Most Likely to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “I did call about the reunion,” Kristen admitted, “but I really wanted to talk to you. To catch up. Got a minute?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They talked for nearly half an hour, filling in the gaps and laughing. Kristen told Rachel about her job at the Clarion, her husband and daughter, and Rachel revealed that she was divorced and working as a cop.

  “I heard that much,” Kristen admitted. “That’s really one of the reasons I decided to call you today. I know your father worked on the Jake Marcott murder case.”

  On the other end of the phone, Rachel sighed. “Oh, God, yes. Swear to God, the fact that Dad couldn’t solve that one drove him to an early grave.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. For a lot of things,” Rachel admitted. “The Jake thing…horrible. For all of us.”

  “You’re right, and it hasn’t gone away.”

  “It never will,” Rachel thought aloud. “It really ticks me off that someone got away with murder.”

  “Me, too, and I’m afraid whoever did it might be back.”

  “What?” Rachel asked, a little more loudly.

  “Either the murderer has returned or…someone’s getting off on messing with me, probably because of the reunion.” She explained everything that had happened, from the moment she felt someone might have been inside her house to the reunion committee, to feeling she was being watched. As Rachel listened, Kristen told her about driving to St. Elizabeth’s campus, walking through the maze, and receiving the “gift” of the picture and tape. She finished with, “The photographer is out of business and my picture, the one of Jake and me at the dance, is missing, though I don’t know for how long. It’s been years since I looked in that box in the attic.”

  “What about the other people on the committee? Anyone else been harassed?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then you were singled out because you’re in charge of the reunion, or because you went to the campus, or both,” Rachel surmised. “And you went to the police?”

  “They weren’t all that interested. They took the tape and the photograph, but…really, they’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  “Not if this is really tied to Jake’s homicide,” Rachel said, and Kristen heard a rhythmic sound, as if Rachel were tapping the end of her pencil on something…just like she used to do when she was really thinking hard in Sister Clarice’s religion class twenty years earlier. Religion was one of the few classes Rachel, Lindsay, and Kristen had shared their senior year. “You know, Dad’s partner, Charlie Young, is still with the force, at least I think so. I’ll give him a call and find out what’s what.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Kristen said with feeling. “Well, we all would. Some of the girls—I mean women, we’re bona fide women now—would, too. They were a little freaked at the last committee meeting.”

  “I’ll bet,” Rachel said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “Thanks.” Kristen hung up feeling slightly better. At least someone in law enforcement was interested, even if that interest came from nearly twenty-five hundred miles away.

  Two days later, Kristen parked her car in the garage, then walked out to the mailbox to pick up the usual assortment of junk mail and bills. There, between an offer for a low-interest rate credit card and her Visa statement, was the invitation to the reunion. She was surprised because she hadn’t bothered to mail one to herself; she’d kept the prototype in her laptop and figured why waste the stamp. But there it was, big as life, addressed to Kristen Daniels Delmonico.

  “What the devil?” she asked, as she walked into the house…the quiet house. “Lissa? Ross? I’m home,” she called as she headed down the hallway.

  Odd…no one save for Marmalade was inside.

  “What’s up with that?” she asked, and then remembered that her cell phone’s battery had run out after her long conversation with Rachel and she’d forgotten her charger. Now she fished the phone from her purse, snapped it into the charger on her desk, and as the phone went through its machinations of coming to life in a series of tinkling sounds, she found the letter opener in her desk drawer.

  “You have seven new messages,” the computer voice informed her after she entered her password.

  “Seven?” she repeated, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear to free up both hands so she could slice open the reunion packet. Marmalade hopped onto the desk and sat squarely in the pile of mail. “See how popular I am?”

  The cat ignored her and began cleaning herself.

  “Yeah, yeah. A lot you care.”

  “First message,” the computer voice stated.

  “Mom, it’s Lissa. I’m going over to Brandy’s house to work on a project for German. Either she’ll bring me home or I’ll call for a ride.”

  Click.

  That sounded safe enough. Kristen sincerely hoped that her daughter was where she said she’d be.

  The machine announced, “Next message.”

  “Hi, Kris. Hey, I’m running a little late, okay? But I’ll be home by seven. If you want, I can pick up something for dinner. Or we could go out, or whatever. Love you.”

  Ross’s voice enveloped her. The words, uttered so quickly, touched her heart. Don’t go there, not yet, she warned herself as she pulled the thick, folded papers from the envelope.

  “Next message.”

  “Is this your idea of some kind of joke?” Aurora demanded, her voice shaking. “I just got my invitation and surprise, surprise. What the hell were you thinking, Kris? Call me!”

  Kristen stared at the phone, then opened the folded pages of her own invitation. Everything was as it should be except there was no letter of explanation signed by her, and her picture, the one she’d copied and cut from the yearbook to be used as part of her name tag at the reunion, had been altered. A harsh red line streaked across her face.

  Her lips parted in shock. The threat was clear: someone intended to do her harm.

  “Next message.”

  The phone beeped. A hang-up. Kristen dropped the invitation as if burned.

  “Next message.”

  Oh, no.

  “Hi, Kristen, this is Bella. I got my invitation today and…well, it’s really, really weird. Some of the other girls on the committee got identical ones and I just don’t understand. Call me back.”

  “Next message.”

  Kristen was shaking.

  Aurora said coolly, “Okay, Kris, I talked to other people on the committee. It seems I’m not the only one who got the marked-up invitation. Bella and Mandy got one, too. But the rest of the committee, as far as I know, didn’t. What the hell’s going on? Call me!”

  The next two calls were hang-ups, but caller ID indicated that Aurora had been dialing her every fifteen minutes.

  Staring down at her own scratched senior photo, Kristen thought she might be sick. Who had done this and when? She thought of the invitations that had been left on her table for three days. Had they been tampered with?

  Had someone been inside her house?

  She nearly fell into the desk chair, her mouth dry, her heart pounding. She picked up the phone to dial Aurora when she stopped and listened.

  Was she alone?

  She thought hard, adrenaline kicking in. She didn’t have a weapon in the house. Neither she nor Ross owned any kind of gun. Quietly, she walked to the kitchen, reached for the butcher knife, but it was missing. Probably in the dishwasher. She didn’t have time to search and settled for a serrated, long-bladed knife from the drawer, then saw her reflection in the window—a pale ghostlike image of herself with a huge knife, just like one of those idiotic girls in a teen slasher movie.

  Too bad. She needed something to protect herself. Moving softly, she walked from room to room, looking in closets, under beds, in any corner where someone could possibly hide. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears as she searched every inch of the house. She’d nearly satisfied herself that she was alone when she remembered the attic.

 
Though the temperature was cool, sweat broke out on her back. Don’t be a fool, she told herself, but walked to the cord hanging from the ceiling anyway, pulling hard. The stairs unfolded into the hallway. The only other access to the attic was through a small window in a gable of the house, so Kristen told herself it was unlikely anyone would be inside. Still, her heart was thundering as she mounted the narrow steps, her muscles stretched tight.

  She poked her head up slowly, only to eye level.

  Thump!

  Kristen gasped and nearly fell off the ladder when she heard the telltale scratch of little claws scraping across the floor. A damned mouse. That was all.

  Slowly she stepped upward and flipped on the lights. No one was hiding in the dusty shadows. No dark figure cowered in a corner. No deranged psycho was crouched behind the antique chest of drawers she’d never gotten around to refinishing.

  No…everything was fine.

  She was about to snap off the lights when her gaze swept over the stack of boxes of old textbooks and high-school paraphernalia she’d searched through.

  One box was missing.

  No. That couldn’t be right.

  Again her heart began pounding crazily and a lightning chill raced down her spine. She gazed around wildly, her eyes searching one corner to the next. Surely she’d misplaced the damned thing…That was it. She’d tucked it somewhere else.

  Frantically she scoured the room, not wanting to believe that someone had actually violated her privacy and sneaked into her home.

  But the box that had contained all her memorabilia from St. Elizabeth’s was gone. She could still see the square shape in the dust where it had sat for so many years.

  Sweet—Mother—Mary.

  Who was this sicko? What did he want? What if he became violent? Images of Jake Marcott’s white-faced body flashed through her mind. She remembered his blood-soaked tux. Lindsay’s ruined dress. The pool of red oozing around the base of the oak tree and statue.

  Backing toward the stairs, she could almost hear Lindsay’s ear-splitting, terrorized scream echoing through the rafters. She thought of the mutilated picture of Jake and her at the dance, the bloodcurdling scream on the tape, and now the marred invitations to the reunion.

  Some sick pervert had been in her house.

  Without breaking a window or knocking down a door.

  Someone had a key, and now no one was safe.

  Oh, God, Lissa! Was she really studying at a friend’s house, or had she been coerced into calling? Had she been kidnapped? No, no, no!

  Fear storming through her, Kristen flew down the stairs.

  Carrying the heavy box, the killer slipped into her private lair, deep in the locked, forgotten basement at St. Elizabeth’s. It had been a long, hard, but oh so rewarding day. Everything had gone perfectly. As planned.

  She set the box on a desk, then, once the door was shut behind her, lit the kerosene lantern. In the flickering illumination she searched through the items in their cardboard container. Little trinkets, photos, even Kristen’s essays and diploma were in the box. She thrilled at the personal things, playing with the tassel from the mortarboard of the graduation cap and pulling out the long gold honor cords that Kristen, as a member of the Honor Society, had worn at graduation.

  Then there were the pictures…in an album or left loose, photographs of the three best friends: Rachel, Lindsay, and Kristen, and, of course, all the snapshots of Jake Marcott.

  She fingered those pictures and sighed.

  What fools they all were. All of them. Even Kristen Daniels. Despite her soaring GPA and stratospheric SAT scores, she was an idiot.

  They all were.

  But they would soon learn.

  Satisfied, she walked the few steps to the wall and worked the combination to locker number 118. Kristen’s locker. A click, then a groan as the metal door opened to reveal the few items already tucked inside. Now along with the French III textbook, awards, final report card, and her diary, she could display the pictures and little mementos that Kristen had treasured enough to keep all these long years.

  A thrill ran down through her as she draped the faded honor cords over the jacket hook. They hung like a woman’s thinning blond braids.

  What a joke.

  “Fool, fool, fool,” she whispered happily to herself. Carefully she stacked, pasted, and glued items inside the locker. When she was finished, she admired her work, then took out the final item from the box:

  The butcher knife she’d stolen from Kristen’s kitchen.

  A serious stroke of genius, she thought, staring at the blade and seeing her own distorted reflection in the shiny steel.

  “Tomorrow,” she told herself, shivering with anticipation as she imagined the moment when one of St. Elizabeth’s graduates would give up her miserable, useless, whoring life.

  She pricked her thumb with the tip of the blade and saw a drop of red blood gather in the small cut.

  Oh, yes, she thought, smiling coldly. Oh, yes.

  Chapter 12

  Kristen picked up her cell and speed dialed Lissa, only to be connected to her daughter’s voicemail. No, honey, oh, no, no, no. She left a message for Melissa to call home immediately. Frantic, she punched in the number again only to be directed to the voicemail box once more. With an effort she forced her shaking fingers to text a simple message: Call home. URGENT!

  For the first time in history Kristen hoped her daughter’s cell phone was off or that Lissa was screening her calls. She didn’t waste a single moment as she located the high-school directory of students and began flipping through the pages for Brandy’s number. Brandy…Brandy…Parker…no, Brandy Peters…no, oh, what the hell was that girl’s name? She found the page with the Ps, ran her finger down the page until she saw Brandy Porter. That was it. She was dialing the number frantically when she saw Ross’s truck roll into the driveway.

  Thank God!

  “Hello?” a girl’s voice answered on the other end of the line.

  “Is this Brandy?” Kristen asked in a rush, then didn’t let the girl respond. “I’m looking for Lissa, er, Melissa Delmonico. I’m her mother.”

  “Oh…she, uh, left.”

  “What? How?”

  “Her boyfriend picked her up?”

  “Her boyfriend? What boyfriend?” Kristen demanded, in a full-blown panic. “Zeke?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When did they leave?”

  “Uh…I dunno…maybe fifteen minutes ago?”

  Ross walked through the back door and Kristen sent him a look that warned him not to say a word. He had two sacks of groceries that he set on the table.

  “Were they coming straight home?” Kristen asked, the girl’s vagueness making her want to tear out her hair.

  “I think…so?”

  “Okay, thanks.” She hung up, scared and frustrated.

  “Lissa’s with Zeke again?” Ross’s voice was steel.

  Kristen nodded, her mind racing.

  He swore roundly. “How do you knock some sense into that kid?”

  “Ross, there’s something else going on here. I think someone broke into the house. Someone who had a key.”

  Quickly, she outlined what had happened since she’d returned from work. Ross’s expression turned grim, the veins in his neck stood out, and a small tic started at his temple as she handed him the doctored invitation that someone had sent her. She also told him about Aurora’s and Bella’s calls. “I haven’t called either one back yet, but I can’t concentrate on that when Lissa is…Oh, God, is that her?” She ran from the den to the kitchen where, through the window, she saw the high beams of an SUV splash against the rear of Ross’s truck.

  Relief flooded through her as she spied Lissa climbing out of the passenger side, shouting something Kristen couldn’t hear, then slamming the door of the SUV. Lissa turned and stormed in through the garage, and the vehicle took off with a roar.

  “Prick!” Lissa said as she stepped through the door. “Lying, cheating, useless
prick!” She caught sight of her mother as she slammed the door and her face reddened. “Sorry. I was talking about Zeke.”

  “You were supposed to call me,” Kristen said, so grateful to see her daughter alive and safe that she really didn’t care if Satan himself had given Lissa a ride home. “Let’s not argue about it now.”

  “Did you ever give Zeke a key to this house?” Ross asked.

  “What? No.” She was shaking her head as she walked to the refrigerator and opened the door.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Uh-uh. There’s nothing to eat.” She grabbed a bottle of water and cracked it open. “Are we gonna have dinner?”

  “Soon,” Kristen said. “Now, Lissa, I think someone might have been in the house and taken some things.”

  “Really? What?”

  “A box from the attic.”

  She looked from one parent to the other. “This is a joke, right? Who would come in here and steal some of that junk?”

  “I don’t know,” Kristen said. “But someone. Dad’s going to bring you up to speed while the two of you cook dinner.”

  Kristen ignored the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look on Melissa’s face. “I’ve got some work to do, so you guys whip up something spectacular and then we’ll discuss what we’re going to do.”

  “What we’re going to do?” Lissa repeated suspiciously. “What does that mean?”

  “We’ll probably call the police.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Ross said as he began unloading a couple of grocery bags. “Tell you what, since you and I are on for dinner, I’ll dial the phone and you order the pizza.”

  Kristen left them to argue the merits of pepperoni versus vegetarian and headed to the den. Her cell phone had died on her again, so she replugged it into the charger and sat at her desk. Bracing herself, she punched out Aurora’s number on the landline. Aurora answered on the second ring.