She printed out all three pictures and put them in the put-back pile, too. Now she’d have to get rid of this printer as well. Printers might be a dime a dozen, but printer ink was among the most expensive liquids on earth, thus, probably identifiable. She added “3. Printer” to her list.
When the police checked his house, they’d have all the proof they needed that Jeremy had killed Tara. Of course, she’d give them more than that, because Jeremy didn’t have an obvious motive. If she planted enough stuff to prove he did it, motive wouldn’t matter…hopefully.
She looked at his camera she’d stolen. It was a nice camera and she wanted to keep it, but she also wanted the police to have access to the pictures of her he’d taken. After some thought, she attached the camera to her computer, opened a blank jump drive, and downloaded all of them. She tossed the jump drive into her bag, and made sure to erase all the pictures on her new camera before she put it in her safe.
She grabbed her flashlight, put all the rest of the stuff she was taking into her bag, and rubbed her hands together. This next part would be a master stroke if she could pull it off. She listened to the recording she’d saved on her phone of Tara’s message, and broke out in a sweat again.
Good heavens that had been a close call.
Tara had been on the verge of ruining her life. Literally, if she hadn’t killed Tara that night, Sean would be gone now. And murder hadn’t even been on her mind that night. It was just luck…
She listened one more time and grabbed her mini tape recorder. Yes. She could make it work.
Ruby edited the message using her Voice Memo App and the tape recorder. When she was finished, she put them both in her pocket.
She made sure Jeremy’s gun was loaded and kept it handy. If Jeremy surprised her, she’d shoot him with his own gun. Hopefully, the police would think he’d surprised an intruder and had his own weapon used against him. Sean would swear she’d been home all night, and she’d be in the clear.
She put on a knit hat, changed into a fresh pair of gloves, grabbed her bag and the flashlight, and left her house. Jeremy’s house was dark, but at least the rain had lessened to a drizzle.
She went directly to his back door and used her credit card on the lock again. This time it took her considerably longer to get inside because it was dark out, the forest looming behind her spooked her, and she was having a hard time managing both the flashlight and the break in at once.
She left her Birkenstocks on his porch and went inside in socked feet. She didn’t flip on the kitchen light but put on the hall light instead. It was an interior light that wouldn’t be visible from the street in case Jeremy came home. It was enough light to see into each of the bedrooms with the help of her flashlight.
She went into his room and put the pictures of her back in the envelope under his mattress. She left the jump drive and the pictures of Tara there also. If Jeremy had hidden the pictures he’d taken of her, he definitely would have hidden the pictures he’d taken of the girl he’d murdered. It was just common sense.
She left a corner of the envelope sticking out of the mattress as a little clue to the police though. No sense making it too hard for the fools.
She began turning on lights. Honestly, Jeremy was not going to come here in the middle of the night. She shrugged. And if he did, he was going to be really sorry.
She checked his answering machine. No messages. Loser. She pressed his greeting button on his machine and his outgoing message played. “It’s me, Jeremy. Leave a message or call, 555-0207, or 555-4421.”
The first number was his cell she’d killed, so the second number almost had to be his Jasmine Drive house. …Right?
She quickly typed and labeled this number in her notes on her phone as well.
She pressed play on her tiny tape recorder and played the entire message again, shuddering as she heard the dead woman’s voice coming out of the darkness.
“This is Tara Dabler. You’re a real brainiac, huh? What is wrong with you? You must be completely insane. You need some help. And, by the way, don’t mess with me. You’ll regret it.”
She let it play for a long time but there was nothing else on the tape. Satisfied, she took the tape out of the recorder, wiped it on her shirt, and hid it in a kitchen drawer. There was no way to get it on his phone except by calling him and she didn’t have a time machine.
Ruby grinned. That alone was enough to get him life or the death penalty.
But would he have really kept that tape out in the open? No. Even Jeremy wasn’t that stupid. She took the tape out of the drawer and put it inside the envelope under his mattress with all the pictures. Now the police couldn’t miss it. Perfect.
She unhooked his answering machine and put it in her bag. It was a digital machine, and she’d planted a tape. She didn’t want the police pondering the discrepancy.
She added “4. Jeremy’s answering machine” mentally to her list of destruction.
She went into the garage and laid everything out again, checking the picture she’d taken the other day, to make sure she got it exactly right. She wished, again, that she hadn’t tossed out that note he’d pieced together.
Satisfied that she’d done all she could for now, she left his house, leaving the door wide open. It had finally stopped raining, and she could smell the wet grass as she ran back home.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes. There were just a few more loose ends to tie up now. Then she could sleep.
She fetched the can of spray paint she’d bought earlier with cash and went outside. She was so tired she was staggering, but she stood on one of her deck chairs and wrote the word “Bitch!” on the side of her house in huge red letters, taking care to miss the brick, as Jeremy would, since it was his house and brick was expensive to fix. When she was finished, she put the chair away, took the can back over to Jeremy’s house and left it on the work bench in his garage. She grabbed her bags, locked up behind her and raced back to her house to turn the doorbell camera back on. She went out through her garage and hurried back through the wet woods to her car.
The only thing that could possibly go wrong now was if Jeremy came back here unexpectedly and saw how she’d set him up. He was ordered to stay away from her though, and hopefully, her luck would hold. It had to.
She took the long way back to Sean’s and tossed her little tape recorder into the first trash bin she passed, and after running it over, she tossed the answering machine into the next one.
She turned up the radio on the way home, feeling free. This was going to work.
▬▬▬
She was on Sean’s porch, hunting for the right key, when Chloe started barking madly from the other side of the door. That stupid dog was going to ruin everything! She unlocked the door, flung it open, and watched the dog streak past her, race across the front yard, and into the road. Ruby seriously contemplated leaving her out there. But how would she explain the dog getting out to Sean? Stupid-ass dog!
“Here girl,” she cooed. “Come here.”
Chloe bowed and barked playfully. “Shut up!” Ruby glanced over her shoulder into the dark house. She made kissing noises and walked slowly towards the dog, pleading softly, “Come on Chloe, come on in like a good girl. Come on in you stupid thing…” She lunged for her, and Chloe danced away.
It began to rain again.
She chased the dog around the yard in earnest. Chloe darted and weaved like a prize fighter, but after ten minutes, she tired of her game, and allowed Ruby to catch her. “Friggin’ stupid-ass dog!” Ruby dragged her into the house by the collar. “Bad dog. Bad dog! Stupid, stupid dog,” she said. She got them both inside and locked the door.
She leaned against it for a moment with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. She put Sean’s keys back on the table and noticed muddy paw prints all over the hardwood floors. She felt like screaming.
She kicked off her own muddy shoes again, dragged the dog roughly into the kitchen, and wiped off all four of Chloe’s muddy feet with wet
paper towels. “Bad dog!” she said again, as Chloe cowered with her tail between her legs.
She got another big wad of wet paper towels and wiped the muddy floor. Dragging her feet, she rinsed off her shoes in the utility sink in the laundry room and set them to dry by the front door beside her wet jacket. When she finally started up the steps, she was surprised to see that it was well after two. If she didn’t get some sleep soon, she would lose her mind.
Sean was breathing so heavily she could hear him from the hallway. She stepped into the darkened room and stripped to her tank top and panties without turning on the light. When she climbed into bed beside him, she put her hand down on a little body that wasn’t Sean’s, and yelped in surprise, completely disoriented.
When her eyes became adjusted to the dark, she realized it was Danny lying beside his father. At that moment, his little eyes opened wide. “Who are you?” he said.
And her perfect alibi flew right out the window.
CHAPTER 37
She sat up in bed. “Who are you?” Danny repeated louder when Ruby didn’t answer.
“Shhh!” She flipped on the bedside lamp, and Danny squinted at her. “Don’t wake your Daddy. It’s okay. I’m a friend of his. My name’s Ruby.”
The little boy began to shake Sean’s shoulder. “Daddy! Wake up!”
Sean remained dead to the world. “Danny, stop! I told you not to wake him up!” She grabbed his bony shoulders and squeezed for just a second. The little boy shut up, and Ruby slowly released him.
Danny scrambled across his dad onto his pillow and pressed himself against the wall until he was as far across the bed from her as he could get. His eyes were wide, his face, pale, and it was unnerving to bear his unwavering, accusatory gaze.
How in the world did her wonderful Sean end up with such a horrid brat of a son? She crossed her arms. “Now Danny, you let your daddy alone. He needs his rest.”
Danny didn’t reply.
Ruby waited him out again for another minute or so before she snapped, “What’s wrong with you?”
Danny covered his eyes with his hands and began to cry, and Ruby watched him, completely nonplussed. Was the child crazy? She had no idea how to handle this, so she let him cry until his wails became screams and Sean began to stir. This brat needed to calm down before he woke Sean.
She imagined clapping her hand over Danny’s mouth and nose until he shut up, but some instinct warned her not to. It would not be good for her if Sean woke up and found her like that. She changed her tactics.
“What’s wrong Sweetie-Pie?” she asked in a baby voice. “Are you afraid of something?”
This time Danny nodded his head and peered out from between his fingers.
“What are you afraid of, Honey?”
He pointed at her before snatching his hand back quickly, as if he feared she’d smack it.
“Me?” She would never understand children. “Why?”
He cowered away from her. “Are you gonna…kill me?”
“Why would you think that?” What a weird child.
“‘Cause you yelled and grabbed me.”
Sean stirred again. She couldn’t allow Danny to tell those lies to him. “I never grabbed you or yelled at you.”
Danny took his hands away from his face and nodded. “Uh-huh.”
Ruby shook her head emphatically. “No. You must have dreamed it.”
The little boy looked unsure for a moment, and Ruby pressed her advantage. “I’m your Daddy’s friend. You came in here earlier when you had a bad dream, right?”
Danny nodded and she said, “Well, I was here then. Your daddy introduced us.”
Danny looked confused. “Daddy was sleep when I comed in, and you wasn’t here.”
“No!” She softened her tone. “He wasn’t. You were confused and sleepy, but I was here. I got up to use the bathroom, and I accidentally woke you up when I came back in. You’re disoriented, that’s all.”
“Nah-uh,” Danny said stubbornly. “My daddy was alone.”
Her fingers itched to throttle him. “Why don’t you just go get back in your own bed now? It’s late.”
Danny’s face fell. “But I’m scared,” he said. He began to wail and shake Sean’s shoulder again. “Daddy! Daddeee! Wake up!”
Well. Things were going to hell quickly now. “I’ll do it,” she said, nudging Danny out of the way. She grabbed Sean’s shoulder and shook him violently. “Sean! Sean! Wake up and deal with your kid!”
Sean rolled onto his back, face slack, breathing slowly, deeply asleep, and Ruby began to wonder if she might have given him too many sleeping pills. The instructions on the bottle had said to take one, and she’d wanted him to be deeply asleep, so she’d given him two and a half. But he wasn’t a huge man, and she’d also given him that muscle relaxant…
“Sean?” She shook him harder. “You all right?”
Danny grabbed her arm and yelled right in her ear, “What’s wrong with my Daddy?”
Ruby turned and yelled back in his ear, “Quiet! I need to think!” Danny shrank back against the headboard and shut up.
Ruby went back to shaking Sean. “Honey? Wake up. Please wake up.”
Eventually, Sean began to moan. She kept shaking him and he slowly put his hands to his head, keeping his eyes closed tightly against the light. “Please,” he mewled. “Please stop shaking me. My head feels like it’s in a vise.” His speech was slurred.
Ruby breathed a sigh of relief as Danny crawled back over top of Sean and hugged him fiercely. Sean seemed oblivious. “Water,” he said, smacking his gummy lips. “Do you have any water?”
“There’s a glass right beside the lamp, Baby,” she said.
He sat up slowly, clutching his head and moaning.
“Daddy! You wouldn’t wake up!” Danny said.
Sean’s eyes flew open in surprise before closing again. “Danny? What’re you doin’ in here?”
“I had a bad dream and—”
“About those wolves with the all-white-eyes again?” Sean reached for his water and took a long sip.
“No! It was about ghosts and stuff.”
Sean clutched his head with one hand and stroked Danny’s hair with the other. “Why don’t I believe you? I warned you about watching that show, and it’s been over a week now—”
“No!” Danny scowled and broke out of his dad’s embrace. “I told you, I’m not afraid of that no more. I’m not a baby!”
Sean chuckled. “Of course, you’re not.” He opened his eyes, saw Ruby, and his expression became unreadable. “I see you’ve met Ruby.”
“Yeah, and she—”
Ruby cut him off. “Danny had a bad dream, and he seems to think I’ve come to kill him or something.” She chuckled. “Who knows how kids come up with this stuff!”
“What?” Sean said, peering at his son.
“She wasn’t here and then she woke me up—”
“I was in bed honey, you must have been sleepwalking,” she said. She turned to Sean and explained, “He came in here about an hour ago, and I eventually let him in bed because you wouldn’t wake up and he wouldn’t leave.”
“We all fit in a double bed?” Sean said.
She smiled. “Not comfortably, no. I actually ended up curled on the floor—”
“I’m sorry,” Sean said, turning towards his son. “Danny knows he needs to start sleeping in his own bed. Right, Buddy?”
Danny stared at the floor and Ruby continued her story. “Anyway, just now, I used the bathroom, and when I came back in, Danny freaked out and didn’t remember meeting me before.”
“Could you do me a favor and get me some Advil?” Sean asked her. “They’re in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.”
Ruby stood and looked from father to son uneasily. “Okay, but I’ll be right back.”
She left the room, found the medicine, hurried back, and met Danny and Sean on the way out of his room. “Danny’s going back to his bed. I promised he could sleep with his light on
though. Right, Buddy?”
Danny didn’t look up, he just nodded resentfully.
She set the pills on the nightstand and crawled into bed, so exhausted her vision was bleary. Hopefully, that was the last interruption of the night.
Ten minutes later, Sean came back to bed. Her eyes were heavy as she watched him swallow the pills. She hoped they’d be okay to take on top of the others, but to die of an overdose, you probably had to take more than two and a half sleeping pills, a muscle relaxant and a couple painkillers.
Hopefully.
She turned and faced the wall as Sean turned off the light. “I’m sorry you two had to meet like that, but I’m sure you’ll become friends.”
“Yeah.”
He curled his body around hers in her favorite spooning position, and she snuggled back into him. Small beds had their advantages.
She was drifting off when he said, “How’d your hair get wet?”
“Wha—” She yawned. “When I opened the bathroom door, I heard Chloe whining, so I let her out, and then she refused to come back inside. I had to chase her around through the rain.”
Sean chuckled. “She’s not well trained. The trick is to jingle her leash. Even though she’s already free, she comes running back thinking she’s getting a walk. She’s not the brightest dog, but I’ve had her for almost ten years, and I adore her.”
Ruby only half heard his explanation before sleep overtook her at last.
▬▬▬
Ruby woke up at 10 a.m. to the smell of bacon. She felt wonderfully refreshed. She hadn’t slept this late in ages, and she had definitely needed it. She threw on her clothes and made her way downstairs.
In the kitchen, Sean had his back to her as he flipped pancakes and whistled “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana. He was barefoot and shirtless, his faded jeans slung low on his hips. Ruby felt her heart flip-flop at the sight. How did she get so lucky? Danny sat at the kitchen table coloring, and Chloe was asleep by the back door.
Drawn To You: A Psychological thriller Page 35
