Then she thought to check her voicemail. She never looked at her messages, because as soon as she realized she’d missed a call, she’d immediately call them back. But when she checked, she had a missed message from Sean! Her eyes lit up. So, he’d called her today after all! She swallowed hard. Probably while she was out disposing of her car. …The message had come in at 5:57. She frowned, realizing it was only 5:45 now. She felt herself deflate as she realized it was an old message from yesterday. “Ruby, are you there? This is Sean Chaplin. From Magenta’s Gifts, last Saturday? We had coffee and I drove you home?”
She smiled against her will. How adorable. He’d actually been worried that she wouldn’t remember him.
“I was wondering…would you like to have dinner tonight? I’m not home right now, so I’ll try back later. Good-bye.”
She clapped her hands with glee. His first call to her! She definitely had to save this one!
She made a copy of the voicemail and sent it to her email.
She set her alarm for an hour, and it felt like it rang immediately. Like she hadn’t slept a wink. She was groggy and feverish, and when she moved, she cried out in pain. She popped a few more Aleve and forced herself to get going. There was much still to do.
▬▬▬
She looked at the blinking light on her answering machine with revulsion. They were bound to be from Jeremy, spouting the same ol’ shit. “Please talk to me! I’m sorry! I love you!” Blech.
She hadn’t played them since last night, and she’d been out most of the day…She reluctantly pressed play. “You have thirteen messages,” the phone said.
The first ten were from Jeremy. She’d listen, hear his voice, and skip on to the next message.
She started the eleventh message, which had come in at 6:01 last night. It was a woman’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar. As it played through, Ruby ran into the corner beside the couch, crouched down and put her hands over her ears. “No, no, no!”
“Ruby Deardon is it? Thanks for the name to go with the threats. This is Tara Dabler. You’re a real brainiac huh? Threatening people from your home phone on an answering machine! …Wait. I just realized who you are! You’re Ruby Dear! That cartoonist I like! We were supposed to go to a party at your house this weekend and I actually wanted you to sign your book for me.” There was a long pause. “What’s wrong with you? You’re a psychopath. Well honey, I’ll be sure to let Sean know you said he had herpes. He’ll love that. You need some help. And by the way, don’t mess with me, you’ll regret it.”
Ruby began to sob. Why, why, why hadn’t she waited until she found her disposable phone charger or bought a new disposable before she’d called Tara? How could she have been stupid enough to call from her own house? If Tara had called Sean and left a message for him before she died, …No wonder he hadn’t called all day. And if Tara had the time to leave this message before she died, she’d definitely had time to ruin things for her with Sean as well.
What if the police got her phone records? Or Tara’s? Ruby’s heart dropped, and she was glad she hadn’t known about this last night. She would never have been able to relax and enjoy her date with Sean. But if she had known, she might have been able to sneak over and erase Sean’s messages before he played them.
All right. What were the damaging phone calls the police might be able to get from her records? She’d called the hospital where Tara worked, and Tara’s house, twice, on the day she died. Shit. And Tara had called her house, minutes before her death, which would show up on her phone records as well…
Wait! She was almost positive she’d called the hospital on her disposable phone—she pictured it in her hand—Yes! So, there would be no record of that call. She closed her eyes, shaking with relief.
The first phone call to Tara’s house, the one that had gotten cut off when her phone had died, had also been made on her disposable phone.…But, she had then called Tara from her home phone, and left a threatening message. There was just no getting around that. Okay. She’d gotten Tara’s last name from Sean (he probably wouldn’t remember if he’d told her Tara’s last name or not), and she’d called Tara at home to…talk to her about her dinner party! She hadn’t left a message because her phone had died! Always better to use a bit of the truth in your lies. Made ‘em more believable.
At least she’d used DuckDuckGo and not Google so her searches wouldn’t rat her out, but she probably needed to get rid of her phone and computer. …No! The phone she could see—she needed a new phone, but her beloved Mac was nine years old.…She’d delete the history and call it good.
The police probably wouldn’t be able to prove that she was the one who’d threatened Tara and said Sean had herpes. Man, that had been dumb. Okay, Tara might have called her, but she hadn’t left a message—remember to get rid of her answering machine! —and it had probably just been about the dinner party as well. Okay, okay, this could work. It was hanging together. Her car had been disposed of—
She sat up straight. She wasn’t firing on all cylinders. There was still the problem of when her car had been stolen. She had to call the police and let them know that her car had been stolen yesterday, and figure out some reason why she hadn’t noticed this until just now…Her mind was blank. This was never going to work! This whole house of cards was collapsing around her. How was she ever going to pull this off?
Ruby crawled over to the couch, lay down, and curled into the fetal position. She covered her entire body, including her face, with an afghan, and started humming tunelessly. She was so fucked.
A minute later, her sense of self-preservation kicked in and she sat up again. She might go down, but she would go down swinging.
▬▬▬
Twenty minutes later, a sketchy plan in mind, Ruby called an Uber to take her to the grocery store, then googled the non-emergency number of the police. She cracked her knuckles, stretched her neck and waited for the phone to be picked up. “Kamata Sheriff’s department,” a woman with a loud voice said. “Deirdre speaking. How may I direct your call?”
“I need to speak with someone about my car,” Ruby said.
“This is the Sheriff’s department, ma’am,” the woman said. “Not a garage.”
“I’m aware of that,” Ruby snapped. She stood up and began pacing. “I want to report my car stolen.”
The woman’s voice became all business. “What type of car is it ma’am?”
“A pink Mini-Cooper convertible.” She gave the license plate and the year.
“What time was it stolen today?”
“Not today. It’s actually been gone since yesterday. Early in the day yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you report it stolen early in the day yesterday, then?”
Ruby narrowed her eyes, not liking her tone. “Because I just now noticed it was gone.” The woman tried to interrupt but Ruby talked over her. “I was going to the store, and I noticed my car wasn’t parked in the yard like usual. I said, ‘Hmm, that’s weird,” because I remember parking it outside, though I do have a garage and sometimes I park it in there instead—”
“So today then?”
“No,” Ruby snapped. “Definitely not today. Let me finish. I’ve been home all day today working, and my car wasn’t in the yard, but it didn’t register because sometimes I park it in the garage, and I just assumed it was in there.”
“And it’s not in your garage, I suppose?” the woman said in a bored voice.
“No. If it was, I wouldn’t be calling you, now, would I?”
“You never know, these days,” the woman said. “When was the last time you remember seeing your car?”
This was more like it! “Yesterday morning,” Ruby said too loudly. “I drove to the hardware store, and I haven’t seen it since. It was definitely stolen yesterday. Probably early afternoon because I took the trash out, and now that I think about it, my car wasn’t there then either. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together, but as I said, sometimes I park in—”
“Your garage. I get it. What time did you take the trash out?”
Bitch. “Around three—so it was already gone by three o’clock yesterday afternoon.” The woman was quiet, and Ruby began to gnaw on her cuticles. “Did you get that? My car was definitely already stolen by three—”
“O’clock. Yesterday. Afternoon,” the woman said. “I’ll send somebody out—”
“Wait! Can you send officer Kipling please? Officer P. Kipling? I need to speak with him.”
“This is his day off—”
“But he knows my case.”
“What case?”
“I’m being stalked by my neighbor, who I now think probably stole my car. He definitely stole my keys, and Kipling came out here yesterday after Jeremy, that’s his name, Jeremy Van der Wyden, broke into my house.”
“As I said, Officer Kipling’s off today. Do you wish to speak to a different detective instead?” The woman said, her voice dripping with disdain.
What was this bitch’s problem? “Absolutely,” Ruby said, dripping disdain right back.
“Hold please,” the woman said, and was gone.
Where was her Uber? She went and looked out on her dark front yard.
A moment later a man answered. “Trumpower,” he said. His voice was growly, with a touch of a Southern twang. Ruby shivered. Great voice.
Ruby went through her whole story again and ended with, “—I think my neighbor did this, though I don’t know how or why, and I want to swear out a complaint. He keeps harassing me, and he stole my keys. I know it’s him.”
“Gimme your address” he said, in his sexy voice. “And I’ll come out as soon as I finish some paperwork.”
Headlights pulled into her driveway. “Actually, my Uber just arrived. Can we put this off for a couple hours? I’m going grocery shopping.”
He told her his name was Ben and she smiled. She loved the name Ben. He would swing by around 8:30 to take her statement.
She grabbed her cell and her purse, locked her house and got in the Uber. She didn’t feel like talking so she smiled briefly at the driver, took out her phone, and began scrolling.
She considered calling Sean, but she needed absolute privacy for that conversation, and she needed to gather her courage first. Her chest burned at the thought of losing him after their perfect date last night. She would not let it happen. Luckily, Tara was dead and couldn’t do any more damage than she already had, and Ruby would lie, lie, lie…
She would prevail. The alternative was unthinkable.
CHAPTER 22
Ruby kept glancing at the time on her phone as she hurried through the store. She’d called another Uber to pick her up outside in twenty minutes. She needed to be back in time to meet Officer Trumpower. She filled her cart with mostly whole foods before tossing in a pint of ice cream as a treat. After the week she’d just had, she deserved it.
When she got in line the man in front of her kept glancing back. Why was he staring? …Did he know what she’d done? Had he witnessed the accident? He could blow her whole scheme! She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly. Relax. He was just some nosy stranger. If she was going to get out of this without prison time, she needed to get her shit together and not go all, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” freak-out mode in public.
ScuttleBUZZ Magazine caught her eye at the checkout. Was this the one she was supposedly in? The date on the front said October eighteenth. Today was the thirteenth, so it was definitely the new issue. How cool.
She picked it up. The cover read, “How Thin Is Too Thin?” and it featured pictures of four skinny celebrities. Hilary would love this, but it would have been better to be in one with Beyoncé or Meghan and Harry on the cover. This would have to do.
She moved her cart forward and opened to the index in the front. She scanned the stories quickly, flushing with pride when she found her article and saw her name in print. It was on page 83, in the Introducing section. The little blurb read, “With her successful cartoon Left of Center, Ruby Deardon has left her troubled childhood behind as she finds the humor in everyday life.”
What the hell was this? She’d been expecting a fluff piece. She hadn’t told the reporter anything about her “troubled childhood.” She’d barely mentioned her family. Who the hell had they talked to?
This was not good. She was flipping through the magazine when the person behind her cleared their throat and gave her cart a little nudge. She looked up and the conveyer belt was now empty. She glared behind her, tossed the magazine onto the belt, and began unloading her cart.
On the way home, she turned on her phone flashlight and opened her magazine to read the article. She flipped quickly to page eighty-three.
Oh my God! She threw the magazine against the driver’s seat in front of her and began rocking helplessly. “Oh my God, Oh my God, OhmyGod,OhmyGod,OhmyGod,” she whispered.
“Are you okay?” The driver said, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Do you need me to pull over?”
“I’m fine,” Ruby said, pulling herself together. She picked up the magazine and smoothed it out on her lap. She waited to open it until the driver had stopped worriedly looking back at her and was once again concentrating on the road.
The article was only a page long. The top half of the page was a big picture of her, and the bottom half was a short article. It was the picture that had scared her.
The photo had been taken in her front yard. She was leaning against her brand-new Mini in the driveway—she knew it was brand-new because it was still red, and she’d painted it pink exactly one week after buying it. She had a playful smile on her face and long hair—she looked so weird to herself, now, with long hair—and she was sketching Shelby with a Sharpie, on a huge drawing pad propped on the hood.
The photographer had taken so many pictures of her grinning inanely and doing things she never did in real life, that she’d forgotten they’d taken some with her car. And now it was coming back to haunt her.
What if that dog watcher recognized her car? Or some other witness came forward now?
She became aware that she was punching her leg so hard she’d have a bruise there tomorrow. She brushed her hand over the sore spot. “Calm down,” she said under her breath. “Calm down.”
She stared at the picture again. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. Why had she gotten so upset? That dog walker thought she was a man, and if anyone else had seen her, they obviously hadn’t gotten her license plate. And she looked so different from that picture now, she hardly recognized herself. Her hair was over two-feet shorter.
And what were the odds that the exact same person that might have seen her at Tara’s, also read ScuttleBUZZ Magazine cover to cover? Probably a million to one. And there were less than 30,000 people in Calua. She was safe.
…Probably.
She read the article, then read it again in disbelief. It was titled, “Behind the Drawing Board.” The secondary title read, “Through her famous cartoon, Ruby Deardon leaves her past behind and helps us to laugh at ourselves.”
When Ruby Deardon was a young girl growing up in Southern California, becoming a cartoonist was the farthest thing from her mind. “I’ve always loved to draw, and it comes very naturally to me, but I figured I’d grow up to be a doctor like my mom. That is, until I found out how many math classes you have to take!” says Deardon, now 28, with a grin. “My mother was the one who convinced me to make a career out of something I loved, and unlike most aspiring cartoonists, I only submitted one strip and was accepted immediately for syndication. I just got lucky and hit with the right strip at the right time. And yes, I feel very blessed.”
But growing up, blessings were few and far between. The fifth and youngest child of the deceased Martina Williams, a surgeon, and Louis Deardon, a drifter who left the family when Ruby was an infant, Ruby often felt isolated from her four older siblings, who had a different father.
“Lou Deardon was the worst thing to ever happen to our family. He took my mother to the edge o
f bankruptcy, he was abusive, and then he left her with an infant,” says Ruby’s oldest brother, Christopher Sterling, a lawyer, 44. “I’m sure she [Ruby] felt our resentment growing up, and I’m sorry about it now, but we were young,” In fact, Deardon refuses to discuss her siblings, whom she has been estranged from ever since their mother died from breast cancer almost a decade ago, leaving her entire estate to Deardon, her caretaker.
But the graduate of San Francisco State University, who now makes her home in rural Gibson County in Northern California, is philosophical about life. “I’m happy now. Really happy. I have a great job, great friends, plenty of money…the only thing I don’t have is a family,” says the still single Deardon. “But hey, I’m still young, I have plenty of time. And I know if I set my mind to it, there is nothing I can’t have.”
She looked up after reading the article to see they were almost to her house. “It’s here. Turn left at the bright blue mailbox,” she said.
Jeremy’s car was there. He was home, of course he was. She shoved the magazine into a grocery bag, wrinkling it. Her first big press and that stupid reporter chose to dwell on her crazy family. And she wouldn’t be twenty-eight for almost a week. Christopher loved to poke his nose into her business. She’d call him up and give him a piece of her mind if she hadn’t tossed his address and phone number years ago.
▬▬▬
Ruby unlocked her front door, turning just in time to watch the driver sling the last of her grocery bags onto her driveway. He sped away. She stomped down the steps waving her hands. “Thanks for nothing!” she yelled.
A police cruiser turned into her driveway, carefully wove around her groceries, and stopped beside her. She glanced at her phone. Trumpower was early.
She crossed her arms to cover her nervousness. He was going to ask to search her garage, no question. Her car was gone, but it reeked of bleach, and she’d forgotten to get rid of those garbage bags from earlier. Her stomach flip-flopped. Please don’t let him ask about the covered windows in there…
The officer opened his door and got out, and she took a step back. Wow. He was huge; at least six-five, two hundred-and-forty pounds of pure muscle, and he was cute. He had milk chocolate skin, full lips, and dreads that bounced when he moved. “Hi, you must be Ruby Deardon?” he said. At her nod, he continued. “I’m officer Ben Trumpower, but you can call me Ben.”
Drawn To You: A Psychological thriller Page 20
