Superstition

by Karen Robards

  Indeed, Nicky noticed as she determinedly focused on the here and now again, there were three untouched helpings of egg on toast on a plate in the center of the table, and another plate—only about a third full now, since Livvy had been helping herself—of bacon. In case, as Uncle Ham would have said, anybody should want seconds. Or thirds.

  “Appreciate the offer,” Joe said, eyeing the food with what looked to Nicky like considerable regret. “But I actually came by to talk to Ms. Sullivan, if she feels up to it.”

  Nicky’s stomach sank. No, Ms. Sullivan doesn’t feel up to it. Definitely not.

  “Now?” Uncle Ham’s brows snapped together. Could he read her reaction in her face? “It’s nearly two-thirty in the morning, and she’s been through a lot.”

  “I know.” Joe looked at Nicky. “I understand from some of the people you work with that you’re planning to fly out later today. Otherwise, I’d just ask you to stop by the office tomorrow and give us a statement.”

  “Are you leaving today? I would have thought—after what happened . . .” Leonora’s voice trailed off and her brows slowly met over the bridge of her nose as her gaze touched Nicky’s. “Maybe you should go.”

  Because she might be in danger. Her mother’s expression as much as her words crystallized the fear that Nicky had until that moment refused to face.

  She had nearly been killed along with Karen tonight. If things had happened just a little bit differently, she would be dead right now.

  And the killer was still out there.

  Wild horses couldn’t keep her off that plane.

  “Now is fine,” Nicky said, pushing her chair back and standing up. Her scraped and bruised knees ached, the cut in her side reminded her of its existence with a sharp twinge, and her head swam unexpectedly. Tottering a little, she caught hold of the back of the chair for support, then gritted her teeth and fought to pull herself together. Talking to the police was unavoidable, and if she meant to be on that plane at ten-thirty a.m., then now was the moment to do it. From her own work as a reporter, she knew that as the person who had found the body—Oh, God, “the body” would be Karen—any evidence she could give would be of vital importance to the investigation. And beyond that, she had been attacked, too, presumably by the same man, presumably for the same purpose.

  Could she identify the killer?

  Her skin turned to gooseflesh at the thought.

  “Is there someplace we can talk in private?” Joe asked, and the confused images that had begun to swirl through her mind receded.

  “Use the den,” Leonora suggested, peering at him over the top of her glasses.

  Fighting not to shiver, Nicky glanced at Harry—the den was his secondary place of refuge after the garage—and he nodded.

  “Game’s over,” he said. “Feel free.”

  “This way.” Taking a deep breath, Nicky squared her shoulders, let go of the chair, and started to lead the way out of the kitchen. Joe followed. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him pause to look back at the group around the table.

  “Dave will be taking statements from the rest of you while we’re here, if you don’t mind. Your whereabouts during the last fifteen minutes or so that the show was being broadcast, anything unusual you might remember, things like that.”

  There was a murmur in response, but Nicky was too far away to hear what was said. Anyway, she didn’t care. Walking was much harder than she remembered it being, and just putting one foot in front of the other without collapsing required all her concentration.

  By the time she reached the den, Nicky was freezing. It was a small room, paneled in rare longleaf pine, with an elaborately carved fireplace built into one wall and a single tall window that looked out into the side yard in the middle of another. A pair of shabby leather armchairs flanked the fireplace; a tapestry-covered couch had been placed opposite them. The faint smell of wood smoke from decades of fires hung in the air. Harry was a Civil War buff, and paintings of the Blue and Gray engaged in various epic battles adorned the walls. The drapes—once-grand gold damask panels that were now so old that they were almost see-through in places—were closed. The only light, a faint bluish glow, came from the small jabbering TV in the entertainment center that took up nearly the entire wall beside the door. Unable to bear its too-cheerful noise, Nicky switched the TV off as soon as she entered, then found the sudden near darkness unexpectedly unnerving.

  Get a grip, she told herself, and walked steadily across the shadow-filled room to the lamp on Harry’s big desk, which was positioned in front of the window about as far away from the door as it was possible to get. Turning on the lamp, relieved at the soft yellow glow that banished the shadows, she didn’t realize that she had been holding her breath until it escaped in a soft whoosh.

  Then she sank down in one of the armchairs by the fireplace, wincing a little as the tape that held the bandage in place tugged at her skin, and pulled Livvy’s too-pink robe closer around her throat.

  She was so cold. Cold as death . . .

  “Do you mind?” Joe asked. He’d closed the door while she was turning on the lamp, and he was now standing beside Harry’s desk. Nicky frowned a little in incomprehension, then saw that he had something in his hand, which she discovered on closer inspection was a small portable tape recorder. Clearly, he was asking if she minded if he taped their conversation, and her permission, just as clearly, was something that he took for granted, because he turned on the machine even before she nodded.

  He identified himself, identified her, and gave the time, place, and date.

  “So, how are you feeling?” That was his first question. He was leaning back against Harry’s desk now, his arms crossed over his chest. Besides the ancient T-shirt, he was wearing sneakers and worn jeans that hugged his lean hips and long, muscular legs.

  It occurred to her that he looked sexy as hell standing there like that. It also occurred to her that he looked pretty unprofessional for a police chief.

  In which capacity he would undoubtedly be heading the investigation into Karen’s murder. She pursed her lips.

  “Fine,” she lied, electing to concentrate on the subject at hand, then added, “considering,” because of course it was obvious that she wasn’t fine. Then she ended up changing the subject by asking him about something that had been bugging her since she’d heard him say it in the kitchen: “Why ask my family their whereabouts during the last fifteen minutes of the show? What happened to Karen—it happened after we were off the air.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Why . . . I followed her down the driveway, and I didn’t go outside until the broadcast was over. Probably at least ten minutes after the broadcast was over.”

  “You followed her down the driveway.” He was watching her closely, his brows drawn together above the faintest of frowns.

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Before you followed her down the driveway, when was the last time you saw her?”

  Nicky thought. “In the hall, right before I followed my mother upstairs. We were on the air. Karen”—she swallowed as the memory came back to her—“was in the downstairs hall, and I walked past her.”

  “And this would be about what time, do you think?”

  “Probably about fifteen minutes before we finished. If you look at the tape of the show, the time should be easy to fix. My mother would have been going up the stairs to the second floor.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” His tone was noncommittal. “What was Karen doing? Who was she with?”

  Nicky tried to remember. “She was watching my mother, like everybody else. And . . . smiling, because things were finally going well. Actually, she gave me a thumbs-up.” The memory hurt. “She was with . . . oh, gosh, I don’t know. I think . . . Cassandra? And maybe Mario. There was a group standing together near the bottom of the stairs, but I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  He nodded as if to say he understood.

  “So when I saw you in th
e kitchen after you were off the air, you hadn’t seen Karen since right before you’d gone upstairs about fifteen minutes before the end of the broadcast?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did you go outside?”

  Nicky frowned. She had to think a minute. Then she remembered: She’d been looking for Karen, and he had entered the kitchen, and she hadn’t wanted to deal with him—two very good reasons, only one of which she meant to tell him.

  “Gordon said Karen had gotten a phone call, and that he thought it was Sid—somebody important—about the show, and I wanted to know if it was, and what he said. Also, I wanted to tell her that she was giving me a ride home in her car.”

  “Gordon?”

  “Gordon Davies, one of our cameramen.”

  He nodded. “Okay. So you went outside. Then what?”

  “I stood on the patio for a few seconds.” Nicky felt herself starting to tense up. She didn’t want to remember this—but for Karen’s sake, and her own, she had to.

  “Then I saw Karen walking down the driveway. And I followed her.”

  “Did you call out to her or anything?”

  Nicky shook her head. She was so cold now, it was all she could do not to shiver openly.

  “No?” he prompted.

  “No,” she said, realizing that he wanted her to respond out loud for the benefit of the tape recorder. “I thought she was probably talking on the phone. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “What makes you think she was on the phone? Could you hear her talking?”

  Nicky thought. A flash of memory crystallized in her mind’s eye: Karen ahead of her in the dark, moving down toward the shadow of the pines . . .

  Clenching her teeth, she did her best to remain objective.

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t hear her. Not ever. Even when I was close enough, when we were both . . . under the trees. I remember thinking I should have been able to hear her.”

  “So you never heard her. Let me ask you something: Did you ever actually see her? Well enough to positively identify her, that is?”

  “What?” Nicky blinked at him. “I told you: I followed her down the driveway.”

  “Are you sure?” He was watching her intently. “That it was her, I mean.”

  Nicky stared at him. The possibility that whoever she had followed down the driveway might not have been Karen had never occurred to her until now. Her brows knit. What had she actually seen?

  “I think it was,” she said at last. “I saw someone walking away from me down the driveway, moving kind of aimlessly, like you do sometimes when you’re talking on the phone, and it looked like Karen to me. I’m almost positive that it was a woman. Slim, with kind of a swaying walk. But no, now that you mention it, I didn’t actually see enough of her to be absolutely positive it was Karen. It was too dark.”

  “So the person you saw could have been anybody.”

  “Well—” Nicky frowned. “I guess. Are you saying that you think it wasn’t Karen?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to get things right here. If it was Karen, then she had to have been killed after you saw her, and that makes the time frame kind of tight. If it wasn’t Karen, then the possibilities open up some.”

  “Who else could it have been?”

  “At this point, I don’t have any idea.” He hesitated. “Let me ask you something: How well did you know Karen?”

  “We were colleagues. Friends, but work friends, if you know what I mean. Outside the job, I didn’t ever see her. We all—the crew I have here with me—started working together in August, when Twenty-four Hours Investigates was being put together. I didn’t know her before that.”

  “So you wouldn’t know if there was someone in her personal life who might want to do her harm?”

  “No, probably not. But I never heard of anything like that.”

  “Okay.” He paused for a moment, glancing over at the tape recorder as if to make sure it was still working. Then his gaze switched back to Nicky. “I realize that this might be tough for you, but . . . I want you to take me down that driveway with you. Tell me everything that happened.”

  Nicky simply looked at him for a moment without saying anything. Then, when she tried to speak, her lips parted but her throat wouldn’t work.

  “Take your time.” His eyes flicked over her face. He was still frowning slightly, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. “You walked out the back door onto the patio and saw someone you thought was Karen. Then what?”

  “I started walking down the driveway toward her, sort of following her, not wanting to call to her until she got off the phone.” Her voice had come back, she was relieved to discover, but she was suddenly so cold that she had to tuck her hands into the sleeves of her robe while her toes curled up in their fuzzy socks. “The big pine trees there at the turn of the driveway, they cast this enormous dark shadow over the pavement, and when I stepped into it, everything seemed to . . . stop. It was just unbelievably dark, so I couldn’t really see anything, and for some reason, I couldn’t hear anything, either, not the birds or the insects or anything that I’d been hearing before. It was kind of like I’d fallen down a hole, a black hole, and then I realized that I couldn’t hear Karen.”

  The memory came back in a rush, and for a moment, Nicky was back under that pine tree, alone in the silent dark. “She was right in front of me, I thought, and I should have been able to hear her. But I couldn’t. Then . . . I don’t know why, exactly, but I got scared and turned and ran.” She took a deep breath, remembering. Her heart began pumping faster, and goose bumps slid to prickling life over her skin. “Someone jumped me from behind. A man, I’m almost sure. I didn’t see him, but . . . anyway, I think it was a man. Then I must have hit my head on the pavement and blacked out, because the next thing I remember is waking up under that tree.”

  Remembering, she started to feel dizzy and closed her eyes. Reconstructing what had happened next as a continuous sequence was impossible, she discovered, when she tried. It was too terrifying, too painful. Instead, snippets of memory swirled into her consciousness like quick snapshots of horror.

  “Go on.” His voice was deep and low, steadying, a verbal lifeline anchoring her to the here and now, and she latched onto it thankfully. She could feel his eyes on her, feel the weight of his gaze, hear his occasional encouragement when she paused or her voice broke, but she kept her eyes steadfastly closed. In halting phrases broken up by pauses in which fragments of scenes so graphic that they took her breath away flashed on the screen of her mind, she told him everything she could remember.

  When she finished at last, he said nothing. For a moment, she didn’t move but simply sat there with her head resting back against the smooth leather upholstery while she breathed carefully in and out and fought to drag her mind back to the present. Then, as the terrible images finally began to recede, she opened her eyes to discover that he was crouched in front of her, his brows drawn together and his mouth grim as he looked at her.

  His hands were big, long-fingered, and tan, with smooth, well-kept nails. They were warm, and strong, with faint calluses on the palms. She knew this because she was holding on to them tightly, though she had no memory of reaching out to him or having him reach out to her. He was close enough so that she could see the exact pattern the fatigue lines made around his eyes, and each individual whisker in the stubble that darkened his cheeks and chin. The width of his shoulders blocked her view of much of the room, and his shadow fell across her like a blanket. That he was able to get that close without her even having been aware that he had moved, to say nothing of the fact that she hadn’t even known that she was clutching his hands, said volumes about just how deeply into the recesses of her mind she had plunged, she realized. She realized too that she was huddled against one wing of the chair now, with her legs drawn up beside her, having made herself into almost as small a package as physically possible. Her skin felt cold and clammy, and she was shiv
ering so hard that her teeth began to chatter.

  “Hey.” Joe said it very gently as their eyes met. His were a warm, golden hazel, flecked with green, dark now with concern for her. “You okay?”

  8

  NO. THAT WAS THE SHORT, brutal truth, but Nicky didn’t say it. Instead, she clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering and swallowed hard, fighting to regain her composure. But the horror, once summoned, was hard to shake.

  She nodded.

  “Sure?”

  Still too upset to speak, she nodded again and concentrated on steadying her breathing and letting the hideous images go. She felt so cold that the sensation was like a physical ache; the only warm spot on her entire body was where her hands touched Joe’s.

  “I’m sorry I had to put you through that,” he said after a moment. The nasty cop was being kind now, and she appreciated the change, but it didn’t really help. What she needed was strength, and for that she had to dig deep inside herself. It required a physical effort, but she finally managed to stop shivering and relax her jaw. Then she took a deep breath and drew the remnants of her composure around herself like a tattered garment.

  And she let go of his hands. He didn’t seem to notice as she folded her arms across her chest instead.

  “The thing is . . . he knew my name. He said ‘Nicky’ and t-touched my hair.” Her voice sounded hoarse, croaky, not like her voice at all.

  “You’re on TV. Lots of people know your name.”

  There was that, of course. The thought didn’t exactly make her feel any better.

  “Did you recognize the voice?” He didn’t sound particularly hopeful.

  She shook her head. Just remembering that whispered “Nicky” made her skin crawl.

  “Can you . . . tell me something?” she asked after a moment. “How exactly did Karen die?”

  He regarded her steadily. He was still crouched in front of her, so close that she thought she could feel a little of the welcome warmth of his body heat radiating toward her. His hands now rested lightly on the arms of her chair, so that he was in effect closing her in. Under the circumstances, his position was comforting rather than claustrophobia-inducing.