The Naughty Box (9 books in 1 box set)

by Davis, SJ

  “Alex is back in Stamford,” she said. “He got in last night. You can serve him with the papers any time.”

  “Are you sure, Lena?” James Burke was not only her lawyer, but a personal friend. His concern was palpable as he spoke to her from his office in the city. “Don’t you think it would be wise to take a little more time to think things over before you make such a drastic decision?”

  “Thanks for your concern, Jim, but I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “Seven years of marriage is a long time. Maybe you can work things out…try counseling.”

  “I don’t want to go to counseling, Jim,” she said. “I want a divorce. Go ahead and serve him with the papers.”

  “Okay. I’ll send someone over there this morning. Are you still at the same number?”

  “Yes. I’ll be at my dad’s place for the rest of the day, as well. You can reach me here if you can’t get my cell.” She repeated the ten digits she’d grown up with; the number she still knew by heart.

  “All right. I’ll get on it and let you know when it’s done. You’re aware that the separation agreement requires six months before the divorce can be finalized, aren’t you? How long do you intend to stay in Maine?”

  “I’ll be up at my camp for the next month or so,” Lena said. “After that, I may travel. If I decide to stay in the area, I’ll move into dad’s house when the weather gets cold.”

  “What about the Stamford house? I assume you’ll want to sell it to split the assets.”

  “No,” Lena said. “I’ll keep the places in Maine and Alex can have the house in Connecticut.”

  “Are you sure?” he said. “The Stamford house is worth substantially more than your Maine properties.”

  “I’m sure. I don’t want to screw Alex over, Jim, I just want out.”

  “Understood.”

  “So we’re on the same page?”

  “I think so,” he said. “If you need to get into the Stamford house, call me and I’ll arrange it. Don’t go over there alone. You’re relinquishing your rights to the property, and since it’s in Alex’s name, you could technically be arrested for trespassing. If he wanted to be petty, that is.”

  “Don’t worry, Jim, I won’t. I have no intention of ever setting foot in that house again.”

  After she hung up, she felt a little better. Her anger at Alex wasn’t good, but at least it acted as a temporary Band-Aid for her grief.

  The next call she made was to Marge Quimby. When no one answered, she left a message on her voice mail. “Hi Marge, Lena Walker here. I got the message about my dad’s house and wanted to let you know that I won’t be renting it. Thanks for thinking of me, but I may move in myself once it gets too cold on Blackwater Pond. I’ll probably stay up there through hunting season - maybe longer if the snow holds off - but it’s good to have a back-up in case we get an early winter. Thanks anyway for thinking of me. Talk to you soon.”

  That ought to get the tongues wagging, she thought as she hung up.

  Returning her phone to her pocket, she stepped onto the back porch. The day was beautiful, still warm with the hint of fall in the air. Behind the house, the remnants of the old barn sat in the middle of what was once a hayfield, now badly overgrown and filled with blackberry bushes and white pine saplings. She could hear the whirring wings of a thousand grasshoppers in the grass.

  Lena pushed through the knee-high growth to the old Oak tree where her tire swing dangled, another remnant from her childhood that her father had kept despite her willful entry into the world of adulthood. She pushed it gently, listening to the groan of the chain as it rocked back and forth, chafing against the limb. She and Annie had spent hours pushing each other high into the air on that very swing.

  Annie. The knowledge that her best friend was dead overwhelmed her with a fresh wave of grief. Images of the two of them passed through her mind with the repercussions of tiny earthquakes: the day they’d met in kindergarten, the first time they’d hiked Big Moose Mountain, the trip to Bangor where they’d bought the anklets - the one she still wore…the one that Annie had worn on the day she’d died. Lena sat on the ground below the old tree and wept anew at the misfortune that had befallen her.

  When the call finally came from the Greenville Police Department, her grief was spent and she was numb. She sat in a chair in Stan Spaulding’s office and answered the Bangor detectives’ questions as best she could. Five of them, ten, one hundred. The strangers were thorough; the interview lasted three hours. Finally, they released her and called in Jake. Overwhelmed with grief and exhaustion, she left the building, wandered to her Jeep, and headed for home.

  In Monson, she stopped for gas at the Mobil Mart. The trips back and forth to Greenville had eaten through a full tank in no time and she was glad she’d checked the gauge before heading up the ridge. She waited her turn at the pump behind two trucks and a mini-van as she tried to forget about Annie.

  Ahead, at the Blanchard Road, a black Forerunner turned toward Guilford. Lena watched it top Tenny Hill and disappear from view before her brain registered the fact of its ownership. Odin. It had to be. His was the only black Forerunner she’d seen in the area and the truck had come from the direction of Breakneck Ridge. Jumping into the driver’s seat, she pulled back onto Route 15 and followed him south.

  By the time she’d crested Tenny Hill he was halfway down the other side. Struggling to keep up, she followed him past the turn-off to Piper Pond and into the tiny hamlet of Abbot. At the crossroads, he barely braked for the yellow stoplight, leaving Lena stranded as it turned to red. When it turned back to green, she resumed the chase. There was no sign of him ahead.

  In Guilford she slowed, searching the streets for his truck. The Forerunner wasn’t parked along the main drag, nor was it pulled in at the pharmacy or hardware store. After an anxious glance at the gas gauge, she pulled into the Shell station and filled up. There was only one other place he could have been headed: the Grocery Barn in Dexter.

  As she watched the ticker count off the gallons she debated what to do. Continue on, or go home and wait for him there? She checked her watch; it was only two o’clock. The idea of sitting alone on her dock with her memories and her sorrow was more than she could bear. If nothing else, the drive to Dexter would keep her focused on something other than her grief. Her decision made, she paid for the gas and headed out of Guilford.

  Compared to the smaller towns, Dexter was bustling. She cruised past the Grocery Barn and sighed with relief when she caught sight of the black Forerunner beneath the trees at the far end of the lot. Pulling in beside it, she gathered her purse and went inside to find Odin. When a cursory search of the store failed to turn him up, she walked through the aisles again, picking a few items from the shelves. She’d been wrong; the Forerunner belonged to someone else. Feeling stupid, she went to the checkout counter with her basket and began to unload the items onto the belt.

  “Did your brother forget something?” the cashier said.

  “Excuse me?” Lena looked up. Pretty, with blonde hair and a dark tan, the girl looked familiar. Maeve, her nametag read. Lena frowned as she tried to place her.

  “Dylan,” she said. “He was just here. Don’t tell me he forgot all of this.”

  “My…brother,” Lena repeated as her memory kicked in. Maeve was the same cashier who’d been flirting with Odin on her last visit to Dexter. “He was here?”

  “He left about three minutes ago. You just missed him.”

  “Did he say where he was going next?”

  The girl shrugged. “Home, I assume. Didn’t you come together?”

  She shook her head. “I was down in Newport for the morning,” she improvised.

  “If you hurry, you can beat him back,” Maeve said. “He’s a slow driver.”

  “Yes,” Lena said.

  “Well, there you go.” Maeve tucked the last of the items into a plastic bag and totaled the purchases. “Twenty-three forty-six, please.”

  Lena handed h
er two twenties and waited for the change. “Thank you,” she said, pushing the singles into her wallet.

  Maeve smiled and tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “You’re welcome, Rhiannon. See you next week.”

  Lena’s body worked on autopilot as she left the market. She looked toward the Jeep where the Forerunner had been parked, but it was gone; there was no way to tell if it had been Odin’s truck or not. Doubt mingled with grief and exhaustion, threatening to overwhelm her. If it had been Odin in the supermarket, why had he told the pretty young cashier that she was his sister?

  “He’s seeing someone else,” she said, resting her forehead against the steering wheel.

  In a daze, she pulled from the parking lot and headed toward home, retracing her route through Guilford and Abbot before turning toward Blanchard and Breakneck Ridge. Seeing someone else. The possibility turned her stomach. But why not? She herself had a husband, after all…what was there to stop Odin from keeping another girl - maybe even Maeve - on the side?

  “Oh God,” she whispered, “I don’t know what I’ll do if he’s got another woman.”

  She pulled over and wiped her shaking hands on her skirt, clenching them tightly as a wave of nausea rose in her throat. Abandoning the driver’s seat, she crossed the logging road and vomited. Sour bile spewed into the tall grass. She heaved again as fresh tears streaked her face, sending another gush of stomach juice across the hard scrabble. When her stomach finally settled she returned to the Jeep, forcing herself to calm down. There was every chance that Odin hadn’t been the man in the store. She hadn’t seen him there, just the Forerunner, and there were thousands of them. As for Maeve, the girl could easily have mistaken her for someone else. She’d called her Rhiannon on the way out, and she’d called her ‘brother’ Dylan, after all.

  Lena took a deep breath and reassured herself that her worries were foolish. The explanation was simple: Maeve had gotten her mixed up with some other guy’s sister. It was an easy mistake given all the people to pass through the Grocery Barn. “Get yourself together, Selene,” she whispered. "Don’t drag this thing home.”

  Home. For the first time since leaving Connecticut, she wished she was back on her boring street in her comfortable living room with her usually conventional husband. She wished that Annie was on the phone talking about breaking up with Jake Morris. She wished that cranky Mr. Ubold would knock on the door to bitch about her dog, or her car, or how loud she was playing the music. She wished that things were normal.

  Chapter 29.

  The more she thought about it, the more absurd her suspicions sounded. Lena took her own advice and dismissed the incident in Dexter without questioning Odin, as the discovery of Annie Janson’s body overshadowed the other aspects of her life. There was too much going on to waste precious energy on an innocent flirtation with a checkout girl in the grocery store even if it had happened. Besides, she told herself, he wakes up every morning next to me.

  “The memorial’s at ten,” she told him, three days later. “I’m going in early to help with the flowers.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

  She tensed beneath Odin’s hands as he ran the brush through her hair and worked the tangles free. A cloud passed overhead and she shivered.

  “No,” she said. “Annie was my best friend but you never knew her. Plus, the whole town will be there… if I show up with you, they’ll be talking as soon as the memorial’s over. This is Annie’s day. Stay here. I’ll be fine.”

  “Perhaps I’ll do the shopping then. Leave me a list of things you need and I’ll bring them back with me.”

  Lena pictured Maeve’s pretty face and lithe figure. “Give me your list, instead,” she said. “I’ll stop at Indian Hill on my way home. That should free up your day for something more interesting.”

  Odin parted her hair into three thick strands and began to braid. “Are you sure? You’ve got enough to do without adding my chores to your list.”

  “Hand it over,” she insisted. “I’ll be back by mid-afternoon. What will you do while I’m gone?”

  Odin finished the braid, banded it, and bent to kiss her neck. “Paint in the morning. After that, I’ll probably take the kayak to Lover’s Rock. Do you have your key to the gate?”

  Lena nodded. Since the morning the stranger had appeared on Odin’s dock, they’d agreed to keep it locked. Although they’d seen no sign of the intruder since then, it made sense to be careful, particularly since the grim discovery of Annie Janson’s remains had been made. She’d copied keys for Jake and Marge; Barbra Collins, Odin’s realtor, had one as well. Other than that, they’d agreed, there was no reason for anyone else to be snooping around Blackwater Pond.

  Lena couldn’t help but wonder if it had been Alex that morning, searching for clues to her relationship with Odin to use as ammunition against her in the divorce proceedings. If it had been, she worried, he would have found plenty: her face was depicted in more than a dozen of Odin’s paintings, as was her body. Lena found the portraits tasteful, but there was no denying the fact that the pictures would work against her in a court of law. She could argue his infidelity until the cows came home, but there was only her word against his. On the other hand, the portraits she’d posed for, particularly the one portraying the Goddess Freya, were concrete proof of her deception.

  Pushing aside her worries, she shimmied into her black dress and carried her heels to the Jeep. “Keep a hold on Zephyr for me, will you?” she said, returning to the porch to retrieve a vase of flowers.

  “He won’t follow you,” Odin said. He whistled and the dog streaked from the woods to his feet, wriggling in anticipation as he juggled a tennis ball and aimed for the pond.

  Lena watched them, smiling. Zephyr had come a long way since his days of growling on the dock. She climbed into the Jeep and put it in gear. “See you later,” she called, heading out the driveway.

  “Good luck at Diana’s memorial,” Odin replied, as the dog barreled into the water.

  Lena braked hard as his words registered. “What?”

  He threw the ball without turning back. “I said good luck.”

  “No…after that.”

  “Good luck at Annie’s funeral?”

  Zephyr dropped the ball. Odin picked it up and threw it again.

  Lena put the Jeep into park and turned the engine off. “No you didn’t. You said Diana. ‘Good luck at Diana’s memorial.’ How did you know Annie’s name is Diana?”

  Odin shrugged. “You’ve been talking in your sleep lately. Sometimes you call out her name. Most of the time you say Annie but once in a while it’s Diana. It didn’t take much to make the connection.”

  “Talking in my sleep?” Lena frowned. “I did that when I was little, but thought I’d outgrown it.”

  “You’ve been under a lot of stress, Selene. When your grief lessens, I’m sure it will stop. What’s the big deal, anyway? Annie, Diana, Ann? As names go, they’re similar.”

  Lena shook her head. “Annie hated her real name and never used it. Most people think she’s an Ann, not Diana.”

  Odin walked across the meadow and kissed her. She closed her eyes and her mind emptied; for a moment, she forgot her loss and her pain.

  “When you return, we’ll talk more of Europe,” he said. “It’s time to begin making plans, don’t you think?”

  She nodded. After another kiss, he turned his back to her and threw the ball. Zephyr streaked toward the water as she pulled away.

  Driving towards Greenville, her emotions seesawed between joy and sorrow. For life to reward her with such happiness at the same time that fate had stolen Annie away, seemed horribly unfair. Stan Spaulding had divulged the news that they’d found most of Annie Janson chopped into pieces and left to rot with the trash in the Greenville Landfill. The bone of her left forearm had been broken, as well as her collarbone. What remained of her torso showed evidence of extensive physical trauma. The forensics experts speculated that she’d been beaten to
death, but nothing was sealed in stone. They had yet to find her head.

  “What about her house?” Lena had asked, aghast. “Did you find anything there?”

  “No,” Stan said. “The only fingerprints we found on Highland Street were those that we expected: her friends, her mother, the real estate agent, and the owners.”

  “What about her boyfriend?” Lena said. “He must have left prints as well.”

  “The only boyfriend’s prints we found were Jake’s.” Stan tapped his pen on the desk. “You might as well forget about the mysterious lover angle, Lena.”

  “Why?” she said. “Annie told me she was seeing someone. She wouldn’t lie to me, Stan.”

  “We asked around about the new boyfriend. No one saw her with him. Not at her house, not at The Swan, not at the grocery store or the hardware store. No one noticed anything in her behavior that would suggest that she was seeing anyone, either.” Stan tapped the pen again and shrugged. “You knew her better than I did, but one thing’s for sure…if there was a guy involved, he was careful to stay out of sight.”

  “Exactly!” Lena rolled her eyes with a sigh of exasperation. “That’s why you should check it out, Stan! I mean really check it out!”

  He shook his head, his mouth set in stubborn denial. “We’ve done that, Lena. Other than Jake Morris, there was no boyfriend. Case closed.”

  That he’d doubted her story was obvious - why, she wasn’t sure. Nonetheless, Annie was dead and there would have to be a funeral. Since her body couldn’t be released until the forensic specialists were through and an actual viewing was impossible, her mother had decided on an informal service and asked each of her friends to bring along a token for a memory box. Lena had brought a picture that Annie had given her for Christmas in the seventh grade. In the shot, the two of them stood arm in arm at the top of Little Moose Mountain. It was their first summit, a triumphant event. The frame was handmade, cardboard covered with magic marker, sequins, and stars. “Best Friends Forever” read the caption across the bottom. Lena hated to give it up, but, short of memories, it was all she had to offer - the only token, beside the anklet she continued to wear, that remained of a lifetime of friendship.