I sped up too but changed my mind. Instead of following him I parked a few houses down. Dying to see what interested him enough to stop. Did he live here now? With Chica? If he did, why didn’t he get out? A red Audi sat in front of one of the four garages.
What?
Shrinky drove the same car.
No.
Shrinky? Here? Not nearly as elegant or upscale as Nottingham Lane but still you’d pay a pretty penny to buy this place. Maybe she really did inherit from her stingy mother. Did my father want to talk to her? Was his distress on the phone symptoms of a breakdown? Even Dad had to know Shrinky wasn’t a real therapist. What would he want with her?
What about Judge Seward? He was the one sitting next to her at that freak club. What was happening?
Shit on a shingle.
Was Dad making time with this nutcase too? Just how unpacked was his pecker? My mother sure sounded worried about some kind of Shrinky situation. I crept to the first window. Slow as drying paint, I straightened enough to peek in. The sight of the back of Shrinky’s head drove me back down. I waited, expected the worst, then got a hold of myself. Unless she had eyes in the back of her ratty head she couldn’t see me. Emboldened, I looked again.
Yep, there she sat, cell phone to her ear behind a desk. The chair she sat in swiveled, a little to the left, a little to the right but never enough for me to see anything else or for her to spot me. I didn’t want to press my luck so I crabwalked back to where I’d come from. I zipped past Shrinky’s Audi. Wait. The trunk looked popped. Dare I look? I’d come this far. Might as well go for broke.
I opened the trunk enough to see several boxes piled in there, tops open. I pushed the trunk up a little farther to see inside a box. A camera? I threw caution to the wind and looked through several more. All cameras. Security cameras. The ones that disappeared from my house? Maybe. They all looked the same. I grabbed a couple of boxes then dumped them in the Rover. When no one chased me down, I made one more trip, closed the trunk as much as it’d been when I found it, open a crack.
Better get the fuck out of Dodge.
****
I hadn’t kept track of how I got to Shrinky’s house. My GPS took me back by the hidden trail. Walter White sat at the side of the road like he’d been waiting for me to come pick him up. I pulled over.
“Walter White, where have you been?” I flung the door open as wide as it’d go, weak with relief. Walter immediately sank to the dirt on his belly, head on the ground. He only did that after he’d eaten the entire pizza off the counter or chewed the remote in half.
“What’s in your mouth, Walter? What’d you do?” I forced his heavy head up. Pulled him by the snout into the light from my car. Walter still wore his collar. I could see some remnants of the wooden stall slat dragged by the end of his leash. Walter spit out whatever he’d carried with him in his mouth, gave me his best pouty face, licked my hand.
“Is that blood?”
The hair around Walter’s mouth looked like he’d tried to eat a red Sharpie. He licked my hand again for good measure. I picked up what he’d dropped. A piece of dirty fabric frayed and ripped. A windowpane check summerweight wool.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Isabel
I’d taken it up the ass big time.
How did I not see this coming? Well, I didn’t think I’d inherit squat if Mom bit the dust. She’d made a point of letting me know at every opportunity. But I knew Sherman never leveled with me. God only knows what shit he stirred on any given day. If only I’d known about this windfall. I would’ve never gone to all the trouble with Sherman, or blackmailed Jonathan.
Of course I would’ve.
To my sad surprise, I wanted my mother. Her death had hit me harder than I thought it would, but I couldn’t say I missed her. I missed what she could’ve been. What we could’ve been.
It came up on me like the rolling tide. Safe to say our wires always crossed, our relationship a morass of complicated feelings. Hard pressed to say who disappointed who the most. No, that’s a lie. All things considered I disappointed her more. Yet, she rewarded me in the end in a way she couldn’t during her lifetime. Money couldn’t love you. But somehow my mom’s post-mortem magnanimous gesture felt like love. No matter what I was her child and she’d take care of me in the best way she knew how. Fucked up? Sure. But what relationship didn’t ride the razor’s edge of fucked up?
I realized my mother thought leaving me her winnings would serve as my Hail Mary. When in fact, it would kill me. Almost had to laugh at that. I’d bet it all and lost. A true gambler, I lived like one and would die like one. I rested my hands on my belly, felt my baby shift underneath. I had to push thoughts of my nesting child out of my brain, or I’d crack. I could call the police, a lawyer, get up and leave. But if I got out of this mess I’d find another and another. The thought exhausted me.
Only way to get rid of the bad in me was to kill it.
I realized knowing when you’ll die is a gift not a curse. Wherever my mother was she’d welcome me there. She’d like to know I didn’t feel any fear at the end. Only peace.
My ringing phone snapped me to reality.
“Jonathan, Jesus Christ. Can’t live without me?”
“You’ll get yours you scheming, leeching—”
“I’m in for a treat then.” Might as well talk to him, to take my mind off what I knew was coming.
“I told on you.” Jonathan laughed like a madman.
“Are you drunk?”
“What if I am?”
“Listen, you weak, pathetic worm of a—”
“I told my wife everything.”
I paused to consider whether or not I gave one speck of shit. I didn’t.
“Great, good luck to you.”
“I told that detective too. That Miley guy. A few minutes ago.”
“Smiley, you asshole.”
“Whatever. Rhonda told him everything about you. At first I denied it like a cringing coward.” Jonathan’s words tripped over one another, but I understood him.
“Did you?” Why did I entertain this fool? “I’ll send you a thank you card later.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I confessed. Told my wife the whole sad story.”
“I’ll send her some flowers and an apology note. Okay?”
“You don’t get it do you, bitch?”
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me. But do get on with it.”
“After I admitted everything to her, I called Miley, oh wait, Smiley, of all the asinine names and backed up Rhonda’s story. Told him every nasty detail about you. Your bombs, your blackmail scheme. I believe it’s called corroboration.” He snort laughed.
“Old news. No one got hurt. So I started a little fire, BFD.” I could’ve ended the call but talking to anyone, even jackoff Jonathan, made me feel alive.
“Brendan Finney got hurt. He got dead.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You’re a bomber. Not a very good one but a bomber nonetheless.”
“I’ve got to—”
“Quite a coincidence that Brendan Finney’s car had a bomb in it. Is it another coincidence he also bugged a bomber’s office?” He snickered. “I doubt it.”
The mechanical sound of one of the garage doors going up gave me pause. Sherman had arrived. Much as I wanted to delay the inevitable I knew I couldn’t. My bell was about to get rung.
“Sorry, Jonathan. This bomber’s about to detonate.” I pressed my phone off.
Chapter Eighty-Five
Preston
Is there anything you can’t find on YouTube?
After finding model and serial numbers on the cameras and DVRs, which made searching for how-to videos possible, I set to work in my favorite spot, sitting behind Aunt James’s desk. Goddammit. A techno-zero, especially for someone my age, I couldn’t figure heads or tails out of the so-easy-anyone-can-do-it YouTube tutorials. Not getting anywhere exhausted my patience. I dashed to the kitchen where I’d dropped the equipmen
t boxes.
I lucked out. The boxes still contained directions—in four languages. Even the ones in English looked like Latin to me. Shit. Fuck. Walter White click-clacked behind me, following me from room to room. In such a hurry to investigate my find I’d freed Walter from his leash but left the broken slat attached. The whole contraption lay on the floor. Water in his dish cleaned some of the blood off his jowls when he took a sloppy drink but not all. He looked a mess.
Now what? Frustrated, I kicked the nearest box over, spilling its innards, more worthless instructions. Walter yelped in support. With my foot I pushed the papers out of the way. What was that? I dropped to the floor to retrieve whatever black, plastic thing had been hiding in the box.
A flash drive.
If the footage on the cameras had been copied to this flash drive, I’d devote my entire life to the church. Once a month at the least. I raced back to my laptop, opened the flash drive.
There batty Isabel stood on my porch ringing the bell, or knocking on the front doors, hard to tell from this angle. She looked less Blanche DuBois than usual. The date at the top of the screen told me the footage was more than a year old. About the time she took over my case from my original therapist. A hand reached out to pull her in. I hit zoom.
Holy Christ on the Cross.
I rewound. Hit pause. Zoomed more. Clear as a summer day, I could see the red scar twisted across the back of Dad’s hand. I kept going. For the next half hour, I witnessed Isabel waiting at the door, she and Dad in various intimate embraces, kissing hello or goodbye, over a period of several months up to the week I returned home and relieved them of their love nest.
I hit pause again to absorb the impact.
The man we couldn’t make out in the fuzzy stills from the security footage taken in front of the freak club had to have been my father. Not Judge Seward like I’d assumed. Then I remembered the envelope Smiley’d left at the guard gate. I rushed back to the kitchen to grab my purse where I’d dropped it. The manila envelope stuck out the top. I dumped the contents. The photos Smiley’s guy had performed his mumbo jumbo on.
Smiley was right, pics weren’t much clearer. I brought them nearer to my face for a closer look. The arm coming out of the car reaching toward Shrinky was lit fairly well. Well enough to recognize the cufflinks. Ones I’d seen all my life—on the blingy side, larger than most, with a good-sized ruby in the center. They’d been a gift from my mother. Everything moved at fast-forward now, all coming together. The car in the background had to be the Bentley. So far out of the realm of possibilities at the time, I never considered the car could be his. Nothing about my father should shock me anymore. Back I went to the library, Walter close to my heels, grumbling.
Dad must’ve taken out the cameras from my house in the middle of the night right after I’d come home. No gate guard back then. He could’ve easily slipped in and out. They obviously put new locks in after I’d been dragged out, and I’m sure he still had keys.
Not Marcella, or at least not just Marcella, two-timed with my father. Shrinky was Dad’s side talent and they used my house. I remembered Brendan telling me he’d seen a dark car turn into my driveway when he fled after tripping the alarm.
Probably Shrinky’s red Audi.
It all made hideous sense. It’s what my mother found out. Shrinky and Dad were the truth and the everything else. Right under my nose the whole time. Isabel’s obsession with me getting out of Haven House, her constant reminders that my mother deserved my hatred, her thinly veiled references to me taking another run at killing her. Isabel had wanted me to get rid of my mother once and for all so my father would marry her.
Piqued, I rewound, paused, rewound, paused.
What’s this now?
Saw my mother going in and out of my house the months before that night, nothing I didn’t already know. Then I saw another flash of my father at my front door. What the—I hit stop. I don’t remember seeing Dad at all during those last weeks but that didn’t mean anything, considering my state. Something climbed up the back of my brain, a memory, a feeling. A bad prickling feeling. I hit start to keep watching my father.
He picked up a box off my doormat before putting his hand in his pocket. Probably to get the keys that everyone always seemed to have to my place. I stared, bug-eyed while he fiddled with the handle. He couldn’t open it, so he rang the bell. I’d changed the locks by that time, I guess. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw myself at the front door, obviously pregnant. My father pushed by me into the house still carrying the box.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Isabel
“So you found it,” Sherman said.
“Jesus, what happened to you?” I said. “Your leg—shit, you’re bleeding all over the floor.”
He limped in carrying towels. Swayed, then half fell, half sat, on the floor. I’d never seen him less than immaculate outside the bedroom. Now his hair smashed every which way, leaves and dirt stuck in, jacket gone, tie stained, barely on, shirt and trousers wrinkled, torn, covered in dirt. He pulled up what was left of his pant leg. Half his calf was torn off. I could see blood, loose flaps of skin, muscle, bone. He pressed a monogrammed towel to the wound, made a sound like an angry snake, leaned his head against the wall.
“You lost the wrestling match,” I said casual and calm.
“This. You. It’s your doing,” Sherman’s wound had already taken a toll on him. He struggled to talk and breathe at the same time.
“Mine? I don’t even know what this is, Sherman.”
“Can you please, for the love of fucking Christ, drop Sherman?” He said with more strength than I thought he possessed. “Married you, didn’t I? No secrets. No, not anymore.” He jutted his chin toward the papers in my hands. “Jesus Christ this thing hurts.”
“Looks like it does. Todd,” I said. His name felt foreign on my tongue. I don’t think I’d ever said it out loud even after he started calling me Isabel.
“Why go to the witch’s lair, dammit. To Beverley, of all the moronic ideas? Poke around where you don’t belong.”
“Who cares now? You should go to the hospital.”
“Thought about that already, bimbo. Started to go, but shit.” He hissed through gritted teeth. “I stopped here first. Needed towels.” He grabbed his leg, scowled, made more reptilian-like sounds. “I changed my mind, headed to, to the hospital. Too far. I didn’t want to explain to some nosy doctor anyway. So I came back.”
“I told you living all the way out here was—”
“Where are they?” He pounded the floor with his open hand.
No point pretending I didn’t know he meant the cameras.
“In my trunk. Speaking of the witch’s lair. What a stupid place to hide them by the way. The stables at Beverley? Why didn’t you destroy them?”
“Marv. Goddamn his stupid ass. He was supposed to destroy the lot of them. But he didn’t. Couldn’t follow the simplest directions. Found his notepad in his personal shit after he—bastard— blew his head off.” He squirmed around like he could out maneuver the pain. “Dumb mick wrote everything down. I might not be the DA anymore but,” he said, his face contorted, red. “You can bet I’m still a big, swinging dick who takes what he wants, no matter where or what.”
“I’m sure.”
Asshole must’ve forgotten I’d seen his dick on numerous occasions.
“Went to, to, get rid of those stupid, fucking cameras. Some assholes’s—somebody’s giant ass dog—tied to a post. Damn thing saw me. Broke free. Beast almost, damn near, killed me. ’Cause you, you couldn’t leave any fucking thing alone. She saw you. Harrison saw you.”
“When? Today?”
He slapped the floor again. “Does it fucking, fuck all, matter?”
Guess I’d been wrong about the light through the window situation.
“So what?” I said.
He beat the back of his head against the wall, squeezed his eyes shut, kicked the floor with his uninjured leg. “Do women ever stick to the
ir side of the goddamn street? Mind their own fucking business? Ball-busting bitch got the money back I’d hoarded,” he whined.
If the situation hadn’t been a matter of my life or death, I’d have laughed. Todd looked ridiculous, like someone out of a campy horror film, and sounded like the squealing, gutless wonder he’d always been.
The gutless wonder squealed on. “Out of the blue she remembered how, and I mean out of the fucking blue, she decided to act like a lawyer. Even owns this house now.” He went back to beating his head against the wall, this time repeatedly. “Your precious new car? Hers now too. Took everything.”
The towel around his calf dripped blood. He threw the bright red terrycloth at me. It landed on the pile of papers I’d found. He pressed another one on then jerked off his belt. Tied the leather above the wound.
“She’s got a lot of nerve,” I said. “What with a boyfriend half her age.”
“What nonsense, I mean bullshit, or whatever, are you talking about?”
“Who’s the idiot who didn’t know his wife got herself a young stud? Never mind. It’s moot now. Besides, you were getting divorced anyway.” I shifted my considerable weight around in the chair. My engorged feet and legs throbbed.
Todd’s barking laugh echoed around the big, mostly unfurnished room. “Harrison’s the original woman scorned. Don’t think for a . . . a . . .nano second she didn’t see this disaster coming.”
“So you stole my money?”
“You didn’t even know you had money, you oblivious hag.”
His makeshift tourniquet helped him gather strength. It felt strange to hear these insults fly out of Todd’s mouth. Todd, who liked to suck his thumb and get paddled ’til his ass bled. Now, at this late date, he dominated. No safe word for this situation.
“How did you know about the money?” I said.
The Invisible Heiress Page 24