by Sam Sisavath
“Why did she ask you for help?” Pete asked.
Allie shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Why wouldn’t she ask me?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
He nodded at the barfly snoring in front of him. “Or even Stan here.” Then, with one of those sorry-not-sorry looks, “No offense.”
“None taken. I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.”
“And you don’t know her…”
“No.” Then, “Where do they live? The Marshalls?”
“How would I know?”
“You don’t know?”
Pete shook his head. “Again: How would I know? I’m a bartender. They’re the Marshalls.”
“What does that mean? ‘They’re the Marshalls?’”
“I told you, this isn’t their kind of establishment. There’s a reason for that. The Marshalls have a long history around here. From what I heard, they’ve been around as long as Timber Creek County has been a county. I guess if you really want to find them, it wouldn’t be very hard. Just go to where the rich people in town live.”
“And where would that be?”
“Again, how would I know?” He flashed her a wry grin. “Wouldn’t be too hard to find out, I figured.”
“Let’s just assume I don’t know where to begin.”
“Just follow the money.”
She was about to ask, “And how would I do that?” when a voice next to her said, “He hitting her again?”
Allie turned to Stan, the barfly who wanted to take her home to do the nasty earlier. The drunk had lifted his head off the countertop and was rubbing his very red eyes with both hands, his unkempt brown hair, sprinkled with doses of gray, looking even more unwashed. Allie had been so wrapped up in trying to figure out the blonde’s identity along with Pete that she hadn’t noticed when Stan gained consciousness.
“What did you say?” Allie asked.
“Did someone hear a gunshot?” Stan asked.
“What did you say?” Allie asked him again.
“A gunshot—”
“No, the first question.”
“He hitting her again? That one?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Who are you talking about?” Pete asked.
“Who are you talking about?” Stan said.
“The Marshalls,” Allie said. “Sarah and Tom.”
“That’s who I’m talking about, too,” Stan said.
The barfly sat up straight on his stool—or tried to, because he almost toppled over. Almost, but Pete reached over and grabbed him by the shoulder just in time to keep him from falling. The bartender had moved so fast that Allie was momentarily taken aback. Pete, besides serving a good mug of beer and knowing his way around a shotgun, had some serious athletic abilities to boot, apparently.
“So, you guys didn’t hear a gunshot?” Stan was asking them.
“Never mind that,” Pete said. He straightened the drunk before pouring some water into an empty glass and sliding it over. “Have some of this while you’re telling us more about Tom Marshall.”
“Why did you ask if he was hitting her again?” Allie asked.
Stan hadn’t seemed to hear her or Pete. He was too busy staring at the glass of water for a moment, as if unsure what it was.
“Stan,” Pete said. “Answer the lady’s question. Why did you ask if he was hitting her again? Were you talking about Tom Marshall and his wife, Sarah?”
The barfly pushed the water away and glanced up at Pete. “Who else would I be talking about?”
“What did you mean, ‘Is he hitting her again?’” Allie asked. She felt as if she’d been asking the same question all night.
“It means what it means,” Stan said. “Is he hitting her again?”
“Tom Marshall has hit his wife before?” Pete asked.
“Sure he has.” Stan stared at Pete for a second or two, before turning on his stool to face Allie. “What? This is news to you two?”
“How do you know it?” Pete asked. He hadn’t said it out loud, but Allie assumed from the way he had posed the question that Stan the drunk didn’t exactly swim in the same pond as the Marshalls.
“Can I have some beer, Pete?” Stan asked.
“Answer the question first.”
“What question? Come on, can I have some beer?”
“The question is: Tom Marshall has hit his wife before? And people know about it?”
“Yeah, sure, people know about it,” Stan said. He rubbed at his face with both palms. “Come on, Pete. Can I get a beer?”
“One beer, coming up,” Pete said. He grabbed an empty glass and refilled it from a spigot, while at the same time shooting Allie a quick glance that said, It’s your turn.
Allie put her hand on Stan’s shoulder to get his attention. Then, when the man swayed around to face her, “If everyone knows that Tom Marshall hits his wife, why hasn’t anyone stopped him?”
Stan stared at her in silence.
“Answer her,” Pete said. He’d finished pouring but hadn’t put the glass in front of Stan yet.
“Because he’s Tom Marshall,” Stan said, as if they should already know.
“What the hell does that mean?” Allie asked.
“This is Timber Creek County, and the Marshalls all but own Timber Creek County, that’s what it means. Everyone knows that boy hits his wife, but no one’s going to do a damn thing about it, just like no one did a damn thing about it when Marshall Sr. shot his pool boy in broad daylight.”
Allie thought about all the makeup on Sarah Marshall’s face when she had come into the bar and they locked eyes. There was so much of it that it was impossible for Allie to miss even with the bar’s dimmed lighting. Sarah was used to hiding the bruises.
She looked over at Pete, who shrugged. “I just got here five months ago. Stan, he’s been here since he could walk. Hell, he was camped out at this bar, in that exact stool, my first night on the job.”
Stan grinned and snatched the beer out of Pete’s hand. He took a large swig that emptied half of the glass before laying it down with a satisfying thump!
“Wanna know all the dirty secrets about the Marshalls?” Stan asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Keep the beer coming, and I’ll sing like a bird.”
“Tell me one thing,” Allie said.
“What, just one thing?”
“Just one.”
“Shoot.” But before she could do that, he turned to Pete. “Be a good boy and give me another one, Petey.”
“You haven’t even finished that one,” Pete said, nodding at the still half-full glass of beer.
Stan picked up the mug and drained it before slamming it back down with a wide grin across his flustered face. “Now. Give me another one.”
Pete sighed, but instead of responding to Stan, he looked over at Allie. “What was your question?”
“I want another one,” Stan said.
“Answer her question first, then I’ll get you another one.”
“On the house?”
“Sure, if you don’t tell anyone.”
“Promise?”
“Just answer the lady’s question.”
“But that’s a promise, right?”
“Yes, Stan. That’s a promise.”
“Just wanted to make sure.” Stan swiveled in his stool to face Allie again. “Fire away, little lady.”
“Tom Marshall…” Allie began.
“What about him?”
“How bad does it get? The abuse? Is he capable of more?”
“More?”
“More,” Allie said.
Stan stared back at her. He might have been drunk, and his brain was probably half-soaked with alcohol tonight, but there was enough sobriety there that he understood, even if it did take him a while.
“He’s done it before,” Stan finally said.
“To Sarah?”
“No, the one before her.”
“What happened to her?�
��
“Well, death, for one,” Stan said. “She up and died before she could get away from Tom Marshall.”
Four
“Well, death, for one. She up and died before she could get away from Tom Marshall.”
Stan had said it as if he were setting up a joke for a major payoff. Or maybe he’d said it like a half-drunk (Mostly drunk?) man would when he wasn’t quite aware of the ramifications involved. Either way, the words reverberated inside Allie’s head, taking up space away from the words on the tissue paper still inside her jacket pocket.
MY HUSBAND IS GOING TO KILL ME.
“Well, death, for one. She up and died before she could get away from Tom Marshall.”
All of that had led Allie here, sitting behind the wheel of her parked Ford rental about a hundred meters from a large gate. The house on the other side was big, but it wasn’t as opulent or grand as she’d imagined after hearing everything Pete and Stan (but mostly Stan) had told her about the Marshall clan. For a family that had, if the two bar men could be believed, been in Timber Creek County even before there was a Timber Creek County, the parts of the two-story house she could see over the brick wall was underwhelming.
Allie had seen how the really rich lived, and this wasn’t it. Then again, maybe “rich” was different in this part of the northwest. Maybe out here, wealthy just meant having more than the Smiths down the street.
But to hear Stan and Pete tell it…
She wasn’t sure what she was doing here. Pete hadn’t been either when she left him at the Don’t Stop In.
“What are you gonna do?” he’d asked.
“I don’t know,” she had said, which wasn’t the entire truth. She knew she was going to go look for Sarah Marshall at her home, but not what she would do once she got there.
Finding out where the Marshalls lived was easy enough. They weren’t trying to hide from anyone, especially Tom. Like every other town and city in America, Wells City—which made up the biggest slice of Timber Creek County—had its designated suburbs. It was here that she found the Marshall residence. Ten minutes before midnight, and just about every house she’d driven past were dead asleep. The driveways were filled with vehicles, and living room lights had been either turned off or dimmed. There wasn’t another soul still awake. Or it seemed that way, anyway.
The same went for the Marshall home. 2011 Stoner Street. Allie hadn’t been able to see much when she slowly drove past the house earlier to get a quick look at it before circling back. The two-story was built in an American Craftsman style, a combination of modern and traditional. Nothing flashy or ambitious, but it did stand out somewhat from the more modest family homes on the same street. And yet, it wasn’t what she had been expecting, and for a moment Allie had wondered if she had gotten the address wrong.
But no, she hadn’t. Thomas J. Marshall (she wasn’t sure what the J stood for) was in the Wells City business community directory. Under his name was the title Junior Partner at Marshall & Sons Inc. Allie hadn’t spent the extra minute or two it would have taken to find out exactly what Marshall & Sons Inc. did.
Because it didn’t matter. Right now, all she cared about was finding the right house…and the right lady of said house. She had double checked the address and was certain she was at the correct location. Now all she had to do was…
What? What exactly was she going to do?
Go up to the house, ring the doorbell, and ask to see Sarah Marshall? Then, when the woman showed up, ask her why she’d left a dire proclamation written on two flimsy pieces of toilet paper underneath Allie’s coaster?
Yeah, that wasn’t happening.
That was if she could even get inside the house in the first place. The gate was locked, and she’d have to use the intercom. What if Tom Marshall answered when she rang the house instead of Sarah? How would she explain being here, at almost midnight, to the husband?
And then there was the whole matter of Allie being a complete stranger. Not only to the couple but to the population of Wells City, which she didn’t even know existed until a week ago. Hell, she didn’t even know there was a Timber Creek County.
So what was she doing here? What the hell was she doing—
Lights had come on inside the Marshall house. She couldn’t tell if that was the window of the main bedroom that had just suddenly brightened up, but it was on the second floor. She expected the light to turn off just as quickly, but it didn’t. Instead, it stayed on, and Allie glimpsed a figure moving across the window. There one second and gone the next, not nearly long enough for her to make out if it was a man or woman. Of course, from where she sat, she would have needed binoculars to be sure anyway.
Allie didn’t move, her hands on the steering wheel just to give her fingers something to do. It wasn’t freezing cold outside, but the chill had settled inside the Ford. It would have been warmer if she had turned on the engine and let the heater do its job, but that would have drawn attention. Right now, attention was the last thing Allie was looking for.
So she dealt with the cold and watched silently as another window on the second floor lit up. She tried to imagine what was going on inside, why someone would be up this late at night. Maybe a woman who was afraid her husband was going to kill her…
It didn’t occur to Allie until right that second that she’d come here unarmed. She had a gun, but it was back in her cabin. It hadn’t seemed like a smart thing to drive around Wells City with a pistol inside a jacket pocket. Besides, this was a vacation. She had no reason to carry a weapon with her at all times; bringing the SIG Sauer was purely a paranoid act of just in case.
Realizing that she had a gun, but not on her, made her realize she could have used it back at the Don’t Stop In with those two Devil’s Crew bikers.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
While Allie was thinking about how unprepared she was to deal with an angry husband who may or may not have already murdered one wife (Stan had been unclear about that part, and that was being overly generous), the front gate began to slide open.
Here we go…
Allie sat up straighter as twin red lights appeared before a vehicle began backing out of the property. A silver Audi, reversing slowly into the street even before the gate had completely opened.
Someone’s in a hurry.
She leaned against her steering wheel to get a better look as the German car reversed through the gate and into the street, its bright—too bright—LED headlights flashing the street and coming toward her. She ducked behind the steering wheel just as the lights raked across her rental’s windshield. The piercing brightness caught her eyes for a split second, and Allie couldn’t be certain if she’d made it out of the way in time. If the driver had good vision, they might have spotted just the top of her head, but that was a pretty big might.
Allie stayed down and listened to the Audi’s smooth engine as it drove up the street and passed her parked car. She sat up and twisted around in her seat, picking up the sedan just as it slowed down at a nearby intersection—barely, and just long enough to make a left turn, all without bothering to use its blinkers.
Someone’s definitely in a hurry.
There had been no chance for Allie to make out the driver as they passed her by. She didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman, or even if it was one of the Marshalls. It could have been their maid, for all she knew, though the idea of a housekeeper driving what looked like a fresh-from-the-showroom Audi was pretty implausible.
Allie fired up the Ford and made a quick U-turn, then hurried over to the intersection before making the same left the Audi had done seconds earlier. It didn’t take her long to pick up the German car’s taillights in the distance. Instead of stepping on the gas and catching up to it—which she could have done easily—Allie eased up on the pedal so the Audi maintained its lead on her. The last thing she wanted now was to spook whoever was driving.
If it was Tom Marshall, she didn’t need the man to know someone was following him.
&nbs
p; And if it was Sarah…
What if it was Sarah?
What am I doing here?
She didn’t have an answer. She hadn’t known when she left Pete and Stan at the Don’t Stop In, and still didn’t know while sitting outside the Marshalls’ home. And she remained in the dark now, as she pursued the car up ahead.
There was also something else: She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with this whole thing. She didn’t know what it was, but it was there, gnawing at her gut. A persistent annoyance that refused to go away.
Something wasn’t right, but she didn’t know what it was. Her instincts rarely led her astray, but there was just too much for Allie to ignore. The note, Stan and Pete’s knowledge of the Marshalls, and, of course, the mysterious death of Tom’s last wife. All of it had brought her here, even if she didn’t know why.
What am I doing here?
She was still asking herself that question (How many times now? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?), when the Audi began to slow down noticeably in front of her.
Shit. Did they spot me?
Any other time in the day, and Allie would have said no. She was a good driver. More than that, she knew how to stay undetected in traffic—how to remain invisible. But this wasn’t daytime; it was night, and out here, right now, there were exactly two vehicles on the road—hers and the Audi.
Dammit. They’re definitely on to me.
Which left her with only two possibilities: Speed up and pass the other car and keep going, or confront the driver.
Which was the better choice? Was either one? And what if that was Tom Marshall behind the wheel? What if—
The Audi began swerving. Slowly at first, then more dramatically until it was weaving into the incoming lane. Allie could tell that the driver was trying to maintain control and losing.
That means they’re not on to me. Something else is wrong…
The sedan turned sharply toward the curb before going up it and broadsiding a big blue trash bin sitting on a driveway. The plastic container went flying into its owner’s yard while the Audi jerked back into the street and kept going.