by Brenda Novak
“You’re listed under your husband’s name,” he said, “which I saw on a picture at Francesca’s.”
Had he felt a little tug when he’d seen that picture? Something had made him memorize her husband’s name….
But that was exactly the type of thinking that’d gotten her into trouble before. None of this meant what she wanted it to. “Why are you calling?”
“I’m sorry. I know this is unexpected and…awkward, at best. I wouldn’t have bothered you, except…I’m looking for Francesca.”
Of course. Why else would he contact her? If she hadn’t been so blinded by desire ten years ago—desire and selfishness—she would’ve been able to see the truth even then. “She’s not here.”
“Have you heard from her today?”
“No.” The rumble of a car engine brought her to the kitchen window. Her husband had just come home from his office downtown, where he ran his medical practice. Hoping it would take him a few minutes to greet the kids before he came looking for her, she dashed up the stairs to their bedroom and closed the door. He knew about Jonah and the baby she’d given up. She’d told him all about it when they were dating. But she was sure he assumed, as she had until this morning, that if she ever met Jonah again he’d have no effect on her.
“Can I give you my number, in case she does get in touch with you?” Jonah asked.
That was it? They’d created a child together but he had nothing more to say to her than “please give my number to Francesca”? He hadn’t asked about her husband, her kids, how she’d been…
She closed her eyes. “I— Sure. Why not?” She had to agree, didn’t she? A refusal might inform him of how she felt—reveal her pounding heart and sweating palms. She loved all she had, but Jonah reminded her of old dreams and what it was like to be young, to experience the kind of bone-melting desire that could burn out of control.
“Thanks. You ready?”
“Yeah.” She jotted his number on the pad her husband kept by the bedside for when he awoke with a thought he didn’t want to forget. Then she ripped off that sheet, folded it into a tiny triangle and slipped it in her back pocket.
“What—what brought you back?” she asked before he could hang up.
She already knew about the cases in Prescott; she was really inquiring about finding him at Francesca’s house, and he seemed to understand that.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess the price we paid wasn’t high enough.”
A click signaled that he’d disconnected just as she heard her husband coming up the stairs. “Adriana? Where are you, babe?”
“I put a clean towel on the back of the toilet, in case you get up before me and want a shower.”
Shifting her attention from her laptop, which was open on the kitchen table, Francesca conjured up a smile for Heather’s sake. Nearly six feet tall and bone thin, her assistant had a pale face and long dark hair with streaks of blond that came from a bottle. “Thanks. I really appreciate your help.”
“No problem. Mi casa es su casa. Such as it is,” she added with a shrug. “You need anything else?”
“No, this is great.” Although she’d tried to infuse her voice with enthusiasm, Francesca considered those words a fairly transparent lie. She’d never felt so out of place, never dreamed it’d be necessary to spend the night with her twenty-two-year-old employee. For one thing, Heather lived in a small apartment and didn’t have room for guests. For another, as a single mother caring for a three-year-old boy, she already had her hands full. Francesca didn’t want to be an imposition.
But she couldn’t face going home. Not tonight. So what if she was doing the exact opposite of what she’d told Jonah she’d do? And so what if a small part of her felt sheepish for wimping out? She was too emotionally and physically spent to deal with returning to the house. It didn’t matter that Heather had met the locksmith and had the locks changed. Francesca no longer felt safe. She needed to get some sleep without having to worry that Butch might pay her another visit as soon as she closed her eyes. It wasn’t as if she could go to a hotel. She’d ordered a new debit card and replacement credit cards before going to the Apple store to get another iPhone, but they were coming in the mail and wouldn’t arrive for several days. Until then, she couldn’t do anything that required a card.
She supposed she could’ve stayed with Adriana…. But she couldn’t handle the complexity of their relationship right now. It was hard enough coping with the feelings Jonah had dredged up.
The unopened messages waiting in her in-box beckoned to her. Reading her e-mail brought a measure of relief because it felt normal. She could get lost in work and forget that she was sitting in an unfamiliar kitchen with cracked linoleum, secondhand furniture and a noisy dishwasher so old it hooked up to the sink. But she needed to be polite, didn’t want to ignore Heather. “Sean down for the night?” she asked, making small talk.
Heather responded while gathering up her son’s toys and piling them in a toy box shaped like a plastic turtle. “For the time being. Lately, he’s been getting up a lot. The doctor said I shouldn’t be too quick to respond when he calls out for me, so don’t worry if I let him fuss a little. I’m trying to teach him to sleep through the night so I won’t have to go through my days feeling like the walking dead.”
“No problem. Do whatever you have to. I’m not here to get in the way.” Francesca wasn’t even sure she’d be able to hear Sean. Her bed was in the living room, on the lumpy sofa.
As she bent to retrieve the last toy, Heather’s shirt rose up, revealing a large tattoo on her back—Alberto, the name of Sean’s father. In prison for armed robbery, he still had nearly two years, but Heather was determined to wait for him. He’d promised to marry her when he got out, make them a family, and each square of the calendar on her wall showed a number—the days left in his term. Six hundred and thirty as of today, which sounded like an eternity to Francesca. She often wondered how Heather tolerated having the man she loved locked up. But Heather never complained. She’d had a rough childhood and didn’t seem to expect a lot out of life.
Finished with the toys, she stretched her back. “Okay, well, I know it’s early for bed, but I’m going to turn in, if you don’t mind.”
It was only ten after nine, but it felt much later than that. Francesca planned on following her example, just as soon as she’d downloaded all the information that’d been stored in the iPhone she’d lost. Fortunately, she had a copy of everything on her computer. God bless the iPhone and its syncing ability. “I don’t mind a bit. Get some sleep while you can, huh?”
“You, too. You could use it.” She headed down the hall but turned back before reaching the bedroom. “I almost forgot—we were so busy this afternoon—but you got a ton of messages today. I brought them home, just in case you weren’t coming in tomorrow.” Twisting her hair up and fanning her neck, she went to her purse, which was sitting on the counter, and eventually handed Francesca a stack of messages fastened with a paper clip.
“You might want to check your voice mail, too, if you haven’t already,” she said. “Some of the people who called wanted to be transferred. Others had me take a message.”
“Will do. ’Night.” Francesca listened to Heather’s steps recede as she started through her messages. Jillian Abbatiello’s name was at the top of the stack. No doubt she’d also left a message on voice mail. April’s disappearance was so recent, they talked every day. Jill had to be wondering where Francesca had disappeared so suddenly. Francesca hadn’t called her because she wasn’t sure whether or not to tell Jill and Vince about the body in Skull Valley. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until she knew whether or not that corpse was April?
But no word was agony, too. Which was worse for April’s family?
Deciding to hold off until tomorrow morning, she set the message aside. Investigator Finch’s name was on the next slip. The two after that came from Jonah. All three said the same thing. “Call ASAP.”
Did they have new inform
ation? If so, it might solve the dilemma of what to tell Jill and Vince.
Disregarding the rest of her messages, she called Jonah first. Finch hadn’t fully forgiven her for embarrassing him. Jonah would be more forthcoming with any details the M.E. managed to find, anyway.
“Hello?”
She felt a flutter in her stomach the moment she heard his voice—and cursed her weakness. “It’s me.”
“Jeez, it’s about time you called. You scared the shit out of me, you know that? You can’t go dropping off the face of the earth and expect me not to think the worst, Francesca.”
Covering her eyes, she tried to rub away some of her fatigue—and wished she could ignore her appreciation of his voice. They used to talk for hours on the phone, whenever they couldn’t be together in person. “Sorry. I’ve been busy putting my life back in order, as much as that’s possible in one afternoon. I’m not used to anyone keeping tabs on me, so I wasn’t aware I should check in.”
“After this morning? Are you nuts?”
“I understand why you might’ve thought the worst. But you can relax. I’m fine.”
“Where are you?”
Her eyes circled the room, taking in the old wooden cupboards, which had been repainted so many times they hardly closed, the chipped enamel sink, the 1960s table and chairs covered in lime-green vinyl upholstery, the ancient toaster. Did she really want to tell him? He might wonder why she hadn’t chosen to stay with Adriana, and she’d rather he didn’t realize he still had the power to tear them apart. “How do you know I’m not home?”
“Because I’m at your house.”
She sat up straighter. “Why?”
“When I couldn’t find you anywhere else, I thought maybe you’d eventually come here.”
“But…it’s locked. How’d you get in?”
“I didn’t.” His yawn came through the phone. “I fell asleep on the porch while I was waiting for you.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. Why?” He’d obviously noted the sharp edge to her voice.
“Because Butch doesn’t like you any better than he does me,” she snapped. “You’re lucky he didn’t decide to stop by and bash your head in while you were taking your snooze.”
“I didn’t fall asleep on purpose, Francesca.”
Pushing out of her chair, she began to pace. “It doesn’t matter. Just leave. Get out of there now. Don’t you have a—a wife or a girlfriend or something who’d be unhappy about you taking such risks?”
“I have neither. And I’ve got my gun. I’ll use it if necessary.”
She imagined how easy it would’ve been to sneak up on him while he was unconscious. “Now that you’re awake, shooting an assailant might be a possibility.”
“A distinct possibility. I have nothing to worry about.”
“Fine.” She wiped the image from her mind. She was so rattled she perceived danger lurking around every corner. Maybe she was overreacting, assuming Butch was a threat to everyone.
And maybe it was true…
Either way, Jonah was merely a work associate responsible for his own safety. She had to remember that.
Sidling up to the window, she parted the curtains to stare out at the empty, second-story landing. “So…why’d you call me earlier? What’s happening with the body?”
“The M.E. finished the autopsy two hours ago.”
“And?”
“The victim was raped before she was killed.”
She didn’t want to acknowledge that. “Anything else?”
“She has a small tattoo on the inside of her right thigh.”
Francesca experienced a surge of hope. She couldn’t imagine such a straightlaced teacher getting a tattoo. Maybe that corpse wasn’t April Bonner, after all. But when she hung up so she could call Jill and ask, she didn’t like the answer. Yes, April had such a tattoo.
They’d found her.
Francesca explained the situation as gently as she could. She even spoke to Vince, who got on the extension. The Abbatiellos were understandably broken-hearted; it made her feel terrible that she could offer no solace, except the promise that she’d do all she could to bring April’s killer to justice.
By the time she said goodbye, she was clammy with sweat that wasn’t entirely due to the minimal air-conditioning in Heather’s apartment. Pressing her forehead to the glass of the picture window in the living room, she called Jonah back. “It’s her. Jill just told me they each got a butterfly tattoo on April’s thirtieth birthday.”
“You might want to have her draw a picture of it, just to be sure,” he said.
“I will—tomorrow. Let’s give her and Vince tonight to deal with their grief.”
“They’ll check the victim’s dental records, too,” he said, “but it sounds pretty certain.”
“That means Butch is the killer, Jonah,” she said.
“We don’t have any proof of that yet,” he reminded her.
“In a way, we do. He was done with her. He’d already buried her. He would’ve left her where she was if it wasn’t for me.”
“How do you figure into this?”
“Digging her up and leaving her for the police was his way of taunting me, scaring me, making me feel powerless.”
There was a long pause. “I hope you’re wrong about that.”
“I’m not. He’s proud of his work, as Finch said earlier. And he wants to prove his superiority to the police. He’s left all the other people he’s murdered in the ground, hasn’t he?”
“As far as I know. We’re the ones who dug up the bodies in Dead Mule Canyon.”
“Exactly. Are you prepared to tell me it isn’t the same guy? You think we have two killers going around raping and beating women to death in such a sparsely populated area? No. He dug up April because of me, to show me what I have to look forward to.”
“Don’t even say that,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve convinced Finch that we need to keep an eye on Butch. They’ll be watching him.”
“Starting when?”
“Tonight, I hope. If they’re not there now they should be soon.”
That news brought some relief, at least for the moment. She could go home tomorrow and enjoy a short reprieve from the anxiety that’d been pumping through her blood like oxygen. But what if one week led to the next and Butch never acted suspicious? The police couldn’t sit there indefinitely. He could outwait them. What with budget constraints, it wouldn’t even be hard—a few weeks, a month at most. And then…
Something jumped from the roof onto the landing, causing Francesca to rear back. She dropped her phone before realizing it was only a cat. A black cat…
“What’s wrong? Francesca? You there?” Jonah’s voice came to her as if through a tunnel when she retrieved her cell.
“Sorry. I was…startled by a cat, that’s all.” She managed a laugh but, with her heart still racing, knew it only revealed how frazzled she was.
“You okay?”
“Of course,” she said. But she couldn’t help being a little spooked. Maybe it was her imagination, but that cat seemed like a harbinger of doom. It stared boldly up at her with its unblinking, tawny eyes. Then it twitched its tail and sauntered away.
So what if it was black? she told herself. She wasn’t superstitious.
“Fine. Call me if anything comes up,” Jonah said.
“You do the same.” A click confirmed that he was gone.
Trying to relax despite what they’d learned, she drew a deep breath, but before she even set her phone aside, another call came in—from Unknown Sender.
10
Having lost sight of the cat, Francesca let the drapes fall into place and answered her phone on the way back to her laptop. “Hello?”
“Is this Francesca Moretti?”
She didn’t recognize the voice, and it was a little late for a sales call. “Yes…”
“This is Dean Wheeler.”
“Who?”
“Paris’s brother.”
&nb
sp; Thinking this had to be a referral from a previous client, she sank into the seat she’d occupied earlier. “I’m afraid I don’t remember a Paris.”
“Paris Vaughn. Butch’s wife?”
She’d been about to shut down her computer, but as she heard this, her fingers hovered in midair. Was her caller the slim young man who’d watched the events at the salvage yard with such ambivalence? It had to be. He spoke as if she should know him. “What can I do for you, Dean?”
“I wanted to tell you I’ve found your purse.”
She closed her laptop without bothering to power it down. “What did you say?”
“The purse you lost?”
There’d been no “losing” involved. Butch had stolen it from her. But she didn’t insist on the truth. She preferred to see where this was going. “You’re prepared to return it to me?”
“Of course, now that I’ve found it.”
She listened for proof that Dean wasn’t alone but couldn’t hear anything—no voices, no television, no car engine in the background. “I appreciate that. Where was it?”
“In the salvage yard, just like you thought. Isn’t that strange? I don’t know how we missed it.”
Could Dean really expect her to believe it had been overlooked, when she knew exactly where she’d dropped it and under what circumstances?
What was going on here? Was Dean trying to do her a favor? Or was he somehow in league with Butch?
“Your wallet’s inside and everything,” he added, as if she should be inordinately pleased.
“And my phone?”
“Yep. That, too.”
“How’d you get my number?”
“It’s on your checks.”
Of course. Her address was there, too. Her business cards provided her office information. Her telephone contained a complete list of all her friends, clients and associates, as well as a detailed calendar of upcoming appointments. Her video card gave the location where she rented her movies. Her key ring held the supersaver card for her local grocery store. Heck, anyone who got hold of her purse could even tell what kind of tampons she used.
