Secrets of Redemption Box Set

by Michele Pariza Wacek

  Did I tell her about Mad Martha’s diary? I didn’t think I had, but I couldn’t be sure. I knew I told Daphne about it. Did we ever talk about it in front of Mia? Had Daphne told Mia?

  Someone must have told her, right? She must have heard that line before today.

  Because the alternative was too horrifying.

  Hearing footsteps. Unable to sleep.

  The house is whispering to me again.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t stand it. I needed to find that diary.

  I quickly refilled my coffee and headed up to The Studio. Once I found it, then maybe I could show Mia, and we could have a laugh about it. See, look? Remember this? That’s where those words came from.

  Nothing more sinister than that.

  As I walked up the stairs, I tried to remember the last time I had seen Mad Martha’s diary. I thought I had put it away with Aunt Charlie’s other files, so it should be in the wooden filing cabinet.

  I started there, but a quick search revealed nothing. Next, I went through my painting supplies, but no luck. Had I tucked it away in my desk? I supposed it was possible.

  I got on my hands and knees and started rifling through the drawers. One of the drawers was jammed, and I felt around to determine what was keeping it stuck. Was the diary blocking it somehow? My hand found something small and hard wrenched in there.

  What the heck was that? Carefully, I worked it free, trying not to damage anything in the process.

  Finally, it came out. I turned it over in my hand, trying to make sense of what I was holding.

  It was a cell phone.

  Chapter 18

  I turned the phone over and over in my hands, trying to figure out what it might mean. A growing sense of dread was slowly seeping into the pit of my stomach.

  Why was an old-fashioned flip phone in my desk?

  Whose was it?

  I flipped it open. The call history consisted of only three outgoing calls.

  All to the same number.

  And all in the past few days.

  What was going on?

  With shaky fingers, I reached for my own phone. I needed help.

  I dialed Daniel’s number, silently chanting, “Please pick up, please pick up,” over and over. Luckily, he did.

  “Becca, are you okay?”

  “I found a cell phone,” I said, my lips numb.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A cell phone. I found a cell phone in my desk.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know.” My voice was rising, and I forced myself to take a ragged breath.

  “Could it be Mia’s or Chrissy’s?”

  “I doubt it. It’s a flip phone.”

  “A flip phone,” Daniel mused, half under his breath. “Where did you find it?”

  “In my desk. Wedged way back in one of the drawers.”

  “Could it be Charlie’s?”

  “Doubt it.” I gave a short bark of laugher. “Unless Aunt Charlie is making calls from beyond the grave.” Even funnier was that I could almost picture her, in the kitchen, a cup of tea in one hand and the phone in the other, dialing away. I had to clamp my teeth down to keep myself from bursting into hysterical laughter.

  “Calls?”

  “Yeah, there are three calls made since Saturday,” I said.

  “Can you see the number?” His voice had taken on a suspicious tone.

  “Yes, it’s one number.”

  “Read it, please.”

  I rattled off the digits. There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

  “Becca, you need to call Detective Timmons right now,” he said. “You need to tell him about this.”

  “What? Why? What’s going on? Whose number is it?” I was starting to sound hysterical again, and I fought to get myself under control.

  He paused. “It’s Gwyn’s.”

  “What?”

  “I thought ... Becca, this is really bad.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “You have to call Detective Timmons. Now. And you probably ought to call a lawyer, as well, if you haven’t already. And think about moving into a hotel temporarily.”

  I closed my eyes, pain stabbing at my temples. Oh no. Not a migraine. Not now. “I am being set up, aren’t I?” I whispered.

  “Becca, I thought ... I thought you were calling because you heard from Detective Timmons. They analyzed the paper those anonymous notes were on that were delivered to Gwyn. The ones that looked like ransom notes.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering how any of this could possibly get any worse than it already was.

  “It was drawing paper. Like from a sketch pad.”

  Oh God. In my mind, I could see the scrap of torn paper from the sketch pad I had just bought. “So not only am I definitely being set up, but he was in my house.”

  “That’s why you should move to a hotel. Or somewhere else. Just temporarily.”

  He really was in my house. I wanted to scream. This was actual, tangible proof. It couldn’t be explained away like the clicking on a virus theory, or accidentally deleting an email. I was holding actual, physical evidence in my hand that my home—and my privacy—had been violated.

  Suddenly, everything felt filthy and disgusting. What had he touched? What else had he done in my house? All I wanted to do was get a bucket of boiling hot water with soap and bleach and scrub and scrub and scrub. Even then, would I ever feel comfortable again?

  “Becca? Are you listening to me?”

  I opened my eyes, slowly straightening my shoulders. This guy was not going to win. He was not going to chase me out of my own home.

  “I’ll call Detective Timmons,” I said, my voice cool and calm. Maybe eerily so. “I’ll start calling lawyers, too. But I’m not leaving.”

  “Becca! You have to ...”

  “The locks are changed,” I cut in. “The alarm system is coming. He’s not chasing me out.”

  “I should stay ...”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’ve gotten you more involved than I should have already. I’ll be fine.”

  “What about Mia and Chrissy?”

  I stared out the window. A hawk lazily circled the sky. “They can decide for themselves if they want to stay or go,” I said.

  Daniel was silent. “Keep me posted,” he said.

  “I will.”

  “Becca,” he said, as I was about to hang up. “The offer still stands. You call me whenever. If there’s anything that doesn’t feel right, call me and I’ll come. I don’t care what time it is.”

  Tears welled up inside me. I took a deep, unsteady breath, feeling more touched than I could put into words. “Thanks Daniel,” I said softly. “ I appreciate it.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know.”

  I hung up, staring at the flip phone. As much as my fingers itched to start cleaning, it made more sense to call Detective Timmons first. The sooner I called him, the better, right? I would look less guilty than I would if I waited at all.

  I suspected I was fooling myself.

  I had left his card in the kitchen. I picked up both phones and headed down the stairs.

  The ransom notes kept niggling at me. Whoever wrote them had taken the paper from the sketch book I had bought, but where did the magazines come from? I didn’t have any. Maybe he thought the cops would assume I threw them away?

  Somehow, that didn’t feel right. It was too ... sloppy.

  After all, this was a man who had clearly (and painstakingly) thought of every detail, right down to tying the paper directly to me.

  Would he really leave the magazines up to chance?

  Or would he connect those to me, too … maybe by planting them somewhere in my house?

  Unless
...

  Aunt Charlie.

  I had almost forgotten. Along with all the other bags of useless crap my Aunt Charlie had hoarded (and I had thrown out), were old magazines.

  The details started coming back to me—I hadn’t been able to get rid of all of them. There were just too many. So I simply stashed a bunch in the garage, waiting until the next trash day to toss them in.

  And I had completely forgotten about them.

  With a sinking feeling of foreboding, I walked over to the door that led to the garage and opened it. How could he have even known, I argued with myself. There was no way he would have had time to search the whole house. And who would ever think to look in a garage for magazines?

  I flipped on the lights. Stacks of boxes greeted me, reminding me that I still had way too much stuff from New York here that I needed to get rid of. God, between the stacks in the basement and the stacks in the garage, I was practically drowning in junk.

  I wove my way through the boxes to the back of the garage. There, exactly where I had left them, were the magazines.

  I knelt in front of one and started rifling through.

  It didn’t take me long.

  The third magazine in the stack was riddled with the edges of ripped pages. Pages that, once I lined them up, had clearly cut out words.

  ***

  “So, how bad is it?” Mia asked sympathetically.

  Mia, Chrissy, and I were sitting outside soaking up the fading sun. Mia and I with glasses of wine, Chrissy with lemonade, and platters of hamburgers and seasoned vegetables positioned next to the grill. Oscar was curled up in the chair next to me, keeping a close eye on the hamburgers. The air was filled with the sweet scents of roses and lavender.

  I was exhausted. Emotionally, mentally, and physically. I was too tired to even pick up my wine glass, so I simply spun it around on the table in front of me, my fingers red and raw from frantically scrubbing all day. The house smelled of lemon and bleach and was so clean it practically sparkled, but it still felt dirty to me.

  I wondered if that would ever change.

  In between cleaning, I had called Detective Timmons. Our conversation was less than ideal—it was clear he didn’t believe that I had just “found” the phone. At the last minute, I decided not to mention anything about the magazines. I was in enough trouble as it was, and I couldn’t bring myself to hand over any more ammunition he could use against me.

  And now, I was about to have a very difficult conversation with two of my closest friends. Would this nightmare ever end?

  Chrissy’s eyes darted between us, her ponytail whipping from side to side. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Mia, what do you know? Does this have anything to do with why we have new locks on the doors?”

  I had been so careful not to tell Chrissy anything. I didn’t want her to worry. She was still a teenager, after all, who had already had a hell of a time over the past couple of months. She certainly didn’t need my troubles dumped on her, too. When I had handed her the new key and explained the new security features, I had been purposefully vague, telling her it was impossible to know who Aunt Charlie had given a key too, and how really, we should have had the locks changed the day we moved in. It wasn’t a priority, then, because we hadn’t planned on staying long. But, better late than never, right?

  Of course, all that had done was make everything I had to do now even more difficult.

  “It’s bad,” I said to Mia. To Chrissy, whose mouth was already open to protest and declare how unfair everything is in her normal “teenagey” way, I said, “Give me a sec. I’ll tell you everything. And yes, I probably should have told you sooner, but I had no idea how messed up things were about to get.”

  I caught Chrissy up as best as I could, watching her expression change. I knew I had been right, and she was miffed that I had kept it from her. Then I told both of them about the phone and the magazines.

  As I spoke, Mia’s face grew paler and paler. Chrissy continued to look displeased.

  When I finished, Mia reached over to refill her empty glass. “So, you’re saying he was in the house.” Her voice was flat.

  “Wait. What?” Chrissy said, looking bewildered.

  I sighed. “I don’t see any other explanation. Although this clearly happened before we changed the locks, so I doubt he could get in now.”

  “What do you mean, ‘he was in the house’?” Chrissy asked. “Who?”

  “The stalker,” Mia said, gulping down more wine.

  Chrissy’s eyes went wide. “You mean, the guy who led you to Ellen’s body in the trunk?”

  “That’s the one,” I said. I had to remind myself that this was a confusing story, and with Chrissy coming in at the tail end, it would feel even more so.

  “What was he doing in the house?” Chrissy’s voice became more agitated.

  “We don’t know,” Mia said. “That’s the problem.”

  “How could you not tell me?” Chrissy was close to yelling.

  “Okay, so look,” I said. “The locks are changed. There are only four keys, one for each of us and one extra I hid inside the house. No one else could possibly have one. We have new security features on the doors. The alarm system should be installed the day after tomorrow. I feel safe. However,” I paused to take a deep breath, “Daniel thinks we should move into a hotel for a few days. Just to be on the even safer side.”

  “What are you going to do?” Chrissy asked pointedly.

  “I’m staying here,” I said. “I’m not letting this guy, whoever he is, win. But you need to decide for yourself what you want to do.”

  “If you’re staying, I’m staying,” Chrissy said.

  Mia took another drink of her wine, her gaze faraway and focused on the backyard. I watched her for a moment, noting how lost she seemed in her own world.

  “Mia,” I said gently. “It’s fine if you want to stay somewhere else for a day or two. Until this gets sorted out. I understand.”

  She jerked, like I had startled her, and her wine sloshed out of her glass and onto the table. “Oh, clumsy me,” she said, mopping the puddle with her napkin. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “Are you okay?” Chrissy asked, her brow furrowed. “You didn’t seem yourself at work today either.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, scrubbing the area with a little more intensity than necessary. “I’m just tired.”

  “Maybe you should move out for a few days,” I said. “Could you bunk with a friend? That might help you get a good night’s sleep.”

  “No,” Mia sighed, reaching over to fill up her wine. “I love living here. I love all this space. Having my own room and an office to study in. It’s the perfect setup for me, especially after living in that cramped apartment for so long. You’re right. The locks are changed. We’re safe. I’m just being silly.”

  “You’re not being silly,” I said. “Daniel would tell you how smart you are to leave for a few days.”

  She half-smiled. “Daniel worries like an old woman sometimes. And, whoever this guy is, he’s a bully. I certainly don’t want to let the bully win.”

  “Hear, hear,” Chrissy said, raising her lemonade glass. “To not letting bullies win.”

  I smiled and raised my own glass, but inside, I wondered if this was a good idea. It was one thing to risk my own neck, but was it really fair to them if I let them stay? Should I insist they leave?

  Was I being selfish, because secretly, I was scared to be alone in my home?

  Chapter 19

  “Time for your medicine.”

  I blinked, trying to focus, but the room was too dark. Was I back in the hospital? My nostrils were filled with that dank, mildewy odor.

  There was a click, and a single lightbulb lit the room. Nurse Ellen was there, her nursing outfit wrinkled and stained with blood and dirt. Her hair was also matted
with blood, and it ran down the side of her face. She leaned against the concrete wall, leering at me, and holding up a huge, sharp needle.

  I tried to take a step back and smacked into something behind me. Ellen’s smirk widened. “It’s worse if you struggle.”

  “I don’t want any medicine,” I said.

  “Then how do you expect to get better?” she asked, waving her arms and hitting the exposed lightbulb so it swung widely on its chain. We were surrounded by stacks of boxes, everywhere. It felt familiar to me, somehow. Where were we?

  “Why do you even bother, Ellen?” a new voice asked. “She clearly doesn’t want to get better.”

  The lightbulb swung to the right, revealing Gwyn leaning against the wall as well. Unlike Ellen, she was perfectly together, her white-blonde hair styled in her usual spiky, asymmetrical style, and her makeup carefully applied. She was examining something in her hands, but I couldn’t see what it was.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Gwyn.

  She glanced up, eyes narrowing, lips peeled back in a sneer. “What do you think? I’m here because of you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is all your fault,” Gwyn snarled. “Why couldn’t you have stayed in New York where you belonged?”

  “Not just you,” Ellen added. “Your whole family.”

  “All you’ve done is bring misery to this town,” Gwyn said. “Why don’t you do everyone a favor and leave?”

  “After you take your medicine, of course,” Ellen growled, her smile twisting.

  I tried to back up again, but whatever was behind me prevented me from moving.

  “Oh, stop being such a baby,” Ellen said, stepping toward me. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

  “That’s because it will hurt a lot,” Gwyn added, and they both broke into manic laughter.

  I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Especially not to either of you,” I said, trying to look at both of them at once.

  “Doesn’t matter what you meant,” Ellen said. “All that matters is the evil that was done.”