by Beverly Long
He was with a woman. She was tall and thin, and she wore black dress pants and a white button-down shirt. Her auburn, shoulder-length hair was thick and straight. The wind caught a piece and blew it across her face. She batted it away. She was also wearing sunglasses.
Tess did not know them. But she wasn’t afraid. They probably needed directions. Well, they were out of luck. She wasn’t sure she could even find her way back to Lauren’s cabin. She thought about hiding in the house. Just not answering the door. But then realized it was too late, because the man was staring right at her. He’d somehow caught a glimpse of her.
“Hello,” he said. He had a nice voice.
“Hello,” she responded. She bent down, picked up Tabitha and walked around the house. She suddenly wished that she’d thrown her scarf on, like she had when she’d gone to town, to hide her stump, or residual limb, as she’d been encouraged to refer to it.
She waited for the look of surprise, the revulsion, as the pair saw her. But because of the sunglasses, she couldn’t see their eyes. But they made no other indication that they were bothered.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Are you Tess Lyons?” the man asked.
Her first thought was Marnee, that something had happened. But then she quickly realized that no one would have known to find her here. “Yes,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Detectives McKittridge and Morgan,” he said. They held out badges. She glanced at them. “We’d like a few minutes of your time, ma’am.”
“Does this have anything to do with my daughter?”
“No, ma’am,” Detective McKittridge answered.
“My parents?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Please, for the love of God, stop calling me ma’am,” she said.
Detective Morgan stepped forward. “Ms. Lyons,” she said. “May we call you Tess?”
“It’s certainly better than ma’am.” They wanted a few minutes, huh? She could invite them in. Offer them a beverage. But whatever they wanted, she really didn’t want them to stay that long. “Follow me.”
She led them to the garage. Put Tabitha on the grass, outside the side door. She saw the man bend down, let the dog sniff his fingers, and then he gently rubbed her behind the ears.
The dog was practically smiling. Definitely useless as a watchdog.
“Wait here,” Tess said. Then she went inside and got two more lawn chairs. Tapped each one on the ground as she exited, to shake off the dust and any spiders. Then handed a chair to each of them.
They took them without a word.
Then she led them around to the back porch. Took her seat in the chair already there. Gave Tabitha a signal to lie at her feet. Tess kept her feet on the wood boards, rather than putting them up on the railing like before. She was okay with talking to them but not relaxed. Nothing good generally came out of anything the police were involved in.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” Detective McKittridge asked, looking at the back door.
“No.”
“Our records indicate this property is owned by a Chad Vogel.”
“Landlord.”
The two detectives opened their lawn chairs, took a seat. Nobody said anything. She took a sip of her wine.
“Nice dog,” Detective McKittridge said finally.
“She can be ferocious.”
“I’m sure,” he said.
“Do you have a dog?” Tess asked.
“I’ve got a cat,” A.L. said. “Felix.”
Detective Morgan turned her head to look at the man. Tess got the impression that she hadn’t known the man had a pet. But she said nothing. And her focus was quickly back on Tess. “Do you have any idea of why we might want to talk with you?” the detective asked.
“No.”
“Do you recall signing a petition to save the Gizer Hotel?”
She knew the building, probably everybody in Baywood did. “No,” she said.
Detective Morgan reached into her leather purse and pulled out a single sheet of paper. She handed it to her. “Is that your signature on line sixty?”
“Yes.”
“Now do you recall signing it?”
“No. But my friend Lauren’s name is right above mine. So I expect we were somewhere, and Lauren wanted to sign the petition and wanted me to do the same. She’s always got some cause. God, her penmanship sucks. It’s a good thing she teaches history and not language arts.”
The two detectives looked at each other, but the downside of keeping them outside was that they hadn’t taken off their sunglasses. She couldn’t read much into the look they shared. But she thought the man gave the woman an almost imperceptible nod.
Detective Morgan leaned forward. “Can you look at the names on lines ten, thirty, forty and fifty? Do those names mean anything to you?”
She ran her finger down the sheet. Leshia Fowler. Marsha Knight. LeAnn Jacobs. They had some familiarity, but she couldn’t place where she knew them from. She kept going. Line fifty was Jane Picus. The minute she saw the name, it hit her. The article about Jane Picus had come out on Wednesday. She’d read it less than an hour before she’d left for Lauren’s cabin. Now that she looked at the other three names, she thought they had also been mentioned in the article.
Ran her finger down the list. Leisha Fowler, line ten. Marsha Knight, line thirty. LeAnn Jacobs, line forty. Jane Picus, line fifty.
Tess Lyons, line sixty.
Looked up at the detectives.
Put her feet up on the railing. Felt the stretch in the back of her thighs. “Well, this is just fucking great, isn’t it?”
Seventeen
Not much surprised A.L. But Tess Lyons had.
He couldn’t believe that both he and Rena had missed Lauren Peacock’s signature. It was almost illegible, but still. His head was still coming to terms with that when Tess’s unexpected reaction washed over him.
“Tess, I know this is a lot to take in,” Rena said.
“You would think,” Tess said. “But it’s been a pretty shitty year.”
A.L. let that go. “This petition came into our possession just a few days ago.”
“Ten, thirty, forty, fifty and moi,” she said, waving a hand toward herself. “What happened to twenty?”
The women had been reduced to numbers. That sucked, but it was an efficient shorthand. “We don’t know why twenty was skipped. She’s the only one to live in a duplex, versus a house. Perhaps he was afraid of someone overhearing. She’s also the only one without children,” A.L. said. He paused. “But the pattern is pretty clear.”
“So you’ve come to tell me to get my affairs in order? Let’s see, it’s Saturday, May 14. And someone is coming to kill me on Friday, May 20. That means I don’t have much time, doesn’t it?”
She spoke as if working through a math problem. It wasn’t what A.L. had expected and it made him feel off balance. “Our intent,” A.L. said, “is to make sure you’ve got a whole lot of days left.”
“Frankly, I don’t really care.”
They’d been warned that her mental state was shaky. Nobody had said that she had a piss-poor attitude to boot. She’d been through a lot. A pretty shitty year, as she’d said. But she had a daughter. Parents who were going to need her. Life. He was trying to figure out what to say when she spoke again.
“How did you find me?”
“We talked to your neighbors. They directed us to your work. Your emergency contact form had your parents’ address.”
“You didn’t tell them, did you?” For the first time, she sounded concerned. She ran a hand through her dark hair that was shorter now than it had been in the photo. It curled around her ears and flipped up in the back. It was shiny, healthy. And her blue eyes were clear. Intense.
“No. All we told them is that we wanted to
have a conversation with you. We assured them that you’ve done nothing wrong. They said that a reporter was trying to contact you and that had seemed to upset you. I told them that we’d left multiple messages for you, but our calls had gone straight to voice mail. They thought you might have canceled your phone.”
Tess shook her head. “Turned it off and left it at home.”
“We know that,” he said. Probably wasn’t any good time to tell her that they’d broken a window in her garage to search her house. “We had a search warrant for your house and saw it on the kitchen counter.”
She opened her mouth as if to speak but simply closed it. He suspected she’d come back around to it.
“Your parents sent us to Lauren Peacock, who told us you were staying at her cabin in Shell Lake. We were there yesterday.”
“But I wasn’t.” She cocked her head. “Just how did you get into my house?”
As he’d thought. A home really was sacrosanct. Any breach of that was never easily dismissed. “We broke a window in your garage. We were very concerned about you and really wanted to know why you weren’t answering your phone. A judge agreed that it made sense to take a look inside your house.”
“Did you fix my window?”
“Put a piece of plywood over it. We will pay for the entire repair.”
“Yes, you will. Marnee is going to need to sell that house when I’m dead.”
He ignored her comment. “Anyway, we returned to Baywood last night, and then earlier today, you called your parents and left a message. They contacted us right away. We were able to trace the phone number you left to this address. We’re glad you made that call.”
“Well, that makes one of us.” She stared out into the backyard.
Neither he nor Rena said anything.
Finally, after three or four minutes, she turned. “Two trips to Shell Lake in two days. You two have had a lot of windshield time. I find driving, especially now, a little stressful. Would you like a glass of wine? I’ve got plenty.”
They were working, which meant that they wouldn’t drink. Usually. But just maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing. They had a ways to go before they could put together any type of plan. “Sure,” he said. “Rena?”
“Great,” she said.
Tess went inside the house, likely to retrieve glasses. A.L. leaned close to Rena. “This is a fucking Twilight Zone episode. We manage to find the next murder victim in the nick of time, and she doesn’t care.”
“She’s hurting,” Rena said.
“She’s going to have to shake it off,” A.L. said as the screen door to the house opened. She was carrying two jelly glasses in one hand. She squatted down, put the glasses on the floor and poured the wine into each. One at a time, she distributed them to Rena and him, before topping off her own glass.
They sipped in silence for a minute. Finally, A.L. spoke. “We’d like to talk about next steps.”
“Oh, I doubt that I’ve had enough wine for that,” Tess said.
“Well, as you mentioned, we don’t have much time. We very much need to stop this serial killer. And we’d like to talk about how we can do that together.”
Tess stared at him. “I know how to save myself. I’m just going to stay here. Whoever is doing this won’t be able to find me.”
“We found you,” A.L. reminded her.
“You have resources,” she said. “So, Detectives, you might have a problem, but I don’t think I do.”
It was time to play dirty. “I suppose you might be right,” A.L. said, his tone considering. “Although we’re sort of in the dark here. All four of our other victims were in their homes when they were attacked. If you’re not there, there’s no telling what the killer might do.”
“Go on to the next name,” she said. “You should go protect her.”
“Right. But the pattern will be disrupted,” A.L. said. “So does he—we’ll just assume it’s a he for the sake of ease—go on to line seventy, or maybe he just goes to number sixty-one?”
“You’ll be busy,” she said, like she couldn’t care less.
“Or maybe Perp, that’s what we call him, knows something about you. Remember the reporter who called your parents? Not really a reporter. We checked. Now, maybe he’s Perp. And if he knows about your parents, maybe he knows that you’ve got a daughter in college. Maybe he goes to her apartment. Mother or daughter, makes no difference.”
Something—maybe it was scorn, maybe it was hate—filled her eyes. “You bastard,” she said.
“Just trying to point out all the reasons why you’ve got a vested interest in helping us.”
Now Tess turned to Rena. “He must be a real joy to work with.”
“He has his moments,” Rena said. “But if we could—”
“Please, can you just give me a minute to think? You’ve had days to wrap your mind around this. I’ve had about fifteen minutes.”
Rena nodded and sat back in her chair. A.L. did the same. They sipped their wine. Tess finished her glass and poured more wine into it. Lifted the bottle in their direction. Both he and Rena shook their heads.
Another ten minutes went by. The sun was low in the sky. But the message was clear. Tess wasn’t going to be hurried.
Another five minutes went by before she said, “I need to eat something. I have food inside, but...as you can see, I’m limited in what I can do. If you’d like dinner, you’ll need to help.”
It was a good thing that he and Rena had both packed clothes. It was looking as if they might need them. “I’m an excellent chopper,” he said.
“We’ll see,” she said. But the malice was gone from her voice. Now there was weary acceptance. She was going to help them, he could feel it.
* * *
Rena watched Tess pull a new bag of frozen, already deveined raw shrimp from the freezer. She slapped it down on the counter. “These need to be run under some water so that they thaw.”
Rena picked up the bag and headed toward the sink. Tess pointed at a cupboard and looked at A.L. “Dishes are there. Silverware in the drawer.”
A.L. went to work. Meanwhile, Tess pulled vegetables out of the refrigerator. Mushrooms, asparagus and grape tomatoes. Then a jar of minced garlic. “I don’t like garlic from a jar,” she said. “But it’s just one of the many little compromises.”
Rena supposed it might be hard to chop garlic with one hand. But Tess was doing okay with the other vegetables. Knife in hand, she quartered the mushrooms, halved the tomatoes and cut the woody ends off the asparagus. It took her longer than it would have taken Rena or A.L., but she managed.
When she was done, she got two lemons out of the refrigerator. Stared at them for just a moment before turning to A.L. “I’m supposed to try to find joy, or at least satisfaction, in developing new and different ways to do things. But right now, I just want some lemon juice.”
“How about I cut them in quarters?” A.L. asked. “Then you squeeze them.”
“Fine. Thank you,” she added.
She did figure out how to get the dried basil open while he was doing that. She held the spice bottle off the edge of the counter and then leaned her hips in, trapping the bottle between her body and the counter. Then she twisted the lid. She opened the olive oil the same way.
Into a bowl, she squeezed the quartered lemon, poured olive oil and sprinkled basil. “For the shrimp,” she said to Rena. Then she turned the oven on, to four hundred degrees.
Ultimately, the marinated shrimp went on one baking tray and the vegetables, with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, on another.
A.L. had found a pan, filled it halfway with water and put it on the stove on high heat. Tess reached into a cupboard and retrieved a new box of angel hair pasta. She tossed it to A.L.
The three of them stood in the kitchen. Waiting.
For water to boil. For vegetables and s
hrimp to cook. For Tess to volunteer to work with them to capture a murderer. Rena appreciated A.L.’s restraint. Knew that it likely wasn’t easy. He liked to push his way through things, to move mountains, but he seemed to realize that Tess needed just a bit of TLC in the form of patience right now.
But it was awkward with none of them talking. “Why did you leave Lauren’s cabin?” Rena asked.
“I’d visited Shell Lake with Lauren twice before. I’d met her neighbors, other people, too. It’s the kind of place that when somebody sees a strange car in the driveway, they make a point to stop by and check it out. I wasn’t feeling all that social.” She dumped the pasta into the now-boiling water. Finally, she turned. “And, as you mentioned, there was that man who called my parents, claiming to be a reporter. I thought if he’d been tenacious enough to do that, he might be tenacious enough to track me to Lauren’s. Didn’t want to be a sitting duck there. I think I’ve read too many stories about paparazzi with long-range zoom lenses.”
“I guess you’re lucky you found this house,” A.L. said.
“I thought so,” Tess said. “What would you have done if I hadn’t contacted my parents?”
“We’d have gone back to your daughter,” A.L. said. “We called her last night but she didn’t answer her phone. We didn’t leave a message.”
“I’m glad you didn’t connect with her. She’s been through enough. It’s hard for a twenty-year-old to get a call that her mother has been bitten by a shark, almost bled out on the beach and is in surgery where there is no hope of saving the arm.”
“I get that,” A.L. said. “I’ve got a sixteen-year-old daughter.”
Rena was again surprised. To learn that A.L. had a cat was one thing. But he rarely volunteered information about Traci to strangers.
“Sixteen,” Tess repeated. “Such a tough age. Is she driving?”
