  “I need a favor.” She smiled and raised her hands to show him the cuffs—as if he hadn’t already noticed them, for chrissakes.

  “I see.” Jesse stuck his glasses back on the top of his head while his attention slid across to the car she had pulled up in. “Is this what you’re driving these days? Things must be looking up.”

  She glanced back at the Taurus, pile of junk that it was. “Yeah. I traded it with Maria Puentez.”

  “A trade, huh? What’d she get?”

  “A ’67 Chevy Impala with a Saint Christopher hanging from the rearview mirror.”

  He nodded without enthusiasm. “And does she know whose car that is?”

  “Give her time,” Kelsey said, and grinned wide.

  “Did she deserve that?”

  Now she felt like shit. “Probably not,” she admitted, and wished she’d gone somewhere else. Like there was a “somewhere else.”

  Jesse switched his attention back to the alternator he’d been working on, turning it in his hands for a moment. Having apparently come to some kind of decision, he reached across and deposited the alternator on the worktop, then leaned back with his butt perched on the corner of the bench, folding his arms while he regarded her.

  “Yeah, so,” she said and shifted uneasily, “I, ah … I can’t stay long. Y’know, stuff goin’ on—well,” she added and lifted the cuffs, like this was some hilarious situation she’d found herself in and surely he could see the fix she was in. When he still said nothing, just sat there eyeballing her, she said, “And besides, I ah … I got things I gotta do. Y’know,” and she nodded and bit her lip, and shifted her weight.

  In lieu of a reply Jesse reached across and hit a button that was set on the wall next to the office doorway. Behind her the garage door clattered down, drawing a line of shadow across the workshop like the rapid descent of daylight in a time-lapse sunset. When it finally touched the floor and stopped, they were plunged into a wash of dull gray and shadows. Now, the only sources of light were a cracked and filthy window to the left and a strip light hanging over the pit. “So … is there anything you can do for me?” she asked cautiously. “Y’know, I was thinking bolt cutters, or something like that might do it.”

  Jesse narrowed his eyes on her, then eased himself off the bench. “I got better than bolt cutters,” he said and sauntered across to a cabinet that was strewn with tools and nuts and bolts at the rear of the shop. He stood with his hands on his hips, a deep-rutted frown creasing his face as he searched the shelves above. “I just gotta remember where I put it.”

  She hung back, feeling a little vulnerable now, what with his attitude change and the cuffs—not to mention feeling crappy about how she had pulled a fast one on Maria, even though the bitch deserved it for what she’d done. She shot a furtive glance back at the door, wondering how the hell she’d get back to the car in a hurry if she needed to, when Jesse came back with bunched-up coveralls tucked under his arm and what looked like a set of keys. “Found it,” he said and held up a ring of maybe fifty tiny keys hooked over his finger.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, this,” he said, handing her the coveralls, “is the only change of clothes I can offer you. They might have a spot of grease here and there but they’ll be cleaner than yours. And these,” he added, lifting the keys, “could be what you’re looking for. I got them off a guy I supplied with a ’62 Caddy back in the day. He said I’d find a use for ’em one day,” he said, pulling his eyeglasses down and giving her a pointed look over the top of them. “And here was me thinkin’ he lied.”

  “Well, just as well I came along, huh?” she said and grinned.

  He squinted down at the keys in his hand, selected one and tried it in the cuff. It didn’t fit so he tried the next, then the next, while she watched. She was thinking the bolt cutters would have been faster. “So, I’m guessing he didn’t tell you which keys are which, huh?”

  “Patience, Kelse. Freedom has its price,” he said and tried another. There was an awkward silence while he kept selecting and trying keys. Finally, he looked up and said, “So, what’s with the eye?” Like it was something and nothing. Like he didn’t care.

  When she looked up this time, their eyes met. “Nothin’.”

  “Looks like a pretty painful nothin’ if you ask me.” He selected another key and tried it.

  “It’s just … y’know …”

  “Yeah, I do know. I’m guessing it’s just the same old shit, Kelse. The same old shit, and how many times do you have to wind up like this, huh?”

  “I’m not. It’s over.”

  This time when he peered at her over the top of his glasses, his expression softened. “That’s good to hear. You’re not one of the boys, Kelse. God knows you tried hard enough. Your mom could have told you—”

  “Leave her out of it,” she said sharply. “She’s dead and gone and I’m glad.”

  He leveled a stare at her until she broke eye contact, dropping her focus to the cuffs. “I don’t believe that,” he said softly. “She knew he was bad news. She would have told you he never did you any favors.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “And while I’m on a roll here, I’m going to tell you something else,” he said and picked out yet another key.

  She pulled in a long breath and thought, Here it comes.

  “You’ve got twice the brains Matt ever had and he never forgave you for it. You hear me? I don’t know how many times he took credit that wasn’t his. And when shit went down, you were the one under the bus.” Then he added, “And that’s all I’m saying on the subject,” and went back to the keys. “She knew that, too,” he added softly.

  She bit her lip and shook her head. What did he know? How many times had she heard this before? God, it was the old broken record.

  “That’s not true. You just don’t know how smart he is. No one does. And you don’t know what he’s been through. He had it tough when he was a kid.”

  “Oh, boo hoo.”

  “Yeah, well, he did.”

  He must have spotted the look on her face because he shrugged, tried another key and said, “You think he’s Mr. Terrific, you go right a
head. I’m not gonna argue. But how many times are you going to wake up looking like you went three rounds with Tyson, huh?”

  “I just told you—”

  “But no, you never listen. You go your own way and next thing, it’s happened all over again,” he continued on, like she hadn’t spoken. “He cut you out from the crowd, lost you all your friends, chipped away at your confidence. When I first met you, you were …” He paused for a moment, then shook his head in frustration because hadn’t he just said he wasn’t going through all that again? And now look. “Anyhow, I’m glad to hear you’re rid of him. She would have been, too.” He stuck another key into the cuff, turned it. Nothing. Selected another. “Maybe now you can get out, make a new start. Jesus, Kelse, you could do anything you want—anything …”

  “How many keys to go?” she asked.

  He paused. “About a thousand,” he said and tried the one in his hand. Another of those silences descended; him still trying keys, her pretending there was a wall between them. Then he said, “I had the cops in here earlier.”

  She looked up so sharply her mouth dropped open.

  He caught the expression. “What, you think they’re too stupid to look me up?” He angled his head and narrowed his eyes at her. “They said you were wanted for a double homicide over by Lorain.”

  “It wasn’t me,” she said. “That was Lionel. He killed Delmar and his wife. Jesus,” she said. Jesus, was right. Just the memory of that poor woman made her sick to her stomach.

  “Well, that’s not what the police said.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re wrong. It wasn’t me.”

  He let it hang for a while, then he said, “They also said you killed a girl—Richard McClaine’s nanny.”

  She huffed and rolled her eyes. “That wasn’t me, either. Turns out she knew Lionel. He owed her money. He was going to pay her ten grand to stay out of the way when the kidnapping happened.”

  “You got proof?”

  “Well, she’s dead and Lionel doesn’t have to pay her. Coincidence? I don’t think so.” Their eyes met. “And I didn’t kill her.”