OTHER TITLES BY SUSAN MCBRIDE
The Debutante Dropout Mysteries
Say Yes to the Death
Too Pretty to Die
Night of the Living Deb
The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club
The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
Blue Blood
The River Road Mysteries
Come Helen High Water
Not a Chance in Helen
Mad as Helen
To Helen Back
Women’s Fiction
The Truth About Love & Lightning
Little Black Dress
The Cougar Club
Young Adult Mystery
Very Bad Things
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 by Susan McBride
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503937628
ISBN-10: 1503937623
Cover design by Faceout Studio
CONTENTS
MONDAY
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MONDAY
The night boxed her in like a pitch-black room with no light beneath the door.
Her head spun as she tried to process what had happened since she’d driven out of the parking lot sometime after five o’clock, when the sky had blushed a dusky pink, the clouds a faded orange.
She knew it was almost over.
Her eyes darted around, seeing only shades of dark. Maybe she was already dead and didn’t know it. She clasped her hands so fiercely that her fingers numbed, and still they trembled at the voice that hissed impatiently: C’mon, we haven’t got all night. Let’s do this.
She stumbled away from the car, the hem of her jeans catching on her boot heels. After a few unsteady steps, she slipped, slamming down hard, banging her chin against the gravel. Tasting blood on her tongue, she rose to her knees and lifted her head, disoriented. Which way was forward? Which was back?
What’s wrong with you? The voice grew angrier. Move, for Christ’s sake. Get up.
She struggled to rise, fought to keep her legs from wobbling so she wouldn’t go down again.
As her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she made out the fringe of trees surrounding her. Gravel crunched beneath her shoes, creating unsure footing as she plodded forward, down an invisible path. Goose bumps prickled her flesh beneath the fleece pullover and turtleneck that had felt much too warm beneath her coat.
Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
She told herself that when this was over, she would feel no pain. The hole in her heart would disappear, the lies along with it. There would be only silence.
Wasn’t that what she’d wanted?
Despite the cold, the air smelled dank and chalky. Raw. It was the perfect place to die, an already-dug tomb. She kept going down and down into the pit, until she reached the muddied bottom and fell to her knees again.
She squeezed her eyes shut, no longer fighting the tears, instead drowning in them and praying hard that when they found her, they would understand.
Dear God, she begged, forgive me.
Though no one could hear.
The first knock on the door was so tentative, Jo wasn’t sure she’d heard it. When it became more insistent, her initial response was annoyance. It was late, and she was tired. She was tempted to ignore it, hoping whoever it was would go away.
Her curiosity got the better of her.
She pushed back the living room drape and peered outside to see a man, ill lit by her feeble porch light, and yet she knew right away who he was. She took a deep breath before unfastening the dead bolt and opening the door a sliver.
“Hey,” Adam said, huddled in his coat against the cold. “Can I come in?”
She drew the door wide and stepped aside.
He must have driven straight from work; he still wore scrubs beneath his beat-up bomber jacket. He was freshly showered, his dark hair slick against his skull, but Jo imagined she could smell the stink of the autopsy suite on his skin. The first time they had met, he’d reeked of eau de postmortem, that and the Vicks he sometimes smeared beneath his nose.
Ah, so romantic.
She bolted the door, then followed him into the living room.
He paused, glancing around the space. “The place looks good,” he said, though she wondered how he could see much of anything in the dark. “It’s very you.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, because he wasn’t supposed to do this. They’d agreed they wouldn’t see each other again, not while he was still married. That was why she’d left the city and moved to Plainfield, to get away from what she couldn’t have.
“I thought you’d want to know that it’s over.” He rubbed a hand over his whiskered face. The shadows deepened the grooves at his eyes and mouth. “The papers are signed. She’s moving to LA. I’m a free man.”
If it was true, if that was what he really wanted, why did he look so miserable?
“You could have called . . .”
“No.” He shook his head, coming toward her. “I had to see you, Jo. I had to know that you’re real, that this is real. Tell me I’m not wrong.”
She could hardly breathe. She for damned sure couldn’t speak.
“Say something, please,” he begged.
Jo felt dizzy, like she’d been turned upside down, or maybe inside out. “You’re not wrong,” she said and took his hand, leading him into her bedroom.
She slipped his coat from his shoulders and reached for his face. The stubble of his jaw tickled the palms of her hands. Then she kissed him hard, and he moaned low in his throat, his arms coming around her, tugging her close.
They undressed in silence, too anxious to speak. The quiet rustled with motion as discarded clothes were kicked aside. Jo heard her quickened heartbeat, so loud in her ears, and she wondered if he heard it, too.
Adam lowered her to the bed, and she found herself pinned beneath him, beneath his hands, his thighs, his mouth.
She let out a cry, then bit her lip to silence herself, suddenly awkward, embarrassed by her emotions and how fiercely they rose to the surface, making her tremble, awakening her every sense.
He whispered her name, his breath warm on her skin. His lips touched her neck, teeth nipping, and she squeezed her eyes more tightly closed, reveling in the darkness, in not seeing, only feeling.
He pressed down into her
, so hard she felt herself disappear into him, a mingling of flesh and sweat and hunger, their movements impatient, clumsy as adolescents. His hands caught in her hair, drawing back her head as she arched against him. She gasped for air, greedily drinking it in, crying out.
God, help me, she begged before all rational thought passed from her head. She didn’t want to live in fear of her past and all the things she hadn’t told him. Please, don’t let me lose him again.
Then his mouth covered hers, sweet and bruising, and she tasted the sweat on his skin and the salt of her tears.
PART ONE
LOST
CHAPTER ONE
TUESDAY
The man sat so close, their knees nearly knocked.
He’d pulled the chair around her desk, so there was nothing between them but a little air and the fists he held clenched in his lap.
“Tell me, Detective, where could my wife be?” he said, less a question than a demand. “What could possibly have happened to her?”
“Take it easy, Mr. Dielman. I can see you’re upset. Why don’t you fill me in?” Jo Larsen had no choice but to listen. The guy wasn’t going to leave.
According to the desk sergeant, he’d planted himself in the lobby good and early, asking to speak to her. Jo had found him there when she’d returned to the station house, after she and her partner had spent the better part of the morning investigating a theft at a local yarn shop. But once Jo had settled him at her desk, all he’d done was throw questions at her, like Jo was somehow responsible for his problem.
Despite his attitude, he had panic in his eyes. Jo felt sorry for him. She wondered if she had sucker stamped on her forehead.
And Hank thought she was such a hard-ass.
Ha.
She had nothing more pressing on her desk at the moment. Thanksgiving was little more than a week away, and a recent cold snap had effectively dropped Plainfield’s low crime rate to a barely perceptible blip that pleased the city council and police brass to no end. That left Jo and her partner, Hank Phelps, with such urgent cases as band instruments stolen from the high school and the theft of a carton of cashmere yarn from The Knitting Needle.
Serving and protecting tiny Plainfield, Texas, these past two years was a far cry from her days in the Dallas PD, despite being almost within shouting distance of the city limits. Jo couldn’t say that she missed the routine of daily urban violence. At this point in her life, she’d rather deal with tuba theft than murder any day of the week.
“So she’d have no reason to take off. Don’t you see?”
See what? Jo realized she’d missed part of Patrick Dielman’s monologue. “You might want to contact members of her family in the area, sir. Maybe she’s with them.”
“She doesn’t have family in town.” His red-rimmed eyes welled all over again. “Her only sister lives in Des Moines. She didn’t even come to our wedding. They drifted apart when Jenny was married to Harrison.”
“Who?”
Dielman’s soft drawl hardened. “Kevin Harrison. He’s a surgeon at Presbyterian Hospital, and not someone Jenny would run to see. He’s remarried, too, and they hardly kept in touch.”
“What about her parents?”
“Her folks are dead.”
“Did you call the sister, anyway?”
“Yeah, I did.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I’d never spoken to the woman before, so it was awkward as hell. She offered to fly down, but I told her to stay put in case my wife tries to reach her.”
“What’s the sister’s name?”
“Kimberly Parker.”
Jo scribbled that down and then tapped her pen against her jaw. “What about friends or coworkers?”
He shook his head. “I phoned the library where she volunteers mornings. She isn’t there. They wondered if she was sick. I was ashamed to tell them she was missing, like I’d lost her.” The rush of words halted for an instant as he swallowed hard. “Our next-door neighbor saw Jenny in passing yesterday around five o’clock. She was coming home from work when Jenny left to go shopping.” He swept a hand across his close-cut hair. “I can’t imagine where she’d be unless something bad happened. Y’all need to put out some kind of bulletin—”
“Look, Mr. Dielman,” Jo said, cutting him off, hardly ready to issue a BOLO on his wife. “Maybe she’s blowing off steam. I’ll bet she comes home, apologizing like crazy for making you worry. If she doesn’t, we’ll take it from there.”
“Listen to me!” Dielman hissed, his brown eyes flashing. “Jenny’s never done anything rash. She’s never stayed away overnight. She’s never missed a morning at the library, not for any reason. Don’t you get it?”
Jo pressed the tip of her pen to the pad of paper in front of her, creating a smudge of ink on a page that had little else on it. “I get that you’re worried.”
“Worried? What if the worst has happened? What if someone’s hurt her?” He reached out to grip her forearm. “You have got to do something.”
“Okay,” Jo said. “Okay.” He released her, and she settled back, shifting away. “Let’s go over this again, and see what we’ve got to work with.”
“Like I told you, she wasn’t there when I got home from work around seven last evening, and she should have been. She always is.”
As he spoke, Jo took notes. The story was easy enough to follow. A thirty-five-year-old woman named Jenny Dielman wasn’t where she was supposed to be. The last her husband had heard from her was the previous day in the late afternoon, maybe a few minutes before five o’clock. She’d called him at work to tell him she was heading out to shop at the new Warehouse Club because she’d gotten a free guest pass in the mail and wanted to use it. He’d thought nothing of it, had finished updating some files at his job as an administrator for a large medical practice in North Dallas, and had left work shortly before seven.
But Jenny hadn’t been home when he’d arrived.
She had never come home at all.
“Did you try her cell phone?”
“Half a dozen times,” he replied, staring daggers. “She didn’t answer.”
“How about her Facebook page?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“Did you try the Warehouse Club?” Jo asked next.
Patrick Dielman exhaled impatiently. “I drove over just before they closed at ten and scoured the parking lot for her car, but it wasn’t there. I talked to the manager, a guy named Owen Ross. He asked if she had a regular membership card, said he could check the computer to see if she used it.” He pulled a pressed handkerchief from the pocket of his Burberry trench coat and wiped his forehead. “But she had that damned guest pass, just a worthless piece of paper.”
“Still, if she made a purchase with a credit or debit card, we’d know that she got to the store.”
“Mr. Ross didn’t offer that kind of help, Detective. Not to me,” Dielman added and twisted his handkerchief into a pretzel.
“You have a plate number?” Jo jotted down his description of Jenny’s vehicle—a red Nissan—and the manager’s name, Owen Ross.
“How about area hospitals?” she suggested. “Maybe Mrs. Dielman was involved in an accident?”
He shook his head. “I phoned Plainfield Memorial last night and again this morning. I spoke with a nurse in the emergency room and someone in admitting. They assured me no Jennifer Dielman had been seen in the past twenty-four hours.”
“Anything else?” she asked him, because he’d apparently covered plenty of territory before he’d set foot in the station.
“I know she didn’t withdraw any cash from the bank because she has access only to our joint checking account, which never has more than a couple hundred dollars in it. I’m in charge of the savings and money market accounts. The credit cards are jointly held, and I already checked them to see if she’d bought a plane ticket to Iowa.” He shook his head. “If she didn’t go to her sister’s, I can’t imagine where she’d be. We keep to ourselves.”
It s
till amazed Jo to hear about housewives who didn’t have control over money. It sounded so 1950s, so subservient. A little like being kept in a cage, not something she would ever do willingly. She cocked her head. “You’ve been very busy, Mr. Dielman.”
“I couldn’t just sit around, could I?”
Or maybe he didn’t trust his wife as much as he professed.
She chewed on the pen cap, trying to consider other avenues, if there were any left that Patrick Dielman hadn’t covered. “Could she have run into someone at the store? Took off for a drink and got too tipsy to drive home?”
He stared at her like she was crazy. “You don’t know her. She would never have stayed away all night without telling me. She isn’t that kind of person, and she doesn’t get tipsy. She’s not supposed to drink at all.”
Not supposed to?
“You’re right, I don’t know her,” Jo said, “which is why I’m asking questions.”
“I’m sorry,” he said and jabbed the twisted handkerchief back into the pocket of his overcoat, dislodging a leather glove in the process. He bent to retrieve it. “I don’t think you understand, Detective. The fact is, Jenny doesn’t have friends. She just has me.”
“I know this is hard,” Jo said, because she felt bad for the guy, really. At the very least, his wife had walked out on him, or maybe bolted from her cage was a more apt description. “But let’s not panic yet.” She glanced down at the address he’d given her. “You live on Ella Drive?”
“In Woodstream Estates, yes.”
Jo knew it as a growing area with redbrick ranch houses in an expanding subdivision for hardworking middle-class folks on the fast track to upper-middle. It was nice, even exclusive, but certainly not the kind of big bucks that would inspire a kidnapping for ransom. Besides, the guy said he managed a doctor’s office. He was hardly Bill Gates. “You’ve been Plainfield residents for how long?”
“Fourteen months.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “We moved here from the city after we got married. Jenny loved the area. She said she felt comfortable here, almost at peace. She had a rocky first marriage, which fell apart after”—he swallowed hard—“after she lost her son three years ago. The boy was just six.”
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