The House Guests

by Emilie Richards

  It was all so vague. They. Maybe. Some kind of offer.

  “So.” Nick sat back and tented his fingers. “Do you know more about your husband’s last year than you’ve told me? You don’t have to answer. No crime’s been committed, so I’m not asking as a police officer. Just a friend.”

  “A police officer is a good friend to have right now.” She stalled. “Do you like what you do, Nick? I thought you’d end up as a lawyer. Don’t I remember that was your goal?”

  “Good memory, but after college I was tired of classrooms, so I decided a few years of working in law enforcement would be a good thing for law school applications. In just months I realized I was happy right where I was.”

  “The dive team was a bonus, right? Not a lot of underwater action for lawyers.”

  He smiled in answer to hers. “Some attorneys probably make enough money to dive all over the world. But I wouldn’t have the thrill of recovering murder weapons or finding hidden drug caches. And I wouldn’t be able to give a family closure who lost a loved one in deep water and needed to bring the body home.”

  She had asked about his job to buy time, but she hadn’t thought ahead. Mark’s body had been found by the Coast Guard, although divers hadn’t been needed. She could see Nick had just realized he’d hit too close to home.

  “Cassie, I’m sorry...”

  She held up her hand. “No, it’s okay. Really. I’m glad there are people like you, Nick. Mark’s body was found very quickly, washed into shallow water, but I can’t imagine how much more awful it would have been if I’d had to wait for days or even forever. Everyone I dealt with couldn’t have been kinder. You’re doing something important.”

  “Next of kin notifications are the hardest things we do. I feel like I’m digging a hole under their feet and shoving them in.”

  She liked this man and she realized she could trust him. “I told you that Mark changed significantly in the last year of his life. But I didn’t tell you the kicker. He was a psychiatrist, remember? And the practice he was part of catered to a lot of affluent patients. He always saw people who weren’t rich, too, but the upshot is that Mark made a lot of money.”

  She explained how carefully their money had been invested. She paused, because the next part was hard enough to believe, much less recount. Then she told him what she’d learned from Greg.

  Nick finally spoke. “An investment with a prep school roommate? Was it a scam?”

  “I don’t know. The roommate, Sim Barcroft, really is a genius. He’s a financial analyst for some international conglomerate. I’ve seen articles, and he’s brilliant at predicting the market. I guess this time his genius failed.”

  “Leaving you with nothing?”

  “Leaving me with a fraction of what I thought we had.” She told him the rest, including the fight over the savings account. “When I confronted Mark, he got angry and blamed me for snooping. We had a huge fight about it right before he went sailing.”

  He reached over and covered her hand with his for a moment. “And now you feel responsible?”

  She was grateful he understood. “Late at night the fight haunts me, but to be honest I’ve been too busy trying to pick up the pieces of our lives to regularly beat myself up.”

  “That’s some story.”

  She nodded. “If there are secrets to be exposed, they probably revolve around the money that disappeared.”

  “So what have you done about that?”

  She told him about her conversation with Fletcher and then with Ivy. “Greg, our financial advisor, assured me I can get a forensic accountant to look at his records. I haven’t done that yet because I think he told me the truth.”

  Nick balled up the trash from their lunch, scooping up hers to add to his. He left to dump it in a waste receptacle, but when he came back, he leaned over the table, resting his palms against it. “Hire the accountant. What about the prep school roommate? Have you talked to him?”

  “What could he tell me?”

  “Whether your husband’s story was true. Can you trust him?”

  “I guess it would depend on what he said.”

  “Start there, then.”

  Cassie got to her feet knowing that Nick probably had to get back to work. “You think this whole financial thing could be what the letters are about?”

  “Find out what you can. But if it turns out that your husband didn’t lose everything in a bad investment, then you have to ask yourself where all the money went. The letters may refer to whatever your husband did with it. If the way he spent it was aboveboard, like buying rental properties or funding a fledgling charity, he would have told you, probably even if he was afraid you would disagree. But since he didn’t...”

  “I don’t have any ideas. Not one.”

  “Ask yourself how people spend money. And I mean in ways they shouldn’t. Make a list, Cassie. You knew him better than anybody. What were Mark’s weaknesses?”

  She didn’t have to give that any thought. “His conviction he wasn’t allowed to have any.”

  “A man like that would have a lot of trouble when he realized he had given in to a weakness, wouldn’t he?”

  He was warning her. She might not like what she found. She might learn things about Mark she didn’t want to know. She might learn answers about his death she would rather keep as questions.

  “You’re very kind to help,” she said, holding out her hand.

  He shook his head, then he came around the table and pulled her close for a quick hug instead. “You know, I actually wanted to do that in high school. Call it delayed gratification. You get more letters, or find out anything you want to share, you can always find me. I’ll help if I can. That’s a promise. Thanks for lunch.” He gave her a casual salute and headed down the dock.

  Nick had warned her about the road ahead, and with good reason. Unless the letters turned into full-blown extortion, she could set the past aside. She could move on with her life as she’d told him she was trying to do.

  Instead she sat at the table they had shared and began to scroll through her list of contacts, looking for somebody who might know how to get in touch with Sim Barcroft.

  Finally, with seagulls cawing behind her and the sponge boat crew taking more strings of sponges from hooks, she punched in a number and waited.

  23

  AMBER WASN’T MAKING AS much money at the Kouzina as she’d made during the pre-hepatitis days at Dine Eclectic, but she enjoyed the job more. The other servers were friendly, as was everyone back of house. Unfortunately the Kouzina was competing with so many other “authentic” Greek restaurants, they weren’t attracting the tourists they needed. Yiayia’s solution was to turn up the music and dust off the fading plastic flowers on the tables.

  The restaurant needed serious renovation. The wallpaper mural of Santorini, with its blue domed churches and colorful houses clinging to the hillside, had been in place for decades. The white plaster buildings in the foreground were turning yellow, and the setting sun looked as if it planned to sink into the ocean and never come up again. Half the chairs needed seat repairs, and wobbly tables were steadied by Yiayia’s Kouzina matchbooks, left over from the days when smoking was allowed inside.

  Amber had a surprise to spiff things up.

  “This is for me?” Yiayia asked, reaching for a huge gift bag Amber had purchased at the Dollar Store.

  Everyone in the kitchen stopped to watch. Roxanne looked most interested. Amber was sorry she hadn’t consulted her first, but Yiayia had to be in charge, even when, these days, she really didn’t have the energy or flexibility.

  “I can’t imagine.” Yiayia grabbed Amber and kissed her on both cheeks.

  Amber tried not to appear as flustered as she felt. “The gift is really for everyone. But you’ll see. I just hope you like them.”

  “How could I not like them when you br
ought them to me?” Yiayia began to pick at the ribbon tying the bag. “What could this be? It’s heavy. Like a bag of rocks.”

  Roxanne had a brow cocked. Amber gave the slightest shrug, since Yiayia wasn’t looking her way.

  She finally got the bag open and began to pull out the contents. She stopped with the first item, peering inside, where Amber knew there were a dozen more just like it.

  “What is this?”

  “Shake it out and see.”

  Yiayia did. “Oh, it is beautiful!”

  Amber felt her entire body relax. She’d made the server’s apron in Yiayia’s hands from white duck canvas she’d found at Things From the Springs. Someone had donated multiple yards to the shop, most likely left over from a work project, or mill ends. She’d taken the whole lot for very little money. She still had enough remnants to make half a dozen canvas bags for her Etsy shop.

  “It says Yiayia’s Kouzina! And the pockets!”

  Amber had used the embroidery feature on her sewing machine to add a Greek key design in bright blue along the top of both sizable pockets on the bib-style aprons. Yiayia’s Kouzina was embroidered in script across the apron’s top. She’d designed them to look sleek, swooping along the sides to full coverage from the waist down.

  “They are beautiful! You did this for us?”

  “Nobody else.” Amber submitted to another cheek kissing. “There are twelve, enough for every server to have their own, so they can take them home to launder when neded.”

  Yiayia rubbed the fabric against her cheek. “They must have cost so much.”

  “Not a thing for you.” She explained about the fabric. “And I made them in the evening while I watched television. My gift to the Kouzina. A thank-you from Will and me.”

  Half an hour later Yiayia was still crowing about the aprons when Amber, wearing hers over the required uniform of blue slacks and white shirt, got a phone call. She was filling saltshakers and setting the tables for lunch, and since the restaurant hadn’t opened, she still had her cell phone in a pocket. She raised it to her ear without looking at Caller ID.

  At first no one answered, then there was a screech, and a voice that sounded like someone screaming underwater. “Who is this?” she asked.

  Something which might have been a laugh was her answer, but the sound, which was drawn out and increased in volume until it was painful, was followed by a loud click, then silence.

  She immediately checked Caller ID and saw “Unknown Caller,” a popular telemarketer ploy. By the time she slipped the phone back in her pocket, her heart was speeding.

  Roxanne, wearing a bright emerald chef’s coat, was lending a hand at setting up the tables. Before the call she had complimented Amber on convincing Yiayia that the aprons were nothing more than a thank-you gift instead of an attempt to raise the bar. Now she frowned when she noted her staring into space. “You okay?”

  “Fine. Just a weird phone call.”

  “These days I don’t even answer a call unless I’m sure it’s somebody I know. Legitimate callers can always leave a voice mail.”

  Amber was only half listening.

  “For someone who’s fine, you don’t look fine,” Roxanne said.

  Amber had gotten so good at lying she didn’t hesitate. “You have a son, right? Gary? Did you worry about him the way I worry about Will? I was afraid that might be the school with bad news.”

  “You never stop worrying, but you’re raising that boy right. He’s a trouper.”

  Amber retrieved a smile from somewhere. “I’m being silly. Thanks.”

  The second call came when she was taking her first order of the day. Normally once the restaurant started to fill, her phone went into her purse hanging from a hook in the kitchen, but because of the strange call, she still had it with her. She could feel it buzzing against her leg, although she couldn’t answer. Once she’d placed the order, she stepped into the hallway in front of the coatroom. Again the screen read “Unknown Caller.”

  She checked her voice mail and listened, breath held. Again the caller sounded as if he—she thought it was a man—was drowning. She couldn’t make out a word.

  She told herself this had to be a telemarketer in a call center somewhere across oceans and continents. She hoped maybe now that a message had been left, the person would move on.

  By the end of her lunch shift, though, she knew better. She’d gotten two more calls. All similar, all inaudible and all frightening.

  Darryl.

  By now her hands were trembling. She’d bought and registered her phone in Alabama years ago, right before leaving the state on her way to Baton Rouge, where she and Will had lived for a year. She’d thought that registering the number in a state where she no longer lived would protect her. But since then she’d learned about radio signals between cell towers, triangulation software and the way law enforcement could track almost anyone.

  She wondered if making call after call helped pinpoint the phone’s location even more closely. She wondered if that was why she had now gotten a total of four. As sheriff, even sheriff of the smallest county in West Virginia, Darryl had access not only to advanced technology, but to people who knew how to use it.

  None of that addressed how he’d gotten her phone number, but the possibilities were endless. The most likely was the woman who had helped Amber from the very day her nightmare had begun. Betsy Garland was in her seventies now. While she’d promised she would never write down Amber’s number, had she grown afraid that one day she might not be able to remember it? Had she jotted the number somewhere and Darryl had found it? He would know how to search a house without detection.

  “You know, you’re not looking too good,” Roxanne said.

  Amber realized Roxanne had probably been standing there awhile. This time she didn’t have to lie. “I’m not feeling that great. And it’s not going away.”

  “Do you have a shift tonight, too?”

  Amber nodded.

  “Want me to see if I can get somebody to cover for you? Maria likes to sub. If she’s not able to, we’ll find somebody else.”

  Amber needed the money, but she was afraid she might need to pack even more. “That would be great. But I can do it if nobody else comes through.”

  “You just go home and take care of yourself.”

  Amber thanked her, hung her apron on its hook and grabbed her purse.

  At Cassie’s house she checked her surroundings, then quickly drove into the garage and let herself in. She was relieved to see she was alone inside. She was already heading toward the bedroom when she remembered she’d better check the house phone, too. If Darryl was her caller, then he might know everything, starting with the name she’d adopted the day she left Croville County forever.

  The phone was blinking, and she punched in the code, although the first time she was shaking too hard to do it correctly. Finally, she fell to the chair by the phone and listened.

  The same underwater voice sounded over the line, but this time the message was cut short. She sat still listening to the dial tone and tried to decide what to do. Could she drag Will away from Coastal Winds and Tarpon Springs because the caller might be Darryl? And if this was Darryl, wasn’t it already too late to make an escape?

  She’d made emergency plans for this situation, and for years she’d honed them. She had the name of a man who could provide her with more false documents. She had a folder of information on Darryl she had gleaned from the internet, including the names of other law enforcement personnel who had gone head-to-head with him. Betsy, who still lived in the town of Chaslan, Croville’s county seat, had helped with that.

  As a last resort Amber had nudged Will to take Spanish as his foreign language, and she’d signed up for free classes herself wherever they were given, in case they had to cross a border and disappear. But moving to Central or South America was a pipe dream. The
tidal wave of immigrants heading to the United States was proof that heading the other way was pointless. Even though she’d been able to save money since moving in with Cassie, she still didn’t have enough for a safe and comfortable transition to another culture.

  And what would a move like that do to Will’s life?

  Even though she wasn’t sure what to do or where to go, she began to assemble basics. Paperwork they would need anywhere they moved. Shoes and underwear. She divided clothes into piles so when she figured out where to go, she would be ready to pack.

  Most important she tried to figure out what she would tell her son. She was desperately afraid the only explanation that would satisfy Will was the real one.

  Somebody wanted to kill her. And when they found out about him...

  The doorbell chimed, and she stifled a moan. Even though she told herself Darryl wouldn’t bother with the bell, she couldn’t make herself move. When it chimed again, she forced herself to step toward the front window of the suite and peek through the curtains.

  Travis was just turning away and heading back up the sidewalk.

  Her legs were shaking so hard it took twice as long as usual to get to the door and open it. She called his name and the squeak that she pushed out didn’t sound like her voice. She was surprised he heard her.

  He turned, smiled and raised his hand in a wave. “Hey, did I wake you? Roxanne said you weren’t feeling well. I was checking to see if you needed anything.”

  She had never been happier to see anyone. She pulled him inside quickly and closed the door, leaning against it because she wasn’t sure she could stand without support. She tried to come up with something to say, and nothing occurred to her. Her mind continued to spin.

  “You do look pale.” He reached over and laid his palm against her forehead. “You’re not hot. That’s good. Did you get lunch? Shall I make you something? Soup maybe?”

  “I’m fine. I think I need a good nap.”

  “I’ll leave you alone, then. But I’ve tried calling all morning—”

  “What?” She stood a little straighter.