Passerby: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  The truth is, I don’t know why I called Cole, and now that he’s here, I’m even less sure. I only know I have the distinct inclination to drag him upstairs to what has always been one of our favorite rooms. “I guess so.”

  He looks me in the eye for a little too long not to have any feelings for me, and then he says, “Is there something else?”

  Yes. Yes, there is. “Ruth?”

  I can’t seem to spit the words out. But then I realize I’d better get it over with. “Roy practically came straight here. He seems to think my brother had something to do with Bobby’s death…”

  Cole looks at me sideways. “Johnny?”

  “No, Davis.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  What do I think? I think my biological clock is ticking and making babies with you looks pretty damn good right now. I think that would be the sweetest disaster, and though I could easily make it happen, I won’t, because I’m too scared to face the fallout. “I don’t think it was either of them. The Holts have no shortage of enemies.”

  “No,” he says. “They don’t. I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. My guess is, and this is just based on what I’ve heard, it’ll probably be ruled an accident.”

  “Maybe.”

  He takes the seat next to mine. “Why do I sense there’s something you want to say but aren’t?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You called me here for a reason.”

  He’s asking in his own way if I want to go upstairs. Really, I want to go anywhere. Right here on this porch would do. But then, as with every other area of my life, there are other people to consider. Just once I’d like to know what it feels like to be selfish. I don’t say any of this, of course. I just silently pray that Cole is as intuitive as I hope he is. “I think Ashley has something to do with what’s going on.”

  I say this, and even as the words float off my tongue, I want to reel them back in. Suggesting Ashley is involved also implicates Davis.

  Cole’s face breaks into a wide grin. “She doesn’t exactly seem like someone with the wherewithal or the know-how to commit not one but multiple murders.”

  “How can we ever really know what a person is capable of?”

  He laughs. “You know I adore you, Ruth Channing. But I think you might be overthinking things a bit.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? Two men with ties to my family have been found dead within the past twenty-four hours.”

  “What’s that saying about causation?”

  “Correlation does not equal causation.”

  “Ah, that’s right.” Cole knows this.

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “I’m not mocking you. It’s just that seeing two variables together does not necessarily mean we know whether one variable caused the other to occur.”

  “Sure, I didn’t see Ashley Parker take out Bobby Holt or Danny Vera, but would I put it past her? No. No, I wouldn’t.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Have you been drinking?”

  “No, but I think I’m about to start.”

  “Good,” he says, standing. He smooths his pant legs. “Mind if I join you?”

  Cole opens the screen door and motions for me to follow. So I do. “And if she didn’t murder them, assuming they were murdered, I think she sure as hell knows who did,” I tell him between gritted teeth as we make our way to the kitchen. “Obviously, I have no proof of this. Just a feeling in my gut.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have to understand it intellectually. I just know it. Plus, what more evidence do I need? I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. She said: Someone really ought to take care of him… Then, about Danny Vera she told me: I think someone really needs to break that guy’s bones. I think he deserved every bit of what Davey gave him and more.”

  Cole takes the bottle of tequila from the liquor cabinet. “If that doesn’t look damning, I don’t know what does.”

  I can’t tell whether he’s joking or not. “I only know it wasn’t my brother.”

  God, I hope it wasn’t my brother.

  “It wasn’t your brother,” he says, filling two glasses. He hands one to me. “Either of them.”

  It couldn’t have been. Could it? I don’t say this out loud. It feels bad enough just thinking about it.

  Cole sucks in his bottom lip and then releases it. I can tell what he’s thinking.

  “What?” I ask.

  He glances at his watch and then looks at me in a way that tells me he doesn’t want to say what’s on his mind but he knows he has to. “I’m not sure I want to get into this right now but…”

  “But what?”

  “This makes two women asserting their son’s death had something to do with Davis.”

  “Yeah,” I scoff. “I thought that was established…”

  “Have you called your attorney?”

  “I’m waiting for him to call me back.”

  “You should put in another call. I wouldn’t wait.”

  “This isn’t Davis’s fault. None of it.”

  “Hey, I said that already,” he tells me, holding his hands up in defense. “Now we’re just talking in circles, and besides, I’m not the one you need to convince.”

  I look at him, tilt my head, and narrow my eyes. “There’s something you’re not saying.”

  He hesitates for several long beats before he says, “Bobby’s mother called Gina again.”

  I down my glass in two quick gulps and then slam it on the counter. Cole didn’t want to have this conversation because he knew if he did, he wouldn’t get laid. And this is why we can’t have nice things. This is why I can’t have a child that shares half of his DNA. I can’t trust him. “How much does Gina know about you and me?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what it means.”

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “Why are you evading the question?”

  I cross the kitchen, take the bottle of tequila from the counter, and refill my tumbler. “I’m just wondering why she might have a reason to have it out for my family. Now, it makes sense.”

  “I’m not the enemy here, Ruth. And believe it or not, not everyone is out to get you.”

  “So you’re defending her then?”

  “I’m not defending anyone. Gina’s a member of the press. She has a story to tell.”

  “Never mind if it’s a lie.”

  Cole places his glass in the sink and turns on the tap. It’s his way of checking out of the conversation. It’s his way of telling me he’s about to walk in and out of my life.

  I grab the bottle of tequila from the counter and take a long pull on the bottle. “Tell her she can have you, I’m done.”

  “I think you’re overreacting. This isn’t about me.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t know women at all.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ruth

  Days go by, each one passing like molasses. Festival weekend comes and goes, and each day thereafter feels pretty much like the one before it. Little is said about Danny Vera. The Holts delay a funeral for their son, although eventually the gossip and speculation around that dies out, too.

  As for me, I seem to get a little less jumpy and a little more melancholy with each passing day. I become less concerned that someone is going to pop up out of nowhere and shoot me dead or run me off the road and more concerned with the fact that I’m probably never going to be a mother. All of a sudden, I become more comfortable with the idea of dying. It hardly feels like I have a lot to live for. And at any rate, all I know is that I can’t live at that level of alert, or stay on edge like that forever. Not without going crazy.

  It’s amazing how fast I adjust to this new sense of normal, even though I don’t quite know what that means, other than things are different, but in many ways, very much the same as before. Ashley says that humans are wired to move
past things, that it is understandable for us to want to fall back into a normal routine, and as much as I don’t want to believe anything she says, I do. I fall into a routine that looks a lot like my routine every summer. Life does not stop when things get crazy. It keeps moving on past and it leaves little room for catching up, so eventually, I suppose we all just sort of let go and fall into step.

  Late one evening, I’m seated at the kitchen table poring over bills and bank statements and invoices when Julia comes to me with a pained expression on her face. She’s gripping her rosary beads, which is what she’s always done when she has bad news to deliver. “Jesus Christ, Julia,” I say impatiently. “What is it?”

  She eyes me hesitantly.

  I slap an open palm against the table. “Just spit it out, would ya?”

  I don’t mean to snap at her. I haven’t been sleeping well and I’m frustrated, not the least of all reasons being that after the argument with Cole, I haven’t gone out to the cabin simply as a matter of principle. And aside from all of that, I hate accounting. Nothing is adding up, and what the numbers show is not what I was hoping to see. For a bed and breakfast that is always booked, it seems our margins are very thin. Money seems to be seeping out from many angles and much faster than we’re bringing it in.

  Julia looks at me suspiciously, like I have lost my mind. “You should not use the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “I’m not,” I say, punching numbers into the calculator. “I’m calling upon him to help you get the words out.”

  “Ah, Ruthie.” She shakes a finger at me. “Your mama would have soap in your mouth if she were here. You remember? Like the good old days.”

  “The good old days, yes. Funny, I recall them a bit differently.”

  I jot the figure down on the paperwork in front of me, and then I look up. “I’m sorry,” I sigh. “Whatever it is you have to say, I doubt it could be worse than this.”

  She looks worried, and I instantly wish I could take the words back. I try to think of ways to tell her that her job is safe, without making things even worse, but I can’t seem to come up with anything.

  “Soap in your mouth,” she tells me. “That is worse than this, no?”

  Poor Julia. I think my punishment was harder on her than it was on me. She used to feel so bad that Mama would make me sit in the bathroom sucking on a bar of soap for the better part of an hour. This was back when people did things like teach their kids’ lessons. I doubt the mother next door has ever thought about giving her daughter a bar of soap. It might save her some trouble down the line. But you can’t tell people anything these days. It’s not the parents’ fault their children are assholes.

  It’s just that it’s hard to be a decent person if you’re never told the word no. Just look at the woman staying in our guest house.

  “I can still taste that soap sometimes,” I say to Julia, and she laughs.

  It wasn’t just the soap that was awful. It was being stuck in the bathroom for all that time, away from everyone. I hated every second of it. Julia used to feel so bad that she’d sneak in glasses of Kool-Aid. Other times she’d slip a handful of the mints we used to leave on guest’s pillows under the door.

  Mama would come in and my lips and tongue would be blood red and she’d ask when I’d gotten into Kool-Aid. She’d blame the sugar for my bad behavior and act all confused, and it was only later, much later, that I learned she never really was. Mama missed nothing that went on in this house. If only I could be more like her, then I wouldn’t have to depend on Julia to deliver news she can’t seem to get out.

  “It’s about Ms. Ashley,” she says. She treads cautiously, even going so far as to wince as she speaks.

  “What about her?” God, why does everything have to be about her?

  “I found this.”

  She hands me a driver’s license. It’s from Louisiana.

  “I found it in her room, in the guest house. I was cleaning.” She looks sad, and I understand why. Julia has just broken one of her sacred values. She prides herself on discretion. It’s the pinnacle of who she is and of her work. “I didn’t want to tell Davis. I know I shouldn’t pry—so I brought it to you.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m glad you did.”

  I glance down at the plastic in my hand. The woman in the photo staring back at me is the same woman sleeping in my guest house. But her name isn’t Ashley Parker.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ruth

  I’m in the parlor refreshing the selection of magazines we keep out on the tables when Ashley enters the front door of Magnolia House. Her arms are weighed down by shopping bags, and she has a stack of packages in her hands. I watch as she dumps her haul onto the floor in the entryway, the bags slinking from her arms like a sloughing of a second skin.

  “Hey,” I call out. “Can you come here?”

  It feels like as good a time as any to ask for the truth. Although, I haven’t yet decided how to start the conversation. Do I begin with an icebreaker? Or should I just get straight to the point? Who the hell are you? Why are you here? And what is it that you want?

  All I know is that the Ashley Parker mystery gives me a reason to want to live. It gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It gives me purpose, now that Cole and I aren’t speaking. I shift from having a full-on pity party to something that feels more like an intimate gathering for rage, and I have to say, it feels better.

  It helps that I’ve kept myself busy. I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours making a ton of phone calls. I’ve searched the internet, combed through all the school websites in the greater New Orleans and surrounding areas, carefully scanned the staff profiles on each webpage, and when that didn’t turn up with anything, I called.

  I’ve tried multiple searches using the name on the driver’s license, and none of them pulled up anything of interest. The search results did not get me any closer to finding out who in the hell this woman occupying my home really is.

  In this day and age, I wouldn’t have imagined that it would be this difficult to determine a person’s identity. People post everything online. They tag their friends and relatives; they tell you what they ate for dinner and their opinions on just about everything. It leaves me baffled. But it also gives me a lot to think about. People post endlessly, but do they ever really tell you who they are?

  I don’t simply want to know who Ashley is. I want to know what she wants. I want to know who she is hiding from and why she’s hiding.

  I wish I could say that my mind comes up with a gazillion answers, a billion explanations, a million rationalizations, but it doesn’t. The cold hard truth is I’m no closer to finding answers than I was when I started. And it isn’t for lack of trying. This leaves me little choice but to go to the source, and as luck would have it, she’s sashaying into the parlor wearing a grin the size of Texas.

  “It’s hot out,” she says, pretending to wipe sweat from her brow. “I didn’t know it got this hot here.”

  “I’m finding there are a lot of things I don’t know.” I toss a stack of magazines on the table. “Like really anything at all about you.”

  She looks at me like I’m a challenge she’s excited to face. “I’m probably less interesting than you think.”

  “Try me.”

  “Of course.” She picks up a magazine and studies the cover. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But first—you’re going to want to hear what happened in town. Trust me.”

  I don’t trust her. Nor can I wait to hear what she has to say. I plop down on the sofa and fold my legs underneath me.

  “There were these suits,” she exclaims as she paces back and forth in front of the fireplace, and it’s like all the world’s her stage. When she speaks, her eyes are wild, and she gestures with her hands in a way I find confusing. “You know, like men. In actual suits.”

  “Okay?”

  “With cowboy hats.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So I struck up a conversat
ion with one of them and guess what? They’re looking to buy property here.”

  “Shocker.”

  “And I told him about Magnolia House and he seemed really interested—”

  I cut her off. “Magnolia House is not for sale.”

  “Right. But maybe you might want to hear what he had to say. You know, just for shits and giggles.”

  “Shits and grins.”

  “Huh?”

  “The saying—it’s shits and grins.”

  She gives me this light, school girl giggle that makes me want to stab my eyeballs out as she waves me off. “Anyway, I’ll come back to that—you’ll never in a million years believe who I also ran into!”

  “It’s a very small town.”

  “Someone I hear is…or was very special to you—I don’t know—you’ll have to spill the tea!”

  I study her curiously. She’s good. I’ll give her that. The suspense should be killing me, but I know exactly where she’s going. She knows I know. Or at least I think I know. I can’t decide which it is. And I don’t think she can either.

  She waits for an answer, and when I don’t offer one, she throws her hands in the air like we’re playing a game of charades. “Ryan Jenkins!”

  “I never would have guessed.”

  “Wait—” She chews at her bottom lip. “Are you being serious?”

  She crosses the room. “What a cutie! I mean… He sort of has the dad bod thing going, but I don’t know… He’s okay. Like… he’s perfect for you.” She nods to show that she’s satisfied with herself for expressing her thoughts in such an eloquent way. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “Ryan is married. So, no, he is not perfect for me.”

  “All things can be undone.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ear,” I say. She misses the point entirely.

  “And anyway,” she tells me, scrunching up her perfectly upturned nose. “He didn’t even seem happy.”

  “His feelings are not my concern.”

  “When’s the last time you spoke to him?”