by Jeanne Adams
Frustrated, Torie shook her head. She regretted the gesture immediately. She moaned as her vision blurred, and her stomach rebelled at the swimming sensation. “Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.”
The nurse shoved an emesis basin into her hands, but also pressed the webbing at the juncture of her thumb and forefinger. The relief wasn’t immediate, but the nausea backed off.
Closing her eyes with relief, she relaxed into the flat pillow. The nurse adjusted the bed to support her.
“What did you do? That pressure thing?” Torie managed to ask.
“Acupressure. I learned it when I was pregnant and had constant morning sickness. Sometimes it helps. Luckily, it did for you. It’s no fun to be sick when you’ve got a concussion and an impressive set of stitches in your forehead.”
Torie was beginning to feel the pins-and-needles sensation in her skin as the local anesthetic wore off. The pain medication would be good, but she hated to take it, hated to feel so out of control. She needed to know something, anything, about her house, about what had happened.
Before she completed the thought, she heard several male voices beyond the curtain, and she heard her name.
“There. Finally,” the nurse commented. “You can get your answers, and then get some rest.”
Two men slipped through the curtains. One was short but lean, like a greyhound. The other was tall, a bit on the bulky side. The tall one looked, ironically, like a bulldog, all jowls and attitude.
“Ms. Victoria Hagen?”
“Yes. Can you tell me about my dog? She was out on the deck with me, I asked the dispatcher…”
The short one interrupted. “I’m Battalion Chief Marsden, I’m a fire investigator. The dog was taken to the ASPCA shelter hospital. They’ll take good care of her, I’m sure.”
“The shelter? But they might put her to sleep, or think she’s abandoned,” Torie exclaimed, once again struggling to sit up. Her swimming head warned her to stop. Right now.
She sat still. She had to get her stomach calmed down so she could manage a call to her vet. Now.
Well, maybe when they moved her to a room. She squinted against the light, her head still pounding. There would be a phone in the room. Yes. That’s what she would do. She’d call Karen, the vet, from the room.
“Uh, no, ma’am,” the tall investigator spoke slowly and shook his head as well, as if she couldn’t understand the words he was saying. “They won’t hurt her. They know you’re her owner and what the circumstances are. She’ll be looked after.”
“Do you know if she’s okay?”
“No, ma’am, but I’m sure she is. We need to ask you some questions.”
Of course they did. Her own questions flooded her mind and poured out in a rush. “What about my house? Is it okay? They were able to put the fire out, right? Oh, God,” she managed, when the two men exchanged glances. “My laptop. My photos. Granny’s bible. Oh, God. Did it…did it…burn to the ground?” The words came out in a choked whisper.
“No ma’am. But there is a lot of damage. Our team of arson investigators are there now. The fire’s out, and once the team’s done they’ll do an overhaul and check, but they’ll see to the building tonight. We won’t know till morning the extent of the damage. You’ll need to call your insurance company right away, of course.”
“Uh, didn’t look like a total loss, ma’am,” the shorter man, Chief Marsden interjected.
“Not a total loss,” Torie managed weakly. Squeezing her eyes shut to block the glare, she imagined the devastation. Not a total loss left a lot of room for destruction.
“Please Ms. Hagen, the doctor has restricted our time with you, and we do need the information while it’s fresh in your mind.”
Oh, it was fresh all right. The smell of fire and blood lingered in her hair. She could even smell it on her skin.
Fear. She smelled that, too. Her own fear. How many times would her life be turned upside down?
“Ms. Hagen?”
“Yes. What do you need to know, Detective…?”
“Oh, sorry. I’m Investigator Sorrels. Walk us through what happened. Tell us everything you remember.”
Step by step, she took them through the events. They wanted to know about her day, the time leading up to when she got home.
“I left work late. Grabbed a…drink with a friend.” No need to tell the police what else she and Pam had grabbed. She needed to call Pam. Shit, when was she going to do that? “Um, I, um, stopped and got some groceries. Came home.”
“A neighbor said you had a visitor when you got home.”
Surprise must have been written all over her face because the taller man smirked. “Your neighbor’s the curtain-peeking sort, I believe.”
“Missus Bellfort. Yes, she is,” Torie managed, gritting her teeth at a new wave of pain in her head. Snarky old biddie. It just figured she’d be watching everyone on the block. As usual.
“I hope she saw something useful.” Irritation made the headache worse. “The visitor was Dev, my cousin from New Orleans. He stopped by, wanted to come in, but I told him it wasn’t convenient.”
“You don’t get along with this cousin?” Marsden’s voice sharpened, every bit of his attention focused on Torie. It was weird to watch the switch from laconic to on-point.
“No, it’s not that.” Torie wondered how on earth to explain. “Dev’s my fourth cousin, a couple times removed. He’s in town on a conference. I knew he was going to be in town, we talked about getting coffee or something, but no firm plans. We share a great-grandmother. She sent a message that he felt needed to be delivered in person.”
“What are you leaving out?” This from Sorrels.
Crap. Mama had always said she was too easy to read. Torie sighed. “He wanted to take me out for dinner or drinks to catch up. I’d just come in from…” she hesitated, telling herself again that she had to call Pam, make sure their stories were straight. “Drinks with my friend, as I said. I just wanted to spend the rest of the evening in.”
“And you didn’t invite your cousin in as well?”
“It wasn’t, um, convenient. And he wanted to go out. He’s kind of a party guy.”
Men who came into her house got hurt.
Or worse.
She’d been trying to protect Dev as best she could. Besides, she had been tired.
“Ms. Hagen?”
“Sorry. My head’s hurting a lot. Anyway, Dev delivered my great-grandmother’s message, and headed back to his conference. I went into the house to put the groceries away, change, and take Pickle out.”
“Pickle?”
“My dog.”
“And your cousin’s full name? And the name of the convention, too, if you remember?”
“Devereaux Chance. The convention’s for green building technologies.” Marsden made a note, of course.
“And what happened then?”
Torie told them about the sound of breaking glass, the smell of gasoline, how she’d headed toward it, then been blasted back by the explosion. The two exchanged glances.
“You’re very lucky, Ms. Hagen. If you’d gotten into the room, you would have been severely injured.” She got the strong sense that Sorrels really meant she’d have been killed.
“Did anything else happen today? Anything unusual?”
“Nothing that I can think of. I got up, went to work, basic stuff.”
“Is there anyone who would want to hurt you? An ex-husband? Ex-boyfriend? Anyone with whom you work?” Sorrels probed.
“Old boss? Ex-fiancé?” Marsden chimed in.
When her eyes flew open at the last words, Marsden’s face took on that sharp look again.
“Tell me about the ex-fiancé,” he said, his gaze intense.
“Oh, not Todd. He would never hurt me. He can hardly kill bugs.” She rubbed at her forehead, which hurt more and more with each passing second. Her rubbing at it didn’t help. “He’s got this reverence-for-life thing going. Went to Tibet to find himself. He got back
into town again, and called me yesterday. We were going to have lunch tomorrow after he met with his lawyer.” She had to remember to cancel that.
Todd’s face popped into her mind’s eye, the way she’d last seen him. Right next to him, looming large in her memory was Paul Jameson, Todd’s gorgeous, irritating frat brother, and lawyer. She never thought about Paul without reliving the horrible moment when he’d walked into the bride’s room as she punched Todd.
The images were accompanied by the terrible swimmy feeling in her senses, along with the pounding behind her eyes. “Wow, my head really hurts.”
The nurse had been silent up to this point, a chaperone in scrubs, but at Torie’s complaint, she cleared her throat. “I think you need to wrap it up, gentlemen. Ms. Hagen needs to rest.”
“What’s the ex-fiancé’s full name?”
“Todd Alan Peterson.”
“When did you, dum…uh, call off the wedding?”
Torie scrunched her eyes against the pain, which grew worse by the minute. “Five years ago,” she managed to grind out. “Exactly five years to the day, this Saturday.”
There was a lot of beeping and the sound of pings from the machines behind her head. The bed suddenly went flat and her head spun with dizzying force. It was the last straw for her stomach.
With a heave, she vomited. Then choked.
The last thing she heard was the nurse hollering in the loudest voice Torie had ever heard. It rang in her head for hours.
“I need a doctor in here. Stat!”
Chapter Two
There were flowers everywhere. It was only the next morning, but people had already heard about her house, her injuries. Torie counted no less than eight bouquets. They’d begun arriving early in the morning, once she’d been installed in a regular room. There were roses from her brother, who had also called. She’d reassured him that coming home from Russia wasn’t necessary.
There wasn’t much he could do really, and it wouldn’t help his business to fly home and do nothing. The office had sent a plant, and each of the divisions had sent flowers as well. Two of her major clients from TruStructure, her engineering firm, had sent flowers, and one had sent a really interesting looking cookie-tower-thingie from Harry & David.
Other than the fact that she had a concussion, had almost choked to death, hurt all over, and had a partially destroyed house, she felt pretty good.
“Alive and hurting is better than the alternative,” she said into the quiet of the room. She needed to hear something besides beeping.
Pickle was in the gentle and competent hands of her very own vet, thank goodness, so she didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Pam knew to cover for her for their little excursion after drinks and before the grocery.
A niggle of worry wormed its way into her thoughts. What about Dev? Her great-grandmother, GoodMama, had sent a warning. It had been about fire. Surely he’d heard from her, or heard about it on the news. And Todd. Where was he? Even after the horrible way things had ended, they’d somehow managed to stay friends. She’d left a message about lunch on his cell phone, saying she was in the hospital. She’d left the number, too. It wasn’t like him to not call. She looked at the bouquets again. None of them were from Todd, and he was a champion flower buyer.
“How’s my patient this morning?” a cheery voice called from the doorway. Her doctor, a spritely woman in her sixties, bounced into the room.
“I’m good, Dr. Suz, when can I go home?”
“When I say you’re ready.” Suz Pierce smiled and deflected Torie’s protests with the ease of long practice. “A concussion’s nothing to fool with young lady. Not to mention that you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you to get your house in order, so to speak. You don’t need to start on that until you’re fit for duty.”
“I’m bored,” Torie sulked. Even she could hear the petulance in the words. “Sorry, but I am.”
“Better bored than unconscious. Too hard to read?”
Nodding, Torie grimaced. Her head still hurt if she made too many sudden movements. “My iPod’s at the house, probably a pile of plastic goo, same as my laptop.” She managed to talk even as the doctor checked her eyes and gently examined the lump and cut on her head. The nurse who had checked her vital signs not ten minutes before came trotting through the door in time to hear Dr. Suz say, “Any friends coming to visit today? Maybe they could get you some magazines or something.”
“Or our volunteers keep a supply, if you’d like some,” the perky woman chimed in.
“I forgot about that,” Dr. Suz said. “Why don’t you see if Nancy can find something from this century, preferably the last few months.”
“She already has some visitors,” Nurse Perky chirped as she held a tray to receive the dressing the doctor was changing. To Torie, she said, “They’ll be able to come back when Dr. Pierce is finished, and you’re ready.”
“Thanks.” The idea of visitors cheered her immensely. Maybe Pam had come. Or Dev. Or Todd. She’d left a message at Todd’s hotel as well.
Hopefully Todd was smart enough not to bring the odious Paul Jameson with him.
To her dismay, the first two people in her door were the fire investigators.
“Good morning, Ms. Hagen, how are you feeling?” Sorrels began as soon as he made eye contact.
“Okay, all things considered. Have you been by my house? How does it look?”
The investigators glanced at one another.
“That bad?”
“No, but it doesn’t look good. It’s better than it might be, with the fire department being so close. Structurally, we’ll have to wait for the city inspector to let us know. Evidently, you’ve got some kind of fire retardant in your insulation? That seems to have given some protection to the structure.”
“Oh, I had the house reinsulated several years ago.” Torie was delighted and surprised that the stuff had been of some use. It hadn’t been as insulating as she’d been promised, but if it saved her house, she’d never regret the expense again.
“That might be it. Anyway, your insurance adjuster has been by, and your neighbors have asked after you. Evidently, the whole neighborhood knows you.”
“I used to run the neighborhood association,” Torie explained.
“Ah. That makes sense.”
She wondered what they thought she was up to, by the looks of relief. Drug smuggling? Gang activity? Prostitution? The last thought nearly made her giggle. All the possibilities skittered through her mind as the men continued to comment on the neighborhood and the house.
“There is one thing we need to tell you, Ms. Hagen. It may be a bit concerning to you.”
“Concerning?”
“Yes, your cousin—” Sorrels began.
“Have you talked to him?” Torie interrupted. “I can’t get a hold of him.”
“There’s a reason for that.” The grave look on Marsden’s face had Torie leaping to a terrible conclusion.
“Oh, Lord, something happened to Dev? What? What happened?”
“He was stabbed several times. The attack occurred in a park near the hotel where he was evidently staying.”
“Stabbed?” she screeched. “Is he alive? Is he okay? Where is he?”
Both inspectors made calming motions as they stumbled over their words, reassuring her.
“I’m sorry to break it this way,” began Marsden.
“He’ll be fine. He’s two floors down on the third floor,” Sorrels soothed.
“Who would do that sort of thing? Oh, God, poor Dev.”
“What’s important,” Marsden recovered his composure to continue. “He’s not the one who bombed your house.”
“Of course he isn’t,” Torie replied, highly indignant. “I don’t know why you’d even suspect him.”
“Motive and opportunity,” snapped Sorrels. “I checked your name in our database, Ms. Hagen. You seem to have an unfortunate number of accidents happening around you.”
Torie felt all the blood drain from her
face. No one had ever put it quite so boldly before. In fact, she didn’t think anyone but Pam had realized how many of her boyfriends, dates, and lovers had had serious or life-threatening accidents or injuries over the last few years. All within weeks or months of dating her, or breaking up with her.
She was cursed. She knew it.
That’s why she’d turned Dev away, why she’d stopped dating. Why she eluded her friend Pam’s attempts at matchmaking, and basically went to work and came home to her dog.
“It’s true,” she stuttered the word. “I don’t know why, but a lot of the people…men…I’ve dated, have had accidents or…or…”
“Another man died.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know why this is happening?”
“No. I tried to talk to someone about it, at the police department, but all they did was ask about me. Did I have a stalker or someone who had threatened me, that’s all they asked about. I didn’t. I don’t. I haven’t ever been threatened.”
“Is it possible that your cousin is another victim of this pattern?”
Unable to speak, Torie could only nod.
“We still haven’t located Mister Peterson. His lawyer has reported him missing. Do you know anything about where he might have gone?”
Pulled away from her thoughts about Dev, she frowned, which pulled at the stitches. It hurt.
“No, I don’t. He’d never stand Paul up for a meeting. They were roommates and fraternity brothers. They’re both lawyers, and they worked together at Pratt and Legend before Todd won all the money.”
“Did he have any other kind of relationship with this friend of his?” The words were straightforward, and the detective’s bland countenance gave her no hints to his meaning.
“What do you mean?”
“Was the lawyer involved with your former fiancé, in a relationship of any kind?”