by B. J Daniels
“Lindy was my stepsister and I killed her.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“YOU KILLED HER?” Shep said, thinking he’d either heard wrong or Charlie was exaggerating. “You killed her?”
Charlie jumped off the couch and headed for the kitchen. “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to need wine.”
He was still trying to understand as he watched her go into the small kitchen and come back with another bottle of wine and two glasses. Charlie was no killer. He’d stake his life on that.
She made a production of opening the wine until he couldn’t stand to watch her struggle anymore. Taking the bottle, he uncorked it and poured them both a glass. “You’re going to have to be more specific. When you say you killed her...”
He watched her take a gulp of her wine before dropping back onto her spot on the couch. Cupping the glass in her hands, she looked down at the dark red liquid and said, “My mother died when I was thirteen. My father remarried within months of my fourteenth birthday to a woman named Kathryn Parker. Kat had a daughter who was seventeen named Lindy.”
He saw pain in her expression and knew that whatever had happened, it had been haunting her for years. Which made him wonder why she was only now seeing the person she thought was Lindy. Unless this wasn’t something new. He asked as much.
“I’ve never seen Lindy—except in my nightmares—until this week.” Charlie took another swig of her wine before she began again. “Lindy hated me from the beginning. I remember how disappointed I was since I thought the only good thing about my father remarrying was that I’d have a sister.
“I didn’t realize at first just how much she hated me. Our parents were in love and lost in their own world. So it was just Lindy and me a lot of the time. Once, she offered to cut my hair not long after we’d moved into this large old house on the edge of town. She said she’d cut all her friends’ hair where she used to live. My father liked my hair long and insisted my mother do nothing more than trim it. I was ready for a change and I’m sure I was partly angry with him for marrying so soon after my mother’s death, so I agreed.” Charlie let out a laugh. “I also wanted Lindy to like me. I wanted to bond. I trusted her.”
Shep nodded, seeing where this was headed.
“When Lindy finished and handed me the mirror, I saw the look of triumph on her face and I knew she’d done something awful to me.” She grimaced in memory. “She’d butchered my hair. It took months to grow out. I got grounded because my father blamed me for letting her cut my hair. I just remember the snide smile Lindy gave me when I got grounded and she didn’t. Her mother did little more than tell her she was disappointed in her.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t all she did to you.”
Charlie shook her head. “She put awful things into my food when I wasn’t looking, she ruined some of my clothing, always my favorites, she started rumors about me at school.”
“Didn’t you tell your father what was going on?”
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “He pleaded with me to try to get along with Lindy and not make trouble. He said she was having a rough time of it because she was having more trouble after moving to another town, another school and leaving behind her friends than I was.”
“It must have been just as hard on you. And you were hurting as well. Your mother had died.”
Charlie stared down into her wine. “He always took Lindy’s side, something else she rubbed in my face. The rest of the time he was enjoying his new wife. He thought that Lindy and I were old enough to work things out for ourselves.”
Shep snorted. “He didn’t want to upset his wife by stepping in, you mean.”
“I think he was still hurting from losing my mom and Kat was a distraction.”
He let that go, knowing how much Charlie had loved her parents.
“Whenever I fought back, Lindy had a way of turning things around so it looked like I was the problem.”
“It must have been hell for you.”
Charlie let out a bitter laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I thought about running away. I even thought about killing myself—not seriously. I knew that if I could stick it out, Lindy would be leaving, going away to college and I would be free of her. As it was, she’d been held back a year and I’d been advanced a year at school so we were in a lot of the same classes.”
She sipped her wine. “There was this senior at school that I liked. Lindy often went through my things since we had to share a room and she found a note from a friend about the boy, Andy Walden. The day Lindy died, she came home from school to tell me that he’d asked her out. I thought I couldn’t hate her more than at that moment. She said he told her he thought I was a freak. I couldn’t understand why she tormented me so. We argued.”
“Where were your parents?”
“They’d gone out, as usual, and weren’t expected back until late. They’d joined the country club and had gone to a party there.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. He could see that she was working herself up to tell him the rest. “For the first time, Lindy told me that she hated me. That I wasn’t the sister she wanted and that she would torment me for the rest of my life.”
“Charlie—” He started to reach out to her, to touch her, but pulled back his hand when he saw the anguished look on her face as if she only wanted to get though this. He feared if he tried to comfort her, it would only make it harder.
“That day, Lindy pushed me too far. She didn’t even like Andy, she said, but she wasn’t about to let me have him. She was berating me, saying he said I was ugly and childish and...” She swallowed. “Something snapped inside me. I opened the front door as if I was going to leave, but instead grabbed her and pushed her out. It was late and very dark that night. I knew she was afraid of the dark. I did it out of meanness.” She stopped to pour herself more wine.
“Compared to what she did to you—”
“She was screaming for me to let her back in. Our house was on the edge of town with several empty lots between us and the neighbors on one side and open wooded land on the other with a house back off the road away from us. On the other side was an old industrial area with lots of huge abandoned buildings with broken windows. It was really dark out there and the wind was blowing, making the nearby trees groan and moan and creak.
“I could hear her begging me to let her back in before getting angry and threatening to tell when our parents got home. I knew she would tell and I would get in trouble again but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t let her in. I wanted her to go away. I wanted her mother to go away, too.” Charlie took a sip of her wine.
Shep realized he hadn’t touched his he’d been so involved in her story. Now he picked up his glass, giving her time. He could see how hard all of this was on her. Whatever she’d done, she’d been living with it for fifteen long years.
“Lindy pounded on the door, threatening me with what she was going to do to me, what my father would do to me. I wouldn’t relent. She began to cry, saying she was scared, that she’d heard something out in the trees, heard someone moving toward the house.” Charlie scoffed. “I didn’t believe her. She’d tricked me too many times. I wasn’t even that sure she was really afraid of the dark. I knew if I opened the door and let her back in, she’d mock me for being so gullible and then she’d be on the phone to her mother. They would come home early, angry, and I would be blamed for everything.”
Charlie stared down into her wine for a few minutes without speaking. Her fingers trembled, holding the glass. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with tears. “I’d never felt so hateful in my life. I don’t know how much time passed. It’s all kind of a blur.”
He waited.
“There was a long period of silence. I thought maybe she had left. Then she was screaming, these horrible high-pitched piercing screams. I still hear her screams in my sleep. I remember standing on the other side of the door with my hand on
the knob. I wanted her to suffer but she sounded so pitiful and yet I still thought she was faking it just to get me to open the door. I could just see her laughing, mocking me. I didn’t open the door.”
Charlie finished her wine, set down the glass and got up to walk to the window, her slim back to him as she hugged herself. “Then the screaming stopped. In its wake there was nothing but this unnerving silence inside the house and the wind in the trees outside. I waited for a while longer, still thinking it was a trick before I opened the door.”
Shep found himself sitting on the edge of his seat, half-full wineglass in his hand.
Charlie came back to the couch and sat down. “Lindy was gone. I called for her, but there was no answer. I thought about going out to look for her, but I could imagine her out there hiding, waiting to jump out and scare me. I left the door unlocked and went up to my room. I could imagine what she would tell our parents and how much trouble I would be in even for leaving the front door unlocked. I heard her come into the house and start up the stairs. I was waiting for her to come up to our room and start threatening me when I heard a car pull up out front. I looked out my window and saw a police car. An officer climbed out and headed for our front door. I ran downstairs. I still thought that Lindy was somewhere in the house, but I didn’t see her.”
He held his breath.
Charlie turned to look at him, her face wet with tears. She made a swipe at them. “The police officer gave me the news. There’d been a car accident. My father had missed a curve and crashed into the river. He’d been trapped in the car and had drowned. My stepmother was missing. I was in shock. There was a sound toward the back of the house. I figured it was Lindy. The officer heard it. He asked if I was alone. I told him my stepsister was in the house. He insisted on talking to her.
“The two of us looked around the house, calling for her. She was nowhere to be found. But we found the backdoor was standing open. I had locked it earlier. I figured Lindy had come in the unlocked front door and gone back out when she’d seen the cop. The officer got his flashlight and went out back to look for her...” Again her voice broke.
“He found her back by the creek. She had been attacked and brutally murdered—at least that’s what I heard later. The police thought it might have been some vagrant staying in one of those old abandoned buildings nearby next to the railroad tracks. I just knew that she was dead and it was my fault.”
“No,” Shep said too sharply. “You couldn’t know that there was a killer outside. Anyway, you heard her come back in and go out again.”
She shook her head. “The policeman said she had been dead for some time. I couldn’t have heard her on the stairs.”
He didn’t know what to say for a moment, but she didn’t give him a chance anyway.
“I could have opened the door and it wouldn’t have happened,” she rushed on. “As it was, I never told anyone what I’d done, especially the policeman. At first I was in shock. Later I couldn’t bring myself to tell the truth.”
He sighed. “You were fourteen.”
She nodded.
“You were just a kid. What happened to you after that?”
“Foster care.”
He did the math. “You were sixteen when we met the first time.”
Her smile was full of regrets and guilt. “I had started acting out in foster care, getting into real trouble until I was caught and had to go before the judge.”
“It’s understandable after everything you went through. Did you ever talk to anyone about what happened? Get some help?”
“You mean like a psychologist? I know what you’re thinking. That I’m seeing Lindy again out of my guilt for getting her killed.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“I felt like I deserved whatever bad thing happened to me. I’d killed Lindy—”
“You didn’t kill her.”
She gave him an impatient look. “She would be alive if I had opened that door.”
“You said you heard her come back into the house. She wasn’t locked out then.”
“Maybe I’d just imagined that I heard her come in and start up the stairs.”
“I don’t believe you imagined it. Someone was in the house. If the cop hadn’t arrived when he did... Charlie, it could have been the killer. Maybe he knew that there was only the two of you home that night.”
She paled. “I’d never thought of that. If it wasn’t Lindy...”
“The killer could have been in the house with you.” He raked a hand through is hair. “You could have been his next victim.”
“Maybe I deserved it.”
Shep let out a curse. Why hadn’t she told him all this years ago when they’d first met? He couldn’t bear that she’d been living with this all these years. He put down his wineglass and reached for her, taking her hands in his.
“Listen to me, you can’t think that way. You were unsupervised teenagers. Your stepsister was terrorizing you and you had no one to go to for help. You have to stop blaming yourself.”
Tears filled her eyes again. “How do I do that?”
He pulled her into his arms. “Admitting what happened that night is a beginning. But you need to talk to a professional. You didn’t cause her death.” He smoothed her hair as she cried quietly in his arms for a minute.
She gave him a pained smile as she leaned back to look into his face. “What about now? Are you telling me that I only imagined seeing Lindy out of guilt?”
“You’ve been through so much. I think you haven’t dealt with the past, but I don’t think you imagined what you saw any more than you imagined hearing someone come back into the house that night and start up the stairs. Have you told anyone what happened?”
“Not even the judge knows the whole story.”
He nodded, again wondering how the judge thought this was something Shep could handle. “What I don’t understand is why now? Why are you seeing Lindy after fifteen years have passed. What’s changed?”
“I don’t know unless...” She got up again as if she couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t stay in his arms. “I’m happy with my life, with my job. I have my own apartment. There’s... Daniel.”
He groaned inwardly, remembering what a jerk the man was. “Anything else?”
She seemed to think for a minute before she shook her head no. “I’m happy and I love my job. I don’t see how that would make Lindy suddenly show up.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “She tried to make your life miserable. You think if she were alive she wouldn’t still torment you if she could?”
“Except she’s dead. Maybe it is all in my head and if I’d told the truth that night, I wouldn’t be seeing her now.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t imagine someone across the street.”
“But you went after her and didn’t find anyone, did you.”
“No, but...” He frowned, just now remembering. “I smelled something. Perfume. Did Lindy have a perfume she wore all the time, like what do they called it, a signature perfume?”
She nodded. “Her mother told her she wore too much of it, that she could smell her a half mile away.”
“I’m betting that the woman you saw across the street was wearing that same perfume.”
“What are you saying?”
“That someone wants you to believe that Lindy has come back to haunt you.”
She stared at him. “Who?”
He shook his head. Then he had a thought. “Possibly the real killer. He was never caught, right?”
CHAPTER SIX
CHARLIE COULDN’T BELIEVE that she’d confessed everything after all these years—and confessed it all to Shep. She shuddered at the thought as she picked up the wineglasses on the way to the kitchen. Worse, she’d been taking care of herself pretty much since she was fourteen. She didn’t need Shep to come save her.
But to her surprise, she felt better. After rinsing the glasses, she stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and thinking about what he’d said.
Was it possible the killer had come into the house looking for her and if the cop hadn’t shown up—that the killer might be behind Charlie seeing Lindy after all this time. She’d been so scared she was imagining it. She thought it was karma coming to make her pay for her sins. Why wait fifteen years though?
What if Shep was right? If she hadn’t imagined it, then it was someone trying to scare her. Or make her think she’d lost her mind? But if Lindy’s killer was behind it... She realized with another shudder what that could mean. That the person who killed Lindy wasn’t some vagrant passing through like the police had finally decided when they couldn’t solve the case.
If Shep was right, then fifteen years ago, Lindy’s killer hadn’t just been in the house that night. She’d heard him start up the stairs toward her bedroom. That’s when she saw the policeman drive up. She couldn’t shake the chill that raced along her spine. If true, she’d come that close and now...
She jumped as she heard Shep come into the kitchen. Turning to look into his handsome face, she was reminded of the first time she’d seen him at boot camp. His hair had been longer back then and tousled. It was still tousled, only now one lock dropped low on his forehead, making him look all the more beguiling.
Charlie had already noticed the way his body had changed. He’d filled out in the shoulders and arms, making him look strong. She’d been in his arms and had felt that strength. He’d been the best-looking boy she’d ever seen. He’d known it, too.
“You were such a jerk at boot camp,” she said, smiling at the memory of their first meeting.
He laughed. She liked that laugh. It was sexy—just like him. “You came on to me.”
“You rejected me.”
“The judge had made it clear that there would be no fraternizing or we’d be sent to jail. He seemed pretty serious about that.”
“You were so law-abiding,” she joked as she stepped to him. She placed her palm on his chest, not surprised to find it as hard and muscled as it appeared. Earlier, when she’d been in his arms, she’d breathed in his male scent. It had felt as if the years hadn’t passed.