She stayed calm, raised the bat, and stared at it. "You stole Tamzen's boyfriend. She lost control and, well, you can imagine what she'd do. I took two bats for just such an eventuality."
I raised myself to a sitting position. "You're a freakin' psycho."
"What about the hand? Let's see...in a rage, Tamzen cut off both your hands because...oh, it doesn't matter."
"You really think you can murder people, incriminate people, and get away with it?"
"I've thought about that," she said. Her calm tone set my nerves on edge. "Maybe I won't get away with it. Who knows. But I'm the long-suffering wife. Mother of two babies. Why would anyone suspect me of being involved in all this drama?"
This isn't a dream, Guinan. It's really happening.
My mother, grandfather, and Zeke had to be looking for me. Keep her talking. "Zeke will figure it out. He'll find out what you've done and hate you for it."
"Now why would he suspect his own mother?"
"I don't know how you've gotten away with it so far, but—"
"Want to know how I did it?"
"No."
She ignored the answer. "I knew Zeke wanted to spend the night with his slut girlfriend, and I hinted my approval. Once I knew he'd be out of the house, the rest was simple. Sleeping pills in Tim's wine, and children's allergy medication for the twins." Her tone was conversational, as if we were discussing it over tea. "I used a prepaid cell to lure Kate out here. Killed her with Eric's special bat."
She paused, waiting for my reaction. I didn't give her one.
"Dealing with Skeeter was even simpler. I didn't have to lure him anywhere. I checked his bedroom window and waited for him to pass out."
Crazy bitch, evil eyes. Skeeter must have seen her at the window before he passed out. I didn't want to hear anymore.
"My mother and grandfather know where I am."
She looked at me with pity. "Given your habit of slipping out of the house, I doubt it."
"You were like...like a mother to me." I covered my mouth to stop my lips from trembling.
"I'm not your mother, though I would have been a better one to you than Saundra."
Mothers. Babies. "You saw that tree carving, didn't you? The one with Tim plus Kate equals BH."
Tessa's expression softened. "BH stands for Bethany Hicks. My baby."
Trying to figure my way out of this and process the new information made my thoughts foggy. "But that's a name Kate liked."
"She was taunting me. That was the name of the baby I miscarried. It was her way of letting me know that she and Tim shared more than sex." She lowered her head as though in prayer. "But that's all over now."
"No, Tessa. It'll never be over. For the rest of your life you'll wonder and worry about the truth coming out."
"Perhaps. But for now, I'm in control, the same way I blocked you from reading me. We share this curse, you and I." She rubbed her temple. I glanced at the bat. "You'll never know what it feels like to sense your husband's desire for another woman when he's making love to you. It's evil."
"More evil than murdering people?"
Without warning, Tessa raised the bat. I didn't have time to think. I rolled away and avoided it by inches. She cursed. I covered my head with my arms and flinched, not knowing when the fatal blow would come.
"No!"
I heard feet shuffling in the dirt, and I raised myself on all fours. In a blur, Zeke tackled his mother, and the bat went flying into the darkness. She landed on her back, with him on top of her. She didn't move again.
He stood up, out of breath.
"Your phone," I croaked. "Did you—"
"I already called the police," he said. He walked over to me and kneeled beside me. Words teemed in my head, but they were stuck there.
"I...I..."
He pulled me to him and cradled me. "Just relax," he said, his voice strained. "You're safe now."
"How did you know?"
He swiped a hand across his eyes but didn't speak.
I closed my mine.
Safe.
Sirens screamed in the distance.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"He couldn't wake his father," Rory said. "That's what set the wheels in motion."
I'd given him a statement from my hospital bed, reciting events as if they'd happened to someone else. My initial shock was receding, but for Rory and everyone else, it was fresh. Every now and then, he widened his eyes and shook his head. Now he answered my questions about Zeke.
"He said at first he thought Tim had passed out from drinking. Then he saw his mother's sleeping pill bottle on the nightstand. She usually kept it in the medicine cabinet and out of reach. He said his father hated taking meds and doubted he did."
I nodded absently. I was on some kind of meds, too. The doctor called it remarkable that my injuries from the fall and the bat weren't more serious. Whatever was in the IV drip, I was grateful. It dulled my thoughts to the point I couldn't coherently contemplate that Tessa tried to kill me.
Rory exhaled loudly and scratched the top of his head. "That kid somehow put it together. He listened to your message on his cell, called the police, and headed straight to Jepson's."
A half-formed question swam around the edge of my mind. "Rory," I said. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them, trying to focus. "Why was Zeke conscious? Didn't Tessa try to...to..."
"Drug him?" Rory said. "Get this. He loves his mother's homemade lemonade. She keeps a pitcher of it just for him. But when he got home from practice, he drank water, instead."
Granddad paced near the door. "I'm ninety-percent certain the lab will find something in the sample they took."
My father was on a plane headed to Ridge Grove, and my mother stood by the window grim-faced and watching Granddad pace.
"The day after the murder, Tim had complained of feeling groggy," he said. "Like he'd been drugged. We laughed about it at the time."
His face seemed to have sprouted more lines than the day before. He avoided looking into my eyes. Every time he glanced at my swollen head, he closed his eyes.
I reminded him and my mother that it was my own fault.
"I'm the adult. I'm the cop. I should have—"
"Dad, Reggie's right. You can't watch her every minute of the day. Guinan has to take some responsibility for this. She's not a child anymore."
We both looked at my mother. She shrugged and rubbed her chin. She'd arrived at Jepson's Point just as I was being loaded into the ambulance. I'd heard she'd lunged at Tessa, and the police had to hold her back. They found the shotgun in her car. I was so glad she decided against using it. She would have gone to prison along with Tessa. That is, if Tessa had survived the gun shot.
I lay stiff on the bed and felt tears rolling down the side of my head. Motherless. Zeke and the twins were motherless. There was nothing I could do about it. As long as I slept, I didn't have to think about it.
The morning I was released, I heard on the news that Tessa had been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. I hadn't seen or spoken to Zeke since that night. I didn't contact him, and he didn't contact me.
"Your friend Tamzen came clean," Granddad said to me over breakfast. I sat across from him at the kitchen table picking at my eggs.
"She said she lied about not spending the night with Eric because she was embarrassed," he said, furrowing his brow. "Can you believe it? Someone's freedom was at stake, for crying out loud. I'm considering charging her for giving a false statement to the police."
I hadn't wanted to see her or Dean. My parents instructed the hospital to allow only family to visit. Dean came to the house once, but my mother turned him away. He'd left several voice and text messages. Tamzen left messages, too. I felt ashamed, like it was partly my fault that Zeke's mother tried to kill me. I knew it was irrational.
Soon I'd make my escape. But Tim, Zeke, Jacob, and Jude had none. Even if they left Ridge Grove, they'd always have a murderer for a wife and mother.
My fo
rk hit the plate with a clank.
My grandfather jumped. "What's wrong?"
I slid my plate away. "I'm going to ask you to do something, and I don't want you get upset."
He looked at the ceiling. My parents were upstairs.
"It's nothing dangerous," I said, offering him a weak smile. "Besides, the killer is locked up now." I swallowed a lump.
He agreed to do what I asked only if I told my parents where we were going and why. They didn't protest.
At Jepson's Point, Granddad stuck close to me while I searched for the cluster of marigolds I'd seen while up in the oak tree. When I found it, he dug with the shovel I asked him to bring. I didn't know what I expected to find, but I had a feeling there was something to find. When the shovel met resistance, we both stared at the spot. I kneeled and brushed away dirt. It was a small metal box. I gave him a questioning look.
He nodded. "Use the glove and peek under the lid. Don't pull it out. It might be evidence relevant to the case."
I nodded, put on the latex glove, and carefully lifted the lid. "It looks like a piece of clothing. It's pink." A baby's gown? Why would Tessa bury it and commit murder here? What did this place mean to her?
Granddad leaned on the shovel. "What made you think something was buried under the marigolds?"
I explained about the ones that grew in Tessa's garden, the buried bat, and symbolic things. I told him that she'd confessed to being clairvoyant and that she shaved her widow's peak.
He raised his eyebrows. "So, all that brought the picture into focus, huh? I figured she must have sixth sense, her mother being a boardwalk psychic and all. But I never suspected she was a psycho."
I thought about my own mother. "I wonder why I inherited, but Mom didn't."
He shook his head, staring at the box.
I closed the lid and looked at the sky. "To tell the truth, it could have been Eric in that ski mask, and I wouldn't have been surprised. I thought it was dumb that he'd bury the blood-covered murder weapon, but people do dumb things all the time."
He put his hand on my shoulder. "Come on, get up. Be careful of your back."
I held on to him as I stood. "Zeke probably hates me."
"Why should he?"
"For one thing, every time he looks at me or thinks about me from now on, it'll remind him that his mother's a murderer."
He grunted. "That's not your fault, hon. What's say we get out of this heat?"
I looked at my grandfather. He cracked a smile.
"You'll get through this," he said. "I know it doesn't seem like it now, but you will. I love you. I don't tell you that often enough."
"I know you do," I said, my voice thick. "And I love you, too."
***
Chelsea International Airport – Exit 5 two miles
While my grandfather and father made polite conversation in the front seat of the truck, my mother and I sat silently in the back. My throbbing ear was bright red, but I didn't want to take anymore pain pills. Most of my bruises were fading, and my head didn't look too swollen. I wore my hair loose to hide my ear.
Granddad pulled up to the airport curb. He'd wanted to park and walk us inside, but my parents insisted that he just drop us off. They knew I didn't want to say goodbye in front of a bunch of strangers.
The four of us stood at the curb surrounded by luggage. My lips trembled, but I was determined not to cry again.
"Guinan could've have been seriously hurt or dead," my mother said to my grandfather. She paused. "And so could you."
He raised his hands in mock surrender. "You're absolutely right. The whole thing was a real mess."
"I have a mind of my own, you know."
My mother put her arm around me. I gently pulled away and embraced my grandfather. The lump in my throat was so big I could barely breathe.
"No need for goodbyes. Next time you see me, I'll be delivering your chariot at Thanksgiving."
His face looked blurry through my tears. I hadn't given my car a fleeting thought in days. I gave him a quick nod and a tight smile.
Once we'd arrived at our gate, I watched people idling in the area, sipping coffee, tapping on laptops and tablets and tending to restless toddlers. I closed my eyes and pretended the sounds of tiny children were the Hicks twins. I was struck with a thought. Did my grandmother suspect Tessa had serious issues? So many questions. I was getting my hopes up about those journals. They certainly wouldn't contain all the answers I wanted. But within those pages, I'd learn more than I knew now.
My cell buzzed in my pocket, and I grinned through my tears. Granddad must have forgotten to tell me something. I looked at the screen, and my hand shook.
My father noticed. "Who is it?"
I squinted at the phone to make sure I wasn't just seeing things.
Zeke's image appeared on the screen.
Black-Eyed Moon is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright @ Callista Foley
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
About the Author
Thanks so much for reading my book! Please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, or your preferred site.
I'm a freelance writer who loves watching, reading, and writing murder mysteries. Book 2 in the Guinan Jones Paranormal Mystery series will be published in September 2013.
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Table of Contents
About Black-Eyed Moon
I. Waxing Crescent
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
II. Waxing Gibbous
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
III. Full Moon
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Copyright
About the Author
Black-Eyed Moon (A Guinan Jones Paranormal Mystery #1) Page 16
