by Lisa Jackson
A reporter appeared on the screen with the policeman. “Detective Hayes, could you comment on the ruling that Shelly Bonaventure’s death was a suicide?”
Hayes’s face turned into a scowl. “No.”
“A reliable source quoted you as saying you weren’t convinced that she took her own life.”
“No comment.”
“But, Detective Hayes,” the reporter insisted, chasing after the much taller man as he strode toward a parking lot of cars. “Is it possible that her death was a homicide?”
Hayes’s broad shoulders, under the expensive weave of his jacket, visibly stiffened. He turned slowly, pinning the reporter beneath his shaded glare. Very slowly he said, “As with all investigations, Shelly Bonaventure’s case will remain open until all the facts are in.”
“So there’s a chance of foul play?” the reporter replied, pushing.
Unlocking his car door remotely, Hayes shrugged. “Isn’t there always ‘a chance’?” he asked rhetorically, then slid behind the wheel of his vehicle.
The final frame was of taillights as his SUV blended into the thick Southern California traffic, and the screen returned to the hosts of the show.
“So I guess nothing’s conclusive,” the blond anchor said. “You know, Shelly was found much like Marilyn Monroe was half a century ago. The similarities in their deaths are really bizarre.” With that the camera panned to a large black-and-white head shot of Marilyn Monroe, which morphed into a montage of pictures of the iconic blonde and ended with an interior black-and-white shot of the death scene, her bedroom within her Brentwood bungalow.
“Trash TV,” Kacey muttered because of the exploitive edge to the segment.
And yet, possibly because of the morbidity of the report, she experienced a chill crawling up her spine, and she glanced to the window and the darkness outside.
She remembered the depths of her own despair, the fear in those frightening moments when her own life had been threatened, when she was certain she would die, when she stared into the face of evil.
For a split second, she remembered those horrid last words spoken by the man who had meant to run a knife through her heart. She shuddered, his last words, which had been snarled as he staggered away, reverberating through her mind. It’s not over. . You’re one of them.
His vile prediction had meant nothing, the ramblings of a deranged man whose psychosis and deadly intentions had somehow been trained on her. Don’t go there…. It’s over!
Shaking off the memory, she forced her attention to the television screen.
The hostess of the show, a blonde who appeared to be a human version of a Barbie doll, mentioned Shelly’s acting credits, rumored lovers, and reiterated the fact that though her death was ruled a suicide, detectives at the LAPD “hadn’t ruled out the possibility of foul play.”
Wide-eyed, glossy lipstick perfect, the hostess went on to the possibility of a conspiracy with her cohost, a younger, hipper man in a dark suit, with spiked hair.
Kacey clicked off the television.
On her way to the bathroom for a quick shower, she started peeling off her workout clothes and was naked once she reached the small room. Inside, she turned on the water and hit the play button on her radio before stepping into the old claw-foot tub and drawing the curtain closed.
Hot water pulsed against her skin, and she felt the tension of the day start to ease from her muscles. Lathering, she washed, humming to a song by Katy Perry and forcing her mind away from Trace O’Halleran, where it had wandered whenever she had a free minute to herself, which, today, in the midst of flu season and appointments all day, hadn’t happened often.
In those few minutes, though, she’d found herself wondering about him, about Eli’s mother, and the unknown Miss Wallis, his “girlfriend” according to his son.
“Forget it,” she said aloud, twisting off the tap. He wasn’t even her type. She’d never been one to go for the backwoods, rugged alpha male in battered jeans, a beat-up jacket, who lacked a razor.
Yeah? And what good did that do you? Remember polished, sophisticated Jeffrey Charles Lambert, the heart surgeon whom you fell for? Was he your type? That didn’t turn out so well, now, did it? Face it, Acacia, your track record when it comes to men is pretty dismal.
“Oh, stop!” she muttered under her breath, disgusted with the turn of her thoughts. Maybe she spent too many hours with her own thoughts when she was alone. It could just be time to rethink the issue of owning a dog.
So O’Halleran was the most handsome cowboy she’d met. So he seemed dedicated to his child. So her own biological clock was ticking like crazy, so loudly that she avoided the maternity wing in the hospital. So what?
The old pipes groaned. She heard over the DJ’s chatter on the radio a noise that didn’t seem to belong in the house. Grabbing a towel, she wrapped it around her as she stepped out of the tub, listening hard.
Nothing.
Was someone in the house?
Or was the sound only her imagination?
Still dripping, her heart pounding a little, she toweled off quickly and snagged her robe from its hook on the back of the bathroom door. Shoving her arms down the thick terry sleeves, she strained her ears, hearing nothing. Cinching the robe around her waist, she moved cautiously into the hallway.
Nothing looked or sounded out of the ordinary.
Scraaaape!
Her heart flew to her throat, and she walked stealthily along the hallway toward the noise. It’s nothing…. But she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle in warning. Peeking around the corner, she saw that everything was just as she had left it. The exercise ball still in the middle of the den, the remote for the television on the carpet nearby.
She rounded the corner and was starting for the kitchen when the sound, a deep grating noise, erupted nearby. She spun around, her eyes wildly searching the darkened dining room, her heart a drum.
Scraaape! Against the glass of the old window. She nearly shrieked when she saw a skeletal hand rake along the pane.
“Oh, God!” She staggered back, a scream rising in her throat just as she recognized the blackened hand for what it was — a weathered, leafless branch of the shrubbery on the east side of the house.
She sank down hard on a kitchen chair, drained, her vivid imagination and her deep-seated fears getting the best of her. She was a doctor, a professional, trained to be calm in emergencies, and yet a stupid tree branch had nearly sent her running for her grandfather’s shotgun. “Get a grip,” she told herself, feeling like a fool. “This is ridiculous.”
Pulling her wits about her, she heated the slices of pizza in the microwave, threw the salad into a bowl, poured herself a glass of red wine from the bottle she’d opened three days earlier, and carried it all to the den, where she clicked on the television again and told herself this was the life she’d always wanted after she’d divorced Jeffrey.
She glanced out the window to the darkness beyond.
There was no one lurking in the shadows, just beyond the veil.
She was safe here. Home at last.
Or so she tried to convince herself as she shuttered all the blinds and refused to look beyond the frosty glass.
But in her heart, deep in the darkest of places only she recalled, she knew that she’d run away. Not only from a cheating husband, a doctor with a God complex, but also from the past, and the one night she tried never to remember.
The problem was, she couldn’t run away.
Wherever she went, the memory of that night chased her down, nipping and snarling at her heels, the pain and terror never quite leaving her alone.
From the knoll, he trained his long-distance binoculars on the cottage, but even with the high magnification, he saw little through the curtain of snow. Yes, there were images of her in her den and kitchen, and the bathroom light came on for a few minutes, but her figure was indistinct, her face completely blurred, and when she finally pulled the shades, he could watch no longer.
&nbs
p; He had the audio, of course, tiny microphones hidden in her house, in spots she would never find, but he’d never been able to install a remote camera, and that bothered him for he would have enjoyed watching her surreptitiously, from a distance, learning more about her, about her routine, about what really made her tick.
His fascination was obsessive, he knew, as he stood shivering in the thicket of aspen and spruce that grew at the edge of a field near her house, but he couldn’t help himself.
She was the special one; of all the pretenders, she was the most dangerous. Smart and beautiful, Acacia Collins Lambert, a doctor no less.
Sliding his binoculars into their case, he took off the way he’d come, through the surrounding forest to a back road that he’d taken after following her home from the clinic where she practiced. Telling himself he had to be patient, he broke a trail through the snow.
It wouldn’t be much longer.
CHAPTER 7
“ You’re sooo grounded.” Pescoli glared at her daughter as Bianca slunk through the front door.
“Why?” Bianca asked as she headed to her room and Cisco, who had been sleeping on a pillow on the couch, jumped down and began wagging his tail frantically.
“Are you serious?” Pescoli had had it with her kid. “You skipped school.”
“I told you I didn’t feel good.”
“Well.”
“Whatever.” Yanking off her gloves with her teeth, Bianca deigned to pat the dog on his head, then headed straight for the refrigerator. She tossed her gloves onto the table with the mail and opened the refrigerator, only to stare inside. “Isn’t there anything to drink?”
Pescoli followed after her and slammed the refrigerator door shut with the flat of her hand.
“Hey! Watch out!” Bianca said, stepping back quickly and facing her mother. She was pale, dark circles showing under her eyes as she pulled off her stocking cap and tossed it onto the table next to the gloves. “What’s your problem?”
“Exactly what I was going to ask you.”
“I said I’m sick. Duh!” She glared at her mother as if Pescoli were as dense as tar and certainly not as interesting.
“You didn’t call me, and you didn’t come home.”
“I hung out at Chris’s.”
“Instead of going to school?” Pescoli stepped back, allowing Bianca access to the refrigerator again.
“I was sick.” She pulled out a can of Diet Coke and pulled the tab. Pop. Ssst.
“And when you are sick, the protocol is to phone me and let me know that you need to A”—she held up a finger—“come home, or B. .” She held up a second finger. “Go to the doctor. There are no other options.”
“I could call Dad.” Bianca took a swig from her can.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cuz it wasn’t an option, I guess.” Another swallow of cola.
“Nor was going over to your boyfriend’s house. Were Chris’s parents home?”
“No. Duh. They work.”
“Precisely.”
“It’s not like I need a babysitter.”
“I’m not sure,” Pescoli said. “So what did you do?”
Her daughter’s eyebrows drew together. “Hung out. What did you think? Oh, God, I know. You think we were having sex or something.”
Pescoli’s insides curdled. “Yeah, I think that when you’re alone with your boyfriend for hours, lying to everyone about where you are, that you could be getting yourself into some serious trouble!” She heard the accusations in her voice and dialed it back a bit. “Okay. . listen. . tell me, what were you doing? I know, I know, about the ‘hanging out’ part, but let’s get a little more specific.”
“We watched TV, played video games, rented a movie…. It was no big deal.”
“Except that you were supposed to be in school,” Pescoli said, keeping her voice low and serious. “It was a big deal, Bianca. A very big deal. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Chris, but I do know that whatever it is, it’s not worth cutting school and getting behind in your classes.”
“You’re so ridiculous! I just watched some movies!” She started huffing her way out of the kitchen, trying to act like she was affronted. Pescoli caught her elbow as she passed and spun her around.
Nose-to-nose with the fifteen-year-old, she said, “We’re not talking about me, Bianca. Don’t try to deflect. This is about you, your behavior, consequences, and yeah, the rest of your life. Because you seem intent on messing it up.”
“Just get off my case!”
“Nuh-uh. Not for a few more years.”
Bianca yanked her arm back. “I could call Child Services on you! You can’t touch me.”
“Is that what Chris told you?”
“You can’t touch me!”
Pescoli reached for the phone, grabbed the receiver, and held it close to her daughter’s face. “Take it. Call. See what happens. If they believe you, they’ll remove you from this home, and where will you go? To your dad’s? To a foster family? Is that what you want?”
“Maybe!”
Despite the pain in her heart, Pescoli said, “Fine. Make the call.” Bianca eyed the phone, and for half a second Pescoli thought her daughter would call her bluff. For another half a second she didn’t care. No fifteen-year-old was going to bully her or try that stupid-ass emotional blackmail on her. She slapped the receiver into her daughter’s free hand.
Bianca sputtered, “They — they won’t believe me. You’re a cop! You’ll twist things around!” She slammed the phone onto the counter, and this time she marched off to her room.
“Slam that door and I’ll take it off its hinges! Bianca, I’m not kidding!”
Slam! The entire house shook. Cisco let out a startled yip.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered under her breath and left the phone on the counter, then made her way to the garage, where she found Joe’s twenty-plus-year-old toolbox and carried it back inside.
The front door burst open, and all six feet and then some of her son walked inside. A gust of cold wind followed him, and Cisco went nuts again. The little dog yapped and spun in elated circles.
“Hey, Cis,” Jeremy said, bending down and scooping up the wiggling dog in his big, gloved hands. At eleven, Cisco still thought he was a puppy and washed Jeremy’s unshaven face with his eager tongue. “What’s for dinner?”
“I haven’t gotten that far, yet,” Pescoli answered.
“So, what’s going on with Dad’s tools?”
“I was just about to wrestle your sister’s door off its hinges.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t do that.” He set the dog down and pulled off his gloves, then stuffed them in the pockets of his down vest.
“Why not?”
“It’s lame.”
“So is slamming the door so hard, it nearly breaks the jamb.”
He yanked off his stocking cap, and his hair, still filled with static electricity, stood on end, giving him a few more inches and a shocked look.
“You can help,” she suggested.
“No way… uh-uh, I’m staying out of that catfight.”
“What’re you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
He looked suddenly uncomfortable and worked hard at smoothing his hair while avoiding her eyes.
“What happened?”
He hesitated. “Okay, I got laid off.”
Her heart took a nosedive. “Because?”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “Dunno. The economy, I guess.”
“You guess?” Not now. She didn’t need this now.
Jeremy heaved a loud sigh, then fell onto the couch. The old springs groaned. Cisco leaped up to his lap, and he absently petted the wriggling dog’s head. “I got fired,” he admitted.
“Fired,” she repeated in a careful voice.
“Lou claims I stole from the station, that the receipts didn’t add up.” Head lowered, he looked up at her from the tops of his eye
s. “Swear to God, Mom, I didn’t do it.” His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his big hands clamped over his jean-clad knees.
“You told Lou that?”
“About a hundred times! You know what? I think it’s either Manuel or Lou himself, like maybe he’s covering his ass. Manuel’s a good guy. Really honest. But I thought Lou was, too. Shit!” He gritted his teeth. “How could this happen?”
Her heart was pounding, and a mixture of anger and fear slid through her blood. “I don’t know, Jer, but you have to fix it. Figure it out. If you didn’t do it—”
“If? Really? You don’t believe me?” He was shocked and offended, his lips flattening. “Come on, Mom!” Slamming a fist onto the arm of the couch, he declared vehemently, “I’m not a thief! Someone set me up!”
“You didn’t let me finish, Jer. I was saying that if you didn’t do it, then you have to find out who did. Prove it. It couldn’t be that tough. The station has cameras and records of all the transactions.”
“Are you crazy? You think they’re going to let me see any of them?”
“They’ll have to if you sue them and they fight it. Your attorney will—”
“I don’t have an attorney, and I can’t afford one. Get real!” He was starting for the back stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“My room.”
“You moved out, remember?”
“It’s still my room.” Big feet began clomping down the steps.
“I was going to turn it into a sewing room.”
“You don’t even sew!” he yelled up the stairwell.
His door slammed shut, though not with the same righteous, passionate thud as Bianca’s had.
“I’m a failure as a mother,” Pescoli confided to the dog. “A complete and utter failure.” Opening the toolbox, she searched for a screwdriver with which to pry the pins out of Bianca’s door hinges. After digging through the rarely used wire cutters, pliers, and wrenches, she found a large screwdriver with paint drips on it, proof she’d used it to force open stubborn paint cans, and was about to attack the door in question when her cell phone rang.