Paranoid

by Lisa Jackson

  “. . . and don’t know what’s going on with him,” Mrs. Walsh had said, and Rachel had pictured the tiny administrator frowning with concern. Or mock concern. Rachel hadn’t been sure which. She sometimes suspected Marlene Walsh enjoyed her authority and ability to discipline. “But this is the third time and that’s cause for suspension.”

  “Doesn’t that seem to defeat the purpose?” Rachel had pointed out. “If he’s cutting class, then why would you reward him by letting him out of school?”

  The administrator had paused for a beat. As if she hadn’t thought of this before, but Rachel suspected differently. “Yes, I know. It’s all school policy. But I’ve devised an alternative solution.” She’d then outlined her plan, a far better idea in Rachel’s opinion. Would it work? Who knew? Both of her children were pulling away from her, and the little boy who had worn his heart on his sleeve while growing up and who had confided in her had become secretive, as had his sister.

  Now, she parked in the carport and let Reno sniff around the backyard as her kids filed through the back door and she followed. Once they were in the house, Harper still texting as she headed down the hall to her room, Dylan shedding his backpack by the door, Rachel let the hammer fall. “Mrs. Walsh called today.”

  Dylan froze as Harper went into her room. Then he slowly removed his earbuds as Rachel went on. “She told me that she caught you in the hall when you were supposed to be in class.”

  “Oh. I was getting my algebra book.”

  God, did he look guilty.

  “I know. But you were ditching English.”

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  Overhearing the conversation, Harper had returned to the hallway, idling as Rachel asked her son, “What were you thinking?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Oh, come on, Dylan.” Rachel didn’t bother hiding the exasperation in her voice. It had been a helluva day and she wasn’t up to teenage subversion. “There was a reason you ditched.”

  He hesitated, a tic appearing near his temple, then came up with a lame excuse. “I didn’t have my report ready.”

  “So you didn’t go to class? Because of an unfinished assignment? That’s how you handled it?”

  He tried to shrug it off, but she was sure he was lying. He’d been a bad liar as a little kid and she’d hoped that trait would stay with him, but now she wasn’t so sure. Lies came more easily to him these days.

  “This is the third time, Dylan. Mrs. Walsh was going to suspend you.”

  Another lift of a shoulder. “But she didn’t.”

  “Yet.”

  “I just have to do some stuff for her.” He started to open the refrigerator door, and she slammed it shut before he could peer inside.

  “I’m serious. There are only a few weeks left of school this year—the least you could do is finish your assignments, turn them in, and stay in class.”

  His eyes darkened and she thought he was going to say something to her. Instead his jaw tightened and he glared. “I will.”

  “Wait a second,” she said. “Is there something else going on?”

  He looked away as Harper cast her brother a glance of . . . sympathy? Conspiracy? Warning?

  “You know something about this?” she asked, turning her attention to her daughter. “Harper?”

  “No.” She replied quickly. Too quickly.

  “Then why do I have the feeling you’re holding out on me? That you’re both holding out on me?”

  She waited.

  No one said a word.

  The refrigerator hummed.

  Outside in the yard, Reno gave a sharp bark.

  Another knowing look passed between brother and sister.

  “What?” Rachel said, glaring at her children, a new fear knotting her stomach. “What?”

  “Mom, it’s not a big deal,” Harper finally said. “Kids cut class all the time.”

  “Not my kids.”

  “Oh, right. Because you never did anything wrong in high school. I forgot you were an angel. Just perfect.”

  Rachel blinked. Saw the insolence in Harper’s eyes. She didn’t say it, but it was there between them. You were accused of murder, weren’t you? You were caught sneaking out and your brother died because you shot him. And now you’re all freaked out because Dylan cut one stupid class. She heard the accusation, the rationale as clearly as if Harper had spat the words out.

  “This is not about me. So let’s get back to the point. What’s going on?”

  A disgusted look tightened Harper’s features as she held her mother’s stare. But her throat worked and she broke first, her gaze moving to Dylan. “Are you going to tell her?”

  “Tell me what?” Rachel demanded.

  Dylan shot his sister a thanks-for-nothing look.

  “Tell me what?” Rachel repeated.

  “Thanks,” he threw out at Harper, then blew out a huge sigh. “Okay. Fine. I—I . . . some older kids are hassling me.”

  “What do you mean ‘hassling’? You mean like bullying?”

  “No! No! It’s not like that.” Another angry glare sent to Harper. “I made a mistake, okay? I, um, I gambled with them and lost. They want their money.”

  “They?” she repeated. “As in more than one?”

  He licked his lips. “One.”

  “Who?” she demanded.

  “Oh, man. I don’t want to say.”

  “It’s Brad Schmidt,” Harper said.

  “I don’t know him.”

  Harper glanced at her phone. “You wouldn’t. He’s a loser. Thinks he’s a tough guy. Football player. I hate him.”

  “Oh, good.” None of this sounded right. “I need to talk to him.”

  “No!” Dylan was shaking his head. “Mom, you’ll only make things worse.”

  “So what is this guy threatening to do to you?” she demanded, worried. “What?”

  “It’s . . . it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have placed the bet. I know. I won’t do it again and this will all go away.”

  Rachel wasn’t so sure and was having trouble not panicking. Who was this kid, this Brad? Was he violent? Would he hurt Dylan? “Mrs. Walsh knows about this?”

  “Yeah,” Dylan admitted. “Well, most of it.”

  “So you were gambling with him. How’s that work?” Visions of casinos with slot machines and roulette wheels and craps tables spun through her mind. The bright lights of Las Vegas. Or maybe it was local. Whatever kids did.

  “It . . . it was kind of an online thing.”

  That made more sense. Dylan was forever hooked into his computer or his iPad or some game system. “We were playing a game. A war game. Interactive. For money. You pay for hits. I lost.”

  That was almost the truth, she thought. But not quite.

  Rachel turned to her daughter. “You knew about this?”

  “I knew he got into some trouble with a couple of seniors.”

  Her focus swung back to Dylan. “What were you thinking?”

  “He wasn’t. It was stupid,” Harper said, stating the obvious. “Now they want to be paid.”

  “So they’re what? Threatening you?” Rachel was playing this out in her head.

  “Not really.” But he looked scared.

  “How much?” Rachel asked, stepping back and folding her arms over her chest.

  He swallowed. Licked his lips.

  Her stomach dropped.

  “A hundred,” he whispered.

  “Dollars?”

  “No, euros.” Harper rolled her eyes. “Of course dollars.”

  “Okay,” Rachel said to Dylan. “So what’re you going to do?”

  “Pay them back.”

  “With what?”

  “I have some . . . My birthday money and . . .”

  He was always broke.

  “Would it help if I loaned you the money?” she asked, immediately thinking this wasn’t the right way to handle the situation. He needed to learn this lesson. Fast. She couldn’t enable him. And yet . . . “And I mean loaned. I’m ser
ious. You would have to pay me back. ASAP. Summer is coming, so I’ll expect you to do yard work and help with cleaning the basement, whatever.”

  His eyes brightened a little. “You’d do that?”

  “Maybe.” She couldn’t let him off too easily. “But you’ll have to let your dad know. And if this kid gives you any more trouble—”

  “He won’t, Mom. Really.”

  She glanced at Harper. “Yeah,” Harper agreed, “Schmidt is a bully, but he wouldn’t do anything to, like, mess up because he could lose his scholarship.”

  “He’d lose it if I made trouble?”

  “Don’t, Mom, just don’t!” Dylan said, shooting his sister a dark look. “And please, can we just keep Dad out of this?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh, man, really?” Dylan groaned and rolled his eyes. His whole body slumped. “Why?”

  “Because he’s your dad.”

  “But . . .” Was he really going to argue about it?

  “Hey—what is this?” Harper said as she picked up the newspaper still open on the table. The article about Luke Hollander’s death was front and center. “Does Lucas know about this?”

  “I don’t know. Probably,” Rachel said. The whole damned town would have read it by now.

  “Wow. Oh, wow.” Harper was scanning the article. “He’s gonna freak. It’s online, right?”

  “Everything’s online now.”

  “Yeah, then he’ll see it.” She shot her brother a look.

  “What?” Rachel asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that he doesn’t like to talk about it, y’know. It makes him feel weird. Different.”

  Even though Lila had mentioned how difficult it was for her son in the article, Rachel hadn’t dwelled on how the newspaper piece might affect her nephew, the boy who’d never gotten the chance to meet his father. But she knew how it was when someone felt different. Hadn’t she witnessed Luke’s own emotional response when anyone asked about his father, his “real” father, meaning Bruce Hollander? Luke had always tried to hide the fact that his biological father had been serving time in prison. Whenever anyone had questioned him about Hollander or whenever his father had tried to get in touch, Luke had become angry and sullen, horrible to live with.

  It had been a weird dynamic for their little family.

  It was probably just as difficult for Lucas. Possibly worse.

  Harper finished reading and glanced up to meet Rachel’s eyes. “It’s hard for you, too, huh?”

  “For all of us.” Rachel nodded, then fought the tightness in her throat when she caught a bit of empathy in her daughter’s eyes. Over the years the subject had come up; the kids knew the sketchy details and Rachel had left it at that. Now, compliments of Mercedes Pope, they might learn a helluva lot more.

  Today, it seemed, was a turning point.

  For all of them.

  And worst of all, Violet Sperry had been murdered.

  CHAPTER 9

  By the time Rachel was ready to leave for the meeting, Violet’s murder was all over the news.

  Flanked by her kids as they stood in the living room in front of the flat-screen, Rachel felt her keys dig into her tightly clenched hand as she watched the press conference where the sheriff himself spoke first into the camera.

  Roberto Valdez was a tall, fit man with military-cut brown hair starting to gray, a firm jaw, and near-black eyes that were deep set and didn’t falter as he stared into the camera. Standing on the concrete steps in front of the flagpoles and the department’s headquarters, Valdez, in uniform, made a brief statement before the public information officer took over. A forty-something woman whose brown hair was clipped at her nape, Isa Drake seemed less grim than the sheriff, though her answers were short and concise:

  “Yes, it was definitely a homicide.”

  “No, there are no suspects or persons of interest yet, but it’s still early in our investigation.”

  “More details will follow, as Sheriff Valdez mentioned.”

  “We are encouraging anyone with information to please come forward.”

  The kids stared at Rachel as she turned off the TV.

  “So you knew her?” Dylan asked.

  “Yes.” Listening to the report, hearing the account on the news had only made it more real.

  “Like, she was a good friend?” he asked.

  “Not close, but we hung out sometimes.” Rarely.

  “Weird,” he said.

  “More like freaky,” Harper said. “Who do you think killed her?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You must have an idea.” Her son, again. “Who, Mom?”

  “I don’t know.” Rachel checked her watch. “How could I know?” she admitted as much to herself as to the kids. “Come on, let’s get a move on. We’re already late.”

  She expected everyone on the committee had been held up. She’d received a dozen or so texts about Violet over the course of the afternoon—group texts, which she despised, her phone pinging as each person weighed in. Worse yet, it was a group Lila had created and some of the respondents came in as unfamiliar phone numbers rather than names, which meant she didn’t really know to whom she was replying. So she didn’t.

  They made their way to the back door and the dog bounded behind them. “Not this time,” Rachel said.

  “Still talking to the dog.” Harper let the screen door slam shut behind her.

  “Hey!” Dylan called after his sister. He was hoisting his backpack to his shoulder. “We all talk to him. You too!” He seemed to have forgiven Rachel for the earlier grilling. At least for the moment. But as his backpack wasn’t completely zipped, she saw inside, her gaze landing on a brown box. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She pointed. “The box?”

  “Oh.” He flushed, zipped the pack. “Lucas needs a new mouse for his computer. I had one, so I told him I’d bring it.”

  That didn’t sound quite right, but Dylan added, “He’s got another one ordered. He’s just borrowing this one until it gets here. No big deal.” And he was out the door.

  No big deal.

  She wondered, but let it go.

  * * *

  The trip to Lila’s house took less than twenty minutes. She’d let Harper, who had gotten her license just two months earlier, drive, and her daughter tended to be a lead foot.

  Which ran in the family. Still, her fingers had curled over the armrest for most of the ride.

  With a little difficulty, Harper parked on the street in front of Lila and Charles Ryder’s house, a three-storied Victorian built on the steep hillside in the late 1880s. The house had been home to the Ryder family for generations and was the very house where Cade and his brothers had grown up, the place where his mother had died.

  Rachel hated it.

  “Let’s go,” she said. As she glanced up at the turret with its 360 view of the city, a flash of memory came to her, of sneaking up the stairs to that small private space with Cade. No one had been home at the time. Through the windows, the lights of the town had glimmered to the dark expanse of the river. Her throat closed as she thought of the way he’d kissed her that night, the way her heartbeat had pounded in her ears, the warmth of his breath against her nape, the tingle of her skin as they’d tumbled to the floor and the breathless feeling of elation that had followed their lovemaking.

  All shattered when, six weeks later, she’d learned she was pregnant.

  Now, she took the keys from her daughter, then gathered her bag, with her laptop tucked inside, as her kids piled out and walked up the series of stairs leading to the sharply gabled Victorian with its wraparound porch and sweeping view of the town and river.

  The front door opened before she could push the bell, and Lila stepped onto the porch, a white cat streaking out behind her. “Oh, crap! Sammy! You get back in here!” But the cat was long gone, slinking from the porch and into the surrounding shrubbery. “Fine,” Lila muttered, visibly
irritated. She turned back to Rachel. Her usual smile was missing, but as always she was dressed as if she expected to meet a prospective real estate client: heels, expensive slacks, a long tunic, and bracelets that jangled over her wrist. She gave a quick hug to both Harper and Dylan and said, “Lucas is upstairs in his room with a friend. Why don’t you go on in?”

  The kids shot inside and were hurrying up a sweeping staircase when Lila pulled the door shut behind them, trapping Rachel on the porch. “Can you believe it?” Lila asked, obviously distressed. “Violet? Dead? I mean murdered?” She was shaking her head, her big eyes as cloudy as the day. “Who would do anything like that?” She blinked, then reached into the pocket of her slim gray slacks, retrieving a single cigarette and lighter. “I shouldn’t, I know. I quit years ago, but . . . Violet.” She lit up quickly and drew a deep breath before saying in a cloud of smoke, “I just don’t get it. Why would anyone . . . ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She thought for a moment, waving the smoke away as if the odor wouldn’t cling to her tunic or hair. “I just saw her, y’know? She’d come into the real estate office, supposedly interested in property near the river, but the real reason was to let me know that no matter how much I harassed her, she wasn’t going to be a part of . . . this.” Lila motioned to the bay window of the living room, where the reunion committee was meeting. “Not only did she refuse to be a part of the planning committee, she made it clear that she wasn’t even going to attend the reunion.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “Oh yeah.” She took another pull on the cigarette, again shooed the smoke away. “High school ‘is over.’” Lila made air quotes. “Like she thought we were all going to relive our days at Edgewater High.”

  “Well . . . some people would.”

  “The idea was just to catch up with old friends,” Lila snapped. “But she thought I was ‘harassing’ her into coming.”

  “Did you? Harass her?”

  “No, Rach. Of course not!” She rolled her eyes, then added, “I just kind of, you know, ‘urged’ her to be a part of it and maybe she felt pressured, but really?” She let out a sigh and glanced over the rooftops of the houses lower on the hillside to stare at the darkening waters of the Columbia. “I guess we’ll have to . . . oh, you know, include her in the remembrance table.”