Guaranteed to Bleed

by Mulhern, Julie

  “Good. Now, do I have your promise?”

  “I promise I’ll call.”

  Another toe-curling chuckle. “Do I have your promise of discretion?”

  Oh. That. “Yes.”

  “The accident that landed Jonathan Hess in the hospital wasn’t an accident.”

  Not what I was expecting. “What do you mean?”

  “According to the FBI, it was attempted murder.”

  The FBI? Murder?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s a chance Grace and Donna have been abducted.”

  Hell on a stick. What was I supposed to tell him? If I told him where the girls were, would he feel obligated to return Donna to her parents? He would. Anarchy believed in rules. I swallowed.

  “Are you there, Ellison?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you say anything besides yes?”

  “No.”

  He chuckled again. Damn him.

  I loosened the tight muscles in my toes. “Why would someone want Jonathan dead?” I wanted him dead and I had a darned good reason, but that was hardly worth sharing with a homicide detective. “Isn’t he a tax consultant?”

  “Apparently, Jonathan Hess has an unsavory client.”

  I gulped. “Are we talking waking up with a horse head in your bed unsavory?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I’ve been watching too many movies, but wouldn’t they just shoot him, or blow up his car? Marlon Brando would never abduct someone’s stepdaughter.”

  “This isn’t the movies, Ellison.”

  Anarchy was right. This was much more dramatic.

  Ding-dong.

  “I’ll get that.” Aggie put down the silver and the cloth, wiped her hands on the apron that covered a muumuu the colors of autumn foliage, then pushed through the swinging door into the front hall.

  “I don’t think they’ve been kidnapped.”

  “Why not? Because Marlon Brando wouldn’t do it isn’t a valid reason.” Sarcasm? From Anarchy Jones?

  “No. Call it a mother’s intuition.” That and absolute certainty the girls were at Mother and Daddy’s farm.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  What I wasn’t telling him could fill a book—a sketchbook.

  Aggie saved me. She pushed through the kitchen door with Amy McCreary at her heels.

  Amy ignored the phone receiver in my hand and thrust a bouquet of flowers into my arms. “Jack told me that Grace and Donna ran away but you gave him a ride to the hospital, and stayed with Betty until I got there. You must have been wild with worry.”

  “Anarchy, I have to go. I’ll call you if I hear anything.” My nose itched but my hands were too full of flowers and phone to scratch it. “Goodbye.”

  I hung up the phone, passed the bouquet to Aggie. She disappeared into the butler’s pantry with them.

  “Thank you for the flowers.”

  “It’s the very least I could do. You stayed. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.” She patted the skin beneath her eyes, surveyed the array of silver on the kitchen counter, then brought her right hand to her chest. “It hardly seems fair.”

  That I got the silver instead of my sister? If Marjorie wanted the family sterling, she shouldn’t have married a condom maker. “What’s unfair?”

  She shook her head. “You were nice enough to take that girl into your house, then she convinced Grace to run away.”

  The blood coursing through my veins chilled by five degrees. “How do you know that?”

  “Jack told me.” Amy looked at me from the corners of her eyes. She looked…sly. She was up to something. “Well, I think it’s just awful. Jack told me it was all Donna’s idea but he didn’t know why she was so anxious to leave.”

  I knew. I wasn’t telling.

  Amy waited for my answer.

  I wasn’t offering one.

  She patted her hair, frowned at a chip in her nail polish, and glanced at the clock. “I can’t help wondering if Donna saw Bobby’s murderer.”

  I blinked. That was the question Amy had danced around? If Donna was a witness to murder?

  “I think Donna would have said something to the police.”

  “What if she didn’t realize what she saw? What if she only realized that she’d witnessed a murder a few days later? Would she still come forward? Or would she run away?”

  Had Donna been under the bleachers when someone shot Bobby? She was a smart girl. If she saw a murder, she’d know it. But would she tell? “I have no idea.”

  Amy nodded as if I’d made her point for her. “You were there. What did you see?”

  “It was dark. Someone knocked me down. I didn’t so much see Bobby as hear him.”

  “Did he say anything?” She looked at me with desperation in her brown eyes. Her shoulders rose and she seemed to vibrate with tension.

  “Not about his killer.”

  Her shoulders relaxed a bit. At least they no longer touched her ears.

  “You seem very concerned about Bobby’s murder,” I said.

  “Do I?” Amy’s cheeks paled and she shifted her gaze from me to Mr. Coffee. “Well, Jack and Bobby were such good friends. I just want to keep Jack safe.”

  Everyone was wrong. I was not the world’s worst liar. That title belonged to Amy McCreary.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” I said. “I don’t think it was a random murder. I think Bobby knew something or saw something that got him killed.”

  Her pale cheeks blanched the color of freshly painted lines on a tennis court. Stark. White. Vibrant against the red of her lips. “You’re sure you didn’t see anything that night?”

  Just what—or whom—did she think I might have seen? It seemed as if…Did she suspect John? Would he have killed the object of his son’s affections? I remembered the mottled appearance of his skin before his heart attack. Damn. Amy was right to worry. “I’m positive. There was just the person at the gate and I can’t even tell you if it was a man or woman.”

  Her mouth thinned. “Why did you go down there?

  “I dropped my lipstick.”

  “You went under the stands for a lipstick?” Amy’s tone was frankly disbelieving.

  Let her disbelieve. It looked to me as if she purchased her lip color at the corner drugstore.

  “I bought it in Paris and paid too much for it. So I went looking for it. I bumbled upon Bobby. If I hadn’t dropped my lipstick, no one would have found him for hours.”

  “Poor boy.”

  I didn’t bother to answer.

  “You’re sure you don’t know where the girls are?”

  “No.” I refrained from scratching my nose. “Why?”

  “You don’t look nearly as stressed as you did the other night at the hospital. I was wondering if perhaps you’d found them.”

  “No,” I repeated.

  Amy regarded me with narrowed eyes as if she could tell my Rouge Chaud lips were spinning lies. She shrugged. “Well, I’m sure you have a million things to do. I won’t keep you. Thank you again for what you did for John and the kids.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She stepped forward, wrapped her arms around my shoulders and surprised me. No let’s-not-wrinkle-our-clothes, ladies-lunching, followed-by-an-air-kiss half-hug for Amy. She squeezed. I raised my arms and hugged her back.

  “I mean it, Ellison. Thank you for what you did for my family. If I get anything more out of Jack, I’ll let you know right away.”

  She released me.

  Amy McCreary was a nice woman, too nice to go on a fishing expedition. She was lucky she’d thrown her lure into my pond. I stocked my shallows with minnows and tadpoles and bluegill. Other women, women we kne
w well, stocked their ponds with electric eels and tiger sharks and barracudas. Amy might not have survived it.

  Twenty-Two

  Walking into Le Petit Zinc was like walking into a Paris bistro. Same tile floors, same rattan chairs, same matchbooks jammed under the table legs to keep the tops steady so the coffee didn’t spill.

  I picked a table in the corner, ordered a café au lait and a palmier (after my day thus far, I deserved a French pastry) and checked my watch—five minutes early, a minor miracle.

  At precisely four o’clock, India pushed through the entrance. She scanned the room and I stood and waved. I even managed something of a smile, or maybe a grimace.

  She zig-zagged through the tables and claimed the seat across from me. “Have you heard anything?”

  I folded my hands in my lap and ignored the sudden outbreak of poison ivy on the tip of my nose. “They’re bright girls. They have a car. They have money. I’m sure they’re fine.” That at least was the truth. I called every hour and talked to Grace just to check.

  She raised her brows. “That’s all well and good but have you heard anything? They could be in trouble or they could be halfway to California.”

  “California?”

  “Or Connecticut.”

  “You think they’re running that far away?” Did India know about Donna and Jonathan? Was that why she assumed Donna wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and her stepfather?

  In French fashion, a waiter deigned to stop by the table. He scribbled India’s order for coffee and pain au chocolat on a pad then disappeared.

  “There’s something you should see.” I pulled Donna’s sketchpad out of the tote bag I’d carried instead of a handbag and turned to the picture of Donna’s dad.

  India lifted her gaze from the interlocking Gs on my tote and stared at the page. Her eyes filled and she looked away. “Why are you showing me this?”

  Donna’s art could do my explaining for me. I flipped to an early picture of Jonathan Hess, one where he looked like a pompous human being and not a demon from hell. Slowly, I turned pages. If India saw the progression from nice man to monster, she might believe me, might believe her husband had stolen her little girl’s innocence.

  India stared slack-jawed at a drawing of Donna pinned to a bed by the demon. Then her mouth firmed and she straightened her spine. She slammed the pad closed and sent it flying off the table with a sweep of her arm.

  It thunked on the floor.

  Heads swiveled and eyes stared at us over the rims of coffee cups and croissants half-lifted to waiting lips.

  “I can’t believe—” India glanced around the room, presumably noticed all the curious stares then lowered her voice to a furious whisper. “I can’t believe my daughter drew such filth.”

  “She drew what was happening to her.”

  India’s lips thinned to a mere line. They matched the slits of her eyes. “How dare you suggest such a thing?”

  “Because it happened.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  The waiter chose that moment to arrive with India’s coffee and pastry. Given India’s propensity for flinging things, I wished he’d taken his time. My tote wasn’t yet Scotchgarded.

  He put India’s order down in front of her, bent, picked up the sketchpad and put it in the center of the table.

  He might as well have deposited one of Boris and Natasha’s bombs. We both stared at it. Both waited for the explosion.

  I leaned forward. “You need to entertain the possibility that what Donna depicts in this sketchpad—” I tapped the bomb with the tip of my finger, “—is real.”

  India’s features looked as if they’d been carved in limestone. Cold. Remote. Unmoving. “No, I don’t.”

  “This is your daughter we’re talking about.”

  She lifted her coffee.

  I feared for my tote.

  India sipped, settled the white china cup back into its saucer then leaned against the woven back of her chair. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  I blinked.

  “Who are you to interfere in my marriage, my family?”

  “Someone who cares more about Donna than you do.” Cruel words. Words I should have swallowed. Damn.

  “Mother told me I shouldn’t leave Donna at your house. She told me a Walford would never accept her granddaughter. It looks as if she was right.”

  Any guilt I felt over being bitchy disappeared. “Whatever issue our mothers have with each other has nothing to do with this.” I tapped the sketchpad again. “Your daughter needs you.”

  “She made it up.”

  “What if she didn’t?”

  “Donna has too much imagination. Jonathan is always saying so.”

  I let that comment hang in the air for a moment. Too much imagination? As if there could be such a thing. Jonathan Hess was preparing his defense, denying accusations Donna hadn’t even made yet.

  “What if Jonathan is raping your daughter and you let it happen because you don’t want it to be true?”

  She lifted her purse off the floor and stood. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  “What if Donna ran away to escape him?”

  “Lies.” She spat the word.

  I grabbed her wrist, kept her from walking away. “What if they’re not lies? Are you willing to risk Donna?”

  She pulled against my hold, looked down her pert nose, narrowed her eyes. “Jonathan would never lay a hand on her.”

  “India, please sit down.”

  She didn’t move.

  “My late husband and I had problems,” I said.

  She snorted, but stopped pulling.

  “He cheated on me. That I believed. I had to. He and Madeline Harper were caught in flagrante in the coatroom at the club Christmas party.” My head ducked of its own accord from the mere mention of that evening. I bit my lip and forced myself to look up. “The whole club whispered and tittered and rubbed their collective hands with glee. I couldn’t deny it. It’s hard to deny eyewitness accounts from twenty people.”

  Mother had sniffed but refrained—almost—from telling me that if I’d been a better wife Henry wouldn’t have strayed. Daddy gave me the name of a good divorce lawyer. I should have listened to Daddy instead of Mother.

  India’s expression softened.

  “He did other things too. Terrible things. I’m still coming to terms with what Henry did.”

  India lowered herself back into her chair.

  I released my hold on her wrist. “If I ever trust another man, it will be a miracle.”

  “Will you live the rest of your life alone?” Her voice fell at the end of her question as if being alone was the worst possible of fates.

  “I’d rather be alone than with a man who lied to me or betrayed my trust or hurt my daughter.”

  India’s lips thinned. I’d gone too far. Again.

  “You don’t know Jonathan.”

  I bet I knew him better than India did.

  “He’d never hurt us.” She shook her head. “Never.”

  “How did you meet him?” It sounded so much nicer than how did you let this cancer into your lives?

  “At a grief support group. His wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. The poor man was bereft.”

  So bereft he’d replaced one wife and daughter with another.

  My thought hung in the air, nearly tangible, as real as the taste of croissant or coffee. “And I’d lost my husband,” she added. “I needed…”

  What had she needed that made living with Jonathan Hess bearable? Companionship? Status? Money?

  “India, if you need help to get away from him…” I bit my lip. Warmth rose to my cheeks. I’d rather talk about Henry’s preference for kinky sex than money.

  Apparently India shared my a
version to discussing things financial; her cheeks flushed too. She bit her lower lip. “It’s not like that.”

  What exactly was it like? She was married to a man who molested her daughter. If she had the means to leave him, why didn’t she? If she didn’t have the means to leave him, why didn’t she?

  Because she didn’t believe me.

  “He loves me. He wouldn’t hurt Donna.”

  Was it my imagination or did she sound less certain?

  “What if I’m right? What if Donna’s art tells a truth she couldn’t put into words? Are you going to stay with him if there’s so much as a chance this happened?”

  India’s face hardened again. “What happens when she doesn’t like the next man, Ellison? Her father’s gone. I can’t spend the rest of my life alone just because Donna doesn’t want me to replace him.”

  India didn’t understand her daughter at all.

  Who was I to throw stones? I didn’t understand mine either. Maybe that was the way of mothers and teenage daughters.

  Then again, I might not understand Grace, but I still believed in her. India didn’t even do that.

  I arrived home to a ringing telephone. I picked up the receiver.

  “Ellison? It’s Amy.” Amy McCreary pitched her voice high enough to shatter glass, as if she had an exciting secret to share—that or she’d been sniffing helium.

  I held the receiver away from my ear. What fresh hell was this?

  “I have wonderful news! I know where Grace and Donna are.”

  “You do?” She couldn’t. The girls were safely hidden. I brought the receiver close.

  “Grace called Jack.”

  Had Grace lost her everloving mind?

  “They’re at your parents’ farm. They’re both safe.”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “You’re speechless with relief. I know. That’s just what happened when I told Jonathan Hess. He was speechless too.”

  My heart, the muscle that belonged in my chest, leapt to my throat. “When you told who?”

  “Jonathan Hess. I tried to call you earlier. When I couldn’t get you, I called the Hess’ home. Jonathan answered and I told him where the girls are.”