Word to the Wise

by Jenn McKinlay

  “Right.” Ava’s sarcasm was thick enough to spread on toast. It made Lindsey furious.

  Before she could argue further, Ava shoved her hard in the back, forcing her to walk again. They were going in the direction of the shed, and Lindsey knew if she didn’t break free before they got there, she wasn’t going to survive to talk about it.

  She glanced at Ava over her shoulder. “You won’t get away with this. Chloe is safely hidden from you, and if you hurt Robbie, well, believe me, if he goes missing, Emma won’t rest until she finds him.”

  “She won’t find him,” Ava said. She rolled her eyes, but it looked overdone. She was edgy. The bodies were stacking up, and it was going to be harder and harder to hide her crimes. This gave Lindsey a surge of hope. She just had to play it right.

  “I left messages with what I’ve found, Ava. You won’t be able to get away with killing Sylvia and Aaron,” she said. “Adding me to the list is only going to make it worse for you.”

  “I didn’t kill Sylvia,” she snapped. “Aaron did.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Lindsey said. She was lying. She’d seen Aaron at his obsessive worst. She had no doubt he was capable of killing, but she wanted Ava to keep talking, and she knew being contrary was the way to make that happen.

  “He did kill her,” Ava insisted. “That’s how I became her.”

  Lindsey slowed her pace and Ava did, too. Lindsey was hoping to take as long as possible to get to the shed, where who knew what sort of nightmare was awaiting her.

  “I don’t understand,” Lindsey said.

  “I don’t understand,” Ava mimicked her in a singsong voice. “What’s not to understand? He got sick of her and wanted to ditch her for the little reporter hottie, but Sylvia refused to be dumped, so he strangled her. When she didn’t show up for work after a couple of days—he’d been calling out sick for her—I went to their house. That’s where I found her dead in her bed. She was posed as if she was sleeping, but she wasn’t. She was dead with marks around her neck like she’d been strangled. It was clear he needed someone to become Sylvia.”

  “Oh God,” Lindsey said. The horror of what Ava was telling her was chilling. Aaron had murdered his wife to pursue Chloe, and when Ava caught him, she decided to become Sylvia. It was madness. “Why? Why would you pretend to be his wife? You were supposed to be her friend.”

  “Because I wanted her life. It was better than mine. So I made a deal with him. I would help him hide the body. I wouldn’t tell anyone that he’d killed her. And I would become his wife, pretending to be her and covering up his crime. He would go free, and I would get a husband.”

  “So you were in love with him?” Lindsey asked.

  “No,” Ava scoffed. “It was her life I wanted. The house. The husband. He could have been anyone, but when I knew he’d murdered her, I knew I had him—for life. But he couldn’t quite forget Chloe, now could he? When I discovered he’d moved us here to be near her, I knew I’d have to kill her, but then you showed up, and he became obsessed with you. I knew then that it was always going to be somebody he wanted—somebody that wasn’t me.”

  “So you killed him.” This was worse than anything Lindsey might have imagined.

  Ava’s gaze narrowed. “You talked to Jean, didn’t you?”

  Lindsey didn’t want to say, afraid that Ava would add the woman to her hit list, so she said nothing.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ava said. “As soon as someone else goes down for the murder, I’ll leave the area. I have enough money to go wherever I want. I really liked having a husband, though. I suppose I’ll have to find another one.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Lindsey said. “You aren’t going to be able to walk away from this.”

  “Sure I can. As far as anyone knows, I’m Sylvia the sad widow. Nothing is going to change that.”

  “I already have,” Lindsey said. “I’m a librarian. We have access to all sorts of information, including reverse image searches, which is how I discovered the picture of the real Sylvia, information which I shared with the chief of police. She’s going to call Sunrise Health in the Berkshires and figure out that you’re a fraud, just like I did.”

  “Damn it, I said shut up!” This time when Ava went to shove her, Lindsey was ready. She dropped to the ground, propelling Sylvia right over her. Lindsey thought about wrestling her for the gun, but her head was pounding and her flight response had kicked in. All she could think was to take off running and get to a phone. She stomped on Sylvia’s gun hand, hoping she broke it, as she broke into a sprint.

  Her head was throbbing. The air was hot but a breeze had kicked up. Lindsey glanced up and noticed the sky, which had been a pale scorching blanket of white heat for weeks, was now thick with ominous dark gray clouds that blocked the sun. There was a distant rumble of thunder, because of course there was.

  Lindsey dashed around the house and ran for the car. She could hear Sylvia shouting behind her. She yanked the driver’s door open, hoping Sylvia had left the keys in the ignition. She had! Lindsey pressed down on the brake, switched the car on and put it in drive. She stomped on the gas and shot down the driveway, spraying gravel in her wake. A gunshot sounded and the back window exploded. Lindsey let out a noise between a yelp and a shriek and ducked down so that she could barely see over the dashboard.

  Once she reached the road, she didn’t even slow down but shot out onto the street, making a sharp right as she floored the gas and headed into town. She was almost there when a police car popped up in her rearview mirror. She didn’t slow down. She didn’t stop. She drove right into the police station with the squad car on her tail. She pulled into a spot, rolled down her window and put her hands on the wheel. She finally took a breath.

  “Don’t move or I’ll shoot,” a voice ordered.

  “I’m unarmed,” Lindsey cried. She glanced out the open window to see the dear familiar face of Officer Kirkland. His thick thatch of red hair was hidden by his hat, and his freckled face took on an expression of confusion.

  “Lindsey! How did you—oh wow, are you okay?” He reached for the door handle and opened the door. He held out his hand and Lindsey took it.

  “We’ve been looking all over for you,” he cried. “Ms. Cole at the library called to say that someone in this type of car had abducted you. Your head! You’re covered in blood! Are you going to pass out? Here, let me carry you inside.”

  “No, I can walk—” she began, but he cut her off, swooping her up and into his arms as he strode toward the building. He took the steps at a fast jog and hit the button for the door to open automatically.

  “Really, I look worse than I feel,” she said. She was pretty sure that was a lie. She felt lousy.

  He ignored her. As soon as he cleared the door and stepped into the lobby, he shouted, “We’ve got a code twelve.”

  Karen Hobart, the desk clerk, looked up and her eyes went wide. “On it!” she cried and picked up her phone.

  “Code twelve?” Lindsey asked. “What’s that? Are you going to put me down?”

  “Officer Kirkland, what’s going on—” Emma came striding up from the back. At the sight of Lindsey, she staggered. “Oh, thank God. Bring her in back. Call an ambulance, then call Sully and Robbie and tell them we’ve located her. Let them know she’s here and she’s okay.”

  The desk clerk gave her a thumbs-up. Kirkland hustled Lindsey into the break room, putting her gently down on a chair, while Emma popped the lid on a metal first aid kit and sifted through the contents.

  “What’s going on?” Lindsey asked. “Sully’s not here?”

  “I’ll explain,” Emma said. “First things first, you’re covered in blood.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Lindsey said. “Sylvia, although that’s not really her name, is your killer, not Sully.”

  “I know,” Emma said. “That’s why he’s out looking for you with
Robbie.”

  “You have to warn them away from the Grady house!” Lindsey cried. “She had a gun. She’ll shoot them. She tried to shoot me.”

  “Karen is calling them in—don’t worry,” Emma said.

  “How did you get away?” Kirkland asked.

  “She went to shove me, I ducked, she fell, I stomped on her arm and ran for the car,” Lindsey said. “Listen, she’s not Grady’s wife. She’s an imposter. Her name is Ava Klausner, and she worked with Grady’s wife at the insurance agency. She discovered he murdered his wife and used it to blackmail him into pretending she was his wife.”

  “Should I head out there, Chief?” Kirkland asked. Emma nodded. He ran from the room.

  Emma’s eyebrows shot up. “How did you figure all of this out? Besides the reverse image search that you did. Sully told us about that.”

  “This morning, I reread the wedding announcement, and it mentioned that Sylvia worked for Sunrise Health,” she said. “When I looked up their website, I saw they have an emblem that looks like a doctor’s seal with a sun behind it. I remembered the day we ran into Ava after Grady’s body was discovered. She was wearing a lapel pin with the same symbol.

  “So it occurred to me that the connection between the Sylvia we know and the former one was the job. I figured whoever this woman was, she had to have worked with Sylvia in the office up in the Berkshires, so I called them and pretended I was doing a reference check. I got Sylvia’s former manager, and she listed three people but said one of them had left after giving no notice at about the same time that Sylvia had put in for a medical leave and then a transfer to the Connecticut office. That person was Ava Klausner. When I told Ava what I knew, she said it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t going to live long enough to tell anyone.”

  “She was wrong,” Emma said. Then she grinned and held up a fist. With a weak smile, Lindsey gave her a knuckle bump. A commotion sounded from the front of the station, and then Sully was there, charging into the back room as if he were planning a jailbreak.

  CHAPTER

  18

  He didn’t stop or slow down. Instead, he scooped Lindsey up and hugged her tight. “Are you all right? Do you have a concussion? Are you bleeding? I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “Stop.” Lindsey laughed even though it made her head pound. “Now that you’re here, I’m fine.” She hugged him tight. “I’ve never been better.”

  He cupped her face and studied her pupils as if to make sure they were the same size. Then he took in the gash on her head and the dried blood.

  “Here.” Emma slapped some antiseptic wipes into his hand. “You’re the spouse-to-be—you can do cleanup. I need to put an APB out to all the surrounding towns to be on the lookout for Ava Klausner, a.k.a. Sylvia Grady.” She looked at Lindsey. “Any idea where she might have gone?”

  “No, but call the local Sunrise Health Insurance office,” Lindsey said. “Ask if there is anyone there who worked with Sylvia Grady, specifically someone named Rosie.”

  “Rosie?” Emma looked intrigued. “As in Rosie Donovan, the coworker who told us Sylvia was with her at their insurance adjusters’ conference in Providence at the time of Aaron Grady’s death?”

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. “Ava thinks Rosie rolled over on her. When she asked if Rosie had blabbed, I bluffed and said I knew all about her. And then she recanted, pretending there was no Rosie. But if there really is a Rosie, she might be in danger now.”

  “Got it,” Emma said.

  A sudden boom of thunder erupted, and they all jumped. Lightning flashed, and a deluge of rain came down on the police station. The lights went out, flickered once, and then went out again.

  “Damn it,” Emma cursed. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “Come on,” Robbie said. “Let’s go find some flashlights.”

  “They’re in the emergency kit out at the front desk,” Emma said. Robbie left the room, banging into a chair on the way and letting out a curse as he went.

  “You two stay here,” Emma said over her shoulder to Lindsey and Sully. “I still want to get the word out about our suspect, but I want to know you’re safe.”

  “I took Ava’s car, and I didn’t see another one at the house,” Lindsey said. “She has to be around there somewhere.”

  Another rumble of thunder sounded, and they all started. The fierce wind rattled the windows, and the lightning lit up the room for a second.

  “I’ll be back,” Emma said. She strode toward the door, tripping on the same chair Robbie had and muttering the same curse.

  Sully waited until she cleared the room, and then he pulled Lindsey close and held her as if he just needed to reassure himself that she was okay. Lindsey leaned into his embrace. The thought that Ava might have gotten her way and ended her life just when she was getting to the good stuff was a bit more than she wanted to deal with right now.

  She leaned back and looked at Sully. She could barely make out his features in the gloomy half-light, but she met his gaze and said, “Let’s elope.”

  “I knew it!” a voice cried from the doorway.

  Lindsey whirled around, which caused her to be completely unprepared for the ball of wet black fur that came charging at her. Heathcliff jumped for her, and she would have been knocked on her keister, but Sully was there, bracing her with his strength.

  A flashlight shone in their direction, and they shielded their eyes. “You owe me five dollars, Vi.”

  “Fine.” The flashlight was turned up toward the ceiling, and it illuminated the room.

  “Hey, buddy.” Lindsey rubbed Heathcliff’s ears and glanced up at the door to see her crafternoon friends Nancy and Violet standing there. “What are you two doing here, and with Heathcliff?”

  “Well, I was getting ready to do some baking when the storm blew in,” Nancy said. She glanced at her friend with a look of gratitude, and Lindsey knew without them telling the rest of the story what had happened. Storms were the boogeyman for Nancy. Having lost the love of her life when his boat went down in a surprise storm, she struggled whenever an unexpected one hit.

  “But I arrived at her house and told her that it was not the time for baking—we needed to go get Heathcliff,” Violet said. “You know how dogs hate storms, and we didn’t want him to suffer.”

  Lindsey glanced down at her furry little man. He was wagging away, completely oblivious to the thunder and lightning. She glanced up at the two ladies.

  “You heard I got kidnapped, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “I might have overheard something on the local police scanner while I was trying to dial in the weather forecast,” Violet said.

  “Right,” Sully said. “And how did you know to come be here?”

  “I heard there was a code twelve, a call for an ambulance, for someone at the police station. Given that I knew Lindsey had been nabbed, I was hoping it was for Lindsey. Not in a life-threatening way but rather in a superficial-injury, we-saved-you-from-a-bad-guy sort of way,” Violet said.

  “And if it was you, we figured you’d need Heathcliff,” Nancy said.

  The two women moved forward and nudged Sully out of the way. They took over cleaning Lindsey’s cuts and scrapes, and Nancy even produced some over-the-counter pain-reliever tablets from her purse and pressed them on Lindsey.

  As she relaxed into a chair, the muscles she had used to climb the trellis in her escape attempt began to ache, and she was grateful to her friends for their care.

  The storm raged on. Sully put on the radio, and they listened to the local news reports about the weather. There was no information about Sylvia, a.k.a. Ava. As the time ticked by, Lindsey became more and more concerned about what the woman would do. It occurred to her that if Sylvia was out for revenge, she might try to find Lindsey at the library, and any person in her way could get hurt.

  She borrowed Sully’s phone and cal
led Beth. There was no answer, so she assumed Beth was busy dealing with the power outage. She called the main desk, hoping to get Ms. Cole. Again, there was no answer. She felt her heart start pounding in her chest. She counted the rings. Eight, nine, ten. She ended the call.

  Pushing out of her seat, she glanced at Sully. “Something’s wrong at the library. They’re not answering the phone.”

  “The power’s out,” Violet said. “Maybe the phones aren’t working.”

  “The desk phones are on a landline,” she said. “They should work.”

  “I’ll go. You stay here,” Sully said. She looked at him and he sighed. “Fine, but you stay with me at all times.”

  “What? Where are you two going?” Nancy asked. Her eyes were wide, as if she couldn’t imagine going out into the storm.

  “The library,” Lindsey said. “We have to. Will you and Violet keep Heathcliff here with you?”

  “Yes, of course, but don’t you think you should tell Emma?”

  “We will,” Lindsey said. “But my people are at the library, and if Ava goes after them, looking for me, I can’t live with that.”

  She felt an urgency to be gone, to be at the library, so strong it made her bounce on her feet. She glanced down. She was still missing a shoe.

  “Here,” Violet said. She toed off her own flats and pushed them toward Lindsey with her foot. “We’re about the same size.”

  “Thank you,” Lindsey said. She smiled at her friends as she and Sully hurried from the room.

  Karen was alone in the front when they arrived. She told them that Emma and Kirkland were out searching for their suspect and that Robbie had insisted on going with Emma.

  “We’re going to the library,” Lindsey said. “If Emma calls, tell her that.”

  “You’re not supposed to leave,” Karen said. She looked flummoxed, as if this was a complication she hadn’t expected. “I can’t let you leave.”

  “I’m sorry, but you have no choice,” Lindsey said. “My people aren’t answering at the library, and I’m worried that they’re in danger. Call Emma and tell her—I don’t care, but I can’t stay here.”