She shook her head, negating her own foolish thoughts. Her whole world had been turned upside down. Some of the changes were good, like meeting Charley's family. But now she was having doubts about her father and fears for her life.
That reminded her that she had not yet checked her motorcycle after her run-in with Kimball last night. She hurried downstairs and out into the yard. Her bike was still parked where she'd left it. It seemed to be intact, but a cursory inspection the day of her accident had not revealed any problem. She moved up close, ready to do a complete check of everything.
She didn't need to. Someone had made three yellow chalk marks on her back tire, the kind police left on automobile tires to determine if they stayed in a parking zone too long. But the marks hadn't been there the night before. They were fresh, not driven over. And if there should be any doubt as to who was responsible, someone had written a capital letter K in the dust on her gas tank.
Kimball was sending her a message. Nothing she could take to the police, just a warning that he could get to her any time he wanted.
Amanda rose slowly, her gaze glued to her bike. Kimball wanted to frighten her. He'd succeeded. She was scared. The extent of his power, the fact that he could get to her so easily was terrifying.
But he'd also pissed her off. How dare he sneak around in the middle of the night, intruding on Irene and Herbert's property and touching her motorcycle? He'd already ruined her favorite bike. Now he'd touched this one, and that felt creepy beyond words. She'd have to check it for problems and wash it thoroughly before she rode it again.
Killing Charley was one thing. She really could hardly blame him for that. She'd thought about it often enough herself. But breaking into her apartment, stealing her gun and putting her at risk of going to prison, causing her to wreck one motorcycle and leaving his evil presence on another…the jerk had to be stopped.
Chapter Sixteen
That afternoon Amanda made a thorough inspection of her bike followed by a thorough washing then rode to the high school football stadium to talk to the coach, Dianne's widower. If she could figure out why Kimball killed Dianne, that might give her a lever in dealing with him.
Charley, of course, came with her. When he was alive, he'd spent a lot of time away, working on scams, having affairs, a night or two in jail. Now, when he should be gone forever, she couldn't get rid of him.
The two of them stood at the rail around the football field and cheered for Paula and Penny as the girls ran laps. When they finished their track practice, they came over, smiling and mopping perspiration from their faces.
"Hi, Amanda!" Paula greeted. They had their names on their shirts, so Amanda knew which twin was which. Unless they'd switched shirts. "Did you ride your bike? Can I ride back with you?"
"No, let me!" Penny protested.
"Tell them both you can't," Charley said. "I don't want my sisters riding with somebody who goes so fast, my life flashes before me!"
Amanda ignored him. "I have one spare helmet. I could take one of you home, and then come back for the other."
The sisters looked at each other, then nodded. "We'll be right back as soon as we shower and change clothes."
"Before you go, is that Greg Carter?" She indicated the man in a baseball cap holding a clipboard and talking to another sweaty girl.
"Yeah, that's Coach," Paula replied.
"Can you introduce me?"
The twins exchanged startled glances, then looked back to her. "You want to meet Coach?" Penny asked.
"He is single," Paula said. "But—"
Amanda almost choked when she realized what the girls thought. "Oh, that's not what I mean! I don't want to meet him socially! I want to ask him some questions about…" She hesitated, unsure how to explain the whole thing to the girls. "I'm trying to get information about people who knew your brother."
Both girls looked relieved. "We like Coach," Paula said.
"It's just—" Penny ended her comment with a shrug.
Amanda hadn't been out of school so long she'd forgotten how things were. "Just that it would be really weird for somebody you know to date him."
"Yeah."
"Trust me," she assured them, "that's not where this is going."
"I should hope not since you're still a married woman," Charley said.
She glared at him and shook her head.
Paula trotted over to Greg Carter, said something to him, pointed to Amanda, and the two walked back to where she stood.
"Amanda, this is our coach, Mr. Carter."
The man stood little taller than she and was muscular as expected of a football coach, but his broad face and warm brown eyes gave him a mellow appearance. Amanda extended a hand, and Greg took it in a firm but gentle grip. "You're Charley's widow?"
"Yes. If you have a minute, I'd like to talk to you."
"Sure."
Penny and Paula took this as permission to leave. "We'll meet you back here after we get cleaned up!"
"They're good kids," Greg observed, watching them go.
"The whole family's great."
Greg turned to her. "You want to talk about Charley? I didn't know him very well. He never went out for sports."
That figured. Even in those days he probably had no time for something as clean-cut as sports. "Actually, I want to talk about Dianne."
Pain flashed across Greg's face, and he looked down for a moment, composing himself before he met her gaze again. "I could talk about Dianne all day, but she didn't know Charley very well, either."
"I realize that. It's just that they came from the same town, and they both died violent deaths."
Greg shifted his clipboard from one hand to the other and studied her for a long moment. "Two years apart, in different towns."
"Both were shot with a thirty-eight caliber gun. I know I'm probably reaching, but I'd really appreciate it if you could answer a few questions."
Greg pushed his baseball cap toward the back of his head and drew in a deep breath. "It's hard to get past something like that. The boys and I still miss her every day. But I guess I don't have to tell you what it feels like when your life partner is gone."
Amanda glanced at Charley who smiled and shrugged. She refrained from telling Greg that she could only wish she knew what that felt like.
"Do you know why Dianne and Roland Kimball broke up?"
Greg blinked a couple of times as if startled by the question. "I…no, that was before we started dating."
"I know. I just thought she might have told you."
"She never talked much about that time in her life."
"Did she stay in touch with him after they came back from college? Did they remain friends or at least friendly?"
Greg shook his head. "She had no contact with him, and she never brought up his name."
"So the breakup must have been a bad one."
Greg drew in a deep breath. "My wife is dead. All I have left is her memory. Why do you want to dredge up things from her past that are better off forgotten?"
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to upset you. But her killer was never brought to justice, and Charley said he thought her death might be connected to what happened in college." That wasn't a lie. She just didn't specify if Charley told her before or after he was killed.
Greg gripped the rail and leaned closer. "You think that bastard Kimball had something to do with what happened to my Dianne?"
Amanda hadn't expected that reaction. For all his money and prominent position in the community, Kimball didn't seem likely to be voted Mr. Popularity. "I don't know. That's why I'm asking questions."
Greg leaned back and studied her for a moment. "She was different when she came back from college. In high school she was the girl everybody loved. A cheerleader, smart, funny, bubbly, adventurous. Always right there when somebody wanted to do something silly. One time she and her friends put pink flamingos in the biology teacher's yard. Another time they blew up hundreds of balloons and filled the boys' bathroom with them. Nev
er anything bad, just high-spirited. About the worst thing she ever did was smoke a cigarette in the cafeteria on a dare."
"She doesn't sound like the kind of girl who'd date Roland Kimball."
"He was rich and good looking, she was beautiful and popular. Nobody was surprised when they started dating. After they went off to college together, everybody thought they'd get married." Greg was silent for several seconds, his gaze focused on the ground.
"But they didn't," Amanda supplied.
He slowly lifted his head. His eyes were damp, but he smiled. "No, they didn't. She came home and married me. She never looked at me in high school, but when she came back, she was quiet, subdued, ready to settle down. We had a good life."
"She never mentioned Kimball? Never even something like, gee, I wish I'd never met that jerk?"
Greg shook his head. "Never. Not even when somebody else brought up his name. She never talked about him, and she went out of her way not to be around if he was speaking to a group or visiting the school or something public like that. Yes, I thought that was suspicious. I thought he'd probably hurt her, but I didn't see any reason to bring up bad memories, so I never pushed her." He hesitated, holding his clipboard against his chest. "She had nightmares. Sometimes she'd wake up crying, sobbing as if her heart was broken."
"Did she say what the nightmares were about?"
"No. She always claimed she didn't remember. The nightmares got worse just before she was killed." He hesitated, then seemed to make up his mind. "Sometimes I'd catch a word here and there in all the crying. She'd mumble things like, forgive and blood. She was very religious, obsessed with never being good enough. So that seemed normal, forgiveness and the blood of Christ. But sometimes she begged somebody to stop." He swallowed. "Sometimes she talked about death and murder."
A cold chill shot down Amanda's spine. "Death and murder? Did you ask her what she meant?"
Again Greg shook his head. "She always claimed she didn't remember the dreams."
"Coach Carter, can you come see if I'm doing this right?" Another young girl in track gear came up behind him.
"Sure, Julie. Be right there." He looked at Amanda, smiled weakly and spread his hands. "I'm sorry I can't tell you anything more."
"Thanks," she said. "You helped." While the information that Dianne had nightmares and talked in her sleep about murder seemed ominous enough, she had no idea what to do with that information, where to go from there. Feeling a little frustrated, she started to leave, find the twins and head home.
"Mrs. Randolph?"
"Yes?" She turned back to Greg Carter.
"You might talk to Sandy Lawson. Dianne and Sandy were friends, and they roomed together in college. When Kimball walked into Dianne's funeral, she got upset. Said he had no right to be there. Going to funerals is part of being the mayor, but Sandy said, after what happened between him and Dianne, he shouldn't have come."
Amanda's frustration lifted measurably. "Do you have her phone number?"
"It's in the phone book. Her husband's name is Don. She still lives here in town."
"Thank you!"
"Now we're getting somewhere," Charley said as Coach Carter walked away.
"Maybe." Amanda shared Charley's enthusiasm, but she didn't want to admit it to him.
Paula and Penny ran up, clean and ready to roll. As the three of them—four if you counted Charley—headed for the gate, Amanda noticed a man a few feet away duck his head and turn from them. He looked ordinary enough, and there was no reason he shouldn't be hanging around the high school stadium, but why was he trying to hide his face?
The girls didn't seem to notice anything, but she glanced at Charley and saw him watching the man, too.
A pervert scoping out the kids, or one of Kimball's flunkies keeping an eye on her?
She didn't much care for either possibility.
***
As soon as Amanda ferried Penny and Paula home, she looked up Sandy Lawson's number and called her. The woman was more than ready to talk about the Kimball incident.
"But not on the phone. Can you drop by after dinner?"
"Absolutely!"
When Amanda announced she was going for another moonlight motorcycle ride, Irene looked at her skeptically, but said nothing.
She climbed on her bike, and Charley climbed on the passenger seat. "I thought you didn't like riding with me."
Charley shrugged. "Not gonna hurt me. I'm already dead. I was just worried about my sisters."
"Be sure and put on a helmet." Amanda laughed at her own humor.
Charley sighed. "I wish I could."
In less than fifteen minutes, Amanda came to a stop in front of a small brick house with a wide front porch. The place was neat and well-kept, bushes trimmed and grass mowed.
A tall woman with short blonde hair came to the door. "Come in," she invited. "You must be Amanda. I'm Sandy. Can I get you something to drink?"
"Iced tea would be great." Amanda was stuffed from dinner, but conversations in Texas were always smoother when accompanied by drinks.
Amanda removed her helmet and jacket and sat down on the sofa. Sandy's living room, like her yard, was neat and tidy, the furnishings subdued and tasteful.
Charley plopped down on the recliner. Actually, he sank a couple of inches into it, but Amanda had become accustomed to that sort of thing and didn't mention it. "Give me a hand," he requested. "I can't make this thing go back. I like recliners. How come we never had one?"
Sandy returned with two glasses of iced tea and set them on coasters on the coffee table. "Don took our little girl to get ice cream," she said, taking a seat beside Amanda. "I told him we needed some alone time."
Amanda's spirits lifted. That sounded encouraging. A little scary, but encouraging as far as information she could use against Kimball.
"Thank you for talking to me. You were Dianne's roommate when she broke up with Kimball?"
"Yes. We were best friends from grade school on. We told each other everything." She grimaced. "Until that night."
Amanda's spirits took a nose dive. Dianne hadn't told her what happened? "That would be the night they broke up?"
Sandy nodded, reached for her tea and took a long drink. "It was her birthday, and she went out with Kimball for a celebration. She came in late, very upset, pale and shaking with what looked like mud splatters all over her dress."
"It looked like mud splatters?" Amanda repeated. She glanced at Charley. He'd caught the implication, too, and was leaning forward. Dianne had mentioned blood during her nightmares.
"That's what I thought it was when she first came in. She had on a cute little yellow sundress, and I thought maybe she'd fallen and got mud on it and was upset about it. But I knew right away it was more than that." She wrapped both hands around her glass of tea, clutching it tightly. "I asked her what happened, if she was hurt, but she wouldn't talk to me. Not one word. She went straight to the bathroom and turned on the shower." Sandy's gaze drifted across the room, her gray eyes unfocused, as if she were looking into the past.
"Did she have mud splatters on her face and arms, too?"
Sandy set her tea on the coffee table and returned her attention to Amanda and the present. "No. I think she must have washed her face and hands. There's no way she could have had so much…mud…on her dress without some of it getting on her."
"But she went in to take a shower, anyway."
"Yes. She never said a word, just gave me a look as if she'd been to hell and wasn't sure she could ever make it back. I was freaked out. I'd never seen her like that before. I followed her into the bathroom. She was in the shower, crying. I didn't know what to do. I started to walk out and give her some privacy, but then I saw her clothes."
At that moment Amanda thought Sandy looked like she'd been to hell and wasn't sure she'd made it back. Her amiable features contorted with remembered horror.
"The yellow sundress? With the mud splatters?"
"Yes." Her voice was little above a whi
sper. "The dorm bathrooms were tiny. You couldn't get in the shower without splashing water all over everything. Dianne had tossed her clothes on the floor, and some of those spots got wet." She paused "It wasn't mud."
"I knew it!" Charley shouted.
"It was blood, wasn't it?" Amanda encouraged when Sandy went silent.
"I think so. Where her dress was wet, the stains ran red, not brown."
"Was it her blood? Was she hurt? Did Kimball hit her?"
Sandy shook her head. "No, I don't think it was her blood. She didn't seem to be injured."
The Ex Who Wouldn't Die Page 17