The Ex Who Wouldn't Die

by Sally Berneathy

  Amanda groaned. She had been a little surprised that Charley wasn't looming at her bedside, especially after that scene on the mountain. Her accident and confinement to a hospital bed would have been the perfect opportunity for him to prove his devotion, try to convince her to drop the divorce proceedings. But if one of his scams had landed him in trouble with the authorities again, naturally he'd be hiding out.

  Her father, a prominent attorney who'd attained a judgeship a few years ago, had managed to keep Charley out of jail during their marriage. However, there had been plenty of close calls, plenty of times the police had shown up on her front porch and plenty of times Amanda had hoped her father wouldn't find out and intervene, when she had looked forward to viewing Charley behind bars. But Charley had always appealed to his father-in-law who didn't want to "see the family's reputation blackened."

  Now, probably because Charley had been caught at the scene of her accident, the cops had decided her bike might be involved in something illegal he'd done and had taken it. Damn! She'd bought that bike almost new just a few months ago, added pipes, made adjustments to rev it up, and Dawson, her assistant, had added some great detailing to the paint job. It was the hottest bike she'd ever owned. She loved that bike. Now, thank you, Charley, the cops had it. They'd probably already taken it apart looking for evidence. It would never be the same.

  But something had gone wrong with the bike even before her accident. The horrifying details washed over her in a rush…the loss of control, the sensation of sliding on a slick surface that hadn't been slick, falling over the side of the mountain, then abandoning the bike to save her life.

  Had Charley tampered with it? She'd left it outside when she went into his third floor apartment for the latest in a series of confrontations that had, as usual, ended with her storming out, jumping on the bike and riding hard and fast to get away from everything.

  No, that wasn't possible. Not that she thought him incapable of it, but he'd been inside with her the entire time she was away from the bike, arguing with her, shouting at her.

  Still, it was a huge coincidence that he'd suddenly appeared right after she crashed. She'd been riding fast for a couple of hours. The only way he could have been there was if he'd followed close behind her for the entire trip.

  Damn him! She was going to get her bike back, find out what was wrong with it, put it back together and then she was going to kill Charley.

  "Where's a nurse? Jenny, get me a nurse. Please," she added before Jenny could upbraid her for her lack of courtesy.

  "Oh, dear! Are you in pain? Do you need more medication?"

  "Yes, I'm in pain. No, I don't need more medication. I need my clothes. I need to get out of here. I've got things I have to do." Kill Charley.

  Jenny fluttered, one hand touching her cheek, then drifting to her hair. "I don't think you can do that."

  Amanda had a few doubts of her own what with her left leg swathed in bandages and her head pounding with every fraction of a movement, but she was going to give it her best shot. "Jenny, please, get me a nurse or, better yet, get me Dad's friend, the doctor." She rolled to the side of the bed, putting her good foot on the floor. The process was painfully reminiscent of her climb up that blasted mountain.

  "I have to call Daddy," Jenny said. "I told him I'd call him as soon as you woke up."

  The old I'm going to tell on you! Jenny had always been good at that one.

  Amanda ceased her efforts to get out of bed, more from the pain than from any acquiescence to Jenny's threat to call their father. "Fine," she said resignedly, and lay back down.

  Jenny was the obedient daughter. She did whatever their parents told her to do. She'd graduated from college with a 2.5 average in education, but of course she'd never teach. She'd promptly married a young lawyer and taken her rightful place in Highland Park society. David Carter, Esq.

  Jenny, and only Jenny, called him "Davey." Well, Amanda called him that sometimes just to annoy him. To the rest of the world he was "David" or "Mr. Carter." He was, Amanda thought, as boring as day-old white bread. He was the perfect son-in-law. Jenny was the perfect daughter.

  Amanda, with a 4.0 average, dropped out of college in her junior year and spent the next twelve months biking across the country. She'd returned home to take one ultimately boring job after another, then, at the advanced (according to her mother) age of thirty, had married Charley and opened a motorcycle repair shop. She was the disappointing daughter.

  Amanda loved her little sister, had since her unexpected birth when Amanda was seven and their parents were already in their early forties. But Amanda's life would have been a lot easier without Jenny's staunch alliance with their parents. As she listened to Jenny on the phone to their father, Amanda thought it would have been nice to have a rebel sister, someone who would have "forgotten" to call their father until she'd made her escape.

  But no one got to choose their relatives. If they did, Amanda reflected wryly, she would likely be the one not chosen for inclusion in this family.

  While the two sisters waited for their father to arrive, Amanda consumed the cold, unappetizing food hidden beneath the stainless steel cover. Most likely it had once been part of an animal. Which part, which animal, that was anybody's guess, but it was sustenance, and she would need sustenance to give her the energy to deal with her family and to eventually escape from this place.

  "Is Mom coming with Dad?" she asked around a mouthful of the questionable food.

  "No, she had a charity luncheon where she had to give a speech, and you know how much everybody depends on her. She's been very worried about you, but I told her I'd take good care of you." Jenny fidgeted in the plastic-covered chair beside the bed.

  "I understand. She would have hated being here when I was unconscious and couldn't hear her criticisms. On the other hand, I couldn't have argued with her, either. She may have just missed her big chance."

  "Oh, Amanda! You know how much Mother loves you! We all do! But we just don't understand you, especially about—oh, dear! Daddy said we couldn't talk about him!"

  "We can't talk about Dad?" Amanda asked, the misinterpretation deliberate.

  "No! We can't talk about…" she lowered her voice to a whisper…"Charley!"

  "Like we'd even want to."

  "Well, well, well!" boomed a deep, resonant voice followed by Emerson Caulfield's entrance into the room. "My little girl's awake." Emerson was an average-size man, but he always loomed as large as his voice. His full head of steel-gray hair, his penetrating brown gaze and immaculate dark suit completed his imposing courtroom presence no matter where he was, even in a hospital room.

  As he moved to give each girl a perfunctory peck on the cheek, Amanda noticed the taller, younger man who'd come into the room behind her father. Brian Edwards, an associate from her father's old law firm, was a younger, taller version of her father.

  They all exchanged greetings, and Amanda studied Brian, a little curious about his presence in her hospital room. He was handling her divorce, but they weren't buddies. He wasn't on her birthday party list or her hospital room list.

  Brian stood quietly, deferentially, to the left and slightly behind her father. Though he seemed as imperturbable as always, Amanda sensed something wasn't right. His erect posture bordered on rigid. He clutched his briefcase with a white-knuckled hand.

  Had Charley filed a new motion of some sort, something so bizarre her father felt the need to bring her attorney to her even as she lay in bed tethered to an IV?

  After the standard questions about Amanda's well-being, Emerson requested that Jenny leave the room, close the door and be certain nobody entered. She, of course, obeyed immediately, pausing only to look back and give Amanda a perky smile.

  Amanda wasn't sure what was going on, but she was pretty sure she wasn't going to like it. "Is this about Charley?"

  The two men exchanged glances. "Yes," Emerson replied, his dark gaze softening. In spite of her status as black sheep of the family, Amanda
knew her father loved her and would always be there for her, no matter how much he might disapprove of her actions. Sometimes she wondered if he might even envy her freedom…just a little bit…once in a while. "Mandy, whatever happened, we'll fix it."

  Amanda frowned. "Fix it?" Damn! Was he planning to bail Charley out again? "Don't you think we're a little past fixing every little problem for Charley? Have you ever heard of the concept of actions have consequences?"

  Her father looked uncomfortable, not a normal state for him. "Of course they do, but sometimes there's a question as to what those consequences should be. When you feel up to it, I'll go with you to the police station, but if anything should come of this…and I'm quite certain it won't…we need to have Brian involved from the beginning."

  Amanda groaned. "So Charley's in jail. Did he do something to my bike? I just can't believe he would want to hurt me. Physically, I mean."

  Again the men exchanged worried glances.

  Emerson moved forward and took his daughter's hand in his. "Mandy, sweetheart, Charley's not in jail. He's dead."

  "What?!" Amanda half rose from the bed, then fell back with a grimace of pain. Charley couldn't be dead! He was a lot of things, most of them bad, but everything about him was alive and vibrant! She couldn't imagine him any other way. "Dead?" she repeated. Well, that would explain why he hadn't come to stalk her in the hospital! "Are you sure? What happened? I didn't even know he was sick! Did he overdose on something?"

  Her father looked down, refusing to meet her gaze, and drew in a deep breath. "Somebody entered the apartment, apparently somebody he knew since there was no sign of a break-in, and shot him."

  "Omigawd! Was it a robbery?" Not that Charley had anything to steal after so many visits to the pawn shop. More likely a jealous husband.

  Emerson shook his head. "They don't think so. Nothing seemed to be missing."

  "The gun," Amanda whispered, guilt suddenly washing over her.

  "What gun?" her father asked.

  "Charley called me and wanted me to bring him that gun he bought me. Said he'd sign the divorce papers if I would. I went to his apartment, but I didn't take the gun. I thought he wanted to sell it or hold up a liquor store or something awful. But maybe he wanted it to defend himself."

  She looked at her father, hoping he'd say something to relieve her feelings of guilt.

  Instead, he and Brian exchanged glances. "You didn't take the gun with you? Where is it?"

  "Home in a box in the back of my closet, where it's been since he gave it to me." Amanda felt her eyes fill with unexpected tears. "I wanted him out of my life, but I didn't want him dead." Okay, maybe she'd thought of making him dead a few times, had fantasized about things like stripping him naked, tying his hands and feet, pouring honey on him and leaving him on a fire ant hill in west Texas in the middle of August or beating him with a black jack wrapped in barbed wire then squirting acid on him at thirty-second intervals for a few hours. But those were just pleasant fantasies, on a level with dreaming about winning the lottery. "He saved my life," she said quietly.

  Her father's gaze sharpened. "What do you mean, he saved your life?"

  "The accident. I passed out somewhere down the side of the mountain. Charley found me and wouldn't let me go back to sleep. He forced me to crawl up that mountain to the highway so somebody could find me." It was the truth…refined and honed, perhaps, omitting the ugly part about his refusing to actually help her. He had, nevertheless, forced her to help herself.

  Her eyes overflowed, and a tear trickled down each cheek. She felt quite benevolent at being able to remember Charley in a good light. "No matter what he did in the past, I'll have that as my last memory of him."

  "Amanda, that's not possible. Charley's body was found at nine o'clock Sunday evening with time of death approximately three hours earlier. You were picked up just after eight o'clock Sunday evening in Oklahoma, and the motorist said he saw you stagger onto the highway and fall…alone."

  Amanda stared at him for a long moment, trying to comprehend and make sense of her father's words. "What are you saying? Charley died two hours before my accident? That's not possible. Charley was there. I saw him. I fell down the side of the mountain and he was there. He was rude and mean, but he made me crawl up the side of that mountain. He taunted me until I did it. If he hadn't been there, I would have lain down, gone to sleep and died. The last thing I remember is reaching the highway, and he was still there."

  Her father shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mandy. It was just a dream. Sometimes when people are involved in traumatic accidents, they have strange dreams."

  "You mean hallucinations. Great. Other people see bright lights or angels. I could have died, and all I saw was my ex-husband."

  You almost died. He tried to kill you. He'll try again. You're in danger.

  She gasped and struggled to sit up as the memory of Charley's last words hit her. "He said somebody tried to kill me!"

  Her father's brow creased with concern. He took Amanda's hand. "Sweetheart, it was a dream. Charley wasn't there. He was already dead."

  Of course he wasn't there. He hadn't saved her life. He hadn't warned her she was in danger. Just a dream. The last time she saw him was their violent argument at his apartment. She hadn't brought him the gun that might have saved his life, and he'd been angry. She'd shouted that she hated him, and he'd told her to go away. That was her last memory of Charley.

  She lay back on the pillow and turned her face to the side. "I guess," she agreed, suddenly too depressed to argue about it.

  Her father, still holding her hand, took another deep breath and again looked uncomfortable. "Someone saw you race away from Charley's place on your motorcycle around five thirty Sunday afternoon. The police want to question you."

  "Question me? I don't know anything," she mumbled, wishing everyone would go away and let her assimilate and deal with Charley's death. "I didn't see anything."

  Brian cleared his throat. "Mrs. Randolph, the police want to talk to you about your husband's murder because you're the prime suspect."

  Chapter Three

  For the next two days Amanda lay in the uncomfortable hospital bed eating the dubious food served in ugly dishes on cold stainless steel trays and wondering if this was similar to prison except they wouldn't give her pain meds in prison.

  The police thought she killed Charley.

  Okay, she had motive. And she'd threatened him a few times. A lot of times, to be precise. But how could anyone think she'd murder him? At one time she'd loved him.

  Even now she had errant thoughts of how Charley, if he were still alive, would have come to visit her in the hospital, would have joked about her injuries and made her laugh. He'd have smuggled in pizza for her, brought her pastries from the little German bakery across town.

  But when he wasn't bringing her treats, Charley would have been out drinking, gambling, chasing sleazy women and participating in any other activity, legal or illegal, that caught his fancy. She felt a little irreverent thinking these things about someone who was dead, but Charley's death hadn't turned him into a saint.

  When she was finally released from the hospital, she didn't protest her father's suggestion that she stay at her parents' house for a few days. She still had a limp and ached all over, not quite ready to tackle motorcycle repairs. Besides, the food would be excellent, much better than either the dismal hospital fare or the frozen dinners and peanut butter sandwiches she typically ate at home. Her mother always employed housekeepers who were good cooks.

  As they drove across Dallas, Amanda leaned back in the plush leather seat of her father's Mercedes and watched the familiar scenery slide past. She'd spent her entire life in this area…born, lived and attended school in Highland Park, then college at SMU, knew the best restaurants and the worst, went to the Texas State Fair every year, strolled the restored brick streets of Uptown. This was home. But now things seemed to have shifted ever so slightly, become strange and unknown.

  C
harley was dead. Her husband…still legally her husband, thanks to his stubborn refusal to become an "ex"…was dead. She was, technically, a widow.

  Her lips curved into a faint smile at the thought of such a respectable term being applied to her. The Widow Randolph.

  "Good to see you smile," her father said. "You'll be surprised at how fast you'll get through all this, put it in the past, and move on with your life."

  "I want to change my name back to Caulfield," she said. Erase all traces of Charley.

  "Easily done. Your mother will insist we wait a proper amount of time, of course, then we'll file a Request for Name Change, and you'll be Amanda Caulfield within the week."

  "If I ever decide to get married again, I'm keeping my birth name." She considered that for a moment, then amended, "If I ever decide to get married again, I'm going to have myself committed to a mental institution."