Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  They were both thirty-eight, both divorced and childless, and together again after twenty years. Was fate giving him a second chance with Rachel? Or was he a fool for letting himself believe in second chances?

  Dean stared at Rachel, drinking in the sight of her. Her short blond curls framed her heart-shaped face. Her big blue eyes sparkled with mischief and curiosity just as they had when she’d been a kid. She had dressed casually, her outfit suitable for just about any place he might take her in Portland for dinner. White slacks in some gauzy fabric with a matching loose-fitting blouse that billowed out from a row of tiny beading directly under her breasts. Heaven help them both, but she looked good enough to eat.

  “You have her home at a decent hour, young man,” Charlie Young said jokingly as he patted Dean on the back.

  “Is two in the morning a decent hour?” Dean asked.

  “I’ll be home before midnight,” Rachel informed both men.

  “You two have a nice evening,” Laraine called after them as they left the house.

  Once alone together in Dean’s white Thunderbird, he started the engine, then turned in his seat and looked directly at Rachel. “You look beautiful.”

  The corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly. An almost smile. “I’m not beautiful and I know it, so don’t waste your time with flattery because it will not get you laid tonight. Got that?”

  Dean laughed. God, she hadn’t changed. At least not in the way she reacted to him. Hackles raised. Spitting fire. On the defensive.

  “I really do think you’re beautiful.” I always have. “And to set the record straight, I don’t put out on a first date. A girl has to woo me a little before I let her have her way with me.”

  “I can’t believe this—you act like you did when we were sixteen.” She glowered at him. “I’m cute, vivacious, spunky, and have a really nice rack, but I am not now nor have I ever been beautiful.”

  He shifted gears, backed his Ford sports car out of the Youngs’ driveway, and gunned the engine, shooting the Thunderbird like a rocket down the residential street.

  “You’ll get a speeding ticket driving so fast,” she told him.

  He slowed down to just ten miles over the speed limit. “I have friends on the police force who can fix a ticket for me.”

  Rachel gave him a real smile then, and his stomach knotted.

  “Would you be interested in a movie before dinner?” he asked, already having a particular movie in mind.

  “I guess so, if there’s something good showing.”

  “Define good.”

  She glanced his way. “Something that isn’t all blood and gore. Something that won’t give me nightmares and something where every other word isn’t MF.”

  “Well, there goes my idea of seeing a movie.”

  They both laughed.

  That evening after leaving Emily with Mandy’s parents, Mandy and Jeff drove over to Ross Delmonico’s apartment. Mandy had called earlier and told Kristen they had to talk, that it was urgent. Now, after she’d had the entire afternoon to rationalize the eerie phone call she’d received, Mandy was able to tell Kristen about it without crying or freaking out.

  “Is there anyone who might want to frighten you or even hurt you?” Kristen asked. “Someone not connected to St. Lizzy’s or the reunion”—she sighed heavily—“or to Jake?”

  “No, no one,” Mandy said.

  “I think Mandy needs to report the call to the police.” Jeff glanced from Kristen to her husband Ross.

  “I agree,” Ross said. “When Kristen sensed she was being stalked—”

  “Rachel Alsace is back in Portland,” Kristen blurted out. She’s a police officer in Alabama and Chief Young is allowing her to go through the old Cupid Killer files. She’s working with Dean McMichaels. You remember Dean, don’t you?”

  Mandy stared at Kristen, trying to decipher any hidden message in what she’d said, doing her best to read between the lines. “Have you seen Rachel, talked to her?”

  “We had lunch today.”

  “And?”

  “She thinks there might be a connection between Haylie’s and Aurora’s deaths, something the police here in Portland and in New York City weren’t aware of that would have made them look beyond the obvious.”

  “What?” Ross and Jeff voiced the word simultaneously.

  “She isn’t sure, but she feels certain there’s something,” Kristen said. “And if Rachel senses something isn’t right about their deaths, and we do, too, then we’d be fools to ignore our gut instincts, wouldn’t we?”

  After deciding not to go to a movie, Dean had driven Rachel around Portland. When she suggested going by St. Elizabeth’s he had hesitated.

  “Why spoil a perfectly lovely evening?” he had asked.

  “We won’t get out,” she’d told him. “I’d just like to drive by and take a look.”

  He had driven by, barely slowing down, as if the ghosts from the past were hot on his heels.

  “You and Jake were buddies, but sometimes I thought maybe you didn’t always like him,” Rachel had said.

  “He could be a jerk.” Once the old red-brick school that had originally been built in 1920 was out of sight, Dean added, “Jake could be a real son of a bitch. He kept his dark side well hidden.”

  “It’s easy enough to defame his character now, when he can’t defend himself.”

  After she had made that really stupid comment, silence hung between her and Dean for quite some time—until they arrived at their original destination. Bar Pastiche was an odd little restaurant on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Odd in that it was a small eatery where the updated-daily menu was written on the wall on butcher paper and where customers threw their paper napkins on the floor as people might do in a true tapas spot in Spain. The ambience was nonexistent, but the food was fabulous. They sat together at the small bar, sipped their drinks, and nibbled on mini-meatball sandwiches and Spanish deviled eggs.

  After dinner, as they headed for Dean’s Thunderbird, he asked, “It’s too early to take you home. Want to go dancing? Pick up some ice cream? Run by my place and let me introduce you to my cat?”

  “You have a cat?”

  He chuckled. “Nah, not really, but I thought that sounded better than saying ‘want to come up and see my king-size bed?’”

  She playfully punched him on the arm. “No running by your place for any reason. And no dancing. Not tonight. However, if you’re offering to buy me a double scoop of cherry vanilla ice cream—”

  Rachel’s cell phone chimed. A no-nonsense ring. Not a cute song or music of any kind. She reached inside her white handbag, removed her small phone, and flipped it open.

  “Hello?”

  “That had better not be another man.” Dean winked at her.

  “What?” she said into the phone. “Oh, crap! Yes, y’all wait right there.” She glanced at Dean and mouthed one word. Kristen. He immediately knew she meant Kristen Daniels Delmonico.

  When she’d closed her phone and dropped it into her open bag, Dean asked, “What did Kristen want?”

  “She wants us to come to her apartment—her husband’s apartment. Mandy Kim, who is now Mandy Stulz, and her husband are there with Kristen and Ross. It seems Mandy received a threatening phone call this afternoon, and both she and Kris are convinced that someone is stalking them…stalking all of us.”

  Dean raised a questioning brow. “All of us as in…?”

  “The girls who were once closely involved with Jake in some way—Kris, Mandy, Bella, Lindsay, and me. Maybe even some of the others. We’re not sure.”

  “You know how crazy that sounds, don’t you?”

  “If you want to hear crazy, then listen to this theory: we, as in Kristen, Lindsay, and I, think that Haylie and Aurora may have both been murdered by the same person. Maybe the same person who killed Jake. Several of us received pictures that had been scratched, as if we were being singled out. Maybe warned.”

  “You think the Cupid Killer is k
illing again after twenty years?”

  “Yes, we do. And that’s the real reason I’ve come back to Portland. I intend to catch Jake Marcott’s murderer.”

  Chapter 26

  After Rachel and Dean met with Kristen, Mandy, and their husbands last night, they had all agreed that someone was stalking Kristen and Mandy, but the guys pointed out that they couldn’t be certain this had anything to do with the reunion or Jake Marcott’s twenty-year-old murder. However, the one thing they all agreed on was that Kristen and Mandy shouldn’t take any chances, that someone wanted to, at the very least, scare them. And at the very worst?

  That question had become a bone of contention between Rachel and Dean in their discussion of the situation when he drove her home.

  “What if the person stalking Kris and Mandy killed Haylie and somehow implicated the homeless guy? What if this person went to New York, killed Aurora, and tried to kill Lindsay?”

  “That’s a lot of what ifs,” Dean had said.

  “Well, here’s one more for you—what if the two deaths, the attempted murder, and the stalkings are all connected to the reunion and to Jake?”

  Dean had played devil’s advocate, pointing out the holes in her theory and asking the one unanswerable question—what was this unknown person’s motive?

  Rachel had no reply. Dean was right when he’d asked why Jake’s killer would resurface after twenty years.

  Today, Rachel had sat in the corner of the squad room at the police bureau headquarters and gone through the Cupid Killer case files. There was far too much information to absorb in one or two days. But after only a few hours yesterday and again today spent sorting through the facts, she had come to one conclusion—she had never really known Jake Marcott. The flirtatious, fun-loving, handsome boy she remembered had apparently been little more than a figment of her fertile teenage imagination. Just as Dean had told her, there had been a dark side to Jake. Why hadn’t she seen it? He had been a troubled boy from a troubled home, but he had hidden it well, as had Bella.

  Rachel and Bella had never been buddies, but they had gotten along better than Bella had with most of Jake’s friends, especially the girls in his life. Bella had resented the fact that she didn’t quite mesh with the in crowd, the St. Elizabeth’s and Western Catholic students that her big brother had hung out with. Rachel had always felt sorry for Jake’s little sister and had thought there was something strangely sad about her.

  Wonder if she’s still that quiet, brooding girl she was twenty years ago?

  Well, Rachel would find out in a few minutes just what Bella was like now. She rang the doorbell as she waited on the front porch of Mandy and Jeff Stulz’s sprawling ranch house, which must have cost them a small fortune. But from what Kristen said, Jeff Stulz’s accounting firm had become one of the most prestigious in the Portland area and the guy was raking in the big bucks.

  “Mandy worked for him,” Kristen had said. “That’s how they met. He’s probably ten years older than she is, but he doesn’t look it, does he?”

  When the door opened, Rachel came face-to-face with someone she didn’t recognize. Expecting Mandy to greet her, she paused, wondering if she might be at the wrong house.

  “Rachel?” the attractive black woman asked.

  “Yes, I’m Rachel.” She stepped into the two-story foyer. “I’m afraid I don’t know—” She stared questioningly at the woman.

  “I’m DeLynn Vaughn. Actually, it’s DeLynn Simms now.” Smiling warmly, she closed the door behind Rachel. “Come on in. Mandy’s upstairs with little Emily, putting her to bed for the night. The others are in the great room, having drinks and discussing what’s been happening to Kristen and Mandy.”

  When Kristen had called her first thing that morning, Rachel had agreed to join the members of the reunion committee who were meeting at Mandy’s house that evening. But their hen party had been called not to discuss the reunion, but to compare notes and see if only Mandy and Kristen were being stalked.

  As Rachel entered the great room, Kristen met her and offered her a glass of white wine, which Rachel accepted.

  “Come on in,” Kristen said. “You met DeLynn at the door. April and Martina are eager to see you.”

  By the time Kristen had reintroduced her to Martina Perez Taylor and April Wright, Mandy had joined them. Although Martina had gained at least fifty pounds in the past twenty years, Rachel would have recognized her anywhere. April was another matter. Her once-brown hair was a sun-kissed blond, her teeth were capped and pearly white, and contacts had replaced the thick glasses she had once worn.

  Then there was Bella Marcott, who shook hands with Rachel but said nothing. Still quiet and shy? Still a bookish wallflower? With her curly black hair and light blue eyes, Bella should have been strikingly beautiful—as beautiful as Jake had been—but despite the similarity in their features, Bella was simply a pale imitation of her brother’s beauty.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Rachel said.

  “You’ve changed,” Bella told her. “You’re prettier.”

  “Thank you.” I think. As in the past, Rachel didn’t quite know how to take Bella. She’d always been a rather odd bird, a girl who didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. And she didn’t really fit in here with the others tonight. Except for the fact that Kristen had said the reunion would include the guys from Western Catholic and even the kids from Washington High, Rachel would have been puzzled by Bella being on the committee.

  For the first fifteen minutes, the women chitchatted about children, husbands and ex-husbands, their jobs, and the upcoming annual Rose Festival here in Portland. Then the one person Rachel had never thought would bring up the subject asked the question that had been hanging in the air like a dark cloud.

  “So, Rachel, with your background as a police officer, what do you think is going on?” Bella asked. “Has Jake’s killer returned? Did the Cupid Killer murder Haylie and Aurora and is he or she stalking the rest of us?”

  An unnatural silence fell over the room. Suddenly the only sound was the combined soft breathing of the six women congregated in Mandy’s great room.

  Rachel focused on Bella. “I think it’s possible.”

  “But why would Jake’s killer suddenly start killing again?” Martina asked.

  “And why kill Haylie and Aurora?” April inquired.

  “We—Kristen and I—think it has something to do with this reunion y’all are planning,” Rachel told them. “For some reason, knowing that the old gang will be reunited has set this person off, but there has to be more to it than that. And I plan to dig as deep as possible into the Cupid Killer files and see if I can come up with something that will warrant the Portland Police Bureau reopening Jake’s case.”

  “Oh.” Bella mouthed the one word, an expression of surprise on her pale face.

  “I’m sorry, Bella,” Rachel said. “I know this has to be painful for you, but—”

  “No, no. Really. I understand and I’m all right with whatever you need to do. No one would like to see Jake’s killer brought to justice more than I. Even now, after all these years.”

  Rachel offered Bella a sympathetic half-smile. “Look, there’s nothing we can do to help Haylie or Aurora, but we can help ourselves, protect ourselves. Someone is stalking Kristen and Mandy. Anybody else? Do any of you feel as if you’re being watched? Followed? Anything missing from your houses? If anything odd has happened to you lately, tell me.”

  One by one, they shook their heads, then Bella gasped. “It might be nothing, but…well, several of my scarves are missing. I thought it odd, but since I have a habit of misplacing things, I just dismissed it as that. You don’t suppose someone stole them, do you?”

  “Was there any sign of a forced entry into your home?” Rachel asked.

  “No, but I usually open the window in my bedroom at night. I like the fresh air. And I have been known to forget to close the window when I leave in the morning.”

  “But you haven’t sensed that someone was
following you or watching you?”

  Bella shook her head.

  “From now on, I want each of you to be alert. Not paranoid, just careful.”

  “Are you working with the police?” Martina asked. “I mean, is the Portland Police Bureau aware of what’s been happening?”

  “Actually, Rachel is unofficially working with Dean McMichaels,” Kristen said. “Dean is a homicide detective now. He works in the Cold Case Homicide Unit.”

  “Dreamy Dean?” April sighed. “Is he as gorgeous as ever?”

  “Oh, yes, he certainly is,” Kristen said.

  “I used to have crazy dreams about that guy,” DeLynn admitted.

  “I think it was his eyes,” Martina said. “He’s the only person I’ve ever met with golden eyes.”

  Feeling just the slightest bit uncomfortable listening to the girls talk about Dean, Rachel cleared her throat. “Ladies, I think we got off the subject, didn’t we?”

  “Okay, so you’re working with Dreamy Dean. I’d say that’s a plus since you two were friends from the time you were in diapers, right?” April said. “It shouldn’t be any trouble for you to convince him to reopen Jake’s case, especially if you really think it is somehow connected to what’s happening now.” April looked directly at Rachel, her gaze intensely focused. “Do you think we’re all in danger? I mean, I wasn’t one of Jake’s girlfriends or anything. Actually, we weren’t even friends.”

  “I don’t know for sure who is in danger and who isn’t. We’re not even certain the scratched photographs are significant,” Rachel admitted. “For now, I’d say everyone working on the reunion committee should be careful and watch for anything unusual happening. At this point, there is no way to know for sure who has been targeted and who hasn’t or what criteria this person is using to choose his or her victims.”

  “But my brother Jake, his murder, is somehow at the core of what’s happening,” Bella said, her voice a mere whisper. “Poor Aurora. She never did anything bad to anyone. And Haylie…well, we all know she was unstable, don’t we? Neither of them deserved what happened to them.”