Live Ringer

by Lynda Fitzgerald

  He didn’t argue, but she could see disbelief written across his face. “Did you tell Sheryl about coming to the hotel?”

  Allie glanced away. “No.” Then she added, “It would have upset her. Apparently, Joe has guilt-tripped her into following me around.”

  “Is he in love with you?”

  “No. Of course, he isn’t. Joe is—protective of me. You know, like a big brother. He had a fit when he found out I let Rupert Cornelius in the house.”

  Marc gave her the kind of look one would give a slow child. “He also pitched a fit about your seeing me,” he said gently. “Hey,” he said when she started to speak, “the guy would be an idiot if he wasn’t in love with you.”

  His words caused a warm glow to spread through her body, but she wasn’t ready to let it go. “He’s protective,” she said stubbornly. “That’s different.”

  Marc patted her hand in a way that told her she might as well give it up. He looked down at her writing pad, which lay discarded on the rumpled bedspread. “What’s this?”

  “My attempt at making order out of chaos,” she said wryly, picking up the pad and giving it to him. “The murders obviously have something to do with their appearance.” She picked up the writing pad. “All the victims are women, blonde, or sort of blonde, similar facial features. They were nearly all the same age, and I think they were all divorced or going through a divorce.” She bit the pencil. “Was that Melanie divorced?”

  “She was. But you forgot one other thing they have in common.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a dead ringer for all of them.”

  Allie shuddered, looking at the paper again. “Karen was the first one.”

  “That we know of.”

  They stared at the writing tablet, neither of them willing to think beyond that possibility.

  Finally, Marc said, “I’m not sure how we’ll find out what triggered the first murder. I’ve been trying to find another link since I learned about the second one.”

  “You said you had a suspicion.”

  Marc glanced at her, then away. “You won’t like it.”

  “It’s not Joe or Sheryl, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I never said I suspected them. I don’t trust them.”

  Allie wasn’t going to waste her breath arguing with him. “Then, who do you suspect?”

  “Rupert Cornelius.”

  “Rupert Cornelius!” Her voice came out an octave higher than usual. “Why in the world would you suspect him?”

  “Think about it, Allie? The witness said the guy with Karen looked like me. You’ve seen Cornelius.”

  Allie mulled that over for a moment. Same height. The same build and hair color. She remembered that first day at the beach, thinking Marc might be Cornelius’ son. But Rupert Cornelius a killer? He might be pond scum and a womanizer, but that was a long way from being a serial killer. She studied her writing pad rather than meet his eyes. “I could pick his brain when I have lunch with him on Wednesday.”

  Marc came up off the bed. “You’re having lunch with him?”

  “Yes, I am. He invited me to lunch to discuss my coming to work for him. It’s the perfect opportunity to pick his brain.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  Allie raised her eyebrows. “You don’t have to like it. We’ll be in a public place. He’s not likely to reach across the table and try to strangle me.” Marc said nothing. “If he’s the killer, he’ll kill again. If I’m not the next target, someone else will be, someone who doesn’t have our knowledge. I know to be careful.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  She reached up and took his hand, pulling him down on the bed beside her. “I don’t like it, either, but I think it’s our best chance of getting information. I won’t do anything stupid. I won’t suggest we go for a boat ride or—”

  “Don’t even joke about that,” he said, his hand tightening on hers convulsively.

  That’s when Allie remembered that the first victim was Marc’s wife. “I’m sorry,” she said and meant it. “I know it’s not a joke.”

  His arm came around her. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Allie.”

  “I don’t, either.” Her eyes searched his, her brow wrinkled with worry. “Life has gotten a lot more interesting for me. I don’t want to lose it now.”

  For a moment, she thought he would kiss her. “Too fast! Too fast!” her mind screamed at her. She and Marc pulled back at the same time.

  “So.” Allie blew her bangs out of her face. “The guestroom?”

  He pushed to his feet, stretching. “Maybe the sofa. Just for a couple of hours.”

  “What about the windows?” At his blank look, she said, “No curtains.”

  “We’ll keep the lights out.”

  “What if they shine a flashlight?”

  “Will you stop making difficulties?”

  She led him to the linen closet where she remembered seeing an old pillow, and then into the living room, glancing at the back door. Framed in the opening was a man’s face. She barely stifled a scream. Marc reacted instantly, grabbing the gun on the bookcase and lunging for the door handle.

  “Marc, no!” She blocked his way. Then, she spun to the window. “Feelie, go home!” she said, pointing down the street. The man seemed more confused than terrified at the sight of the gun. Then, some kind of realization penetrated his alcohol-befuddled brain, and he turned and lurched away.

  “Another friend of yours?” Marc asked dryly.

  “Neighbor with a bad sense of direction,” she said, tossing the pillow on the couch.

  She went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned the lock.

  Chapter 16

  It was still dark when Allie heard a soft crash in the living room. She heard a muffled curse, and then soft footsteps in the hall. She heard a toilet flush a minute later. Marc. She tiptoed to the door and flipped the lock open. When she heard the shower start, she slipped into shorts and a shirt and headed to the kitchen. A glance at the clock told her it was barely 5 a.m. She would have gone back to bed and slept another few hours, but since she was awake, she decided to start a pot of coffee.

  She heard the shower go off, and then footsteps in the hall. A moment later, Marc appeared in the doorway with Spook peeking around the door a foot behind him. Marc looked tired; Spook, wary.

  “Hi,” she said, stifling a yawn.

  “Were you awake?”

  “Not until you fell off the sofa.” She felt a smile forming on her lips. “What are you doing up?”

  “It’s morning.”

  Allie glanced at the window. “Not in my world, it’s not.”

  He smiled. “It’s almost dawn. I want to get out of here before anyone sees me leave.”

  “OK,” she said, more relieved than sorry. She didn’t look forward to a confrontation with Sheryl or Joe. “Let me fix you some coffee.”

  He pushed away from the doorframe. “I’ll get some at Starbucks on the way to the hotel. See you later.”

  She didn’t need much convincing. Maybe Marc could get by on three hours sleep a night, but she couldn’t. “Lock the door,” she told his retreating figure. Five minutes later, she was back in bed, Spook snuggled against her back.

  *

  She spent the day doing all the things she had promised herself she’d do. After she fed and walked Spook, she straightened up the things Marc had knocked off the table the night before—this morning, she corrected herself—and checked to make sure Feelie wasn’t passed out on her back patio. Then, she took off to Merritt Square and bought a cordless phone with two handsets—why hadn’t she thought of that?—and curtains for the kitchen window and back door. She added a new pillow and light blanket for her part-time houseguest.

  Marc showed up earlier that evening. There was no night terror this time, no drawn guns. He tapped on the back door and, after peeking out the new curtain, Allie let him in. He locked t
he door and smiled down at her. “Is it too early in the game for me to give you a God-I’m-glad-you’re-still-alive kiss?”

  She answered him by standing on tiptoe and brushing a kiss across his lips. “Not too early at all.”

  “Does that mean you missed me?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” she tossed over her shoulder as she walked into the kitchen. “I greet all my nocturnal visitors that way.”

  “I wonder if anyone’s told your neighbor that,” he said, following a step behind her. “Maybe that’s why he keeps coming back.”

  She pulled the dinner she’d been keeping warm out of the oven. “He keeps coming back because he can’t tell his door from all the others.” She got two plates out of the cabinet. “Is chicken OK?”

  They took their plates into the living room. Spook screwed up his courage enough to come out from behind the couch and huddle at her side, and Allie rewarded him with a bit of chicken skin. Marc was holding a drumstick, his gaze held by something under the table.

  “What?”

  “What’s that?” he asked, gesturing with his elbow.

  Allie looked down. The corner of a photo was sticking out from under the coffee table. “That’s what you knocked over last night.” She wiped her hands on a napkin and reached down to pick it up. “Or that is,” she said, pointing at the stack of albums on the end table. “I thought I picked everything up.” She studied the photo in her hand. “I’d hate to lose this. It’s a good picture of my aunt.”

  Marc wiped his hands. “May I see it?”

  Allie handed him the photo. He studied the photo with an intensity Allie found unsettling. “What?”

  “Who’s this woman in the foreground? The one in the hat?”

  Allie peered closely at the photo. “I don’t know. The man with her is Cord Arbutten, the sheriff.”

  Marc cut his eyes toward her. “I’ve met the sheriff.”

  She bit her lip.

  Marc looked back at the photo. “You’re sure you don’t know who the woman is?”

  “Positive. I only kept the picture because my aunt was in it. I had another copy made after Joe took the original.”

  Allie could feel the temperature in the room drop. “Odum took the original?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The night he and Sheryl were over. He took it so he could show the sheriff.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  She didn’t like the suspicion in his voice. “Yes, why?”

  He tapped the photo. “This woman with the scissors. I’ll have to have it enlarged to be sure, but I think she looks like you.”

  Allie took the photo from him and examined it more closely. The woman was tall and slim. She might have been blonde, and now that he mentioned it, she could see a slight resemblance. “It could be a coincidence,” she said with a frown, handing it back to him.

  “It could, he agreed, taking it back and tucking it into his shirt pocket, but I don’t think so.” Allie turned back to her food.

  When they were finished, Marc took their dishes into the kitchen. Allie made no move to help him, as the implications of what he’d said hit her full force. If the woman in the photo resembled Allie, then she also looked like all the murder victims. She remembered Joe’s strange reaction when he saw the photo, the abrupt way he left mere minutes later. She heard water running in the kitchen sink, but still she made no move. Whoever the woman was, her aunt had known her. So had the sheriff.

  When Marc walked back into the room drying his hands on a towel, Allie asked, “What do you mean, you don’t think so?”

  Marc wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I think maybe Odum realized it, and I think it might be important.”

  Allie felt a surge of exasperation. “For Pete’s sake, what are you talking about?”

  Marc sat back on the sofa. Allie could tell he considered his reply with the caution of a lion tamer lowering his chair. “I think it’s pretty coincidental that Odum borrowed a picture from you of a woman who looks like our victims.” When she averted her eyes, he said, “Well? Don’t you?”

  “No,” Allie said. “I think he wanted it because it was a picture of my aunt.”

  “Allie.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. Somehow, that would give credibility to what he suggested. “Even if she does look like me, what does it matter? It’s an old picture. She would be—” Late fifties, early sixties, Allie realized, judging by her aunt’s age when the photo was taken.

  “I don’t know what it means,” Marc said reasonably. “That’s what I’ll try to find out.”

  Allie picked at a thread on the couch cushion. “How?”

  “I thought I’d ask around.”

  “I know a better way.”

  The look he gave her told her he’d already guessed what her better way entailed, and he didn’t like it. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “You haven’t even heard it.”

  He sat back on the sofa, draping his arm along the back. “OK, tell me about your way.”

  “I thought at lunch tomorrow, I might—” He shook his head, but she forged on. “Who better to ask about a photo of local residents?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “But—”

  “For one thing, her looking like the murdered women makes her a touchy subject to discuss with anyone, let alone the man who might be killing them.”

  “That’s supposition,” she injected.

  Marc ignored her. “For another, this is an old photo. Black-and-white. Cornelius didn’t own the newspaper when this was taken. He was still a young man back then. How would he know about some ribbon-cutting ceremony?”

  Allie wasn’t about to give up. “The newspaper has archives. I could look in the

  morgue—”

  “You could end up in the morgue.”

  She bit her lip. “If what you suspect is true—and it’s a big if—what’s wrong with forcing his hand a little?”

  Marc regarded her with narrowed eyes. “I’m all for forcing his hand once we know what’s going on with him. I want to know what this picture means, if it means anything, but I don’t want you doing it. You’re enough of a target because of how you look. I don’t want you advertising that you’re probing into this. That would make you a direct threat.” When she didn’t speak, he said, “Allie, please don’t put yourself in any more danger than you’re already in.”

  She glanced away. When he reached over and pushed her lower lip back in, she smiled despite herself.

  “What I want you to do is go through these albums with me and see if we can find any more pictures of the mystery woman.”

  She reached over and pulled the photo out of his pocket. When he made an effort to stop her, she said, “For comparison.” She could tell he didn’t buy it, but he let her put the picture on the coffee table.

  Two hours later, they were bleary-eyed. “Did she keep every picture she ever took?” Marc asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “There are more in the guestroom closet.”

  He held up a hand. “No, please, I can’t look at another photo.”

  Allie felt the same way. Besides, when he wasn’t looking, she’d slipped the mystery woman’s photo under an album. With any luck at all, Marc would forget about it. “We should get some sleep.” She stood and stretched.

  From the linen closet, she gathered up the new pillow and blanket and headed back to the living room. As she rounded the hallway door, she saw him tucking the photo back into his shirt pocket. She threw the blanket and pillow at him. “Goodnight,” she said, going back into her bedroom and closing the door. She hesitated for a long time before she turned the lock.

  By 2 a.m., she’d come up with plan B. She’d spent an hour staring at the ceiling and replaying their conversation. She knew questioning Rupert Cornelius could prove dangerous. It probably wasn’t the best way, and it might not even be the smartest way, but by God, it was the fastest way. Allie was sick of this. She wante
d her life back, to feel once again a sense of security she hadn’t even realized she felt. It didn’t matter whether she truly was a target; she felt like a target, and until they found the killer, that wouldn’t change.

  She came up with a plan of action by asking herself what her aunt would have done. No voice whispered in her ear. No smoke writing appeared in the air, but she got an answer all the same. Whether it was what Lou would have done or not would have to remain a mystery, but it was what she would do.

  Allie didn’t go back to sleep the next morning. Instead, she pored over the photo albums and collected a dozen pictures of her aunt at different times during her life, putting them into an envelope. Then, she slipped the negative of the snapshot Marc had taken with him out of the box where she’d replaced it. She headed to the one-hour photo store. They weren’t open, so she spent half an hour in Starbucks waiting for 8 o’clock. After the photo shop promised her a two-hour turnaround, she headed back to the house to get ready for lunch.

  Allie dressed to impress. While she might be a source of despair to her mother and her ex-husband, that didn’t mean she didn’t pay attention all those years. She chose a sage green tailored suit that made her look slim and curvy, with a drape-neck cream silk shell that showed off her new tan and the store-bought cleavage from a miracle bra she only used for emergencies. She wore three-inch heels and said a prayer of thanks that she owned one pair of stockings still in their wrapping, which meant no surprise snags or runs; hair in a tidy but sexy French braid with a few loose strands around her face; nails and lips a soft coral; a touch of the eye shadow she hadn’t used in almost a year. She primped like a woman off to meet her lover. The thought turned her stomach.

  Thank God, Sheryl was spending a few days with her parents in Fort Pierce. No story she could make up would adequately cover her getting “all dressed up” in the middle of the day, and she didn’t need Sheryl following her around town or, God forbid, offering to go with her.

  Cornelius had indicated they were to meet at noon. Since she wasn’t sure if fashionable lateness irritated or intrigued him, she decided to arrive on time. No need to take a chance. By 11:15, she was as ready as she would be. She spritzed on a little Estée Lauder—a gift from her mother she’d forgotten to toss, dumped a few things in a tiny and useless matching handbag, and headed out of the house.