Literally Stalked

by Eryn Scott

I nodded.

  “And you’re going to go up there? Alone?” She brought out her big-sister voice for those important questions.

  “I’ll park down at the lower garage and steer clear of Emerson’s place. From what we saw the other day, he’s not leaving that apartment much. I want to talk to some staff and see if they know anything.”

  Maggie tapped her nails on her marble countertops. “I remember them being pretty loyal to the family. Are you sure they’ll even talk to you?”

  I shrugged. “I have to try.”

  After a few moments, my sister seemed to make up her mind. “Okay.” She stepped forward, wiping her hands on a towel and then grabbing the car keys off a hook on the wall. “Be careful, though. You said you wouldn’t be able to handle it if anything happened to Alex, and I feel the same about you.” She gripped her hand over mine as she passed off the keys.

  I leaned forward and pulled her into a hug. “I will.”

  After stepping back, I eyed Hamburger playing with Hudson in the next room. The dog was running around the toddler, licking him each time she zoomed past. He squealed and giggled each time, reaching out for her but always missing.

  “Mind if I leave Ham here with you guys for the day?” I asked.

  Maggie followed my gaze.

  “In case my note-leaver decides to slip something more harmful than threats under my door,” I added with a shiver.

  “Of course.” Maggie nodded somberly, but her expression lightened right back up as she watched Hudson and Hammy. “With Brooklyn gone to school all day, Hudson’s hungry for a playmate.”

  “Perfect.” I pulled in a deep breath, waved to them, and headed out.

  The drive up to Woodcrest wasn’t as fun without Liv and Hammy, but it went by quickly enough. As I told Maggie I would, I stopped at the garage down the hill from the main estate, so my car wouldn’t be visible to Emerson. From there, it was a five-minute walk up the hill.

  Their staff kept the driveway plowed, and we hadn’t had any new snow since the night Cole died, so it wasn’t a difficult trip. As I walked, I relaxed into the familiarity. When we’d been in high school, Cole would often have us park down at the lower garage and walk up to keep the driveway clear for his parents.

  The familiarity only increased as I considered talking with the staff members. They’d always been kind to us growing up. I’d even gotten to know a few. My friend Fiona’s dad had worked here as their gardener most of her life, actually. I frowned as I remembered he wasn’t a good example of kindness since he ended up stealing from the family and running off, leaving Fiona behind.

  I crested the hill, and the mansion came into view. It looked as brilliant and intimidating as ever in what little sunlight peeked through the clouds on this typical winter morning.

  A chill thread its way down my spine as I focused on the place Cole’s body was only days before. The snow had either melted or been removed. The crime-scene tape was gone, but the memories lasted. I tried to shiver them away.

  Striding up to the large front doors, I pulled in a deep breath. Their butler would answer the front door, and I would ask if I could come in. As I rang the doorbell, I tried to remember his name. Steven? Or was it Evan?

  I tapped my fingers against my thigh as I waited, then rang the doorbell again.

  Finally, footsteps rang through the cavernous front foyer. The grand door swung open. I was greeted by Mrs. Williams herself, very decidedly not the butler.

  “Hello?” She looked older than I remembered, and tired, and also devastated. All of which made sense given the week she’d had.

  “Hi…” My heart hammered in my ears.

  I wasn’t expecting Cole’s parents to be back in town yet. This was going to throw a wrench in my plans. There was absolutely no way they’d be okay with me walking around questioning their staff.

  “Uh, I don’t know if you remember me, but I was a friend of Cole’s from high school.” I picked at my nail beds, nervous under Mrs. Williams’s cool gaze.

  Her face softened. “Yes, of course. Would you like to come in?”

  Just as with Emerson, having me come inside must've been one of the last things this woman wanted, but the family’s sense of propriety seemed almost inherent.

  I stood in the foyer as she closed the large door behind me.

  “I’m so sorry it took me a moment to answer the door,” she said as she led me into a sitting room to my right. “We just got in from Italy this morning and realized our butler no longer works here as of last week. The maid isn’t used to answering the door yet, plus she’s still a little shaken.” She shook her head and swiped a blonde hair back into her almost perfect chignon.

  Right. Alex had said a maid had been the one to find Cole’s body. Poor girl. Once I’d gotten past that detail, my mind clutched on to another piece of information. Their butler didn’t work here anymore. He’d worked here for as long as I could remember. Had he quit or been let go?

  I settled onto the couch when Mrs. Williams motioned for me to do so. “Sorry, did he quit?” I didn’t need to observe the way her jaw tightened to realize my question was in poor taste, but it was something I needed to know.

  She gave me a tight smile. “I’d rather not discuss it.”

  Just then a maid walked into the room. She jumped slightly, noticing her employer had company. She was about my age, I guessed, and her red hair was tucked up into a blue-and-white bonnet. I felt like I’d been transported back in time. Who actually made their servants dress like that anymore?

  “Would you like me to bring you two anything, Mrs. Williams?” she asked, her red-rimmed eyes flicking around the room.

  “No, thank you, Callie. Our guest isn’t staying long.” She waved he girl away.

  It seemed her cordiality wasn’t as ingrained as I’d first thought, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake by coming inside.

  The woman watched me. “So what can I do for you?” She narrowed her eyes at me as if I might have my name written in tiny letters on my forehead.

  “Pepper.” I pressed my lips together for a moment, before deciding what to say next. “I was wondering if there’s anything I can do for you. This is an awful situation, and nothing will make it better, but I wanted to let you know that I’m here; all of Pine Crest is here for your family.”

  Mrs. Williams’s blue eyes locked onto mine, and her beautiful face crumpled. Tears spilled down suddenly red, blotchy skin. I could tell she was trying to say something in response, but her words were hiccupy and garbled by sobs.

  Surprise froze me in place for a moment, but I spied an ornate box of tissues on the table next to me. Grabbing a few, I scooted next to her, offering them and putting my hand tentatively on her arm after she took them.

  She dabbed at her cheeks and then blew her nose. Mascara ran down her face. Unsure what else to do, I moved closer and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, hugging her tight.

  “A piece of me is missing.” Her voice shook. “As if someone stuck the knife in me instead and cut part of me away, but I have to go on living.”

  “I’m so very sorry,” I whispered. My chest ached as I held her tight.

  After a few moments filled with sniffing and shaking her head, she said, “I’m embarrassed. I’ve been traveling for the past few days, and I’m exhausted.”

  I frowned. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed. I’m sorry I came here. I felt a little helpless too, I guess. We all loved Cole,” I added quietly at the end.

  She smiled at me in the most heartbreakingly tender way. “Thank you.”

  Mr. Williams walked into the room, his face as weary and pale as his wife’s. He took in the scene and eyed me warily, obviously protective of his wife.

  “Hi, there. I’m sorry, Emerson left for town an hour ago, if you were looking for him.”

  “Oh, honey, this is Pepper. She was a friend of Cole’s. She stopped by to offer her condolences.” Mrs. Williams patted my hand and rose.

  Her husband’s face soften
ed. “Thank you.” He did his best to smile.

  “I’ll get going now,” I said. “Please reach out if you need anything. I own the bookstore downtown.”

  They nodded, wrapping their arms around each other as I waved goodbye and let myself out. The cool winter air felt like a lifeline, opening my constricted lungs. I walked with a purpose away from the mansion even though it sounded like Emerson wasn’t even here. It appeared that I would have to get to the bottom of this without any information from the house staff.

  Still, Cole’s parents deserved the truth, deserved to see the person who did this to their son brought to justice. I couldn’t give up now. I thought about Mrs. Williams saying their butler was no longer working for them. How could I get Alex to look into the man? Last night’s fight was still too fresh in my memory.

  I drove back into town and dropped off Maggie’s car before my classes that afternoon. It seemed almost impossible to concentrate on authors and prose and literary analysis with everything running through my head. Even Fergie’s class was a wash. Andrea wasn’t there, and I ended up staring out the window, watching the winter sun set over the mountains instead of paying attention like I should’ve.

  As if my focus wasn’t already stretched too thin, pulled between thoughts of the case and my classwork, my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a call, but I didn’t normally answer during class. I would call whomever it was after. When a text message came through right after the phone call stopped, I pulled it out and saw a missed call and a new text flash across the screen. They were both from Frank.

  My heart caught in my throat as I read the text.

  “I’m at the hospital with Alex. Call me as soon as you can.”

  16

  Shooting an apologetic look at Fergie, I grabbed my bag and ran into the hallway. My heart hammered as I called Frank.

  “Hey,” he said, his tone frazzled. Loud noises clambered their way into the line, muffling the word.

  “Is he okay?” Tears sprang to my eyes, and I’m sure the question was almost unintelligible through all the emotion.

  “He’s going to be.” Frank let out a whoosh of air. “For a moment there, I worried…” He cleared his throat. “He was attacked, Pepper. Someone found him unconscious in an alley a few blocks away.”

  I jogged to the building exit while he talked, shoving open the English building exterior door and turning toward the hospital. The inky-black night closed in on me like a giant’s hand, squeezing and suffocating me. Or was that guilt? I hated that he’d left angry last night.

  “He’s awake now,” Frank said. “They have him under surveillance since it’s a head injury. I stepped out to the waiting room to call.”

  “Head injury?” I asked in a whimper, realizing too late that neither my stomach nor resolve were strong enough to hear any details at the moment.

  Frank must’ve sensed as much, because he said, “We can talk about it when you get here. His dad’s on his way too.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Frank.” I hung up and ran.

  I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise, given my love of books and sitting around reading, but I am not a runner. So even though the hospital was only at the edge of campus, I felt like I was about to die by the time I pushed my way through the large glass doors and into the emergency room waiting area. The stale but disinfected smell, only present in hospitals, wrapped around me as I entered.

  Frank wasn’t hard to spot in the best of times, and I located his large form in the corner, perched uncomfortably on one of the generic beige waiting chairs.

  He glanced up as I jogged over. “Hey.” The word was 90 percent exhale. “Thanks for coming.”

  I nodded, tears crowding into my eyes. Now that I had stopped they rushed forward again as if I’d been running just ahead of them, and they’d finally caught up with me.

  Frank reached out and enveloped my hand in his, squeezing tight. “He’s okay. He’s going to be fine.”

  “What happened?” I sank into a chair.

  “There was a baseball bat laying next to him. He’s gotta heck of a goose egg, but it seems like they only knocked him out. There wasn’t any fracturing or bleeding. He wasn’t even missing anything from his wallet.” Frank shrugged.

  Fear sank through me, from my chest down to my toes. The threatening notes flashed to mind. Tell Alex to watch his back.

  “Do you have any idea who could’ve done this?” I swallowed the worst of the nausea rising in my throat.

  Shaking his head, Frank said, “Nothing at the scene but that bat. We’re running it for prints.”

  “It would be pretty dumb of them to leave the weapon with their prints all over it,” I mused aloud, but mostly to myself.

  “Exactly what we were thinking.” Frank eyed me knowingly. But if he was going to talk about the attack anymore, he stopped himself and made a shooing motion toward me. “Go see him. I’ll wait here for the detective. He’s in room 207.”

  I passed the nurses station and scanned the numbers outside the patient rooms. Two oh seven was around the corner, and I pulled in a fortifying breath before entering. My heart hammered something fierce inside my chest at the minute possibility Frank was downplaying Alex’s injuries in order to make me feel better. The fact that I had no idea what I was walking in on made me cringe in anticipation.

  The door swung open, and I tiptoed inside, unable to hear even the beeping of any monitoring technology. The silence seemed like a terrible omen until I saw him. Alex looked up from where he sat, perched on the edge of the bed as if he were ready to leave any second.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but those darn tears jumped ahead again and sabotaged anything coherent I might’ve uttered. Instead hot tears spill down my cheeks as I ran toward him.

  He forced a smiled, opening his arms wide. I latched on to him and squeezed tight.

  “Hey, I’m okay.” He pulled me closer as I sat on the bed beside him.

  Sniffling, in hopes of making room for words, I nodded. Frank's words came back to me, and I moved back to inspect Alex's head.

  He’d appeared normal when I’d first walked in—tired, sure, but that was pretty standard these days. Now that I surveyed him closely, though, the bump on the back of his head was unavoidable. An ice pack sat next to him on the other side of the bed. I reached over and picked it up.

  “Should you be icing this?” I tentatively moved the ice toward him.

  Alex winced and ducked away. “Actually, I just took that thing off for a few minutes to give it a break.”

  “Oh, okay.” I set the pack in my lap, the cold grounding me, giving me a sensation other than fear or worry to focus on. “So what do you remember?” I asked.

  His hand moved as if to rub the back of his head, but then he thought better of it. “Not much, unfortunately. I was walking to pick up some dinner since we’d finished questioning Andrea’s sister. Frank and I were craving Yum Rosetti, so I was cutting through the alley behind the hardware store and…” He shrugged. “I heard a foot scuff behind me, but that’s it.”

  I cringed, knowing Alex was probably leaving out any descriptions of pain for my benefit. “And someone found you there?”

  He nodded. “Some customers told Old Man Jefferson there was someone sleeping in the alley, and he came out with his own bat, ready to scare away anyone squatting near his dumpsters again. But he didn’t realize I’d already had a run-in with another bat. He called the ambulance.”

  Biting my bottom lip as he told the story was the only way I kept myself from interrupting him. But when he was done, I couldn’t help blurting out the words I’d been holding in.

  “I’m so sorry we fought last night,” I said. “I hate that I let you leave like that. You could’ve…” My voice cut out and my just-dried eyes filled with tears again.

  He squeezed me tight. “Peps, this isn’t your fault. Not one bit.”

  I left the ice pack sitting in my lap and reached forward to grab his hands, pulling his expression back to
serious as I said, “No more leaving each other while angry. I’m so sorry we fought.”

  He dipped his head. “No more staying mad.”

  I wanted to tell him I was sorry for mentioning moving in together too, but before I could, the door swung open. Detective Valdez raced in, dark eyebrows furrowed in a worry that broke the remaining pieces of my heart completely in half.

  Alex squeezed my hand before letting it go and standing. This move was to show his dad he was okay, but the slow, wobbly way he got to his feet made what had happened to him today all the more real.

  His father pulled him into a hug so tight I almost worried he might hurt Alex, but I relaxed when Alex hugged him back just as tight. The detective pulled back, placing his hands on either side of Alex’s face, inspecting it much like I had.

  I put the ice pack on the bed and stood. “I can give you two a min—”

  Before I finished the sentence, the detective turned toward me and pulled me into a hug as well. I sunk into it, missing my dad so intensely that for a moment the pain was like a knife in my side. But Alex’s dad squeezed me tighter, and the ache subsided.

  “I’m so relieved everyone is okay,” the detective said. He let me go and stepped back to study his son some more. “Whoever did this is getting desperate.”

  The door opened again, and a doctor slipped inside. I stepped out of the way as Alex sat back on the bed. The doctor was a middle-aged woman with sharp eyes and a kind smile.

  “So we’d like to keep Alex here overnight for observation. Our initial brain scans don’t show any hemorrhages, fractures, or hematomas, but since this is a class-three concussion, we definitely want to keep an eye on him for about twenty-four hours to be safe.”

  I swallowed. “Class three?”

  The doctor nodded. “It means he was hit so hard that he lost consciousness. These are the most severe types of concussion.” She must’ve noticed my face drain of all color and heat because she added, “But it’s mostly precautionary at this point. If there was any bleeding or swelling it usually would’ve shown up by now. Alex seems to have a hard head.”