Deanna had never been very good at waiting. She preferred action. Even if it was fleeing. She paced the floor. Every minute seemed like an hour. She felt impotent ... useless ... and angry at herself.
By not immediately handing over that second letter to Smalls—the one addressed to Reggie Cane’s family—Deanna knew she’d demonstrated both a lack of commitment and a breach of loyalty. She’d pissed off Smalls royally, and he had every right to his anger.
Deanna took another absent look out the window, wondering why she’d done it. Hadn’t she told herself she wanted the truth at all costs? Then why the self-sabotage? Did part of her not want to know?
That’s crazy, Deanna thought. No. She would have to make amends—to prove herself a worthy part of the team. And she knew just where to start. She’d learn all she could about the drug her mother had used to subdue her victims.
Deanna marched determinedly into the dining room and fired up the laptop lying on the table. She typed in the word Rohypnol, and was surprised at the Google results.
Rohypnol, also known as Flunitrazepam, is used as a pre-medication for surgery, and for short-term treatment of insomnia. It is also referred to as the date-rape drug, due to its amnesia properties when used illicitly. Victims given the drug report limited or no recollection of the sexual assault.
A central nervous system depressant, Rohypnol produces powerful sedative/hypnotic effects, including muscle relaxation and forgetfulness. Once ingested, the drug takes 20 to 30 minutes to take effect, and can last four to six hours, with effects reported up to 12 hours.
A sedative? A treatment for insomnia? Deanna thought. Her eyes widened. Is this why I’ve been sleeping through the night?
Smalls’ drug test kit had proved she’d ingested Rohypnol somehow. Was it residue from the gimlet glasses? A cursory search of the house hadn’t located any more pills. But that didn’t prove anything. Deanna looked around at the mountains of clutter surrounding her. Finding a bottle of pills in this garbage heap would take forever....
The task seemed insurmountable for one person, so Deanna focused on a goal that was a little more achievable. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving. To keep her word, she needed to pick up a bottle of wine to bring to dinner at Mrs. Havenall’s.
Deanna shut off her computer, grabbed her car keys, and headed for the door.
ON HER DRIVE TO THE store, Deanna remembered it wasn’t just wine she was running low on. Her refrigerator was completely bare. But when she stepped into the grocery store, she nearly froze in panic. People were running around everywhere, shouting, arguing, and bumping carts. The pre-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy was in full force.
Deanna took a deep breath and dove in, fighting the crowds only long enough to get a bag of coffee, a pint of milk, and a bottle of wine. She made it through the ordeal quicker than she thought, and so decided to stop in the adjacent liquor store to replenish her vodka supply.
“Where’s the Stoli?” she asked the clerk as she rushed inside.
The small shop was almost as busy as the grocery store. The harried clerk pointed at a rack to his left. “Over there.”
Deanna grabbed a bottle. “Is this the biggest one you’ve got?”
The clerk grinned. “Yeah. Expecting relatives?”
“Just trying to survive the holidays,” Deanna said as she scooted in line behind a man buying a case of beer.
“Aren’t we all,” a voice said just inches from the back of Deanna’s neck.
She turned to see Jodie Havenall standing right behind her, sporting her signature flouncy hippie dress and wild eyes, a half-gallon bottle of tequila in her hand.
“Great minds think alike,” Jodie said, and laughed.
Deanna smiled. “Yes, they do.” She held up a shopping bag. “I’ve got the wine for tomorrow.”
“Cool.” Jodie sidled even closer to Deanna, deeply invading her personal space. “Don’t forget about the gallery opening Friday. I think you’ll really like it.”
“Why’s that?”
Jodie smirked. “Your mother is my inspiration.”
Deanna’s eyes widened. “Really? I didn’t think you saw her anymore.”
“Sure. She and I got pretty close the past couple of years. I helped my mom take care of her sometimes, for extra cash. Your mom was quite the weirdo. But hey. You know me. I like weird.”
Deanna’s nose crinkled. “I didn’t know—”
“Next?” the clerk said.
Deanna turned and plopped the bottle of vodka on the counter. “Sorry!”
Jodie squeezed Deanna’s arm until it pinched. She raised the tequila bottle at Deanna. “Listen, I gotta run. Buy this for me?”
Before Deanna could react, Jodie stepped in front of her and handed the bottle of tequila to the clerk. He swiped the bar code and handed it back to her. Jodie grinned at Deanna. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow, okay? We’ll talk then.”
Stunned, Deanna stood, mouth open, as Jodie turned and disappeared out the door.
Chapter Forty-Six
AFTER STOWING THE MILK in the fridge and the vodka in the freezer, Deanna went for a walk along the seawall to clear her head. Her crazy idea about getting a fresh start in St. Petersburg was turning out to be just that.
Crazy.
She’d already blown it with Smalls, and she was pretty sure Blatch had serious doubts about her as well. To make matters worse, Jodie Havenall was back in her life—and not in a good way. Deanna kicked a small stone off the sidewalk into the street and thought, What should I have expected?
Ironically, relationships had never been Deanna’s forte. Most of what she knew about functional ones she’d gathered secondhand from TV shows and psychology textbooks. Dysfunctional relationships, on the other hand, she’d learned from direct experience—as a captive audience to her mother’s every phobia and psychotic mood swing.
Correcting her original, damaged programming had turned out to be much harder than Deanna had hoped. Like her patients’ bleak prospects, she found herself wondering more and more if it was worth the monumental effort involved. Even the best relationships required struggle. The worst—well, they weren’t much more than emotional battlegrounds for the clash of opposing wills.
Deanna trudged along the seawall toward downtown, the shimmering water to her left unseen, blanked out by the thoughts swirling inside her head.
Tomorrow is Melody’s birthday. It wasn’t a happy thought. Instead of cakes and candles and balloons, the word birthday conjured up images of plumbago bushes and sweat—of an eavesdropped conversation—of the odd, thrumming noise in her ears that had signaled to Deanna that her world had just imploded.
Marry a rich old man, give him a bath, put him in a draft ....
Deanna shuddered and pulled her trench coat together at the collar. She looked up at the sky and was surprised to see the sun was beginning to set. She glanced around and was equally surprised to find she’d walked all the way to the marina across the street from The Vinoy.
Deanna blinked at the expensive yachts and the fancy hotel and suddenly felt as if she were an intruder. A fraud. She pictured a glamorous, newlywed Melody and Warren sipping cocktails on the hotel’s luxurious, inviting porch. The easy, carefree life enjoyed by The Vinoy’s guests felt as far away to Deanna as the moon.
She turned away and headed back toward her house, her thoughts tagging along behind her like an unwanted straggler.
Marry a rich old man, give him a bath, put him in a draft ....
Thoughts of her own birthday plagued her. That fateful day behind the plumbago bush had torn away the fragile safety net Deanna had managed to cobble together for her young self. Any hope she’d had of breaking through to her mother—of things getting better between them—had shattered in that moment. In its place, Deanna had added her own layer of bricks to the invisible wall between them, closing off her intimate self from her mother’s unworthy grasp.
Deanna smiled wistfully into the wind, recalling how the decision she’d made so long
ago had made her feel nearly drunk with power for a few days. But that power had quickly faded when her mother hadn’t even noticed her withdrawal. Deanna realized then that the extra layer of loneliness she’d heaped upon them had been hers alone to bear.
A sudden gust of wind caught Deanna’s scarf and blew it out into the bay. Let it go, she thought. Let it all go.
As she turned the corner and passed one of the majestic palms lining Coffee Pot Boulevard, Deanna forced herself to think of happier moments with her mother. Melody Young was never happier than when she was recalling the glory days of her youth—before Deanna had come along.
According to Melody, she’d been twenty-two when she’d married Warren. When he’d died a year later, she’d inherited his money and the huge house they’d shared on Coffeepot Boulevard. Nouveau riche, Melody had spent her money and her youth extravagantly and frivolously on lavish parties and handsome, broke scoundrels. She’d never expressed any regrets over squandering her money. As far as Deanna knew, Melody’s only regret in life—besides getting pregnant—was that her beauty hadn’t lasted.
Fifteen years ago, on her forty-fifth birthday, Melody had informed Deanna that her life was over. Her face sagging and her body no longer “bikini worthy,” Deanna’s mother had declared she would never go out socially again. She’d kept her word, too. Melody had cut off contact with the outside world bit by bit, until, a few years ago, she’d quit leaving the house entirely.
Deanna stopped and sighed. She looked out across the dark water of the bayou and did the math in her head. She was thirty-seven. If, as her mother believed, life ended at forty-five, Deanna only had eight years left.
Eight, Deanna thought. The number of a spider’s legs.
IT WAS BARELY SEVEN-thirty, yet the sky had already turned to embers and ash. The November sun was pulling down the curtain, and night was falling fast along with it. Deanna picked up her pace, and felt a ping of relief when she spotted the light from her front porch. It glowed yellow in the gloom like a jaundiced ghost.
Deanna cut along the corner of Mrs. Havenall’s yard and through the overgrown ligustrum hedges. As she did, she got a sudden chill—the creepy feeling someone was watching her.
Spooked, she ran for the front door. Her foot caught on a fallen branch. She fell to one knee. Nearby, in the dark hedges, she detected movement.
“Deanna,” a voice whispered from the shadows.
A knife-blade of panic slit Deanna’s spine and turned her mind to mush.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“DEANNA,” THE VOICE whispered again from the shadows.
Deanna struggled to get up from one knee, but her legs failed her. As weak and wobbly as if she’d been hit with a tranquilizer gun, Deanna’s heart thrummed in her ears the same way it had that day behind the plumbago bush—the day her life had imploded.
Get up! she screamed inside her head as she blindly scanned the dark hedges bordering her front yard. Suddenly, a dark shadow moved. The silhouette of a man emerged. He was inching his way toward her. Deanna opened her mouth to scream ....
“Deanna,” the man whispered. “It’s me. Marcus Blatch.”
Deanna nearly collapsed with relief. “Jeezus, Marcus!” she hissed. “What are you doing here? You nearly scared me to death!”
Blatch stepped into the dim light of the porch. His face was a yellowish mask as he spoke. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just out for a walk. I saw you coming down the seawall and ... waited. I hadn’t planned on you seeing me.”
The hair on the back of Deanna’s neck pricked up anew. “What? Why didn’t you want me to see you?”
Blatch pursed his lips. How could he explain that he was staking out her place? That he was concerned for her—that he cared about her? He’d meant to defend her from harm. Instead, he’d given her even more to worry about. What was it Smalls had warned him about? Staking and stalking are just a letter away?
“Well?” Deanna said angrily.
“That came out wrong,” Blatch said. “Let me explain. You see, my mother only lives a few blocks from here. I ... uh ... kind of like to patrol the neighborhood in the evenings.”
Deanna’s nose scrunched with skepticism. Had Blatch been spying on her? If so, was it because he was worried about her, or did he have some other reason? Did he suspect her of being involved in the murders?
Even now, with anger and suspicion boiling inside her, she could feel the spark between them. Mutual attraction pulled her toward Blatch like a magnet. She’d only felt such attraction once before in her life. It was much too rare to toss away on a misunderstanding. She decided to give Blatch the benefit of the doubt, and deflected the tension with a joke.
“Your mother must be so proud of you.”
Blatch smiled sheepishly, hoping his red cheeks weren’t visible in the dim light. “I’m a complete idiot. I know.”
Deanna smiled. “Not a complete one. How are you feeling? After the Rohypnol, I mean?”
Blatch was amazed she would think of him after all she’d been through today. “Back to one hundred percent. You?”
“I’m okay, yeah.” She walked toward the front door. Blatch followed her. Nervous, she turned back to face him. “So, uh ... thanks for keeping an eye out on my place. I’ll see you on Friday.”
“Okay.” Blatch made no motion to leave.
“Goodnight.” Deanna turned and pushed open the screen door.
“Uh ... we did a preliminary comparison of the letters,” Blatch blurted. “Snyders and Cane’s, I mean. They appear to be written by the same perpe ... author.”
Deanna’s heart sunk a little. “Thanks for letting me know.” She stepped inside the porch, up to the front door, and stuck the key in the lock.
“It doesn’t prove anything yet,” Blatch said from the front stoop. “There’s still hope your mother’s innocent.”
Deanna let go of the keys and turned around. “I appreciate you trying to keep my spirits up. That’s kind of you.”
Blatch shrugged. Deanna started to turn back to the door. He blurted, “By the way, I meant to tell you this morning. You have a nice house.”
She eyed Blatch skeptically. “It’s crumbling down around me. I could really use a handyman. Or, like Smalls said, a demolition crew. Maybe a stick of dynamite.”
Blatch laughed too hard. “Just missing a little love and elbow grease.”
Deanna’s brow furrowed. Blatch seemed nervous. He was obviously stalling. What was he up to? Then a thought hit her. Could he actually be flirting with me? If he is, he’s even rustier than I am.
She shot him a tentative smile. “I’m afraid this place needs a lot more than elbow grease.” She was about to tell Blatch goodnight again, when a question popped into her mind. “Hey. When you saw Snyder today, did you happen to see what kind of car he drives?”
Blatch shook his head. “No. Why?”
“You told me he was following me.”
“Oh.” Blatch winced. He’d lied about that. “I don’t know. I could find out tomorrow. Wait. Did you see him today?”
“No. At least, I don’t think it was him.” Deanna shrugged. “It’s probably just my imagination.”
Blatch opened the screen door. “What? Tell me.”
“I feel like I keep seeing this black sedan around.”
Blatch’s brow creased with worry. “Where?”
“I don’t know. At the funeral. Driving by my house.” Deanna shook her head. “Forget it. I’m just being paranoid.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Blatch said. “I’d be paranoid, too, if I were in your situation.”
“Like I said, it’s probably nothing.” Deanna turned the key in the lock, then blew out a breath, suddenly feeling lonelier than she had in a long time. “Hey. You want to come in for a drink?”
Blatch’s eyebrow arched. “Sure.” He shot her a smile. “But I should warn you right now, I’ve got to be home by eight-thirty.”
Deanna grinned and pushed open
ed the front door. “Eight-thirty? In New York, most places don’t even get started before nine.”
Blatch followed her into the house. “Well, St. Pete isn’t exactly New York. And I wouldn’t want to worry my Southern mother.”
Deanna stopped and turned toward Blatch. “Wait. You don’t live with your mother, do you?”
Blatch winced and held up his hands. “It’s a temporary thing. Just until business picks up.”
Deanna shot him a yeah, right look. “I didn’t know your detective agency was in a slump.”
Blatch followed her into the kitchen. “Actually, it’s too new to be in a slump. We’re just getting started. We’ve still got to build our clientele base.”
“And your reputation?”
“No. Mine could use a bit of polish, I’ll admit. But Smalls’ is stellar.”
Deanna crinkled her nose. “I hope I haven’t ruined it with you and Smalls. I know I’ve got to trust you guys with everything. It’s just, well, trust isn’t so easy for me.”
Blatch watched as Deanna pulled two martini glasses from the cupboard. “Make sure you rinse those out good. I wouldn’t want to be accused of drugging and raping you.” He smiled, but the expression on Deanna’s face made him want to kick himself in the ass. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
Deanna smiled. The guy’s a fumbling mess. A charming, fumbling mess. She held up the martini glasses. “Don’t sweat it. They were my glasses, so if anybody is to blame for drugging us, it’s me.” She held the glasses under the running faucet. “So, what did you do before you started the detective agency?”
“I was a cop. A police lieutenant.”
“So, why the career switch?”
“I didn’t always like what I saw, so I decided to change the view.”
Deanna smirked. “If you ask me, you were born to be a detective. Both of you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You sound just like one. Though, I have to admit, not quite as hard-boiled as Smalls.”
Blatch tilted his head and studied Deanna. “You’ve got me curious. Just how do you think a detective is supposed to talk?”
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