Jan Coffey Suspense Box Set: Three Complete Novel Box Set: Trust Me Once, Twice Burned, Fourth Victim

by Jan Coffey

  “Hey, man,” Sarah called after him. “You dropped this.”

  Owen saw Hal turn sharply in her direction at the same time as he saw the knife blade flash in the hand of a man who suddenly appeared between them.

  He didn’t know how he was able to crawl across the seat, but somehow he managed, shouldering open the passenger door.

  “Sarah!”

  It was as if everything were happening in slow motion. Like a dream in which you see a terrible event occurring but cannot move quickly enough to stop it.

  Owen’s shout yanked Sarah’s head around as the man snatched the paper from her hand and thrust the knife toward her.

  ~~~~

  The cigarette fell from Frankie’s lips, but he didn’t notice it. His eyes were glued to the man wearing the cheap shades who slid the knife out smoothly and pocketed the blade as if nothing had happened. It was a fucking work of art.

  Of course, when Van Horn’s body hit the ground, the screaming started.

  Frankie stepped forward and the man in the shades gave him a long look before moving brusquely past him and heading down the street.

  Now, that’s the way to do a job, Frankie thought, stepping closer to the tight circle of people forming around the victim. He was sure that nobody on that entire street could identify who did it. Nobody, of course, except him and maybe Sarah Rand.

  He glanced over his shoulder and, as a cop came running from the lot across the street, Frankie saw the Range Rover disappear around the corner at the intersection.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered, reaching for a cigarette and looking at the fish on the sidewalk. In about a minute flat, the sirens were coming from every direction, so Frankie just edged away from the crowd.

  Frankie O’Neal knew everyone in this town who had any connection with the business. And he sure as hell recognized the shark doing this job, in spite of his cheap shades.

  One thing he didn’t know was that making hits was the guy’s new line of work.

  Shit. This bozo was cutting into his business. Literally.

  Chapter 13

  Working his way through the narrow residential streets behind the Tennis Hall of Fame and then past the college, Owen had a hard time keeping his eye on the road. Although he was certain the blade of the knife hadn’t touched Sarah, it was the psychological blow that seemed to have left its mark. Three attacks on her life in less than twenty-four hours gave her ample cause for distress. And then, add to that the fact that she’d just witnessed someone she deeply cared for step into the path of a knife obviously intended for her. Not a good day.

  He didn’t know how badly Hal Van Horn had been hurt, but Owen was not about to hang around to find out. His main concern after the attack had been Sarah, and getting her out of there. She’d felt like a rag doll in his arms when he’d grabbed her and pulled her into the car. And after curling over and burying her face between her knees, she hadn’t seemed to improve much since. Improve? Christ, she hadn’t moved.

  Owen ran a yellow light that took him back onto Bellevue about eight blocks south of the scene of the attack. He could hear sirens in the distance and looked out the back window. No one was following them. He reminded himself that there was no reason why anyone should. The whole thing had happened too fast. There had been too many people on the street. All of them jumping away from what looked like a simple push and shove. And Owen and Sarah had been out of there just as the screaming really got started.

  Her baseball cap had fallen to the floor, and Owen laid a consoling hand on Sarah’s back. She was shivering violently.

  “Sarah?”

  He couldn’t bring himself to comfort her about Van Horn’s condition. Another string of lies wasn’t what she needed right now. He continued to caress her back.

  “We’re almost home.” He took the sharp right that led from Bellevue to Ocean Drive. The wail of the sirens was becoming fainter. The streaks of clouds in the sky were slashed and bloodstained as the giant sun finally nose-dived beyond Point Judith.

  At a sharp bend in the road, her head slid off her knees, and Owen touched her forehead. Her skin was cold and clammy. Frowning, he tried to remember the symptoms of someone in shock. He touched her neck and felt the racing pulse.

  He knew the smarter move would be to take her to an emergency room. Better yet, he should drive them right out of town and head for Boston. He could call his lawyer in New York from there.

  Instead, he turned down the drive to the chateau and pulled into his parking spot. There was no one outside, not that it really mattered at this point. He went around the car and opened her door. She didn’t move.

  “Sarah?” He touched her hair, pulling her toward him. “Let’s go inside.”

  She continued to tremble. Owen lifted her, studying the pale face and the tightly closed eyes.

  “Come on, hon.”

  As he pulled her out of the car and onto her feet, she clutched at the collar of his jacket. Owen felt her legs go rubbery beneath her and thought for a second that she might faint. Sweeping her up in his arms, he crossed the terrace to his apartment. Once inside, she stirred and pushed at him. He put her down, and she made her way unsteadily, but under her own steam, toward the bathroom.

  Owen locked the door and shut the curtains and then strode to the closed door of the bathroom.

  The retching sound from the other side was stunningly difficult to listen to.

  ~~~~

  Senator Rutherford left his small circle of guests and took the call by the window on the far side of the room.

  “What can I do for you, Chief?”

  “My apologies for calling you so late, sir, but I knew you’d want to be informed immediately.”

  “No apologies needed, Dave. What’s the problem?”

  “Well, sir…” The Newport police chief paused. “There’s been an incident in town, and I’m figuring the press will probably be at your doorstep as soon as the news gets out.”

  “I appreciate the forewarning.” Gordon Rutherford turned his back on the half-dozen people in the room and lowered his voice. “What’s happened?”

  “There was a stabbing on Bellevue this evening, sir. The victim was rushed to Newport Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.” The phone went silent for a lengthy pause. “The victim has been identified as Henry Van Horn.”

  The senator’s knuckles went white on the handset, his shoulders becoming rigid. His voice had a choking quality to it when he spoke again.

  “Has…has the judge been notified?”

  “Yes, sir,” Calvin assured him. “In fact, even though you were the next on my list, Judge Arnold himself suggested that we notify you immediately. In the absence of any next of kin available, he said he believed you could be counted on to make any arrangements that were necessary.”

  “Of course…of course. Hal was like a son to me.” Gordon leaned a hand against the table to support his weary frame. “Do you have the killer in custody?”

  “No, sir. But we have an extensive list of eye witnesses. Our detectives have already started the interviewing process.”

  “Who is handling the case?”

  “Dan Archer, sir. But I’ll be personally overseeing everything.”

  “That’s fine. Archer’s a good man,” Rutherford replied solemnly. “Keep me posted on everything, David.”

  When Gordon Rutherford finally returned to his guests, everyone saw the grief that was etched on the senator’s face.

  “I’ve just received word from the chief of police in Newport.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket. “It’s impossible to believe…but Hal Van Horn is dead.”

  ~~~~

  She had blood on her hands. Hal’s body lay at her feet. She stumbled toward the sink and turned on the faucet, but a brownish liquid sprayed out, spattering her before turning to a steady stream of blood. She tried to turn the knobs, but they turned to two stumps of metal in her hands. A loud hammering was coming from the door. Sirens were screeching in her head.
She ran to the door. The doorknob came off in her hand. As she stumbled backward, the door crashed open. The man standing there, she knew him. It was Owen, standing on the other side of the threshold, staring at her hand. Sarah looked down and saw the doorknob was now a bloody knife.

  Sarah sat up with a start. The room was dark. She was alone in a bed. For an insane moment, she didn’t know the difference between the nightmare world and the physical one. The two had become interwoven with terrifying realness.

  A sudden chill raised the flesh on her skin as the chain of events in front of the restaurant flashed through her mind. She remembered Hal’s annoyance as the other man grabbed the paper out of Sarah’s hand. She saw the look of death gripping Hal’s face before Owen dragged her away.

  Owen. He’d come for her.

  Through the partially open bedroom door, Sarah saw the glow of a television set flicker in the darkness of the next room. She pushed the covers aside and placed her bare feet on the floor.

  Sarah remembered heaving so hard that she’d thought her insides were coming apart. She also remembered Owen being in that bathroom with her—wiping her face with a wet towel, giving her something to rinse her mouth with. Later, when she couldn’t stop her shivering, she’d found herself in a hot shower. That was the last thing she remembered.

  She stood up. Her body felt weak, her legs wobbly. She was wearing one of her own sweat suits, but the thick cotton was no help at all in easing the chill that washed with shivering regularity through her body.

  As Sarah entered the living room, her gaze was drawn to the television screen. A news banner across the top framed a video clip of Senator Rutherford waving the cameras away as he entered Newport Hospital. Beneath it, the closed-caption flashed words at her.

  The face of a local news anchorwoman filled the screen. The volume of the set was too low for Sarah to hear anything. She walked closer and tried to focus on the words.

  Van Horn’s stabbing death is the second homicide in a month to rock the city by the sea. Newport city officials…

  A thick sheen of tears blurred Sarah’s vision. The words seem to waver and run off the screen. She realized her teeth were chattering and she couldn’t control it. Her shivering body seemed to belong to someone else.

  “You should have stayed in bed.”

  Owen’s soft whisper in her ear and the feel of his arms pulling her into the warmth of his embrace was a blessing. She buried her face against his chest and tried to stop the choking tears. She couldn’t.

  “Come here.”

  He sat down on the sofa and pulled her onto his lap. She felt a blanket being tucked around them, trapping for her the heat of his body.

  “I shouldn’t have called him. I killed him. I…so many people are dead…because of me…it should have been me.”

  “Don’t say that.” He rubbed her back. He held her so tightly against him that they were practically molded as one. “Listen to me. These are ruthless people. Killers. You are not responsible for their actions.”

  “I have to go to the police. I have to go to them before someone else gets hurt.”

  “Did you see the man who did it? Could you identify him?”

  “No. I…I only saw the knife coming. And then Hal was in the way. He stepped between us.” Her tears were soaking into his shirt. “I have to go to them tonight. You could be next.”

  “You are not doing anything tonight.” He brushed his chin against her hair. “You are staying right here until we think this thing through.”

  Sarah drew her knees up to her chest. He tucked the blanket around her feet, but neither the tears nor the shakes racking her body would stop.

  Owen gathered her even closer and pressed her wet face against his bare neck. She was feeling completely helpless—he knew that—but so was he in terms of knowing how to help her. But some strange bond was forming and he felt it. Somehow, they had connected with each other. She needed him and, in some inexplicable way, he needed her, too.

  He leaned over for the remote and turned off the television. They were immersed in the darkness of the room. Only a sliver of moonlight cut across the carpeted floor.

  After his mother’s death, Owen had recoiled from personal attachments. Detested them. Spurned them. Even after so many years, even after so much water over the dam, he’d continued to live the same way. Nothing was permanent. Nothing lasted. He would not allow himself any involvement that could lead to any depth in a relationship. Hell, there was no need. The women in his life had always come in easy and walked out the same way. He was safe. He was protected. Last in, first out.

  So what was going on here?

  He didn’t want to even think about it right now. Later, maybe. Not now.

  They stayed like that for a long time. No words passed between them. Only the comfort of a touch, the warmth of two bodies, the soft darkness of the room.

  The ragged sound of her breathing gradually eased, and then she simply stopped shivering.

  Sometime later, she pushed away from him and sat up. “It must have something to do with the safe-deposit box. There must be something in there, something they want.”

  Owen held on to the blanket and stared at her face in the shadow. Her eyes were puffy from the crying, but he could see a major step had been taken.

  “What safe-deposit box?”

  “Avery’s.” She stabbed at her tears. “I am an executor of Avery’s estate. After her death, I made a transfer of four safe-deposit boxes into one. There was a delay in disbursement of everything to the family because of some provisions in her will. We’re talking a lot of money and a lot of personal possessions. It was complicated. The end result was that I put together a list of everything that was in these particular boxes. Judge Arnold and Hal each had a copy.”

  “Hold on a second,” Owen said, sliding her off his lap onto the sofa. Getting up, he went to the kitchen, turned on a light, and returned with a box of tissues and a glass of juice for her.

  “I don’t deserve all of this.” She gave him a broken smile, taking the tissues first.

  “Hey, as king of this castle, I’ll be the judge of what you do and don’t deserve.” He sat down next to her, surprised once again by the way she huddled against him, and even more so by the way he felt about it. He smoothed the blanket over her shoulders. “Now, tell me how you think the safe-deposit box ties into the attacks?”

  “Yesterday, I told you about the discrepancies I noticed in Judge Arnold’s calendars. Well, after you left, I did a cross-reference of my own schedule, and I realized that during those same days I went with the judge twice to the bank so he could check something in that safe-deposit box.”

  She took a sip of the juice he pushed at her.

  “Twice in one week. And now that I think about it, that was the week that he became impossible. If it weren’t for me stepping in, he would have fired Linda over nothing. And then, there were several other fights he tried to pick with me. In his opinion, he told me in no uncertain terms, I had become an imbecile overnight. There wasn’t a thing I could do right. We started arguing about everything. Finally, I threatened to end our association. I wasn’t going to continue being verbally abused.”

  “And that’s what the police are using as a motive—your threat to leave him.”

  “But I think…I’m sure now that there must be something in that safe-deposit box that set this whole thing off. Last night, when I called Hal at his office, I mentioned the box…and later, when that man pulled the knife, he grabbed the list out of my hand first.”

  “Is that what you were doing there?”

  She looked down at an invisible spot on the blanket. He saw fresh tears stand in her eyes. Owen reached over and brushed them away himself before raising her chin.

  “What were you going to ask Hal?”

  “Most of the things in those boxes had been in Avery’s possession since the death of her first husband. I thought Hal might be able, somehow, to help me sort out the list.”

  “H
ow many things were in there?”

  “Between the jewelry, coins, stamps, documents, and various negotiable stocks and bonds, in excess of five hundred items.”

  “And who else had access to that box?”

  “No one but me.” She took another tissue and wiped her face. “Avery had laid out exactly how she wanted everything to be handled. I was directed to move all the contents of the boxes in several banks in town to one box, with me serving as executor. Neither Hal or Judge Arnold were allowed to remove anything until the rest of the proceedings were completed.”

  “And were the rest of—”

  “No. I was killed.”

  “How much money is involved here?” Owen asked. “What do you estimate the net worth of the estate to be?”

  “Roughly, I’d say an amount in excess of eight hundred million, including her European holdings and accounts. Avery was from a lot of money, then she married money…and later, with Judge Arnold…well, he was pretty comfortable on his own, so it just continued to build and build.”

  “I’d say the biggest motive for your murder lies right there with that will.”

  She shook her head. “But I wasn’t inheriting anything.”

  “Hal was, though, wasn’t he?” He frowned as another possibility struck him. “What if the two attacks were unrelated? We’re assuming that the attack tonight was directed at you, as well. But what if Hal was the intended victim and not you? Would the judge control all of the estate with Hal out of the way?”

  “That wouldn’t make sense, either,” she protested. “Avery was leaving most of her estate to the judge, anyway. Hal’s inheritance had a lot of strings attached. No, I can’t imagine Judge Arnold planning anyone’s murder—mine or Hal’s—and certainly not from inside a prison.”

  Owen watched Sarah draw her knees again to her chest. She planted her chin on top. She looked more alert now than she had all night.

  “My time has run out. I can’t stay here any longer.”

  “Of course you can.” The response spilled out of him without a moment’s hesitation, surprising them both. “Look, it’s three in the morning. You have to get back into that bed and try to get some more sleep. In the morning, we’ll have a better chance of thinking straight.”