Haunting Olivia

by Janelle Taylor

  “I prefer to deal with Johanna herself,” Olivia said. “Let’s go, Zach.”

  “I wouldn’t bother her if I were you,” Marnie quickly said. “She’s got something of a concussion HAUNTING OLIV IA

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  and needs to rest. In fact, she’s at the hospital,” she added, stepping toward Olivia.

  The bell above the door jangled, and a few women came in. Zach saw Olivia’s shoulders visibly slump with relief.

  “I’ll be calling that attorney to inform you that you forfeited,” Marnie said. “According to Johanna, you only have a window of fifteen minutes to produce your daily receipts and sign the clipboard. It’s now eight-twenty.”

  “Actually, Marnie,” Olivia said, “I read the fine print of the letter from my father’s lawyer. It states that if Johanna Cole is unable to conduct her duties as caretaker during the thirty-day period the terms of the conditions are void and the cottage is mine.”

  A murderous glint shone in Marnie’s eyes. “Well, then, enjoy your trashed house.” One of the women perusing a display of turtlenecks asked for Marnie’s help, and Marnie snapped, “We’re closed.”

  “Let’s go, Liv,” Zach said, ushering Olivia out. “Is that true about the conditions?” he asked as they headed down Blueberry Boulevard. “No more eight o’clock visits from Johanna? It’s yours fair and square.”

  “Not that I want it,” she said. “But yes. I just have to talk to Edwin Harris, William’s lawyer. And I suppose Johanna will need to verify that due to illness she was unable to meet her end of the bargain. It might end up being her word against mine.”

  “Nope,” Zach said, pulling out the recorder.

  “Marnie verified it for you.”

  Olivia smiled. “Didn’t you once say you were an architect, not a detective?”

  Zach’s cell phone rang. It was Blueberry’s finest.

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  He, Olivia, and Kayla were wanted at the Abernathy residence.

  “Now what?” Zach muttered as he opened the passenger door of his truck for Olivia.

  Ten minutes later, Zach had his answer. Eva Abernathy woke up that morning to find a dead mole on her pillow—with a note that read: “You’re next.”

  “We found this outside the twins’ bedroom window,”

  an officer said to Zach, holding up a pink wool glove with pink sparkly pompoms on the hem.

  “And we’re pressing charges,” Clark Abnernathy said, his arm around his wife. “My daughters are dropping out of the pageant.”

  “Thanks to Kayla!” Eva screamed from the top of the stairs. “Because of her and her stupid jealousy, we have to drop out. It’s so unfair! And now that we’re out of the pageant, she gets to go first.

  It’s probably all part of her big plan!”

  “Officer, something supposedly connecting my daughter has been found each time there’s been an incident,” Zach said. “I think she’s been set up. If my daughter were going to drop a dead mole on someone’s pillow, she wouldn’t be stupid enough to drop her very unique glove outside the girl’s window. Or leave a perfume trail. Or hand her backpack to the principal when she knows the principal will pull out the evidence that will incriminate her.”

  “He might be right,” the officer said to the Abernathys. “And the glove doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Get out, all of you,” Mrs. Abernathy said, her cheeks bright red.

  Once they were back in the truck, Zach said, “I’ve HAUNTING OLIV IA

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  had it. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m getting to the bottom of it. Now. ”

  “How?” Olivia asked.

  “There are three girls left in the pageant besides Kayla. Marnie’s daughter, Jacqueline McCord’s daughter, and the Carle girl, Cecily. Two of the mothers have a huge problem with both of us, and one of them may be trying to frame Kayla. Let’s go talk to Cecily’s mother. Find out if she’s gotten any threats.”

  A few minutes later, they pulled in front of the Carle house, a pretty extended Cape near the center of town. Rorie Carle welcomed them in, and they sat down at the kitchen table to coffee and scones.

  “Rorie,” Olivia said, “I want to say first that Kayla is not responsible for what’s been going on.”

  “Look,” Rorie said, “I’ll be honest. I don’t know Kayla well. She was over here once and seemed like a sweet, polite girl to me. But so do the Abernathy twins and Brianna Sweetser. I don’t know what to make of Deenie McCord. But when one of the girls called Cecily first thing this morning to report what had happened, even Cecily wondered aloud if Kayla was the culprit.”

  “But Cecily stuck up for Kayla in public,” Olivia said. “I’m surprised to hear that she thinks Kayla’s the one.”

  Rorie shook her head. “She doesn’t think so. She’s just worried that it might be Kayla. If it’s not, then it’s Deenie. But in the window of time that the posters were taped up, Deenie was taking a makeup midterm exam. And everyone knows that her asthma precludes 252

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  her from going anywhere near perfume. One sniff and she can’t breathe. So . . .”

  “So Kayla looks guilty,” Zach finished.

  “I’m sorry,” Rorie said. “I like Kayla. So does Cecily.

  But we don’t know what to think.”

  “Rorie, has Cecily been targeted in any way?”

  Zach asked.

  Rorie’s lips tightened. “I just found out about it this morning. She didn’t want to tell me because she was afraid I’d worr y, but she did receive a threatening letter just a few days ago. After hearing about the dead mole at the Abernathys’, Cecily was so shaken up, she told me about it.”

  “What did the letter say?” Olivia asked.

  Please tell me there is nothing connecting Kayla to this one, Zach thought.

  Rorie got up and took her purse from a hall closet. She withdrew an envelope and handed it to Zach.

  You’re too pretty to win the Inner-Beauty Pageant.

  Everyone knows it’s for ugly girls. So you’re no competition. But you’d better keep your mouth shut. Or else.

  Zach shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said, handing the letter to Olivia.

  “Keep her mouth shut about what?” Olivia asked.

  Rorie shrugged. “At first Cecily thought it meant sticking up for Kayla. But now she doesn’t know what to think.”

  The phone rang, and Zach and Olivia quickly thanked Rorie for her time and honesty, then left.

  “Now what?” Olivia asked, her expression as glum as he felt.

  “Now we go for a walk,” he said. “Between Marnie HAUNTING OLIV IA

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  this morning and this bit of news, I just need a breather.”

  He didn’t have to think about where to go; he in-stinctively drove to the beach, and they headed down the mile-long rocky path to the secluded strip that was always deserted. Today was no different.

  The beach was beautiful. Even gray and cold and still covered in the last storm’s snow, this particular stretch of beach took Zach’s breath away. And it brought him back to the happiest days of his former life, which seemed like a million years ago. He could barely remember being that kid, watching his father stagger up the road at two in the morning, dead drunk. Watching his mother get into some stranger’s car at ten or eleven at night. Twenty minutes later hearing the car door open, then close, then the front door open and close. Coming downstairs in the morning before school to find a half-eaten bag of potato chips on the kitchen table, if he was lucky.

  It was worse, of course, when he was younger and couldn’t fend for himself or earn his own money to feed and clothe himself. But he’d been working since he was fourteen.

  With everything he’d been through, he’d never once thought about stealing. Or lying. Or doing anything other than what seemed right to him.

  When you had parents whose values were completely opposed to yours, doing right came pretty
easily. If you were unsure of what was right in a given situation, you imagined what your mother or father would do and did the opposite.

  His parents had died in a car accident not long after he had left Blueberry with Kayla. He’d been 254

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  tracked down in Boston by a Blueberry cop, heard the “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, son, but . . .”

  The ramshackle house was his. Two bedrooms and peeling paint and falling down. At first, he’d been tempted to come back and live in it, enroll in the University of Maine. But he couldn’t imagine going back, bringing Kayla back to that nothing-ness. Boston was new, about new possibilities, about his new life. He wouldn’t bring her back to Blueberry until he could make a nice home for her.

  “This is where she was conceived,” Olivia said, shaking Zach out of his thoughts.

  He glanced down at where she was staring, their secret place back under the stand of trees, where they’d made love, hidden from view. In Olivia, he’d thought he’d found the answer to every question he’d ever had in life.

  “The last few months have been crazy,” Zach said, kicking at the sand. “It was a combination of Kayla starting eighth grade and my starting to date Marnie. Eighth grade is a world’s away from sev-enth,” he said. “She slowly changed from this sweet angel girl to this defiant, moody creature who’d lock herself in the bathroom, then come out with so much black make-up on her eyes. She’d take her clothing allowance and buy shirts that said: “I Hate You More.” Everything I asked, her answer was:

  ‘Dad, as if!’ or, ‘You are so provincial.’”

  Olivia squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that alone, Zach.”

  “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that Kayla has your family now,” Zach said. “She has two aunts, a baby cousin, a grandmother. She’ll have relatives who’ll love her.”

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  Olivia smiled. “My sisters fell in love with her the moment they met her. I wish they both could have stayed longer. But we’re going to set up another visit in a few weeks. Amanda and Ethan will bring Tommy. And Ivy will bring her fiancé. And then we can all go to the wedding next month.”

  Olivia had looked so happy yesterday, sitting with her sisters, talking, laughing. When he and Kayla had walked in, Ivy and Amanda had jumped up and enfolded them both in hugs. They had marveled over how pretty Kayla was, complimented her on her shoes, asked her about school and the pageant.

  He’d always known she needed and would crave that kind of adult female attention, the kind that aunts were especially perfect at. And it took a huge weight off his back to know Kayla would have her Aunt Amanda and Aunt Ivy in her life from there on in.

  He picked up a rock and flung it as far as he could into the ocean. Then another, harder, faster.

  Olivia put a hand on his arm. “Zach, talk to me.”

  He chucked his last rock back on the ground. “I guess I’m doubting my judgment, Olivia. I’m the genius who took up with Marnie, thought she and Brianna were good influences on Kayla. I want to go with my gut about Kayla on this pageant business.

  But I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”

  “Does your gut tell you she’s guilty?” Olivia asked.

  “My gut tells me she’s capable of everything that’s been done. Including that note to Cecily. She’s been jealous of Cecily for a long time. Before we even signed up for the pageant, she pointed her out in the school yard and said that Cecily thought 256

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  she was ‘so great.’” He closed his eyes and let the cold air wash over him. “I’m at a loss, Liv.”

  “Then let me help you out,” she said. “I’ve only known Kayla for a little over two weeks. But as I’ve said before, in that short time, I’ve spent a lot of time with her. I’ve seen her at what I assume is her worst behavior, and I’ve seen her at her best. She may be capable of doing all those things—the posters, the threats, the dead mole—but I know in my heart she didn’t do them.”

  “How?” he asked. “How are you so sure?”

  “I feel it the way I felt it when I met you, Zach. I knew who you were that first day I met you. Those first ten minutes. That’s how I feel about Kayla. I know she’s good, Zach. Just like I knew you were good.”

  He grabbed her into a fierce hug, holding onto her against the wind. He tried to let go inside, the way he had so effortlessly when he was seventeen.

  But nothing inside him would budge.

  He thought he heard her whisper, “I love you,”

  but he wasn’t sure if it was the wind playing tricks on him, or his mind—or if he was just remembering thirteen years ago, when she’d laid under him on this very spot and whispered, “I love you” in his ear.

  He glanced at her, then out at the ocean. Whatever the case was, he wasn’t ready to deal with it anyway.

  After they left the beach, Olivia called all the hospitals in the area. There was no Johanna Cole admitted to any of them. She called Johanna’s home several times and got the machine repeatedly.

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  Olivia drove past Johanna’s house, and there were no signs of life. Same with the shop, which had a

  “Closed for Vacation” sign on the window.

  No signs of life.

  Do. Not. Go. Near. That. House. Olivia so ordered herself four times but got out of the car. She would just knock, then peer in the windows, just to make sure Johanna wasn’t lifeless on the living room floor, having been beaten to a pulp by her dear cousin.

  Olivia started up the front steps, her ears perked up for any sounds. But there was only the wind whipping through the trees. She knocked. No answer. She knocked harder. No answer. She peered through the bay window, but the curtains blocked her view.

  “Can I help you?”

  Olivia jumped. An elderly couple stood on the sidewalk, eyeing her nervously.

  “I was looking for Johanna,” Olivia said.

  “She said she was going out of town for a while,”

  the woman said. “Saw her loading her suitcases into that little car of hers. All that luggage barely fit in the hatchback. Then she peeled out like someone was chasing her.”

  Interesting. Marnie must have either scared Johanna away or made her leave town. Olivia wondered if Marnie was ner vous that Johanna had loose lips.

  She headed back to Zach’s. No point in buying anything from town.

  Time to call Edwin Harris, her father’s lawyer.

  “Ah, Miss Sedgwick, I’m so glad you checked in,”

  Edwin said. “How are things?”

  “Well, the cottage was broken into yesterday, so I 258

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  made arrangements with the caretaker, Johanna Cole, to meet at the shop she owns instead, but she wasn’t there. This morning, she didn’t come by the cottage, and her shop had a closed sign on it. I stopped by her house, and there was no answer.

  Phone either.”

  “I see,” the attorney said. “Give me a day or two to get in touch with Ms. Cole, and I’ll call you back.”

  Olivia hung up the phone, a chill creeping up her back despite how comfortably warm it was in Zach’s house. If the cottage was hers free and clear, not that she wanted it, she didn’t have to stay in Blueberry.

  Would Zach see it that way? Would he assume she’d pack up and move back to Manhattan? He knew she didn’t want to live in the cottage or use it as a summer or weekend residence.

  Perhaps that was why he had acted as though he hadn’t heard her when she’d told him she loved him. Of course, he might not have heard her; she said it in such a low voice she wasn’t sure she said it aloud at all.

  Did he think she was planning to leave? Go back to her life in New York? It dawned on her then that they hadn’t even discussed it. How Olivia would “fit into” Kayla’s life. Was she expected to buy a home of her own nearby so that she and Zach could raise
Kayla like a divorced couple? Or like a couple who were sort of dating? If that was what you could call what they were doing.

  Her insides twisted, Olivia went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. She heard the front door open, and Cecily Carle’s voice.

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  “So your mom sleeps in the guest room,” Cecily said. “That’s a little weird, don’t you think?”

  “Totally,” Kayla said. Olivia heard their footsteps on the stairs. “I can’t tell if anything’s going on between her and my dad. Anyway, whatever. I’m just really glad you’re coaching me on my oral presentation. No one else will even talk to me.”

  “It does look pretty bad for you, Kayla,” Cecily said. “I hate to say that, but it’s the truth.”

  Olivia could hear Kayla crying. She wanted to rush up, but she needed to let Kayla be, let her and her friend talk the way teenagers talked.

  “You want to know something I haven’t told anyone?” Kayla said. “No, forget it. I shouldn’t even—”

  “You can tell me,” Cecily said. “I won’t tell anyone. If it’s a secret.”

  “Okay. I think my mother might be the one who’s been doing all this bad stuff,” Kayla said.

  Olivia gasped. She moved closer to the doorway of the kitchen to make sure she could hear.

  “I mean, she’s my real mother, right? And she wasn’t around for my entire life, until now. How guilty must she feel? Incredibly guilty. Plus, she won the Inner-Beauty Pageant when she was fifteen. The pageant is probably so important to her. Maybe she’d do anything to see me win. Like make my competition drop out.”

  “Kayla, I don’t know,” Cecily said.

  “Well, who else could it be?” Kayla said. “Brianna Sweetser wouldn’t hang up like ten posters calling herself a slut, even if she is one. So I don’t think she’s the one doing all this, even though she hates me.”

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  “What about Deenie McCord?” Cecily asked.

  “I guess it could be her. I don’t know her at all.”

  “Do you really think your mom could be the one?” Cecily asked.