What Hurts the Most: An engrossing, heart-stopping thriller (7th Street Crew Book 1)

by Willow Rose

  I leaned forward in my chair, then sipped some more coffee. “Complaining? About what?”

  “I was the one who took her report. She wanted to file a report against the estate after John Platt died,” she said.

  I frowned. “Why? Had they committed a crime?”

  “She claimed the books weren’t written by John Platt. She said they weren’t right or something. I never really listened. I pretended to file the report, but never did. It didn’t make much sense, what she said. To be honest, I thought she was a wacko. But I thought you should know anyway.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  January 2015

  “Someone called for Animal Control? I understand you had a snake in your garage?”

  The Snakecharmer smiled from ear to ear. The woman opening the door was in her early thirties.

  “Yes,” the woman said with a deep sigh. “Thank you so much for coming this fast. I just got off the phone a few minutes ago. I was going crazy just thinking about it being out there.”

  She shivered.

  The Snakecharmer looked at the goose bumps on her neck. A thrill went through his body. He thought about killing her right there on the spot, in the hallway of her own house. Just for the thrill of it.

  “Let me show you the way,” she said. “I think we better go through from the inside. I don’t want it to run out into the yard and hide there if I open the garage door. I want it off the property, if you know what I mean.”

  “Of course, ma’am. I understand. And I take it you have children? I saw the bike in the driveway.”

  “Yes, she said. “We have a girl.”

  “We don’t want her to get scared by one of those bastards while playing in the yard, now do we?”

  The woman shivered again. She was so elegant when she moved, so feminine. The Snakecharmer loved that. Like a gazelle in the savannah. And she was his prey. Just like the predator in the wild, he was watching her every move without her noticing it.

  “Nice house you have here,” he said, and followed her through the kitchen.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “What does your husband do?”

  “He’s a lawyer. Well, actually, we’re getting a divorce, so…”

  The Snakecharmer froze. He forced a smile. “I see. Well, that’s too bad. I mean, it seems like you have everything here. It’s always so hard on the children.”

  The woman sighed. The Snakecharmer felt the blood rush rapidly through his veins. He wanted so badly to snap her beautiful long neck. Talking about the divorce made the furor rise in him. Almost to the point where he was afraid he might snap.

  Not now, you fool. Not now.

  “I know,” she said, and opened the door leading to the garage. “It’s in here. I saw it over there by the cupboards. It had a lot of colors. That’s how I knew it was one of the bad ones. You know how the saying goes.”

  “Red touch yellow, kills a fellow. Red touch black, friend of Jack,” the Snakecharmer said. “People never remember it right.”

  “I know,” she said with a light laugh. “I can never get it right either. But I definitely saw yellow on it.”

  “I’ll take care of it, ma’am, don’t worry.”

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  “Oh, and I do hope that there isn’t another person involved.”

  “What was that?”

  “An affair. I hope there isn’t a third party involved,” he said with a smirk. “It always gets nastier if there is.”

  The woman looked baffled. “I…I don’t think that is any of your business. Now, if you’ll just catch the snake.”

  “Of course, ma’am,” he said.

  “Say, haven’t I seen you before?” she asked.

  “Only if you’ve had other problems with snakes, ma’am,” the Snakecharmer said, then turned his head away.

  “I must be confusing you with someone else, then,” she said and closed the door.

  The Snakecharmer cursed while walking to the cupboards, grabbing the Coral snake by the tail and pulling it out. “Get out of there, Drago. Playtime is over.”

  He grabbed it by its mouth and petted it gently while talking to it. “Yes, you did a good job in here. Yes, of course, this woman needs to get what she deserves. What all of them deserve for doing what they do. For ruining EVERYTHING! I know she recognized me. Must be more careful now mustn’t we? Those ugly pictures on TV are ruining everything, aren’t they? Well, maybe a better disguise would help. Maybe another wig? One that isn’t longhaired. Lose the fake beard, huh? Maybe another color of contacts. What’s that, Drago? Yes, you’re right. We need a new mummy now, don’t we?” He laughed at his own little word play. Mummy/mommy. It was funny. “Yes, we do. But not now. Not yet. We must be patient, Drago. We must be patient.”

  Chapter Forty

  January 2015

  Tracey Burden was a big woman, who in many ways reminded me of Kathy Bates in Misery. The comparison didn’t stop there, unfortunately. As I followed her into the living room of her house in Titusville, I realized she was just as crazy as well. She was wearing a fluttering colorful dress covered with butterflies. Her hair was put up with butterfly clips and the walls of her living room were decorated with pinned up butterflies, roaches, and spiders.

  “I just love bugs,” she exclaimed, as I walked inside. “Don’t you?”

  “Don’t we all?” I said, and sat on her plastic-covered couch. I lied. If there was one thing I hated, it was bugs. Butterflies were okay, but the rest I could live without.

  “I’m sorry about the plastic, but my cats keep scratching the fabric,” she said and smiled. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “I’m good. Thank you.”

  The big woman sat down across from me. “I’m just so glad someone is finally taking my complaints seriously,” she said, almost whispering like it was a secret. “I mean, it’s been going on for years. And no one seems to want to listen.”

  “What has been going on?” I asked.

  She looked puzzled. “Well, the forgery, of course. What else did you think I was talking about?”

  She looked at me with those slightly wacky eyes. I exhaled and tried to focus. Her house was located on the mainland and had a small yard with dozens of garden gnomes that reminded me of that movie I’d seen with the kids, that Gnomeo and Juliet. Strange movie, I thought. Almost as strange as the woman sitting in front of me.

  “BOO!”

  I jumped in my seat. Tracey Burden laughed loudly and slapped her leg. “You were away in dreamland there, Detective,” she said with a shrill voice. “Can’t go around daydreaming on the job, can we?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been working some long days,” I said, beginning to regret having come here. When investigating murder, you often came upon some really strange types. It always brought out the weirdoes.

  “I bet. You have a lot to do, don’t you? Lots of wackos out there. You sure you don’t want any of that coffee?”

  “No, I’m good. But I would like to know more about this presumed forgery you’re talking about.”

  “Presumed? Now, I have never. Let me tell you something, Detective. There is nothing presumed about it. I can prove that John Platt hasn’t written a word in the last three books that were published in his name. I’m his biggest fan. You might even say I’m his number one fan.”

  She laughed.

  “Really? And how can you prove that he didn’t write them?” I asked.

  Tracey Burden got up. She picked two books from a shelf. Then she opened them and sat down. She placed the books in front of us. “This is one of the new books; this is one of the old ones. Look at them,” she said.

  I was wasting my time, but tried to look at the pages anyway.

  “It jumps right out at ya’, doesn’t it?” she asked with a scoff. “They must think we’re stupid. It was so obvious; I knew right away. I even created a Facebook-group for others like me who have detected it.”

  “I…I’m not sure I can see what it is
,” I said. “Could you help me out here? I’m not that big a John Platt fan.”

  Tracey Burden scoffed again and shook her head. “Look here and here,” she said and pointed. “Look at that description right there. John Platt could never have written that. He actually describes this woman nicely. She is a nice person.”

  “And?”

  “Everyone knows John Platt hates women, and that he always describes them as awful people. Especially since, the older he got, the meaner he was towards women. Someone must have hurt him badly in his life. But, suddenly, after his death, three more books came along where the women suddenly are heroes. That’s not something John Platt would write. He was known to hate women. No, hate is too nice a word for it. He loathed them. That was all part of the fun. That’s what made his books special.”

  “So, you’re saying he didn’t write these books? Then, who did?”

  Tracey Burden lit up in a big smile. “Well, I guess that’s your job to find out, isn’t it, Detective?”

  Chapter Forty-One

  January 2015

  I had no idea what to do with the information that Tracey Burden had given me. At first, I was simply glad to get out of there. She was a nutcase, and my first instinct was to just forget what she had said and move on. She had hardly provided proof of anything. Yet, it had still aroused my interest. I made some phone calls and tried to look into the matter, but was only met by a wall of silence from the publishing house and lawyers. That wasn’t the way to approach this. I let it go for a while and went home to my family. My friends, Eliza and Tom, had invited us over for dinner. They had a child in the twins’ class. I had told Emily she could stay home if she wanted.

  “So, how are things?” Eliza asked, when she put the bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. “How are you holding up?”

  Tom brought me a beer, while the twins scooped mashed potatoes onto their plates and started making volcanoes with the gravy, using their fingers as cars driving down the sides. I was too tired to ask them to stop playing with their food.

  “I’m fine. Busy week, but I’m good.”

  “That’s good, Jack. Being busy is good,” Eliza said with a compassionate smile. She worried about the kids and me. I always spent most of our dinners together assuring her we were all surviving. It could be exhausting, since she didn’t seem to believe me. Or maybe she just saw right through me. The fact was, I still loved Arianna. I still thought about her every hour of the day and wondered if I would ever hear from her again. I still jumped when the phone rang and a small voice inside of me said it could be her. It could be.

  Even after four years.

  Eliza and Tom had been my friends since we moved here. Well, actually they were our friends, since they went all the way back to when Arianna was still part of my life. Our kids went to preschool together. Eliza was friends with Arianna before she decided to leave. We used to live in the same condominium, and they were pregnant at the same time. She was in shock when Arianna left me. Maybe even more than I was, I sometimes thought.

  “Still no word from her?” she asked me every time we saw each other, even now, four years later. We were done eating and moved to the living room, where Tom and I finished our beers. Tom’s longboard was leaned up against the wall. I knew it had been a while since he last used it. Between his job at the bank and the family, it was hard for him to find time to hit the waves. Plus, Eliza didn’t like it. She thought he spent too much time on the water. Time he could spend on doing things around the house they had just bought.

  I shook my head. “No. And, frankly, I don’t care anymore, Eliza,” I lied.

  “But, it’s just so odd. So unlike her to just leave and not even check in on you every now and then. I mean, she cared about the twins. I just know she did. What kind of woman leaves her children when they’re less than two years old?”

  “She was depressed,” I said and sipped my beer. I hated always having to defend Arianna.

  “She didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “I think she knew very well…” Eliza mumbled.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  Eliza annoyed me a little. She was always on Arianna’s case. I was angry with Arianna for leaving us, of course I was, but I had stopped blaming her a long time ago. I had decided she simply wasn’t well.

  Eliza received a look from Tom. She shook her head with a sigh. “I know, I know,” she said, and leaned back on the leather couch. “We can’t say anything.”

  She paused and looked angrily at Tom. “I just think he deserves to know.”

  Tom gesticulated. “Why? Eliza? Why now?”

  “Because he deserves to know the truth. It has been long enough, don’t you think?”

  I was starting to get alarmed over their little quarrel. Something was going on here. Exactly what was it I didn’t know?

  “Could you please just tell me what’s going on here?” I asked.

  Tom sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Now see what you’ve done. Now we have to tell him.”

  “Tell me what?” I was holding the beer bottle tightly between my hands. “Tell me what, God dammit!”

  Eliza looked at me. She took in a deep breath. “She was cheating on you,” she said. “There, I said it. Arianna was seeing another guy behind your back. It went on for months. That’s why she left. She needed time to think. She told me about it on the day before she left you. I always thought she’d come back. She told me she believed she would come back as soon as she had the time to figure things out. If not for you, then for the kids. She loved those kids, Jack, she really did. She was just so confused.”

  I put my beer down, then got to my feet. Abigail and Austin were playing in Amy’s room. I called them and grabbed my leather jacket without another word. The kids came running out into the hallway.

  Tom and Eliza came out to us. “Jack…I…” Tom said, then stopped.

  “Not now, Tom,” I said. “I’m not quite in the mood for this right now.”

  I felt so many things I couldn’t put words to them. Anger, betrayal, abandonment. How could they have kept this a secret for this long? My best friends?

  “We were trying to protect you,” Tom said, like he was reading my mind. “We thought you’d been through enough…”

  I shook my head in disbelief. I was about to leave when it struck me. I turned and looked at Eliza. “I do have one question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Who was he? Who was the bastard seeing my wife?”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  March 1995

  “I need to see my son.”

  Victor’s mother barely looked at Annie as she stormed past her in the foyer of their house. Annie stared after her.

  “He’s in the study, working,” Annie yelled, then decided she didn’t care if she found him or not. She returned to the living room, where she put her feet back up and turned on the TV. She grabbed the container of ice cream and returned to her binging. Her sweats had gotten tight around the waist again. Soon, she would have to move up yet another size.

  The boy was in his room doing whatever he wanted to do, and this was Saturday, her day of watching reruns of ER. No one, not even Victor’s dramatic mother should ruin that. Watching that George Clooney as Dr. Ross nonstop was her treat; it was her drug from the reality of her life being so boring she could hardly bear it.

  The voices coming from the study were getting louder. Annie could hear Victor’s mom yelling, and suddenly, her interest was aroused. Victor’s mother never yelled. She hardly ever showed any emotions except for contempt.

  Something was going on.

  Annie turned down the volume. She didn’t have to hear to watch George Clooney. She had seen every episode anyway; the storyline wasn’t important.

  “I’m telling you, Victor. You will do this, or I swear…” She heard Victor’s mother say.

  “You swear to do what, exactly, Mother?” Victor yelled back.

  Uh-oh. This was bad. Victor never yelled either
. What on earth was going on?

  “I swear…I’ll…we’ll…and your father and I agree on this,” she said.

  Annie could only imagine how she was spitting and hissing. It sounded like it. This was better than any soap.

  “What do you agree on?” Victor yelled.

  “We’ll take everything, Victor. The company. The house. Everything. You know we can. It’s all in our names.”

  Annie almost dropped the ice cream bucket. Her heart started racing in her chest. What the heck was this? Annie got up from the couch and walked towards the study. The boy was so quiet in his room. She never knew what he did in there. To be honest, she didn’t care. She cared less and less about the boy and never spent any time with him, if she could avoid it. He seemed to be fine without her.

  “You won’t do that,” Victor said. “You can’t do that to us. To me? I have a family here? We love the house?”

  “Oh, you better believe we can and will do that, Victor. You lied to us all these years. Your entire marriage is based on a lie. Believe me when I say that if you don’t divorce that…that tramp out there, then we’re done with you. You are no longer our son.”

  Annie stopped breathing. A lump in her throat started to grow, and she felt like crying. Victor’s mother was right, wasn’t she? Annie was nothing but a tramp. Their marriage was a lie.

  “Well, I don’t care what you say, Mother. I love her. I love Annie. I love our son, and I love our life together. If you can’t handle that, then…well then, take your money, your house, your company, and leave!”

  Victor’s mother gasped. “Victor!”

  “That’s right, Mother. I chose my family. I chose my wife. Even if that means we have to be poor. That’s how much I love them.”

  Annie had to find a chair to sit down. She waddled backwards and stumbled into one and sat just as Victor’s mother yelled.

  “Fine. Have it your way.” The door opened and she stormed out of the study. She took one glance at Annie, then stuck up her nose and disappeared.