“I’ll still do it. I’ll work from here.”
“And your town house?”
“I’ll keep it. No doubt I’ll need to stay there when I go see clients.”
She had it all figured out. Nice to know she could plan her own life as well as mine. “I’m glad, Jenna. Really glad.”
“Good.” She paused. “I have another idea.”
The way she said it . . . “Oh, boy. Now what?”
“As soon as the kids are out of school next month, let’s all take off for Hawaii. We need to loll on the beach. Get tan. Put this horrific week behind us.”
Well. Second plan in a row I actually liked. “Sounds wonderful. Let’s do it.” I stared at my plate, thinking. “Only thing is, Stephen’s court date is June 10.”
“That’s the day before school lets out; I already checked.”
Of course she had. “But what if he’s put on probation? I thought he couldn’t leave the county, something like that.”
“Chetterling said he could as long as you told the court about it, and he stayed with you.”
“You asked Chetterling about this? Before you asked me?”
“I had to check it out. Make sure it was possible before I got your hopes up.”
Good save, Jenna. But she had a point.
“One thing. Kelly’s already asking if Erin can go.”
So she’d talked to the kids too. “Sure, why not? Always more fun for her to bring a friend.”
“True. And, uh, Erin wants to bring her dad.”
Ah, so that was it. I leaned back in my chair. “Jenna. That’s kind of . . . weird, isn’t it? The two of us, and him? What are people going to think?”
“The three of us, with three kids in between. People aren’t going to think anything.”
I raised my chin, surveying her. Remembering all the times Dave had been over in the past few days. Except for the time we prayed, she’d always found an excuse to leave us alone. “Is this some cooked-up plan of yours?”
“No.” She looked offended. “It was totally the girls’ idea.”
“And you didn’t help put it in their heads.”
“Of course not.”
My tongue ran over my lips. “Uh-huh.”
“Stop obsessing, Annie. I don’t even know if he’ll want to go.”
I focused on Dave’s house through the kitchen window. The house where his wife, Lisa, had lived. And died. The house where he struggled to raise a daughter alone. The house where I had prayed to become a Christian.
“It’s okay, Jenna, if he wants to go.” The words formed slowly. Surprising me. “All three of us adults need a good rest. The kids do too.” I gave her a look. “Besides, with Dave around, maybe you won’t tell me what to do every minute.”
She mushed her lips. “Who, me?”
On second thought, I wouldn’t count on it.
Movement out on the street caught my attention. I turned toward the window to see a van pull up in front of our house. Oh, great, now what? Didn’t anybody rest on a Saturday anymore?
“What is it?” Jenna couldn’t see the vehicle from her side of the table.
The name on the van suddenly registered. Pretty Petals Florist. Immediate fear spritzed down my nerves. My mouth opened, but I didn’t answer. Sitting stone still, I watched a man get out of the driver’s seat, open up the back of the van, and withdraw a long white box.
“Oh, no. Oh, Jenna, no.”
The tone of my voice plucked my sister from her chair and around the table to peer out the window. She sucked in an audible breath as the man strode up our front walk. Then her shoulders relaxed.“Wait a minute. He’s in a marked van.”
“Yeah, but—”
The doorbell rang. I jumped. We both stared out the window, waiting.
Jenna straightened. “He’s not running away; that’s a good sign.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Good grief, it’s just someone delivering flowers. What’s the matter with us?” She started toward the door.“Come on, go with me. They’re going to be for you anyway.”
Exactly what I was afraid of.
The delivery man stood on our porch with a pleasant smile, holding the long box as if it were gold. He looked from Jenna to me. “Annie Kingston?”
I couldn’t help but cringe. “That’s me.”
He held out the box. “Somebody’s thinking of you today, ma’am.”
I eyed it. “What’s in it?”
“A dozen perfect red roses. Packed ’em myself.” The smile would not leave his face.
“Are they alive?”
The corners of his mouth faltered. “Alive, ma’am?”
Jenna gave a little huff. “Just take the box, Annie!” She pulled it from the man’s hands and thrust it into mine. “Thank you, sir, very much. She appreciates it. Really.” She shot the man an oversized smile and waved him off before shutting the door. “For heaven’s sake, Annie!”
“Well, what am I supposed to—”
“Just open it!”
Half out of lingering suspicion and half just to irk her, I took my time carrying the box to the kitchen table. Then, carefully, I untied the yellow ribbon and lifted the lid. The sweet smell of roses wafted into the air. “Oh.” They were long-stemmed and a deep, velvety red. “They’re absolutely beautiful!”
“Well, who sent them? Where’s the card?” Jenna crowded in to look.
“Good grief, just a second.” I didn’t want to hurry this moment. I wanted to bask in it. No one had sent me roses before. Ever. Carefully, I picked one up and admired it. Held it to my nose. Closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Such a heady fragrance. I ran a fingertip up and down the bud’s soft petals. Finally, when I’d had my fill, I passed it to my sister to hold while I lifted out a small white envelope. Inside was a handwritten note.
Annie,
I figured you deserved the real thing this time.
—Ralph
My mouth dropped open. For a moment, all I could do was stare. “Chetterling sent me these?”
Jenna’s head did a provocative turn until she looked at me sideways. One eyebrow slowly lifted.“Well, well, what do you know? Didn’t think the man had it in him. He probably called you this morning because he couldn’t wait to hear if you’d gotten them yet.”
I gaped again at the card, then laid it down and took the rose back from her. “Oh, Jenna, don’t be so . . . He’s just thanking me for the job I did.”
“Uh-huh.”
Feeling a flush rise to my cheeks, I turned away. “Better get these things in water.”
I busied myself with cutting the stems, arranging the roses in a vase. Jenna looked over my shoulder all the while, saying nothing. She didn’t have to. My sister can convey plenty without a single word.
My task done, I placed the vase with utmost care in the center of the table, then stood back and admired the flowers. Their scent permeated the room. How could I ever thank Chetterling enough for this gift? All of a sudden, the mere thought of phoning him sent flutters through my stomach.
Jenna stood by the kitchen window, arms folded with the satisfaction of new possibilities, looking back and forth from the roses to me. I turned, intending to ask her if she didn’t have anything better to do. But for absolutely no reason, my gaze drifted out the window and across the street. I found myself staring at Dave’s house.
Jenna followed my eyes, then gave me a long, penetrating look.
I blinked at her. “What?”
My sister held up both palms and shook her head. “Annie. Even I’m staying out of this one.”
Jenna walked around me to clear our breakfast dishes from the table. “But—” she couldn’t help getting in the last word—“I do believe you need to call a certain detective.”
Read an Excerpt from Dark Pursuit
1
Untitled ms.
“Ever hear the dead knocking”
Leland Hugh watches the psychiatrist peruse his question, no reaction on the man’s lined, learned face. The doctor
lists to one side in his chair, a fist under his sagging jowl. The picture of unshakable confidence.
“No, can’t say I have.”
Hugh nods and gazes at the floor. “I do. At night, always at night.”
“Why do they knock?”
His eyes raise to look straight into the doctor’s. “They want my soul.”
No response but a mere inclining of the head. The intentional silence pulses, waiting for an explanation. Psychiatrists are good at that.
“I took theirs, you see. Put them in their graves early.” Deep inside Hugh, the anger and fear begin to swirl. He swallows, voice tightening. “They’re supposed to stay in the grave. Who’d ever think the dead would demand their revenge?”
From outside the door, at the windows, in the closet, in the walls — they used to knock. Now, in his jail cell the noises come from beneath the floor. Harassing, insistent, hate-filled and bitter sounds that pound his ears and drill his brain until sleep will not, cannot come.
“Do you ever answer?”
Shock twists Hugh’s lips. “Answer?”
The psychiatrist’s face remains placid. The slight, knowing curve to his mouth makes Hugh want to slug him.
“You think they’re not real, don’t you?” Hugh steeples his fingers with mocking erudition. “Yes, esteemed colleagues.” He affects an arrogant highbrow voice. “I have determined the subject suffers from EGS — Extreme Guilt Syndrome, the roots of which run so deep as never to be extirpated, with symptoms aggrandizing into myriad areas of the subject’s life and resulting in perceived paranormal phenomena.”
He drops both hands in his lap, lowering his chin to look derisively at the good doctor.
The man inhales slowly. “Do you feel guilt for the murders?”
“Why should I? They deserved it.”
He pushes to his feet.
He slumps back in his chair.
He aims a hard look
“Aaghh!” Novelist Darell Brooke smacked his keyboard and shoved away from the desk. All concentration drained from his mind like water from a leaky pan.
His characters froze.
He lowered his head, raking gnarled fingers into the front of his scalp. For a time there he’d almost had it — that ancient joy of thoughts flowing and fingers typing. In the last two hours he’d managed to write three or four paragraphs. Now — nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
King of Suspense. He laughed, a bitter sound that singed his throat. Ninety-nine novels written in forty-three years. Well over a hundred million copies sold. Twenty-one major motion pictures made from his books. Countless magazine articles about his career, fan letters, invitations to celebrity parties. Now look at him at age seventy-seven. Two years after the auto accident and still only half mobile. And wielding a mere fraction of the brain power he used to have.
What good is an author who can’t hold a plot in his head?
As for his once-diehard fans, they were now happily reading King or Koontz or that upstart Patterson.
Betrayers, all. He made a gagging sound in his throat.
Darell stared at the monitor, reading over his strikeouts, struggling once more to settle into the story. He pictured the psychiatrist, his killer . . .
No use.
Face it, old man. You’ll never write that hundredth book. You’ve been put out to pasture for good.
He wrenched his eyes from the screen and reached for his shiny black cane. With effort, he pushed himself out of his leather chair to unsteady feet. The broken bones in his left leg and ankle had long since healed, but the ligament damage had not. Despite painful physical therapy his foot had not regained its full flexibility. Amazing — the constant flexing of a foot to maintain equilibrium. He hadn’t realized the importance of those muscles and tendons until his were torn apart.
Darell shuffled across the hardwood floor of his thirty-foot-long office, repelled by his writing desk and computer. Every day they wooed, then shunned him. At the tall, mullioned window near the far corner he stopped and spread his feet wide. Hunched over, both hands on his cane, he brooded over the green rolling hills of his estate, the untamed and capricious Pacific Ocean in the distance.
He used to go to the beach to write a couple times a week, tapping his laptop keys as the surf pounded in rhythm to his pulse. Now he never left the house except for doctor’s appointments.
Darell Brooke had no use for a world that no longer had use for him.
His mouth puckered with disdain.
Characters’ faces in shadow, snippets of scenes filtered through his mind. Fredda Lee. Now there was a delectable killer. Or Alfred Stone with his black hair and eyebrows, an intimidating figure much as Darell had appeared in his younger days. Black Tie Affair, that was Alfred’s book.
No. Not that one.
Midnight Madness?
Darell shook his head. He used to know. Before the accident, he remembered every story he’d written, every character.
“You knocked your skull pretty badly,” the doctor had said as Darell watched the hospital room spiral from his bed. “The dizziness will pass, but you might find it hard to concentrate . . .”
Now here Darell stood, a shell of his former self. As the undisputed King of Suspense he’d reveled in playing the part. No longer was there a part to play. His once stern, confident countenance — now blank-faced. His black hair turned an unruly shock of white. The wild gray brows jutting over his deep-set, dark eyes no longer intimidating, merely strawlike. Oh, how he used to love to use those eyebrows! The muscular arms — even into his early seventies — sagging. Straight back now bent.
“Pshhh.” His lips curled.
Slowly, with defiance, Darell raised his chin.
He focused through the glass once more. At least the gnarled trees on his property still looked formidable. And his mansion looked just as severe from afar, with its black shutters and multiple wings and gables. From the outside looking in, people would never guess . . .
Darell glared at the phone near his computer. On impulse he clomped over to it and picked up the receiver. His gnarled forefinger hovered over the keys.
What was the number? The one he’d dialed countless times, year after year.
He lowered himself to the edge of his chair and flipped through his Rolodex. There.
Malcolm Featherling, agent to the country’s top writers, answered his private line on the third ring. Clipped tone, terse greeting. Malcolm was always pushed for time.
“Hello, Malcolm. Just checking in to give you an update.” Darell pushed the old confidence into his voice. After all, his agent worked for him.
“Well, Darell, nice to hear from you. It has been three days.”
Darell blinked. He’d called three days ago? Surely it was at least a month. Maybe two.
He cleared his throat. It sounded phlegmy, like an old man’s. He hated that. “I wrote some today. Almost a page. And another yesterday. You know what they say — write a page a day and you’ve got a novel in a year.”
He used to write at least two a year. All of them brilliant.
“That’s good, Darell, good . . .”
“Maybe I can get that contract back. Just think, Malcolm, fifteen percent of ten million is a lot of dough. I’ll make you rich. Again.”
“You do that, man, you do that. Keep up the good work.”
He could hear the disbelief in Malcolm’s response. The agent was patronizing him. Darell’s publisher had waited eight months after the accident, strung along on the promise that he would be able to write his one hundredth bestseller — the assumed milestone that had landed him on the cover of Time magazine. But a worldwide publishing conglomerate couldn’t wait forever, even for Darell Brooke. Not with half the contract — five million dollars — already paid up front, and doctors advising he may never write again. The deal was canceled. Darell had been forced to give the money back. Malcolm had to cough up his fifteen percent.
I’ll show you, Malcolm. Maybe I’ll even get a
new agent.
“All right. Well, got to get back to my writing. See you, Malcolm.” Darell clicked off the line and stared at the phone in his hand.
Just three days ago he’d called?
With a loud sigh he hung up the receiver. He shifted his legs and focused on the half-empty page on his screen. An emptiness he used to love to fill. Now it mocked him. His killer was still on his feet, frozen. The psychiatrist watched from his chair.
What were they supposed to do next? Where had he been headed with this story?
What was the story?
Oh, to regain half the concentration he’d once had. A fourth. A tenth. The thought of spending day after day in this mansion-turned-prison, in this office, unproductive and used up, filled him with an emptiness as deep as staring into the face of eternal hell . . .
Straightening, Darell dredged up his will.
He placed his fingers on the keyboard, straining to turn the gears of his mind. One more paragraph, just one. He’d give anything to finish this book. To gain back his reputation, his life. Anything.
The gears refused to move.
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Stain of Guilt Page 25
