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

by Jan Coffey

  Léa stepped into the narrow street and decided against taking her car. She had already decided not to call Ted. She knew how excited he was to have Emily and Hanna for the weekend, and with everything he had on his plate next week, he didn’t need this, too.

  The line of row homes stretched down the block. An old van turned onto the street and drove slowly past. A man’s angry bellow from the van, followed by a woman’s screechy laughter, startled Léa. Clutching her car keys, she strode to the end of the block and turned the corner. Peering into every shadow and doorway, she headed toward the place where they’d found Janice last time.

  A church bell clanged ten o’clock a few streets over. Two blocks up, she passed a rowdy group of men just coming out of a corner bar. One made some crude remark in her direction that drew laughs from his buddies. She quickly walked by.

  Léa thought of the talks she had been having with Ted about their aunt. Two and half years ago, after retiring from a lifetime of teaching, Janice had decided that she wanted to live closer to her only family—the niece and nephew that she’d raised since their teenage years.

  The first year and half had gone very smoothly. With Léa working as a social worker at one of the city’s public schools, and Ted and his wife and children living an hour north of the city in Bucks County, life was going well.

  But then everything had started falling apart.

  First, it was Ted and Marilyn’s marital problems and their separation. Then, Janice had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. A couple of weeks after that, the school budget had been cut and Léa’s job with it.

  Léa crossed Broad Street and dodged a speeding car that obviously had no interest in stopping for red lights. She prayed that her aunt was where they’d found her last week.

  She had moved Janice in with her and started a graduate program at Temple at night, while trying to make ends meet with part-time day jobs. Ted had moved to a place just north of the city, too. Many nights, while Léa was taking classes, he’d come in and taken care of Janice. But Ted felt that living here in the lower end of South Philly was not the best situation for Janice.

  Léa agreed. Janice’s illness was advancing more quickly. Soon, Léa couldn’t afford the ‘luxury’ of being a part-time student, part-time worker anymore. She needed a full-time job and a place where dangers didn’t threaten their aunt every time she walked out of the house. She needed to find a place where people would know the older woman.

  Though it would put a bit of distance between them and Ted, Léa felt strongly that she needed to go back to the town in Maryland where Janice Hardy had lived and worked her whole life before coming to Philly. Léa had sent a few resumes out to people she still knew in the Baltimore suburb. From the couple of phone calls she’d already received, the response was positive, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up too high, yet.

  As she stopped at the end of the alleyway where they’d found Janice before, a chill settled in the pit of her stomach. The narrow alley was dark, lit only by a single light over a door halfway down. These were mainly the back doors of lunch places and shops, closed up tight now. Léa realized it was overly optimistic to think that her aunt would be here again. But she couldn’t give up hope. She had to take a look.

  Glancing across the street, she saw two women sitting on the steps of a row home about halfway to the corner. Nine or ten teenage boys and girls were listening to a rap song a little farther up the street. Léa put her hand into her jacket pocket and exchanged her keys for a small can of pepper spray and started down the dark alley.

  The graffiti-decorated Dumpsters that lined the alley were overflowing with garbage. Broken bottles and empty cans and more garbage were scattered everywhere. A cat peered out at her from between two of the Dumpsters as she passed, its eyes gleaming at her without fear. Léa searched, covering every shadowy inch of the alley. Every doorway and trash pile. When she’d nearly reached the end, relief washed over her as she spotted a small shape huddled against a brick wall.

  “Janice,” she called out in a low voice. “Aunt Janice.”

  No response.

  As Léa drew closer, her foot inadvertently kicked an empty bottle, sending it skittering loudly along the pavement past the sleeping form. As the bottle shattered against the wheel of a Dumpster, the figure sat up, glaring and hurling a string of violent obscenities at her in a graveled voice.

  “Sorry,” Léa murmured, backing away from the homeless man. “I thought you were someone else.”

  Quickly, she retreated down the alley. Feeling genuinely panicked now, Léa looked up and down the street when she reached it. The two women were gone. The beat of the music drew her gaze to the teenagers still hanging on the steps up the street. She started toward them. A couple of them turned their backs as she approached. The girls glared with open hostility.

  Léa took the picture out of her jacket pocket. She folded Emily’s and Hanna’s faces under.

  “Could any of you guys help me?”

  Someone turned the volume of the music up. Two girls lit cigarettes and walked down to the corner.

  “I was wondering if any of you might have seen this woman around here tonight.” She held out the picture and walked to the middle of the group.

  One of the boys strutted over to her and put his arm around Léa’s shoulder, looking with exaggerated interest at the photo. “What’d she do, hon, steal your man?”

  She gave him a sharp jab in his bony ribs and shrugged off his arm, drawing a laugh from the rest of the group as he complained loudly.

  “Look…I’ve got ten bucks.” Léa pushed the picture toward the others. “Maybe you passed her on the street. She’s lost and…”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Someone snickered behind her back. “Maybe if you try fifty, lady.”

  A kid who had just joined the group stepped toward her and took the picture. “Let me see.”

  “She’s wearing a flowery housedress,” Léa said. “Pink slippers. She’s short. This high. Very thin. She wears her white hair tied in the back, in a ponytail.”

  The teenager held the picture to the street light.

  “Have you seen her?” Her voice must had shown her desperation. He gave a cool shrug.

  “What’s it worth to you?”

  “I don’t have fifty bucks on me,” Léa whispered. “I only have ten. But help me find her, and I get you the rest tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, right.” With only the slightest hesitation, he shrugged again and motioned for Léa to follow. She did, ignoring the laughter and comments behind them.

  “Jamal got himself a white girl.”

  “She is as old as your mama, Jamal.”

  “Didn’t mean to ruin your reputation, Jamal.” Léa tried to make light of the situation despite the worry that was eating away at her insides.

  “She your mother or something?” He handed back the picture to Léa.

  “She might as well be. She’s my aunt. She raised me.”

  “What’s wrong with her? She crazy or what?”

  “No, she’s not crazy. She just…sometimes forgets her name…and where she lives…and gets lost.”

  “Alzheimer’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “My grandmother’s got it.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Léa hesitated a second as Jamal turned down a very rough street. A fire had burned four or five houses on one side, and two or three others looked abandoned. She eyed the half-dozen derelict cars along the broken sidewalks. “You have seen her, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.” At the end of the street, he stopped and nodded his head toward a bus stop across the way. “Right there. She was sitting there when we went by before. Kind of just talking to herself.”

  Léa’s heart leaped at the sight of her aunt rocking back and forth on a bench near the corner. Her slippers were dangling from her thin feet. Her face had a wild expression as she kept glancing up and down the street in search of something. Léa started crossing, but then whirled around.

&n
bsp; “I’m sorry. I almost forgot.” She reached for her purse.

  “Forget it.” The kid gave another shrug and waved her off. “Just take better care of her next time.”

  Before Léa could insist or even try to explain, the teenager had walked away. As she crossed the street, there was a bitter taste in her mouth. She did her best…and Aunt Janice was not being neglected.

  The older woman didn’t even see her approach. But when Léa slid onto the seat next to her, Janice’s gray eyes brightened with recognition.

  “Good thing you got here. The bus is coming any minute.” She glanced up the street anxiously.

  “Where are you taking me, Auntie?” Léa turned her head and saw a bus was indeed coming.

  “We’re going to pick up Ted. He is waiting.” Janice grabbed Léa’s hand and stood up when the bus pulled to the curb. “Come on.”

  “But he is already coming to the house. We don’t have to pick him up.” Léa shook her head at the bus driver when he opened the door. Gently, she put an arm around Janice’s shoulder and turned her down the street. “Ted and the girls are coming over tomorrow morning.”

  “Who?”

  “The girls. You remember…Hannah and Emily.”

  The older woman glanced anxiously at the departing bus. “Ted won’t find the way.”

  “He will, Auntie. Don’t worry. Ted never gets lost. He’ll be here tomorrow.” Léa linked Janice’s arm in hers and started for home at a slow pace. “In fact, let’s talk about tomorrow. Did you know I love birthdays?”

  “Whose birthday?”

  “Mine!”

  Janice laughed heartily, and Léa felt her own emotions surge through her. She loved this woman.

  “Whose birthday?” she repeated with a wide grin.

  “Yours!” Léa patted her hand. “But no peeking at the presents until tomorrow.”

  Despite the attempt at humor, it was obvious that birth dates were just one more thing that Janice no longer remembered.

  They took their time walking back to the house. The more they talked, the less confused and suspicious Janice seemed to be. By the time they reached the front steps of the row home where their apartment was located, the older woman was calm and reasonably lucid.

  Clara was still waiting for them when they came up the steps. The television was on again. “You gave this poor girl a heck of scare, Janice. You really shouldn’t—”

  Léa shook her head at Clara. After taking her aunt to her favorite chair, she walked Clara out. “There is no point. She doesn’t really remember what she did or where she went, or even why.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, dear, but you should be thinking of putting her in one of those homes or something. If she’s going to just disappear like that, she’ll be too much to handle for you, and for your brother. And you can’t expect somebody my age be watching her anymore, either.”

  “Janice had a bad night. That’s all. She is not like this all the time. Thanks for staying, Clara.”

  “That’s okay, Léa. But you should think about—”

  “I know. I will,” she said, biting back the sharp edge that was creeping into her voice. “Good night, Clara.” She closed the door on the older woman’s back.

  Janice was standing by her chair, her eyes glued to the television set.

  “Ted is not coming,” she said.

  “Of course he is, Auntie.” Léa locked and latched the door and headed for the kitchen. The protectiveness she felt had every nerve in her body humming. She was not going to send Janice to some institution where she might be ignored and neglected. No matter how severe her illness got, Léa knew they could work through it, themselves, as a family. They would work though it the same way as her aunt had done when she and Ted had been dropped in her lap.

  “Léa!”

  “Why don’t you sit down? I’ll get us something to eat,” she called, throwing away the cold meal on the tray and reaching inside the fridge.

  “Ted’s not coming,” the old woman called, louder this time. There was a note of panic in her voice.

  “You’re right. He is not coming tonight. But he and the girls will be here for breakfast.” She took out a plastic container with soup and set it in the microwave.

  “Not coming…not coming…”

  The mournful chant of the older woman brought Léa out of the kitchen and across the living room. Tears were rolling down Janice’s cheeks. She was shivering.

  “Come on, Auntie.” Léa sat down with the older woman on the sofa and gathered her like a child into her embrace. She was already well accustomed to these sudden mood swings that were part of the illness. “You and I will have a nice meal together, and before you know it, tomorrow will be here and…”

  “Not coming…”

  The television’s reflection in the glass front of a cabinet caught Léa’s attention. Something familiar passed across it. She turned to stare at the television screen. A news reporter was standing on a dark street with fire trucks and police cars behind her. What remained of a burned house was visible beyond. The woman was recapping the story.

  “…what we know. A triple murder here in the peaceful bedroom town of Stonybrook, Bucks County.”

  Léa felt every inch of her body go tense.

  “Thirty-three year old Marilyn Foley Hardy’s body was discovered in the kitchen. We’ve just been told the partially burned bodies of the two little girls have been discovered upstairs.”

  Aunt Janice’s face turned to the screen again. Léa couldn’t breathe.

  “The preliminary reports already indicate that the mother was stabbed to death before the fire was started.”

  Léa couldn’t move. Couldn’t say a word. A wrenching sound escaped her throat, but she still couldn’t breathe. Stunned, all she could do was to stare at the television.

  “The woman’s estranged husband, Ted Hardy, was arrested on the scene an hour ago. He is being held in custody.”

  Janice sobbed and looked into Léa’s face. “I told you Ted is not coming.”

  Chapter 1

  Two years later

  Half bent over the toilet, Léa leaned against the cold metal wall of the bathroom stall and tried to will her stomach to stop heaving. Her nerves were shot. Her stomach was now, as always, the first thing to break down.

  She flushed the toilet again and lurched out of the gray stall. Leaning over the old porcelain sink in the courthouse bathroom, she opened the cold-water faucet wide, washed out her mouth, and splashed handfuls of water onto her face. The frigid water on her skin did little to ease the fevered burn.

  The door opened to her left, and Léa immediately pulled some paper towels out of a dispenser. She kept her face buried in the coarse brown sheets as the newcomer’s high heels clicked toward one of the bathroom stalls. When the lock on the stall snapped shut, Léa hazarded a look at her own reflection in the mirror. She looked like hell.

  All that was left of the little makeup she’d applied that morning was a couple of smudged black rings under the swollen slits that once were eyes. Her nose was red and her lips colorless. Her skin was blotchy.

  At the sound of the toilet flushing, Léa reached into her purse for her sunglasses. A younger woman, coming out of the bathroom stall, stared at her openly as she walked to the adjacent sink.

  Léa pulled on the dark shades and cast a final glance at the beleaguered stranger that she had become. Forcing herself to be calm, she walked out of the bathroom to face the inevitable.

  She felt her knees wobble as she entered the nearly packed courtroom. The clock on the wall showed a minute before four. She focused her attention on her own seat and tried not to be affected by the pronounced hush that came over the place with her arrival. Marilyn’s mother, Stephanie Slater, said something aloud, but Léa didn’t bother to spare the woman a glance. Weeks ago, she’d given up responding to her taunts and thinly veiled threats.

  The district attorney and his three assistant D.A.s entered the courtroom a minute lat
er. Ted’s lawyer, David Browning, walked in with his team at 4:06. Browning was, as usual, sporting a starched white button-down shirt that highlighted his impeccable tan. His suit today was charcoal gray, and Léa didn’t think she’d ever seen this one. He gave her a friendly nod that she ignored.

  Last week, she’d received his latest bill. Browning was a junior partner in a decent law firm in Philadelphia, but she couldn’t help but wonder how many of his tan and manicure sessions had been folded into the mind-blowing sum she now owed. And then there was the young lawyer’s collection of Armani suits—each a different but oh-so-conservative shade to cover every day of the week.

  Léa dropped her chin to her chest, knowing that she was looking for any excuse to explode. David Browning just happened to be an easy target.

  As a door along the wall to her right opened, cold claws of fear ripped at her insides. She watched two court officers escort her brother into the courtroom. He had lost so much weight. She looked into his drawn face, at the coarse blond-and-gray beard that covered his once-vibrant and handsome face. He was only thirty-five, but he looked fifty-five…maybe older. His eyes had once sparkled with life, but now there was no light, no hope.

  He, too, looked like a stranger.

  Ted Hardy was not waiting for any twelve jurors to decide on his sentence. He had given up hope long ago. She knew he’d already given up the first time she’d seen him after his arrest two years ago.

  Tears burned Léa’s eyes, but she blinked them back. Ted sat down at the defendant’s table without looking at her. She understood what he was doing. He was severing this last bond—this last connecting lifeline—and she felt more lonely and lost than she’d ever felt in her life.