She couldn’t use her cell, knowing it would lose power quickly and go from fully charged to dead in ten minutes. She checked her glove box without much hope, and nope, her new car charger wasn’t there. Of course not.
She wished she’d thought to bring a book.
Ruby arrived at twilight, and as she sat, it became full dark. The streetlights popped on all around her, just as a woman walking her dog passed. Ruby turned away and waited until the woman was out of sight before she slipped off her hood and sunglasses.
She sat quietly in the dark, daydreaming about Sean, as it got later and later. By ten to six she knew something was wrong. Either she had the wrong house or Tara had plans after work. What a waste of time. She’d stay until six, and not one minute later.
At three to six, a blue Prius drove by her, slowed, and pulled into Tara’s driveway.
Ruby pulled up her hood again and watched as a very pretty woman with a long, blonde French braid got out. She wore khaki pants and a leather jacket.
This had to be Tara. Ruby watched the other woman sling a leather knapsack over her shoulder before reaching back into her car. Leather jacket? Leather knapsack? And she called herself a vegan? Frigging hypocrite. Tara grabbed two reusable, cloth grocery bags, and Ruby scowled. Grocery night. It figured.
As Tara started for her front door, Ruby was surprised at the feeling of utter hatred that settled over her. That this bitch had found Sean two weeks before she had was the most unfair thing that had ever happened to her. And that included her false arrest.
Tara stood on her porch fumbling with her bags and trying to shove her key in the door. Why didn’t she just set the groceries down? What was so special about this woman anyway? Nothing that she could see.
Tara finally wrangled her door open and went inside. She came back out a minute later and Ruby had her cell phone ready. When Tara walked under the glow from the streetlight, Ruby took three pictures of her in quick succession. She hoped at least one of them turned out. If not, she supposed she could draw a decent enough picture of the bitch for her records. She wasn’t sure if she could be objective though, and she needed to carefully access this idiot’s strengths and weaknesses in order to figure out the best way to beat her.
Tara grabbed the last three bags from her car. Ruby spied a bunch of bananas, and her stomach rumbled. After this, she was stopping at the Jade Dragon for some takeout shrimp lo mein.
Tara disappeared inside again, and this time, she closed the door behind her.
Ruby glared after her and realized that she was crying. She wiped the tears away with an angry gesture and found an old tissue in the pocket of her hoodie to blow her nose with. She hated the fact that when she was furious, she often cried. She considered tears to be a sign of weakness. …Unless, of course, she was purposefully using them as a weapon.
Ruby started the engine, put on her seat belt, and sat staring at Tara’s house for almost ten minutes, lost in thought. The house was all lit up now against the darkness, and she beat the steering wheel with her fist as she raged. How was she ever going to get rid of that bitch? What could she possibly do to break them up? What—
Tara reappeared, empty-handed. She left her front door open as she made a beeline across her lawn for her mailbox on the curb.
As she got closer, Ruby realized that Tara wasn’t as pretty as she’d first thought. The hair that had escaped her loose braid was frizzy, her lips were thin, and her nose was much too pointy to be cute.
Ruby chuckled, suddenly gleeful. Why, the poor woman was hideous, bestial…freakish! Certainly, Sean could be made to see how much prettier she was than Tara.
Ruby silently released her parking brake as Tara paused at the curb and waited for a car to pass. When the street was clear, she stepped into the road and opened her mailbox. Ruby, breathing as shallowly as possible, shifted into first gear.
As soon as Tara bent down and peered into her dark mailbox, Ruby let up on the clutch and pumped the gas pedal down as hard as she could. Her car shot forward with a squeal of tires.
Tara’s head came up in alarm, and Ruby flipped her headlights on bright, hoping to both blind Tara and illuminate her. The better to see you with, my dear.
Ruby closed the distance between them rapidly, though she would later figure that she couldn’t have been going faster than thirty miles an hour on impact.
Tara’s body didn’t sail through the air or roll spectacularly up on the hood as Ruby might have hoped had she bothered to plan this out. Instead, Tara tried to leap back onto the curb when she realized what was happening, but in her panic, she ran into her mailbox, and was in the process of falling when Ruby struck her. As such, she barely hit the bumper before being pulled underneath the wheels.
There was a loud thunk, and the vehicle gave an enormous jolt. It was all Ruby could do to hang onto the wheel. There were two more jolts as first the front wheels and then the rear ones rolled up and over the body. Her car actually bounced up fiercely and came down with a hard rattle in between, and Ruby, who had never even run over a squirrel before, was surprised at how solid Tara’s body felt. It was like she’d gone over an enormous speed bump much too fast, although Tara’s body had more give than a speed bump would. Ruby wondered, briefly, if there would be much damage to the undercarriage.
When she was finally free of the body, she fishtailed briefly, and visions of going to prison helped her gain control. She shoved the gas pedal to the floor and glanced into her rearview mirror. She could see the faintest gleam of approaching headlights in the distance, and Tara’s body was splayed out in the middle of the road. Her arms and legs and head were in impossible positions. She looked…broken.
Ruby began to shake, and she took the first right turn she came to, then started taking random side streets until she was miles away from Tara’s house and hopelessly lost in Calua.
Her heart was a racehorse. My God! She’d actually killed someone she didn’t even know, just to win a guy! And she hadn’t planned it out first.
She was chilled, so she turned up her heater. Her eyes widened. For fuck’s sake, she was so stupid! She’d murdered a woman in her own twee, custom painted, pink Mini Cooper convertible!
Okay, okay, calm down. Her car was distinctive, but there hadn’t been any bystanders. By the time Tara was discovered, she was long gone. And she could always keep her car in the garage for a few days as a precaution.
But what if Tara wasn’t dead?
They hadn’t been far apart, and there really hadn’t been enough time to build up any real speed at all. Say Tara was injured but not dead. Then Sean would be at her bedside until she recovered, and her accident would bring them closer together. Shit! Why hadn’t she backed up and run over that bitch once again for good measure?
Ruby swallowed hard as she thought of one last scenario. Suppose Tara had been so alert she’d memorized Ruby’s license plate? Or, worse, what if that hadn’t even been Tara? All she’d had to go on was a vague description and an address she’d found on the internet through a reverse search of a phone number she’d purchased. And though she’d used stealth mode and DuckDuckGo, she was certain all her searches were traceable by the police…Ruby pulled over in front of a big Victorian house, opened her door, and vomited on the street.
She wiped her mouth, saw a faint wisp of smoke coming from underneath her hood, and froze. What if her car was too damaged to drive the fifteen miles back to her house? Her house on that cursed Shiloh Hill!
She released her seat belt and made her way on shaky legs to the front of her car. What she saw made her blanch and look around for witnesses. Had she really been driving around like this for the past ten minutes? Her bumper was splashed with blood, so much blood! The bumper was crumpled, badly, in the corner of the passenger side, and that side of her hood was crushed too, and her headlight was out. Her license plate was bent out of shape, and there was more blood and a hunk of bloody, dark blonde hair hanging from it. Ruby’s guts bubbled when she saw this. She couldn�
��t wipe the hair off with a tissue and put it in the car, because then she would be introducing Tara’s blood into her car, and she was sure the police had the technology to find it.
She also couldn’t leave it like that and drive home. It would be awfully hard to explain it to an officer if she was stopped for the broken headlight. Especially if they’d already found Tara’s body, or worse yet, found Tara alive and talking and telling them to look for a pink Mini Cooper with front end damage.
And she couldn’t leave it on the street, because if the people who owned the house saw a hunk of bloody blonde hair lying there, they’d call the police.
And what if someone on this street had a doorbell camera? She turned in a circle, looking wildly around at the dark houses.
She was so fucked.
She drove away quickly, vowing to toss the hair down the first storm drain she came to. She didn’t see any more smoke coming from under the hood, and she hoped maybe she’d imagined it in her terror. She couldn’t break down here. She needed to get home and hide her car in her garage, or she needed to get the hell out of the country for good, because she couldn’t spend the rest of her life in prison.
She shook her head again in disbelief. How could she have done this without planning it out first? That was so…stupid. And out of character.
Ruby drove with her eyes shifting frantically back and forth, until she finally spotted a storm drain. She tore off a piece of newspaper from one of the old ones on the floor of her car, and quickly cleaned off her license plate, taking care not to get any gore on her hands or her clothes and especially her shoes. When she was finished, she folded the hair inside the paper, and dropped the whole mess down the drain.
She needed to wash the blood off her car.
But…not in her own yard. And there were no car washes open at night and she couldn’t exactly wait in line with her bloody car at one—she smirked at the thought of the horrified onlookers…
That would make a great cartoon.
No. Focus, Ruby. Okay. she couldn’t afford to be caught on camera anywhere, so where could she go to access a hose?
Hilary—no. Don’t involve her. She had the biggest mouth in the world. Um…there was that empty house on her street. They’d had an open house last weekend—maybe they still had the water turned on? They certainly still had electricity. It was all she could come up with. It would have to work.
Ruby obeyed all the laws on the way home, fervently praying she wouldn’t be stopped for the missing headlight, and God was obviously watching over her because she made it to Shiloh Hill safely. She stopped her car near the bottom of her neighbor’s long driveway, pulled her hoodie up, put her sunglasses on, and hurried on foot the rest of the way up to the house. The “For Sale” sign was still up, and the house was dark. There were no cars parked out front.
She made sure there was no doorbell camera, then spent five precious minutes searching the roof and the trees and the house carefully. She found no cameras, but they did have a hose.
She held her breath as she turned on the spigot. When the hose immediately became turgid in her hand, she was so relieved she teared up.
She raced back to her car and parked it close to the house, leaving the car running and her headlights on.
She spent a good twenty minutes hosing down her car, making sure to wash off all the blood she could see. She sprayed the tires and the undercarriage, moved her car down the driveway, and washed the bloody water off the driveway and into the grass. She finished by going over the entire area again, to make sure that anything gross was well hidden in the bushes beside the fence.
Damp and chilled, she turned the water off and put the hose away before carefully surveying the yard. It looked fine to her, but she’d have to come back in the morning light and make sure she hadn’t left any gore for the realtors. It just needed to look good. Crime scene techs were unlikely to ever check this yard for scraps of Tara’s DNA.
She was backing out when she realized she’d forgotten to wipe her prints off the hose and spigot. She grabbed some napkins out of the glove box, ran back up to the house and wiped everything clean.
She drove home but didn’t truly relax until her garage door closed behind her. She’d made it.
Now, what the hell was she going to do?
CHAPTER 17
Ruby frantically searched for something to cover the three windows in the garage door. The shelves along the right-hand wall were lined with boxes full of possible things she could use as temporary curtains, but her mind was racing so hard that she couldn’t concentrate.
Finally, she thought to use duct tape and garbage bags. She ran into her kitchen from the garage, threw her purse on the counter, and yanked her junk drawer open so hard it came out in her hand, spilling its contents across the floor.
She flung the empty drawer away, bent down, and searched in vain for the tape. Where was it? Where was it? She didn’t have time for this—there! It had rolled over by the refrigerator and she snagged it, grabbed the entire box of garbage bags from the cabinet under the sink, and raced back into the garage.
It took her almost ten minutes to get the windows covered, and when she stood back to look at it, she grimaced. Boy did that look suspicious. But her shoulders dropped and her breathing slowed. She’d made it home, she hadn’t been stopped by the police, and her car was hidden from view. She was safe.
For now.
She bit her thumbnail wondering if they’d found Tara yet. They had to have. Tara—please God let that have been Tara—lived on a busy street, and a hit-and-run would be big news in Calua. Especially if Tara died. Ruby had to know if the police had any leads and if she should expect to get arrested tonight. If she made it through the next few days, she was probably safe.
She turned on the TV, shocked to discover that it wasn’t even 7:15 yet. Was she in some sort of time warp? She would have guessed it to be after midnight at least.
The news was on commercial, and she paced until it came back on. The two reporters began talking about the meth crisis, and Ruby was about to switch it off in disgust when the pretty female reporter named Janine Wu said, “Hold on. We’ve got some breaking news.”
Ruby was riveted to the screen. They cut to a male reporter who was on scene. “A young woman was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Calua tonight,” he said. “Her body was discovered at just after six this evening lying in the road in front of her house on Harrison Avenue. The victim was pronounced dead on arrival at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, where, in a horrible coincidence, she was on staff. Her identity is being withheld until her next of kin is notified.”
Footage showed Tara’s body being rolled quickly into the ambulance. The paramedics were bagging her mouth and performing CPR as they climbed inside with the stretcher. There was a ring of people behind the ambulance, looking on with shocked expressions on their faces.
They cut back to the reporter who said, “We’ll have more on this story—only the third homicide in Calua this year, on the eleven o’clock news. Stay tuned. And if you have any information on the identity of the driver, please contact the Calua City Police Department’s Crimestoppers line—555-TIPS.”
Ruby turned off the television and collapsed on the couch. She put her head in her hands. Homicide. It was official. She had killed Tara.
…And she could not get caught.
At least no one would believe she was capable of this; she was a cartoonist for heaven’s sake. She sold funny pictures for money! She was kind to strangers and children, she loved baby animals, she was an optimist. …No way she could’ve murdered a stranger in cold blood.
And yet…she’d do it again.
Except, if she was convicted, she’d be off to San Quentin and the needle. …Wait. Did California still have the death penalty? She felt nauseous and her fingernails were blue. She cranked the heater up to eighty, threw her damp clothes in the hamper, and got out her oldest, thickest Gibson State sweatshirt. It hung halfway down her thighs, and she put it
on over a long-sleeved T-shirt and leggings, glorying in the warmth while knowing she’d soon be sweltering.
She ventured into the garage and stood hesitantly just inside the door for a moment staring at her car. A woman had died underneath that. She needed to get it out of her garage and out of her life.
She forced herself to look underneath. She didn’t know what it was supposed to look like, but it looked fine to her. There were no holes or dents, and she’d hosed off all the blood and gore. She frowned. At least she hoped she’d gotten it all. The undercarriage was dark, and her cellphone flashlight wasn’t much help.
She crouched, peering closely at her tires. They seemed clean. Good. It looked like she’d merely been involved in a minor fender-bender. Why, her insurance might even pay for the repairs.
She put her hands on her hips. How was it possible—a quick rinse and her car was fine. She’d have thought running over a person would cause a lot more damage. She shrugged. Live and learn.
So…all she had to do was dump her car and report it stolen, and she’d either get a new one from the insurance company, or, if they found it, the insurance company would fix it for her.
She smiled for a moment before it hit her.
…There was way too much evidence in this car. Even if she scrubbed it thoroughly, the police had all sorts of tests that could prove it was her car that had killed Tara. Especially if they found paint fragments at the scene. Her Mini had been red when she’d purchased it, and she’d had it custom repainted light pink. They could hang her on those little half red, half pink paint fragments alone! No, she had to dump this thing where it would never be found.
But how? She frowned as her mind flitted through the different scenarios. She could abandon it and set it on fire, but there would still be enough left to trace it back to her. The police would question her about why someone would want to burn her new car, and maybe they’d start thinking about Tara.
Drawn To You: A Psychological thriller Page 15