Last Girl Standing

by Lisa Jackson

  Candy was his nurse at the nutrition clinic he ran using his father’s health products, which had actually seen their day and, after a scare of traces of lead and God knew what else found in the mix, had fallen out of favor and off the shelves. Les Stahd had lost nearly all his fortune, but he’d managed to hang on to his business, such as it was at that point, but not his wife. Lori had swanned off to greener pastures with an older gentleman still in control of his money. Les had then made a play for his first wife, Tanner’s mother, again, who’d seemed interested for a while, but had then also drifted away. Luckily for Les, Lori’s greener pastures had turned out to be dried-up wasteland, apparently. Her new man cut her loose, and she’d returned to Les, wiser and contrite. Delta wasn’t entirely convinced of Lori’s conversion, but whatever. Les and Lori were together again.

  Tanner didn’t see either of his parents or his stepmother any longer. And so far, he’d kept his hands away from Candy, but maybe because she was about six feet tall with an even taller, larger husband and two teenage boys, also tall and large. Amy and Tia were young and luscious, barely older than Delta had been that last year of high school. The kind of women Tanner invariably eyed lasciviously.

  Prior to the high school reunion, she’d made herself believe she and Tanner were a team. But then everything had blown apart. Amanda had been there. Cool, blond, and still beautiful, with a wealthy, far less attractive husband whom she ignored most of the night and whom she’d since divorced. Amanda had hung up her acting aspirations and become a lawyer. Her husband was one, too. Delta had caught Tanner and Amanda in a tight embrace, even though Tanner had sworn he despised her for lying about being pregnant, which was the way Tanner wanted to remember those weeks after graduation, when she’d supposedly been pregnant and miscarried. To this day, Delta wasn’t sure whether Amanda had miscarried or simply lied to steal Tanner away from her. Either one could be the truth, but what did it matter? Tanner Stahd was a liar and a cheat.

  Amanda hadn’t explained the reunion embrace, but then Amanda never explained anything, and Tanner had said she was reading too much into two old friends catching up. Oh, was that what it was? It had been up to Delta to decide what to do, but as Owen was only a year old at the time, she just couldn’t up and leave her husband. She wanted them to try to be a family, so she determined she would work things out with him.

  Fast-forward to now. Tanner’s infidelity had only increased since the reunion. It was almost as if he didn’t care enough anymore to even put up a pretense. He was an inveterate cheater and always would be. The marriage was on a long, slow road to destruction and probably had been since the beginning.

  So she was going to stop by the clinic, quickly, and see what he had to tell her. It was unlikely to be anything she cared to hear. Excuses, most likely. She still didn’t want to go, but it was after hours, and the clinic would be empty, so . . . sure. Might as well see what he had to say one more time.

  She pulled into the Stahd Clinic and drove her Audi into the back of the lot, out of the expanded circle of illumination from the streetlight, in a space by the back doors. She hurried up the steps and found them locked. Well, hell. If he hadn’t left the front doors open, then she was out of here. She didn’t have time for this. Her father was in the early stages of some kind of mental decline, and Mom didn’t like to leave him alone for too long. This meeting of the Englewood Academy’s kindergarten parents had been set for weeks, and she’d agreed to babysit, though Delta had promised she and Tanner wouldn’t be late. Then Tanner had begged off at the last minute, claiming he had to work—par for the course—so Delta had gone by herself . . . and been entertained and flattered by that single dad, Jonah Masters . . . or Masterer . . . something like that.

  She threw the strap of her purse over her shoulder, circled the building by its brick-lined, cement walkway, and entered through the first set of double doors that led into the clinic. They were open, as were the inner doors, as it turned out, and she pushed into the clinic’s waiting room. Toward the left was the reception counter, its silver metal curtain pulled down and locked as it was nearly 8:00 p.m. The waiting room’s gray upholstered, steel-framed chairs were tucked against the wall; an array of dog-eared magazines had been stacked neatly on tables and filed in a rack attached to the wall in tidy rows.

  Delta walked toward the door that led to the inner sanctum, grabbed the knob, twisted and pushed, but met resistance. For a moment, she wondered if she’d been locked out, which instantly annoyed her. Had he already forgotten he’d asked her to stop by? But then she realized the knob was turning in her hand.

  She pushed again, and the door opened a crack. Something was up against it.

  “Tanner!” she called through the crack in the door. With a sound of disgust, she pressed harder, throwing her shoulder into it to shove back whatever was holding the door closed. Her force caused it to suddenly give way, and she stumbled into the room, hanging on to the knob, but slipping, the heel of her right foot twisting. She fell forward, and her right hand hit a stain on the carpet; she felt moisture. Her left hand went down, and something sliced into her palm. A knife. She yanked her hand back and, in that same moment, saw the body. Lying on the floor. Smashed between the door she’d thrust open and the wall.

  She’d fallen onto her hands and knees. Her ankle throbbed, and she’d lost her heel. Her left hand was bleeding. She stared at the body in total shock.

  “Tanner,” she whispered.

  His chest was covered in blood, his white shirt stained with spreading red spots in a half-dozen places. Knife wounds? In a daze, she picked up the knife that had cut her. It was one from their set at home. A steak knife he’d taken to work to cut the apples and pears he took for afternoon snacks. Her brain couldn’t connect.

  “Tanner,” she whimpered. She dropped the knife. Her pulse rocketed into high gear. “Tanner!”

  His eyes were closed, but he was breathing.

  She hesitated. Was this some kind of gruesome, sick prank?

  But no. Blood was still seeping, soaking into the cloth. Oozing up between the tiny rips in the shirt. Knife slits. Real. It was all real. Oh, God. Oh, God!

  “Tanner!” she shrieked. His breaths were shallow. Labored. Slowing . . .

  Her phone.

  She staggered back to her feet. Her right ankle throbbed. She’d done something to that foot. She was always injuring that foot.

  Her purse had flown off her shoulder when she’d fallen to her knees. She stumbled forward, scooping it up. Her phone was in there . . . somewhere . . . somewhere . . .

  Someone stabbed him.

  Fear sliced through her. She dropped the phone. Picked it up, gazed at her husband, her breath coming fast, quaking.

  His eyes opened, and he looked around wildly.

  “Tanner! Tanner!”

  The phone was slippery. It squirted from her hand, landing on his chest, bouncing to the floor, skittering against the knife. She snatched it up, and the knife flipped away, its blood-covered blade leaving a trail of red on the commercial-grade gray carpet. London Fog. She’d picked the color out herself.

  “Dee,” Tanner said dully, staring at nothing.

  “Oh, Tanner. Right here. Right here. I’m calling nine-one-one. . . What happened? Oh, God, what happened?”

  “Dee?”

  “I’m right here. I’m—”

  “Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?” The voice broke in on the telephone.

  “My . . . my husband’s been stabbed in the chest at his clinic.” She had a blank moment, then rattled off the address. “Dr. Tanner Stahd. The Stahd Clinic in West Knoll.”

  “Dee?”

  “I’m right here,” she said to Tanner again, her voice shaking. She loved him. She loved him. She did. She always had.

  But it was a hollow thought, one that made her feel like the fraud she was. She listened to the operator’s questions and directions in a kind of rote trance.

  Three minutes, and then the ambulance
was there, and the EMTs were rushing in, tending to Tanner, who’d lapsed into unconsciousness again.

  Delta stood back, spent. The drinks she’d had earlier didn’t help the fuzzy, out-of-sync surreal quality she felt. Her legs were quivering. She staggered into the waiting room and collapsed into a chair before she could fall onto the carpet.

  The police arrived.

  Bob “Quin” Quintar.

  Not Bailey.

  Her eyes closed, and she began silently crying.

  “Delta.”

  A new voice. One she recognized even though they hadn’t spoken since high school.

  She opened her eyes into the cool blue ones of Chris McCrae.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said.

  Bailey wasn’t the only one who’d gone through the police academy. McCrae had chosen to become a police officer as well. Tonight, he was sans the beard she remembered him sporting at the reunion, and he was dressed in a pair of jeans and a gray shirt, open at the throat. She recalled his washboard stomach from the pig roast. He looked in as good shape now as then, fifteen years past graduation, but the bloodless pallor of his skin spoke of his reaction to finding his old classmate on the floor, stabbed a dozen times or so.

  She saw the unspoken question in his eyes and realized she was holding the knife.

  “I didn’t do it. I loved him. I didn’t do it. We . . . we loved each other. Always.”

  That was her first lie. He’d loved Amanda too, hadn’t he?

  Delta was numb. While McCrae bagged the knife, she told him about the locked back door, which Tanner normally left open for her. He ordered her to stay back with the EMTs while he and Quin searched the clinic in case the attacker was still around. By the time they returned, the ambulance had taken Tanner away, and she’d found her way to one of the waiting-room chairs. There was a smear of blood on the hem of her dress, red against the white fabric and black piping.

  “It’s all clear,” McCrae said of the clinic.

  Quin said, “I’ll close the place down and get a team in here tomorrow.”

  “Good,” said McCrae, his eyes fixed on Delta.

  “I fell on the knife,” Delta said, looking at her palm and the deep scratch the serrated edge had made.

  “Looks like a steak knife.” McCrae bent down to where Delta had dropped it. “It’s not one of yours?”

  She shook her head even while her mind’s eye saw Tanner plucking it from their knife set in the wooden block on her counter.

  That was her second lie.

  * * *

  The next several hours passed in a hellish blur. She drove to the ER at Laurelton General, where’d they’d taken Tanner, about twenty miles east of West Knoll. He was in a curtained cubicle in the ER when she got there. She was asked to stay in the waiting room. She half-expected to be hauled away for questioning by Quin and McCrae. The lie about the knife was eating her up. Why hadn’t she said it was from their set?

  Because you touched it.

  Yes, but now she was going to have to compound the lie. Get rid of the rest of the set. Amy and Tia would be able to say that Tanner had brought the knife to work, wouldn’t they? Or maybe they didn’t know.

  It was ridiculous. She needed to straighten that out right away.

  It’s always the spouse, though, isn’t it?

  But Tanner just needed to get better! He could tell them what happened! He could tell them who had done this to him. Who had stabbed him over and over again.

  Who was that?

  Delta shivered. Someone had viciously attacked him. Someone was out there. She could see them . . . locking the back door from the inside . . . making it look like an outside job when it was really someone inside . . . someone who knew him well and wanted him dead . . .

  Delta jerked awake in her seat. She’d fallen into a daze. Her pulse ran fast and hard. Outside it had begun to rain even though it was late July, the precipitation flung against the windows by a hard, accusing wind. Delta felt under attack, singled out by the elements.

  You’re in trouble, girl.

  She lifted her head and looked around and asked herself the question that had been at the back of her brain but now came roaring again to the front. Who had stabbed Tanner? Who would do that? Who wanted him dead?

  You did.

  “No . . .”

  He could die.

  The thought knocked the breath from her. No. Not Tanner. He was almost larger than life. The kid who’d made good on his dream of becoming a doctor. His dad had taken shortcuts and paid the price, but Tanner had put his nose to the grindstone and worked like a Trojan. His efforts had paid off, because he was an excellent physician, a gastroenterologist who worked with a combination of diet, exercise, health supplements, drugs, and surgery to help obese people, or even anyone who wanted to lose a few pounds, drop the extra weight, and gain a new, healthier lifestyle. He was beloved.

  What if he doesn’t make it through the night?

  She couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t think at all!

  With a kind of dreaded expectation, she watched McCrae walk into the ER. His eye fell on her, and he headed her way. Behind him, Quin—Officer Quintar, she reminded herself—entered through the sliding double doors. Quin took a look at Delta, and she read the accusation he didn’t try to hide. But instead of joining McCrae, he peeled off to the reception desk.

  “Delta,” McCrae said, taking a seat next to her. “Quin’s going to ask you some questions about what happened, but you might not want to answer them here.”

  “I don’t want to leave Tanner. My mom’s taking care of Owen, but she needs to go home, too. I don’t know what to do.”

  “We need to find out what happened.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” she repeated.

  She gazed at him, taking him in. He’d aged since high school and the reunion, but hadn’t they all? Some more than others. McCrae’s crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes spoke of a sense of humor—or squinting into the sun, she supposed—though she sensed it was the former. She remembered him saying the night of the barbeque that they needed to call the police, then taking off in the golf cart with Amanda. He’d also accused her of being as judgmental as Ellie, or something to that effect, and yet here he was, the lawman. She also remembered him at the reunion. A bit apart from the guys’ group, where Tanner had held court.

  He was saying something, something she’d missed: “. . . was a classmate and friend, so Officer Quintar will be the lead on the case.”

  “Quin’s in charge?”

  He heard her skepticism. They both knew Quin was no more removed from Tanner than McCrae was. He wasn’t unbiased.

  “We may have to draft an outside investigator,” McCrae admitted, which made Delta’s heart clutch.

  “I need to go home to my son,” she said. “I need to be with Tanner, but I have to go.”

  He glanced around to Quin, who was still talking to the nurse, but they were both edging toward the double doors that led to the emergency room cubicles. The receptionist pushed a large button on the wall, and the admitting doors slowly swung inward. Quin strode through them as they were still opening.

  She said, “He’s going in. I want to, too.”

  “Wait.”

  McCrae’s voice was clipped, and Delta, who’d risen to her feet and was about to hurry toward the now closing doors, stopped short.

  “You can’t go in there. Tanner was attacked. He’s . . . in a kind of lockdown until we know more.”

  “He’s my husband.”

  He just looked at her.

  “You do think I did it,” she said, her heart twisting. Of course, he did. Of course, they both did. “I didn’t. I would never. Could never!”

  He grabbed her elbow and steered her out of the ER and into a long, windowed hallway that led toward the main doors and hospital reception. Outside, the rain was still peppering the glass windows, obscuring the parking lights beyond through a watery shield. Currently, they were the only ones within
earshot of their conversation. “Give me a quick recap of your evening, and Tanner’s, to the best of your knowledge.”

  “I thought you couldn’t help me,” she said.

  “I can take down some information. You’ll probably be telling your story to a number of us.”

  “So get it straight the first time?”

  “That would be helpful,” he said, refusing to be baited.

  Delta suddenly felt extremely tired. There was a narrow bench in the hallway, and she walked over to it and sank down. “I need to call my mom again,” she said on a sigh, pulling her phone from her purse, and then did so while McCrae walked a few feet away to give her some privacy.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said, and her throat closed. She couldn’t say anything more. She was overwhelmed and felt so bereft that she couldn’t speak.

  “How’s Tanner?” Mom asked fearfully when Delta choked up. “Oh, honey. Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she managed. “I’m . . . I’m talking to the police, and I wanted to say that . . . I might be a while.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry. I’ll stay as long as you need me.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She hung up and put her head in her hands and cried. After a few minutes, she pulled it together and had the presence of mind to worry about the state of her makeup. She looked up at McCrae. “What do you want to know? Oh, yeah. Where I’ve been . . .”

  She launched into the tale of her evening, the event at the Bengal Room. She wondered how much she should say about Jonah Masterer, or whatever his last name was, and ended up not saying anything at all. It had been nothing. A mild flirtation, and it had nothing to do with her real life.

  Then she told him about finding Tanner, the stuck door, about the blood seeping through the white shirt covering his chest, his eyes rolling around.

  “He called out to me several times, Dee . . . Dee . . . but even when I answered, he didn’t say anything else.”

  “He calls you Dee?”

  “It’s short for Part D. The whole Five First thing, you might remember.” She felt silly, suddenly, and she could feel face heat from a rising blush. Was that good, that she could still feel embarrassment even through the devastation of Tanner’s situation? Or was that narcissism?