After She's Gone

by Lisa Jackson

  Cassie shook her head. The truth was no one, not even the cops, thought Sig Masters was behind the accident. His record was clean and he had no ax to grind, no motive to harm Allie or Lucinda or her.

  “I just want to find my sister,” Cassie said.

  Lucinda snorted through her nose. “I didn’t think you two ever got along. I heard that the only reason you had a bit part in the movie was because she threw you a bone, or that she thought it would be good for publicity or something.”

  “Wow.”

  “Oh, come on. Everybody knows.” Lucinda lifted a dismissive shoulder, then wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “As for trying to find your sister, she’s probably already dead somewhere.” Cassie made a sound of protest but Lucinda went on without a hint of emotion, “I kinda thought you might have an idea of what happened to her.” She unlocked the brakes of her wheelchair and began rolling closer to the doorway where Cassie stood, still blocked from entering farther by the intractable Louise-Marie.

  “Why would you think that?”

  Lucinda gave a humorless laugh. “Everyone knows you were jealous as hell of her success, and then after she goes missing and I get shot, you end up in the nuthouse?” She was close enough now that Cassie didn’t have to shout. “That’s convenient.”

  “What’re you saying?” Cassie asked, stunned. “You think . . . that I know where she is?”

  “If the Manolo Blahnik fits . . .” she said tartly as the wheel of her chair caught on the corner of a mat sticking out from where it had been tucked under the parallel bars. Lucinda had always had a chip on her shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar. “Jesus,” she growled, irritated, before she was able to push around the obstacle. “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” she said, rolling to the door and edging out the aide.

  “I want to know where Allie is, that’s all.”

  “Really? She stole your husband, didn’t she?” Lucinda reminded, and Cassie felt as if she’d been slapped. But she couldn’t deny it. Heat stormed up the back of her neck as she thought about Trent, whom she’d once considered to be the love of her life, her husband, her damned soul mate, and then his jarring betrayal. Deep inside she felt something break, the dam holding back her raw emotions. She didn’t want to but she thought suddenly of Trent’s rugged good looks, his strong jaw, deep-set eyes, and thin lips that could twist into an irreverent smile with little provocation. She’d loved him. Wholeheartedly. Stupidly, and as it had turned out, wretchedly . . .

  Forcing his image from her mind, she focused on Lucinda’s avid gaze. “Trent and I were already over,” she lied.

  “You know, I’m surprised the cops aren’t looking at you for Allie’s disappearance. You’re the logical choice.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with—”

  Lucinda cut her off. “Yeah, right. Of course not.” She let out a short laugh.

  Cassie’s fingers tightened over her keys and she tried vainly to tamp down the wave of emotion that had started deep inside and was boiling upward. Anger and rage, fury and fear, all threatening to erupt.

  “You know what? I’m tired of this,” Lucinda muttered, as if she sensed the change in Cassie’s mood and didn’t want to witness the storm. “I’m not supposed to talk to anyone associated with Dead Heat. My lawyer’s advice.” To the aide, she said, “Can we go now?” then pushed past Cassie and rolled indignantly down the wide tile corridor.

  “This isn’t a legal thing,” Cassie called after her.

  Lucinda stopped and deftly turned her wheelchair a hundred and eighty degrees. “What planet do you live on? Hellooo. This is Earth, for God’s sake! America. Everything is a legal thing.” Then, with a quick movement, she was rolling away again, her head held high, as if she’d just won a chess match.

  Check and mate.

  Great, Cassie thought, her jaw sliding to one side. She considered storming after Lucinda, demanding answers, but knew it would get her no further than being tossed out of Meadow Brook Rehab on her ear. Besides, Lucinda probably had no better idea than she about what had happened to Allie.

  Turning to leave, she nearly tripped over another woman in a walker. “Sorry,” she said as the woman stopped short.

  “Watch where you’re going,” was the gruff response.

  She couldn’t get out of the rehab center fast enough. Pushing open the front door, she drew in a long breath of damp Portland air, then made her way to the parking lot. As she did, Lucinda’s accusations followed after her. The truth was, they didn’t ring false. She and Allie had always had a love/hate relationship, one that drove their mother crazy. In her teenage years, Cassie had been rebellious and thwarted Jenna at every turn. She’d been angry and hurt over her parents’ separation and divorce, had never adjusted to life away from Southern California, and generally hated everything to do with Falls Crossing, Oregon. Aside from her boyfriend, Josh Sykes, who was three years older. Jenna, of course, hadn’t approved of the relationship, but she wasn’t exactly a shining example when it came to finding Mr. Right.

  Allie, too, hadn’t liked their parents’ divorce and her mother’s subsequent move north, but she’d been more introverted, more of a baby in Cassie’s estimation, more of an “odd duck” who had hated anything to do with Harrison Elementary. It wasn’t until she’d entered high school that she’d turned on to education and spent the next few years outshining all of her peers.

  Cassie had been flummoxed. Suddenly, shy, babyish Allie had become a stellar student and athlete, with college prospects and scholarship opportunities. Their mother had been so proud and Cassie, struggling to make it in Hollywood, had been more than a little jealous. Even now, she felt it, that burning rage that boiled up when she remembered their mother bragging up her younger child, mentioning the schools to which Allie had applied.

  It had been surreal.

  And just plain wrong.

  Cassie had intervened, and it had probably been a mistake.

  Allie might have been content to live a more “normal” life if Cassie hadn’t butted in. As Cassie thought about that now, how stupid she’d been to insist her younger sister follow her, she felt the old rage raise its ugly head and her blood begin to boil. All her plans had backfired! Allie, too, had anger issues with her sibling. There had been times when they’d loved each other and other times when their feelings had bordered on hatred.

  “Story of my life,” she said as she climbed into the rental car and threw the little Nissan into reverse. A horn blasted and she jumped, standing on the brake pedal and jerking to a stop. In her mirror she caught the blur of a smart car flash by, the driver obviously using the parking lot as a cut-through to avoid waiting at a traffic light.

  Cassie wanted to flip the driver off, but didn’t. Her hands clenched over the wheel and her heart rate was still somewhere in the stratosphere. “For the love of God. Don’t lose your cool. Do not.” Drawing a deep breath she scanned the area again and caught sight of the gravel-voiced receptionist walking along the sidewalk as she smoked a cigarette. She threw Cassie a suspicious glance, which Cassie steadfastly ignored as she backed out of the slot. Ramming the Nissan into drive, Cassie drove to the exit. The smart car was long gone and Cassie melded into the flow of traffic without any other problems.

  Visiting Lucinda Rinaldi had been a total bust, she decided. She consulted the GPS app on her phone before heading back to the hotel to regroup and come up with a better plan to locate her sister.

  CHAPTER 4

  Cassie’s phone rang the second she turned into the lot of the hotel. She glanced at the caller ID and recognized her mother’s cell number displayed on the small screen. She let the call go to voice mail as she parked around the corner from the main entrance. She’d caught sight of a Starbucks on her way, so she’d waited in line at the drive-through window, ordered a latte and a raspberry scone, and had nearly finished her drink by the time she reached the parking area of her temporary home.

  “Very temporary,” she reminded herself a
s she took the elevator to her room, where she turned on the television, managed a quick shower, then once she’d thrown on clean jeans and a sweater, ate the scone at the small desk where her cell phone was plugged in and charging. She was still hungry when she threw the wrapper and bag into the trash, but she’d deal with a real meal later.

  She needed a better plan than her hastily-put-together notion of leaving the hospital to find Allie. She’d accomplished phase one, the hospital was in her rearview, but discovering what had happened to her sister would take some serious doing, if locating Allie were even possible. There were dozens of cases of people who had just disappeared, seemingly to vanish off the face of the earth. But she didn’t believe for a second that her sister was one. First of all, the timing was too perfect. It was almost as if Allie had known there would be some kind of accident on the set of Dead Heat that day, that she was a target and that’s why she hadn’t shown up.

  Far-fetched?

  Maybe.

  But with Allie, Cassie had learned, anything was possible. Even faking her own disappearance.

  You don’t know that. Sure, Allie’s capable of a lot of things, but would she really vanish intentionally? Because she had advance knowledge about the attack, or “accident” as it was being called? Who would try to kill her and why?

  The questions, without answers, buzzed through her brain, like darting insects that never quite landed, never settled, never slowed down long enough to be examined and understood.

  And there was no getting around that it had been Cassie’s fault. Along with her father, she’d encouraged Allie to give up her academic dreams, those scholarships and dorm rooms, or at least put them on hold, for the glitter and allure of Hollywood. Robert had insisted that they could become a successful team, the three of them, and Cassie had been so eager for his attention, she’d gone along with his plan. The ink had barely dried on her own high school diploma when Cassie had turned her car south, hit the accelerator, and drove with only two stops in eighteen hours. Filled with dreams of stardom and anxious to shake the dust of stupid Falls Crossing from her shoes, she’d beelined down the Five.

  She’d landed in LA ready for her big break and ended up with big disappointment. Her roles had been few and far between. And then she’d talked Allie into joining her in California and things had only gotten worse.

  She flopped down on one of the beds and considered calling her mother back, but decided she wasn’t in the mood. She needed to calm down before she dealt with Jenna, or, for that matter Shane Carter, her stepfather. The ex-sheriff. She’d never liked him, still didn’t. Too backwoodsy. And come on. A cop? Who marries a cop?

  Your mother, that’s who!

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said aloud, her mind returning back to the sibling rivalry that escalated when both she and Allie vied for the same roles, which Cassie inevitably lost.

  Even now the old jealousy raised its hateful head, and she punched the extra pillow. She had to rein in her rapidly escaping control over her emotions and she couldn’t risk that, didn’t want to return to the hospital on the very day she’d signed herself out. She had to avoid hallucinating again and couldn’t afford to black out and lose hours of her life.

  With an effort, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. She’d been out of the mental hospital less than twelve hours—hell, less than six—and she couldn’t let the fear take over, wouldn’t allow it to gnaw away at her tentative hold on reality.

  Breathe in.

  She settled back on the pillows.

  Breathe out.

  She imagined the air flowing out of her lungs, taking the bad memories and her fears with it.

  Inhale.

  Drawing in fresh air, she cleared her mind.

  Exhale.

  Again, she pushed out the pain.

  Slowly she opened her eyes. It’d been rash thinking to toss her meds out earlier this morning, but thankfully, the doc had saved her. She slid a glance at the overnight bag and the pocket, still zippered, where the plastic bottles were tucked.

  Not now.

  Not yet.

  It’s only been a few hours and you were so sure you didn’t need them, that you would get along just fine without any medication. Already you’re tempted?

  She turned her attention back to the TV. Just because she had the bottles of antianxiety meds and antidepressants in her bag didn’t mean she had to take them. They weren’t crutches, just helpmates, she reminded herself. Kind of like the therapist who’d been working with Lucinda as she learned to balance and walk again. Tiny little aides.

  Oh, yeah, just like that Rolling Stones’ song Dad loves, “Mother’s Little Helper.” Weren’t those lyrics written about diazepam or some other tranquilizer half a century ago? There had been dozens of references in other songs as well, though they escaped her now.

  Sighing, Cassie thought about Allie with her pixieish face and hair that shined between gold and red, thick tresses that curled and waved and caught the sun’s rays to look as if they were on fire. Her freckles were faint, her eyes bright and expressive. Though Allie’s coloring was more like their father’s, she was as photogenic and alive on film as her famous mother. Another irony, Cassie thought, as she had been told from the time that she could remember that she was the spitting image of Jenna Hughes. Cassie’s hair was lighter than Jenna’s, but her eyes were the same shade of green and her facial structure of high cheekbones, arched brows, and sharp chin were much the same. But it hadn’t helped.

  The camera loved Allie. It caught her inner spark. That’s all there was to it. And Cassie? Not so much. Allie had shown up in LA, and with a little help from their father, who had once been a Hollywood producer, landed her first commercial. That success was followed quickly by a bit part on a nighttime drama. And that small part had been a stepping-stone to another, bigger role on television, and within the year, she had a contract for a movie, the script of which was altered for her, her role expanded. Voila! Allie Kramer, not her older sister, became the daughter who followed in their mother’s glittery footsteps.

  Cassie had struggled on for a while, then finally had turned to writing. To her surprise she’d found that, as her English teacher at Falls Crossing High, Mrs. Crosby, had predicted, she had a knack for script writing.

  Which was something.

  And this . . . Allie’s disappearance . . . was one hell of a story. The disappearance of an ingenue who had taken Hollywood by storm? It was golden. So, okay, that was stretching it a little. Allie was far from a wide-eyed innocent, and she hadn’t wowed producers and directors all at once, had actually kind of crept in the back door her father had opened, but she had gained some fame and she’d narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet.... Well, that was definitely stretching the truth, but who really knew? She had indeed disappeared without a trace. Somehow Allie had pulled off the impossible.

  Or she’s really dead.

  Cassie felt a sharp pang, one of real worry. However, she didn’t believe Allie was really gone. No. Her sister was alive. She had to be. There was no death scene at the end of her screenplay.

  “You’re a true bitch,” she said to her reflection in the full-length mirror mounted on the wall near the bathroom. She was capitalizing already on her sister’s troubles. She’d been searching for a new idea for a screenplay and Allie’s story, as told by her older sister, was a gift. Though she’d pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind while she was in the hospital, her destiny now seemed clear.

  And Allie was not dead. She just had to find her.

  Grabbing up her phone, she felt a jab of guilt about not calling her mother, but pocketed the cell anyway and headed out again. She had work to do and for some reason she felt as if the clock was ticking, not just the seconds of her life, but the time to solve this mystery.

  Solve a mystery? You?

  “Oh, shut up!” she sputtered. She made certain the privacy sign was positioned over the door handle of her room, then double-checked to see that
the lock engaged.

  Her next stop? Allie’s apartment, the one she’d leased during production of Dead Heat. The cops had already been through it, of course, but Cassie hadn’t been since the last time she’d seen her sister.

  In her mind’s eye, she caught a glimpse of Allie as she’d last seen her. Small, scared, but angry enough to glare at her older sister. “This is all your fault,” she’d said, in a barely audible whisper. Her face had been devoid of makeup, tears streaming from her expressive eyes, wetting her lashes. She’d seemed, at that moment, so much younger than her years. “If something happens to me, Cassie, you’re to blame.” She dashed the teardrops from her face. “Remember that. Okay? You. And you alone. You’re the reason!”

  Trent heard the familiar rumble of Shorty O’Donnell’s half-ton truck grinding its way down the lane. He turned, a carton of roof shingles balanced on one shoulder, and spied Shorty hunched over the wheel of his twenty-year-old pickup, the older man squinting through the windshield. Originally painted red and tan, the Chevy was now equipped with a faded green front panel and black tailgate, replacements for original parts that had been dented so badly they’d been scrapped long ago. New dents had appeared over the years.

  Trent didn’t have to check his watch to know that Shorty was late.

  Then again, Shorty was always late. Had come into the world three weeks overdue according to his mother and hadn’t caught up since. As long as Trent had known him, over three decades, Shorty had always shown up long after he was due. Today was no exception. No big surprise there.