I was betting she’d panic and be less careful, but I knew Sonterra was persuaded otherwise, so I didn’t try to convince him. “I have a legal right to investigate,” I said. “Want to see my badge?”
Sonterra cranked off the light and slammed himself into the mattress. “Let me do my job, Clare.” He didn’t sound like he had a hope in hell that I would back off, and he was right about that. It was too late for Judy Holliday, but Micki and her daughter might still be alive. Sonterra was doing everything he could, but a fresh perspective—mine—couldn’t hurt. “Lombard will blow it sooner or later. His kind always does. And once the cuffs are on, your new boss can prosecute him to hell and back for all I care.”
“Go to sleep, Sonterra.”
He threw back the covers, rolled out of bed, and did the lamp thing again. “Like I could,” he said. He looked sexy as hell, standing there in his sweatpants and nothing else, with his hair all rumpled and his eyes shooting Latin fire.
I decided sex was probably out of the question.
“It’s one-thirty in the morning,” I pointed out. “What are you going to do at this hour?”
“I’ll think of something,” he told me, and stormed out of the room.
I wriggled over to his side of the bed and switched off the light. Maybe he didn’t want to sleep, but I did. I plunked myself into the pillows and squeezed my eyes shut.
The skeleton bride came to mind.
I got up, grumbling, and went downstairs, tracking Sonterra to the small den at the front of the house, where he was logging on to the Web.
“This is ridiculous,” I said.
He ignored me.
I went back to the kitchen, examined the contents of the freezer, and nobly decided against ice-cream therapy. I was sitting at the table, sipping herbal tea, when somebody pounded at the front door.
Sonterra was closer, and he got there before I did, but just barely.
A teenage boy stood on the porch, hyperventilating. I recognized him as the kid who, with his girlfriend’s help, had pulled me out of the Escalade after the first vehicular attack.
I didn’t recall his name and, between the hospital stay and everything else that had been going on since, I hadn’t had a chance to thank him.
Sonterra pulled him into the house and sat him down in the living room. “What is it, Michael?” he demanded. Obviously, they’d had conversations in the meantime.
The kid’s eyes were enormous, and he was trembling. “We shouldn’t have been there—”
“Shouldn’t have been where?” Sonterra pressed.
Michael swallowed hard. “The cemetery,” he answered miserably. “We party there sometimes. Once, Lanna and I spent the night, on a dare—”
I sank onto the sofa. I knew there was a train coming, and it was too late to get off the tracks.
Sonterra crouched in front of the kid, looking up into his face. His voice was calm, even. “Okay, you were in the cemetery. What happened, Michael?”
Michael looked ready to faint, and I knew I ought to hurry back to the kitchen for a bottle of water, but I didn’t want to miss a word.
“There’s a naked woman, lying on top of one of the graves. I didn’t want to touch her, but I think—I think she’s dead.”
Sonterra muttered an expletive and straightened. “Wait here,” he said, and sprinted for the stairs.
Michael looked in my direction, but I don’t think he was focusing. “She’s all blue,” he said. “And there’s blood. Lots of blood.”
My stomach rolled. I regretted the macaroons in a whole new way. “Did you recognize her?” I heard myself ask. I knew what he was going to say, but I was hoping I was wrong.
He nodded and dropped the bomb. Even though I was expecting it, the explosion practically tore me apart. “Micki Post,” he said.
The cemetery was awash in the red-and-blue swirl of squad-car lights, and sure enough, my client and potential friend lay dead under a headstone that read BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. Both deputies were there, and the State Police were on the way.
I’d awakened Emma, told her to lock the door behind us, and jumped into the backseat of Sonterra’s SUV just as he popped it into reverse. Michael sat in front, on the passenger side, his narrow, boy’s shoulders moving with silent sobs.
Micki hadn’t been posed. She was sprawled, arms and legs flung out, as if she’d been dropped from a great height. I wept silently, helplessly, and cursed Bobby Ray Lombard for the murdering vulture turd he was.
Michael, Lanna, and a few other kids stood at a distance, huddled with their parents. Like me, most of the adults were in bathrobes.
Where was Suzie? I wondered desperately. Where in God’s name was the child?
Headlights appeared at the gates, and two unmarked cars pulled in, followed by a coroner’s van. More townspeople began to materialize out of the surrounding darkness, moving woodenly to the perimeter of the scene, like the living dead roused from their graves. More squad cars pulled in, and I spotted Special Agent Timmons among the new arrivals.
“Everybody stay back!” Dave Rathburn shouted, while Sonterra crouched beside the body, talking with the crime-scene technicians and the new cop crop. Timmons showed his shield and muscled in, dropping to his haunches next to Sonterra. He wore a natty suit, in contrast to hastily donned uniforms and bathrobes, and I wondered if FBI agents slept fully clad, standing up to keep from wrinkling their clothes.
Then Emma appeared beside me, holding a blanket. She draped it gently over my shoulders.
I wanted to take the blanket off, use it to cover Micki, but I knew Sonterra and the others wouldn’t let me get close enough. So I huddled inside the folds and waited, shivering hard. I’d thought the nightmare was bad, but this, of course, was infinitely worse.
Emma put an arm around my waist. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
I didn’t state the obvious—that she shouldn’t have been, either. She must have seen the flashing lights from her bedroom window, after we left, pulled on her clothes, and climbed over the fence between our back lawn and the graveyard.
“Come on, Clare,” Emma urged, when I remained silent. “Let me take you home.”
I shook my head. Micki had been my client. I’d filed for the restraining order that was supposed to keep Bobby Ray Lombard away. Fat lot of good that had done.
With my legal expertise and twenty-five cents, she could have made a phone call.
Sonterra stood and separated himself from the tight cluster around Micki, like a cell dividing. He approached, his face grim in the nearly nonexistent moonlight and the eerie red-and-blue glare from the squad-car lights.
“Deputy Rathburn will take you home,” he said tightly, looking straight at me and not bothering to comment on Emma’s presence at all.
“Michael said there was a lot of blood,” I responded with no inflection in my voice. I didn’t have the energy for anything but a monotone.
“Multiple stab wounds,” Sonterra answered. I was surprised he gave up that much. “Go home, Clare. Please. There’s nothing you can do here. Nothing anybody can do.”
Rathburn loomed beside me. “Car’s right over here,” he said quietly.
I caved. Let Deputy Dave take my arm and lead me away. Emma stayed at my other side. Held my hand as we sat in the back of the deputy-mobile, staring at the metal grille designed to keep prisoners from assaulting the officers in front.
Next thing I knew, we were pulling into Sonterra’s driveway.
Dave walked us to the front door, waited in silence while Emma produced a house key from the pocket of her jeans and did the honors.
“You’ll be all right here,” he said. “Be sure to lock up, just the same.”
“Thanks,” Emma told him when I didn’t speak, and pulled me inside. She locked up behind us, then walked me to the same chair where Michael had sat earlier, delivering the terrible news.
Waldo and Bernice hadn’t barked when we arrived, and now, while Emma went to the kitchen for wa
ter, Waldo settled on my feet, and Bernice jumped into my lap. She pressed her paws into my chest and licked at the salty streaks on my face, and I didn’t push her away.
Sometimes, you have to take your comfort where you can get it.
Loretta called at 7:00 A.M. sharp.
“Where have you been?” I demanded, testy from another trying night. “I’ve left half a dozen messages.”
“With Kip,” Loretta said quietly. “What’s up?”
Kip. I’d seen an e-mail from him in my computer’s inbox, but I hadn’t taken the time to read it. I’d been completely absorbed in Danielle’s Web presence the last time I’d gone online.
I took a slow, deep breath. “Your car is in the shop. Somebody bashed me from behind—in broad daylight, too.”
Loretta gasped. “You know I don’t give a damn about the car. Are you and the baby all right?”
Tears stung my eyes. “Yes,” I said. “Sonterra says you’re coming back for the wedding.”
“Friday night is the ETA, but I’m looking for an earlier flight.” A smile crept into her voice, albeit a weary and rather war-torn one. “Good news. Kip’s credit cards still work. I bought you a surprise at Saks.”
“Tell me!”
“Absolutely not. It wouldn’t be a surprise then. Are Mrs. K and Shanda coming down for the ceremony?”
“Yes,” I said, subdued by the reminder of the wedding. Come Saturday afternoon, I would no longer be a free agent. I recalled the skeleton dream and shivered. “Not to mention the whole Sonterra clan,” I added.
“It’s about time you bit the bullet, Clare,” Loretta said. “Tony’s a great catch. What do you say we learn to cook?”
Sometimes Loretta misses a segue and makes one of those conversational hairpin turns, and I have to lay some mental rubber to catch up. “Cook?” I echoed stupidly.
“You know—gather various raw food items and assemble them into something edible? Pots and pans are often involved, and a stove is usually helpful.”
I laughed. “Is Kip rooming across from Martha Stewart or something? Since when do you have a domestic bone in your body?”
“Since I decided to simplify my life,” Loretta said, and she sounded serious. “Kip is probably going to prison, Clare. Most likely, he’ll serve five to eight months in one of those country club places. He has some offshore accounts, so I’ll be all right for money. But I need something constructive to occupy myself in the meantime.”
I took a few moments to absorb the idea of Kip Matthews cooling his swanky heels in a prison, fancy or not. “ ‘In the meantime’?” I queried. “You mean, you plan to stay with him?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” There was a sort of shrug in Loretta’s voice. “Time will tell. Right now, the plan is to simplify—sell everything but the ranch, pay off the creditors and as many of the investors as possible, and start over.”
I didn’t know whether to admire my friend or crawl through the phone wires and choke her. “Whatever you decide, I’ll be with you,” I said.
“I know, and I appreciate it, Clare.” She paused. “This is the second time somebody’s rammed your car. The question of the hour is, who’s behind this, and what’s their motive?”
Sonterra and I had been over and over the subject. He’d been scrounging for leads from the beginning, but they were few and far between, and the bottom line was, we still didn’t have any idea what was going on.
I said as much to Loretta.
She was silent for a few moments after I’d finished, probably searching her own mind for a clue. “Any other developments I should know about?” she went on presently. “Besides the dents in the Lexus, I mean?”
I hesitated. “Some kids found a body in the cemetery last night. Naked, with a dozen or so stab wounds. Her name was Micki Post, and she was my client.”
“Oh, God. This would be the battered wife you told me about over the phone? The one with the little girl?”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. “I should have protected her.”
“How, Clare?” Loretta asked reasonably.
I bit my lower lip. I didn’t have an answer, and Loretta probably didn’t expect one. “Nobody knows where Suzie is. The daughter, I mean. God knows what Lombard has done to her—he might have killed her, too. I keep thinking another body will turn up—”
“You don’t know that,” Loretta broke in firmly. “Why go down that road before you have all the facts?”
I sighed. “I guess you’re right.” Up until then, I’d been curled up in a chair in the living room, like an invalid, with a blanket wrapped around me and the dogs curled up at my feet. Time to do something new. “You’re really okay, Loretta?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, you did say you wanted to learn to cook.”
Loretta laughed. “I’ve been watching the Food Channel, between visits to Kip. We can do this, Clare.”
“If you say so.”
“I’ll be at the Wagon Wheel late Friday night—unless I can get there sooner. Expect me on your doorstep Saturday morning at the latest.”
I thought of the disabled Lexus. “Won’t you need someone to pick you up at the airport?”
“I’m hiring a car. Ciao, Babe. Hang in there. Loretta is on the way.”
I teared up again, tossed aside the blanket, and stood, wavering a little on my feet. “I can’t wait to see you,” I said.
“That sound you hear in the distance is a bugle. The cavalry is about to ride over the hill. In the meantime, try not to piss off any more crazed killers, will you?”
I promised, we said good-bye, and the line went dead.
I was still standing there, holding the receiver, when Esperanza came in with the fifth pot of herbal tea. She’d been a rock, arriving an hour early for work, getting Emma off to school, and screening phone calls, so I wouldn’t have to come out of my cocoon before I was ready.
“You are feeling better?” she asked hopefully.
“Yes,” I answered. Something about Loretta’s call had shaken me out of my stupor. Maybe it was the threat of cooking. I felt recharged, and very restless.
I went straight to my computer, signed in, and opened the mailbox, calling Kip’s e-mail up first.
Hello, Clare.
If you haven’t deleted this by now, you’re at least willing to listen, and that’s all I can ask.
I know I screwed up, and since you’re Loretta’s best friend, you probably want to tell me off. I’m open to that. I deserve it. Mea culpa.
There’s no excuse for what I did, let’s get that out of the way first. I’ve made some bad mistakes, the worst of which was hurting Loretta. I got careless, I got busy, I got greedy. I forgot what really mattered—my wife.
You probably won’t believe this, Clare, and under the circumstances, I can’t blame you, but I DO love Loretta. I’m asking you to take care of her.
She’s in a vulnerable place.
Keep her safe.
Kip
Tears stung my eyes as I hit the REPLY button and wrote a message of my own.
Nothing will happen to Loretta on my watch.
Clare.
Ignoring the other e-mails, all of which had innocuous subject lines, I signed off.
A shower was the next thing on the agenda. Then I would sift through the messages Esperanza had taken down earlier, while I was incubating in the living room. That done, I planned to stroll down to the cop shop and hang around until I found out what was going on. If I had to, I’d flash my county credentials.
I felt like a new woman after the shower, even though I did have to pull on my fat jeans. I was standing in the kitchen, examining the messages—two from Eli Robeson, one from Mrs. K, three from Shanda, and one from a car dealership in Tucson.
I called Robeson first. We did a little verbal dance around the subject of Lombard—neither of us knew anything, and we commiserated. He promised to fax me the info on several cases he wanted me to check out.
Next, I gave Shan
da a ring. She had news. My private client list had dwindled to squat, and she wanted to set up an eBay business to keep herself busy. She had a new boyfriend, one without a rap sheet for once, and her classes were going well. She and Mrs. K would be down Saturday morning for the wedding. Could she bring the beau?
I said yes, and moved on to Mrs. K. I got her voice mail.
That left the car dealership. Being in no mood for a sales pitch, I almost let that one slide. I’m not sure why I didn’t, except that there was a slight tingle of curiosity in the pit of my stomach.
“This is Clare Westbrook,” I said, when the switchboard operator picked up the call. “I’m returning a call from—” I squinted, trying to read Esperanza’s Lilliputian handwriting.
“Jim Bonebale,” the operator interrupted cheerfully. “Congratulations, Ms. Westbrook. This is some wedding present.”
Before I could ask what she was talking about, Bonebale came on the line to introduce himself. “Your vehicle is ready for delivery,” he said. “Will you be home this afternoon?”
“I didn’t buy a car,” I replied slowly.
“The order came from Mr. Anthony Sonterra.”
I leaned against the counter for support. This is some wedding present. “Sonterra ordered a car?”
“Not a car, exactly,” Mr. Bonebale said. “Our courtesy people are ready to bring it out to Dry Creek, if you’ll be there to sign for it.”
I was mystified. “Okaaaaay,” I said.
Bonebale read off the Cemetery Lane address. “Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said, still at a loss.
“Good. Give us an hour. You’re going to love this rig, Ms. Westbrook. Or is that Mrs. Sonterra?”
I felt as though I’d been punched. The curious thing was, it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. Who would I be after Saturday afternoon? Clare Sonterra?
Who the hell was Clare Sonterra?
“Still Ms. Westbrook,” I said uncertainly.
The Hummer arrived one hour and seventeen minutes later. It was bright red and could have been used to invade Baghdad, lacking nothing but the antipersonnel swivel gun on the roof.
One Last Look Page 17
