A Deadly Reunion

by Odette C. Bell

  I nodded.

  I doubted anyone knew how to deal with things like this, except for maybe Denver. But he managed to deal with it by being completely and totally closed off from the world. He maintained the same hard, glacial countenance wherever he went. It meant he couldn’t get hurt and likely couldn’t get surprised by dead bodies in the rose bushes either.

  “It must be horrible,” I suddenly pointed out, “I can’t even begin to imagine how you try to deal with something like this.”

  “By the book. These aren’t the first violent crimes that have ever been committed, and as horrible as it sounds, each time someone winds up murdered, you learn something new.”

  It was such an uncomfortable topic that I found myself curling my fingernails into my sides as I tapped my hands on my legs.

  I wanted to offer Thorne an ear and a bit of solace, but everything he said just drove home how dreadful this situation was.

  Two people had died.

  Brutally.

  “You look a little pale, Patti. Sorry to bringing this all up again. How about I leave you to your walk? Don’t forget to drop into the police station when you’re ready to give your statement, sooner rather than later, if that’s okay,” he added hesitantly.

  He was about to drive away and leave me to my thoughts, wasn’t he? He wasn’t going to mention the memorial again; he was just going to back off respectfully.

  You didn’t come across men like Denver too often, but you sure as hell didn’t come across men like Thorne any more frequently.

  Pushing my hair off my forehead again, I suddenly nodded. “What time did you say the drinks were?”

  “Nine,” he gave the slightest, slightest of smiles. While still being respectful, he showed his interest at the same time.

  Seriously, you didn’t come across men like Thorne Scott often.

  “I’ll ask Annabelle if she’s going. I don’t want to be an imposition on anyone.”

  “Patti, you sure as hell aren’t an imposition; you’re a breath of fresh air.” With that, Thorne waved at me and got back into his car. With another short wave, he pulled out from the curb and drove off slowly.

  I stared at his car as it turned around a corner and drove out of sight.

  What was I doing?

  Murders and romance didn’t mix... or maybe they did.

  And I really didn’t mean that in a nasty, smutty kind of way, but when people were stressed out, and faced with the brutal side of life, they often reached out for comfort.

  I could spend the rest of my short stay in Wetlake berating myself for thinking about the likes of Denver and Thorne while terrible things were happening, or I could try to accept the fundamental need for human connection in times of horror.

  Walking back to where Annabelle would pick me up, I was peacefully thoughtful.

  Thoughtful, however, wouldn’t last.

  Neither would the peace.

  Chapter 12

  “I’m so sorry I’m late,” Annabelle said as she rolled down her window and gave me a short wave.

  I stood up from the park bench I was sitting on and returned the wave. “That’s fine,” I replied honestly.

  “I’ve had to pick up a few things from the store,” she leaned over and opened the passenger door for me.

  Getting in, I repeated that it was totally fine. Annabelle was being kind enough to give me a lift here, and I wasn’t about to snap at her for being all of five minutes late.

  “Hey, Annabelle, I know you have your heart set on wine and popcorn tonight, but apparently they’re having some kind of memorial drinks at the pub, and I thought...” I trailed off. I didn’t want to be cheeky and ask for another lift.

  She glanced across at me. Briefly, a calculating expression stiffened her features – but it was gone in the flicker of an eye. Shrugging her shoulders, she tutted. “No one told me about that. Sheesh, sometimes I think I’m so over the top that people hide parties from me just so I won’t come, take photos, and send scrapbooks to everyone afterwards.”

  I smiled at her joke, but I didn’t laugh.

  This wasn’t a party.

  For Christ’s sake, it was memorial drinks for two people who had been murdered.

  Realizing Annabelle was, like me, probably just stressed and trying to make light of the situation rather than wallow in it, I let it slide.

  “What time are the drinks, anyway? We should try to pop our heads in, if we can.” Annabelle leaned right around in her seat, checking her lane before she pulled out from the curb.

  She was an extremely cautious driver. Which was kind of nuts considering there was no traffic in Wetlake. I could understand why you’d want to be careful out on the forest roads; there was a real possibility of running into deer or fallen trees. But in town, it was just you and the only other guy who owned a car.

  “Nine.”

  “Well we’ll be there. If you’re up to it, that is?” She looked at me carefully.

  I nodded.

  “You know, Patti, you’re one of those peculiarly strong women. I got to say, I admire you.”

  I frowned at her sudden and confusing admission. Me, strong? Well yes, I usually liked to think of myself as strong, but I was falling apart right now, big time. What I’d done to Denver was evidence enough of that. Hell, by accidentally forgetting to check in with him, I’d made him think I’d been kidnapped and murdered.

  He’d wasted time and resources on my mistake. That didn’t make me strong; it made me dumb.

  “You seem totally unflappable. I wish I had a bit of that,” she casually continued.

  Was she joking? She had to be, because, hello, I was seriously flappable. When she’d come across me that afternoon, I’d been trying to clamber over a safety railing, with the horrendous idea of scaling down a near vertical rock scree to get away from the traffic which my addled mind had told me was full of murderers.

  I couldn’t answer.

  “It’s always nice to see someone who’s made a success of their lives,” she added finally.

  Now that made me frown. It wasn’t just that I was a little touchy on the whole successful and wealthy thing. It was that... well, Annabelle was clearly taking a dig at herself.

  “I envy your life up here,” I quickly tried to change the subject; even though I couldn’t say I was being 100% honest. Still, there were aspects of living up in Wetlake that were desirable. And no, I wasn’t just thinking of Thorne. “It’s always so beautiful and peaceful up in the mountains.”

  “Well, we could do with a lot more of the peace right now.” Annabelle shook her head as she slowed down to take a corner.

  Shit. I’d walked into that one. I should just keep my mouth shut before it sounded like I had plain forgotten Hank and James had been murdered – or worse, that I didn’t care.

  Swallowing uncomfortably, I tried to think of something else to say.

  “We don’t have to go for drinks if you don’t want to,” I mumbled.

  “Now, Patti, you might think you can drink in the city, but you ain’t seen nothin’, girl. If you think I can’t handle a couple of beers—” she began.

  I laughed. “Not what I meant.”

  “Of course it wasn’t. I’m just trying to make a joke, anything to lift my mood. Everything is really dark out there right now.” As she drove, she brought her hands up and she massaged her brow.

  I swallowed again. I couldn’t say anything insightful, anything wise, or anything helpful. I just sat there and gulped like a frog by a pond.

  “You know, I think we need to change the subject and change it for good this time,” Annabelle admitted through a heavy sigh, “no more talk of murders. There’s nothing we can do about it. We’ve got to leave it up to the Feds and the police. But that doesn’t mean we have to spend all our time fixating on it and driving each other nuts.”

  She was right. There was nothing we could do. Though we both clearly had our theories, they were just that, theories. We had to leave it up to the police,
and we had to move on, as cold and terrible as it sounded. We had to mourn James and Hank and give them the respect they deserved. But we couldn’t... obsess about it.

  There was a thin line between ignoring the murders and wallowing in them. And that line was constantly shifting.

  “Oh dear, look at me; I’ve made you quiet. Well how about this? I think you and I might be the same size, and believe it or not, I do have the occasional snazzy top and pair of heels. What do you say we dress up nice tonight? Try to look our best while we say goodbye?”

  I smiled. It was awkward because the proposition was awkward... or maybe because I was awkward. Annabelle had said she wanted to move on, and she was right to try.

  Shaking my head, I suddenly nodded instead. “That sounds great.”

  “Then we can come home to red wine, popcorn, and stories of Thorne and Denver,” Annabelle added.

  I nodded a lot harder at that one.

  As Annabelle drove out of town, again I was struck by how damned beautiful this place was and yet wild at the same time. Thorne was right; from the rocky peaks to the call of the animals, it was darker out here. Okay, so you didn’t have junkies and skyrocketing crime, but there was something primal about those dank, closed woods.

  “Sorry I live so far out of town, but I got to say, as strange as it sounds, I like my privacy.” Annabelle turned up a small, winding, dirt road.

  I turned to her sharply at that. “You’re the most sociable person I know.”

  She shrugged, taking her hands off the steering wheel briefly while trusting her car to drive in a straight line as she did.

  That apparently innocent move struck me as strange.

  In town she had driven as respectfully and slowly as an old nana heading to church. Yet out here she apparently didn’t care that her car was veering towards the ditch.

  “Oh, people are never what they appear to be on the outside,” she counseled as she pulled up in front of a house.

  Annabelle had been right; it was big and it was truly beautiful.

  Made of white and blue weatherboard, it had three levels, the top of which looked like an old attic with a small door leading out to a tiny balcony.

  There were dense firs and pine trees about the back of the house and the steep slopes leading up to it, but unlike Thorne’s bachelor pad, there was also a garden. Lush and meticulously cared for, the lawn looked as if it had been cut with a ruler and a pair of nail scissors. All of the flowers and roses and shrubs were weeded and bunched together in attractive beds that had clearly been planned by someone with an eye for design.

  “Wow,” I gestured to her house as she got out of the car, “this is incredible. A place like this would go for millions where I come from.”

  “Don’t you come from Wetlake originally?”

  “Sorry, figure of speech.”

  Annabelle didn’t say anything more; in fact, she silently walked up the garden path, extracting her house keys from her bag as she did. Her simple heels clapping over the old wood of her porch steps, she waved me forward.

  “You know, Annabelle, you should join forces with Thorne. The both of you live in secluded little parts of the forest, but he clearly has no idea how to keep a garden or a house.” It was an awkward thing to say, and halfway through, I realized I was just babbling.

  Annabelle turned as she opened the door, and her eyebrows crunched down quickly. “You’ve seen Thorne’s house?”

  When I’d filled her in on what I’d been doing with Thorne and Denver, I’d forgotten to mention I’d spent last night on Thorne’s couch.

  I offered a rather meek smile. “Not what you think.”

  “Of course not,” she snorted, “Thorne is not that kind of boy. Unlike his brother.”

  Turning sharply, she walked into her house.

  I pushed my lips together and let a spark of confusion scrunch up my nose.

  Had that been a dig at me or was I just stressed?

  Shit. Annabelle was possibly the nicest person I’d ever met, and here I was second-guessing everything she said and everything she did.

  I needed to pull my head in and start thinking of other people for once.

  Walking into Annabelle’s house, I instantly noted it was even more beautiful within. There were all these old antique chests of drawers and side tables and lamps, and all the curtains were made out of white lace that had been meticulously cleaned and dusted.

  It made my perpetually messy and dog-hair filled apartment look like a disaster zone.

  Annabelle kept going on about how much of a success I was; well she clearly hadn’t done so badly herself.

  Retiring to a country palace like this was the number one dream of most of the city slickers I knew.

  The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as my mother would say.

  “You probably want a shower, huh? Maybe a small bite to eat before we head out again?” Annabelle walked forward and led me to the kitchen.

  “That sounds fantastic,” I said as I continued to survey the incredible house around me. “You live here all on your own? God, it must take you weeks to do the cleaning.”

  “I’m pretty particular about some things, Patti Smith.” She walked over to her sink, grabbed up a clean glass from the dish rack, filled it with water, and handed it to me with a smile. “I’m an old girl who is set in her ways. I have an idea about how things should be, and I don’t stop trying until I make them that way. And if I see someone who’s left a mess, I go after them.”

  I nodded my head as I finished off my glass of water and patted my lips dry. “You sound like a determined woman, every feminist would be proud.”

  It was a compliment.

  Annabelle’s smile stiffened.

  Realizing I’d stepped on her toes yet again, I nodded nervously. “Do you have any pets?”

  “Oh no, can’t say I have the time.”

  Damn. I found talking about pets was always a way to ground a conversation and to make friends. It was the greatest tool to diplomacy. If President Kennedy and Khrushchev had just sat down and talked about their dogs, the Cold War would have been sorted out quick smart.

  You couldn’t help but smile when you described the strange behavior of your cat or pooch. But unfortunately, Annabelle didn’t have pets.

  So that slightly disapproving edge to her smile remained.

  “Do you need... a hand doing anything?” I asked nervously.

  She shook her head, took my glass off me, and immediately cleaned it and stuck it back in the dish rack. “You just go and have your shower and then get ready for to tonight. With everything that’s been going on in this town, I’m sure you just need the chance to relax.”

  I thanked her and let her lead me out of the kitchen and up to one of the upstairs bathrooms. She handed me a towel and then told me about the dodgy taps before closing the door behind her.

  I listened as she trundled down the stairs.

  People didn’t get as nice as Annabelle was, I told myself quickly.

  She wasn’t acting strangely. She was just... dealing with the same things that everyone else was.

  Suddenly feeling exceedingly saddened and confused, I found myself sitting down glumly on the edge of the bath. The cold ceramic cooled the back of my legs as my shoulders rounded and my arms dropped into my lap. Staring at my hands, I made a desperate and rather futile wish for everything to return to normal. I wanted to go back to my ordinary, happy, carefree life. A life where there were no Denvers, there was no murder, and there were no confusing relationships with old classmates. No second-guessing, no paranoia, just glitz, glamour, upscale apartments, and certainty.

  I still had my bag on my arm, and I unhooked it. Rifling around for my hairbrush, I accidentally plucked up my cellphone and realized I should follow Denver’s angry advice and charge it. Grabbing out the wall adapter from my bag, I moved over to the sink and plugged it in.

  Stepping back, I stared around the bathroom. It was as clean as clean co
uld be. There were neat little rows of shampoos and soaps and figurines and fresh flowers. The ceramic glimmered and there wasn’t a sign of dirt in the grout on either the floor or the walls.

  I was suddenly struck by the fact Annabelle had a hell of a lot of time on her own.

  It was no wonder she was so sociable. Still, it was a strange surprise to find out that Annabelle didn’t match up to the person I’d always thought she’d become. I figured she’d come from a huge family and had millions of siblings, and was the kind of girl who was never alone. After I’d received the reunion invite from her, I’d pictured her as a smiling thirty-year-old with an entire truckload of children and a husband with acquired hearing loss from all her chatting.

  I’d been wrong.

  Hell, now I came to think of it, I’d been wrong about most of the people I’d made assumptions about recently. Everybody had their nuances, aptitudes, and flaws.

  Sighing through my teeth, I stripped, got in the shower, and told myself to get over it.

  Chapter 13

  By the time I got out of the shower, Annabelle had already whipped up an amazing meal, and we wasted a few hours easily chatting before we headed back out to town.

  Any possible feeling of ill will I’d held towards Annabelle and her slightly strange behavior was gone for good.

  She was genuinely nice, friendly, and clearly wanted to get to know me while helping me out.

  In fact, I was laughing at another one of her rather dry jokes as we made it into the pub.

  I stopped laughing almost immediately.

  Everybody was standing around justifiably morose, talking in hushed voices.

  Fuck. I was a bitch. Seriously, again I’d forgotten about the murders. Or rather than forgotten about them, I’d managed to push them from my mind for a few precious, if indiscreet seconds.

  Making our way up to the bar, I let Annabelle order the drinks as I turned and surveyed the people around me.

  Some faces I recognized, some I didn’t, yet all looked suitably respectful and silent.

  “Hey,” someone said softly from my side.