Tasting Fear

by Shannon McKenna

  “Here I am,” she gasped out. “Sorry. Dropped the phone.”

  “Jesus! You scared me! Are you okay?”

  “I’m good,” she croaked. “Did you, um, call the—”

  “The cops? Yeah. They’re on their way. You were my second call.”

  Unreasonable panic seized her, ballooning inside her into something monstrous. She saw Lucia’s body lying on the ground, her wide-open eyes, her livid face. “Don’t go in! Get away from there,” she told him wildly. “Right now! What if whoever did it is still inside?”

  “I’ll be okay,” he soothed. “I won’t go in. I’ll leave that for the cops.”

  “It’s just a goddamn house.” The words made no sense, she realized, as they flew out of her mouth, and oh shit, her face had dissolved again. “It’s just a goddamn house. That’s all. That’s all!”

  “Yes. That’s true,” he said. “Hey, Nancy? Answer me!”

  She tried, but her throat was vibrating too much. She made a wordless sound, just so he would know she was still conscious.

  “Nancy, give me one of your sisters’ phone numbers, okay? You shouldn’t be alone. I’ll call one of them for you. Give me the number.”

  He thought she was going batshit on him. Embarrassment stiffened her spine. “No. They’re busy. I’ll be out there as soon as I can.”

  “No!” He sounded appalled. “You’re upset! You should not drive!”

  “I will be fine. I’ll see you in an hour and ten, barring traffic.”

  “Hey! Wait! Nancy—”

  She hung up on him and lurched over to the kitchen counter. The little espresso pot had a mouthful of powerful coffee in the bottom. She poured it into a cup, cold though it was, and dosed it with sugar.

  Her cell began to tinkle. She checked. It was him. No freaking way was she answering now. Ten rings. A pause. Ten more. Take that, buddy. Then, the chime of a text message. She opened it. It said,

  At least take a goddamn taxi pls

  She snorted. Like she had a hundred and twenty bucks to burn. She tossed on her jacket, legs wobbling. This news had taken all the starch out of her, but it gave her a feeling of unfurling warmth in her chest that he worried about her. She cherished the feeling.

  Silly though it was. Bossy though he’d been. Sweet of him.

  She spent the drive up to Hempton trying to figure out why she’d flipped out like that. It was just a deserted house. A break-in was upsetting, expensive, a rotten inconvenience—and that was it.

  Lucia was no longer in that house. The very worst that could possibly happen had already happened.

  So why did she still feel so scared?

  Liam lurked in his truck and watched cops and forensics techs trooping in and out of the D’Onofrio house. Finding the house trashed had been a shock. Weird, for lightning to strike the same place twice, just a week after Lucia’s death. He felt strange, queasy, like he was missing something important. Something that kept flitting out of sight before he could focus on it.

  Maybe that was a result of not having slept. Around two-thirty a.m. he’d given up and headed to his furniture workshop. The detailed work of joining without glue or nails was one of his favorite activities. It put him in a mellow, focused place that he liked. The next best thing to sleep. Currently, he was working on a dining room table big enough to feed a dynasty. Sometimes he fantasized, in a vague, hopeful way, about his future wife while he worked on it, imagined how it would feel to see his wife and children gathered around it.

  The fantasy usually gave him a connected feeling. Hope for the future. He’d figured that working on that table would be just the thing to chill him out. Hook him back into reality. His real, bedrock values.

  He’d bombed out, big-time. He hadn’t been able to picture his future wife. She was a fog of bland possibilities, whereas Nancy D’Onofrio stood out, brilliantly sharp and clear. Every vivid detail of her, burned onto his retina. Those soft, cool fingers. At a certain point, his unruly mind had gone wild with erotic fantasies involving Nancy and the dining room table. Her, perched on the edge, graceful legs spread wide. Him, on his knees, with his face in her muff and his tongue as deep inside her as it would reach, licking up her lube. Her hands wound into his hair. Writhing and whimpering.

  He was still twitching from the aftereffects. Whew. Working on that dining room table was never going to be the same again.

  He’d gotten out of the house before Eoin was up. The first thing he’d done was to drive by the D’Onofrio house. And the bitch of it was, she wasn’t even in the damn house. Oh, no, it was enough for him that she’d been in it the day before. That she’d be in it again today.

  Jesus. How sick was that. How stupid.

  Well, he’d paid for his sophomoric bullshit. He got to be the dumb-ass who bore the bad tidings. That was what happened when a guy started nosing around in a woman’s messy, complicated life.

  Even so, he was quietly glad it had fallen out this way. Better him than her. If she’d been that upset to hear about it on the phone, it would have scared her out of her wits to see the condition of that house in person and alone, with no warning. And no wonder, for the love of God. After finding her mother there dead, just a week before.

  Nancy’s small, battered black Volkswagen Jetta pulled in behind his truck. His heart rate kicked way up. She’d driven. Stubborn female.

  She didn’t spare him so much as a glance when she got out. The wind fluttered her white blouse, but did not budge a wisp of her smooth hair. Her body was so graceful. Her profile stark and pure as she stared at the house. Her face was terribly pale. She looked like she might faint.

  He got out of his truck and folded his arms over the heavy thud in his rib cage, as if she might hear it. As if the woman didn’t have more serious things to worry about than his horn-dog crush. She turned at the sound of the car door. Her chin went right up.

  He went for it. “So you drove.”

  “Of course,” was her cool retort. “I can’t afford a cab.”

  He let his silence criticize that decision, and a flush of anger bloomed on her cheeks. “Did you call your sisters?” he demanded.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. Not yet. Nell’s teaching and doesn’t have a cell anyway, and Vivi’s upstate doing a crafts fair. I’ll tell them about it later, when I know exactly what happened.”

  He grunted. “Hmph. Just wondering why it always seems to be you who has to take care of the messy details.”

  “It’s not their fault!” she snapped. “They’re perfectly willing to help! They’re just busy! And you had my number, not theirs.”

  Her head was high, her eyes snapping. Excellent. She looked much better. Nothing like putting a man in his place to perk a woman up.

  “Uh, yeah. Of course,” he murmured, suitably subdued.

  She trotted up the stairs with a spring in her step that she hadn’t had before. He caught up with her, looked at the marks under her eyes that the makeup did not hide. He wanted to take her hand, offer her his arm. But her hands were clenched, knuckles white. Bracing herself.

  He followed her in. She looked around. The place had been brutally trashed. Every piece of furniture had been upended, every sofa cushion and pillow slashed, every breakable thing crushed. The tiles he and Eoin had hauled in were everywhere. Lengths of lumber were scattered around like huge matchsticks. There were jagged holes in the walls. Every picture had been flung down and lay shattered on the floor. A photograph of Lucia and her three daughters smiled up from the floor, covered with shards of glass.

  Nancy bent down and reached for the pieces. Her hand shook.

  “Please don’t touch anything yet, ma’am,” said the evidence tech working the scene, a middle-aged woman. “It might be better if you waited outside. Until we’ve finished.”

  “Oh. Um, let me just take a look,” Nancy said. “I’ll be quick.” She took a step farther into the room and let out a low cry of distress when she saw what lay at her feet. It was impossible to id
entify, a formless tangle of wire and chunks of broken glass and stone.

  “Oh, no,” Nancy whispered. Her voice shook. “This is…this is a sculpture that Vivi did for Lucia, years ago. ‘The Three Sisters,’ she called it. It was one of Lucia’s prize possessions.” Then she turned and saw the intaglio writing table. Her hand flew up over her mouth. “Oh, my God.”

  The plastic cover she’d bought had been tossed aside, and the plane of the table itself smashed in. The two pieces lay collapsed in upon themselves, splintered edges ragged. The four-by-four that had been used to break it lay in the midst of the broken pieces. The jade plant was in pieces on the floor, dirt and leaves scattered everywhere.

  Better judgment, common sense clamored at him, but he ignored them. He reached out and took her hand.

  Nancy’s fingers curled gratefully around his. A rush of sustaining energy flooded into her body through his hand. He was so solid. An oak that would never bend or break. The romantic metaphor almost made her smile. It was lifted right out of the haunting ballad that Enid had just cut for the album, a song Nancy had finished helping mix in the studio only a few days ago. Of course, the oak in that particular folk song did break. The girl was left barefoot in the snow with an illegitimate baby in her arms. Just a little something to think about.

  She stared down at the ruined table, thinking about the vast sweep of history that it had seen. Lucia’s family line and this historic table had both come to an abrupt, violent end, here in this room, within a week of each other.

  As if the table could not exist without Lucia.

  One thought kept coming back, circling around and around in her mind. She opened her mouth, and voiced it. “He wasn’t satisfied the first time. He’s still angry.”

  Liam slanted her a cautious glance. “You think it’s the same person? From what the cop said, it’s a very different kind of crime.”

  She shook her head. Anything she said was going to sound like grief-stricken rambling. She pressed her hand hard against her mouth as she stared at the ruined table, painstakingly crafted by some nameless artisan hundreds of years ago—smashed by a brain-dead hoodlum.

  It felt as if someone had defaced Lucia’s grave. Ugly and vicious and very personal. She shuddered.

  Liam’s hand tightened. “Want to go outside? Get some air?”

  She snapped herself to attention. Shook her head.

  “I am so sorry,” he said. “It really was a beautiful thing.”

  She nodded, swallowing hard. “Yes, exactly. A thing. On the one hand, it’s a precious heirloom. On the other, it’s just a thing. Made out of old, carved oak wood. That’s all. I don’t know how to feel about it.”

  “You don’t have to choose. Both things can be true at once.”

  She was startled and moved by the comprehension in his eyes. She looked away quickly, but discovered that there was noplace to rest her eyes in that room that did not hurt to look upon.

  “I, uh…” He stopped himself, looking doubtful.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I could try to repair it,” he said slowly. “I’ve done a lot of furniture restoration. My mother was into antiques. I wouldn’t expect payment for the labor. I’d consider it a privilege to work on that thing. But even so, you might be better off contacting a specialist.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “I accept,” she said.

  “Not so fast,” he warned. “I couldn’t make guarantees. It’ll never be the same as before. There’s a lot of damage, and it would take a while. With something like this, I’d go one splinter at a time. You’d better talk it over with your sisters and see if you—”

  “Yes,” she said, with flat finality. “I want you to do it.”

  He studied her face. “Well, whatever, then. I won’t hold you to it, though. Not until you talk to your sisters.”

  “I’ll hold you to it.” She glared, daring him to rescind his offer.

  “Uh, okay,” he murmured. “Whatever.”

  She was clutching his fingers with all her strength. Heat flooded into her face. She whipped her hand away. “Sorry.” She headed toward the kitchen. His light footfalls came after, crunching broken glass.

  The kitchen was just as bad. Cupboard doors had been torn off their hinges, the cupboards’ contents hurled to the floor with a violence that had shattered the floor tiles. The table was upended, the chairs were tossed, every dish was smashed. The garbage they’d forgotten had been dragged out from under the sink, the plastic bag slashed open, its contents spread wide.

  “Well. Guess I won’t have to go looking for any packing boxes,” Nancy said, her voice thin. It was such a silly thing to say. She clapped her hand over her mouth, stared down at the floor.

  That was when she saw it. A crumpled piece of white bond paper, and something written on it, in Lucia’s elegant, slanted antique handwriting. She snatched it up, heart thudding. Some helpful soul had swept up the garbage for her, and thrown away this as well.

  “Nancy, hey. You’re not supposed to—”

  “Yes, I know.” She shook coffee grounds off the paper. The page was covered with scribbled handwriting, marked up with small edits, some words crossed out, others scribbled in:

  will come as a shock to you girls, and no doubt you think me Machiavellian and foolish for creating this elaborate system of checks and balances, but after what happened to my father, after what this thing did to my marriage, I feel I cannot be too careful. Just please know this: I made these arrangements not because I do not trust you, but because I love you, and because you love each other. Love, like any precious thing, should be protected by every means possible. The older I get, the more I understand that it is the only thing worth protecting.

  Then a couple of lines, both of which had been savagely crossed out, as if Lucia had been frustrated, searching for the right words:

  The necklaces are the key to

  You must use the necklaces together to discover the secret of

  The writing continued with a new paragraph:

  You are each in your own unique way great lovers of beauty—music, literature, and the visual arts, and so I devised the

  And the page ended. She could hear Lucia’s soft, accented voice echoing in her head.

  “What is that?” Liam picked his way across the rubble.

  “It’s a letter.” Her voice cracked, broke. “To us. From Lucia.”

  She held it up for him. He scanned it rapidly and met her gaze, his mouth grim. “Wow,” he said. “That’s very weird.”

  “A draft,” she whispered. “It’s a first draft of a letter to us.”

  “Right.” He paused, thoughtfully. “But if this is the draft…”

  “Then where the hell is the finished version?” she finished.

  They stared at each other. She wanted to grab his arm, for balance. The ground beneath her was just a thin crust of apparent normality, and beneath it, an abyss of dark, shifting possibilities.

  “Why didn’t we find the finished letter?” she demanded. “Why?”

  He pondered it. “Could she have mailed it to you?”

  “Eight days have gone by. It takes two, four at most, for a letter to get to the city. It was an important letter. She was putting a lot of thought into it. This did not get forgotten, or lost in the mail. No way.”

  He finished the thought. “You think it got lost in some more sinister way.”

  “‘After what this thing did to my marriage’?” she quoted softly. “What thing? What the hell is this thing that she’s talking about?”

  “Maybe it’s what she installed the safe for,” he suggested.

  She glanced up at him, startled. “Safe?”

  His eyes widened. “She didn’t tell you?” Nancy’s blank face answered his question. He whistled silently. “A few weeks ago, she hired me to install a hidden safe. In her closet upstairs. That’s how we met. Sorry I didn’t say something before. I assumed you knew.”

  The woman from the forensics team came in
to the kitchen and frowned at her. “Miss, I asked you please not to touch anything.”

  “I found something.” Nancy held out the letter. “The investigating officer needs to see it. Please, be on the lookout for more pages.”

  The lady twitched the sheet of paper out of Nancy’s fingers with her own gloved ones. “I’ll bring it to her attention. Since you can’t keep your hands to yourself, could you wait outside until we’re finished?”

  The lady sternly escorted the two of them out onto the stoop, and they looked at each other, feeling abashed as naughty children.

  “I want to look at that safe,” Nancy said fretfully. “Not that I could open it. I don’t have the combination. I don’t imagine you…?”

  He shook his head. “Lucia had to choose the combination herself.”

  Nancy chewed her lip. “I wish I had a copy of that letter. God knows when they’ll let me see it. I wanted to show it to Nell and Vivi.”

  “One second.” Liam went to his truck and pulled a paper from his dashboard. He plucked a pencil from his shirt and scribbled against the hood of his truck. He handed it to her. It was the text of Lucia’s letter, written out in a bold, angular cursive script.

  “It’s maybe not word for word, but that’s the gist of it,” he said.

  “That’s incredible! Do you have a photographic memory?”

  “Not really. In an hour, I wouldn’t be able to write more than a rough paraphrase. And it has to really interest me. Otherwise I don’t retain a damn thing.”

  Nancy broke eye contact and busied herself folding the paper into a pocket-sized square. “Well, thanks for being so interested, I guess.”

  “Anything to do with Lucia and you interests me. Don’t thank me for something involuntary.”