“But,” Marlena said, her smile returning, “isn’t it nice to know there is a place to come back to when you want to rest?”
She was pressing pretty hard for Katie to change her mind. Why would she want to keep working in this house so badly, Katie wondered. Certainly there must be other places in town that would hire a fantastic worker like Marlena to clean for them?
Katie shook her head . Whatever Marlena’s reasons were for wanting this house to stay unsold, she didn’t have time to worry about it. There was just too much on her mind. “I’m sorry. My decision is final. Now, I can pay you for two weeks as a severance, and I’ll be happy to give you a fantastic reference, but I just won’t be needing your services anymore.”
Marlena stared at her for the longest moment, and then she pressed her lips tightly together as her eyes grew darker with a flash of anger. She turned on her heel and stomped off to the front door without a word, and then she was gone.
Now that was odd, Katie thought to herself. Then again, Katie had been thrown off jobs before, and she knew how that felt. Whatever. She would write that check for severance pay and print off a nice recommendation letter like she’d promised. Maybe even find someone in need of a housekeeper while she was here. Lizzy had been a big help already offering her brother as a contractor...
Riley.
That brought up another problem. Was Riley involved in her mother’s death somehow? The more she asked the question, the crazier it sounded. Of course he wasn’t. What reason would he possibly have?
But then, why did he keep locking her in the freezer?
Outside, she could hear the sounds of hammers and a circular saw being revved up. Riley certainly knew his business, from what Katie had seen so far. He was cute and funny, and he just seemed so nice...could there be another explanation for all the things that had been happening to her?
She pressed her lips together in a tight line. She was not going to start second guessing herself now. She didn’t know the first thing about Riley Harris. And the note from her mother certainly didn’t say who had hurt her. She couldn’t just suspect Riley like this.
She would, however, do the smart thing and find out more information about her new employee. There was one person in town that she knew would be able to tell her everything she needed to know about Mister Riley Harris.
His sister.
With a quick trip upstairs to grab the note and take it with her, Katie stepped outside. She told Riley she was going to be out for a while and that no one was to go in the house while she wasn’t here. He looked at her oddly when he heard the tone in her voice, but he nodded just like he had before, and went back to work.
She watched him walk away, her eyes drifting involuntarily over his backside and the strong slope of his shoulders. She watched how that leather toolbelt of his strapped itself to his hips. Damn, he was something to look at.
Pretty men had gotten her into trouble before.
She wasn’t going to let that happen again.
Chapter 6
Katie drove the streets of her hometown without missing a single turn. Funny, how after all this time she still remembered where everything was, and where everything used to be. That second-hand clothing store used to be the hardware. There was a tree on the corner there that Katie and her friends had used as a safe spot for games of tag.
And that over there was where she’d first been kissed, behind Munson’s General Store. Bobby Braddish. She spared a moment to wonder where he was now, and then decided she really didn’t care. He’d been an okay kisser, but then he’d started dating Henrietta Fulsom and turned into a royal jerk.
“Ah, memories,” Katie laughed at herself. “Why are the good old days never really as good as we think they are?”
Maybe it was true what they say. You really can’t go home again. At least, not to the home you remember.
Lizzy Harris, on the other hand, had moved out of her parents’ old home only a few years ago, but just like her brother she had stayed here in Fount Azure. Katie had never been to her house before. Now, as she pulled into the driveway at Twenty-Eight Sycamore Street, she saw how tiny Lizzy’s place was.
It was a pretty sort of yellow color with a cream trim that would have looked better as white, in Katie’s opinion. It was a simple sort of home. Usually the type of thing someone buys when they plan on moving again soon. Or when they plan on living by themselves and never getting married.
Since Lizzy had been working the nightshift when Katie first came into town, and it was morning now, she assumed her old friend would be home. Sure enough, there was a car in the open garage and when she knocked, Lizzy called out to her from inside. “Just a moment!”
The door opened and there was Lizzy, in jeans and an oversized sweater, a look of surprise on her face. Her dyed red hair was hanging in unruly strands around her face. “Uh, hi Katie. I wasn’t expecting you. It’s my day off. I’m not even properly dressed...”
“I’m sorry, I should have called.” For just a moment Katie thought about getting back in her car and leaving. It was so crazy, what she was thinking. But the questions pressed against her mind and the little scrap of paper with the note from her mother felt heavy in her pocket.
Never in her life had she wanted a ghost to show up in her life, until now. She wished her mother was here. Her spirit, at least. If she could have talked to her mother’s ghost then she might already have the answers she was hoping to get from Lizzy.
“Do you mind if I come in? I wanted to ask you, um, about your brother.”
“About my...oh.” Lizzy smiled. “I see. Took one look at him and remembered how every girl in school liked him, didn’t you? Well, he is single, and I know he hasn’t dated anyone in a long time. What else do you want to kno?”
“What? No, Lizzy, I didn’t mean--”
“Sure, sure, I understand.” Lizzy stood back from the door and waved Katie inside. “I’ll tell you all about him. He’s a really good guy. If you’re asking my permission to date him, you’ve got it!”
“No, that’s not what I wanted to ask,” Katie started to say, but it was too late. Lizzy had already gone inside, and Katie had no choice but to follow, drawing the door closed behind her. Well. She was here to talk to Lizzy about Riley. If Lizzy thought her questions were romantic in nature, maybe it would make it easier to get answers.
Besides when all of this was done she was leaving Fount Azure for good, forever. When that happened it wouldn’t matter what the people she left behind thought of her.
“I just made some coffee.” Lizzy was in the kitchen, off to the left of the small living room. Katie could hear the clink of ceramic mugs and the thump of cabinet doors. “I know it’s such a cliché, me working in a diner and coming home to make coffee but a girl’s gotta eat, am I right? It’s not like I have someone here to cook for me. How about you?”
Katie blinked at Lizzy as she came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with cups of aromatic coffee and even a little dish of butter cookies. “What do you mean? How about me...what?”
“Do you have anyone at home waiting for you, I mean. Back wherever it is you call home. A boyfriend? A husband, maybe?”
Katie had to laugh as she sat down on the couch. “I haven’t had a boyfriend in years. My last one was actually the man who taught me how to flip houses for profit.”
Lizzy settled the tray on the coffee table, sitting down next to Katie and giving her an odd look. “There hasn’t been anyone since?”
“Well. One or two.” She decided going into details wouldn’t do anyone any good. “Listen, Lizzy, what I wanted to ask you about your brother is...he does house repairs.”
“Well sure he does. You already knew that.”
“Right. Well, has he ever worked on my mother’s house before? Did she ever hire him to do any kind of work for her in the past?”
Sipping one of the coffees, Lizzy considered that. “Yes. Quite often, I think. Most of the people in Fount Azure hired my brother and his
crew when they needed home repairs done. I remember him talking about your mom’s place. Oh, wait. I remember now. He told me about it. Some work on the kitchen, I think.”
Katie nodded, her coffee forgotten. So. Riley had been inside of her mother’s house before. He would know about the freezer. So, then the next question would be...
“When did your brother do this work? It was before my mother died, right?”
“Well of course.” Lizzy crossed her legs before setting her coffee cup on the knee of her jeans. “I swear, Katie, wouldn’t it just be easier for me to tell you about him? I’ve got embarrassing baby stories, and I know he’s allergic to milk, and I know a hundred other things. If you’re interested in him this is a really bizarre way of showing it.”
“Okay,” Katie said, drawing the word out. “How about this, then. Tell me about your brother’s past.”
“Well, when he was seven there was this birthday party with an elephant. They never told Riley not to feed the elephant peanut butter, so--”
“I meant when he was a little older than that. You wanted to tell me all about him. So. Tell me. Has he, you know, ever been arrested or something like that?”
Lizzy laughed hard at that. “Katie, my brother never hurt a fly in his life. He’s going to make it to sainthood one day, I swear it. I mean, the one time he did get in trouble the charges were dropped so that hardly even counts, right?”
Katie had started chewing on her fingernail when Lizzy said that Riley was a candidate for sainthood. Now, her head perked up again. “Charges? Dropped? Lizzy, what did your brother do?”
She waved a hand at Katie’s question as if it didn’t matter. “It was just a misunderstanding. There was this girl, nobody you know, and she said that Riley tried to force himself on her. But she dropped the charges before it went to court.”
Katie sucked in a breath. “Wow.”
“Exactly. Little lying bitch nearly got my brother in big trouble.”
That wasn’t exactly what Katie meant, but now she was really concerned. Rape victims often didn’t want to press charges. They were too embarrassed. Katie knew that, but she also knew that didn’t make the accusations of rape any less real.
Someone had accused Riley of rape.
What kind of monster had she allowed into her mother’s house?
“I know your mother thought very highly of him,” Lizzy continued, still trying to sell her brother to Katie as a potential dating partner. “Whenever I went to see your mom she would always say what a big help he was around the house.”
Her next sip of coffee tasted sour in Katie’s mouth and she set the cup aside. Apparently Riley had been to her mother’s house a lot. That gave him the opportunity to kill his mother.
But what could he possibly have for a motive?
“Did my mom...” Katie didn’t know how to ask this without it sounding suspicious. So she just asked it. “Did my mom ever say she was afraid of Riley? Did she ever say if she had a problem with him?”
“Katie, please. Riley’s almost a saint, remember? Your mom loved having him around. In fact I think he was supposed to go over there the day your mom...you know, right? The day she passed away.”
This was too much for Katie. She had only just wrapped her mind around the possibility that her mother may have been murdered. These revelations about Riley on top of everything else were just...too much.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly. “I’m sorry I just can’t do this.”
Lizzy stood up with her. “I understand. It must be a lot for you, coming back to town, and your mother’s death, and getting the house ready to sell, all of it.” She paused, fiddling with her fingers and looking off at the far wall. “You’re so lucky, Katie.”
That was an odd thing to say, Katie thought. “Lucky? I’m talking about my dead mother. How does that make me lucky?”
Lizzy shrugged a shoulder, color touching the cheeks of her pudgy face. “You actually had a mother to care about, Lizzy. Mine died when I was four. I never knew the kind of love and attention you had. From your mom, and from Marlena too.”
“Marlena? You knew Marlena?”
“Yes. She loved your mother so much. That house, too. I can’t believe she would be okay with you selling it like this.”
“She isn’t.” Katie remembered the way Marlena had stormed out of the house earlier. She was so upset. More upset than she would have expected even a well-paid housekeeper to react.
“Yes,” Lizzy said, “Marlena loved that house. Your mother loved having Marlena there, too.”
Katie could feel tears forming in the corners of her eyes now. Everything was going wrong. No one around her was who she thought they were. Everything she thought she knew was changing. Everything was--
“You know,” Lizzy told her, “your mother always said that she thought of Marlena more like a daughter than she did you.”
Those words froze Katie’s blood. “My mom said that?”
Lizzy nodded slowly. “Yes. A couple of times.” Then she looked up, and saw the expression on Katie’s face. “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just that you were never there. She needed someone to turn to.”
“She could have turned to me,” Katie protested. “She could have called me or...or...”
Even as Katie said it she knew it was a lie. She had lived her life by moving from town to town and state to state. For the last few years, she hadn’t had a single permanent residence. Half the time she forgot to tell her mother where she was. There had been text messages, some days, and cards on Mother’s Day and Christmas and birthdays, but that was all. Katie could have--should have--done more to stay in touch with her mother. She just hadn’t done it.
The tears flooded out, turning her vision watery. “I have to go.”
Wiping furiously at her eyes she sped her way outside, and to her car. She had to get home. She had to be somewhere familiar and safe.
Her mother’s house.
As she was driving back the tears began to fall in earnest. At one point she drove over the center line without even realizing and even in a sleepy town like Fount Azure there were cars to worry about. She snapped her wheel to the right side of the road when another motorist blared their horn at her.
She pulled over to the side of the road, and shut her car off, and then gripped her steering wheel in her hands hard enough that her knuckles popped.
Then she screamed, and she cried, and she smacked her fist against the steering wheel over and over until the sides of her hands ached.
Her mother was dead, and there was nothing she could do about it. “I was a good daughter,” she told herself, over and over. “I was a good daughter. I was.”
If her mother had been upset with her, or disappointed, or anything like that...she never said anything.
“How could she, Katie? You were never there. Oh sure, you’re here now when there’s a buck to be made out of it, but you weren’t there when your mother died. You weren’t there when she was all alone and turning to people who aren’t even family for comfort, either!”
Your mother always said that she thought of Marlena more like a daughter than she did you.
Her thoughts followed down that path and it led her to a question. If Marlena felt that strongly about keeping the house, and if maybe she was convinced that Katie’s mother would leave the house to her if she died...would she try to hasten that death along?
“If killing Mom got her the house...”
Then there was that whole thing with her mom treating Marlena like a daughter.
...she thought of Marlena more like a daughter than she did you...
“Really Mom? Really?” She slammed her fist into the steering wheel again, just as hard as she could. “We’ll just see about that.”
She pulled back into the street, turning in the direction of the cemetery, and shaking her injured hand.
“Ow. No more hitting my hand against things. Even when I’m mad.”
Chapter 7
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She pulled into the half-circle drive in front of the cemetery again. This time she waited for a count of thirty before getting out of the car.
When Everson Millsap didn’t appear, she figured it was safe.
Not that she didn’t like the old man, or appreciate what he did to take care of the cemetery, but he had really creeped her out after their last conversation. The whole thing about feeling her mother’s spirit--that had set her on edge. She hadn’t seen any ghosts in her old house, and certainly not her mother’s ghost, but she did feel something in there. Something or someone, wanting her to know her mother had been murdered.
Setting her jaw, Katie slammed the car door behind her and marched into the rows of gravestones. She went past all the older ones, marching right to her mother’s spot.
The graves stood like quiet sentinels in the grass. Some of the older ones up front had broken over the years and been cemented back together. Others were tall and carved, massive blocks of stone that marked the rotting remains of the wealthy who had come to the same end as all their other neighbors.
Money didn’t do you a bit of good after you were gone. Katie wondered if there was a lesson in that for her as she made her way along the path.
The newer stones were thicker, and polished, and came in a variety of sizes and shapes. There were a few that didn’t have a date of death. These were burial plots for people who were still alive. Did they come here, she wondered, and stare at their own graves?
Katie shivered. “That’s a bit morbid,” she scolded herself. “You’re not a child anymore. You know that people die.”
Just like your mother, a voice inside reminded her.
“Yes. Mom’s here, too. She’s at peace now.”
Then why do you feel so guilty?
Her mother’s grave was just about a dozen steps away, but Katie stopped where she was. Why did she feel guilty? Because either she was going crazy, or that note she’d found in the freezer really did mean exactly what she thought it did.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 29