by Lisa Jackson
When they got back to Vivian’s house, Lissa and Bibi seemed to have ganged up on Chloe who was near tears but wouldn’t let them fall until she was in the car on the way home. “I hate Lissa,” she said again, brushing aside angry tears.
“We don’t hate anyone,” Elizabeth answered, tired.
“Yes, we do.” Chloe sounded so positive Elizabeth wondered if something more was behind her words, then decided she was chasing ghosts. Chloe was a child who loved and hated all at the same time.
Back at the house, Elizabeth indulged her with a Popsicle, then read her two stories at bedtime. Closing her door, she walked to her bedroom, kicked off her shoes, and changed into a pair of pajamas. She’d had one glass of wine at the bar and wondered if she should indulge in another, but a headache was knocking at the back of her brain, so she let it go.
She was in bed, reading and rereading the same page of a book Nadia had recommended to her that she just couldn’t get into, when her doorbell rang. Her first reaction was to burrow under the covers and hold back whatever was coming her way.
The half sister.
Immediately, she was angry with her father again. He should have asked her before he just handed out her address. “What was he thinking?”
Throwing off the covers, she hurried to the door, not bothering with a robe. She wanted to catch her visitor before she rang the bell again and risked waking Chloe. She would get rid of her, and the private detective, too, if he was still with her.
Peering through the peephole, Elizabeth felt a distinct shock. Not a supposed relative. Officer Maya. What’s she doing here? Did Detective Thronson tell her what I said?
Cautiously, Elizabeth turned on the outside light and opened the door. “Officer Maya,” she said, her tone purposely neutral.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Ellis, but I have some disturbing news.”
The restaurant crash. “Did he die? The man in the car?”
Officer Maya hesitated, then said, “Yes, unfortunately, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because Detective Bette Thronson was killed last night. Shot in her own home. And we believe you may have been one of the last people to see her alive.”
Chapter 27
“What? Shot? No!” Elizabeth stumbled backward away from the doorway. “She can’t be dead. She can’t!” But even as she said the words, she could read the truth in Maya’s sober and stunned face. “Oh, God . . .”
We think you may have been the last person to see her alive. . . .
Crumpling into a chair in the living room, Elizabeth buried her face in her hands. How can this be happening?
Her world had tumbled off its axis, tragedies befalling people she knew, people who’d touched her life. Her hands were wet with tears and she felt darkness squeeze in on her.
“Mrs. Ellis?” Maya’s voice. From a distance. As if the officer were on the far side of a long tunnel. “Mrs. Ellis!”
In her shock, Elizabeth had left Officer Maya standing on the porch, but she’d come into the house anyway and was leaning over her. With an effort, Elizabeth pulled back from the seductive embrace of oblivion. She needed to keep from fainting. She needed to be present.
She dropped her hands. “I’m . . . I’m okay,” she said, though of course, that was a lie. She was far from being anything close to okay. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
“There was an intruder in her home. No forced entry. Looks like he or she followed Bette home and pushed their way inside.” Maya was having difficulty keeping the emotion out of her voice. “My partner’s on the scene with the techs.”
Elizabeth gazed dispiritedly at the officer. Her heart pounded erratically. Dead because you had a problem with her. Dead because you argued with her, baited her, in so many words told her to go ahead and arrest you. “Do you . . . Do you know who did it?”
“Not yet,” Maya said, her dark eyes somber. “But we will.”
Something in her tone alerted Elizabeth to the realization that Maya thought she had something to do with Thronson’s death, just as Thronson suspected she was involved with the others.
You can’t wish someone dead.
Thronson’s claim came back to her, but her stomach twisted because it was a lie. She had wished them dead, and they’d died. “Didn’t anyone see anything?” she forced out. “Someone walking by? A car out of place or . . . ?”
“The investigation’s just starting. Why don’t you tell me what you and Detective Thronson discussed. Give me a replay of what you said to each other.”
Elizabeth nodded. Their conversation was still so fresh that she could relate it practically verbatim, but she only told Maya about wishing Court and Mazie dead, not Officer Daniels or GoodGuy; she could see Maya thought she was crazy enough as it was. She also left out her challenge to Thronson to go ahead and arrest her. It just seemed prudent. She finished with, “. . . and after that, she left. That was it. I didn’t hear from her again.”
“Detective Thronson was scheduling you for a polygraph.”
Elizabeth could easily read between the lines on that. She’d just told Maya that she’d wished people dead, and though she hadn’t elaborated on her statement, it was the kind of comment reserved for crackpots, she was certain. A lie detector test was a good start to separate truth and fiction, at least about what someone truly believed. “I still want to go through with it,” she assured the officer.
“Mind if I sit down?” She was already perching uneasily on the ottoman directly in front of Elizabeth.
“My daughter’s sleeping and I don’t want to wake her.”
Maya nodded and said quietly but with an edge, “The crash at the restaurant. How did you know it was coming?”
She’d explained already, but Maya, like Thronson, wanted answers. “Like I told Detective Thronson, I heard it coming. I saw the car speeding out of control, aimed straight for the restaurant.”
“No,” Maya disagreed. “You were in the car’s path at least half a minute before the car plowed through the glass. You saved that kid’s life because you knew the crash was going to happen.”
“I just reacted,” Elizabeth insisted, her head beginning to pound.
“Well, see, that’s the problem. I think you acted. Not reacted. It was impossible for you to see that car coming.”
Elizabeth’s back stiffened. “Did you come here to tell me about Detective Thronson or was that just an excuse to badger me? I reacted to a situation, a calamity I saw coming, and that boy and his family are alive because of it. I’m not going to feel bad about doing what anyone would have.”
“People are asking who you are. They know I spoke with you at the site. I haven’t given them your name.”
“Media people?”
Maya nodded slowly.
“I appreciate that,” Elizabeth said shortly.
“I don’t want this turning into a circus any more than I imagine you do, but I intend to get to the bottom of it. And I intend to find out who killed Detective Thronson.”
“I wish you the best of luck in that.”
Maya studied Elizabeth’s face, looking for signs of guilt, she suspected. “If there’s anything you’ve left out, something you remember later, call me.” Maya pressed a card into Elizabeth’s hand.
“I’ll do that.” Elizabeth got to her feet and ushered the officer outside. Once she closed the door behind Maya, Elizabeth threw the dead bolt, exhaled a long breath and leaned against the panels.
Detective Thronson’s image swam before her eyes and she swallowed hard. From fear. From grief. From not understanding what kind of vortex had caught her in its deadly swirl, trapping her. People around her were dying ugly, tragic deaths. Some of those deaths were presumed to be accidents. Mazie’s single-car crash. Court losing control due to road rage. Others were not. Someone had definitely shot Detective Thronson, like Officer Daniels had been shot. Yes, Thronson’s and Daniels’s homicides could have been brought on by someone not connected to Elizabeth. They were both po
lice officers, and Thronson was a homicide detective, investigating murders. Her line of work was dangerous. But the timing of her murder was directly after she left Elizabeth, if Maya could be believed. Elizabeth didn’t think the officer would get it wrong. It seemed more than coincidence. A lot more. Elizabeth felt sick inside. And someone had definitely gone out of their way to kill Channing Renfro, GoodGuy, dousing him with gasoline and setting him ablaze. That took a certain amount of planning.
As she leaned against the door, she saw them all . . . the victims, each face appearing in her mind’s eye, distorted and pained, eyes accusing. One image replaced by another, those victims included Detective Bette Thronson. Would there be no end?
Not as long as you keep becoming enraged with people.
Elizabeth felt a serious lurch of her stomach. She ran to the kitchen sink where she heaved up most of the little she’d eaten during the day. Clutching the edge of the counter, leaning over the sink, her nostrils and mouth smelling of bile she dry-heaved a second time.
Rinsing out her mouth, she splashed water over her face and told herself to calm down, to think rationally as she cleaned the sink. No such luck. The shaking started in her fingers, but soon involved her hands and arms, crawling up her body until her teeth started chattering and she wondered if she was literally falling apart, not only mentally, but physically, as well. She slid down the cabinetry to puddle on the floor and dropped her face into her hands. What was happening to her? Tears burned in her eyes and it was all she could do to keep from breaking into full-fledged sobs.
Don’t do this.
Pull yourself together.
You can’t let whatever’s happening steal your sanity. You can’t fall apart. What would Chloe do without you? Get a damned grip! Do it. Your daughter needs a strong, sane mother, not some sniveling weakling who’s confused and feeling sorry for herself. Get the fuck up!
“Oh, for the love of God,” she whispered, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. Setting her jaw, she stood up and forced her knees to hold her. She stalked to the front door and looked out the peephole to make certain Officer Maya had left.
Sure enough, the cop and her car were no longer in view, but she didn’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet as through the fish-eye lens she saw a man and a woman walking up to the porch!
“Oh, God.” The supposed half sister and the investigator her father had warned her about. She thought about not answering, but as before, she knew she would just be putting off the inevitable. But that didn’t mean she would be buying the girl’s tale. The world was rife with predators who, upon learning of a family member’s death, would come out of the woodwork to take advantage of those left behind. Oftentimes claims were filed against an estate by long-lost family members who felt they were entitled to their due. Maybe that was what was happening. Maybe this girl thought there was money to be had, that Court, a lawyer, had been wealthy when he died....
Except that, according to dear old dad, this girl’s claiming to be your sister, so she can’t really lay claim to Court’s estate.
But why else would she suddenly appear, so close to his death? For a fleeting second, Elizabeth wondered if her father was actually behind this total fabrication. Along with a lot of people, he believed that because Court was a lawyer and drove a BMW, he was wealthy. And yet, for all her father’s faults and his desire to use her “ability” for profit, she didn’t think he would try to steal from her.
Before they could ring the doorbell and wake Chloe, Elizabeth slid the chain lock free and opened the door a crack, just enough so that she could see her visitors.
The man stopped short. He was tall, around six-feet, with deep-set eyes and dark, almost black hair that shone under the porch lamp. The look on his face was intense.
Great. Just what she needed.
The woman next to him, barely out of her teens, was staring hard at Elizabeth as if memorizing every plane of her face. Dressed almost like a boy, or street kid, she was a honey-blond, her hair pulled away from a face devoid of makeup, her features even.
With an inner jolt, Elizabeth recognized a resemblance between them. Her father hadn’t been wrong about that.
But whatever story they were peddling, she wasn’t interested.
“Elizabeth Gaines?” the man asked.
“My name is Elizabeth Ellis,” she said, her pulse elevating again. God, she was wrung out; she shouldn’t even be talking to these people.
“But it was Gaines,” the girl insisted. “You’re Elizabeth Gaines who went to Van Buren High.”
The guy sent his companion a look meant to silence her.
“Rex Kingston,” he introduced himself, focusing on Elizabeth’s face, or what he could see of it in the crack of the door. “Kingston Investigations.” He pulled out a card and moved up the steps to reach it toward her.
Reluctantly, Elizabeth took it from his fingers, then scanned it in the illumination from the porch light. Rex wasn’t the name her father had told her, but there it was on the business card. Joel “Rex” Kingston.
“And this is Ravinia Rutledge, my client.”
“I’m actually your cousin,” the girl cut in again.
“Cousin?” Elizabeth repeated. “I thought you were claiming to be my half sister.”
“You spoke to your father?” Ravinia asked.
“I . . . yes.” Elizabeth gazed at Ravinia who kept on studying her as if searching for something she couldn’t quite find. In those moments, Elizabeth felt something move through her, something she couldn’t name, but it stilled the breath in her lungs and for a second her body was suffused with heat. And then as quickly as it came on, it dissipated.
What the hell?
She turned back to Kingston, unnerved by the girl. “Why did she claim to be my half sister if she’s my cousin?”
His eyes also seemed to be searching her face, and his lips parted as if he were going to answer, but it was Ravinia who spoke up first.
“I wanted to find you. I thought your father wouldn’t believe a cousin as much as a sister. But I am who I say I am.”
“Well, that’s fine, but I don’t want to talk to either of you.”
“Wait!” Ravinia called as Elizabeth started to shut the door.
“Think about it,” the investigator said. “You’ve got my card. She has some information for you that you might like to hear. Call, if you change your mind.”
Ravinia looked at him as if he’d lost his senses. “I’m not leaving.”
“You’re leaving if she says you’re leaving. This is her property, and you’re a trespasser.”
“I’m her cousin!”
“She doesn’t think so,” he pointed out, and Elizabeth got the feeling that this kind of conversation went on between them more often than not.
“Are you related?” she asked him, indicating Ravinia.
“No.” He was definite on that. When she didn’t immediately shut the door, he pulled out his wallet and took out several pieces of identification, his California driver’s license and a PI license, both of which could be bought on the streets of LA. You just had to have enough cash and the right connections. “Ravinia showed up in my office and asked me to locate you. That’s how we met. That’s how we ended up here,” he said.
“It’s important I talk to you,” Ravinia insisted, throwing Kingston a look that said, you’re not helping.
But he was helping, she realized. He’d disarmed Elizabeth with his honesty. If it was a ploy, it had certainly worked because she turned her attention to him again.
He spread his hands. “As I said, you might want to hear what she has to say.”
Elizabeth hesitated. More out of curiosity than anything else, she almost let them in. But she had enough to deal with. More than enough. “Sorry.” With that she shut the door. She didn’t have the time nor the energy for this. Her life was enough of a shambles as it was.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The knocking was so loud, Elizabeth whirled to face the do
or again just as the bell chimed. Oh, for the love of God! They were going to wake Chloe and she—
“Mommy?”
Elizabeth gritted her teeth. Damn it. Too late.
Rubbing her eyes, and gripping onto her favorite blanket, Chloe stood in the hallway. Her hair was tousled, sticking up in all directions, the line between her brows etched deep.
The damn bell rang again. “Elizabeth! Open up!” Ravinia called, her voice muffled through the door panels. “We are related! I’m just trying to help, and I need to tell you things.” She sounded frantic, almost hyped up.
Elizabeth hadn’t gotten the hit that either one of them was on any kind of drug. Nor, after the brief conversation did she think they were running some kind of obvious scam. Because they’re good at it. Ignore them.
“I’m one of your cousins.”
There are more?
“I’ve come from Siren Song. It’s a place near Deception Bay. In Oregon. I . . . Your mother is my aunt.”
Oh, good Lord.
“Who is that?” Chloe demanded and pointed her free hand toward the front door.
“No one.”
“It’s someone,” she said in a tone that said Elizabeth was lying to her.
“No one I know,” Elizabeth corrected. “I’m sorry for the racket.” Refusing to answer the door again, she shepherded her child back toward her bedroom, guiding her daughter in the glow of a night-light. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Just go back to bed and—”
“No!” Chloe balked, digging her heels into the carpet.
“Chloe, it’s late. I’m sorry that you woke up, but it’s time to sleep.” Elizabeth was growing angry with the girl on her doorstep. Worse yet, the pounding continued only to be interrupted by the peal of the doorbell again. If she weren’t already in trouble with the damn police, she would have dialed 9-1-1 in a heartbeat and have the cops remove Kingston and Ravinia from her property. Maybe she would, anyway.
“Not going to bed,” Chloe insisted and to prove her point, dropped to the floor and wrapped her blanket around her as if it were some protective shield.
“Of course you’re going to bed. Me, too. Real soon.”