Dying To Marry

by Janelle Taylor

  “Yes, we’re fine! Hurry down here, Holly. I can’t get Lizzie’s rope untied!”

  Holly threw open the door and rushed down the long, steep stairwell. She tripped, and landed on her ankle. She screamed.

  “Poor Holly,” Flea said. “Hope you’re not crippled for life. Let me tell you, it’s no fun.”

  Holly grabbed her ankle against the rush of pain and glanced up at Flea.

  The woman held a butcher knife in her hand.

  Oh, my God.

  A movement in the dark corner caught Holly’s attention. It was Lizzie.

  “Lizzie!” Holly cried.

  Her cousin was bound with rope in a chair. A piece of duct tape was across her lips. Holly could see the fear and panic in her eyes.

  “Flea, what is going on here?”

  “You stupid, stupid snotty slut!” Flea shouted, waving the knife. “Shut up right now!”

  What?

  Holly stared at Flea. And comprehension slowly entered her brain. No wonder security hadn’t registered that Lizzie was in grave danger. She was with Flea—one of her best friends.

  Oh, God, Holly thought, strangling on a sob.

  Flea moved quickly over to Lizzie and stood next to her. She placed the knife’s tip at Lizzie’s throat.

  “Flea!” Holly cried.

  “My name is Felicia. Not Flea. Felicia. Say it with me now, Holly, since Lizzie can’t speak at the moment.”

  Holly opened her mouth to speak, but no words came.

  “I’ll give you a moment to figure out how to talk, you stupid snotty slut,” Flea said. She grabbed a fistful of Lizzie’s hair and held it high above her head. She took a pair of scissors from the table and began cutting close to Lizzie’s scalp.

  Lizzie looked absolutely terrified. Holly’s heart was hammering in her chest.

  “If you so much as move, Holly the Whore,” Flea said. “I will jam these scissors in her neck so fast she won’t know what cut her. Get it? I made a funny.”

  Holly swallowed.

  “And then I’ll take this knife and jam it in her slutty chest!” Flea snapped.

  “It’s me he should have loved!” Flea screamed as she grabbed another fistful of Lizzie’s long blond curls and cut within an inch of her scalp. “If I was-n’t disfigured, if I was pretty like you—”

  “Flea, we’re best friends,” Holly said as evenly as she could. “I don’t understand!”

  “How could you, snob?” Flea yelled back. “You moved away. How could we be best friends if you haven’t even lived here in ten years?”

  “But—”

  “But nothing, snob,” Flea screamed. “And I told you. My name is Felicia. Your latest conquest knows my name. So why don’t you? I thought we were best friends. You lying snobby slut!”

  “Felicia,” Holly said. Think, girl. Reason with her. You know her. You’ve known Flea all your life. Do something!

  But she didn’t know Flea. Felicia. She clearly didn’t know her at all.

  Flea continued cutting, her eyes on her handiwork. “It’s your fault I’m disfigured,” she snapped as clumps of Lizzie’s hair fell to the floor. “You didn’t save me in time!”

  Oh, God.

  “She tried, Felicia!” Holly said. “She tried. She was burned herself. She had to stay back!”

  “And she let me burn. She saved her precious skin and let me burn!”

  “No, Felicia!” Holly said. “It wasn’t like that! They wouldn’t let her back in! The firefighters held her back!”

  “No boys ever liked me,” Flea said. “No, they all went for you, Lizzie. Of course they did, since you slept with them all.”

  If Flea believed that, why would she single out Lizzie? Why not go after Holly or Gayle, who had equally undeserved reputations based on lies?

  “And now you’ve hoodwinked the man of my dreams,” Flea said. “I’ve loved Dylan Dunhill since my ‘accident,’” Flea said. “Do you know why?”

  “Why?” Holly asked softly. She looked at Lizzie. Tears rolled down her cousin’s cheeks.

  “Because I’d had a mad crush on him since seventh grade,” Flea said. “I never told any of you because I thought you’d laugh at me for liking an Up Hill boy and the richest boy in town, at that. So I kept it to myself. And Dylan was nice to me. Always nodded at me as he passed me in the halls at school. Agreed with me a few times in a class discussion. And after—when my scars healed and I started going outside again, he was the only person who didn’t stare. He was nice to me. Once, he even said my scarf was pretty and made me look like a movie star.”

  “Felicia,” Holly began.

  “I love him so much!” Flea cried. “And Lizzie got her hooks into him! Slutted onto him and got herself pregnant and now he’s forced to marry her because he’s so upstanding a person! Well, I won’t stand for it. I won’t let him sacrifice himself for you. The way you didn’t sacrifice yourself for me!”

  Flea transferred the scissors to her left hand and picked up the butcher knife with her right.

  “Did you find my note?” Flea asked Holly, the knife perilously close to Lizzie’s shoulder.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I said the ‘cripple was dead too,’” Flea said. “And she is. From now on, I’m living. Once I get rid of Lizzie, I can live again. Be the person I was meant to be before she ruined my life.”

  Flea slowly lifted her arm, and the knife shone in the dim light.

  “No!” Holly screamed.

  “Don’t waste your breath, Holly the Whore,” Flea said. “No one can hear you. Thanks to Lizzie, no one ever comes around my little house.”

  The knife slashed down.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Inside job. Inside job. Inside job.

  The words echoed in Jake’s head. They’d been echoing all night long. Unless the psycho they were dealing with was Lizzie herself or Gayle or Felicia or Holly, Jake couldn’t see how the person had managed half of what he or she had accomplished.

  Had Holly attacked herself in the park? Had Flea struck herself with a brick-sized stone? Had Gayle—

  Nothing terrible had happened to Gayle. Her car had been keyed weeks ago, and her boss had received that vile letter about her, but she could have done both herself to include herself among the victims.

  Lizzie, Holly, and Felicia had all been viciously attacked.

  Gayle was the only one who had not.

  But Gayle was one of Lizzie’s best friends. Granted, Jake didn’t know her all that well, but his gut refused to believe what was going around in circles in his head.

  She’s not the one, his cop’s instinct seemed to say.

  Then who, dammit!

  He got out of bed, took a fast shower and threw on clothes. He had to talk to Holly. Had to talk out this Gayle theory, no matter how distasteful.

  Perhaps she was secretly in love with Dylan.

  You’ve got it wrong, every fiber of his being screamed. You’re barking up the wrong tree.

  As he grabbed his keys and headed for the front door, he knew that there was something he wasn’t thinking of, something he couldn’t focus his thoughts on. The culprit was right under his nose, that much he knew for sure.

  So if not Gayle, then who?

  He unlocked the door, but it wouldn’t open.

  That’s weird, he thought, yanking on the doorknob. The door wouldn’t open.

  He grabbed his telephone. It was dead. That was weird. His cell phone was also dead, despite the fact that he’d charged it last night.

  What the hell?

  Panic rose. Six flights up, there was no way out except through the door. And someone had made sure he couldn’t get through it—or call anyone.

  “Not too pretty now, are you?” Flea asked Lizzie, cutting another clump of her beautiful blond curls. “You are hideous. Now you’re the kind of girl who’d get invited to a dance as a dare.”

  “Fle—Felicia,” Holly said, her knees trembling. “You—”

  “Holly,” Flea sai
d, holding a point of the scissors to Lizzie’s throat. “If you keep talking, if you say one more word, in fact, I will jam this into your ugly cousin’s throat.”

  Oh, God, Holly thought, her mind racing. What can I do? I have to do something. Out-think her. Think, Holly, think!

  Lizzie looked absolutely terrified. She was crying and shaking.

  “Poor, poor, ugly Lizzie,” Flea said. “Too bad Dylan won’t want to marry you now. Not when he sees you like this.” Flea’s eyes seemed to light with an idea. Then she began slowly unraveling the black scarf from her neck. Holly hadn’t realized how long the scarf was—there seemed to be yards of material.

  Flea’s bare neck was just visible in the dim light. Holly had never before seen the scars on Flea’s neck. They were large patches from skin grafts.

  Lost in her own world, Flea put down the scissors and ran her fingers over the scarf. She moved behind Lizzie and wrapped the scarf around Lizzie’s neck.

  Oh, God, Flea, Holly thought. Please don’t let her hurt Lizzie. Please!

  Flea continued wrapping.

  Now, Holly ordered herself. Now was the time. When Flea was lost in her own world. Act now!

  Her eyes on the scissors and knife on the table, Holly realized she had this one opportunity to save Lizzie’s—and her own—life.

  She lunged.

  But Flea was too fast. In the blink of an eye she had the knife in one hand and the scissors in the other. Flea raised the knife high in the air and turned in one motion to strike at Lizzie’s neck.

  “No!” Holly screamed.

  The sound of gunfire split the air, and Flea fell to the ground.

  Dazed, Holly looked up to the stairs, and there were Jake and Dylan behind two uniformed police officers, their guns drawn.

  “Noooo!” Flea screamed. She coughed, blood sputtering out her mouth. “Don’t let Dylan see me this way.” She brought her hands up to her neck and tried to use her hair to shield her scars. “He’ll never want me if he sees me like this! I’ll be as ugly to him as ever! As ugly as Lizzie is now! I tried to stop the wedding, Dylan. I tried to stop her from ruining your life. I even hired some thug to hurl a stone at me through the bridal salon’s window, but—” She stopped talking and gasped for air. The sounds of approaching sirens filled the silence of the room. “I can still get rid of her and we can be together—”

  The cops rushed forward to assist her, to try to stop the bleeding, but Flea was already gone. One of the officers closed her eyes.

  Dylan flew to Lizzie and untied her. And Holly, on the verge of collapse, fell seconds before Jake caught her in his arms.

  “How did you know?” Holly managed to whisper.

  “I just kept remembering what we spoke about—that it had to be an inside job. And when I let myself focus on Lizzie’s side, I finally hit on Felicia and everything clicked—how she was able to accomplish her attacks. I wasn’t sure, but I called Dylan and the police and rushed over here. I had to break down my door first, thanks to Felicia, but it’s amazing what adrenaline does to a person. Felicia also managed to turn off my phone service.”

  “If you’d come a minute later—” Holly said. “Oh, Jake.”

  “I’m here now. And you’re safe. Lizzie’s safe. Everything is going to be okay now, Holly.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent, relaxed against his strong arms. Don’t let me go, she said silently, but she wasn’t sure if she’d said it aloud.

  The police had found a duffel bag full of empty prescription medication bottles—antipsychotic drugs—hidden away in a closet in Flea’s bedroom. Apparently, she had been under psychiatric care since the fire when she was fourteen.

  “How could we not have known?” Holly asked.

  Holly, Lizzie, Gayle, and Dylan were seated in Lizzie’s living room. It had been five hours since that morning’s ordeal. Lizzie, rejuvenated by the knowledge that it was over, truly over, was doing better than anyone expected.

  Lizzie and Gayle shook their heads. Lizzie leaned back against her living room couch with a sigh; Gayle’s eyes pooled with fresh tears.

  According to the police, Felicia Harvey had been seeing a psychiatrist in private practice an hour away from Troutville from the ages of fourteen to eighteen. When she became a legal adult, she switched doctors a few times.

  “I don’t even know how to process this,” Lizzie said. “The attacks, Flea’s death, the Dunhills—How am I supposed to go on with the wedding when nothing in my life makes any sense? One of my best friends has hated me for over a decade—”

  A knock on the door interrupted Lizzie, and Holly went to answer it. Jake stood outside, his expression grim.

  “I’ve just come from the precinct. Felicia is now at the morgue.”

  Lizzie swallowed. “Now that I know it was Flea all along it does make sense. She locked herself in the basement—even, or especially because she was always terrified of basements. She bashed herself in the forehead with the stone. Who would ever suspect her? She had complete access to me, my house, to Holly and Gayle.”

  “And during all our conversations about that—the access the culprit had—it never even occurred to me that it could be Flea,” Holly said, shaking her head.

  “That’s not a bad thing, Holly,” Jake said. “Why would you suspect your own friend? Your childhood friend?”

  “But all the evidence—if I would have opened my eyes, I might have seen it.”

  “And I saw it almost too late,” Jake said. “I’m trained to be objective—and I thought I was being objective. I learned a serious lesson on this case.”

  “I think we all did,” Holly said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Am I really expected to enter ... a pub?” Mrs. Dunhill asked, her expression incredulous. Louis snug against her beige blazer, Mrs. Dunhill eyed the outside of Morrow’s Pub as though it might attack her at any minute.

  “Mrs. Dunhill,” Jake said, “it’s a very nice place. I think you’ll be quite pleasantly surprised—if you ever go in.”

  She had been stalling since he’d picked her up an hour ago. First, she needed a “bracing cup of coffee.” Then she needed some fruit. Then she needed to walk Louis in the gardens. When Dylan called her to say that if she didn’t come immediately, he and Lizzie would elope to Las Vegas, Mrs. Dunhill announced that she was ready to go. Of course, she spent ten minutes arranging herself in the passenger seat of Jake’s car, then another ten minutes getting out of the car in front of Morrow’s Pub.

  Mrs. Dunhill glanced sharply at Jake to chastise him for his impudence, then raised a gray eyebrow. “I’ve never been inside a common pub in all my life. Of course, I’ve been in some lovely, elegant hotel bars, but I’m sure the Morrows don’t have the top-shelf liquor that I’m used to.”

  Jake mentally rolled his eyes. “Again, Mrs. Dunhill, I think you’re going to be very surprised.” He pulled open the door. “Shall we?” He hesitated. “Actually, before we go in, there’s something I need to know. Why did you leave the engagement party—and where did you go?” Jake had been unable to pry this information from Victoria, but perhaps now she would explain.

  “Oh, Jake, really! I simply had to escape, that’s all. All right, let’s go,” she said, clutching Louis more tightly against her. “You’ll protect me, won’t you, Louis,” she cooed to the dog—who didn’t respond. “I still can’t accept the idea of a pregnant girl in a bar. It’s in such bad taste, smoking ban or not. It’s the way it looks.”

  “Mrs. Dunhill, after you,” Jake gritted out. And finally, the woman walked into the pub.

  Inside the brightly lit room, Dylan, Lizzie, Pru, and Holly sat around a large round table, a pitcher of lemonade and a cheese platter in the center.

  Everyone looked miserable. Dylan was slumped in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Lizzie was biting her cuticles. Pru was looking around as though she might catch a disease from the walls. And Holly was staring at her clasped hands.

  “Pru? Who is that man
sitting next to you?” Mrs. Dunhill asked.

  All eyes swung to Pru. Sitting next to her was Dan. They held hands atop the table.

  “This is Dan Martin, Mom,” Pru said. “He’s a mechanic at the auto body shop. I met him when I brought in the Jag.”

  “Is it necessary to hold hands with your mechanic?” Mrs. Dunhill asked pointedly. “And I thought this was a family meeting.”

  “It is,” Pru responded. “Which is why I asked him to come. I’m in love with this man. Madly, crazy in love. He is family to me.”

  Mrs. Dunhill looked as though she was going to pass out. “Jacob, dear, help me to a seat, will you? My legs may give way.”

  Jake helped Mrs. Dunhill into a chair next to Lizzie’s mother. The queen of Troutville immediately slid the chair over a ways so that she wouldn’t be contaminated by the “common folk.”

  Jake rolled his eyes and sat down across from Holly. She looked exhausted. Vulnerable.

  “Okay, let’s just get started,” Lizzie said. “The wedding is being postponed indefinitely.”

  “That’s unacceptable,” Mrs. Dunhill boomed. She sat across from Dylan, slightly set back from the others as though she were a queen. “I will not have an illegitimate grandson!”

  “Mother, wedding or no wedding,” Dylan gritted out, “this baby will not be illegitimate. It is my child and Lizzie’s child. And as you know, we have not determined the sex yet, so please stop referring to the baby as a boy.”

  “If you’re not married, he’s illegitimate, Dylan,” Mrs. Dunhill retorted. “That’s the definition.”

  “In your dictionary, Mother,” Dylan said. “In mine and Lizzie’s, our child is ours regardless of marriage, regardless of name, regardless of anything.”

  “It’s because of the baby that we’re postponing the wedding,” Lizzie continued. “We can’t imagine creating a family when our own families can’t support us.” Mrs. Dunhill opened her mouth to speak, but Lizzie cut her off. “For the baby’s sake, Dylan and I ask all of you to please put aside whatever negative feelings you may have about us as a couple. For the baby, we all need to get along.”