“They belong to me. Technically speaking. But be my guest.” She opened her hands and relieved herself of the heavy burden.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“Am I?” He brought out a handkerchief and dabbed her forehead. She flinched and sucked in a breath. “Is it deep?”
He shook his head.
“You keep showing up like a bad penny, Detective. Have you been following me?”
He replaced his doctoring hand with hers and steered her fingers to the pressure point. The cut bled close to the hairline and stung like a bastard. Wakeman surveyed the area. After piloting her to a bench, he encircled his hand around the back of her neck and forced her head between her knees.
Walkie-talkies squawked. Horrified shoppers spoke in fearful undertones. Clunky shoes sped onto the scene. Wakeman filled in mall security and uniformed cops with the facts as he understood them. With the noise level at high pitch, Kendra missed much of what he said. The durable presence of his warm hands, which traded places every so often, comforted her.
A different pair replaced the detective’s hands. The paramedic crutched her head and examined the laceration. “Did you black out?”
“I ... I don’t think so.”
He replaced the handkerchief with gauze. She flinched when he shined the pencil light into her eyes. “How many fingers?”
“Three.”
She must have guessed right because he said, “We can transport you to the emergency room if you want. To check you out.”
She said again, “I don’t think so.”
While he applied a butterfly wing over the wound, Kendra had a chance to look around. She located Hunter. He lay sprawled on the floor, face down, legs splayed apart and wrists handcuffed at his back. He turned his head and looked at her asquint. Embarrassment bathed his clammy complexion.
“He’s with me,” she said to Wakeman. “If you want to arrest someone, arrest me. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ethan was looking through Hunter’s wallet. “Is this his name? Hunter Steele?”
“I told you, he’s with me.”
Wakeman ordered a uniformed cop to call in Hunter’s ID and signaled the widow over. Two police officers brought her along. She was hobbling on one shoe. Ethan held up one of the shopping bags. “These yours?”
“I don’t know who these people are, but you have my permission to arrest them.” Mrs. Santana tossed back her hair. “Both of them.”
“Do me a favor, Detective,” Kendra said. “Look at the receipts. She’s been using my credit cards.”
He wagged his finger between the women but addressed Kendra. “You know each other?”
“We’ve never met. I was only taking back what’s mine.”
Once again, he compared the women and finally focused on Kendra. “You can take off the wig now, Mrs. Swain, as a favor.”
Wakeman took Juliana Santana aside and questioned her in confidential tones. He motioned toward her purse. She shouldered the strap and clamped her arm over the flap. A heated discussion followed. The detective’s voice rose above the din. “You can do that, Mrs. Santana. Or we can wait for a warrant. Here or back at the station. I don’t care which, but you might.”
With a thrust of her arm, she unhanded the asked-for item. He found what he was looking for: two pieces of plastic.
“They planted those on me. When they attacked me. I have a fucking sprained ankle because of them.”
Wakeman wasn’t listening; he was studying the signatures. His jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything. He left Mrs. Santana with the officers.
“If you would?” Wakeman handed Kendra a notepad and a pen. She scrawled her name across several lines. “You must have been a terror with coloring books, Mrs. Swain.” An athletic scent eked from his clothing. He nearly smiled. “May I?” He appropriated her purse, and after coming across similar credit cards, made comparisons. He swore and gestured an order.
When the one cop unhooked handcuffs from his belt, Juliana Santana balked. She would have bolted if there hadn’t been another officer at her back. Calculating the odds, she unfurled a smile and joined her hands before her. The cop slapped one of the bracelets around her wrist, flipped her in a circle, and secured the other at her back. “You’ll be hearing from my attorney,” she said over a shoulder.
“Not if he’s my husband,” Kendra said.
Santana’s voice went up two octaves, “Fucking bitch.”
“Can it, both of you.” The detective motioned his head, and the cops led the widow away.
The trembling had been building like a locomotive chugging down a steep track. Though Kendra wasn’t cold, her back ached with shivering. She had set these events into motion. Afraid of what she might do or say next, she gazed up at Wakeman. He rushed in and grabbed an arm. The immediacy of his hold brought her back from faintness.
A police officer arrived at the detective’s side and nodded down at Hunter. “Outstanding warrants. Indecent exposure. Attempted rape.”
Kendra reached out for something solid. It turned out to be Ethan Wakeman. He said, “Just watch my shoes, will you.”
And she vomited.
Chapter 19
DARKNESS HAD BECOME Kendra’s haven. The workmen left an hour since, but sawdust drifted like a turbid sandstorm, turning everything gritty. Though the workbench was a mess, Kendra didn’t mind entrenching herself among tools and debris. In many ways, the evidence of manual labor and the lingering sweat of hard work reminded her of Mac.
She propped an elbow on her upraised knee and every sixty seconds or so fit a cigarette between her lips. At the intervening half-minute mark, the opposite hand lifted a wine glass at a similar rhythm. She fingered the bandage and gingerly tapped around the wound. The pain was persistent but bearable. She could deal with the stinging laceration and the throbbing puffiness, but she was about to pass out from a pounding headache.
Except for wind whistling through a bank of picture windows newly incised into the eastern gable, the house slept.
An automobile drove up. In the arctic wintriness, the car door hammering shut reverberated like splintered glass. The temperature was racing toward subzero. The cold was already tangible and smelled like wool. Her forehead cracked with the dryness. Her hearing picked up sounds and noises normally unheard. The walls had turned into tissue paper. Or she had.
She jerked when the front door cracked open. Garbled voices exchanged words, one using a placid monotone and the other angry.
The original staircase leading down to the hallway was being dismantled. An enlarged kitchen pantry would eventually replace the footing. In its place, a new stairway had recently been erected, uniting the second storey with the living room and temporarily leaving the attic exposed. A pair of shoes scraped across the raw-timbered steps. Woodchips rained like sleet onto the tarp below. Kendra counted out the stairs in her head. Fifteen. She was going to count them the rest of her life.
When his head first appeared in the opening, Joel was searching for her. His ultramarine eyes pierced the gloom like headlights. He climbed the rest of the way, his eyes stuck on her. With a nervous flick of his hand, he raked back his tousled hair. His face gleamed yellow beneath the single bare light bulb.
“Why not take off your coat, Joel, and stay awhile?” Kendra said.
His eyes blinked into the shadows. He could see her plainly enough but didn’t seem to recognize her. In a few short hours, she must have aged a decade or more. “What are you doing up here alone?” The resonance of his voice spoke from deep caverns, muted and barely discernible.
“Better than being downstairs alone.”
“What the hell have you done?” His initial calmness twisted into anger, cutting the atmosphere like a knife.
Even though she had anticipated the ferocity, she flinched. “Do you want to hear about the ghost?”
“Not particularly. Not now.” The low-wattage light bulb carved his face into a mask, hideous and evil.
“Her spi
rit is tormented.”
“Hers?” he asked. “Or yours?”
“Both.” She took another puff of the cigarette and expelled the smoke.
A second set of footsteps trudged up the stairwell. Detective Wakeman levitated like a sea god ascending from dark waters and stepped into the framework of studs and rafters.
“Did you bring my husband up to date?”
“He’s been told.”
“His excuse?”
“He doesn’t know where or how Mrs. Santana acquired the credit cards.”
She put out the cigarette, finished off the wine, and scooted off the workbench. The touch of rough wood beneath her fingertips gave her enough strength to stand erect. “He gave them to her.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Whose side are you on, Detective?”
“Am I to understand that Mrs. Santana is your husband’s client?”
Joel acknowledged the truth with a grudging nod.
“There’s your answer: identity theft.” He stepped up to an imaginary line and stopped. His unzipped jacket, puckered at the sides, gave him easy access to the concealed shoulder holster. “She had the means and the opportunity. Your husband probably dropped information, quite unintentionally, which she used.”
It was possible. The policemen’s logic had backed her into a corner, but Kendra decided to come out fighting. “Did you tell him that my partner-in-crime is wanted for sexual deviancy?” The room hushed. The ghost stirred. She found her voice again, this time laced with spite. “No? You left it up to me?” She turned an outraged eye on the man of her dreams. An eternity had passed since Kendra McSweeney first met Joel Swain. The boy who excised her virginity in the back seat of his father’s luxury car was not the man confronting her tonight. Instead, he was the unwelcome guest of her heart. “I’ve taken a lover,” she said. “He’s pathetic, but no less pathetic than you.”
Even though Joel stood stock-still, he clenched and unclenched the fists at his sides.
“I take it you haven’t clued the detective in on your grand scheme.”
“Which grand scheme is that?” He spoke coolly enough, but his unblinking eyes gave him away.
“Have you told him about my lapsed memory? My obsession with ghosts? My father’s changed will?”
Joel grabbed a stud for support. His knuckles whitened with tension. “Mac changed his will?” He was so slick. So calm. So calculating.
“He made you co-executor, as if you didn’t know. Every penny of his estate comes to me instead of Emily. And when I’m out of the way ...”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“... either through death or ... or incapacitation,” she said, stressing the word, “directly to you as sole executor. Of my mother and her money. And we both know what will happen then, don’t we?”
“Happen?”
“You’ll sell the Queen Anne and lock her up in an institution. You’ll be free to spend her money. You ...” She was losing her grip on reality. She felt it seeping away drop by contaminated drop. “You convinced Mac it was for the best. In ... in light of my own instability. Hell, I can hear him say it now. Kendra can’t cope.” Anger rose to the surface. She couldn’t contain herself or her emotions. They were galloping at breakneck speed. She wanted to hit out. At anything. But mostly at Joel.
“Had he left the estate to Emily with you as sole executor ... well ...” His expression remained placid. And white. Whiter than the ghost who lived in the house. His grip on the post tightened. “I can only think Mac didn’t want you to handle the responsibility alone. That you wouldn’t be detached enough.”
“It takes someone cold blooded like you.”
He let go of the two-by-four.
“You turned him against me.”
He stepped forward.
“His own daughter. You ... you poisoned his mind or ... or shocked him with a ... a revelation ... about me. That’s what killed him.”
“Your father’s death was a clear case of ...”
“Murder!”
He inched closer. “My God, Kendra, you can’t believe ...”
“The lawyers tell me the will is airtight. But I’m going to fight it. Make no mistake. I’m going to divorce you.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Watch me!” She staggered towards him.
He caught a wrist and flung her backwards. “I won’t let you!”
Her eyes flew to the detective. He was like one of the two-by-fours. Sturdy, silent, and taking in everything.
“You won’t let me? You won’t let me!” She circled around Joel. In her mind, she wanted to escape. In her heart, she knew running was pointless. “Did you tell Wakeman how you pocketed my wedding rings but blamed it on my madness? How you pawned my watch and left the claim check in my coat so I would think I’d forgotten one more thing?”
Joel tracked her as she moved around the room. “That was you, Kendra. All you.”
The room was spinning now. Round and round like a merry-go-round. “What was the point of the Gucci sunglasses? Oh, yes. Another clear case of forgetfulness. And maybe something more. Let’s not forget the necklace. How much did you get for it? You fenced it, didn’t you? After the insurance check cleared.”
“You do these things to yourself.”
“And Mrs. Santana? Is she also a figment of my imagination?”
“Whatever she did, she did on her own. Without my knowledge.”
“Convenient, since you knew she was a kleptomaniac.”
His hands bunched into fists at his sides.
“Did you tell the detective that your lover isn’t, on a normal day, a brunette but a blonde? A dirty blonde at that? Are you a regular Svengali? Do you turn all your lovers into clones of me so that later, should someone accuse you of infidelity, you can claim she was your wife?”
“There’s only you, Kendra.”
“Do I always order salmon piccata and marinara sauce?”
“Can’t you see how sick you are?”
“I always choose merlot, don’t I? It’ll teach me not to be so predictable.”
“You need professional help.”
“Tell him, Joel. Tell the detective how you’ve been waiting for me to flip out.”
“Someone who knows how to deal with these things.”
“He’s a smart man. He has eyes. He can see I’m ... what’s the word ... upset.”
“Before you hurt yourself. Like your brother did when he went off the deep ...”
She didn’t let him finish. “Just so you know, I told Birdie not to let you into my father’s house. Even if I’m with you.”
“It’s easy to accuse me of infidelity when ...” He stopped himself from saying more.
“I’m going crazy?”
Joel wiped a sleeve across his brow and sent a persuasive look toward the detective. Wakeman moved forward, creating a third point to their obtuse triangle. Kendra realized she’d been playacting for an audience of two, or possibly three if she included the ghost.
“I always thought your practice was in estate planning. But it’s really screwing your clients’ wives so you can screw your own. I should have seen the signs earlier. I should have been more suspicious. I should have trusted myself instead of believing your lawyerly platitudes.” She was closing in on him. “Tell me you didn’t kill my father, and maybe I’ll believe you.”
Joel backed up a step. “You’re not going to believe anything I say.”
Her body, stiff with tension, reeled forward. “Tell me you’re not a cheating son of a bitch.”
“I have no defense.” He took another step backward. “Everything you say is true. Happy now?”
She closed the gap between them and punched him on both shoulders. “Tell me you didn’t set me up for the fall.”
He miscalculated her speed, her objective, her passion.
“Day by day.” She struck him again. “Go on. Admit it!”
Refusing to defend himself or hit back, he lost ground,
slipping deeper into the cave of her wrath. The staircase loomed behind him.
“Why won’t you come clean? You’re a cheat and a bastard.” Momentum carried her forward. “Just own up to it and all will be forgiven.”
Sensing imminent danger, Wakeman grappled her around the waist. But Kendra failed to grasp that catastrophe was only a handgrip away. Something inside her snapped loose. No one, not even the detective, could prevent her from launching a final assault on the man she loved.
Everything happened very quickly after that.
She rushed forward. Joel lurched backward; tripped and juggled for a handhold; tottered and struggled for a foothold. One moment, his heels were planted on the top step of the staircase; the next, he was losing his balance. He plowed against the railing. Spindles flew like bird wings and opened up the quickest way down. He spread his arms like a vulture.
Everything stopped on a scream. Kendra’s scream. She made a desperate attempt to take back her last action. Just as she reached out, time resumed, and she grabbed an empty sleeve.
Joel plummeted on a downward spiral. He kicked out his legs to put a brake on his descent. Gravity seized the moment, and he tumbled down the remaining steps like rainwater splashing from a flume.
The hard landing flipped him onto his shoulders. His heels punted the Christmas tree into the fireplace. Packages wrapped in colorful foil and sparkling bows were crushed in the scrimmage. Ornaments shattered. Blinking lights extinguished. Electric sparks crackled. The branches settled. And everything came to a screeching hush.
She retracted the red-polished fingernails of the hands that pushed her husband over the edge. They were cracked and broken, like their marriage.
Kendra was suspended over the ruined balustrade, her legs twisted beneath her and her arm trapped inside the painful crush of Ethan Wakeman’s grip. The detective swore and shifted his weight, dragging her away from the fractured banister and heaving her into his burly arms.
Never once did she blink Joel away. He lay quite still in a nest of pine needles and glass shards, wreckage sinking around him and his legs convulsing in the aftermath. He groaned and started to come to. His eyes remained sealed against pain while his face became shrouded by a dusky mask of agony. Kendra wasn’t sure whether she felt relief or disappointment.
Trick of the Mind Page 14
