She Loves Me Not

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Oh, really? What makes you think that, Netta?”

  Looking even more uncomfortable, Netta confessed. “I mentioned to him that he’d be working with a lovely young widow, and he became very nervous and finally admitted that he isn’t interested in women.”

  It was the first time Rose heard herself referred to as a widow.

  As jarred by that bleak description as she was by the fact that Netta would even consider matchmaking just six months after Sam’s death, Rose never thought twice about the fact that Bill came right out and told a potential employer that he was gay.

  Why would he do such a thing? It certainly wasn’t necessary.

  He couldn’t know, back then, that Netta was more tolerant than the conservative majority of senior citizens in this small town.

  Nor could Netta—or Rose—know that the pleasant young man so eager for a minimum-wage job in the bookstore was really a cold-blooded killer.

  “Rose?”

  She looks into his eyes. Such unusual eyes, the palest blue-green color.

  Why, Bill? Why?

  It doesn’t make sense.

  Maybe she’s wrong. Maybe the 7718 page was a fluke. Maybe she’s jumping to conclusions, thinking that Leslie meant for her to turn it upside down, the way she did Jenna’s calculator that afternoon more than a week ago.

  7718.

  If you read the numerals as letters . . .

  They spell B-I-L-L.

  But he’s my friend. I can’t believe he wants to hurt me. In fact, I won’t believe it until . . .

  “Are you all right? Angela?”

  Angela.

  The name again. The name on the necklace.

  Leo didn’t steal it.

  Bill was in her bedroom in the dead of night while she was sleeping.

  “No, I’m not okay, Bill.” She slips her violently trembling hands into the deep pockets of her coat. “And my name isn’t Angela.”

  Behind his wire-framed glasses, wrath flares in his gaze.

  It’s there only a moment, and then it’s gone, his expression as benign as it was before.

  But now she’s certain.

  He’s the one.

  And the phone didn’t go dead just now because of the storm. Bill did something in the basement.

  “Oops, sorry. I meant Rose. You’ll feel better once we get out of here,” Bill says smoothly, his breath puffing white in the snowy evening air.

  Like a smoke-breathing dragon, Rose can’t help thinking, gazing at him, wondering who he really is, and why he’s doing this.

  “I can’t go with you, Bill.”

  His face is beginning to harden, yet his tone remains casual. “Why not?”

  “Because. Because I know. About you.”

  She shrinks backward in dread as his familiar features are transformed by a mask of monstrous rage.

  “Can’t you drive any faster?” Leslie urges from the passenger seat.

  David’s eyes are focused on the blinding snow beyond the windshield. It’s all he can do to keep the Land Rover between the white lines on the road.

  “If we wind up in a ditch, we won’t be able to help Rose,” he mutters, checking the wiper switch to make sure they can’t go any faster. They’re working at top speed, but the snow is coming down hard and fast and it’s impossible to see anything.

  If what Leslie told him is true—that she knows Rose spoke to her coworker earlier on the phone and could very well have told him where to find her tonight—they may already be too late.

  There isn’t a doubt in David’s mind that Bill Michaels and Clarence are the same man—Angela’s lover—and that he killed Olivia, Isabel, and Rose’s husband. That Rose is in grave danger is irrefutable. David only hopes—

  “Listen!” Leslie turns in her seat, looking over her shoulder. “Do you hear sirens back there?”

  He does. Glancing into the rearview mirror, David sees the red lights materialize in the haze of snow behind the Land Rover.

  “Thank God,” Leslie says. “Christine must have called them. Pull over and let them pass. They must be on their way to my parents’ house.”

  David takes his foot off the gas and coasts onto the shoulder. Touching the brake would mean risking a spin on the slick pavement.

  The flashing lights and sirens don’t pass them by. Instead, the police car follows the Land Rover onto the shoulder.

  “What are they doing?” Leslie asks frantically, up on one knee, her body twisted around to see the car behind them. “Why aren’t they going to help Rose?”

  David is silent, jaw clenched, eyes on the rearview mirror. The squad car’s door opens. A uniformed figure emerges in the swirling snow, gun drawn, aimed directly at David.

  Speaking over a bullhorn, a voice bellows, “Step out of the car now with your hands over your head.”

  She’s afraid.

  Afraid of him.

  Delicious power surges through him, electrifying his nerve endings.

  “Of course you know about me,” he says, taking a step toward her, giggling when she cowers back into the house. “Tell me, what exactly is it that you know? That I like women? That I was only pretending to be gay so that nosy old lady wouldn’t get ideas in her head?”

  Rose reaches out to push the door closed.

  He easily stops it with his foot, his tone lethal as he warns her, “Don’t you ever slam the door in my face, Angela. Do you understand?”

  “I’m not Angela, Bill. I don’t know who . . .”

  “Enough, already.” His words drip with disdain. “Stop calling me Bill. And stop pretending.”

  “Pretending . . . what?”

  He leans toward her, so close he can smell the scent of her breath. Menthol.

  He makes a fist, raises it, watches her cringe.

  Grinning, he asks, “What’s the matter? Did you think I was going to hit you, Angela? I wouldn’t do that. I just wanted to show you something.”

  He palpitates the fist against his own chest, beating a slow rhythm.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  “What does that sound like?”

  “A heart.” Her words are low, voice strained.

  “Yes. Your heart. So you can stop pretending. I know.” He reaches out and brushes her hair back from her eyes. “I don’t like this style. You really should get it cut again, Angela. Cut and lightened. It looked so pretty when you did that for me the last time.” He trails the backs of his fingers down the side of her face.

  She says nothing. He can feel her tension, her muscles clenching as he brushes his fingers over her jaw.

  “You lied to me, Angela. About Christmas. About everything.”

  “I never lied to you, Bill!” she protests. “I never even—”

  “Stop it! Stop calling me Bill. We don’t have to pretend anymore. You can say my name.”

  “But I don’t . . .”

  “Say it!”

  “Bill. Bill Michaels.”

  “Michaels.” He grins with renewed delight at his own clever pseudonym. “Before it’s too late and I forget to ask . . . how do you like my little tribute to the Snow Angel?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Michael. The angel.”

  She looks blank.

  “Oh, come on, Angela. Don’t tell me you didn’t figure it out. Michael. Mr. Gabriel. Clarence. They’re all angels . . . just like you. The snow angel.”

  “The snow angel?” She shakes her head, pretending to be baffled.

  “And Clarence is the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life.” He waits. She’s still acting as though she’s blank. Exasperated, he says, “Your favorite movie, did you forget? We watched it together. I chose the name Clarence for you. I chose all of them for you. I did everything for you. And you . . . you chose him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Him. Your husband.”

  Her voice is barely audible. “Sam?”

  “Sam?” He burs
ts out laughing, dismissing the name with a wave of his hand. “Not him. I’m talking about David. Your husband.”

  “My husband’s name is Sam,” she says in a strangled whisper.

  “Oh, I don’t think Sam is anybody’s husband anymore. Sam burned to a crisp that night, from the inside out.” He is gleeful, remembering. “And I’ve got something even better planned for David. A fate worse than death, as far as the Brookmans are—what’s the matter, Angela?” he asks, noticing her expression.

  “How do you know about Sam?” She’s gone motionless, staring at him as though the light has suddenly dawned.

  “Oh, I guess you had to be there,” he says glibly, remembering that stormy January night.

  You had to be there . . . and he was.

  The temperature was hovering just below freezing: cold enough for the rain that had fallen all day to freeze in a sheet of glare ice on the pavement and encase every tree, every shrub, every overhead wire with a thick, glassy coating.

  Fresh from dumping Olivia McGlinchie’s body in the northern woods, he meandered out to Laurel Bay, undeterred by the slick roads, eager to lay eyes on his next conquest.

  Instead, as he crept around the perimeter of the house, looking for a glimpse of her through a window, he came face-to-face with her husband. The man was clutching a baseball bat, using it to knock ice crystals from an overhead wire.

  He can still hear the outraged echo of Sam Larrabee’s last words.

  “Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “My husband died in a freak accident.” Her voice is fraught with pain.

  He shrugs. “If you say so.”

  Sometimes it still amazes him that he managed to pull it off. It happened before—something snapping inside of him, throwing into a rage. It happened with Dad, and with Angela. And it happened again, with Luke Pflueger, under startlingly similar circumstances.

  But he never made an actual decision to kill Sam Larrabee.

  He simply reacted to the attack when Sam hurtled himself forward. They scuffled on the rock-hard, frozen ground. He managed to get hold of the bat, and then it was all over. One good swing to the back of Sam’s head, and the other man went sprawling.

  As he stood over his unconscious victim, panting, contemplating his next move, it happened.

  The ice storm—and what he likes to consider divine providence—intervened.

  That high-voltage cable coming down just yards away from Sam was as fortuitous as the abandoned taxicab, engine running, on all-but-deserted East 66th Street.

  He approached it cautiously as it lay sparking on the ground, thankful for his rubber-soled shoes and the wooden baseball bat so that he could safely—

  “You killed him.”

  Angela. He almost forgot she was here. Startled, he looks up and is taken aback to see that the fear in her eyes has been replaced by a flinty glare.

  Odd, considering that he’s the one with the upper hand here.

  “I killed him,” he acknowledges. “What’s the matter? Do you miss him?”

  “You . . . bastard.” Tears have sprung to her eyes, yet any lingering vulnerability is rapidly giving way to palpable outrage.

  “Don’t worry, Angela. You’re going to see Sam very soon, if you care that much. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait for David. He’s going to his own private hell, and I’d be willing to bet they give him twenty-five years to life. If he’s lucky, he might get time off for good—”

  He breaks off abruptly, finding himself staring into the barrel of a gun.

  Through a haze of illness and fear, Christine can hear sirens piercing the night as she stands at the darkened window. She can see nothing but a curtain of blowing, drifting snow and the dim outline of the Larrabee house next door.

  “Do you think there’s a fire, Christine?”

  She looks up to see Jenna and Leo standing behind her. They look smaller than usual, the little brother clinging solemnly to his big sister’s hand.

  Christine nods. “There might be a fire somewhere.”

  It isn’t a lie, exactly. There’s a fire in her swollen throat, and in her feverish, aching head.

  But she knows what the sirens mean.

  The police are racing against time to rescue Leslie from David Brookman.

  He seemed so sincere, as though he only wanted to save Rose.

  Showing Christine and Leslie that old photo of Bill Michaels, making them believe that he was the one threatening Rose’s life . . .

  “Christine? Where’s Mommy?” Leo asks.

  “Aunt Leslie said she’d be at our house, but she wasn’t. Is she okay?” Jenna wants to know.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Christine tells these two shaken children, who have already lost so much.

  Then she gathers them into her arms.

  The gun trembles in Rose’s hands as she grasps it in front of her, elbows awkwardly bent in imitation of a pose she’s seen in countless movies and television dramas.

  For the first time tonight, Bill falters. She can see it in his twitching jaw, though his voice is even as he asks, “What are you doing, Angela?”

  She is silent, glaring at him, swallowing audibly as she moves one thumb over the gun, wondering how to cock it, wondering if the sound will frighten him.

  His eyes narrow. He is watching her intently.

  Dammit. Does he know? Can he tell?

  Oh, Sam. Why didn’t I let you teach me how to shoot . . .

  Or at least, how to make it look like I can?

  Help me, Sam.

  Jenna and Leo need me.

  I need to see them grow up.

  “You’re not going to shoot me, Angela.” He takes a step toward her.

  She fights the waves of fear washing over her. “Yes, I will.”

  “I’ll bet that gun isn’t even loaded.”

  She swallows hard. “Are you willing to take a chance and find out?”

  He shrugs, takes another step toward her. “What do you think?”

  Her hands clench the gun.

  Please don’t let him come closer.

  Please don’t let him find out.

  Her swollen throat constricted by apprehension, she manages to say, “I think you’d better stop where you are, or you’ll be sorry.”

  “Oh, I won’t be sorry, Angela. You’re the one who will be sorry.”

  Don’t let him move.

  Please.

  Bill raises a hand, reaching for the gun.

  Please, Sam, help me.

  “Give me the gun, Angela.”

  “My name is Rose.”

  “Give me the gun.”

  “Get back or I’ll shoot.”

  “You can’t shoot a weapon that isn’t loaded.”

  His gloved fingers come closer.

  She flinches.

  Closes her eyes.

  With a menacing laugh, Bill plucks the gun from her hand.

  Rose steels herself for the inevitable . . .

  And a shot rings out.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Larrabee? Did he try to hurt you in any way?”

  “No!” Leslie looks in desperation from Officer Shanley’s concerned face to David Brookman’s infuriated one.

  “I wouldn’t hurt her! I wouldn’t hurt anyone!” David protests vehemently, as handcuffs are placed around his wrists by Shanley’s partner. “For God’s sake, I’m trying to save her sister-in-law from a killer.”

  Neither officer says anything.

  Leslie’s thoughts are spinning. If David is telling the truth, Rose is in danger. If he isn’t, she is the one who was in danger . . . and she should be grateful to these lawmen for rescuing her just in time.

  But there will be time to thank them later. When she knows for certain that Rose is out of harm’s way.

  “Is anybody checking my parents’ house?” she asks urgently. “My sister-in-law is there.”

  “We’ll send somebody over. There’s been an accident out on Sunrise Highway and all o
f our officers are—”

  “You’ve got to get somebody there right away,” David interrupts emphatically. “If I’m telling the truth and I’m innocent, you’ll have her blood—and a couple of orphaned kids—on your hands.”

  “You think we’re going to let you walk away while we go chasing off to investigate based on your advice?” Officer Shanley flicks his gaze back to Leslie, shifts his tone to reassuring as he says, “Like I told you, we’ll send somebody over. But I’m sure your sister-in-law is okay. There’s no threat to her now that we’ve got him in custody.”

  Leslie exhales shakily, praying to God that the policeman is right . . . and that David Brookman is lying.

  Rose opens her eyes just as the man who calls himself Bill Michaels falls to the floor at her feet.

  Stunned, she can only gape at the blood pouring from a wound somewhere on his torso.

  It doesn’t make sense.

  He’s holding the gun.

  But the bullets are still in a locked box on the top shelf of her closet.

  Too frightened to even touch them, she didn’t dare try to load the weapon.

  She merely dropped it, unloaded, into the pocket of her coat.

  Just in case.

  In a stupor, she stares down at Bill, still clutching the useless gun in his hand . . .

  And realizes that he’s surrounded by broken glass . . . and that the blood is gushing from his back.

  Even Leslie doesn’t believe him.

  David can plainly see the doubt in her expression as she stands frozen in the falling snow, staring at him.

  And the cops . . .

  He turns his head toward them and glimpses something far more potent than doubt in their eyes. Blatant malice bores into him, filling him with utter helplessness.

  Rose Larrabee is destined to join Isabel and Olivia in death, and there’s not a damned thing he can do about it.

  Perhaps she’s already dead.

  Even if she isn’t, she’s already entered a doom-tainted limbo no different, really, than the condemned state in which Angela lingered for days.

  Yes, and David’s decision to pull onto the shoulder when he heard the screaming sirens was as lethal to Rose Larrabee as his decision to pull the plug was to Angela.

  But Angela was already gone. No matter what you tried to tell yourself in the hospital, you knew she was gone the moment you saw her.