A Selection of Recent Titles by Susan Rogers Cooper
The E J Pugh Mysteries
ONE TWO WHAT DID DADDY DO?
HICKORY DICKORY STALK
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN
THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL
A CROOKED LITTLE HOUSE
NOT IN MY BACK YARD
DON’T DRINK THE WATER
ROMANCED TO DEATH *
FULL CIRCLE *
The Milt Kovak Series
THE MAN IN THE GREEN CHEVY
HOUSTON IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR
OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES
CHASING AWAY THE DEVIL
DEAD MOON ON THE RISE
DOCTORS AND LAWYERS AND SUCH
LYING WONDERS
VEGAS NERVE
SHOTGUN WEDDING *
RUDE AWAKENING *
The Kimmey Kruse Series
FUNNY AS A DEAD COMIC
FUNNY AS A DEAD RELATIVE
*available from Severn House
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This first world edition published 2010 in
Great Britain and in the USA by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Rogers Cooper.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cooper, Susan Rogers.
Full circle. – (An E. J. Pugh mystery)
1. Pugh, E. J. (Fictitious character) – Fiction. 2. Women
novelists – Fiction. 3. Women private investigators –
United States – Fiction. 4. Stalkers – Fiction.
5. Detective and mystery stories.
I. Title II. Series
813.5’4-dc22
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-052-4 (ePub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6955-5 (cased)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-284-0 (trade paper)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
TO MY FAVOURITE ELIZABETH,
WHO ONCE WAS A BUSSIE,
(RUSSIAN FOR BESSIE)
BUT NOW IS JUST
COUSIN LIZ.
ONE
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, THE PRESENT
They’re all asleep in there. Thinking they’re safe. They stole her from me again. They won’t win next time. Bessie’s mine. She belongs with me. If I have to kill the whole family to get her, I will.
E.J., THE PRESENT
I woke up with a start. The clock said three a.m., but my body said something was wrong. Pulse rapid, breath coming in quick gulps. I counted heads. My husband, Willis, lay beside me, snoring as only he can. The kids had gone upstairs only a few hours ago, really – midnight, one a.m. God, I had no idea when we finally stopped going over it and over it and all of us went off to our respective beds. That’s what woke me. It wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
I had been in Austin for four days for a convention. I’m a romance writer and this had been a biggie for me; I’d been nominated for a Lady, the most prestigious award in the romance biz. I’d lost, but still . . . And then all that glory had come crashing down with the death of my roommate. Willis had rushed to my side, leaving our kids in the care of his mother, Vera.
But they’d had plans of their own, my children. Plans that nearly got them killed.
I climbed out of bed, careful not to awaken Willis, and moved to the window seat. The window was open to the cool night air of April, and I could hear the cicadas trilling their messages, the first sign of summer.
Summer comes early in central Texas. In a month the song of the cicadas would be muted by a closed window and the hum of central air-conditioning. After ten hours of hot Texas sun, even at midnight the roof tiles would still be hot to the touch.
But at that moment, the back yard was bathed in moonlight, washing the color out of everything: the redwood picnic table, the faded red and blue plastic swing set that had been sitting in that same spot for ten years. If Willis had his way, it would still be sitting there when we had grandchildren to play on it. And maybe that wasn’t a bad idea.
Grandchildren. That all depended upon our ability to keep our current children alive.
I’m not a person who worries over what almost happened. I’ve been through enough in my life to glory in the almost-happened, to relish it, to cherish it. The problem now, this night, was that it wasn’t over.
The kids thought it was. And thinking that, they could find the macabre humor lying beneath it all. I’d been in these situations enough to know that a threat like my girls had endured didn’t just stop when the stalker ran away. No. Stalkers don’t stop. They come back, and back, and back. Until they’re satisfied in their sick-puppy minds. And I’m afraid the only thing that would satisfy this sicko was the rape or death of my daughter Bessie. And that was not going to happen. Willis and I would find this sicko, and he would go to jail.
Or die.
Where to start? It goes back ten years, really, to the day I walked next door to my neighbors to get the kids for carpool. The most horrible day of my life.
BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999
It was my week to drive the carpool. After a long, wet weekend I was more than happy to bundle up my kids and get them to their respective schools. Rainy days and small children don’t go well together. I got my two, Graham, six years old, and Megan, four years old, into the station wagon, got them buckled, and honked the horn for my next-door neighbor, Terry Lester. Her two younger children, Aldon, ten, and Bessie, four, were to ride with me. Her oldest, Monique, sixteen, was driven to school by her father. It was bad enough that I had to take my troops to two different schools – the expensive private pre-K for the two four-year-olds, and the public elementary for my Graham and Terry’s Aldon.
There was no response from the house next door. Cursing under my breath, I told my kids to stay put and ran to the Lesters’ back door, dodging puddles from the weekend’s rain. The door was unlocked as we usually didn’t lock up much out here in suburbia. Stepping inside Terry’s kitchen, I got my first hint: the coffee pot was sitting on the counter, cold and empty. Second hint: no boxes of cereal on the kitchen table, no spill of milk, no lights, no camera, no action. Diagnosis: the Lesters had overslept again. I called out Terry’s name, then headed for the staircase leading to the bedrooms. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to wake up the Lester family.
Terry’s house was neater than mine and more formal than mine. Hell, the boys’ locker room at the high school was more formally decorated than my house. I had to pass through the dining room with its Chippendale-style table, chairs, and sideboard into the foyer to get to the stairs. From there I could see into the living room, with its impossibly cream-colored couch and loveseat, the pale carpet without a spot on it, and the knick-knacks my children couldn’t keep their hands off.
I headed up the stairs. I had only taken one step when I saw the stains on the walls. Then I smelled it. Two distinct smells, actually. One I recognized but didn’t want to admit. One that matched the stains on the wall. The other was something new, something bad.
I stepped back, my mind gone suddenly blank. Something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong, but I didn’t know what. And I didn’t want to know what. Without much thought I ran out of the house, got my kids out of the station wagon and into our own home.
‘Take your sister upstairs!’ I yelled at Graham.
‘Why?’ he yelled back.
‘Because I said so!’ I said, grabbing the phone in the entry hall. I dialed 911 and told the operator to get someone out to the Lesters’ address. While I was still on the phone with 911, I felt a presence on the stairs. I turned and saw my daughter Megan standing at the top of the stairs, tears in her eyes, her pretty face scrunched up.
‘Megan, go back to your—’
‘I’m not playing with Bessie no more—’
‘Anymore,’ I automatically corrected. ‘Honey, I’m on the phone—’
‘She won’t even wave at me!’ Megan wailed.
‘Megan, I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
‘She’s just standing there at the window being mean!’ Megan said.
The implications of what my daughter was saying finally dawned on me. I dropped the phone and ran up the stairs. The window in Megan’s room overlooked the connecting driveways of our house and the Lesters’ next door. Straight across from Megan’s window on the second floor was Bessie’s. And Megan was right: Bessie was standing at her own window, her face and clothes matted with rusty red.
I grabbed Megan and took her into her brother’s room. ‘Graham, watch Megan.’
‘Is she gonna do tricks?’ replied my smart-alec son.
‘Do it!’ I said. There must have been something in my voice. For once, my six-year-old son actually obeyed.
I ran out of the house to the Lesters’ back door. It was still open, just the way I left it. And somewhere upstairs, beyond the blood I’d seen on the stairway, Bessie stood, obviously hurt but alive. I knew I couldn’t wait for the police, or an ambulance, or anyone else. I was there. And so was Bessie.
I’ve never thought to ask myself if I’m brave. That’s not one of those characteristics women think a lot about. That’s a man’s bailiwick. In retrospect, I don’t think going after Bessie was all that brave, not if bravery is a conscious decision. I was running on instinct; there was nothing conscious about going into that house at all.
Once inside, I headed for the stairway, and turned on the light. The marks on the walls were reddish brown, and the smell was distinctive. I hurried up the stairs to the landing and, turning, started to head up the second half of the flight but tripped, falling face first. And landing on ten-year-old Aldon, lying on his back, his eyes opened, the formerly feisty blue eyes now almost opaque in death. The top of his pajamas was covered in blood. I scrambled off him, throwing myself backwards against the wall. I felt the bile rise in my throat, and jumping to my feet, ran back down the stairs for the clear air outside.
I gulped in lungfuls of warm spring air. My body was shaking all over and I knew I had to get home, back to my own babies and away from whatever had happened at the Lester house. After two steps in the direction of my own home, I remembered Bessie. Standing at the window, staring into space – covered with blood and gore. But alive. I couldn’t leave four-year-old Bessie in that house. I couldn’t.
I hugged the wall as I gingerly stepped around little Aldon, trying not to touch or disturb him in any way. At the head of the stairs I turned right again, starting toward the end of the hall where Bessie’s room was. Terry and Roy’s room was the first on the left. My eyes seemed to have a mind of their own and swiveled to the open doorway of the parents’ room.
Sitting on the floor, his back against the open door, was Roy, or what was left of him. I only recognized him from the pajamas I’d helped Terry pick out last Christmas. Royal-blue Chinese silk. They’d cost $150. The top half was soaked in blood, the door behind him a Rorschach pattern of gore. Between the legs of royal-blue silk rested a shotgun, Roy’s finger still on the trigger guard, although the muzzle had dropped across his left arm. His face was gone.
I gripped the doorjamb to steady myself. When I moved my hand to continue on down the hallway, I saw the bloody handprint – my own. I looked down at my hands and the front of my shirt, all covered with blood. Aldon’s blood, no doubt. At some point I heard a high keening sound. It took just a moment before I realized it was coming from me.
I forced myself to go on. The last room on the left was Monique’s, my babysitter, the girl who trusted me with her heart’s secrets. The door was open. Monique was in a sitting position against the back wall, her eyes squinched shut, her mouth in a grimace. Blood from her body had spattered the wall behind her, leaving a bloody pattern on the colorful posters hanging on the wall. Terry lay across Monique’s bed, the back of her nightgown covered in blood.
I moved to Terry’s body and gingerly picked up her hand, feeling for a pulse I knew wasn’t there. I sobbed out loud. One eye was hidden by the blanket, the other stared dully at me. I touched the lid softly, pulling it down to close over the big, cocker spaniel brown eye. I wanted to stay there forever, just hold her in my arms and cry. But I didn’t. Turning, I quickly moved across the hall to Bessie’s room.
She still stood where I had seen her from Megan’s window. Staring ahead of her into space, her little arms by her sides, her back to me. She looked so angelic standing there, her pretty little pink nightgown, her long dark brown hair falling in tresses down her back.
I gulped in air, steadied myself against the doorjamb and said, ‘Bessie, honey, it’s me, Auntie E.J.’
There was no movement from the window. ‘Bessie, honey, we’re going to go to my house and play with Megan, OK? You want to do that?’
I moved cautiously toward her and gently turned her to face me. Her eyes, carbon copies of her mother’s, didn’t track. They moved where her body moved, but they weren’t seeing anything. From the back she had seemed angelically aloof from all the mess around her, but turning her I saw the front: the blood-matted nightgown, clumps of something foul on her face and in her hair. I picked her up in my arms. ‘We’re going to go play with Megan now,’ I cooed. ‘Just you and me. How does that sound?’
I pressed her face against my breast as I made my way out of that house of death.
E.J, THE PRESENT
That had been more than ten years ago. Bessie was now ours, legally adopted years ago, emotionally ours from the very beginning. The loss of Terry Lester, my best friend, was something I’ll never get over. I’ve made friendships since then, but none like that I had with Terry. I think that true friendship is like true love: you only get one chance at such a gift, and Terry was mine: My true friend. I will miss her until the day I die.
But I think I’ve done good by her. I love her daughter as my own; all of Terry’s special things are still in storage until Bessie has her own home. And I’ve tried to keep Terry and Roy and Monique and Aldon alive in Bessie’s mind and heart, as well as in my own. But this – how do I protect Bessie from the unknown? From a monster sick enough to pretend to be Bessie’s dead brother to get to her?
All these things were still in my mind as I prepared breakfast this fine Monday morning. I had the windows open to the beautiful April morning. My azaleas were beginning to bloom in the back yard, and the willow tree was budding out. Butterflies flitted by the open window. And all I could think was: Screw the lot of you. I’m not in the mood.
I poured juice as I heard the heavy clomp of size eleven shoes hitting the stair treads. Shortly thereafter, Graham burst into the kitchen. At sixteen, Graham was already three inches above my five-eleven status.
‘Hey,’ he said, flopping down on to a stool at the breakfast bar.
‘Hey yourself,’ I said, setting the juice in front of him. ‘Captain Crunch or Frankenberries?’ I asked.
My son saluted me. Assuming that meant Captain Crunch, I pulled the box from the shelf and handed it to him, just as his father wandered into the room.
‘Have
you seen my briefcase?’ Willis asked, looking absently around the great room.
‘Did you leave it in the car?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ he said, taking a seat on the barstool next to Graham and grabbing the Captain Crunch.
I’d tried the first seven or eight years of having children to never have sugar cereals in the house. Then Graham, who was a great climber, found his father’s stash of Frosted Flakes on the top shelf of the kitchen cabinets and all bets were off. I had to give it up.
‘Graham,’ I said.
‘Huh?’ he said, not looking up as he shoveled cereal into his mouth.
‘Look at me, please!’ I said, my voice sharper than I’d meant it to be.
‘Whaaaat?’ he whined, while looking at me, at least.
‘I want you to keep an eye on Bessie today,’ I said.
‘Elizabeth,’ he corrected. Last year Bessie had decided to go by her full name. I’m not exactly a fan of the idea. ‘And how am I supposed to do that?’ Graham asked. ‘We don’t exactly go to the same school, Mom.’
‘I know that!’ I said. His grandmother had given him her old car when she bought a new one, and today was his first day to drive to school. He’d already promised the girls a ride. ‘When you drop them off this morning, just watch to make sure they get inside . . .’
Graham sighed loudly. ‘Jeez, Mom, of course.’
‘And when you pick them up don’t be a minute late! I don’t want them waiting outside the scho—’
‘You pick ’em up,’ Graham said, standing and taking his bowl to the sink. ‘I’ve got soccer this afternoon.’
‘OK,’ I said, relieved. It would be disruptive for me to drive them to school this morning after Graham had promised them a ride in his ‘new’ car. ‘But you needed to tell me that first thing.’
‘I just did,’ he said, heading for the back stairs.
‘No, I mean . . .’ But I was talking to air; my son was gone.
Then I heard them coming down the stairs. ‘That is too my top!’ Megan said, or screeched.
‘I bought this with my own babysitting money!’ Bessie declared. ‘It’s mine!’
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