I shook that thought out of my head and continued packing, unable to finish that thought for fear of where my mind would wander, so I focused my attention to my overstuffed suitcase and almost jumped out of my skin when my cell phone rang.
“Hey, Carl,” I said, grateful for the distraction.
“Are you okay? I just saw the news report about Gabrielle,” he said, his voice low and full of concern.
So much for not thinking about it.
“I’m fine, Carl. Really…just finishing a few things up here, then off to a meeting with Nicole and Mrs. Lancaster and then heading to Summerset. Will you please make sure to keep the troops in line while I’m out of town?” I said, hoping that he would take the hint that I didn’t wish to discuss Gabby’s situation. There was a long pause on his end before he replied, “Of course I will, Audra. Just know we’re all praying for her safe return.”
I felt the tears well up in my throat, but I choked them back down, refusing to give them freedom to overtake me. Fortunately, before I could come up with some excuse to hang up, my phone beeped with another call, and noticing that it was Steve, I quickly said, “Carl, I appreciate it, but I have to go. I’ll call you later.” I clicked over to Steve’s call without giving Carl the opportunity to respond.
All I got out was “Hey” before Steve cut me off. I could barely hear him and could immediately tell he was driving, for cell phone service in Summerset was spotty at best.
“Audra, listen closely….surveillance…Piper…lock your…on my…” Then the line went dead.
I tried calling him back twice, but it went straight to his voicemail which meant he had no service at all. I called once more and left him a message, telling him to call me back because I didn’t hear everything.
I felt shaky and a bit dizzy, so I sat on the edge of the bed and thought about what little I did hear. He said earlier that he was following a lead on Robert’s killer and that it might very well tie into Gabby’s disappearance, and that he was waiting on a something from the detective in Cohema County that was working the murder of the grocery store clerk. Was that something surveillance footage of the grocery store? And then, the realization hit me that he said “Piper” and finally, the garbled phone call made sense; Piper was on the surveillance tape at the grocery store.
The same store that was only a few miles from The Castle where Gabby had been heading yesterday with the fake Time of Your Life employee, Diane Martin; the same woman that had been so disturbingly in love with Olin that she had slit her wrists in his office.
My heart began to pound wildly in my chest as the puzzle pieces began to form a solid image in my head. This revelation about Piper was the last missing link, and as the image solidified in my mind, I realized Piper was the weapon Olin was wielding to strike us all down.
Oh dear God.
My hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t dial my phone. No, it isn’t going to end like this! I screamed inside my head as I stood up and grabbed the suitcase off my bed. That sonofabitch won’t win!
I drug the heavy bag down the hall to the front room and ran back to the bedroom for my purse and shoes, quickly sliding them on as I scooped up Purr Baby off the bed and shoved him into his carrier, despite his loud protests, then raced back to the living room. I checked the security system to make sure it was fully armed, even though I knew it already was. Satisfied that we were safe and the rush of activity steadying my hands, I sat down on the couch and dialed the car rental company again.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Tanner, but we’re extremely shorthanded today and won’t be able to deliver your car until tomorrow.”
I hung up before I went ballistic on the woman.
I was trapped—a sitting duck waiting for the hunter to come along and tag me.
Fuck no, not today! So I quickly disconnected the call and typed “taxi service” into the home screen, but before I could even locate one, my phone rang. Damn, I do not have time for her right now! I inwardly groaned when I saw that it was Nicole’s cell.
Unable to hide my irritation, I answered abruptly, “Yes, Nicole, what it is?”
Nonplussed, she said, “Well now, don’t you sound frustrated? Getting cold feet before tonight’s meeting?” she said. I could just picture her face. I knew she was relishing the stress in my voice when she almost purred, “So, what may I do to help? Hold the meeting without you?”
Her laughter in my ear almost made me launch my phone into the wall. Instead, I said, “Nicole, I am in a bit of a bind here and need to call you back. I was just about to call for a taxi so I can make it to the meeting tonight, on time. Seems my rental car will not be available in time. Will you be in your car…?” I said before she cut me off.
“You don’t have a car? Damn, I thought you were the gal that could get things done. This meeting with Mrs. Lancaster is too important to us to put into the hands of some slimy cab driver. I’m coming to pick you up. Be there in a few.”
Before I could offer up any argument, she was gone. I stood there in the middle of my living room and fiddled with the phone, debating whether I should call her back. I almost called for a cab anyway, since the thought of relying upon Nicole was never a position I wanted to be in. The nervous chill then dancing up my spine made me change my mind, so I quickly gathered my gear and stood by the couch, watching the window for her car and smiling as I looked at Purr Baby and realized that Nicole had no idea that she would be included in her chauffer service.
AH, FINALLY, IT WAS time—straight up twelve o’clock. I adjusted the laces on my boots once more, making sure they were securely knotted so they wouldn’t come loose and trip me, for I had one busy day ahead of me, and needed to make sure that even the slightest detail was taken care of.
As I left the confines of my temporary home—what I liked to call Bates Motel II—I mentally kicked myself for not retaining my composure better yesterday as I reached my car and the smell exploded into my nostrils. God, but that bitch’s corpse started stinking fast!
“Sorry Gabby…I didn’t mean to bash your skull in. You’re going to miss the party,” I said as I backed out onto the desolate highway, rolling down the windows and turning the air conditioner on full blast before my eyes became so full of tears from the smell that driving would become impossible. “But don’t worry…even in the rancid condition you’re in, I’m sure you will be a hit.”
I drove in silence for the next twenty minutes as I went over every detail for today’s activities. I was almost giddy (or maybe just high from the fumes from my passenger, Lil Miss Rotting Corpse?) with anticipation because tonight the one I wanted most was going to be mine.
And I couldn’t wait to kill her.
“Steady girl,” I said out loud. “You must not make any mistakes. Look, you’ve already screwed up part of the plan: you don’t get to enjoy watching the Harvard Harlot cry and beg for Gabrielle’s life. You must be more careful!
“Shut up! This idea is much better! Stinky bitch back there wouldn’t have had the impact on her as much as this one will, so it all worked out for the best. Besides, you enjoyed demolishing that face of hers just as much as I did.”
I smiled at that one, because yes, I did enjoy watching her face explode in front of me, the sound of the metal crushing into her skull and then her faint grunt and loud thud as her body crumpled to the floor.
I passed my mental checkpoint sign and knew I was close, so I began my charade of the “stranded motorist” as I intermittently changed from neutral and gunned it to tromping on the brakes while in drive, finally jerking my way to a stop at the shoulder by the mailbox. Nothing beats renting a piece of crap clunker to make the whole scenario seem realistic. But just in case my intended target was suspicious by nature, as I stepped out onto the pavement, I lit the smoke bomb that I brought with me and dropped it by my foot, gently scooting it under the front of the car. The effects were fantastic.
I made my way up the twisting driveway and climbed the front steps, the weathered boards gro
aning in protest, and knocked on the door. I scrunched up my face and carefully displayed the hapless female in need and I even managed to extract a few tears to run down my dusty cheeks, just as the door opened.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but can you help me? My car,” I said, pointing to the end of the driveway to my vehicle that sat motionless, the smoke rising from under its hood, “started making an awful racket and then all that smoke, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a phone, so would you mind calling someone for me? I can just wait out here.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Goodness, that is a lot of smoke. Don’t be silly, honey. You come in and sit down and have a nice glass of iced tea while I call Denton’s Towing. They’ll come right away,” she said as she opened the door and moved aside to let the snarling wolf inside the unsuspecting sheep’s pen.
I smiled at her as I said, “Oh, thank you. So kind of you. My name’s Clarisse. It’s a pleasure to meet such a kind soul.” I walked in, extending my hand toward hers.
“Think nothing of it, Clarisse. Have a seat, and I will go make some tea and that phone call,” she said as her wrinkled nub reached out. “Nice to meet you as well. I’m Rosemary. Rosemary Milligan.”
“Yes, I know,” I said as I shut the door.
“YOUR MOM WAS ABOUT as happy to have that hairball in the house as I was to have it in my car,” Nicole said, her eyes still a bit red from the few stragglers of cat hair that floated around inside her car, all seeming to aim straight for her irritated nostrils. She sneezed violently. “I hate fucking cats!”
“You really don’t know how much I appreciate this, Nicole. I was beginning to feel like I was in prison, trapped in my own house. You never realize how much you depend upon your vehicle until suddenly, you don’t have it anymore,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant, but failing miserably. What I didn’t tell her was how much I needed to escape the confines of my walled prison as the walls in my house had started closing in around me. Had I not had Purr Baby there, I would have probably just called a cab and wandered around the city aimlessly for hours until tonight’s meeting, but after Steve’s call, I realized that would just be an added burden, so I decided to leave her with my parents.
It was 5:30 and we were stuck in the heart of downtown traffic as we headed toward Zargento’s. Funny, a few days ago I was actually looking forward to this meeting, but now I wanted nothing more than to get it over with and get to Summerset and Steve. Earlier, after I found out that I would be carless, I was almost in a state of panic at the thought of having to stay with my parents until tomorrow when my rental would be ready, but thankfully, Steve had finally reached a spot that had cell coverage and called me. He was on his way down here, along with Nick Rancliff, to execute a search warrant for Piper’s house, so he was just going to pick me up when they finished.
I still couldn’t believe that I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car of a woman that most likely hated my guts. I was still astonished that she agreed to pick me up, much less take Purr Baby and me to my mother’s house, but she did so with surprisingly little complaints. Initially, I assumed she was just making sure that this big fish we were meeting at dinner didn’t slip through our hands since we needed the revenue so desperately, but then, after being in the car with her for a bit, I came to the conclusion that she really was just trying to be nice to me without having to say nice things, probably because of Gabrielle’s disappearance. My thoughts were confirmed on this point when earlier, she turned and looked at me while sitting at a red light and blurted out, “Gabby will be okay, Audra. If anyone can take care of herself, that girl can.”
The afternoon heat was rolling its heavy haze through the valley from the asphalt and the stalled cars, so Nicole reached over and cranked up the air conditioner a bit more. I was glad she did because I was not only hot from the heat outside but also from the intensity of my frayed nerves. I wanted this day over and to be in the relative safety of Steve’s arms and for Gabrielle to call me and spin some long, drawn-out tale of where she had been for the last twenty-four plus hours.
“So, I heard about what happened to your car. Is it repairable, or are you going to have to buy another?” Nicole said, leaning her face over to the nearest vent and lifting the hair off the back of her thin, damp neck.
“Well, the insurance adjuster seems to think that it’s worth salvaging,” I said, grateful for the conversation, rather than swimming in my own dark thoughts. “He said it will take about a week or two but should be as good as new once finished.”
“Hmph,” she said, her manicured hand fluttering in the air like she just swatted a fly. “I would have insisted upon it being totaled and held out for a new one. I mean, really, from what I heard, the damage was quite extensive.”
As we continued our idle chit-chat about mindless drivel, my thoughts went back to my conversation with Mrs. Milligan earlier in the week and her tenacious encouragement for me to rid myself of heavy “guilt” garbage that I was carrying around with me, so I decided that now was as good of a time as any to make my first foray since I had a captive audience.
“Nicole, I need to tell you something,” I said as I turned in my seat and faced her.
She was still holding her face to the vent as she replied, “Shoot.”
I took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry.”
I saw an almost imperceptible twitch splash across her face, her muscles in her throat and neck tightening up as she slowly pulled her head back and turned her attention to me. “Excuse me?” she replied, her voice barely above a whisper.
Before I could stop myself, the words just leapt out of my mouth. “I’m sorry for what I did to you, Nicole. I should never have gone after anyone else except Olin. He’s the one that deserved all my anger, not you or anyone else. Granted, I was furious at the time that none of you helped me—and honestly, I still think it was morally reprehensible to turn a blind eye—but that anger didn’t give me the right or the justification to seek out and destroy so many other lives in the process of trying to recapture my own. I just…well, I just became so single minded, so focused on revenge, that nothing else mattered to me,” I said, my voice quiet yet steady. “I was in so much emotional pain that I wanted everyone to suffer, and that was wrong of me.”
Her eyes wide with shock, Nicole just stared at me for what seemed like an eternity, and I fought the instinct to just bolt out of the car and take my chances on the highway rather than face the wrath I knew was going to explode out of her mouth, but I opened this can of worms, so I just sat still and waited.
I couldn’t believe my ears when, after a full minute of just staring at each other, her eyes huge as a vast array of emotions jumbled together behind them, and mine probably reflecting the same, she finally leaned back in her seat and said, “You have got to be the strangest woman I have ever met, Audra. You engineer possibly one of the most outrageous corporate takeovers ever accomplished, the likes of which someday I am sure will make it into a novel, expose a killer and bring him to justice, and then apologize to a female that knew you were raped but didn’t come to help you? What kind of drugs are you on girl because I want some!” Her nervous laughter filled the small interior of her car, but the tears that twinkled in her eyes gave her true emotions away. I was completely taken aback and rendered dumbstruck, so shocked myself that literally, I could have been knocked over with a feather had she touched me with one. “You did me a favor anyway. I was tired of Eric’s cheating old ass; I just didn’t know how to tell him that. Besides,” she said, turning her head to look out the window, but not before I caught a quick glimpse of a fully formed tear precariously sitting on the corner of her eye. “Olin needed to finally pay the Piper. Oh, Freudian slip…” she said as a forced laugh emerged, filling the car with its cackle.
The thick glacier of hate that separated us finally began to melt, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing with her as well. The traffic eased slowly forward, and so did the course of our conversation as we te
ntatively started to walk on this new road forged between us. I decided to steer the conversation back to Piper since I wanted to know as much as I could about her to pass along to Steve, hoping Nicole would offer up something that we could use to help find her.
“I am so glad that I was out on an audit when Piper slashed her wrists. All that blood would have made me ill,” I said, surprised at the sound of my nonchalance that I was definitely faking.
“It was just like walking into a horror movie,” Nicole said, keeping her attention on the road as we finally were making some headway, the traffic beginning to thin out. “But it paled in comparison to the mess in Ralph’s office.” She paused as a small shutter passed through her. “That is a day that I will never forget, nor Piper, I’m sure.”
Piper?
“Oh, I wasn’t aware that you both saw his, um, remains. I was under the impression that Piper was out of town on an audit.”
“She was, but that’s not what I meant,” Nicole said, her eyes cutting over at me sharply, like I was some sort of muttering dolt for not understanding her hidden meaning, which I was beginning to feel like myself because I had no clue what she was intimating.
“So, what did you mean?” I said, willing to sacrifice some of the ground I just made with her if it would procure me some leverage on Piper.
Nicole huffed loudly as she replied, “Jesus, Audra! After all your stealthy ‘research’ on all of us, you never discovered anything about Piper’s obsession with Ralph or the video tape that was sent to all of us, including the waste of manhood hunk, Nick?”
Stunned yet completely absorbed by this newest twist, I said, “Nicole, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Piper was obsessed with Ralph? And what tape?”
Nicole threw her hands up in the air dramatically, her mood quickly shifting from agitation at her previous misconception of my idiocy to excitement at realizing she had the opportunity to share something that I was oblivious to. She said, “Wow, The Warrior of Winscott doesn’t know the history of Winscott? Now that is classic!”
Eviscerating the Snake - The Complete Trilogy Page 32
