Everything is falling apart. Why does everything in her life eventually fall apart? It’s not a good feeling but so strangely familiar. Every time she thinks she has control of her life, it threatens to spiral again. After she adjusted to the fact that her father had been alive for decades after Michelle’s death, and she moved into the house he left her, she felt like she had a chance. Then Gabriel imploded. But she’s been so good since then. So careful. Now Lance Wilson has her house, and her job is all but gone. It’s like a coincidental curse.
What if Leeza somehow orchestrated Lance Wilson into Kimber’s life? The idea that she could be that smart seems unlikely but not impossible.
Or what about someone else who secretly wants some kind of revenge? Gabriel said it could be an angry client. What about Troy—could he still be jealous? Or Diana, because of the affair. Or what about Kyle himself? Any one of them could have bribed someone at the station or be paying Lance Wilson.
Is there some sort of Let’s Drive Kimber Insane revenge club online somewhere?
What do I do now?
She has nowhere to go. Not really. There’s not a person on earth she can tell the whole truth to, that Lance Wilson is all but blackmailing her.
What she wants to do is get stinking drunk, like she used to in college. So drunk that, temporarily, everything was easy and funny and goddamn fun. Eventually she’d get sober, but there was always the next night, the next weekend. It was possible to live like that for a while, but now she has no choice but to be a grown-up. What a joke.
But she can’t get drunk. She promised to pick up Hadley later at day camp. Great.
She pulls into a Starbucks lot and parks, deciding strong coffee will have to do since a drink is out of the question. Instead of getting out immediately, she dials Gabriel. She has to tell somebody about what happened at work. He doesn’t have to know everything. As she’s thinking of what she’s going to say, the call goes to voicemail.
“So it looks like I’m about to lose my job on top of everything else. Call me when you have a minute, okay? I guess I’ll be paying you double to help me with this too. This is so much bullshit.” She pauses. “Talk to you later.”
Hanging up, she realizes that in her haste to get the hell out of the radio station, she’s forgotten to get copies of the reports they say she falsified. Damn. Gabriel will need to see them too, and there’s no way she can go back today and look at those people. But maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t answer. Gabriel has been stuck to her like glue the past few days. It’s been okay, but she can’t help but feel something changed last night. Like they were getting too close. Back when they were dating, he called her four, five times a day. It seemed like every time she got out of a meeting and looked at her phone, he had texted or called her. Now she hears from him at most once or twice a day. Often she contacts him. But she reminds herself to pay attention, to watch for signs that he might be obsessing about her. To make sure things don’t get out of hand again.
A headache is blooming behind her eyes.
Coffee. Coffee now. I can’t think anymore.
As she reaches into the back, feeling for her purse, her hand finds something else. Realizing that it’s a stiff manila envelope, a chill travels up her arm and clutches at her heart.
Dear God, not another one.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
September 199_
The bell for fourth period rang, and the hall filled with the echo of closing doors. Michelle watched a heavyset boy wearing discount-store blue jeans slide an envelope into her locker. Before he could walk away, she stepped out of the alcove where she’d been waiting.
“Hey, who are you?”
He turned at Michelle’s voice, his wet lips open in surprise. The thing she noticed first about his face was that he had remarkably long eyelashes and lovely hazel eyes. He ran.
Michelle chased him, wanting to catch him before he reached the stairs.
He was much slower than she was, even though her five-cigarettes-a-day habit sometimes took her breath. When he was within reach, she grabbed at the T-shirt clinging tightly to his back. At her touch, he tripped, his hands slapping the tiles. He collapsed with a comic “Oof,” and she fell onto his back.
“Get off me!” he cried, trying to roll onto his side to dislodge her.
“Who are you? Why are you writing these things about my dad?” She stayed on his back and spoke fiercely into his ear. He smelled of sweat and Clearasil.
“Leave me alone. I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re not getting up until you tell me.” Michelle shifted and quickly grabbed one of his arms and jerked it back like she’d seen people do on television. He groaned, but otherwise it had little effect. “What do you want?”
“Somebody—he paid me, okay? Let go of me!”
She knew she couldn’t hold him much longer. He was at least five inches shorter than she was but forty pounds heavier. Probably one of the new freshmen. “Bullshit. I don’t believe you.”
“Ten bucks every time. I don’t know who he is. He doesn’t go here.” Now he gave a sudden jerk, and she fell off his back. “You’re crazy!”
Michelle slowly got up, and they faced each other, breathing heavily.
A nearby door creaked open, and Mrs. Matthews, the AP U.S. History teacher, stuck her head out. Her wiry salt-and-pepper hair was cropped short, and her reading glasses rested on top of her head. She looked curiously from Michelle to the boy. “Michelle? What’s going on out here?”
The boy took that chance to walk quickly to the stairwell and disappear from view. Michelle knew it was too late to run after him.
“He tripped. I was helping him up, and we kind of got tangled.” It didn’t hurt that Michelle was one of her best students. She pushed some hair behind one ear and gave the teacher her warmest smile. “Freshmen.”
“I can’t believe you’re letting some skeevy freshman get to you, Michelle. It sounds like Boner Gould. I think his real name is Bernard. Why would you believe him?”
Kimber sat cross-legged on Michelle’s bed, the notes spread out in front of her. Michelle had made sure the diary was hidden away.
“Come on, Kimber. You don’t think it’s weird the way Dad goes away all the time and nobody can get ahold of him? What about how he sometimes goes away on Thanksgiving or Christmas by himself, saying how his family is weird about him being married to Mom? We’ve never even met them.”
Michelle didn’t expect to get through to Kimber right away, but there was no one else she could talk to about this. Certainly not their mother or father. She still had no proof. Only weird statements and accusations. “Will you go with me?”
Kimber picked up the crude map that had been folded into the latest note. “All the way to Union? It’s over an hour away, plus they’re probably directions to some serial killer’s house.”
“I checked. It’s a restaurant. The note says if we’re there by two o’clock, we’ll see Dad with someone he shouldn’t be with. Don’t you want to know the truth?”
Throwing herself back onto Michelle’s pillows, Kimber let out an aggravated groan. “Don’t you have to work? Why should I give up my whole Saturday for some moron’s idea of a joke?”
“Come on. Don’t make me beg. I don’t want to go by myself, and I can’t take anyone else. Nobody should know about this except our family.” She hurried to add, “But not Mom. Not yet.”
“Twenty bucks, and you have to get Mom to let us take the Audi.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
Kimber got up from the bed to go back to her own room. “Of course she will. You always get your way with her.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
This manila envelope has the words “OPEN ME!” written in black marker across its front. Kimber doesn’t want to open it, but if there’s some new threat inside, some new kind of evidence, she needs to know as soon as possible. There’s no predicting what Lance Wilson might do next. The man is pure menace, and she has to protect hers
elf. What if he decides to kill her instead of just blackmailing her?
Ripping open the envelope, she finds another photograph. It’s the same hillside, her sister lying motionless against the same rock. This time, the photographer is farther away, so more of the hillside above the rock is revealed. She wants to look away, but she can’t. Instead, she puts down her car window so she can see the image in more detail. The hillside is covered with the previous year’s leaves and a few struggling bushes and ferns. At the top stands a second girl, staring down the hill.
The stiff photo paper refuses to be crushed into a ball, but Kimber manages to tear it into pieces. They get smaller and smaller as her anger grows, but she doesn’t stop until they’re scattered all over her lap and the Mini’s tiny console.
The only thing that’s going to keep her from going insane, she knows, is to do something. Find something. Without more information from Shaun—who seemed so optimistic—or help from the unhelpful police, she can think of only one thing to do: break into her own house and find out everything she can about the man who’s taunting her.
She drives the handful of miles from the Starbucks to her neighborhood and parks in front of a church two streets from her house. Brushing the shredded photo from her lap, she gets out of the car and heads for the alley that runs behind her house and Jenny’s. She tries not to hurry or look furtive. This is her neighborhood. Why shouldn’t she be out for a walk in the sunshine? But when she reaches her garage, her heart beats wildly, as though she’s jogged the whole way.
Inside, she finds that the ugly orange SUV is gone, which makes everything easier. Now she won’t have to use the key she knows is hidden among Jenny’s flowerpots to let herself into the dead woman’s kitchen to watch and wait. She can go straight to her own house.
Her only real chance is to get in through the concrete stairwell’s old basement door, which has a slightly rotten wooden frame and squares of glass in its upper half. If she can bust the glass out, she should be able to knock the rotten supports out fairly easily if she needs to.
The basement door. Two feet from where Jenny died.
Kimber doesn’t believe in ghosts, but surely there is something left behind in the stairwell. Jenny’s hair. Blood stains. Was there blood? She can’t remember. Could it have been underneath Jenny’s body? Where has the real Jenny gone—heaven or hell? Jenny believed in a Catholic heaven, and there’s a small statuette of the Virgin Mary in the telephone alcove in her hallway.
Probably heaven.
Kimber stands on the concrete steps, silent, hearing her own rapid breathing. The only sign of all the people who came and went the previous day is an unused plastic zip tie resting on the bottom stair. The only remnant of Jenny is Kimber’s memory of the stiffened legs angled on the stairs, and the sunken face and matted gray hair. Kimber’s own legs are unsteady, and she hopes she doesn’t faint. But she won’t let herself faint because she has to get inside the house. Surely then the dizzying hollowness in her head will disappear. She must hurry, and not let the unbidden fantasy of Jenny’s skinny, dead hand wrapping around her ankle frighten and stop her.
Closing her eyes, she makes a silent apology to Gabriel for breaking her promise to stay away and punches her rag-wrapped hand at the glass. When her fist bounces back with a shot of pain, she stifles a cry. Either she didn’t punch hard enough or the glass is thicker than she thought. Shaking her throbbing hand, she looks around for some kind of stick or tool. In the far corner are the remains of a busted concrete block the police didn’t take. When she picks up a chunk of it, a bronze-colored lizard shoots up the wall, and she gives a small shriek.
With the concrete cupped in her palm, she steps back so she can swing harder. This time there’s a satisfying tinkle of breaking glass. Dropping the concrete and unwrapping her hand, she carefully reaches in to unlock the deadbolt. Why didn’t Lance Wilson replace this deadbolt with one requiring a key on both sides like the ones upstairs? Maybe he was being cheap or just didn’t think of it. Or did he do it on purpose, to tempt someone (her?) to break in?
The house smells musty and stale, exactly the way it smelled the day she first let herself in with the keys her father left with Gabriel, who had been his lawyer. Yet it feels unfamiliar too, as though it has somehow drifted out of her reach. Her father owned the house for less than a year before he died, and she doesn’t know much about the Harkers, who owned it before him. For the briefest of moments she wonders if the past fourteen months have happened at all. Perhaps her father has just reappeared, alive, in her life, and she’s stumbled into his house. There is no Lance Wilson.
But she has seen him. Touched him. He has stared at her with cartoonish malevolence, and she has wished him dead.
Although it’s her own kitchen she walks softly into, she’s an intruder.
It doesn’t look as though Lance Wilson is much more of a cook than she is. Her favorite meals are from the gourmet counter at the grocery store or via delivery. The empty cartons of frozen macaroni and cheese and chicken potpies scattered around the kitchen show him to have more downscale tastes. In the refrigerator, she finds the containers of skim milk and yogurt she bought last week are still unopened. The garbage can underneath the sink is overfull. And smelly. Of course he wouldn’t know that the garbagemen come on Monday mornings. Resisting the impulse to pull out the bag, cram it full of mac and cheese boxes, and take it out to the garbage, she closes up the cabinet with visions of future cockroaches in her head.
She does grab the dustpan and whisk broom hanging on the wall of the basement stairway to clean up the glass she knocked out of the door. Back in the kitchen, she lets the glass slide noisily into the full garbage bag. How awful it would be if Lance Wilson were to cut himself when he next goes to throw something away!
Nothing could have prepared her for what she finds in the rest of the house.
Everything is off. Wrong. The furniture is almost, but not quite, in its usual places. The blinds in the kitchen are open, but the ones in the rest of the downstairs are all closed, so the light is dim, filtered through the edges of the blinds and the half-dozen art deco stained-glass windows—stylized flowers and trees—in the living room and dining room. It’s as though she’s entered a different dimension, just a heartbeat away from her own.
Thick dust covers the floor and the furniture. She picks up an amber mohair throw on a nearby chair and shakes it out. Motes of grit and dust scatter like a million fleeing insects, and she sneezes into the heavy quiet. Then she realizes why it’s so dusty: several bricks have been wrenched out of the fireplace and lie chipped and broken on the floor. A ragged half-moon of debris extends from the hearth to the oriental rug on which she spent a small fortune. There are holes in the plaster walls too, beneath two of the stained-glass windows. At first she thinks the glass isn’t damaged, but when she looks closely, she sees a hairline crack running along the stem of the tulip in the window to the right side of the fireplace.
Stunned, she covers her mouth. It’s as though she’s stumbled into a crime scene.
It is a goddamn crime scene. What’s he looking for?
Her first thought is to call the police. But she’s not supposed to be in the house. They might even arrest her for trespassing. Instead, she takes out her phone, her hands trembling with frustration, and takes pictures of the fireplace and the holes in the walls. This is real evidence, if only she can use it.
Anxious about Lance Wilson’s return, she hurries to the stairs, her shoes crunching unpleasantly on the larger pieces of debris. She wants to investigate his personal belongings, but she stops on the landing to see if her favorite window has been damaged. It’s a row of geometric trees, and through it she can see a slightly wavy version of the row of blooming crape myrtle trees across the driveway. The window is fine, despite the ragged hole two feet below it that’s big enough to put both her fists through.
Bastard, bastard, bastard!
As she continues up the stairs with angry anticipation, her left
foot catches on a plank that’s been pried at least a half inch away from its neighbor. She stumbles, hitting her chin on a stair and twisting one leg beneath her. When something in her knee pops, she curses loudly. It takes her a full minute to ease herself upright. She can walk, but the knee is stiff and painful.
The smell coming off the pile of dirty clothes on the antique pine rocker in the guest room is a mix of sweat and tangy deodorant, and as she paws through it, she’s certain the smell will cling to her hands like a filthy lotion. There’s no money, no phone, no incriminating paper or even a gum wrapper. Several well-thumbed paperback thrillers by Brad Thor, Kathy Reichs, and Tom Clancy are stacked neatly on the bedside table. It’s strange to know Lance Wilson reads books here in her guest room after randomly destroying the inside of her house. As though destruction is his job and reading is what he does to relax afterward.
His hygiene gear is spread over the vanity in the guest bathroom, and the countertop is punctuated with smears of toothpaste. The tube of toothpaste lying open is the same brand as hers and looks, indeed, like it might actually be hers. A trill of disbelief runs through her. She pictures him searching for the toothpaste in her bathroom and bringing it back in here to use. The intimacy of that act hits her like a blow—oddly more powerful, more affecting than even the destruction downstairs. There’s a compact of women’s makeup too, its case grubby with the fair shade of makeup inside. It puzzles her. She picks up the toothbrush beside it. Its bristles are bent and mashed like someone’s been using it for months, squashing it against their teeth to brush as hard as they can. Can these things really belong to him? She sticks the toothbrush in her back pocket, thinking vaguely of DNA. But she’s also feeling spiteful.
The Stranger Inside Page 14
