by Lis Wiehl
“Are you kidding me?” Marshall made a puh sound. “Allison’s life is in danger, and you want me to go on vacation?”
“What do you think you’ll be able to accomplish if you stay here? We can’t risk Allison coming to you or you going to Allison. If the killer has any doubts about what really happened in the bank, he could be watching you. That’s why you need to get out of sight and go someplace where you don’t know anyone. Because if you stay here, people are going to be coming to you, crying because their hearts are breaking, and I guarantee you that they’ll realize that something’s off about your reaction.”
Marshall looked as though he wanted to argue, then he closed his eyes and nodded. “Okay, fine. I’ll get out of town—but on one condition.” He stood up and grabbed his suit jacket from a coatrack in the corner. “I’m taking Allison with me.”
Nic was painfully aware of the seconds ticking by. “We can’t risk that either, Marshall. It will get around that the victim’s husband is off with another woman. Or if the killer has someone take a closer look at you, they’ll report that you’re not alone. Either way, this guy could put two and two together.”
Marshall said stubbornly, “I am not going to turn tail and run and leave Allison here all by herself to face a murderer.”
Nic’s adrenaline was running so high that patience was difficult. “I’m not asking you to leave her on her own. Leif and I will be with her. But our best shot at keeping her alive is if everyone thinks she’s dead. And that means you need to stay away from her.”
“So you really expect me to take part in this charade?”
“I’m putting my career on the line for what you’re calling a charade. So is Leif. We’re doing it because we believe it’s the only way to keep Allison safe.” Nic’s voice softened. “Look, I’m only saying get out of town for a day or two, until we can figure out who leaked Allison’s schedule. Until we can figure out who would want both Cassidy and Allison dead.”
“So why aren’t you going out of town?” Marshall challenged her. “Why do you think you can lie to people about your best friend and I can’t?”
“Because I don’t have any choice. Even if I left, it wouldn’t make any difference. Because if this guy killed Cassidy and Lindsay, then I’m next. Everything that Allison and Cassidy had in common, I did too. We all three worked or covered the same cases.”
Marshall’s eyes widened. “The Triple Threat.”
“Right. In fact, I think he already tried once to kill me. On the same day Cassidy was murdered, a car almost ran me over. At the time I thought it was an accident. I’m not going to sit and wait for him to come after me again. Allison and Leif and I are going to figure out who he is and then hunt him down.”
“I don’t know,” Marshall said.
Nic could tell he was wavering, but not enough.
“I have to talk to her. I have to talk to Allison.”
She wanted to shake him, but instead she just said, “Does Lindsay have a phone?” When he nodded she said, “If it was in Lindsay’s purse, then Allison has it, because we traded their purses before she left the bank. Call her on it now, and maybe she’ll pick up when she sees who it is. But if she does answer, make it quick. We don’t need someone from homicide showing up and finding you on the phone with your supposedly dead wife.”
Nic was walking out of the agency when she heard the voice of the man she most didn’t want to see right now. Detective Jensen.
“What are you doing here, Hedges?”
She wiped all expression from her face. “I didn’t want Marshall to hear the news from a stranger.”
He looked at her with a jaundiced eye. “You keep turning up in the wrong place, do you know that?”
CHAPTER 28
Gina Hodson used her car key to slit open the clear packing tape on the brown cardboard box the mailman had left on her porch. The box was plain on the outside, but when she turned back the flaps they read Fruit by the Foot. The sender had separated the box at the seams and taped it back together, inside out, before packing her messenger bag inside.
People who sold a lot of stuff on eBay figured out how to do it for the cheapest way possible. They recycled boxes, stuck new address labels on old envelopes, and used wadded-up newspapers instead of packing peanuts.
Gina’s entire wardrobe came from eBay. Even her underwear, just as long as it was listed as “new without tags.” When you were putting yourself through Arizona State, you had to save money any way you could. So she ate Ramen, hunted out used textbooks, and shopped eBay.
When Gina was a kid, she was dressed from head to toe with finds from garage sales and thrift stores. Her mom had had money once, before her family cut her off for marrying Gina’s dad. They’d said he was bad news, and they were right. He left before Gina learned to walk.
But her mom taught her that if you knew what you were looking for, the signs of quality, you could still dress nicely, if you didn’t mind that what you were wearing had once belonged to someone else. Rich people got tired of perfectly good things all the time. Sometimes things they hadn’t even gotten around to wearing.
Her mom was a dedicated Goodwill shopper, but Gina didn’t like the sour smell of mothballs and mildew that hung in the air. Browsing and buying on eBay involved no smells at all; it was like Goodwill to the nth power. And a lot of items were brand-new, bought by compulsive shoppers or by people who lived near outlet malls and marked their finds back up a little, making their money on volume. Over the last two years, Gina had learned the best way to bid on eBay. She made an offer in the last two minutes, for an odd amount, and as high as she was willing to pay. And she nearly always won.
Now from the balled-up newspapers stuffed in the old fruit leather box, she pulled out a black canvas messenger bag. It looked brand-new. And she had paid only $5.13 with free shipping. The eBay seller, who went by the name LiveFree, had ended up practically giving it away. That’s what he got for listing it at nearly midnight, West Coast time, when many potential buyers were already in bed.
Before bidding, Gina had checked online. Messenger bags from the same company normally sold for forty bucks.
This one had lots of handy little pockets. She slipped pens in one, lip gloss in another, and paper clips in the third. One zippered pocket was located deep inside the main compartment. Gina’s mom had drilled into her the importance of always carrying an emergency twenty-dollar bill, and this seemed a good place for it, hidden but accessible.
Gina unzipped the compartment and started to slip the folded bill inside. Her fingers touched something loose and rubbery. Before she could think better of it, she hooked the item with her index finger and pulled it out.
Dangling in front of her horrified eyes was a white vinyl glove, so thin it was nearly translucent. It was inside out, the fingers still half pushed back into themselves. Whatever the glove had been used to handle had left behind a sticky, dark red residue.
Something that looked very much like blood.
Gina let out a little scream. Dropping the glove, the twenty-dollar bill, and the messenger bag, she jumped back as if the glove were a living thing and could bite her.
Then she tried to reason with herself. Maybe LiveFree was a doctor. Or a hobbyist who had cut himself.
Steeling herself, she picked up the bag and probed the compartment again. Inside was a second glove. There was blood inside this one too. Several longish blond hairs had been trapped in the blood and now dangled from the cuff of the inside-out glove. Gina set the bag and the glove on the floor next to the other glove.
LiveFree must have done something bad.
Very bad.
With shaking hands, Gina smoothed out one of the sheets of crumpled newspaper that had cushioned the messenger bag. It was from the Oregonian. She checked the return address on the box. It was a PO box in Portland.
Then she called 9-1-1.
CHAPTER 29
Okay,” Leif told Allison as he pulled up in the driveway of a 1950s ranch-st
yle house in Southeast Portland. “This must be Ophelia’s place.”
It was the newest and plainest of houses in a neighborhood full of century-old homes with ornamental woodwork, cedar siding, and gardens with crayon-bright flowers. Many of the homes probably had views of the Willamette from their second floors, but it must not have occurred to whoever built Ophelia’s one-story house that such a thing was possible.
Long and low, the structure had about as much personality as the shoe box Allison and Lindsay used to pretend that Barbie and Ken lived in. It was painted a dull white, down to the trim. The lawn was neatly mowed, but there wasn’t a single flowering plant, not even Portland’s ubiquitous rhododendron.
As Leif put the car in park, Ophelia half opened the door and beckoned to Allison. She turned to Leif. “If the FBI figures out the truth, you guys should tell them whatever you need to, to keep out of trouble. Tell them it was all my idea, or that you made a mistake. I don’t want you to flush your careers.”
Leif nodded, but didn’t say anything. Allison knew he would do what he thought was right, not what he thought was easy. Finally he said, “We’ll be back in touch tonight once we know more.”
“And you’ll keep Nicole safe?” Allison asked. “Just in case that guy does have his eye on her?”
“Of course,” he said gruffly. “Now, you’d better get inside before Ophelia has a meltdown.”
Ophelia had stepped closer to the doorway and was gesturing more urgently. Allison took a deep breath and stepped out of the still-running car and into the heat of the day. It was like stepping into an oven. She hurried up the walkway.
As soon as she was inside, Ophelia closed the door behind her. The house was blessedly cool.
“Most of my neighbors work during the day,” Ophelia said, “but I don’t want anyone wondering who you are or remembering what you look like.”
“If you don’t feel safe having me here,” Allison said, “I could go.” She had only met this girl yesterday, and now she was asking to be sheltered from a killer. Then again, their lack of a preexisting relationship make it unlikely anyone would look for her here.
“No,” Ophelia said after a long pause. “It’s okay.”
White spots were dancing in front of Allison’s eyes. “Do you mind if I sit down?” she asked. “I’m feeling kind of shaky.”
Allison waited for Ophelia to ask a question or demand an explanation. All she said was, “Sure.” She seemed devoid of curiosity. It was oddly soothing, allowing Allison to try to float in the in-between, to push away the thoughts of what had just happened.
For places to sit, she had her choice of a well-used green leather recliner or a navy blue futon couch. She chose the couch. The centerpiece of the room’s decor was not the small flat-screen TV but a carpeted cat-climbing structure with multilevel platforms and even a few ramps. A ginger tabby rested on top, and a small black cat with bright green eyes sprawled on another level. Something was missing from the room. It took Allison a few seconds to figure out what it was. There wasn’t a single picture on the wall.
A black-and-white cat slinked out from under the couch. It wound its way around Ophelia’s ankles, letting out plaintive meows.
“Maizy wants to go outside, but I don’t let her,” Ophelia said, bending down to pet her. “It’s destructive to native bird species, plus she would run the risk of being struck by a car.”
Allison felt as though she had stepped onto another planet. Only a few minutes ago her sister had died in her arms. Now she was having a conversation about the ethics of keeping an indoor pet.
Tinny music began to play. Allison jumped. It was coming from Lindsay’s purse, which she was holding on her lap.
“It’s my sister’s phone.”
“Don’t answer it.”
“Let me just see who it is.” Allison opened the purse and tried to locate the phone with just her eyes. It scared her to touch it, as if it would somehow broadcast the fact that she was alive. But then she saw the display. “It’s my husband.” She flipped it open and turned away, giving herself the illusion of privacy.
“Hello.” She kept it short and neutral, just in case.
“Oh, darling, you’re alive.” Marshall’s voice broke with relief. “Oh, Allison, when Nicole walked into my office just now, I thought you were dead.”
“I’m alive, Marshall. But Lindsay really is dead.” Hot tears filled her eyes. “This guy pretending to be a bank robber shot her. I talked to her before she died. One minute she was there and the next minute she was just . . . gone.”
“Nicole told me.”
“The terrible thing is that he shot her because he thought she was me.”
“Nicole told me that too.”
“She died in my stead, Marshall.” The tears spilled down Allison’s cheeks. “It’s my fault that my sister’s dead.”
“You can’t tell yourself that, Allison. You have to look at reality. When we took her in, Lindsay was headed for death. You saved her.”
“Saved her for what?” Allison said bitterly. “Saved her so she could be murdered in my place? It’s such a waste! All those years I spent worrying. I thought she would die of an overdose, or be murdered by one of her customers, or that Chris would finally kill her. But for this to happen now? Just as she was getting her life back together?” Allison wept at the injustice of it, at how her sister’s plans and dreams and endless practice espressos all added up to nothing. “It’s not fair. Lindsay finally turned her life around, and now it’s all ended before it even began.”
“But it did begin, Allison,” Marshall’s low voice insisted. “She had a year sober. A year where she had dreams and worked to make them come true. It’s terrible that she won’t get to see them fulfilled, but how much worse would it have been if she had never had a dream at all?”
“But she’s only thirty-one, Marshall. She’s just a baby, and now she’s dead. She’s never going to fall in love with the right man or have kids or grow old.” Just as Cassidy would never get that Emmy she had always longed for. “Why is everyone dying?” Her voice broke.
“Allison, listen to me. We’re all dying. All of us. We don’t know the day or the hour. It could be tomorrow or it could be in fifty years. But we are all appointed to die. And Lindsay must have come close to death a dozen times. A hundred. Would you rather she had died in some nameless alley with a bullet in her chest or a needle in her arm?” He took a deep breath. “Instead, your sister died right with God and happy about her life. She died with you there to comfort her. She died knowing she was loved. And she died fast. A lot of people can only wish for those things.”
Was Marshall right? It was true that Lindsay had died when her life had meaning and purpose. Not when she was hating herself, as she had for years and years. Allison took a hitching breath and swiped at her eyes. “It’s just so hard.”
“Of course it is, babe. I wish I could be there with you.” He paused. “But I think I’d better go for now. Nicole said a detective could be here any minute to give me the news. I’m going to have to pretend that she already told me that you’re dead, and make him believe that I believe it. And then she said I should get out of town so I won’t have to worry about letting the truth slip. We argued about it. I still don’t know if it’s the right thing to leave you all alone.”
“But I’m not alone. And I’m safe now. I’m safe as long as the killer thinks I’m dead.” And Marshall himself would be safer out of town. Allison couldn’t bear to lose both her sister and her husband.
Suddenly she realized another flaw with the little plan they had made. “Marshall, what about my mom? She needs to know the truth. If we let her think that I’m dead and then she learns it’s really Lindsay, that’s even crueler than the truth. Can you tell her what really happened?”
“But once I do that, the cat’s out of the bag. If Nicole thinks I can’t keep quiet, then your mom certainly won’t be able to.”
It was true. Her mother had never been a good liar. “I th
ink you probably need to take her with you.”
“Your mom?”
In Marshall’s tone, Allison could hear his resistance. Then he heaved a sigh.
“You’re probably right. This whole thing feels so rushed, but I guess we don’t have any other choice,” Marshall said. “Oh. Someone just pulled into the parking lot—I think it’s a cop. I’d better go.”
“I love you.” She meant those three words more than she ever had before.
“I love you too. Remember the psalm we memorized last year? Hang on to those words.”
Allison snapped the phone closed. Then she put her hands over her wet face. What were they doing? What was going to happen to them?
She knew the verses Marshall was referring to. When their Bible study group chose Psalm 27 to memorize, she was sure none of them had dreamed of taking the meaning quite so literally. The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? . . . When the wicked advance against me to devour me, it is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall.
She started when Ophelia pressed a paper towel into her hands. Allison wiped her eyes and blew her nose on the thick paper.
The other woman looked at her and then away. “I’m sorry about your sister,” she muttered. “I don’t have a sister, but Felicity, one of my cats, died a few months ago and I was very sad.”
Allison digested this in silence and finally settled on saying, “Thank you for your sympathy.”
She just wanted to lie down and close her eyes, but Ophelia had other ideas.
“Okay.” She cocked her head and made a humming noise, regarding Allison. “The first thing we’re going to need to do is change your appearance. Everyone always wants to go blond, but I think you would look more convincing as a redhead.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe while I’m at the drugstore getting the hair dye, you should take a shower. You still have some, um, blood, here.” Ophelia touched the hollow of her throat. “By your cross.”
Allison thought of how Lindsay’s eyes had lit up just before she died. What had her sister seen? “Okay.”