by Lisa Jackson
“It could be vehicular homicide,” the detective said slowly as if she were testing Elizabeth, waiting for a response.
Oh, Jesus. “Look, Detective, all I know is my husband’s dead,” Elizabeth snapped and then decided to end the conversation. “I’ve got to go. When you find out more, let me know. I’m sorry, I wish I could help you, but I can’t.” She clicked off and let out a long breath.
What the hell was the detective thinking? What was the real purpose of the call? Was Thronson fishing?
Lost in thought, she nearly missed the turn-off for her house and started to ease over to the correct lane, looking over her right shoulder.
In a blur, a dark convertible BMW slashed in front of her.
Instantly she slammed on her brakes.
Her heart froze.
Gasping, she braced herself for the inevitable crash, the crumpling of metal, the spinning into oncoming traffic.
Her Escape fishtailed, missing the BMW by mere inches. “Oh, God,” she said, her heart thundering wildly as she gained control of her vehicle.
The prick behind the Beemer’s wheel, glared at her through his rearview mirror. His face contorted in anger, he stabbed his middle finger into the air.
Immediately Elizabeth’s finger shot up in response. The jerk thought it was her fault? His brake lights flashed and she was forced to slow at the next light. Still silently fuming, she pulled to within a hairbreadth behind him, nearly covering up his license plate, which read GOODGUY.
“Good guy my ass,” Elizabeth muttered, still seething.
Holding her gaze in the mirror, he started making a disgusting pumping gesture with his hand down by his lap.
Yuck! Seriously? Seeing red, anger pumping through her bloodstream, she mouthed asshole.
The light turned.
He hit the accelerator.
She tromped on the gas.
Pissed beyond all reason, she drove like a maniac, right on his tail.
He zipped in and out of lanes and she followed recklessly behind the bastard.
Are you nuts, Elizabeth? What the hell are you doing? For God’s sake let it go! He’s just a jerk, one of a million behind the wheel. Stop this! You’re a mother, for crying out loud!
In a blink, her brain kicked in and she came to her senses. “No,” she whispered, easing off the gas, deccel-erating and sliding into the slower lane. Her heart was still pounding a crazy tattoo, but her fury was spent and she was horrified by what she’d done, how an idiot had goaded her into such erratic, uncharacteristic behavior. She could have hurt someone, or killed them, or herself.
She trembled inside.
As she found a spot to turn around, she could hear the rushing in her ears, the pounding of her heart, the stutter of her own breaths. What’s wrong with you? her mind screamed.
He reminded you of Court, didn’t he? That’s what this was all about. Well, it’s crazy. Elizabeth, pull yourself together! You’re Chloe’s only parent now. You can’t afford to fall apart.
Shaking inside, trying to understand the instant, unlikely rush of pure fury that had overtaken her, she pulled over to the side of the road. As cars streamed by, she took in deep, calming breaths. Finally, when she felt in control again, she flipped on her blinker and driving with extra care, eased into traffic again and found a safe spot to turn around as she’d long before passed the turn-off to her house.
Still trembling, she drove the rest of the way home extra carefully and pulled into her garage. She’d never done anything like that. Ever.
She cut the engine and hit the button so that the garage door closed, slowly blocking out the daylight. As the engine cooled, ticking and darkness surrounding her, she rested her head on the steering wheel. Never had she experienced that white-hot level of road rage. Never had she chased down an idiot who had cut her off.
What was the report on Court’s accident? Several witnesses reported a dark SUV weaving in and out of traffic about the same time Court’s BMW was doing the same thing. . . .
Dark SUV. Like hers.
BMW. Like the one she’d just chased within an inch of her life.
Oh. Dear. God. Elizabeth swallowed hard and closed her eyes.
The detective thinks you were there. That you killed him.
“But I wasn’t on the freeway with Court. It wasn’t me!” she said aloud, wondering what in the world was happening to her?
The door from the house burst open, light spilling into the dark garage. Chloe, blond curls bouncing, raced into the garage. “Mommy?”
Pulling her thoughts up short, Elizabeth came back to the here and now. She pushed open the driver’s door and climbed out, but her knees shivered a little, threatening to give out. Forcing a smile, she leaned against the hood of the car. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Mommy, Misty’s been on the phone all day,” Chloe complained, her little arms folded over her chest.
“Has she?”
“I wanted to play with her, but she’s mean. I don’t like her!”
This was a new tack, a ploy for attention. “Oh, come on, Chloe. You adore Misty. Let’s go back inside.” Forcing her legs to move, Elizabeth pushed off the car, then bent down to give her daughter a quick unwelcome hug.
“I don’t adore her,” Chloe maintained as she slithered out of her mother’s arms.
“Fine. You don’t.” Placing her hand between her daughter’s shoulder blades and guiding her into the house, Elizabeth said, “Let’s just go inside, anyway.” She pulled the door shut behind her and found Misty in the kitchen..
Coltish, with big brown eyes and a penchant for temporary tattoos—bound to be the real thing once she turned eighteen—Misty set down her cell phone onto the counter as if caught in some nefarious act.
“See?” Chloe crowed triumphantly as she pointed at the girl.
“I wasn’t on my phone the whole time,” Misty defended herself even before Elizabeth could open her mouth. “We played together.”
Chloe muttered, “Barely.”
“A lot,” Misty argued and adopted a hurt expression, as if her young charge had betrayed her. “We always do.”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Enough,” Elizabeth interjected. “It’s over.” While Chloe flopped sullenly on the floor, Elizabeth hastily wrote the teenager a check, thanked her and, as Misty let herself out the front door, called a hasty, “Good-bye.”
Chloe’s head was turned, watching the sitter leave, but as soon as the door shut with a soft thud, she whipped back to her mother. “She was on the phone the whole time. She lied.”
“Maybe she was on the phone today more than usual.” Elizabeth pulled a bottle of water from the fridge, cracked off the top and took a long swallow.
Chloe jumped up from the floor. “She was!”
“I’ll have a talk with her about it.” Still shaken from the road rage incident, she didn’t have time for Chloe’s petty squabbles. To change the course of the conversation, she said, “We’re going to dinner at Lissa’s house soon, so—”
“When?”
“In a little while. I—”
”No! When are you going to talk to her?” Chloe’s fists were on her hips and she had that stubborn look in her eye.
So the ploy to detour her child didn’t work.
“Misty?” Elizabeth asked, taking another long swallow as Chloe nodded her head wildly. “Probably the next time she babysits.”
“I never want her to babysit me again!”
“Chloe,” Elizabeth admonished on a heavy sigh.
“She’s mean. She’s a mean girl.”
“No, she’s not. She’s self-involved. All teenagers are.”
“What? What’s self-devolved?”
Elizabeth almost smiled at the mistake and was reminded how young her daughter was and how much she’d been through in the last week or so. No matter how she was reacting, Chloe was dealing with a major issue with the loss of her father. Even if Elizabeth’s love for her husband had shriveled, the same wasn’t necess
arily true for her child. “Never mind. I need you to get ready to go.”
“To Lissa’s house?”
“Yes.”
“For dinner.”
“That’s right.” So she had gotten through.
“What are we eating at Lissa’s?” Chloe demanded suspiciously.
“Pizza for you girls.”
“Yuck.”
So this was how it was going to be, Chloe obstinate.
“You love pizza,” Elizabeth reminded her daughter. “Now, come on, squirt. Go comb your hair. You look like nobody loves you.”
“But you do. You love me.”
“Very much.” And to prove it, she gave her daughter another hug, holding her fiercely, the memory of the road rage on the dark edges of her mind. Chloe actually giggled before wriggling away.
Elizabeth forced out, “And find your shoes. I’ve got to . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence as Chloe had rushed out to, hopefully, do as Elizabeth had asked.
Only when she was alone did Elizabeth let go. Her legs buckled and she knocked over her water bottle, spilling it onto the counter. Quickly righting the bottle, she didn’t bother wiping up the mess because she had to sit down at the kitchen table or fall down.
She covered her mouth with her hands and stared blankly ahead, watching the water drip from the counter to the floor and unable to do anything about it. She heard the ticking of the clock mounted high over the cupboards, in an almost eerie counterpoint to her own heartbeats.
Something was happening to her. Something bad.
I’m normal. I’m totally normal.
But it wasn’t true.
Chapter 9
Rex slid a look at his companion as he eased his seat back and dropped the baseball cap farther over his eyes. He’d parked in the shade of a Madrone tree a block over from the Cochrans’ drive and had told himself he wasn’t completely out of his mind by allowing Ravinia to come. She was right about the fact that his surveillance would be more camouflaged by having her in the car. He’d been outside the Cochran home enough times to be remarked on, and that “pull date” when someone finally noticed the man loitering in the car and the alarm went out was always a possibility.
Surveillance was a tricky thing and he had to be cautious. Having Ravinia in the car with him could be good or bad. God knew she could certainly blow the whole thing if she wanted to, though he suspected that wasn’t how she was made. He considered himself a pretty good judge of character, most of the time, and apart from a few epic fails in his personal life, he usually knew about people, their habits and their motivations. In that, he’d been a pretty decent policeman throughout his twenties, but deep into his thirties, his skills worked best in private investigation.
Ravinia turned her head, feeling his perusal. She was sensitive that way, though her personality was anything but. She was prickly, confrontational, suspicious, and determined, so when she came out with, “I’d be good at your job,” he gave a bark of laughter.
“What?” she demanded.
“We’ve been here all of ten minutes.”
“You just have to wait around and watch people.”
“There’s a little more to it than that,” he remarked drily as a slow-moving truck, its cab scraping the branches overhead, rumbled by.
“And ask questions and gather information and chase people down. If I had a car and Internet access—a smartphone would really do it—I’d be ready to go.”
“You also need a license,” he pointed out.
“If I had my license, I could be driving my own car, and I could maybe have already found my cousin.”
“A private investigator’s license,” he corrected.
She frowned at him. “You have to go to school for that?”
“Take some classes, sure.”
Casting him a leery glance, she said, “I have my GED.”
“Did you go to high school?”
“I was home-schooled by my aunt.”
“Aunt Catherine?” He was looking through the windshield, his binoculars in his lap, his gaze on the door of the Cochran home.
Kimberley had a fairly specific routine. To the gym in the mornings, coffee with friends—a lot of air kissing went on among them—and then back to the house. Tennis on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Dorell Cochran had moved out and so her time was her own, but she hadn’t met any paramour as yet.
He could feel Ravinia’s attention sharpen on him. “Yes, Aunt Catherine.”
He kept his gaze centered on the end of the long drive, which curved up the hill to the Cochran home. They were in Sherman Oaks. A number of expensive homes perched on the ridge above him. Parking was prohibited on the four-lane road that led past the drive, but he’d found a few places on a side street that offered an unobstructed view. He’d been pretty lucky so far in finding an observation point, but Dorell Cochran was impatient to learn whom his wife was seeing and was making noise about cutting off funding. If he did, so be it. Rex couldn’t manufacture results. A lot of PI work was a waiting game.
“Who are you waiting for?” Ravinia asked.
“A woman whose husband thinks she’s having an affair.”
“Is she?”
Rex shrugged, shifting in the driver’s seat. “Maybe. He thinks so. I haven’t seen any evidence of it yet.”
“How long are we going to be here?”
“Told you it’d be boring.” He glanced her way. She’d pinched her lips together and was glaring through the windshield. “What’s your story?” he asked her again.
“I told you. I just want to find my cousin.”
“So, tell me something about yourself.”
She raked him with a sideways glance from suspicious blue-green eyes. “I’m from Oregon.”
“You already told me that. You lived around a town called Deception Bay on the Oregon coast. What else?”
She thought that over. “Okay,” she said as if she’d decided something. “If I tell you something about myself, you have to tell me something about yourself.”
Rex raised the binoculars to his eyes and swept them across the front of the Cochran house. “Fair enough.”
“All right. Well then, I guess I’ll tell you that . . . my aunt is worried about her daughter, my cousin. My aunt gave her away at birth but feels that she might be in danger.”
When she stopped abruptly, Rex put down the binoculars. “From what?”
“Oh . . . you know . . . forces of evil.”
“Like in a video game?”
Frowning again, Ravinia shook her head. “No, Aunt Catherine thinks it’s one of my brothers.”
“One of your brothers?” he repeated.
“Yeah. There’s the good one and the bad one, and well, he’s the bad one.”
It was starting to sound a little far-fetched. Well, a lot far-fetched. And it must’ve registered on his face.
She said, “I told you it was a long story. Anyway, it’s my turn. Are you married?”
He hesitated, not wanting to give insight into his personal life, then said, “No.”
“Ever been married?”
“Yeah . . . once,” he admitted reluctantly.
“Doesn’t sound like it was good.”
“It was for a while.” Rex had no interest in continuing this line of questioning. He’d been married to Allison for six years before her infidelity came to light, and it was after he’d learned the truth that he left the LAPD. He’d been itching for a change for a while, but it took the impetus of Allison’s betrayal to finally get him to act. That and the fact that she’d taken up with one of his fellow officers whom she’d married almost before the ink was dry on the divorce decree. That was nine years ago, and Allison and Kurt had popped out two daughters in quick succession. He hadn’t even come close to marriage since the divorce and he kind of regretted the fact that he had no children, but life was full of twists and turns. He might not have much of a family life himself, but he’d become the go-to man for sorting through other peopl
e’s domestic chaos—cheating spouses, runaway kids, missing kin. Good ol’ Rex was your guy when it came to dysfunctional families.
“What happened?” Ravinia asked.
“We grew apart,” he said brusquely, cracking the window a little farther, allowing more of the late afternoon breeze to filter through the car. “So, tell me, why do you think your evil brother is after your cousin?”
“I don’t. My aunt does. It’s because he’s threatened us and he killed my mother.”
“He killed your mother? Truly?”
“That’s what Aunt Catherine thinks.”
“And he got away with it?” Rex confirmed, realizing that Bonnie was right. This girl was certifiable.
“It’s true!” she said as if reading his thoughts.
“So now he’s on the loose and after your cousin?”
“He’s after all of us. It’s the nature of who we are.” She slid down in the seat, her voice growing softer. “My turn.”
“No, wait. All of you? Your . . . family?”
“My sisters and I live with our aunt in a lodge. We’re kind of well known around Deception Bay. They all think we’re crazy.”
“Yeah?” Rex half-smiled. This was bizarre. “I assume the police know all this. That if this is true—”
“It is!”
“There’s a warrant out for this guy’s arrest. By the way, does he have a name? And the other one, the good brother. What’s his name? How does he figure into all of this?” Even as he asked the questions, Rex realized it was all for naught. She was spinning fantasies.
“My turn,” she insisted, her eyes narrowing as if she expected him to lie. “How many cases have you solved?”
“Wait a sec. We were talking about the bad brother who killed—”
“How many?” she demanded.
“Oh, for the love of God.” He shrugged. “I don’t know and I’m not sure I’d even call them cases.” He stared through the binoculars again, adjusting the focus. “Sometimes I’m just searching for kids who’ve run away from their parents and it ends up that they were really just away for the weekend, staying with a friend, not bothering to tell their folks. Sometimes it’s a lot more and takes some time. Like what we’re doing now.” He pulled the glasses away for a sec. “So how many sisters and brothers do you have?”