She dozed until the phone rang. She ignored it. She remembered what Lou told a neighbor who complained that she never answered her phone when it rang. “I pay the phone bill. It’s there for my convenience. I’ll answer it if I want to, and if I don’t, I won’t.” It sounded like good reasoning, but maybe she would get an answering machine, so she would know whom she ignored.
She pulled the little dog closer, holding him like a pillow. Her eyes were dry. Crying might have eased some of the pain, but there were no tears to shed. She felt almost numb. Emotions teased at the edges of her mind, but she didn’t feel any of them acutely. Irritation at Joe, the poor, unfortunate messenger. Even as that thought formed, she remembered his satisfaction when he’d listed all the facts about Karen Frederick’s death, like, “See? I was right all along.” No, she didn’t feel sorry for poor Joe, the messenger. What she felt toward him bordered on disgust.
What she felt about Marc was more complicated. Acute disappointment, for one thing. She’d finally found a man who appealed to her, and it turned out he might be another Jack the Ripper. She was frustrated for being led so easily again. She’d met Marc less than a week ago. In that short time, she, in turn, had branded him a stalker, a knight in shining armor, a possible lover, and now she learned that he might be a killer. How could she have been so wrong about the man in so many different ways?
She knew the answer to that. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? What about Garrison? He’d fooled her completely. She had been naïve and trusting, willing to believe whatever story he fed her and kept on believing it for years. As the thought formed, so did a memory as clear as if a movie were playing on the screen of her mind.
She and Garrison were newly engaged when he asked her to attend a cocktail party at the home of some Belgian bigwig living in Atlanta. Garrison told her that his counterpart, the Belgian third secretary, would be there, and the ambassador himself planned to attend. Allie could tell how much it meant to Garrison, and she spent hours getting ready. When she came down the stairs in her best dress, she expected to see in his face the lavish admiration he usually showered on her. Instead, he looked her up and down with disapproval. “Don’t you have anything dressier?” he asked with barely concealed impatience. Allie looked from him to her mother and brother who were entertaining Garrison while Allie finished dressing. Vivian looked disapproving. Len smirked.
“I—I don’t think so,” Allie stammered, unsure what was wrong with her clothes.
“I do,” Vivian said, taking Allie by the arm and pulling her back up the stairs. “She won’t be a minute.”
Garrison glanced at his watch. “I hope not. We’re almost late as it is.”
When she and her mother reached the top of the stairs, Allie glanced back to see Garrison and Len walking back in the living room, both shaking their heads at her stupidity.
Upstairs, Vivian shoved Allie into a slinky black dress with a low-scooped neck and a slit up to the thigh. Allie always thought of it as her mother’s hooker dress. She clipped diamond earrings—no rhinestones for Vivian Garrison—on Allie’s ears and stuffed her feet into jeweled sandal heels, muttering all the time about how if Allie intended to be a diplomat’s wife, she had better learn how to dress the part. “The man’s in the public eye, for heaven’s sake. He has a right to expect a wife who knows enough to dress appropriately for the functions he attends. You’re lucky to have him and even luckier that he’s willing to take the time to guide you, busy as he is.”
Garrison’s look when they came downstairs this time held all the admiration Allie expected to see before, except that he was looking at her mother, and Allie cursed herself for being dumb and gauche for the first of many times to come.
At the party, Garrison showered her with attention. He also showered a lot of attention on the other women present. As she watched him work the room, she’d felt a flash of apprehension about the man she intended to marry and the life that went with it. Then, Garrison turned his charm fully back on her, and Allie told herself she was crazy to worry. Everything would be wonderful once they were married. She would learn to please him. Blah, blah, blah.
Spook nudged her hand again, bringing her back to the present. Had anything changed? Sure, she left Garrison, divorced him, but only after his behavior became so blatantly impossible to ignore. What did that say about her ability to judge Marc’s character? Nothing she cared to hear.
“None of that was your fault.”
Allie tried to ignore the voice.
“And don’t think I’ll let you pretend I’m not here.”
“You’re not here. You’re—”
“You can say ‘dead,’ Allie. The word doesn’t offend me.”
“It’s not the word that gets me. It’s the reality. I can’t bear for you to be gone.”
“I’m here right now. Talk to me.”
“I’ve done it again.”
“Done what?”
“Believed in the wrong man. I liked him, Aunt Lou. He seemed so warm and kind and gentle. I thought something might happen between us, but I was wrong. It’s like Garrison all over again.”
“It’s nothing at all like Garrison. You knew Garrison was wrong for you, but you listened to other people. You believed what they told you about him. He impressed your parents. Your brother bowed to him because of his money and position. You listened to them, Allie. That’s where you went wrong.”
“But Marc—”
“What do you know about Marc?”
“Joe said—”
“Exactly. Joe said. You need to form your own opinions. You’ve got to learn to trust your own instincts, Allie. You have good instincts. Use them.”
“But he could be a killer.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Did she?
She turned over in bed and her hand rested on the purse. Why hadn’t she asked her about the gun?
*
Dawn came about two hours after Allie finally closed her eyes, and it brought rain, great waves of it. The morning was sunk into a kind of murky gloom, as the rain pounded on the roof and spilled out the gutters in sheets. Didn’t it figure? On the one day she needed sunny skies, she got rain.
The instant she woke, a sense of pending doom that had nothing to do with the weather overcame her. Then, she remembered it wasn’t pending; it had already happened. She could remember feeling a lot like that after she got the news that Lou died. Each morning brought with it a sense that something terrible had happened. Then, gradually, the awareness would steal over her, and with it, the grief. This—this feeling about Marc wasn’t grief. It couldn’t be grief. She hadn’t known Marc that long. They’d never even been on a date. Not a real one. They shared a car ride. Lunch. One kiss. One kiss didn’t constitute involvement. Still, it felt like grief.
She staggered into the kitchen for coffee, realizing as she did that she could walk on her injured foot, as long as she curled her toes under—a great testimony to her high arches. She took one look at the ancient coffeemaker on the counter before turning around and heading back toward the bedroom.
She made quick work of feeding Spook and taking him out. Twenty minutes later, she was at Starbucks, a plastic bag tied around her foot to keep it dry and a plastic card in her hand to pay for her shiny new Barista coffeemaker. They tossed in a free cup of coffee when she added a pound of Sumatra. Amazing what you could get these days for one hundred and fifty dollars. The guy at the register looked about eighteen and almost fell over himself in his eagerness to help her get her purchases to the car. Life seems simple when you are eighteen and raging hormones lead you around.
She had come to no brilliant conclusions during the long night; no words of wisdom bubbled up from the dark recesses of her mind. She still didn’t know what she believed. About anything.
Two hours and three cups of coffee later, she’d done a fair job of cleaning the already clean house and was searching the guest room closet for negatives of the picture that caused the strange
reaction in Joe. She found two boxes dedicated to nothing but negatives, some of them black-and-white.
She spent the next couple of hours holding each negative up to the lamp. She knew the basic shape of the group in the picture—a few people in the foreground and her aunt and a bunch of other people in the background. There were three strong possibilities. She slipped them into an envelope and put the others away. Then, she rubber-banded the plastic bag back over her foot again. Spook looked up at her expectantly—she could tell now that she could see his eyes. “Want to go for a ride?” she asked. The little dog almost did backflips, as she attached his leash to his collar. He trotted beside Allie to the Jeep and even managed to jump in by himself.
Allie headed to the one-hour photo store at the causeway intersection to get prints made. It felt better to be doing something. The young man behind the counter told her that her prints would be ready the next day after noon, or she could pay extra to get them back the same day. So much for the one-hour concept. She told him to take his time. Denying him the extra money felt like striking a blow for truth in advertising.
She headed back toward the house with Spook riding copilot. A few times, she thought she caught sight of Marc’s rental car out of the corner of her eye, but there were so many vacationers on the road driving anonymous rental cars that she couldn’t be sure. What could it matter?
Sheryl’s Honda™ CRV™ was parked in front of the house when she turned on to her street. She breathed a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t another police car. If this kept up, she would have to sell the house and move out of the neighborhood before she even finished getting the closets rearranged.
Allie parked in the drive and climbed out of the car. When she got a look at Sheryl’s face, she knew Sheryl had heard about Marc too. Either that or someone had emptied her savings and stolen all her furniture.
“Have you been waiting long?” Allie asked, turning the key in the front door.
Sheryl followed Allie in. “Few minutes. New fashion?” she asked, motioning toward her foot.
“The latest in rainwear,” Allie quipped.
Sheryl almost smiled, but not quite. “Joe told you?”
Allie nodded. “Come in the kitchen.”
It felt good to be home—worn countertops, cabinets that had been painted half a dozen times. Familiar. Safe.
“Getting used to the pup?” Sheryl asked, watching as Allie unclipped Spook’s leash.
“It’s not so hard once you get used to it,” Allie said with a shrug. “Did you ever find out any more about him?”
Sheryl reached down and scratched Spook. “I found the index card she’d put on the bulletin board trying to find him a home. My guess is because she was sick and afraid she couldn’t take care of him.” She shot a glance at Allie. “I asked my mom. She said she’d be glad to take him if you decide you don’t want him.”
Spook looked up at Allie with his liquid brown eyes, and something in her melted a little. “Maybe I’ll hold off for a while if that’s OK. He’s not much trouble.”
Sheryl nodded. “I also checked with the vet down on A1A. I figured that’s the one she’d use. He said she got him from a rescue agency. He’d been knocked around some. He was in rough shape when they found him. I wasn’t going to tell you if you weren’t going to keep him. Didn’t figure you needed any more guilt. Vet said he needs love.”
The melt went into overdrive. She reached down and picked up Spook. How could anyone hurt anything this small? He couldn’t weigh more than ten pounds. That would be like beating up an infant. She tucked Spook under her arm, as she pulled her new coffeepot out of the box. She started a pot of coffee without asking. Sheryl always wanted coffee.
Sheryl raised her eyebrows when she saw the new pot. “Someone’s been shopping.”
Allie got two mugs out of the cabinet. “Self-defense. I couldn’t stand that ancient drip relic another day.”
“Do you still have it?”
Allie looked over at her, incredulous. “You want it?”
Sheryl shrugged self-consciously. “It’s something of Lou’s. Sure. If you were going to toss it.”
Allie swallowed the guilt that suddenly filled her mouth. It never occurred to her that Sheryl and Lou’s friends might want something to remember her by, even though many had known her aunt for years. Sheryl and the others worked with Lou every day, who visited her in the hospital while Allie was over in Europe watching her marriage disintegrate. Sheryl acted so gruff that sometimes Allie forgot she had feelings, and very sensitive feelings at that. Allie could see Sheryl’s hackles rising.
“Hey, if you don’t want to part with it, no big deal.”
Allie blinked her eyes hard to keep the tears from forming. “Of course, you can have it. In fact, I want you to help me sort through her stuff. I’ll bet there are a lot of things in there that someone would want, and you’d know who should get what.”
Sheryl’s face cleared. “You sure I wouldn’t be in the way?”
In answer, Allie reached over and hugged her, almost crushing the dog. Too bad if it embarrassed her. “I’d love to have your help. I went through two boxes of tissues while I sorted the guest room. You can give me moral support.” She put Spook on the floor and turned back to the coffeemaker, pouring them each a cup. “Speaking of the guest room closet, I found some negatives that look like they might be of the photo Joe took. Did you ask him why it upset him?”
She snorted. “Like he’s going to tell me. He didn’t even tell me about his pulling in your stalker. Bill Ricks told me that.”
Allie stopped with her cup halfway to her mouth. “Joe said he would question him. What happened?” she asked as casually as she could manage.
Sheryl drank half her coffee in a gulp. “Damn, that’s good. Questioned. Released. Nothing to hold him on.”
“He had an alibi?”
Sheryl grinned at her. “You been watching those cop shows again?”
Allie could feel her face heat up.
“He could account for his movements. He’d spent a couple of days in Vero looking at properties. We verified it. Not far from here, but there was nothing to put him with the victim or place him near here before the murder. Looks like someone dumped her off a boat. Frederick doesn’t have a boat here. Can’t find out if he’s rented one.”
Allie felt a wave of relief. In the next minute, Sheryl ruined it.
“Doesn’t mean he didn’t do it, but we didn’t have enough to hold him. I’ve got questions of my own.”
Allie raised her eyebrows. “What kind of questions?”
“Like, how’d he get to Jetty Park so fast the day you found the body? Like, what was he doing walking on the beach behind your house the day you sliced your foot? He’s staying at the Hilton. That’s got to be—what—eight miles down the beach? The guy’s in good shape, but give me a break. He has a beach of his own to walk on. And I’d like to know why he’s hanging around here now, instead of hightailing it back to Miami. I’d sure as hell get out of Dodge if the cops were looking at me for murder.”
Allie waited a beat. “Do you have any answers?”
“Maybe.” She finished her coffee and rinsed out her cup. “If he was in Vero, he had plenty of time to get up here before they hauled her off if he has a police scanner in his car. And if he does keep a scanner in his car, why? As for the rest of it?” She shrugged. “I don’t have a clue.”
Allie chewed her lower lip. Neither did she.
Chapter 12
Sheryl looked down at Allie’s foot. “So, you up to cleaning some closets?”
It took them the whole day to go through the master bedroom, mainly because each had a memory that went along with nearly every item of clothing, every handbag, and pair of shoes. They started with the drawers, and two hours later, they were buried under heaps of clothes and costume jewelry. Spook hid under the bed, watching their progress. At some point when they weren’t looking, he came out and curled up on a pile of Lou’s clothes, which almost
broke Allie’s heart. They graduated from tissues—when she ran out—to rolls of toilet paper, but they laughed as much as they cried.
They took a break, and Sheryl went out and picked up hamburgers for lunch. After that, they worked on the closet. That proved too much for either of them, so they turned on the TV and watched HGTV™ for a while. They fell asleep during Designing for the Sexes. It was almost six when Allie opened her eyes to the smell of fresh coffee brewing. She limped into the kitchen to find Sheryl staring at the pot, as if that would make it brew faster.
“It has an automatic shut-off,” Allie said, yawning.
Sheryl needed no further prompting. She snatched the pot off the base and splashed half a cup into the mug she already held in her hand.
“Put the pot back before it overflows,” Allie said, heading back into the living room, “and save some for me.”
She dozed until Sheryl emerged from the kitchen carrying two mugs and the sleek-looking carafe. She thrust a mug at Allie, and then took a couple of gulps out of hers before topping it off again.
“Too much coffee isn’t good for you,” Allie said mildly.
Sheryl snorted. “Neither are bullets, but I deal with those every day.”
Point taken. Life was short. Why not enjoy it?
Sheryl ran a hand lovingly over the carafe. “This is a pretty cool pot.” She pushed the round button that released the vacuum. Open. Closed. Open. Closed.
“Stop playing with the coffeepot,” Allie said with a grin. “You’ll wear it out.”
They sipped their coffee in comfortable silence while the TV droned in the background. Allie couldn’t count the number of times she had done this with her aunt, sitting in this exact same spot, although back then, she usually drank Coke™ or cocoa. The thought of cocoa made her stomach rumble.
Sheryl must have heard it. “Why don’t you put on a party bag, and we’ll go out and grab a bite to eat? It’s my night off, and I don’t want to spend it sitting in front of a TV.” Allie hesitated, remembering their last night out.
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