If You Ever Tell
Page 1
PRAISE FOR
CARLENE THOMPSON
LAST WHISPER
“The characters are so well-drawn that the reader will feel like she knows them personally. Thompson offers suspense and an intriguing mystery.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
SHARE NO SECRETS
“Intriguing… brims with madness and creepy thrills.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
“Turns and twists make you change your mind about who the killer is and the ending is a real shocker. Get this one quick.”
—Rendezvous
“Thompson knows how to write gripping suspense and keep readers enthralled throughout. A great mystery with thrilling intrigue.” —Fresh Fiction
“A chilling murder mystery with lots of twists, turns, and unexpected curves… one of the best romantic mysteries I have read… a great book that you don’t want to miss.”
—Romance Junkies
“A page-turner that will leave you on the edge of your seat… another wonderful thriller from Carlene Thompson… a must-read.”
—A Romance Review
“An intriguing tale told in a wonderfully fresh voice. Thompson has a truly unique style that blends beautiful prose with compelling plots… this novel reads like lightning—and has the same effect on the reader… Thompson has created sharp, smart characters with motives that drive the story along. They are enough to keep the story moving at a quick pace. Her voice has a sense of rhythm and a rustic beauty that lingers in the reader’s memory.” —Romance Divas
“An action-filled read with plenty of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the very end! This story is highly detailed with an array of in-depth characters that are smart, funny, and engaging.”
—Fallen Angel Reviews
IF SHE SHOULD DIE
“A gripping suspense filled with romance. Ms. Thompson has the reader solving the mystery early in the novel, then changing that opinion every few chapters. [An] excellent novel.”
—Rendezvous Reviews
“With engaging characters and intriguing motives, Thompson has created a smart, gripping tale of revenge, anger, and obsession.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
“If She Should Die is a riveting whodunit!”
—The Road to Romance
“In the tradition of Tami Hoag or Mary Higgins Clark, Thompson has created a gripping page-turner. The storyline is engaging and the characters’ lives are multi-dimensional. This is literally a book the reader will be unable to put down.”
—Old Book Barn Gazette
BLACK FOR REMEMBRANCE
“Loaded with mystery and suspense… Mary Higgins Clark fans, take note.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Bizarre, terrifying… an inventive and forceful psychological thriller.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Gripped me from the first page and held on through its completely unexpected climax. Lock your doors, make sure there’s no one behind you, and pick up Black for Remembrance.”
—William Katz, author of Double Wedding
“Thompson’s style is richly bleak, her sense of morality complex… Thompson is a mistress of the thriller parvenu.”
—Fear
SINCE YOU’VE BEEN GONE
“This story will keep readers up well into the night.”
—Huntress Book Reviews
DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES
“Don’t Close Your Eyes has all the gothic sensibilities of a Victoria Holt novel, combined with the riveting modern suspense of Sharyn McCrumb’s The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. Don’t close your eyes—and don’t miss this one.”
—Meagan McKinney, author of In the Dark
“An exciting romantic suspense novel that will thrill readers with the subplots of a who-done-it and a legendary resident ghost seen only by children. These themes cleverly tie back to the main story line centering on the relationships between Natalie and Nick, and Natalie and the killer… Thompson fools the audience into thinking they know the murderer early on in the book. The reviewer suggests finishing this terrific tale in one sitting to ascertain how accurate are the reader’s deductive skills in pinpointing the true villain.” —Midwest Book Review
IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH
“[A] blood-chilling… tale of vengeance, madness, and murder.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
THE WAY YOU LOOK Tonight
“Thompson… has crafted a lively, entertaining read… skillfully ratchet[ing] up the tension with each successive chapter.”
—Charleston Daily Mail
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TITLES BY
CARLENE THOMPSON
Last Seen Alive
Last Whisper
Share No Secrets
If She Should Die
Black for Remembrance
Since You’ve Been Gone
Don’t Close Your Eyes
In the Event of My Death
Tonight You’re Mine
The Way You Look Tonight
C A R L E N E T H O M P S O N
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
IF YOU EVER TELL
Copyright © 2008 by Carlene Thompson.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 0-312-37285-X
EAN: 978-0-312-37285-9
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / April 2008
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
With love to April Blankenship
and her faithful companion, Promise
Thanks to Jennifer Meadows
Special thanks to Bridget, Rebekah, and Laurah Bush
PROLOGUE
TERESA FARR NEVER KNEW exactly what awakened her that warm late April night. Her eyes simply snapped open, a gentle breeze blew across her face from the partially raised window, the glowing red numbers of the digital clock on her bedside table flashed from 2:57 to 2:58, and she knew something was wrong.
For a few moments, Teresa lay still with her eyes wide open, making certain she wasn’t just waking from a nightmare. Time did not ease her mind, though. Finally, she realized she was already fully awake and caught in an atmosphere vibrating with palpable tension—tension and danger.
She wanted to cry out, just as she’d done when she was a child frightened in the middle of the night and her mother would rush to reassure her all was well. But she wasn’t little anymore. Teresa was seventeen, her mother was sick—barely functioning because of lifelong depression made worse by a humiliating divorce—and Teresa’s father, Hugh, was remarried to his former secretary Wendy, a greedy doll of a woman just shy of thirty.
Everyone except Hugh seemed to know Wendy had divorced her young husband, Jason, and married a man nineteen years her senior because he was the major stockholder and president of Farr Coal Company, an enterprise worth at least $30 million. Teresa and her brother, Kent, hated Wendy, yet somehow the shallow woman had produced a smart, swee
t, delightful eight-year-old child named Celeste whom Teresa couldn’t help loving.
Considering her feeling that something wasn’t right in the house, Teresa knew she should leap from her bed, burst into the hall, and flash on the bright overhead light. But she had already caught hell from her father for coming in late. Furious, he’d raged at her, demanding to know where she’d been, what she’d been doing, with whom she’d been doing it, for God’s sake! When he met with only stony silence from her, he’d continued to yell for ten minutes, then run out of steam and told her to get upstairs to her room. Teresa could imagine his reignited rage if she woke up the household over what was probably nothing.
Still, she hadn’t been able to close her eyes and pretend everything was all right. Although Teresa was exhausted, livid with her father, and afraid of the wrongness in her home, a visceral instinct had pushed her to find the threat she felt lurking in the Farr house that night.
She’d thrown back her light blanket, swung her bare feet to the floor, and slowly begun walking. She hadn’t closed her curtains, and moonlight cast an eerie silvery glow throughout the room. She hesitated, then opened her bedroom door.
At first, nothing had struck her as odd. The house was quiet. The small Tiffany-style lamp Teresa loved burned on a table near the bathroom, a guide down the hall for little Celeste, whose bedroom faced the front of the house. Hugh Farr and his new wife, Wendy, used the master bedroom right across from Teresa’s room.
And that’s when she realized what wasn’t right. At night, Hugh and Wendy’s bedroom door was always shut.
Except for now.
For a moment, unease tingled through Teresa. Then she walked to the Tiffany-style lamp that her mother had bought and cherished. Looking at one of her favorite possessions, the low-watt bulbs glowing softly through the glass shade of delicate blue and purple honey locust flowers, gave Teresa a small sense of comfort. Touching it felt almost like touching a rabbit’s foot or some other good-luck totem. Silly, but reassuring.
While Teresa stood by the lamp, she looked at Hugh and Wendy’s partially open bedroom door. Beyond it, Teresa could see nothing. She drew a deep breath, then walked purposefully through the open doorway and stepped into the master bedroom, as always surprised by the feel of thick carpet beneath her feet.
Teresa’s mother had prized the room’s highly varnished mahogany floors decorated here and there with lovely, soft-toned Aubusson rugs. Wendy had complained that the floor was cold against her bare feet, and Hugh promptly had the room carpeted in the hot pink Wendy chose along with cerise draperies trimmed with fringe and tassels. Even Teri’s older brother, Kent, who didn’t know a thing about interior design, couldn’t look at the room without cringing.
Tonight Teresa couldn’t have cared less about the violated bedroom décor, though. She thought about not hearing Wendy’s sleep-blurred muttering or the occasional peeps and whistles that sometimes crept past the device Hugh had bought recently to stifle his stentorian snoring. It’s a big bedroom and I’m just too far away from the bed to hear anything, Teresa had told herself.
She hadn’t turned on the overhead light for fear of waking them, but she took several steps closer to the king-sized bed she knew lay right in front of her. Then she’d stopped and listened again.
Not one sound had come from the bed. Not the sound of someone shifting in their sleep, not the sound of Wendy mumbling or Hugh spluttering and snorting, not even the deep and easy sound of breathing from two people sleeping peacefully. Teresa had heard absolutely nothing.
But she had smelled something—something fresh, strong, and coppery. Coppery. She’d smelled blood before and now she smelled it around the bed. It’s not blood, she had told herself sternly. You’re just scaring yourself.
Using all of her willpower, she’d walked to the end of the bed, then veered right toward Wendy’s side. Teresa had decided she’d rather wake up Wendy than Hugh, who would start yelling at her again, so she’d put out her left hand, gently touching Wendy’s leg beneath the blanket. Wendy didn’t move.
Downstairs, the big grandfather clock tolled three times. The clock also belonged to Teresa’s mother, and Teresa had always loved its exquisite workmanship and the unusually deep timbre of its chimes, but that night they’d sounded strangely ominous. She’d taken a deep breath and forced herself to step forward, her foot squishing into a wet spot in the carpet just as her hand brushed over Wendy’s slick abdomen, almost sliding into a deep slit.
At last, Teresa had screamed. She’d jerked her hand away from Wendy’s stomach, slapped it over her mouth, realized it dripped blood, let it drop, and screamed again. Then, without thought, she had run toward the wall and groped for the overhead light switch. Wendy had chosen one of the largest chandeliers she could find for her boudoir, and Teresa might as well have turned on a floodlight. The room had flashed into dazzling view, temporarily blinding Teresa. She’d closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to see the bed and the people in it garishly splashed with rich, shimmering red.
Teresa was unaware of her own voice tearing open the silence of night. She’d felt oddly removed from the whole gory scene as she’d run to her father’s side of the bed to find him splayed like an insect ready for mounting, his throat slashed, his abdomen oozing blood. His left arm seemed to reach for Wendy, whose once-pretty face had been reduced to an unrecognizable mass of rips and gouges. Her blond hair snaked across the white satin pillowcase in wet, red strands.
Teresa had backed away, heaving as she tried not to throw up, and slowly realized she was shrieking. She could hear the next-door neighbors’ Great Dane begin to bark and howl frantically. Teresa glanced up, and through one of the bedroom windows, she saw bright lights flashing on in the house next door, lights in what she knew was the master bedroom directly across from Hugh and Wendy’s bedroom. Her screaming and the dog’s barking had awakened the neighbors, she thought in relief. She had forced herself to stop screaming long enough to take a deep breath and fill her air-starved lungs. Then the image of eight-year-old Celeste had burst in her mind like a firework.
Without thought, Teresa had turned off the overhead light as if it might disturb someone and dashed from her father’s bedroom, running down the hall and banging into a small antique table in the darkness. She’d cried out and stumbled sideways against the sturdy, erect body of an adult.
“No. Please,” Teresa had managed before pain coursed down her left arm, the razor-sharp pain of a knife blade slashing flesh. Oh, God, now it’s my turn to die, she’d thought wildly.
As Teresa clutched at the gash in her arm, the person pressed closer to her and she’d caught a familiar scent. Sandalwood. Her mother always wore a perfume containing sandalwood, Teresa had thought distantly as she squinted at the shadowy form beside her—the form of someone taller than she, of someone wearing a coat slick like plastic or vinyl, of someone whose head was covered with what seemed to be a large hood and the face turned downward.
Gripped by terror, Teresa had gone motionless like an animal waiting for the inevitable, fatal attack. She’d even stopped breathing, but her gaze slid sideways. She saw a latex-gloved hand move to the area beneath the hood and two fingers rise to hidden lips from which emerged a gentle, prolonged “Shhhh.” The soothing sound echoing eerily in Teri’s mind, she watched as the figure drifted away like an image in a dream—away, down the stairs, and out of the house.
Teresa had stood still for a moment, too surprised to move, too shocked to be anything but vaguely aware of the pain in her arm. Then several drops of warm blood had fallen onto her bare foot, startling her back to life. The figure had been coming from the front of the house—Celeste’s room.
“Celeste,” Teresa had murmured, her voice thin as it squeezed through her tightened throat. She’d swallowed, flying down the hallway now, and finally managed to scream, “Celeste!”
When Teresa reached the child’s bedroom, she had stopped abruptly. She’d begun to hyperventilate and her heart had seemed
to be crashing hard enough to crack her ribs. The pain in her slashed arm had dulled to nothingness. I can’t do this, she’d thought for a frozen moment. I cannot go into this room.
Her body had not listened to her mind, though, and she’d tiptoed in, although she couldn’t make herself turn on the overhead light. Moonlight had shown her the rumpled bed. Slowly, filled with dread, Teresa had followed the subdued radiance of Celeste’s bedroom night-light—the light shaped like a white horse Teresa had given her at Christmas, a light the child had loved and had named Snowflake.
Teresa moved to the bed. She murmured, “Celeste.” Silence. But the night-light revealed no spots of blood. Teresa put her hands on the tumble of sheet and blanket. Nothing. The bed was empty.
She’d looked up and beside the glow of the night-light Teresa spotted Celeste’s nearly empty toy chest. Finally beginning to tremble almost uncontrollably, Teresa had forced herself to walk straight to the box, lift the lid, then look to see Celeste curled into a motionless ball in the bottom of the toy chest. Teresa also had caught sight of the blood splotches she’d expected to see on the bed. The child had tried to hide—tried and apparently failed.
“No,” Teresa had moaned, desolation washing through her like a cold wave as she lifted the little girl’s rigid body from the coffinlike box. “Celeste,” she’d muttered raggedly. “Don’t be dead. Oh, God, sweetie, please don’t be dead!”
“I’m not,” the child had rasped in a flat, gritty voice. “I’m… not… dead.”
Teresa, shaking violently, had burst into a torrent of relieved tears, unaware that Celeste would not speak again for the next eight years.
CHAPTER ONE
Eight Years Later
1
“DID YOU LEAVE ROOM for dessert?”
The pretty waitress at Bennigan’s smiled into the face of Celeste Warner. Celeste looked back placidly, her aqua eyes wide, her perfect lips almost smiling, her long blond hair held back from her smooth forehead by a narrow pink velvet ribbon.