Fast Friends (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 3)

by Dianne Emley

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yesterday I saw my mother sitting at her sewing machine. Last night when I was leaving, I saw a ball of light moving through the grove.”

  Iris’s eyes were wide. “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Nah. I didn’t get any bad vibes. I imagine this place has always been rotten with ghosts. Maybe I just couldn’t see them until now.”

  “Speaking of ghosts…” Paula turned and walked into the house. “I want to show you something.”

  They walked through the burnt and water-soaked rooms, stepping over rubble and squishing on the wet carpet. Iris imagined she heard strange noises and periodically swiveled her head to check for ghosts creeping behind her.

  They went into Bill DeLacey’s office. The flames had been stopped before they reached this remote room, but water had seeped onto the floor underneath the piles of newspapers, books, magazines, and other junk. The room smelled of mildew and smoke. Dim light filtered through the small paned window.

  Iris, eager not to be in the dark, flipped the light switch on the wall several times.

  “Electricity’s out.” Paula sat behind the cluttered desk, opened a top drawer, and took out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to Iris.

  Iris opened it. It was a sheet of DeLacey Properties stationery. The note was written in blue ballpoint pen in a wildly slanted and florid handwriting style. It said:

  Dear Bill,

  Please don’t forget to pay the electric and the telephone bills. I put them in the middle of the kitchen table. Last time you forgot and they turned everything off.

  The cat food is under the kitchen sink. I know you don’t like the cats, but they don’t hurt anything and they don’t take much to take care of. You might even get to like them a little bit.

  Tell Paula I said hello if you see her again. This will be better for Thomas because I know he’s ashamed to have me for his mother, the way I am now.

  Please take care of Junior. I worry about him the most. Please take care of him. I know you always have. You have always treated him like your own son. I always wondered how things might have been different if Daddy hadn’t told him. I don’t know why Daddy wanted him to know. Daddy started to want everyone to know. I still don’t know why. Junior was afraid I wouldn’t be able to take it if everyone knew.

  I don’t want anything fancy for a funeral. It’s not worth spending the money on me. It’s easier this way for everyone. I know you are tired of having me around. This way I will be out of the way and you can have the house to yourself. I have had enough. I don’t want any more.

  Dolly

  Iris sat on a pile of newspapers and reread the note. She looked at Paula. “Gabriel was Junior’s father?”

  Paula shrugged. “Guess Gabe balled his own daughter. The old lady had more to deal with than I realized.”

  “And your father hid Dolly’s suicide note because he didn’t want anyone to know who Junior’s real father was.”

  “You like the message she left for me? Tell Paula hello. That’s all she had to say?”

  “You’re never going to let your anger toward her go, are you? She wasn’t well. Can’t you accept that and move on?”

  “That’s no excuse. It still makes me mad. She was well enough to protect Junior his whole life. And he watched out for her. Junior and my father looked out for each other. Thomas and my father were thick as mud. Everyone’s watching out for everyone else. Except for me.”

  “Paula, let it go.”

  Paula stood. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They walked into the bright sunshine and crossed the lawn to the edge of the hill.

  Iris took a few deep breaths.

  “That’s why I left my kids, you know.” Paula was staring into the distance. “I didn’t think I could protect them. She couldn’t keep me safe, so I wondered how I could protect my own. You would have thought she could have at least kept him away from me. It wouldn’t have taken much, but she couldn’t do it. When I had kids, I figured, this is something that’s mine. Finally something that’s mine. But I got scared it was going to happen to them and I wouldn’t be strong enough to stop it. So I sent them away. I figured they were better off without me.”

  She crouched down and dragged her fingers through the sooty soil. “Now I guess all I’ve got is this hunk of dirt.” She looked at the damaged landscape.

  “And an old friend.” Iris crouched down next to her and put her arm around Paula’s shoulders.

  “Yeah, I guess I’m stuck with you whether I like it or not.” Paula smiled.

  Iris smiled back.

  Paula stood as if to cut the moment short. “The old man always said that idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

  Iris slapped her work gloves against her palm. “Then we’d better get busy.”

  ﾍBONUS: EXCERPT FROM FOOLPROOF

  The fourth Iris Thorne mystery

  CHAPTER ONE

  “What makes you so sure he wouldn’t try to kill you?”

  “Alexa,” Bridget Cross chided her friend. “Kip’s not like that.”

  “Desperate people sometimes do desperate things.”

  “I’ve been married to Kip a long time. There are no surprises left.”

  “You’ve never seen him like this, with his back against the wall.”

  Shaking her head with amusement, Bridget gazed at her five-year-old daughter, who was leading the family German shepherd by a leash far enough ahead on the packed-dirt path to be out of earshot.

  “Stetson, fetch!” Brianna threw a stick and the dog ran after it, his leash dragging on the ground. He picked up the stick but playfully dodged away whenever the child tried to take it from him.

  Alexa added, “You never thought he’d cheat on you.”

  Bridget stopped smiling.

  “The nerve of him, screwing around right under your nose with that Toni person at the office. Of course, you’re the last to find out.” Apparently oblivious to her friend’s uneasiness, Alexa went on. “You think she was the only one? Did you ask him?”

  “I would prefer not talking about it.”

  Coldwater Canyon Park was almost deserted in the middle of a weekday afternoon. It was January in Los Angeles and hot, sunny, and windy thanks to a Santa Ana that had kicked up the day before, blowing dry desert air westward to the ocean. The women and child were bare-armed, the dog was panting, and the sky was as blue and brittle as glacier ice.

  A gust of wind ruffled the dog’s fur and blew Brianna Cross’s long, dark hair, the crown gathered at the back of her head with a bright ribbon, over her shoulder and into her face. She decorously scraped it from her cheeks and patted it back into place while her mother watched, touched by the young child’s newly grown-up demeanor.

  “When are you going to tell him?” Alexa Platt asked.

  Bridget sighed, almost with despair. “I don’t know. I keep thinking we can work it out.”

  “You could, if he were willing. Seems he’s made it clear he’s not.”

  “The last thing I wanted was Brianna to be the product of a broken home, but I’m at my wit’s end.” Bridget grew pensive as she watched her daughter instruct the dog to sit and shake hands. “Maybe it’d be easier if Brianna and I moved out.”

  “No way! He’s the one who should move out.” Alexa flicked back her long, blonde hair and planted her hands on her slender hips. “Why are you acting like such a wuss?” she complained. “You are afraid of him, aren’t you?”

  Bridget suddenly put out a warning hand for her friend to stop talking. She turned and frowned at the empty lane behind them.

  The child, oblivious, continued playing and chatting to herself and the dog several yards away. Stetson, however, was looking in the same direction as Bridget, his ears pricked.

  “What’s wrong?” Alexa peered down the path but didn’t see anyone.

  The dog cocked his head and began to whimper at the sound of heavy footsteps on the sandy dirt.

  A man with stringy, sho
ulder-length hair dressed in a khaki uniform rounded the curve.

  “It’s that grounds-keeper guy,” Alexa remarked under her breath.

  Bridget exhaled with relief. “Afternoon.”

  He mumbled a greeting as he passed, not meeting their eyes. They watched as he disappeared around a bend in the path ahead of them.

  “Ugh,” Alexa commented. “He was staring at me when I was waiting for you in the parking lot. Gives me the creeps.”

  Bridget shook her head and resumed walking.

  “What?” Alexa stroked her friend’s arm. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Bridget paused, as if debating whether to respond. “Lately, I’ve felt like someone’s been following me. Watching me.”

  Alexa frowned. “When?”

  “Last week, in the parking lot at the office. Then, a few days later, at home outside the French doors.”

  “On the patio? Did you see anyone?”

  “No. Just movement, a shape silhouetted by the pool light. The dog started barking, so I know I wasn’t imagining it.”

  “Was Kip home?”

  “He was at Pandora, working late on the new release…he claimed.”

  “You think it could have been him?”

  “Why would Kip spy on me?”

  “Maybe it was one of Kip’s scorned lovers,” Alexa said excitedly. “Maybe Toni.”

  Bridget raked her hand through her close-cropped hair. “The noise in the parking lot was probably my imagination. On the patio, it was probably a coyote, maybe the same one who jumped the fence and got our cat. Anyway, let’s not talk about Kip’s…” She looked askance.

  “Keep the alarm on.”

  “I do now.”

  “You and Kip still have that gun?”

  “I don’t know how to use it.”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking.”

  “Alexa,” Bridget scolded.

  A strong gust of warm wind blew, sending dry leaves and loose dirt scuttling down the path, pushing the women and the child to take a few quick steps. The dog, more surefooted and lower to the ground, was not affected.

  “You have to admit that Kip has changed a lot over the past few years.” Alexa blinked at a speck of dirt that had flown into her eye. “One minute, he’s a…” She searched for the appropriate word.

  “Geek?”

  Alexa laughed. “I was going to say, loner. But, okay, a geek. The next minute, he has groupies. I went through that, ‘you may kiss my ring thing’ with Jim. But Kip’s forgotten one thing—you made him what he is.”

  Bridget dismissed the comment with a shrug.

  “C’mon, B, everyone knows it.”

  “We built the company together.”

  “You said you didn’t want to talk about it, but,” Alexa persisted, “I think Kip slept with Toni to punish you for taking the company in a direction he doesn’t want it to go.”

  “That’s occurred to me. But I can’t worry about Kip’s need for control.” Bridget’s tone was determined. “I have my daughter’s welfare to consider. I’m not going to throw away her financial security just because her father doesn’t want to answer to stockholders.”

  “Bottom line, it doesn’t matter what Kip wants,” Alexa added. “He gave you control of Pandora Software. He couldn’t be bothered with all that icky business stuff. He wants to spend his time being Mr. Creative Genius.”

  “I never thought it would matter unless push came to shove.”

  “It has. No wonder you’re looking over your shoulder.”

  After admiring Alexa’s new Jaguar convertible, the women said good-bye in the gravel parking lot near the park entrance. Bridget and Brianna pulled out first, rushing to avoid being late for the little girl’s ballet class. Alexa, holding her car keys, waved until Bridget’s Volvo had turned down the hill and slipped out of sight.

  When Alexa had not returned home by 1:00 a.m., her husband called the police.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Rowland Barber for being a friend, fan, and mentor. My wonderful editor Linda Marrow for giving Iris and me a soft landing. Dana Isaacson for being my guardian angel. Jane Chelius for her early support of this book. Ann Escue and Mary Goss for commenting on the manuscript. June Pugh for sharing a memory. Charles for being there, as always.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dianne Emley is a Los Angeles Times bestselling author and has received critical acclaim for her books which include the Detective Nan Vining thrillers: The First Cut, Cut to the Quick, The Deepest Cut, and Love Kills and the Iris Thorne mysteries: Cold Call, Slow Squeeze, Fast Friends, Foolproof and Pushover. Her books have been translated into six languages. A Los Angeles native, she lives in California with her husband. Learn more at www.DianneEmley.com