by Lisa Jackson
Drive with the spin. Don’t fight it! She remembered the old axiom her grandfather had pounded into her head from the time she was old enough to get her learner’s permit. But aiming toward the piles of plowed snow that had been swept to the edge of the road seemed wrong.
Don’t panic!
Heart racing, fear spurting through her blood, she tried like hell to steer her careening car back into the lane, but as the Edge righted, her fender sheered through the packed snow, sending a spray of ice into the air.
“Crap!”
She overcorrected, and the car began to twist again, shuddering and sliding into the oncoming lane.
Headlights glared bright.
Oh. God.
A big truck was bearing down on her!
Frantically, she yanked on the wheel.
The car slid sideways, and she worked the brakes again. Desperately she tried to steer out of the truck’s path.
A horn blasted, echoing in the night.
“Oh, Jesus!” Her heart nearly stopped.
The damned brakes locked.
Still the little SUV skidded sideways, the driver’s side exposed to the massive grille of a pickup barreling down on her.
“Son of a bitch!” Frantic, Kacey stepped on the gas while forcing her steering wheel to turn. Her car lurched, tires spinning crazily. “Come on, come on!”
Sweat beaded on her brow.
The truck bore down on her, close enough that she could see the driver’s face. Their eyes locked. For a split second she thought she recognized him, had seen his face somewhere before. Then she braced herself for the impact. The driver turned away and blasted his horn. The truck slid as the driver stood on his brakes.
She hit the gas.
Her Edge jolted suddenly, tires catching hold.
The little SUV leaped forward, straightening, but not before the corner of the pickup’s front panel clipped her back bumper.
Bam!
The entire SUV shuddered! Kacey’s seat belt cinched tight. Her vehicle was sent spinning crazily across both lanes, snow and ice flying, the inky night flashing through her frozen windshield.
“Come on, come on,” she said as if the damned vehicle could understand her. She worked the brakes and the steering wheel, fighting the spin, feeling sick.
The whirling, swirling darkness eased a bit.
Frozen, snow-covered trees that had been reeling monoliths careening past her windows now became distinct.
The road seemed to straighten.
Finally the Edge stopped.
Kacey’s stomach settled. “Oh, damn,” she whispered, her heart thudding wildly, her pulse jumping. She took a deep breath and felt nervous sweat begin to dry on her skin.
Her vehicle’s nose was pointed in the opposite direction of her house, now facing oncoming traffic as she was in the wrong lane. Fortunately, there were no cars or trucks approaching from either direction. Farther ahead, the pickup had stopped, his taillights glowing a bright red and reflecting against the dirty snow packed onto the asphalt.
Her hands were shaking violently as she eased onto the gas and carefully drove forward, sliding into the correct lane behind the idling pickup. She was pointed in the wrong direction, away from her house, but now, at least, she was in the right lane as far as traffic was concerned, though thankfully there was still none.
Like it or not, she had to talk to the dark-haired guy in the pickup and explain what had happened as she exchanged insurance information with him, but as her headlights reached the tailgate of the snow-covered truck, the once-idling truck took off, snow and ice flying from beneath its tires.
“Hey!” she yelled. What the hell?
For a split second, she considered taking off after him. There was damage to her car, and potentially to the pickup. Technically, unless the driver of the car that had passed her and nearly sideswiped her was found, she was at fault. She stepped on the gas, but her tires spun and the truck was disappearing into the night, its license plate, from Idaho, smudged and dark, only the number eight—or was it three?—visible.
What was it about the driver that had seemed so familiar? His dark hair? The way he stared down at her? Something else?
Straining so hard to see the license plate of the retreating vehicle, at first she didn’t notice the woman at the edge of the road. But a movement caught her eye, and she realized she wasn’t alone. A tall, slim woman with graying blond hair peeking out of a white stocking cap was walking along a trail leading from the surrounding woods. Grace Perchant. The local woman who claimed to speak with ghosts and predict the future. At Grace’s side was a huge dog, its bristly fur tan and gray, its eyes, those of a cunning predator. Part wolf, local gossip claimed, and Kacey believed it.
Grace approached her car as Kacey rolled down the window. “Did you see that?” she asked, and the other woman nodded. “I don’t know why he took off.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The wolf dog growled low in his throat, eyes as pale as his master’s fixed on the surrounding forest.
“Bane, hush!” Grace commanded, and the big animal became mute.
Kacey was still talking about the other driver. “But . . . his truck might be damaged and my car—”
“Your car is fine.” Grace glanced toward the darkness into which the driver had guided his truck.
“I should speak with him.”
“No.” Grace’s gaze returned to Kacey’s. Pale green eyes were round with concern. “You should never speak to him.”
“Why? You know him?”
Grace was shaking her head and again turned to face the stretch of icy road that disappeared into darkness. “I only know that he’s evil,” she said, her breath clouding in the air. “He means you harm.”
“He took off! And I don’t think he meant to hit me.”
Grace turned back to her. “Be careful,” she warned and, whistling to the dog, walked across the road to a spot where the ditch wasn’t quite so deep and a path curved into the surrounding forest.
“Weird,” Kacey said under her breath, still shaken up, then, with some effort, turned her car around and cautiously drove the last four miles to the house she now called home. The lane was piled thick with snow, but her car, dented though it was, churned through the white powder and drove easily to its spot in the garage.
It was nearly eleven by the time she let out her breath and listened to the engine tick as it began to cool. After climbing out of the car, she flipped on the interior lights to survey the damage.
A crumpled bumper on one side, a few scratches, and a small dent were all that had happened. Easily fixed. And she was lucky to have survived. The accident could have been so much worse. Telling herself to deal with everything in the morning, she locked the garage behind her and started for the back door. The night was still, snow gently falling, the path she’d broken earlier already partially filled with new snow. Yet she had no trouble following it, her boots stepping in the large prints she’d left earlier. On the porch she paused and looked around the yard. Why, she didn’t know, just an uneasy feeling that had been with her all night. The accident hadn’t helped, nor had the other driver’s quick exit.
What had Grace said? That the driver was “evil,” that he meant Kacey harm?
That’s ridiculous. Don’t go there! He was just another driver in a hurry. And yet she felt a chill deep in her soul and remembered thinking fleetingly that she’d seen the driver somewhere before. “Now you’re imagining things.” She let herself inside and made certain the dead bolt was secure behind her.
Snapping on lights, she had the ludicrous sensation that someone had been inside. “Oh, for the love of God.” Still, she eyed each room, stepping through the archways and doors as she unwound her scarf, then hung it and her coat on the hall tree near the front door.
No knife-wielding, masked boogeyman leaped out at her.
No dark shadow crossed her path.
No pairs of eyes glowed from behind the curtains.
Muttering beneath her breath, she headed up the stairs. One step down from the landing, she paused, certain she smelled something out of the ordinary lingering in the small alcove where a portrait of her grandparents was mounted on the faded wallpaper Kacey had sworn she would take it down. She hadn’t. The pale pink rose pattern had been Grannie’s favorite, and Kacey had had neither the time nor the heart to strip it from the walls.
She touched her finger to her lips, then brushed it over her smiling grandparents’ faces and wondered what they knew about the women who looked like her. Jocelyn Wallis and Shelly Bonaventure, “dead ringers” for her who had lived in the area.
She continued to climb the stairs. The third step from the top creaked as it always did, and Kacey smiled, remembering how she’d avoided stepping on that particular plank as a child, first considering it “bad luck” and later so as not to wake her snoring grandfather and light-sleeping grandmother as she snuck out of the house during those blissful, hot Montana summers, when the smell of cut hay and dust filled her nostrils and she rode her horse bareback through the moonlit fields.
It seemed an eternity ago, part of a childhood disconnected from the woman she’d become, the driven medical student who had been attacked by a madman and had nearly given up her career before it had gotten started.
Who was she kidding?
She’d never been the same since the maniac had leapt out at her in the parking garage.
Gone was any vestige of the girl who had raced her horse at midnight, or swung on a rope to drop into the river that cut through these mountains in summer, or hiked fearlessly through the surrounding hills.... No, between her mother’s constant criticism and that horrific attack, Kacey’s self-confidence had eroded.
She’d gotten some of it back over the years, even handling the failure of divorce with more spine than she would have expected, but still, deep inside, in a place she rarely acknowledged, there was a frightened shell of a woman, and right now she was rearing her scared, trembling head.
Don’t let it happen. Don’t let some weirdo derail you. Grace Perchant thinks she can talk to ghosts, for crying out loud!
Giving herself a silent pep talk and a hard mental shake, Kacey walked to the room she’d always occupied, never having moved into her grandparents’ bedroom. That had seemed sacrilegious somehow. Rather than turn on the light, she walked to the window in the dark and stared across the moonlit fields.
Again she felt an unlikely, malicious wind rush through her insides, though the room was perfectly still. She thought about the driver of the pickup that had hit her car, remembered seeing his fleeting face. Did she know him? Or had she, in that heart-stopping instant, been mistaken?
All in your mind, she told herself but didn’t believe it for an instant.
CHAPTER 16
“ Okay...no . . . wait . . .” Pescoli, seated across from Alvarez in a booth at Wild Will’s held up both hands and cocked her head. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and they’d agreed to meet at the local restaurant and bar located in downtown Grizzly Falls. “You had your fortune read in a teacup by a woman who wears matching sweaters with her dog, and then you stole the victim’s cat?”
“Adopted. Maybe temporarily.”
Pescoli stared at her as if she’d just sprouted horns. “Who are you, and where’s my partner?” she demanded, grabbing the ketchup bottle and pouring a huge glob on her plate. “The next thing I know, you’ll be claiming to be beamed up into a spaceship to face Crytor, or whoever he was, the alien lizard general who Ivor Hicks thinks captured him years ago.”
Alvarez played around with the remains of her tuna salad and decided she had to confess. If she didn’t, Pescoli might hear it from someone else. So she admitted going to Dan Grayson’s for Thanksgiving.
“For the love of God,” Pescoli said, stunned. “You barged in on his family Thanksgiving and—”
“I was invited, okay?”
“Out of pity.”
Alvarez glared at her partner. “It was a mistake, okay? I get that now. I only told you so that if the sheriff said anything, you wouldn’t be blindsided.” She jabbed her fork into a bit of lettuce. “So, what did you do?”
To her surprise, Pescoli actually blushed as she grabbed her Reuben and dredged it through the ketchup before taking a bite.
“Thought so.” Alvarez tried not to sound envious.
“So, you find anything interesting at the neighbor’s besides the cat?” she asked as she swallowed and washed the bite down with Diet Coke.
“Could be that we’re on the lookout for a dark pickup.”
Pescoli sent her a glance. “When aren’t we on the lookout for one?”
Alvarez lifted a shoulder.
“So does this pickup have plates? Distinguishing marks? Maybe a camper or toolbox?”
“Possibly, but Lois didn’t see or remember.”
“Lois is the dachshund-walking, sweater-matching, tea-leaf-reading, charter-member-of-PETA neighbor?”
“Yes,” Alvarez answered patiently.
“Huh. Not exactly the most credible witness.” Pescoli drained her soda, and before she could decline, Sandi, the waitress and owner of the establishment, slid another drink in front of her. “Thanks. That’s enough.”
“Free refills.” Sandi, tall and a little on the gaunt side, grinned widely. She never stopped selling. She’d ended up with the establishment in a bitter divorce from her husband, William Aldridge, for whom the restaurant, had been named, and she’d poured her heart and soul into the place changing up the once-boring menu with local fare that included huckleberries, venison, and trout, then redecorating the restaurant to look like a hunting lodge. The chandeliers were wagon wheels with lanterns affixed to their rims. Mounted on the rough plank walls, high overhead, the stuffed heads of bighorn sheep, antelope, deer, and even a moose stared through glassy eyes at those who occupied the tables and booths below. It was eerie, weird, and kind of macabre to Alvarez’s way of thinking, but totally in step with the Grizzly Falls way of life.
With a wink of an overly shadowed eye, Sandi hurried off to a table where a couple were trying to deal with three loud kids who looked as if they ranged in age from two to six. Mom and Dad were obviously frazzled as they tried to sort out drinks, juggle their bags, and answer questions from the squirming trio of sons. Sandi whipped out tiny coloring books from her apron, found a glass filled with crayons on a nearby table, and, once the kiddies were into their newfound art, took the couple’s order.
“So tell me again about the poison.” Pescoli took another bite as Alvarez repeated what she’d discovered in Jocelyn Wallis’s apartment and how it all added up to murder.
They discussed the case and, after paying the bill, put on their jackets and headed through the front doors and past Grizz, the stuffed grizzly bear that greeted customers as they entered Wild Will’s. Grizz, frozen in time, his mouth a perpetual snarl that bared his long teeth, was usually dressed for the season. Today was no exception, as he wore a white bonnet and collar over his shaggy coat, as if he were a Pilgrim woman. Gourds, squash, and an overflowing cornucopia were situated at his long, clawed feet, and a stuffed turkey peeked around the dry stalks of corn that surrounded him.
“Cute,” Pescoli muttered under her breath.
Alvarez shouldered open the glass doors, and a blast of winter air hit her full in the face. The sidewalk had been shoveled and salted, concrete peeking through, and the roar of the falls was audible over the traffic rolling along the street. The pedestrians were bundled in a variety of jackets and coats, most with scarves wound around their necks, boots covering their feet and stocking caps pulled over their ears. Some juggled packages, while others held tight on to the mitten-clad hands of their children. A few idled and smoked while huddled in doorways of the shops already decorated with cedar wreaths, red bows, and glittering lights, all heralding the Christmas season. The snow had quit for the day, but the cloud cover hung low, hugging the earth, blocking the sun.
/> They had arrived in this part of town in different vehicles. Alvarez had been at the department’s offices before daylight. She’d called Pescoli, who had agreed to meet her. “You know this is supposed to be my day off,” Pescoli said as they reached her Jeep.
“Just thought you’d want to be kept up to speed.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Lucky’s got the kids, so it isn’t a big deal. It’s Black Friday, you know. Michelle’s taking Bianca shopping.”
“I thought you said she was fighting some bug.”
“Did you not hear me? It’s Black Friday, the sacred day of holy shopping. There’ll be no stopping of the laying down of the credit cards.” Pausing before she unlocked the Jeep’s door, she said, “I suppose you’re going to make a workday of it.”
“Yeah.”
“And probably a night.”
“The holidays, always more domestic issues.” That was a trend that seemed to have no end. Get a few relatives together, offer them food and drink, and pretty soon all the old wounds were opened again. Fueled by a little booze and a handy weapon, things could get out of control pretty fast. Hadn’t she witnessed it often enough in her own family? “I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.”
Pescoli opened the door, then hesitated. “Keep me in the loop.”
“Will do.”
As Pescoli pulled out of the parking spot and drove off, Alvarez walked to a side street near the river where her own vehicle was parked. Even in the cold, there were fishermen leaning against the railing, their lines disappearing into the dark, swirling water far below, while a few pedestrians bustled along the sidewalk. Moving away from the river, she turned a full one-eighty and stared upward, over the facades and rooftops of the storefronts, to the crest of Boxer Bluff. Without really understanding her motives, she forced her gaze along the darkened hillside and the railing to the park. Unwittingly she focused on the crumbling wall where Jocelyn Wallis had fallen to her death.
Or been pushed.
Was the killer so anxious for her to be dead that he couldn’t wait for the poison he’d put in her coffee to work? There was a chance he might not have known about her heart condition. For that matter, even Jocelyn herself might not have realized her heart had been compromised. But the killer certainly understood that given enough time and having gone undetected, the toxins he’d laced her food with would eventually steal her life.