by Brenda Novak
She’d never considered just how much information her purse might reveal about her—until she’d lost it.
“Would you like to come by and pick it up?” Dean was saying.
Had he forgotten what had occurred during her last visit? This guy wasn’t quite…normal. He acted as if she and Butch liked each other, as if there’d never been any trouble. “I don’t think so, Dean. That brother-in-law of yours is a bit too dangerous for me to feel comfortable walking onto the property again.”
“Oh, Butch won’t care if you come. He told me I could call you.”
She felt her eyebrows slide up. “He did?”
“Of course. He doesn’t need a woman’s purse.” He laughed as though he found the words Butch and purse in the same sentence incredibly funny.
So why would Butch return her belongings? Because he already had all the information he could get and wanted to draw her back to Prescott? Or was there another reason for making it available to her?
“Are you coming?” he asked.
She’d already canceled her credit cards; it was too late to save them. But she could sell her old iPhone, and she’d spent nearly three hundred dollars on the purse itself. Then there was her driver’s license. Just avoiding a trip to the DMV was worth trying to make some sort of arrangement. “Can you meet me somewhere off-site?”
She hoped that by getting Dean alone and away from the watchful eye of his brother-in-law, she might be able to talk to him. If Butch was really the person who’d killed all those people in Dead Mule Canyon, the members of his household must have noticed something amiss.
“I don’t know about that,” Dean hedged. “Butch said to have you pick it up here.”
“I could ask the police to get it for me.”
“No, I don’t think he wants the police to come back.”
Was this a personal challenge, then? Was Butch trying to determine how frightened she was? Whether or not he’d managed to cow her with his middle-of-the-night appearance and the stomach-turning proof of what he’d done to April Bonner?
If so, making her fearful had to be important to him. It was possible that he intended to strip away her sense of well-being and security, make her paranoid, before he finished her off. In that case, she probably stood a better chance of putting off a life-and-death encounter if he believed he hadn’t yet attained his goal.
He hadn’t, had he? Okay, so she didn’t go home tonight. And maybe she spent too much time looking over her shoulder and jumping at anything that moved—like that damn cat. But she wasn’t about to let him win whatever he’d started between them. “So what are you saying?”
“You can pick it up here if you want it.”
Her mind ran through various scenarios. She supposed she could go in with a wire, have the police waiting in the wings in case of trouble. Maybe Butch would threaten her or do something that would make it possible for Finch and Hunsacker to arrest him. Getting him off the street would certainly be worth the risk, especially if they could hold him until they gathered enough evidence to prosecute him for April’s murder.
“Fine,” she said. “When?”
“Tomorrow?”
“What time?”
“First thing in the morning.”
“Ten is the earliest I can make it. As Butch knows, from having driven to my house yesterday, I live two hours away.”
“Are you hoping I’ll confirm that he was gone?”
“And if I am?” Dean was odd. Different. Would his testimony even help?
“I was sound asleep last night,” he said.
“And the other nights? He’s left before. I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t want to talk about Butch. There are too many other interesting subjects.”
“Like…”
“Your friends.”
“What about them?”
“They’re really nice. And they think so highly of you. You should be proud.”
Francesca brought a hand to her chest. “What are you talking about?”
“Adriana and Josephine and Heather. I like them all.”
Josephine was her aging neighbor. After having both knees replaced two weeks ago, she could barely get around. No way could she defend herself against someone like Butch. “How would you know my friends?” she breathed.
“I called them earlier, when I was trying to get hold of you. I went through your address book. I like the way you categorize. You make it easy to tell friends from clients. I even left a message at your office with that nice Heather person who said she’s your assistant.”
What the heck? Bracing the phone with her shoulder, Francesca shuffled through the messages she’d set aside. Sure enough, there was one from Dean Wheeler. Because it didn’t mention her purse—just his name and number—it wouldn’t have meant a thing to her even if she’d seen it.
“I’m glad you kept the same cell number,” he said. “You never pick up at home.”
Could he be as oblivious as he was making it sound? Or was he laughing at her? “The line’s been cut.”
“Really?”
Had he already known? She couldn’t quite tell…. “Really.”
“How long will it take to get that fixed?”
She ignored the concern in his voice, wasn’t sure she could trust him. “The telephone company will get to it as soon as they can.” Due to recent layoffs, they had a backlog of work orders and couldn’t send someone out right away. But she didn’t add that.
“That must be a relief. Well, just so you know, Adriana’s been trying to reach you. You should give her a call. She’s worried about you getting your purse back. She even offered to drive over here and pick it up.”
So why had Dean refused? Francesca was curious about that, but didn’t ask. She didn’t want to make Adriana a focal point. The last thing she needed was for the people closest to her to come to the attention of someone like Butch or his odd brother-in-law. “No reason to drag my friends into this. We’ve got it covered, right?”
“Now we do. I’ll let you go. But please tell Heather I hope her son sleeps through the night.”
He knew where she was staying! She got the feeling he’d been following her, but it was more likely that he’d spoken to Heather just before she’d left the office to pack Francesca’s overnight bag while Francesca was at the Apple store. Regardless, like Butch—maybe because of Butch—he was trying to frighten her.
“Quit it,” she said flatly.
“Quit what?”
“Mentioning my friends. They have nothing to do with you or Butch or whatever’s going on here, so just leave them out of it.”
“What do you mean ‘going on’? I was only trying to be nice.”
If that was true, why did she have alarm bells going off in her head? “It’s Butch I’m worried about,” she said.
“He’s not what you think he is, Francesca. Really.”
The way he used her first name, as if they knew each other, grated on her, too. “Tell April Bonner that.”
“Who?”
“The woman your brother-in-law met last Saturday at the Pour House. Her body turned up this morning outside the Skull Valley Chocolate and Handmade Gifts shop, less than fifteen minutes from your house.”
Another voice came on the line, this one louder and blatantly taunting. “You sure it wasn’t a mannequin?”
Francesca recognized Butch’s laugh. “You think it’s funny?”
“I think you’re funny,” he said, still laughing.
“Why’d you move her, Butch? Don’t tell me you went to all that trouble just for me.”
The laughter suddenly stopped. “Nothing’s too much trouble for you.”
Swallowing hard, she gripped the phone more tightly. “Good. Because the forensic evidence you provided will come in handy when the investigation moves into the prosecution phase.”
She hadn’t said if; she’d said when. And she’d been bluffing. She couldn’t say for sure that the police or the M.E. had been able to glean any forensic evide
nce. They’d taken samples. Now they had to wait for the lab results. But she wasn’t all that hopeful. It wouldn’t be easy to get foreign DNA from a body that’d been buried, disinterred and dumped elsewhere, especially a body that was in such an advanced stage of decomposition.
Still, she’d succeeded in turning the tables on him. Tension came across the line as palpably as if he’d started swearing at her.
“You don’t scare me,” he ground out.
“You don’t scare me, either,” she lied. “See you in the morning.”
As soon as she disconnected, Francesca dropped her phone on the table and laid her head on her arms. As much as she wanted the whole situation to go away, it was far from over.
Francesca felt Jonah glance in her direction every few seconds while he drove. When she’d called to tell him about the conversation with Dean and Butch, he’d already left Chandler, but he’d insisted on coming back to get her. He said she’d be safer with him than staying anywhere Butch might look. But as far as Francesca was concerned, safe was a relative term. Being around Jonah risked things besides physical injury or death.
They needed to get to Prescott with plenty of time to prepare for tomorrow, however. She had no idea how long it would take the police to get her set up with a wire and put the proper surveillance in place.
Besides, despite an abundance of restless energy, she didn’t feel like driving two hours on her own. They’d taken her car because they hadn’t wanted a change to alert Butch that the police might be involved, but Jonah had the wheel. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been quite so exhausted or upset, and couldn’t say whether she’d been right to stand up to Butch or not. But after talking to Dean, she wasn’t as worried about herself as much as her friends. Her iPhone contained everyone’s address, everyone who was remotely important to her. That meant Butch and Dean knew where Adriana lived with her husband and two kids, where Josephine lived—alone since her husband had died three years ago—and where Heather and Sean resided in that subsistence-level apartment. He even had her parents’ phone number and address, here in Arizona and where they were staying in Montana, should he care to take advantage of it.
Would he try to hurt someone she loved? Should she warn everyone immediately? Or wait and see if a threat really materialized?
She didn’t want to throw her entire circle of family and friends into a panic. But by the time she knew whether the threat was real, it could be too late….
Jonah broke into her thoughts. “How’s April’s sister holding up?”
“Not well.” Francesca would never forget the quiet sobs that’d come across the line. What had happened to April made no sense. She’d been such an unlikely victim. She hadn’t been living on the fringes of society as a hooker or a crack addict. She’d been a straight-A student who’d become a third-grade teacher—Teacher of the Year, two years prior. She volunteered at the library and was kind and helpful to children at school who didn’t have a nurturing family. “Jill feels guilty on top of her grief, which makes it worse,” she explained.
He slung an arm over the steering wheel. He was wearing a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt and had showered and shaved since she’d last seen him, but even with his cheeks smooth and his hair combed, he wasn’t the polished type. He was a “take me as I am” kind of guy who didn’t bother with tattoos, earrings, cologne. Fortunately for him, he had more than enough assets to pull off his minimalist approach.
“Why would she feel guilty?” he asked.
She pretended she hadn’t been admiring him. She knew better than to get caught up in that, didn’t she? She was just too tired to fight her natural inclination. It’d been so long since she’d been with Jonah. She couldn’t help wondering if he kissed the same, touched the same…
Clearing her throat, she told herself it didn’t matter and answered his question. “She’s the one who encouraged April to try an online dating service. That’s how she met her own husband, so she was high on the idea and thought it might work for her sister.”
He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “That’s too bad.”
It was worse than “too bad,” but no words were adequate and she understood that.
Suddenly, Jonah looked over and saw her studying him again. She’d been searching for subtle changes in his body. His thighs were slightly thicker. His hands had a few more nicks and scars—or maybe they had a lot more. Hard to tell in the dim glow of the instrument panel. His biceps seemed more pronounced beneath the soft cotton sleeves of his Cabo San Lucas T-shirt.
She thought maybe he’d ask her what she was looking at, but he didn’t. Their eyes met and held, then his eyebrows jerked together as he returned his attention to the road. “Any chance you could get some sleep?” he asked.
Had he spoken merely to break a silence that had become too intense? She got that impression. There was no real expectation in the question. He knew how wound up she was, that it would be impossible to relax so soon. “No. First I need to decide whether or not to contact the people Dean mentioned.”
“You were staying with Heather. You didn’t tell her before you left?”
“She was already asleep when he called, and I wasn’t sure waking her was a good idea. She has no family in this part of the country and her boyfriend is in jail. Where would she go in the middle of the night with a three-year-old?” Refusing to let her gaze linger on him, she frowned and watched the pavement rush beneath their tires. “I wrote her a note, telling her not to divulge any information to Butch Vaughn, Paris Vaughn or Dean Wheeler, should they call, and to contact me in the morning so I could explain why I had to leave, but…maybe I should’ve done more.”
“What about Adriana?” he asked.
She’d planned on calling Adriana, but by the time she’d finished her conversation with Jill, Jonah had arrived to take her to Prescott. “I definitely need to call her.”
“What are you waiting for?”
Some privacy. She feared Adriana would pump her for information about Jonah, and she didn’t want him overhearing the whole thing. But it’d be after midnight by the time they got to Prescott. If she was going to warn Adriana, she’d better do it now. Adriana’s name had been in that stack of messages she’d received from Heather, too. As soon as she’d hung up with Jonah, Francesca had flipped through the rest of them, but she hadn’t yet tackled her voice mail. She’d started to, then heard that it was full and hung up. Twenty messages? Too many. She couldn’t deal with her regular clients in the midst of all this. Besides, quite a few of those messages were probably from Adriana. She was nothing if not persistent.
The phone rang twice before Adriana picked up.
“Where the heck have you been?”
“Dealing with a case.”
“A man by the name of Dean Wheeler called here. You must’ve left your purse in Prescott because he was trying to return it to you. I’ve called and called, hoping to get you, but—”
“He got hold of me. I’m heading there now. But I wanted to let you know about something that’s going on, something that has me worried.”
“What?” she asked, then fell silent as Francesca explained.
“This Butch guy came to your house?” she said when Francesca was done. “You were afraid he might try to break in when you woke me up last night, and you didn’t say a word?”
They’d been too busy talking about Jonah. “I didn’t want to scare you. I figured I could handle it myself. But now…I think you need to know that he might try to hurt me by hurting people I love. He has your address as well as your phone number. Tonight his brother-in-law, Dean, mentioned you and Josephine, even Heather and her son.”
“And you believe this man, this Butch, killed a woman?”
“I believe he may have killed a lot more than one.”
“My God, this is surreal. Like something out of a movie.”
“It’s not. Take it seriously, Adriana.”
“How?”
“Lock your doors and windows. Tell
your husband to watch for any suspicious activity. Keep a cell phone handy in case you need to call the police.”
“You’re scaring the shit out of me,” she said.
“That’s what I’m trying to do. Then you’ll be cautious, watch out for strangers, look around whenever you leave the house.”
“What about you? So what if this guy has your purse? Maybe you should just let him keep it.”
“I’m hoping it’ll help maintain contact. If he’s focused on me, he won’t be out killing anyone else. I hope.”
There was a brief silence, then Adriana asked, “Does Jonah know about this?”
“Yes.”
“He called here earlier, too. He wanted me to give you the message that he’s trying to reach you.”
“Thanks for letting me know.” She wasn’t sure why she didn’t admit that he was sitting in the car next to her. Like everything else about the three of them, it was complicated.
Glad she’d given Adriana some notice, Francesca felt the tension begin to seep from her body. “I’ve got to go. I’ll check in tomorrow.”
“Francesca?”
She hesitated. “What?”
“If things between you and Jonah are heating up again, I hope…well, I hope you won’t let the past stand in the way of…of a reconciliation. If that’s what you want. If that’s what you really want.”
“It’s not what I want,” she said. She had no intention of asking for a second helping of the kind of hurt he’d dished out a decade before. For all she knew, he’d lied about having a girlfriend.
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Maybe he’s changed, Fran.”
“And maybe he hasn’t.”
A scowl tugged at the corners of Jonah’s mouth as he shot her a glance. He could tell they were talking about him.
“Right,” Adriana said. “Okay. Well, be careful.”
Was it Francesca’s imagination or did her friend sound relieved? “I will.”
Francesca pressed the end-call button and glanced up to find Jonah watching her.
“I was never really attracted to her,” he said. “I—”
Wincing, she held up a hand. “Don’t. Really. That only makes it worse.”
